When you give the man a Bible to take home and read,
And he comes back, having found no particular hope
In the message of repentance and obedience,
But only in the glorious message of eternal life,
He has shown you that he does not believe
In the real Jesus, but in a fake one more to his liking.

Even so, let us imagine that the man’s fake Jesus
Were to “save” him into an eternity of living with
Non-repentant and disobedient people like himself.

Would not the man come to see it as the most
Unconscionable torture of his soul to throw him in
With such a lot forever?

Would he not see that the rewards
His fake Jesus offers are not worth having?

Indeed, he would.
And he could have seen it
When he read the Bible,
Had he been thinking it through.

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Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.

Hagai 1:5. NIV

The man in the story does not think he is in need of reform, but only that he is in need of being delivered from this dark world. He does not see that his own behaviors are contributing to the darkness. So he does not figure out that the warnings in the last two chapters of the Bible are all about people like him.

The Bible tells on those who read it.