Sam Shamoun Explains the SCARIEST Bible PassageSam Shamoun Explains the SCARIEST Bible Passage
Sam Shamoun Explains the SCARIEST Bible Passage
The television studio in downtown Chicago was freezing, the air conditioning cranked high to offset the heat of the massive production lights. Sitting in a leather armchair, Al tightened his tie and glanced across the low glass table at Sam. Between them sat two studio microphones and a high-definition camera tracking their every movement for the live stream.
Sam was a seasoned apologist, a man whose hair was graying at the temples but whose eyes still carried the sharp, unyielding intensity of a street preacher. He had spent the last two decades traveling the globe, debating skeptics, academics, and religious counter-claimants. Today, they were addressing a question that had plagued the comments sections of their ministry videos for months.
“Alright, Sam,” Al said, leaning forward and adjusting his earpiece as the producer gave them the five-second countdown. “We are live. Let’s dive straight into the deep end today. We constantly have critics, specifically Muslim apologists on the street, raising a massive objection to the Christian assurance of salvation. They point directly to Matthew chapter 7, verses 21 through 23.”
Sam nodded, his jaw tightening slightly in anticipation.
“They say, ‘See? You Christians claim your salvation is secure, but look what Jesus says about the very people who call Him Lord, Lord,'” Al continued. “And on top of that, everyday believers often ask, how can people who are ultimately unsaved perform genuine, jaw-dropping miracles in the name of Jesus? I know you addressed this briefly in your presentation earlier today, but let’s break this passage down systematically for our viewers.”
Sam smiled, a warm but serious expression. “It’s an excellent set of questions, Al, and frankly, it cuts right to the heart of what a true Christian actually is. People—critics and lazy believers alike—completely butcher what Jesus meant here. Do me a favor, Al. Open up Matthew 7:21-23, and let’s read it aloud, slowly, so we can unpack the true implication of our Lord’s words.”
Al reached for the heavy study Bible on the table, flipping through the thin pages until he found the Sermon on the Mount.
“Matthew 7, beginning at verse 21,” Al read, his voice filling the quiet studio. “‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”’“
Sam leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes locking onto the camera lens. “Let’s break down the sheer weight of what Jesus is saying on that judgment seat. Notice number one: when someone says the word Lord, they aren’t just using a polite religious title. To call Jesus Lord is to affirm absolute ownership over your life. It means you recognize that He owns you, that you exist entirely for Him, and that your sole purpose on this earth is to serve Him.”
He raised a finger for emphasis. “But what was the fundamental problem with the group standing before Jesus on that final day? They were paying lip service. They approached the throne and tried to present a resume of sensational experiences as proof of their discipleship. They said, ‘Look at what we did! We prophesied in your name—meaning we publicly proclaimed your message, your glory, and your work. We cast out territorial demons by your authority. We performed spectacular signs and wonders by your power!'”
Sam shook his head, a look of profound sobriety crossing his face. “And what does Jesus say to them? He says, ‘No. That is not the criterion that determines whether you truly belong to Me.’ Look at verse 23 very closely. He doesn’t say, ‘You used to know Me and then you lost it.’ He says, ‘I never knew you.’ He identifies them as workers of lawlessness.”
“Lawlessness,” Al repeated, digesting the word.
“Yes! They had absolutely no regard for the law of Christ,” Sam said, his voice rising with a sudden, localized energy. “They rejected His boundaries, ignored His moral commands, and lived according to their own selfish desires while wrapping themselves in the flag of religious ministry. To Jesus, what matters isn’t the flashy performance or the public miracle. What matters is obedience to the revealed will of the Father.”
“So then, Sam,” Al asked, tapping his script, “how do we define the Father’s will in this context? Because a lot of people get confused about what ‘doing the will of the Father’ actually entails.”
“The Bible defines it for us, Al,” Sam countered instantly. “Flip your Bible over to Matthew chapter 17, verse 5. Look at the Mount of Transfiguration.”
