I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:6-12. Part I by Brother Emerson A. Wilson   Perverting The Gospel As we begin to look into these texts and update them by the help of God's Holy Spirit to our day and time, I might say first of all that Paul marveled that the believers could be so soon drawn away from the grace of Christ unto another gospel which is not another. Somebody asked, "Why did he keep twisting back and forth?" Well, just let me make something plain right quick, my friend. When Paul said, called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another, he was nailing down the fact that there is only one Gospel of Christ. Oh, how the world needs to understand this and get this clear in their minds that there is only one Gospel of Jesus Christ! Paul said that they had been so quickly drawn away from the grace of Christ unto another gospel which is not another. Somebody said, "What is it then?" It is the gospel perverted. I want you to see by the help of God that the words that Paul spoke there are just as true today as they were then. The devil believes and trembles. He knows that there is one Gospel, and he knows that the Gospel has power to deliver men and women from everything that they need to be delivered from for all the time that remains. Therefore, since the devil knows that there is only one Gospel of God; and it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, his only hope is to pervert that Gospel. Man knows well enough that there is only one Gospel. Therefore, the devil could not come along and sell the world another gospel. No, no, my friend, his move has been ever since there has been a Gospel to pervert that Gospel, leave it under the same heading, read it out of the same Book, change it enough that it will kill its power and effectiveness, and still leave a world believing that they believe in the Gospel. Consequently, we have the sad, sad condition all around us today. Men and women are believing that there is only one Gospel only one way, only one God, and so forth; but yet they are living lives in a powerless condition with no victory over sin. They are living on the same level that they lived on in sin before they supposedly ever accepted Jesus Christ. When we begin to look at Paul marveling that believers should be so soon drawn away unto another gospel, the marvel today is just a little different. The marvel today is that religious folks will not so much as admit that there is such a thing as another gospel. It makes no difference what they believe or how far it is from the Book; people say that it is still the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The devil has somewhat reversed things today: I pray that God will help us to lay hold of some truths here that we need to consider. Someone may ask, "Well, why are you so fearful? Why are you so stirred about this?" Brother, my heart is deeply stirred when I see a world going down the funnel into a lost eternity and men and women in religion on every side but living with no victory. God is not glorified in their lives, but yet they will talk right back and say that they believe the Gospel. This message needs to be sounded out. The Gospel has been perverted on every side. It is not another gospel, but they have perverted the Gospel till it does not have the power and the effect anymore. A "Bewitching" Gospel In Galatians 3:1, he said, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you…? He begins there by using the word "bewitched." Let us see, my friend, how bewitching and how deceiving the power of the enemy really is. All the witch doctors are not in India or Africa. Some of them are Doctors of Divinity standing in the pulpits, and they are bewitching people just as much as the Scripture said. They are bewitching them to a place where they will not believe the Gospel, and all the time the people are made to believe that they are hearing Gospel truth and that they can stake their eternal soul's welfare on it. May God help us! Someone said, "Well, Brother Wilson, I don't think you need to get excited. I think the need is to preach the Gospel and get men and women saved." Well, we are going to preach the Gospel; but I am going to clear off a place first. Brother and sister, we need to realize that everything is not Gospel truth. I say without fear of successful contradiction that a great percentage of what you are hearing in the religious world is not Gospel truth. I want to make it plain right now that I am not speaking against any individual anywhere, but I am speaking against spirits of the enemy that are out to do a work. The devil is sending more souls to hell through religion than he is through any other avenue. Countless millions have their names on church records and are as sure of making hell their home if they would die today as if they were there already. Yet they are going along being numbed and bewitched. Another Gospel If you try to talk the Gospel to them, they tell you, "I have no need. Go to that drunkard. Go to that man who doesn't have his name on a church book. I don't need help. Go to him." The religious world needs help today as badly as the rest. If you do not think that it is a marvel today, just begin to really deal with some souls in the religious world and try to help them. The marvel today is that folks will not so much as admit the fact that there