The Last Hour, Minutes Unknown (369) – September 26 2026

Few enter the narrow gate that leads to life, but many enter through the wider gate and the broader and spacious way that leads to destruction (see Matthew 7:13-14). Those who are lukewarm are about to be spewed out of Christ’s mouth (Revelation 3:16). What does it mean to enter through the narrow gate. It all ties back to whether we are confessing Jesus as Lord. If we are seeking Him with all our heart, wanting to know Him. Are we abiding (which also means dwelling and living) in Christ, thereby bearing good fruit, worthy of admiration (Matthew 7:17). We are in the last hour. Soon the Master of the House will Get Up and Close the Door (Luke 13:25). The bells are ringing. Jesus is coming SOON!

This program covers the following Scriptures from the Amplified Classic version (AMPC): Matthew 7:13-20.

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) And a very good day. This is Pastor Marc Whelan with Touch of God, and thank you so much for joining us this week. It's so important that we understand how important it is to be with our Lord, to spend time with our Lord Jesus, to know Him, not just know of Him. And so we're spending some time on this particular topic of dwelling in Him, dwelling with Him, and His word abiding in us. And John chapter 15 verse 6, where Jesus was recorded as saying, If a person does not dwell in me, he is thrown out like a broken off branch, and withers. Such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned. Now Jesus is telling us what happens to us when we do not dwell in Him. Remember that Jesus says in the book of John that I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So this means that by not dwelling in the Lord, we're not going to be able to get to the Father, God the Father. And we know that God the Father, while He is omnipresent, He is everywhere, we know that He sits on His throne in heaven next to His Son Jesus. So if we cannot get back to God the Father, then that means we cannot get into heaven where He is, which means that we're going to somewhere else after we breathe our last breath upon this earth in the bodies that we currently reside within. And so Jesus is warning us, this is what happens when we do not dwell in Him. We're thrown out like a broken off branch. Remember the first few verses of John chapter 15, it talks about Jesus being the true vine, and we, His followers, His believers, as the branches. But the branches can bear fruit if we abide in the vine, the true vine of Jesus. If we abide in Him, if His word abides in us, then we are fruitful because our branch then bears fruit because we have been connected with Jesus. And Jesus even said in verse 5 that we can do nothing if we are apart from Him. Let me read verse 5 in John chapter 15 for you in the Amplified Classic edition. It says, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever lives in me and I in him bears much abundant fruit. However, apart from me, cut off from vital union with me, you can do nothing. It is not the problem of the vine, it is the problem of something to do with the branch. If there is some fruit on the other branches, then we know that the problem is not with the vine, but it is with those branches. So the problem today is not with God. If we are asking the Lord in prayer, God please help me have a deeper relationship with you, He would say to you, all you have to do is turn your heart to me and I'm right in front of you. We do not have to beg and cry out to the Lord for Him to come close. All we have to do is focus our heart, repent from what we were doing, and turn 180 degrees, focus on the Lord, and when we draw nigh unto Him, He will draw nigh unto us. There is no waiting game for the Lord. There is no time like the present. There is work to be done. There is a relationship to be enjoyed and nurtured between the branch and the true vine. That's between us and Jesus. And remember that the vinedresser, the husbandman of the vine, God the Father is the one doing the pruning and the cutting off those branches who are not bearing fruit, not dwelling in the Lord. Remember when you dwell in the Lord, you bear fruit. It is not you trying to force yourself to bear fruit. That would be works, and it's not about works. It's about being in Christ, having a relationship with Jesus Himself, dwelling in Him, spending time with Him every day, taking Him with you in your heart, conscious of His presence within you, and also not forgetting His Word, which is vital, because we have to know the truth so we can be set free from our incorrect understandings about Him, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and everything we have been raised to to learn, whether it be by our parents or from someone else in our lives, that we may have been mistaught some things, and we need to find out the truth for ourselves by reading the Word of God and accepting that it's true. That helps the whole aspect of abiding in Jesus. The Word being alive in us, abiding in us, dwelling in us, for us to consider every verse, for us to think about and contemplate and ponder every verse day and night, as Psalm chapter 1 verse 2 says, is so important to God's creation, let alone His believers, sons and daughters, growing up into His Son Jesus. So we