An Alarm to the Unconverted

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An Alarm to the Unconverted
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Reviewer: 
Joseph J. Adrian

There is a great change that takes place when anyone is converted. Before conversion, a conscious awareness of God is not present in their mindset, but the new creature in Christ Jesus alters "The bias of the will"——"Now the man has new ends and designs. He now intends God above all, and desires and designs . . . that Christ may be magnified, in him." What brings happiness to an individual? Before being reconciled to his Maker, a man's all in all is to please himself. For some that is power and influence, for others sensual pleasure, for some ease and comfort but when one comes to love the Lord God, "He counts himself more happy in this . . . that he may be serviceable to Christ . . . this is the mark he aims at, that the name of Jesus may be great in the world." His desire is that, in the eyes of the world, he would decrease and Jesus would increase.

Another mark of True Conversion is that there is now present, in the converted soul, a constant warfare against all known sin. There is no rest in opposing the greatest enemy of our souls-—"He struggles with it, he wars against it; he is too often foiled, but he will never yield the cause, nor lay down the weapons, while he has breath in his body." In contrast, the unbeliever is sin's willing bondservant.

A converted individual's attitude toward the world undergoes a seismic shift. The one who lacks faith does the world's bidding, it is his master—-"The world that was formed to serve you is come to rule you." How does sin affect the heart and soul of fallen man? Alleine gives this graphic description——"What a deformed monster, has sin made you! God made you a little lower than the angels; sin has made you a little better than the devils, a monster that has his head kicking against heaven, and everything out of place." Our God is a God of beauty and order, sin leaves in its wake death and destruction, misery and chaos. It has made the beautiful world God created ugly, deformed, and out of sync.

When converting grace is wrought in the heart of man, there is a reversal (over time) of sins destructive work (a complete renovation of it in the life to come)—-"But converting grace sets all in order again, and puts God on the throne and the world at his footstool, Christ in the heart, and the world under the feet." The beauty of God's creation is being restored and the Lord's redeemed are crucified to the World.

Joseph Allein's "An Alarm to the Unconverted" is one of the great Puritan evangelistic treatises ever published. It remains to this day the third most published Christian book in the history of the world. (#1—The Bible. #2-The Pilgrim's Progress.) It has been abridged and modernized under the titles, "A Sure Guide to Heaven" (published by The Banner of Truth Trust)and "Wake Up and Live" (published by Grace Publications). While the modern abridgments have been well done, the unabridged original is still superior. It is a searching and powerful work on the nature of true and false conversion.