is such a thing as another gospel. It can be perverted. The Word of God can be added to or taken away from, but this spirit of the age has done such a work that people are ready to gather it all together and say that it is all the Gospel and we are all the Church. You cannot find anyone who is preaching another gospel. They are all preaching the Gospel; but just as the Word declares, the Gospel has been perverted. It has been perverted when it will not deal out the results that God has put in His Word. Therefore, we need to note, my friend, that this deliberate blindness which has come over the hearts and minds of too many people towards the truth speaks of a grave condition. It says loudly that modern churchgoers have been so touched and molded by another gospel that they refuse to admit its existence. Right there is the first deception, whenever the devil sells you such a bill of goods and causes you to believe that which is contrary to the Word of God. The devil has so deceived some people that they refuse to believe that their perverted gospel is anything different from the Book even though it reads differently and teaches differently from the Book. They defend it as the Gospel of God and refuse discussion about it. Now here is your bewitching. You can deal with people today who are just as far off the track as they can be religiously. They are still sucking on their old cigarettes. Some of them are still drinking beer and delving in other worldly things; but they have been taught a gospel, and it is Gospel truth as far as they are concerned. When you get ready to put the Word right on them, they say, "Look, I don't even want to discuss it." Well, the devil has done a good job there. This is what I am talking about. May God help us to see the sad condition that mankind is in! Satan through religion has perverted the big things in righteousness, and our world has a twisted concept of the very essence of the Gospel. The results of it are easy to see. The inspired Scriptures are not the final word. No, people today will brazenly tell you, when you read the Scripture to them, that their church does not teach that; but if you would turn around and tell them that is "another gospel," they would say, "No, it is not another gospel. It is THE GOSPEL." The results are that the inspired Scriptures are not final. In fact, the Scriptures are quite hostile to such people. If you want to "bum up" a religious person, just put some straight truth on him. Man, he will get hostile, even though the Gospel is what will save him. Yet you put the Gospel on him, and he will become hostile. He will let you know what kind of a spirit he really has. This great Gospel of Jesus Christ will still uncover every spirit. It will show us what we really are. In fact, that is what the Gospel is for first of all--to show us our true condition. There are two things that the Gospel of God will do. It will show you your true condition first. Secondly, it will show you a way out of it. The Gospel will not pat you on the back when you are wrong. The Gospel will not make a way for you when you are not right. When your attitude is wrong and old ugly feelings down in your heart are manifesting a wrong spirit, the Gospel will not make any room for you. In our Scripture text, we see that Paul is talking about how the enemy, working through the realms of religion, has switched mankind to another gospel and has caused them to pervert the very Gospel of God. I say again that the false teachings of religion have perverted many of the big things of righteousness. The very nature of God Himself has been substituted. The false teachings of religion cause you to feel that God will put up with and go along with things that His Gospel is totally against. The Love of God in Christ Jesus Sinners, religious or otherwise, are talking about the love of God. I have thought much on this lately. You never saw a world that hangs so much on the love of God. Sinners without any religious affiliation and religious sinners will grab for that one straw--the love of God--when you go to put the heat on them. According to the Bible, anyone who is not regenerated knows nothing about the love of God. No one knows about the love of God unless he has been born again. A sinner knows nothing about the love of God, but we have unregenerate men from the pulpit right on down telling all about what God loves. Unless you have been born again, you are as ignorant about the love of God as a hog is about Sunday. Let us get right to the Gospel. This may be a little rough, but it will not hurt you. When God uses a dusting rag on the Church, it is a sword. That is a pretty rough thing to dust you off with, but He will get the dust off if you will hold still; and if you do not hold still, He may take an ear off or something else. We have an unregenerate world standing right up in battle and telling you and me what the love of God is. I want this driven down securely: No one knows anything about the love of God until he has been born again and is living in Christ Jesus. From Roman Catholicism right on through the realms of Protestantism and to the many religious sects and cults of our day, they are all telling you about the love of God. Yet right in the same breath, they tell you how they sin and everyone sins. If you still live in sin, you know nothing about the love of God. God