Hell Hath No Fury … (and Other Lies That Fools Believe)

What Charles Finney Taught About Self-Deceived Christians

Charles Finney’s evangelistic ministry spanned six decades, during which time thousands came under the Holy Spirit’s heavy conviction and “prayed through” to a genuine new birth. But there is a stark contrast between Finney’s uncompromising ministry and today’s diluted Christianity. Unlike his contemporary Søren Kierkegaard—a mentally twisted village idiot whose perverted speculations would later inspire lesser intellects to make idiotic rambling a philosophical art form—Finney emerged from his overwhelming encounter with the Holy Spirit bearing experiential knowledge of The ringing Word of Truth.

Most “Christians” don’t want to hear: Their precious beliefs are nothing but Satan’s lies. That is not mere opinion or theological musing. True Believers have all encountered the God of wrath personally, and they can see through the lies that fools believe. The trouble is, they don’t know where to find the Truth.

The God that Finney knew and preached stands in absolute opposition to the goofy god of unconditional grace that most “Christians” serve today. His was a God of unmitigated vengeance and wrath, demanding that every Believer deny himself and live in complete dedication. Despite the comfortable modern doctrines that suggest otherwise, Finney believed (as did the Apostles and Early Church Fathers) that the God of wrath is the only God that exists. The ever-loving, all-forgiving god of grace conjured up by dolts since Finney’s time has no validity at all, in spite of the fact that evangelical Protestants began borrowing it from liberal theologians who fabricated the lie more than a century and a half ago.

Two Types of Religious Deception

In his treatise on “Self Deceivers,” Finney unmasks the self-deception that is endemic in Christian faith today. He identifies two equally fatal extremes in what people say and what they do (faith vs. religious practice):

• The first extreme makes religion consist entirely in believing certain abstract doctrines while neglecting good works.
• The second focuses solely on good works (dead works) while disregarding any definite beliefs with regard to Jesus Christ.

True Faith vs. False Faith: Understanding the Difference

True faith vs. false faith becomes crystal clear as Finney explains that genuine saving faith requires two indispensable elements:

• An intellectual conviction that something is incontrovertibly true, and
• A corresponding state of the heart.

This combination invariably produces matching conduct—because people always act according to their genuine beliefs. The rational mind naturally approves Truth when viewed abstractly—even the demons would love the Gospel if they could see it without relation to themselves. The signs of false faith in Christianity emerge when professors of the Christian religion intellectually approve of biblical Truth but fail to apply it personally.

The Signs of Self-Deception in Modern Christianity

Religious (Christian) hypocrisy in modern churches manifests itself through two distinct classes of hypocrites:

• Those deliberately deceiving others through outward shows of piety, and
• Those deceiving themselves through orthodox beliefs without practice.

Some self-deceivers love orthodox preaching and delight in flights of imagination about God’s benevolent character, yet they resist any preaching that might expose their true nature by demanding repentance. Like a sick man, they feel tender emotions while viewing Christ abstractly, but they never intend to live in accord with His principles. That is, they appreciate the beauty of Truth while remaining what they always have been. Consequently, they take salvation for granted based on doctrine while never adhering to its requirements.

Early Church deception and hypocrisy can be seen in those who emphasized ceremonial works. Later on, “Christians” swung to the opposite extreme of faith without any commitment to practice. Many who join churches today do so because they love the preaching, but they reveal the enmity that lies in their unchanged hearts by opposing any Truth that confronts their behavior. They take salvation for granted based on doctrine while never intending to meet its requirements.

How the Bible Warns Us About False Beliefs in the End Times

The leaders of the Early Church once possessed an understanding of the incredible store of information that lies hidden in Hebrew Scriptures, but they lost it. That has led to the modern delusion that Satan’s lies are the God’s-honest Truth. Just remember this: The Truth doesn’t become a lie just because fools prefer the religious traditions found in “conventional wisdom.” It only becomes hidden from those who are foolish enough to believe the lie. As Paul warned:

(Do you not remember that I was telling you these things while {I} was still with you? So you are aware of what is holding {them} fast now so that he can be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of the lawless one is already working in {them}—the one who is only holding {them} fast at this time until he comes out of {their} midst.) So then the one who is lawless will be revealed.

