Repentance Is Needed Today
By John VonDoloski
“Except ye repent, ye
shall all likewise perish”
When we see the hand of God acting through natural disasters
upon areas of the world that are renowned for wickedness such as New Orleans or
an earthquake in communist China; there is a danger of misunderstanding these
events. Christ addressed the multitudes concerning the natural disasters in
His day such as the mass murder of the Galileans or the tower in Siloam falling
upon bystanders. The correction He makes is that these are not supernatural
acts of God upon extraordinary
sinners but events of providence known only to God and that all are in equal danger of eternal
judgment, except they repent.
He establishes the fact that without a genuine work of
repentance there is no salvation. His message from the beginning of His
ministry was, “repent ye, and believe the
gospel.” Christ is not alone in His emphasis upon repentance. The message
of John the Baptist was “Repent ye: for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The message of the apostle Peter, “repent ye therefore, and be converted, that
your sins may be blotted out.” The message of the apostle Paul, “I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have
taught you publicly, and from house to house,…repentance toward God, and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” He later summarized his teaching, “that they should repent and turn to God, and
do works meet for repentance.”
Noah Webster gave a most valuable definition of repentance in
his Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. In that classic work, he made a most necessary
distinction between “legal repentance” and “evangelical repentance.”
Legal repentance = the pain, regret or affliction which a
person feels on account of his past conduct, because it exposes him to punishment.
Evangelical repentance = Real penitence; sorrow or
deep contrition for sin, as an offense
and dishonor to God, a violation of his holy law, and the basest
ingratitude towards a Being of infinite benevolence.
Charles Spurgeon who is often called the “Prince of
Preachers” was also a firm believer in the importance of the preaching of
repentance: “I learn from the Scriptures that repentance is just as necessary
to salvation as faith is, and the faith that has not repentance going with it
will have to be repented of.”
William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army sounded a
warning to future generations that we would do well to heed today: “I consider
that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion
without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without
repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven
without hell.”
The preachers of the gospel were unanimous in emphasizing and
proclaiming the message of repentance. Today the message is still needed to be
sounded out by the messengers of God as being absolutely essential to a genuine
salvation. “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.”
John VonDoloski writes from White
City, Oregon. jvondo@hotmail.com