I received in the mail today a letter with no return address, postmarked from Austin, containing a Christian tract (a small pamphlet) entitled, “The Terrors of Hell”, by William C. Nichols.

The above link takes you to Mr. Nichols’ site, I believe, that contains the tract’s contents. I don’t know who sent me this tract, nor why they didn’t want me to know who they were, but I conjecture that they are an Evangelical Protestant who found my blog and wanted to help me see that my faith is in vain, being a Roman Catholic, and that I needed to become a true Christian so I can be saved and avoid Hell.

I think that this person has very good intentions, and I thank them for caring about the salvation of my soul. I care about theirs, too, and have said a prayer for them. I would like to make a blog post about this incident, however, as I think it provides a good opportunity to discuss the critical questions that every Christian should ask themselves concerning their faith.

From Mr. Nichols’ tract:

Why should we be so concerned about hell? Why should we spend time reading about hell? There are several reasons why it is profitable to do so:

1) Hearing about the terrors of hell may shock your conscience and awaken you out of your false security.

2) Hearing about hell helps to deter men from committing sin. Both the godly and the ungodly are persuaded not to sin as much when they are regularly reminded of the terrors of hell.

3) Hearing about the terrors of hell may help to awaken those among us who may think they are saved because they believe in Christ or the facts of the gospel, but who are not really saved and are on their way to hell, but don’t know it.

I believe in Hell. I also think that fear of Hell, while not the most perfect reason to turn to God and love Him, is a good reason to turn to God, so I think that reasons 1 and 2 are true.

Reason 3, however, is different, and I want to focus on it in this post.

The reason listed indicates that there are people who think they are saved but really are not (a dangerous situation to be sure). Why do they think they are saved? Because they believe in Christ or in the gospel.

Clearly, Mr. Nichols uses the word “believe” here to mean something different than the meaning of the word from the Bible. Belief here indicates intellectual recognition or understanding without that understanding translating into a change of life or actions (i.e. the person’s will is not altered to change sinful behavior), rather than belief being a person intellectually understanding the faith and putting it into practice through their will, receiving God’s grace to do so.

I will return to this idea that someone thinks he is saved because he believes in Christ but really doesn’t later.

First, a later passage from the tract:

One of the greatest preachers that ever lived, Jonathan Edwards, wrote, “The glory of God is the greatest good; it is that which is the chief end of creation; it is of greater importance than anything else. But this is one way wherein God will glorify Himself, as in the eternal destruction of ungodly men He will glorify His justice. Therein He will appear as a just governor of the world. The vindictive justice of God will appear strict, exact, awful, and terrible, and therefore glorious.”

Jonathan Edwards was a Protestant minister who believed in Calvinistic teachings. I read his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as an atheist my junior year in high school as part of our required reading.

The first question that strikes me here is: Why should I believe Jonathan Edwards? What authority does he have to say what is true and false with regard to God, the Christian faith, sin, Hell, etc.?

I am not objecting to the contents of the specific passage quoted above, as there is truth in it, but more generally to the fact that Mr. Nichols decided to use Jonathan Edwards’ writings as authoritative.

The tract begins its conclusion, which returns us to the first point:

Do not think that simply because you go to church, or believe in God, or believe intellectually in the truths of Christianity that you will escape hell. The majority of those who regularly attend churches every week, all over the world, will go to hell…

You who profess to be Christians, but do not read your Bible much and pray little: how shall you escape the damnation of hell? You who are not especially bothered by little sins or troubled by the vain and filthy thoughts which you have: are you ready to go to hell? You who think the kingdom of God consists in a verbal profession of Christ or intellectually believing that Jesus died for your sins, but who are not concerned with living a holy, godly life and give little or no thought to God during the week: are you prepared to endure the torments of hell, day and night, forever and ever?

You had better be, because if these things are true of you, you are headed straight for hell, unless you repent. Do not delude yourself! Christianity does not consist in words, or pious statements, or mere intellectual belief, but in a new heart and a new life dedicated to not sinning and living for the glory of God.

From these passages, it is clearly seen that the “belief” that leads a person to Hell is not belief but rather an intellectual understanding only that does not affect our will (actions).

A problem with these statements is that being a Christian does involve professing our beliefs verbally and believing that Jesus died for my sins: Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Also, in Matthew 10:32,33, Jesus says that every man who acknowledges Him before men, Jesus will acknowledge before the Father.

Notice that when St. Paul uses the word “believe” here he means belief that translates into action, into a change in life, rather than the false belief that this tract condemns.

The tract says Christianity “does not consist in words”–well, as we have seen, this statement is a bit inaccurate; it would be better to say that Christianity “does not consist in words only.”

This tract reminds me of my days as an Evangelical Protestant and the paradoxical lack of security I felt about my salvation even while believing in “eternal security” or “once saved, always saved”. The problem is this: You think you are saved because you believe in Christ and in the gospel and are seeking to follow Him in your life everyday, but, you still commit sins, sometimes the same sins over and over again. Are you really saved? Or do you only think that you are saved, as this tract points out again and again?

If you still commit sins, you must not be a real Christian; you must not really believe in Christ, otherwise you would not sin anymore; when you repented for the umpteenth time of that particular sin that plagues you, was your repentance genuine; was it real, or are you truly still unconverted and therefore on your way to Hell?

When you base your salvation off of whether or not you “think” you are saved, it is a hopeless cause. We must instead turn to objective criteria by which we can determine whether or not we are in a state of grace, that is, in a state whereby if we died at that moment, we would have confidence of receiving Christ’s mercy and being welcomed into Heaven.

What is this objective criteria? It involves two things: 1) Knowing which actions are morally right (good) and which are morally wrong (evil), and 2) Knowing that if we commit an evil action and repent of it, we are forgiven by God, even if we commit that evil action for the 27,325th time.

The first criterion is important because if we don’t know what actions God has declared are good versus those He has condemned as evil, we will very likely commit evil actions and offend God, risking our souls’ salvation.

The second is equally important because we need to know whether we are in a state of friendship with God or not. If we are not, when we die He will look at us and sadly declare that He never knew us. Yes, we can tell God we don’t want Him in our lives anymore and, through a mortal sin, expel Him from our souls; He will not force Himself on us and stay within us when we misuse our freedom and tell Him to get lost.

In the Catholic Church, the faith of which was passed on from Christ to the apostles and down to us, we believe that Christ instituted the sacrament of Confession, where we can confess our sins to God through His priest and, from the priest acting in persona Christi, hear in audible words that Christ has forgiven us of our sins.

Why not just ask God for forgiveness directly and avoid going to His priest? Well, you certainly should ask God directly for forgiveness when you sin and become repentant of it, but also, as soon as possible find a priest to hear your confession because this is the way that Christ established it, and for good reason, too, as you know that you are forgiven and don’t have to live with the fear that you didn’t “really” repent but only thought you did and therefore are still under God’s wrath.

To the person who sent me this tract, I thank you again. I challenge you and my dear readers to ask themselves why they believe that Jonathan Edwards is authoritative, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther, or Max Lucado, or the Left Behind series authors.

And if you feel uncertain of whether you are really forgiven for your sins, know that Christ does not want you to be: He both does not want you to have a false sense of security that once you are “saved” you can commit any sin and not lose your salvation, nor does He want you to be uncertain when you repent of your sins that you are forgiven for them, which is one reason He established the sacrament of Confession.

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