(ii) The one whom His Majesty, Jesus,

(a) will put away by the spirit of His mouth and
(b) abrogate by the appearance of His coming;

(iii) the one whose arrival is in accordance with Satan’s energy: with all

(a) supernatural power and
(b) signs and
(c) wonders—lies—and with all
(d) {the} deceitfulness of injustice

(i) for those who are going to be done away with
(ii) because they did not accept the love of the truth so that they could be saved.

(1) So for this reason the {living} God will send them a deceptive energy

(a) so that they believe the lie,
(b) so that all who did not believe the truth but were delighted with his injustice can be judged.

(2 Thessalonians 2:5–12) —Harper’s Standardized Study Bible

Common sense should tell anyone the End-Times deception in Christian doctrine will only intensify as “the mystery of the lawless one” unfolds. Paul plainly says God Himself will send a deluding influence on those who refuse to love Truth “so that they believe the lie”—that is, ensure they believe what is false and face judgment.

The Antichrist’s deception will catch many totally by surprise, especially those who firmly believe Satan’s lie. Nearly everyone believes God would never allow such deception—yet this very confidence forms part of the phenomenal delusion God has already imposed on this generation. Without receiving “the love of the truth,” none will recognize their error until it is too late.

Today’s Church faces unprecedented challenges from vast crowds of Pretenders sitting right alongside True Believers. While this mixture of Believers and Pretenders has existed for the past eighteen centuries, our generation confronts an unprecedented thick haze of delusion that prevents True Believers from recognizing the frauds. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people in fundamental/evangelical churches today have never experienced a genuine rebirth. Many of the frauds firmly believe otherwise even though they have nothing to support their belief in their supposed personal relationship with God. The relationship they do have will prove deadly at the Judgment.

Most of these fake “Christians” will grow hot under their self-righteous collars at the mere thought of them being a Pretender warming a pew in their precious fundamental/evangelical church. If you don’t believe that, just watch how fast the religious frauds bare their teeth when confronted with the Truth. Like the Pharisees of old, most of them have been hiding behind their religious tradition so long they wouldn’t recognize the Truth if it bit them in their sanctimonious backsides.

Identifying Deception in Today’s Church

Finney’s observations about ministers and congregations remain frighteningly relevant:

• When one finds people loving abstract doctrinal preaching but rebelling against practical application, he should recognize their low spiritual state.
• If a person cannot understand and believe a logical explanation of the Truth, they likely possess no true religion at all. They are merely hoping to reach Heaven through dead faith in abstract orthodoxy.

Tell one of these religious imbeciles the Truth and watch them quickly express their anger. They have a vested interest in rejecting the Truth because the lies they believe allow them to do whatever they want while maintaining an illusion of godliness.

Here’s a Truth that will send your average “Christian” into a self-righteous fury: If you haven’t been born again, God doesn’t know you—period! It doesn’t matter how many Bible verses you can quote or how many church committees you serve on. Your emotional attachment to some figment of your imagination won’t buy you a cold cup of water in Hell. You can believe that if you care to. You can disbelieve it if you dare to. The Truth of the Word of God that God is doesn’t give a wit about what you choose to believe. But you should.

The most destitute among us are those who harbor no concern about their divine favor while clinging to a mere emotional attachment to some figment of their imagination. They should be able to recognize the Truth in the fact that their actions do not line up with the Scriptures yet they cannot do so because they have chosen to believe some soul-soothing lie. Their delusion rests on nothing more than emotional fiction.

Charles Finney warned his generation about the impending judgment because he had personally encountered the God of wrath. The time has come for True Believers to abandon the pretense they learned from the Pretenders around them and return to the basics they understood when they first believed. The validity of the Truth does not depend on your belief or disbelief—that is, reality isn’t determined by human preference. The God of wrath has endured such foolishness long enough, and He has now crafted specific circumstances designed to bring this era to a stunning, horrifying conclusion.

Take a good look around—lies and liars control this realm through uncertainty because fools learn early on that lying provides them a temporary escape from consequences. Yet death comes to everyone sooner or later, even though only a few comprehend the horror of the Hell that awaits those who reject the Truth so they can go on believing a comfortable deception. Finney warned his generation about the impending judgment of God because he had personally encountered the God of wrath. That same God still calls True Believers to drop their pretense and return to their first love of Truth.

Only a fool would argue that something is true just because he wants it to be. That is a mind game that religious folks play so they can avoid facing Truth head-on. That mind-set manifests itself in their rationalizations—those comfortable mental constructs that let them continue in wrongdoing without feeling any conviction.