Al turned the pages quickly, his eyes scanning down the column. “Here it is. ‘He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”’ “
“There it is!” Sam struck the table with the palm of his hand, the microphone catching the sharp thud. “What is the Father’s primary, sovereign will for the apostles and for every single believer who has ever walked the earth? Listen to the Son. To do the will of the Father means to listen to Jesus and to execute everything He commands. And Jesus makes this explicitly clear right after He delivers the warning about the lawless ministers.”
Sam pointed down at Al’s open Bible. “Read the very next verses, Al. Matthew 7:24 through 27. This is the immediate context. This is the structural climax of the entire Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus draws a massive, unyielding line between two distinct groups of people.”
Al cleared his throat and read: “‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.’“
“Do you see the contrast, guys?” Sam said, addressing the thousands of viewers watching the live stream. “Two groups. Both groups hear the exact same words of Jesus. Both groups are exposed to the same truth. But the first group—the true believers, the ones built on the rock—actually put those words into practice. They don’t just study the law of Christ; they submit to it. Their lives are anchored, unshakable, and preserved until the absolute end.”
He leaned back, his tone dropping into a deeper, warning register. “The second group hears the words but chooses to live exactly how they want. They build their entire religious identity on the shifting sands of human emotion, charisma, and lip service. And when the final storm of judgment blows against that house, great will be its collapse. On the day of judgment, your theological degrees, your public preaching, and your ministerial success will mean absolutely nothing if your life was characterized by a total defiance of Christ’s commands.”
“Of course,” Al interjected gently, “we are all imperfect. We all stumble.”
“Absolutely,” Sam agreed, his eyes softening with genuine pastoral empathy. “True Christians are not perfect; we sin, we fail, and we fall. But the difference is that a true believer gets right back up. We don’t settle into a lifestyle of lawlessness. We crawl back to the cross, we ask the Lord to forgive our weakness, and we beg the Holy Spirit for the supernatural strength to resume the difficult course of obedience. To reinforce this, look at how the Apostle John links obedience to genuine spiritual intimacy. Go to John 14, verses 23 and 24.”
Al found the passage in the Fourth Gospel and read: “‘Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”’ “
“It’s exactly like a marriage, Al,” Sam said, gesturing with his hands. “The Bible constantly uses the imagery of the bridegroom and the bride to describe Christ and the church. Imagine you tell your spouse that you love them all day and all night. You buy them cards, you write poetry, you sing songs about how much you love them. But during the day, you constantly do the exact things your spouse explicitly asks you not to do. You deliberately hurt them, you violate their boundaries, and you ignore their desires. What are your actions actually saying? They are saying, ‘I don’t love you.’ Your mouth is a liar. And it’s only a matter of time before your spouse packs their bags and leaves you.”
Sam leaned into the table, his gaze piercing. “It is the exact same dynamic with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can sing praise songs until your lungs give out, you can carry a massive Bible, and you can tell everyone how much you owe Him your life. But if you do not obey His words, if you deliberately wallow in the things He hates, you are telling the sovereign Lord of the universe that you are a hypocrite. And you will receive a perfectly just condemnation.”
The producer in the control room signaled a transition, and Al glanced at the monitor before looking back at Sam.
“Okay, Sam, that completely clarifies the first part of the problem,” Al said, nodding. “But let’s tackle the second question, because this is where a lot of Christians truly get tripped up. These people in Matthew 7 were fake Christians—self-deceived workers of lawlessness who never truly belonged to the Lord. Yet, they performed genuine, bona fide, demon-expelling miracles. How can a counterfeit disciple wield that kind of supernatural power? Is it demonic deception, or is there something else happening?”
Sam let out a low, confident laugh. “The answer is right there in the text of the Gospels, Al, but most modern Christians completely underestimate the sheer, majestic authority inherent in the name of Jesus itself. To see how this works, we need to look at the historical precedent. Let’s turn to Matthew chapter 10, and read verses 1 through 8.”
Al flipped back to the early chapters of Matthew, finding the section where Jesus commissions His inner circle.
“‘And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction,’” Al read.
“Stop right there,” Sam interrupted, raising his hand. “Read that part one more time, Al. The twelve disciples were sent out to do what kind of miracles?”
“To cast out unclean spirits and to heal every single disease and affliction,” Al repeated.
“Excellent. Now read the roster of the men who received that exact, supernatural authority. Read verses 2 through 4.”