went from verse 5 and then we went into verse 6, it says, If a person does not dwell in Me, he is thrown out like a broken-off branch and withers. Such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned. I want to jump to Matthew chapter 7. We're going to come back to John chapter 15 a little later. Matthew chapter 7 in verse 13, it's the third of three chapters that record the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus spoke. And Matthew chapter 7, being that third chapter, in verse 13, He says, Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it. Now Jesus is showing us here, unfortunately, there are few that will find the narrow gate. You cannot assume even that everyone who professes to be a Christian will find or enter through that narrow gate. And let that not be so. Let us reach our brothers and sisters in Christ and reach those who are lost and reach those who are lukewarm and pray with them or pray for them and encourage them to seek the Lord with all of their heart and do not stop praying for them because the Lord wants us to pray them into His kingdom. He wants and He loves them so much. He paid preciously for them. He loves them. So pray for your family members. Pray for those who you work with. Pray for those strangers that you don't know on the street. Just pick someone at random. But if you cannot reach someone and you see them down the end of your street, just decide to start praying for that person because you don't know what they are going through and you don't know if they are a believer or not and they could be on a path to destruction tomorrow. A car could run them over tomorrow. We don't know because tomorrow is not promised. So we have to pray for these precious souls around us and God places us in situations and places so that we could demonstrate the kingdom to them and the love of Christ to them because when you love on someone, they did not do anything for you to receive that love. They will start inquiring in their own heart, why is this person being so nice to me? And that is the lost trying to understand the goodness of Jesus, but they don't yet know it's Jesus until you tell them about Him. You may be the only walking Bible, the only walking truth that the Lord Jesus has done good in your life and you're able to bring a testimony to that person in your whole town or in the whole street where you live. There may not be anyone else in your town witnessing to other people. We don't know. So Jesus is saying in Matthew chapter 7 verse 13, enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction and many are those who are entering through it. So there's a couple of other things in this verse that I want to draw out. The gate is the entrance to a path, a very wide path, a broad way that is leading away to destruction. So the wide gate in this verse does not appear to be the entrance to hell, but it's on the way to it because the wide gate unfortunately has to be wide because the Lord knows that a lot of people are not going to choose Him and that's very unfortunate. A lot of people are not going to dwell in Him, to abide in Him, to seek Him with all of their heart. A lot of people are not going to be reading His word. They might think that that one time up to the altar in the church was enough to secure salvation and then they can go back and not even have a relationship with Jesus, not even pray, not even spend time in His word and believe that everything is going to be fine. But as we will learn here shortly in Matthew chapter 7 and as we've read out a couple of weeks ago, He will not know those people who say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do great and mighty things in Your name? He will say to those people that He didn't know, I never knew you, I knew you not. So we'll read that verse shortly. So you don't want to be one of these people who believes that they're saved but in fact you're not. So how do you check yourself? You seek Jesus daily with all of your heart. You do not worry. You do not have a fear that you're going to hell, that you are so fearful that you have no peace and no sound mind. You have to trust in the Lord. If you confess Jesus as Lord, if you say, Jesus, You are my Lord, I seek You with all of my heart. Take my life, Lord. Let my life be laid down for You. You have it because You paid for it. You have paid the price for me. I am not my own. I have been bought with the price that You paid for with Your blood and Your sacrifice. And so Lord, let me seek You. Let me understand the truth. I seek Your Word, Your truth. Teach me, Lord. Teach me. These are examples of things that you would be doing as a believer every day. Worshiping the Lord with worship songs and praising God for His goodness and believing by faith that He will provide for you that He already has been providing for you. Having this exchange of conversations with Him, trusting in Him, and just in your heart, the depths of your heart, loving Him with a gratitude, an appreciation, and a love that He is the best Father. He is your Heavenly Father, and Jesus is your Lord, and He has saved you from the pit of hell. But stay on the narrow path. Do not go to the left or the right. Seek that narrow gate continually. Seek the Lord with all of your heart. Keep abiding in Him. Keep abiding