is love. That is His very nature, but this perverting of the Gospel by men who know nothing of the love of God endeavors to drag Him down to a human level when they begin to tell you how God loves and what God loves. May God help an old-time Church of God preacher somewhere to raise up and tell the world that God is angry with the sinner every day. You do not have the love of God abiding on you when you commit sin. Read I John, II John, and III John. The wrath of God abides on you when you commit sin. Even bumper stickers now say, "Smile. God loves you." Somebody said, "Don't you think He loves the world?" Certainly, He does; but I am talking about experiencing and knowing the love of God to the place where you are able to get up and give directions and tell people what God loves and what He hates. Certainly, God loves the world. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8. However, and I want you to get this: that does NOT mean that we can continue to live a life of sin, being slaves to sin, and still be "OK" with God! God's love for the sinner is shown in that He gave His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die on an old rugged cross, to take our sins FROM us, that we might have a RIGHT relationship with Him! Let us find where the love of God really is. The Gospel will tell us where the love of God is. Friend, somebody needs to open the gatling guns of truth against this devilish thing. I pray God will drop a spiritual bomb and blow it wide open so that men and women can see what a sad condition they are in. Somebody asked, "Are you sure that no sinner knows the love of God?" I am positive of it. Certainly, God has a love for them; but I want to make it plain that no one knows anything of the love of God until he has been truly born again and regenerated. Paul said in Galatians 1:15 and 16, But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood… John 3:16, the golden text of the Gospel, says that God so loved the world--a world of lost humanity--that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him (the Greek says "into Him") should not perish, but have everlasting life. How much did God love them? This verse shows us the degree of His love and the immensity of His love. God's love was wrapped up in Jesus Christ. When we turn Jesus Christ and His Word down, there is nothing but the wrath of God abiding on us. God's love is in Jesus Christ! Romans, Chapter 8, is sometimes read to try to strengthen the feeble knees of sinners and make them feel that they can go on in their sin. They are told by many preachers that if they profess an experience with God, the grace of God will cover them; and they will never be lost. That is a doctrine that comes from the pits of hell. There are no such statements as that in the Gospel; but oh, this Scripture in Romans 8:38 and 39 is misused so many times: For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Where is the love of God? It is in Jesus Christ. If you are not in Jesus Christ, you do not know anything about the love of God. When you come in old-time repentance and are born again, you are grafted into the living Vine and baptized by one Spirit into Jesus Christ. When you get into Jesus Christ, you begin to know what the love of God is. Someone may say, "Why, he said right there that nothing will separate you." He nailed it right down that if we will stay in Christ, nothing can separate us from the love of God. When you are born again, the Spirit of God sheds abroad the love of God in your heart; and when you stay in Christ, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of Christ. However, you can separate yourself from Christ. In I John 3:1, we read, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.. We become as different to the world as Jesus was. This old thing of fusing the Church and the world together is an act of Satan. He has tried to work it all down through the ages, but real salvation makes you and keeps you as separate from the world as Jesus Himself was. The reason why you are different is that the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart. You get an understanding of what the love of God really is. Too many people do not understand what it means to be a partaker of His nature. We know that love is one of His attributes; but that is His very nature, also. II Peter 1:1-4 tells us: Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. That is the way that you grow. The way that you get grace and peace multiplied is by getting a greater knowledge of God, and you get a greater knowledge of God as you study and meditate upon His Word. I want you to see that the love of God is only revealed as we are born again. In John 1:13, we are told that we are those Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. We are not doing what we want to do or what man wants us to do, but we are doing what God said to do. We are born of God; and when we are born of God, He gives us power to become sons of God through His divine power. We are made a partaker of His divine nature. Right there we begin to know the love of God. I can tell you right now that you have never seen the first born-again person fight holiness. You have never seen the first born-again person that wanted to commit sin. When the love of God is shed abroad in your heart, you will love the things that God loves. Yes, you become a