Is Hell Real?

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Alright, so if you would, in your Bibles, open to Matthew chapter 25 and look at verse 31.
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Our plan for this evening is to answer the question, is hell real? Now, even before I answer that question, for those of you who have been here any length of time, you already know my answer.
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And so it might seem somewhat superfluous to have such a rudimentary question be the focus of tonight's teaching.
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But I want to point this out.
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Hell is a difficult thing to believe, even for those of us who affirm it.
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And if you don't think that's true, when you go home tonight, just close your eyes in the silence of your bedroom or closet or wherever you go to pray or wherever you have time to get away from other people and just imagine the reality of being under the wrath of God, with no hope of pardon or escape, no pleasure or peace forever, eternal conscious torment is hard to imagine.
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And I will be honest, the times that I have even tried to sit down and imagine that very thing, I have become overwhelmed with the grief that it inspires in my own heart.
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I have, I don't make this public a lot, but there have been times in my life where I have dealt with depression, never been medicated or anything like that, there's just been times where I've felt what Spurgeon said, the dark night of the soul.
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I've dealt with that at various times, and there have been times where I really thought about this idea of hell and the reality of it was so overwhelming to my soul that it almost drove me to despair.
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This is something that we just cannot take too lightly or too, we can't take it too seriously rather, we can take it too lightly, we can't take it too seriously.
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And you've heard people describe hellfire preachers.
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Do you know why hellfire preachers exist? Because hell exists.
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Years ago I went to the bedside of a man who was going through a terrible ordeal physically and he was an atheist.
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But, I still went, family asked me to go and see him and so I went to his hospital side and I walked in and talked to him for a few minutes about, you know, as much pleasant things as we could.
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He'd been through a terrible surgery so you could tell he was uncomfortable, but he was glad to have a visitor so he talked to me cordially for a little while.
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And finally he just said to me, he said, you know, I visited your church several years ago and I didn't like it.
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He said because when I went there you talked about hell and I found that very offensive and so I never went back.
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I said okay, I didn't respond right away, I certainly didn't get angry, it made sense, you know, that's an offensive topic and so therefore it wouldn't surprise me that someone would hear me preach on hell and leave and never come back.
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But as the conversation was closing, I said, listen, I want you to understand something.
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I said the reason why I preached about hell is because it's real.
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Hell is real and unless you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ, that is where you will spend your eternity.
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And I want you to imagine if you were to be on the beach and you were to lick your finger and stick your finger down into the sand and pull your finger up and see those few kernels of sand that stick themselves to your finger.
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You look at that sand and then you look at the rest of the sand on the beach.
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What's on your finger is this life and that beach is eternity.
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And every other beach all around the world.
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Eternity never ends.
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If we love people, we must warn them of the reality of this terrible place if it is true that it exists.
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And as I have already said, I believe that it is.
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But I don't simply believe in the reality of hell because it makes for good preaching.
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And I don't believe in the reality of hell because it frightens people into coming to church, even though I do think sometimes it does.
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I believe in hell because it's what the Bible teaches.
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As Charles Spurgeon said, we rob the gospel of its power if we leave out the threatenings of its punishment.
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People say, I preach it, I preach the gospel, but I never talk about hell.
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Hogwash.
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If you've never told someone about the punishment that comes from disobeying the gospel and rejecting Jesus Christ and you've not preached the gospel.
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So tonight we're going to look at what I consider to be one of the clearest expressions of Jesus' own testimony.
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By the way, the reason why I believe in hell more than any other testimony, Jesus talked about hell more than anyone.
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And it's not something that you extrapolate from a few verses in the writings of Paul or that you might squeeze out of something in Jude or Peter.
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No, Jesus preached.
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He was a hellfire preacher.
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And in Matthew 25, beginning of verse 31, Jesus explains the judgment.
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Now, for those who have been in this course and we've been talking about preterism and all those things, understand that I believe that verse 31 to 46, this is talking about his return.
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So we're no longer in the preterism.
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We're no longer talking about what happened before.
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This is talking about when the Son of Man comes in his glory.
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And hear what it says.
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When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.
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Before him will be gathered all the nations.
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And he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
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And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
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Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
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For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.
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Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, we do not see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink, and when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you, and when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
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Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
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For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
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Then they will answer saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you? Then he will answer them saying, Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
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And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
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I want you to consider this thought, and this is in your notes, that the reason why people reject the existence of hell is not exegetical, but rather it is emotional.
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Exegetical simply means it's derived from the text.
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I don't think that there is a legitimate reading of the text whereby someone would come to the conclusion that no hell exists.
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But I understand the emotion that would lead someone to believe that no hell exists.
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And let me tell you something, if I wanted to be very popular among the modern evangelical movement, sometimes I refer to them as the evangelifish movement, because they're so soft-spinded, it would be easy to simply go about saying, oh, well, hell is metaphoric.
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Hell is not real.
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Hell is not something that people really experience.
