In this audio message, Bill Brown discusses how if a son does not embrace the Gospel, it will not help him to be able to deal with the biggest problem he will face -- his sinfulness before a holy God and a threat of holy fire. He illustrates this point by sharing some of his experiences from the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Romans 6:23 (NKJV) - "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Every son needs to hear his father say, Son, repent and believe the gospel. Hebrews 12, 28, 29. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. Chapter 5 The Terrors of Flamethrowers A son can receive and follow all kinds of moral lessons of manhood from his father. But if he does not embrace the gospel, his character will do him no eternal good.

It may make him a nicer and more successful guy here on earth, but it won't help him deal with his greatest problem, his lostness before a holy God and the threat of eternal fire. After all, many nice boys are sent to hell because they did not escape the wrath to come. Fire is one of the prominent images the Bible uses to communicate how radically vital this is. The use of flamethrowers on Iwo Jima during the battle gives us an illustration of the nature of fire and the importance of escaping it. You cannot understand a battle for Iwo Jima without understanding flamethrowers.

This is because we had an enemy largely unaffected by bombs and bullets, but they could be destroyed with fire, hurtling through the air, licking up everything in its path. The flamethrower is helpful in illustrating the horrors of eternal fire. This is one of the motivations God gives us to help us understand that we ought to turn to him. On Iwo Jima we learned that most of our bombing efforts were in vain. The Japanese were dug in so deep they escaped death even though they were pounded by the heaviest pre-invasion bombing in the history of the Pacific War.

Not only was bombing ineffective, but bullets had their limitations as well. Bullets were ineffective because the enemy was hidden in caves and concealed bunkers. They would pop up and then disappear, running underground to another cave opening, repeating this over and over. United States Marines on Iwo Jima were constantly facing off with impregnable concrete bunkers full of gunners who were able to retreat to the safety of tunnels behind them. The flamethrower was a perfect weapon to neutralize these positions.

It is hard to conceive of a more frightening weapon of war, and the psychological effects were powerful. Imagine yourself as a Japanese soldier, holed up in a cave and roaring sound thunders towards you. You've been playing sniper in your protected bunker. You've retreated to the safety of the cave. Suddenly you feel the heat on your face and then you cannot breathe because the flames have consumed the oxygen and then you pass out.

You never saw your enemy but you were forced to understand some measure of consuming fire. The flamethrower was the modern 20th century equivalent of dropping boiling oil on the enemy. If you're looking for a humane weapon this is not one of them. It was chemical warfare, pure and simple, the most terrorizing weapon of the war. The portable backpack flamethrower consisted of two tanks that fed into one nozzle.

In one tank there was a mix of two-thirds diesel fuel, one-third 100 octane gasoline, and napalm jelly. The other tank was filled with compressed air. When the valves merging the fuel and gas opened up, liquid flame blasted through the nozzle burning anything within a hundred feet. The Marines used a third revision of the flamethrower the 80 pound M22. It was the most effective weapon on Iwo Jima.

My friend and Marine on Iwo, Bill Henderson, told me we could not have taken the island without the flamethrower. My dad said that the flamethrower saved lives because the weapon did not require soldiers to go inside the cave to get the enemy. The caves were booby-trapped and promised certain death for all who entered. The flamethrower was an effective weapon, but the job was no picnic. Here are a few reasons it was a difficult weapon to use.

It's bulky, heavy package, made it hard to run with on rough terrain. If the wind changed and blew the flames back on you you were toast. It was slow and hard getting up from lying on the ground wearing the backpack. Apart from these physical difficulties, there was one major downsize. Anyone carrying one had a short lifespan.

One flamethrower unit on evil had a 92 percent casualty rate. A Marine who trained flamethrower operators there told me he thought that the average lifespan of the flamethrower operator was around four minutes. The short life expectancy was due to two facts. First, flamethrowers were so successfully used in destroying bunker positions that The Japanese feared and hated them above any other weapons. Second, flamethrower operators were carrying bulky, heavy tanks of explosive fuel on their backs, making them marked men.

Easy to see, easy to hit, and easy to blow up. Carrying a flamethrower was like putting a giant bull's eye on your back that said hit me here. The danger to the operator was huge. This is why many of the flamethrower pictures from Iwo Jima also show other soldiers covering the flamethrower operator. These men were strapping on a backpack of explosives and putting themselves in front of a hail of gunfire.