in Him. Amen. Seeking Him, thinking about Him, reading His Word, doing His Word, praying for others, letting the Lord flow through you so that, yes, you'll be doing the works that the Lord predestined for you to walk in, but first and foremost, you will be in a right standing with the Lord in Christ in a relationship with Him that He's the one that paid for that. So we are to enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it. And I also want to point out here at the end of this verse 13, it says, many are those who are entering through it. He doesn't say, and many are those who will enter through it. There are people who are currently entering through the wide gate, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are already destroyed or in destruction, because the gate leads away to destruction. If you have a path that leads away to something, there is a path to it, and you're not yet at that destination where the path leads to. So there could still be time for people around you that may look like they have walked through that wide gate and are enjoying their so-called life in revelry and all sin and enticing others to sin and all these things of the world, but there is still time. While they are still breathing, there is still time to reach them with prayer, witnessing, telling them about your testimony, what Jesus has done for you, and telling them the truth of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 7, the next verse 14, but the gate is narrow, contracted by pressure, and the way is straightened and compressed that leads away to life, and few are those who find it. So again, he's reiterating again. When God reiterates, he repeats something, whether it be the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit is reminding you of something over and over again. The Lord is bringing prominence and importance to this verse or this message that he wants to give you. It is one of the most important messages because the Lord has paid for all of us not to have to go through, not end up on that wide gate broad path. He has paid for us to go through the narrow one, but not many are it seems, and he says, and few are those who find it, and that's very sad. That means that we need to be doing better as a body of Christ to witness to those who would otherwise be going straight through that wide gate and leading to destruction. We don't want that because they're not going to destruction for 85 years and then coming back on the earth or going to heaven after that. It's an eternal life somewhere, and it's either in heaven or it's in hell, and not many teachers want to mention the word hell. Why not? Are they being influenced into not bringing up something that's going to stir emotion and cause problems in the church or on the radio stations? Why would we not tell you about the cliff edge? Why would we not be loving you today and saying, look you are one step closer to the cliff edge. Do you see what you are doing? Do you see that if you do not repent you will go over the cliff? You will go in through this wide gate and this broad and spacious wide path that leads to destruction. I guarantee you that everyone in hell right now would want to tell whoever knew them, why didn't you tell me about Jesus? Why didn't you keep telling me about Jesus that I needed Jesus? Because now they are in an eternal torment. Eternal, not for 80, 90, 100 years, not even 300 years, not even a thousand years, but in eternal destruction, and we must reach the lost. We must reach those who are even lukewarm because Jesus said he would spew them out of his mouth. If Jesus is spewing us out of his mouth because we're lukewarm, does that sound like people who are dwelling in him, abiding in him, reading his words, seeking him with all of their heart? No, it does not. Why would Jesus spew someone out? It's because they're lukewarm and they are not committed to him. They are half in, half out. They are not committed. They're not dwelling with the not seeking him for a relationship, the one that he paid so preciously for, and so it is very dangerous being lukewarm because you believe that you're saved. You believe everything all is well because I said the sinner's prayer. Sadly, not many people are being taught that this is a very dangerous territory to be in because at least if you're cold and you don't know God, someone could tell you about Jesus and you could decide to turn away from your life of sin and destruction on the earth and start to find out about this Jesus. But the lukewarm Christians, they know that Jesus existed. They know that he came to destroy the works of the enemy and to provide salvation if we so choose him, but they decide not to fully commit to Jesus. They decide not to receive him truly every day as their Lord over their life. They don't give him all of their life. They might give him part of their life, and that is not enough. Very few people find the narrow way, the narrow gate. Interestingly how the gate is narrow contracted by pressure. So pressure is forcing the narrow gate to be contracted because you can only go down this path, the narrow path to eternal salvation in heaven in Christ if you seek Jesus with all of your heart and dwell in him and abide in him. It's free. Jesus has paid for it for us. We don't have to