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In fact, many of you probably heard of a man by the name of Rob Bell.
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Rob Bell, several years ago, came out with a book entitled Love Wins.
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And in his book, he made the point that he didn't believe that hell existed.
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Ultimately, he believed that God would ultimately save everyone, because God's love is more than God's anger or wrath, and it outweighs his anger or wrath, and therefore, as the title of the book implies, love will win.
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As one preacher said, our preaching has become so weak, it's as if we have air-conditioned hell.
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Or we invent new meanings.
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Hell is not a place of eternal torment.
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It's not a lake of fire.
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It's simply separation from God.
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You'll hear people say that a lot.
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I take issue with that language.
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I understand what people are saying, but I think sometimes, again, it's an attempt to sort of soft-pedal the idea of God's wrath.
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I say you're not separated from God.
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You're right in the middle of his wrath.
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Separation from God's grace, maybe.
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Separation from God's mercy, maybe.
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But separation from God is certainly not possible.
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Psalm 139 says, if I ascend into heaven, thou art there.
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If I go down into hell, or sheol is the Hebrew language, thou art there.
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You know, the concept that hell is simply somehow physical separation from the person of God is not the biblical teaching.
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So I want to walk through this text for just a moment.
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I've given you the outline in your handout there.
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You'll notice there are basically four points that I've given in the handout.
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The separation, that's verses 31 to 33.
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The ones on the right, that's verses 34 to 40.
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Those are the sheep.
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The ones on the left, that's verses 41 to 45.
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Those are the goats.
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And then we're going to look at the final verdict.
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The final verdict really is the most important part for tonight's lesson.
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But I do think that this passage comes with some questions that it's important to answer because there are some who read this and come away with some form of a justification by works because Jesus says those on the right did these things and that's why they're righteous and those on the left didn't do these things and that's why they're unrighteous.
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Some people, I think, could easily conclude some form of justification by works from this passage and that's not the point.
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Understand this.
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In the final analysis, our faith must produce good works.
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Because if it is genuine faith, James says it will produce good works and if it's not producing good works, then there is no justification to call it true faith.
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You know, James even tells us, he says, can that faith save you? Meaning that faith which has no good works because that faith is not real faith.
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It is dead faith.
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So when we come to passages that refer to our works as somehow being the ground of our justification, you have to understand that the idea here is that our works testify to our faith.
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And ultimately, everyone who has ever been saved has been justified by faith alone, not ultimately by what they do.
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So with that being said, let's begin with verse 31.
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It says, it tells us the participants in this final judgment.
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The participants are the Son of Man, who of course is Jesus, the angels who are his ministers of heaven, and the nations.
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The nations there, I'm sure, are all peoples of every age.
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I believe that this is the final resurrection and judgment.
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We see this in Revelation chapter, the end of chapter 19, beginning of chapter 20.
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In fact, this Sunday, I'm going to be referencing those passages I've been working on my notes this week.
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And when Noah comes off the ark and he's in a whole new world, that's the title of my sermon.
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And no, it's not a reference to Aladdin, if you know it, Aladdin, whole new world.
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Noah comes off the ark in a new world, a world that has been ravished by the waters of the flood.
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It's totally a new topography.
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Everything's different.
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And I think about that, but for me, it gives a picture of when we go through the final judgment, we're protected by Christ as Noah was protecting the ark.
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By the way, I'm just giving you a preview of my sermon.
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We're going to come into a new world as well.
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And that new world is pictured in Revelation 20.
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New heaven and new earth coming out of, new Jerusalem coming out of heaven, and no crying, no tears, no pain, no more separation from God.
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That's the blessing for those who are in Christ.
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But if you go back a chapter, to chapter 19, the end of chapter 19, Revelation, it's the punishment for those who are not in Christ, whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
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And what is their punishment? They're poured into the lake of fire.
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So I think that section of Revelation is what is corresponding to this section of Matthew.
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Understand? And again, this is somewhat parabolic because Jesus is using the language of king and sheep and goats.
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So there's allegory here, but it's, you know, allegory is not without an actual, you know, an allegory points to something that is true.
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And the true is what we see in Revelation 19 and 20.
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That's the final resurrection, the final judgment.
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And this is what Jesus says is going to happen.
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He says they're going to be before the throne.
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He says when the Son of Man comes in his glory, his angels with him, he's going to sit on a throne and before him will be all the nations.
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And he's going to separate people one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats.
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I think about it like this.
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There's no third category.
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There's not sheep and goats and puppies or sheeps and goats and giraffes.
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There's just sheep and goats.
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And so a good question that people can ask themselves, and maybe you've never asked yourself, am I sheep or a goat? Am I truly his or am I not? Because it says that he's going to separate the two and he's going to place the sheep on his right.
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He's going to place the goats on his left.
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And then he talks about the ones on his right, beginning at verse 34, he says there's a blessing.
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The blessing to them is come, come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
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Very important.