Al’s voice remained steady as he ran his finger down the ancient text. “‘The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.’“
“Who was the last name on that list, Al?” Sam asked, his voice dripping with deliberate significance.
“Judas Iscariot,” Al said quietly. “The one who betrayed Him.”
“Judas!” Sam exclaimed, his eyes widening. “The son of perdition. The man whom Jesus later described as a devil. Judas Iscariot was explicitly included in that commission. He was sent out into the villages of Israel to preach the gospel, to cleanse lepers, to heal the sick, and to cast out literal demons. And according to the text, he did it! He didn’t just sit on the sidelines; he wielded the power.”
Sam leaned forward, his voice dropping into an intense, focused whisper. “What more proof do you need from the mouth of scripture that a person can be a total counterfeit, a child of the devil who is destined for destruction, and yet perform genuine, spectacular miracles? Miracles are absolutely zero proof of your personal standing before Almighty God. Judas raised the dead, and yet he belonged to the dark.”
“So how did he do it, Sam?” Al asked, voicing the unspoken confusion of the audience. “If Judas was unregenerate, where did the power come from?”
“It came from the objective, sovereign power of the name of Jesus!” Sam shouted, his voice echoing off the studio walls. “You guys completely underestimate how glorious that name is. The name of Jesus does not depend on the moral purity of the vessel using it to get results. It is all-powerful in and of itself. When the name of Jesus is pronounced, even by the mouth of a self-deceived hypocrite or an unbeliever, the spiritual realm is forced to comply. The demons don’t look at the holiness of the preacher; they tremble at the authority of the name being invoked! The personal status of a counterfeit worker does not nullify, tarnish, or diminish the objective, sovereign majesty of the Son of God.”
Al sat back in his chair, taking a deep breath as the sheer theological weight of the explanation settled over the studio. “Wow. That completely refutes the objection. It shows a perfect internal consistency within the text itself. But Sam, this naturally leads into the final, massive question that people are blowing up the chat with right now. When people see text like this, they ask: ‘Does this mean we can lose our salvation? If these workers of lawlessness were doing things in His name, were they ever saved to begin with, or did they fall away?'”
Sam rubbed his chin, looking thoughtfully at the desk for a moment before addressing the camera. “Look, Al, this is a debate that has run through the entire history of Christian theology. If you look at the historical data, the overwhelming majority position among the ancient Church Fathers was that human beings possess a free will, and that a person can genuinely choose to turn their back on Christ, walk away from the state of grace, and be cut off.”
He paused, adjusting his position. “Even today, that remains the majority position across global Christianity—it’s held by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, the Lutheran church, and various traditional Protestant denominations. But, as we know, there is another powerful theological school of thought—the Calvinist, Reformed, and particular Baptist traditions—which argues that if you are truly elected by God, the Holy Spirit will seal you and work within your heart in such a definitive way that you will inevitably persevere and can never be cut off from Christ. To them, the people in Matthew 7 were simply never saved in the first place; they were entirely self-deceived from day one.”
Al nodded. “It’s a massive, complex debate.”
“It is, and both sides appeal heavily to the text of scripture to make their case,” Sam said, his tone turning warm and encouraging. “If our viewers want to see this specific issue hammered out by two of the absolute best minds in modern apologetics, I highly recommend they look up the online debate between Dr. James White and Trent Horn. Dr. White is a brilliant Reformed Protestant scholar who masterfully defends the position of eternal preservation, arguing that God will ensure His elect never fall away. On the other side, Trent Horn is an incredibly sharp Catholic apologist who represents the historical, corporate view held by Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans alike—that free will allows for apostasy.”
Sam reached out, gently tapping the table one last time as the producer signaled the conclusion of the segment. “Don’t get bogged down in endless internet arguments, guys. Go watch that debate. Listen to the scriptures both men bring to the table. Take those verses into your quiet time, meditate on them deeply, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide your understanding into the truth. But above all else, let Matthew chapter 7 be a mirror for your own soul today. Don’t settle for lip service. Don’t rely on religious performance. Fall on your knees, submit your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and make sure your house is built firmly on the rock of obedience.”