The Deadly Consequences of Deception

The current condition of the Protestant wing of the Church is particularly alarming. But the Church in all its various forms has long focused on abstract doctrines rather than practical application. Many lay greater emphasis on non-practical doctrines than practical ones. For that reason a man may be the greatest heretic in practice yet maintain good standing with other “Christians” even if openly profane or vicious. This explains why attempts to purify the beliefs of the Church have met such resistance in the past. True Believers have failed to recognize that heresy in practice proves heresy in belief. Here’s the deal:

• One may profess the right notions and theories, even when they don’t really believe them.
• Orthodox beliefs, when truly believed, produce correct practice.
• Wherever you find heretical practice, you can be sure the beliefs are equally heretical.

Consider the professing “Christian” who is fixated on wealth:

• Does he truly believe he will die?
• He may know death’s inevitability abstractly, but his actions prove he doesn’t really believe it personally.

Pretenders’ false representations of “Christians” have done great injury to True Believers. Some preachers define Christians as “a little grace and a great deal of devil”—which is an utterly false and misleading statement. While a True Believer’s sins provoke a feeling of guilt due to their knowledge of the Truth, and while every True Believer feels conviction when they fail, their mind-set is nowhere near the same as that of Pretenders. The lies that Pretenders believe only encourage them to keep on pretending.

In the End Times, Pretense Isn’t Going to Protect Anyone From the Antichrist

Saving faith has a specific content—no one will be saved without believing Christ died for their sins. That belief is an essential part of saving faith. In these Last Days, however, saving faith must contain far more than this basic precept to carry Believers through to the End. The Truth needed to see through Satan’s grand delusion will eventually become available to all, but likely too late to benefit the majority.

Saving faith has a specific content—no one will be saved without believing Christ died for their sins.

The Pretenders who believe in nothing more than clichés and conventional wisdom will prove themselves to be exactly what they are—fake Christians. Their religion consists of empty notions that allow them to neglect holy living. Conversely, those avoiding theological beliefs about God while emphasizing conduct alone become Pharisees, making outward pretensions while denying fundamental Gospel Truths.

The phenomenal aspect of the coming delusion is that:

• Those who have already chosen to believe “the lie” that will enable the Antichrist’s rise to power will not recognize their error until it is too late.
• Nearly everyone who reads these words thinks God would never allow such deception in their case.
• Only those who “receive the love of the truth” will see through the thick haze descending on this generation.

The current situation resembles a sinner contemplating his mortality—the subject stays far from his thoughts until the reality confronts him. Similarly, the beliefs of many in the Church will remain purely theoretical until reality forces an acceptance of the Truth.

The Truth is already available for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Although fools will deny God would ever allow the Truth to be concealed, the fact is, He did. But the Truth will only remain hidden from those foolish enough to believe conventional wisdom and reject Scripture’s clear Teaching. Some here at the End of the Age will readily recognize and accept the Truth, while others will persist in self-deception. The choice is theirs alone, and the consequences are just as certain.

Some of you reading these words have “eyes to see and ears to hear” because you have had that same personal encounter with the Living God that Charles Finney had. If you are one of them, it’s time to drop the pretense you’ve learned from Pretenders and get back to what you understood when you first believed. As for the rest of you—go ahead and dismiss what I’m saying. Your time for understanding is running out faster than you think.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways

Here are the core truths that should shake every complacent “Christian” to their core:

• True saving faith requires both intellectual conviction and a transformed heart that produces corresponding action.
• Ninety-nine out of a hundred in fundamental/evangelical churches today have likely never experienced a genuine rebirth.
• Self-deceived believers love orthodox preaching but resist anything that exposes their true nature.
• The God of wrath remains the only God that exists, despite comfortable modern doctrines suggesting otherwise.
• Those choosing comfort over Truth will discover too late that a lifetime of thinking won’t benefit them in the end.
• In these Last Days, saving faith must contain far more than basic precepts to carry Believers through to the End.

This blog post barely scratches the surface of the full ebook, which delves deep into Finney’s profound insights about religious self-deception and provides a comprehensive analysis of how Satan’s lies have infiltrated modern Christianity. The complete version offers the following for those truly seeking to separate genuine belief from deadly self-deception:

• extensive scriptural evidence,
• detailed examples,
• and practical applications.

For more free resources that will help you see through religious pretense and encounter the real God of wrath, visit our Online Library.