I think they call this courage. Only a few flamethrower operators live to tell their stories. Imagine the difficulty of trying to get testimonies for men who actually handle flame throwers. Problem, they're all dead. Well, almost all.

One who survived was Corporal Herschel Woody Williams of Quiet Dell, West Virginia. Williams' heroics as a flame-sower operator in the battle for Iwo Jima would earn him the Medal of Honor, one of the 27 awarded to United States Marines who fought on Iwo. Today the retired buck sergeant is one of only three living Medal of Honor recipients from Iwo Jima. It was like fighting ghosts, he said. One minute the enemy was attacking and being killed, then they would disappear, including their dead.

They were going underground into 16 miles of tunnels we didn't know existed. Because flamethrowers were so dangerous to soldiers who carried them, we began mounting them on tanks, thus reducing the casualty rates. The tank units used the same basic technology except their range was longer, 150 feet, and flame duration was longer. In the words of Captain Frank C. Colwell, a company commander in the 26th Marines, quote, in my view it was the flame tank more than any other supporting arm that won this battle.

Tactical demands for the flame tanks never diminished. Late in the battle, as the 5th Marine Division cornered the last Japanese defenders in the gorge, the 5th Tank Battalion expended napalm-thickened fuel at the rate of 10, 000 gallons per day. The division's final action report stated that the flame tank was the one weapon that caused the chaps to leave their caves and rock crevices and run. The flamethrower calls up dreaded images of burning to death in a fiery furnace of thousands of degrees of life-consuming heat. These images remind us of the way fire is used in the Bible to explain the nature of the judgment of God against sin.

They help us to see how irrational it is to reject God in the face of unavoidable consequences. God is a consuming fire who judges sinners with righteous judgment and punishes them with fire. His word is like a fire. His judgment is with fire, He is a consuming fire. Because there was no place to hide, the wise would run to Him for mercy.

Psalm 97 1 the Lord reigns but let the earth rejoice a fire goes before him and burns up his enemies round about Ezekiel 22 31 therefore I have poured out My indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath, and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads, says the Lord God." the Lord God. Matthew 13, 49 and 50. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just and cast them into the furnace of fire.

There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Escaping the wrath to come involves embracing the gospel by coming before a holy God and repenting of sin and following Christ. A father must, number one, preach the gospel to his son. This is the most important thing a father will ever do. It is the father's responsibility to preach the whole counsel of God to his son so that he knows who he is, who God is, and what God requires of his creatures.

Every boy needs instruction concerning God, sin, the law, hell, and judgment. The new birth, grace, repentance, faith, and salvation through Christ alone. I would encourage fathers to help their children understand these categories as they are listed below with Scripture references. John 4 8 16, God is love. Exodus 34.

God is merciful. Revelation. God is a judge. Sin. Number one, Genesis.

Adam and Eve. Disobedience resulted in death. 2. Romans 6. The wages of sin is death.

3. Romans 3. 23. Everyone is a sinner. 4.

The Law. 1. Exodus 20. The Ten Commandments must be obeyed perfectly. Number two, Matthew 22, If we disobey the first and second greatest commandments, we have broken all of the Bible's laws.

Number three, James 2 10. If we break one commandment, we've broken them all. Hell and judgment, number one, Revelation 20, the great white throne judgment. Matthew 25, everlasting fire and punishment for the unsaved. Hebrews 9, 27, after this life comes judgment.

The new birth, John 3, 1, Jesus teaches at the new birth is necessary for salvation. John 1 13 salvation is not inherited from our parents or secured by our efforts. 2 Corinthians 5 to be born again means that our old life is replaced by a new one. Grace, Ephesians 2, grace is unmerited favor. Acts 15, 11, We are saved by the grace of Christ.

Romans 4 3 to 5. Salvation is by grace through faith and not by the deeds of the law. Repentance, Luke 13 3. Unless we repent we will all perish. Acts 3 19 we must repent and be converted.

Matthew 4 17 Jesus said repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And about faith Hebrews 11 6 without faith it is impossible to please God. John 20 24 blessed are they who do not see, yet believe. John 3 16, whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. Salvation through Christ alone.

John 14, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. 1 John 5. He that has the Son has life. John 3 36. He who does not believe on the Son of God has the wrath of God on him.

Son repent and believe in the gospel