An Alarm to the Unconverted: Modern, Updated Translation To

An Alarm to the Unconverted (also published as “A Sure Guide to Heaven”) is Joseph Alleine’s urgent call to salvation addressed to those living without genuine conversion, warning of eternal danger while presenting the gospel’s sufficiency for all who truly repent and believe. Written during his imprisonment for nonconformist preaching and published posthumously, this passionate work combines doctrinal instruction with earnest pleading, seeking to awaken complacent souls to their spiritual peril and direct them to Christ.Alleine systematically addresses the unconverted state’s nature and danger, demonstrating from Scripture that without regeneration none can enter God’s kingdom. He exposes various forms of false conversion including mere external reformation, intellectual assent to doctrine, temporary religious affections, and partial obedience, showing how these counterfeits leave souls in their natural condemned condition despite outward religiosity. His treatment distinguishes genuine conversion involving both turning from sin and turning to God in Christ from superficial changes that leave the heart fundamentally unchanged.What distinguishes this work is Alleine’s remarkable combination of theological precision with passionate urgency and pastoral tenderness. Unlike works emphasizing only judgment or only mercy, he balances warnings of divine wrath against sin with earnest appeals to God’s grace offered freely in Christ. His treatment demonstrates how Puritan theology, often stereotyped as harsh, actually generated profound evangelistic concern and compassionate appeal to sinners.The work provides detailed marks of true conversion, enabling readers to examine whether their Christianity is genuine or merely nominal. Alleine addresses the converted person’s relationship with sin, showing how regeneration produces both hatred of sin and desire for holiness that, while imperfect, fundamentally differs from the unconverted’s disposition. He emphasizes that conversion is God’s work while maintaining human responsibility to repent and believe, avoiding both presumption and despair.Alleine particularly excels in addressing objections and excuses that prevent sinners from immediate conversion, systematically refuting delays and evasions including claims of inability, desire to enjoy youth first, hope of future repentance, and fear of inability to persevere. His urgent appeals emphasize conversion’s necessity, its present availability through gospel invitation, and the terrible danger of continued delay. His concluding directions for seeking conversion provide practical guidance for those awakened to their need.Author BiographyJoseph Alleine (1634-1668) was an English Puritan minister whose brief but intense ministry and passionate evangelistic writings profoundly influenced evangelical Christianity. Educated at Oxford, Alleine served as assistant minister in Taunton, where his tireless pastoral labors, fervent preaching, and personal evangelism demonstrated extraordinary spiritual zeal. Following the Act of Uniformity in 1662, he was ejected from his position and subsequently imprisoned multiple times for continuing to preach, suffering harsh treatment that contributed to his early death at age thirty-four. Despite his short life, his writings—particularly “An Alarm to the Unconverted”—achieved remarkable influence, with the work being translated into multiple languages and distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, shaping evangelical understanding of conversion and evangelistic appeal for generations.