pay anything. Verse 15. Beware of false prophets who come to you dressed as sheep, but inside they are devouring wolves. You will fully recognize them by their fruits. Do people pick grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even so, verse 17, every healthy sound tree bears good fruit worthy of admiration, but the sickly decaying worthless tree bears bad worthless fruit. A good healthy tree cannot bear bad worthless fruit, nor can a bad diseased tree bear excellent fruit worthy of admiration. So what you're seeing here is it's very aligned with John 15 because there are branches in the vine who are withering away and being thrown into the fire by the husbandman, the vine dresser which is God the Father, because for example these are false prophets. They come to you dressed as sheep, they dress themselves like they are bearing fruit, but the fruit itself is actually not of the Lord and you can tell by the kind of fruit on their branch, the way they are acting, the way that they are loving or not loving, the way that they conspire, their notions, their plans, their schemes, that they are not of the Lord and these prophets are false. They're false prophets coming to you dressed as sheep, but inside they are devouring wolves according to Jesus in verse 15 and in 16 he says you will fully recognize them by their fruit. So it won't be hard to tell, you will fully recognize them by their fruits. So if you are unsure of people in your circle, whether it be people that you hang out with, that you circulate with at church or even outside of church, and you're really not sure, maybe someone is professing to be a believer, but you have a strange feeling about them. Maybe the Holy Spirit is giving you a feeling of being cautious about someone. You don't have to ask anyone else about them right away. You can just stand afar and watch their actions and watch their fruit, because Jesus says you will fully recognize them by their fruits. So what's the fruit of a person? What you need to be doing is you need to be following and learning from a teacher, a pastor, a believer who is already bearing fruit, because if you are following someone who's bearing fruit, then it makes sense to understand from them the understanding of the gospel. They can teach you the gospel. They can help you understand the scriptures, because you already know that they know who they are in Christ. They are praying for the sick, and they are recovering. They are witnessing to people, and those people are giving their lives to the Lord. Their fruit is good, and those are people who are safe to be around, because no one would want to do those things if they do not love the Lord. You have the love of Christ in you. The fruit of that is that you go about doing good, healing all who are oppressed of the devil, for Jesus, God the Father, they are with you by the power of the Holy Spirit. So when you want to do good to others, it's the love of God in you that wants to set that person free in front of you. So we're going to pause there today, and I want to ask you if you want prayer today, if you're able to raise your hands and seek the Lord and ask Him. Just place in your heart right now your needs before the Lord, and I'm going to pray for you that the Lord is already meeting that need, because the Bible says, we have not because we ask not. So just ask in your heart for whatever desperate need you need, or if it's salvation for your son or your daughter, whatever your needs are. It doesn't have to be financial. And let me pray right now for you. So Father, I thank you in the name of your Son, Jesus, for meeting every need of this precious soul. Listening, we bless your Holy Name, Father. We know that you reign on the just as well as the unjust. You provide for us all, and we thank you, Lord, today as you see the raised hands and the beautiful hearts of the people that are crying out to you today. Lord, I thank you for meeting every need in their heart, even those things they don't ask for, Lord, but you know they need them. I thank you today for providing it at the exact right time when they will need that thing in Jesus' name. We thank you, Lord, today I speak your life. You said you're the way, the truth, and the life, so we speak your life into their very bones, tendons, ligaments, joints, and muscles, all their organs, their bodies from head to toe, completely restored 100% divine health. All pain, leave their bodies now. All sickness, disease, cancer, Lord, I thank you. All forms of growth are gone in Jesus' name. I thank you, Lord, their organs are strong, and they are made young, Lord, that the arteries and the veins in their bodies are completely healed, and the right diameter, and blood is flowing perfectly. I thank you, Lord, that their colon is healed, the digestive tract is healed in Jesus' name. Thank you, Lord, for their abdomens being healed of any disease. Thank you, Lord, for their stomachs being whole and healed today, right now in Jesus' name. Amen. If you have a prayer request, we would love for you to call us. We are at Country Code 1-407-705-3151. Country Code 1-407-705-3151. You can also go to our website at tog.world, tog.world, and you can fill out the prayer request right there on the website. So, until next week, you have a blessed week. Amen.