partaker of His divine nature. A False Love of God Let us go back to our text. According to the Apostle Paul, my friend, another gospel has completely changed the definition of God's love. This is sad, but it is true. God's love today according to religious derelicts is a growing toleration. Now let us just lay it out like it is. The farther we go, the filthier that which calls itself the Church becomes and the more her people look like Jezebels. They are so much like the world that no one can tell where the world stops and the Church starts; but all the time they are setting this image up as the love of God getting greater. They feel that the love of God is getting greater in that it is tolerating more and more. I can prove to you by the Gospel that the love of God will have less toleration the farther you go with God and the straighter and more narrow your life will get. Furthermore, you will love it that way. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit love the naked truth sharp and straight just like it is. I Corinthians 13:6 says that charity Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. It does not rejoice in iniquity; but this thing which is being set forth as the love of God today is declaring it to be a growing toleration of more and more of that which is questionable, polluted, filthy, and vile. With this false love comes an animosity and a hatred for any true servant who thunders out the Word of God as it is. Isn't it a strange thing that they can love everything from the darkness of Roman Catholicism clear on through! They have a love that will cover all the filth and ungodliness; but let a man walk up who will lay the truth out as it is, and they will hate that individual. Let us put the test where it belongs, my friend. There is a hatred that rises up against a servant of God who will still thunder out the words of God that say, "Be ye holy; for I am holy" (I Peter 1:16). In the Gospel, God lets us know that if we are going to understand and possess His love, we must also possess His holiness. The same divine power that quickens us into a new life sheds the love of God abroad. "Another gospel" which Paul talks about has made such a deep impression on the hearts and minds of people. In fact, too many of those who claim to be God's people even accept the thought of another gospel; and when one cries out against it, they say that he is not manifesting love. Someone said, "Do you really think God's people are affected by that?" It is pitiful, my friend, when we consider this great move called Key '73 which was nothing more than a production of this very false image of love that I am talking about. Many of the very people of God have been swept away with the movement that claims to be the Church of God. They have joined ranks, and now they will get red faced if you stand up and preach a separate Gospel that separates a people from sin and false religion. Brother, you can talk all you want to about Roman Catholicism raising up one of these days; and she is going to raise up one of these days and do just what the Bible says--she will swallow up all her daughters. However, she will not have to have any guns to swallow them up. This thing that I am preaching about has laid the groundwork and opened up the way. Brother, Rome is not going to have to raise up and make the Protestant come home. Brother, they are walking back home under the deception of this thing. Protestantism is walking right back into Roman Catholicism. Someone said, "Brother Wilson, don't you know that isn't the way to win the world?" This is what I am preaching against. "Another gospel which is not another" has worked on the minds of more people than we are ready to realize. I can bring it right down closer. Somebody said, "We did not make any moves to support Key '73. Well, that same spirit works on you when the Bible definitely tells you how to dress modestly, and you want to hike your hemline up two or three inches higher than you should. You are not abiding by this Gospel. You have "another gospel," and you are perverting the Gospel of Christ. It is the same old spirit. My friend, the Word and the Spirit of God send forth a message to tell you to lay hold of some things that are not conducive to Christianity and to get them out of your life, get them out of your home, and get rid of them. Then, along you come with the idea that you can still be a saint and hang on to these things. You say, "I will live my life." Brother, that is not this Gospel; that is "another gospel." Somebody said, "How are we going to tell the difference?" I will tell you before we get through. "Another gospel" has made such deep impressions on the hearts and minds of the people that many even of God's people will not accept the thought of another gospel. I do not make a hobby of preaching against false religion; but when God says preach that message, I preach that message. When you stand up and cry out against false religion, people say that you are not manifesting love. This modern worldly religious love accepts everything and everybody but those who obey the Gospel. I know the Revelation is going to be fulfilled, but I want to say again that it is not going to take any power from Rome to swallow up Protestantism. She is walking right into her arms. All it took was a false teaching on love. May God help us to get our eyes open!