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God has prepared this blessing.
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He has prepared this kingdom for them from the foundation of the world.
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Now before we even get into the hungry, thirsty, all that stuff, just for a moment, I want to compare that, which is verse 34, I want to compare that to verse 41.
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Because verse 34, he says to those on his right, he says come.
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But what does he say in verse 41 to those on his left? Depart.
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So there's a welcoming for the saved, for the righteous, whatever you want to, the sanctified, the saints.
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There's welcome for the sheep.
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There's depart for the goats.
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So we see again that, that, that, that parallelism, come and go, welcome, depart.
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And this is the king making this announcement and he says go, depart.
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And notice where they are to depart to.
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Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
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Notice again, if you compare verse 34 and verse 41.
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Verse 34, the king will say come, you are blessed with my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
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But when he says to the goats, he says depart to the place that has been prepared.
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He says not for them, but it was prepared for the devil and his angels.
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So this place of torment, this place of eternal conscious torment is a place that was prepared by God first for the devil and his angels.
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And I think that's, I think that's significant because he says the kingdom of heaven has been prepared from the foundation of the world for God's people.
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But there's this place, and this is going to, I'm going to take you on a creationary thought for a minute.
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When did God create hell? The Bible doesn't tell us specifically when God created hell.
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I mean, you walk through Genesis 1, you know, create first day, you know, light and dark.
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Second day creates sky and sea.
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Third day, he creates dry land.
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No hell, right? Then you go through the rest.
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He fills his creation.
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The sky with sun, moon and stars, the atmosphere with birds and clouds and the fish of the sea and then animals and man still no hell.
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In fact, at the end of day seven, he declares all things are good.
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Did hell exist at that point? I don't I would again, this is pure speculation.
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I would I would say no, based on the fact that everything at that point was good.
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In fact, I don't even think Satan had fallen at that point.
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Back when I was preaching to this, I said, I don't I think at this point everything is good.
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Some people believe Satan fell before God created the world and there was an entirely different universe where Satan was involved in and there was all these.
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There's a lot of there's a lot of sort of extra Christian, I don't call it mythology, but just sort of just speculation.
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Right.
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We don't know.
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But but I tend to think when it says everything was good, I think everything was good.
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And then the fall of Satan, who through pride, according to first Timothy three, he fell because of pride and through that pride.
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He fell into sin, decided also to bring with him a third of the angels.
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Now, again, that's speculation based on Revelation, which talks about taking a third of the stars from the sky.
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We think that that references the the angels coming with him.
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So if it's Satan and a third of the angels and now God has to doesn't have to, but chooses to consign them to this place of punishment.
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He says there's going to be a punishment for your wickedness.
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What is that place of punishment? Hell.
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This place where there is no redemption, by the way, do angels receive redemption? No, there is no salvation for the angels that fell with Satan.
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In fact, I have conjectured and again willing to be corrected on this.
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But I tend to think that's part of why they hate us so much.
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There's no redemption for them.
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They know the end that's coming.
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Remember when he talked about Legion earlier? What did the demons in the man say? Have you come to torture us before the time was he talking about? They know the time is coming.
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They know there's a torturous time coming.
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You're early.
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They're complaining that you're here too soon.
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Right.
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We know it's coming, though.
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We know what our end is.
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And our consignment is this place called hell.
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And God has established this place for Satan and his angels.
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Jesus tells us that here we don't have to conjecture.
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It's what Jesus said.
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But what happens, man having been tempted, Eve tempted by the devil, Adam following his wife's lead and man falls into sin.
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And what does man do? He consigns himself in that regard to the same to the same end through through disobedience and the pride which leads to the fall.
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There's the same end.
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What was prepared for Satan and his angels now will be experienced by you.
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I can't even for a moment.
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Think about what that's like.
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And yet it's what the text says.
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And notice it says eternal fire.
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The word eternal here.
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It's derived from an older word, eterminus, which means without end.
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And.
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This is, in fact, that's how we define eternal.
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We can't we don't really have a word for well, I guess we have forever.
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But the usually forever is described in the negative, without end.
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A world without end.
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God, his strength is without end.
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You know, all these things.
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And so hell is without end.
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So thirty four and forty one, I think, pair together.
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As we see that the reality for the sheep is that they will they will come into the kingdom which God has prepared for them and.
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The goats will go into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
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And.
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Again, I just for the sake of time tonight won't go through.
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All of the things that Jesus says are the reasonings, as I've already said, these are expressions of faith.
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I do think there is some value, though, to ask yourself the question, which I think is the is sort of the heart of the the difference between the sheep and the goats is how the sheep and the goats treat the brethren.
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Right.
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Notice, Jesus says, these my brothers.
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I think that is key to this, because a lot of people use this as reasoning for for specifically prison ministries, hospital ministries.
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And all those are good things.
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Please don't think for a second I'm denying those value of those things.
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Think all those things are good.
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But specifically, Jesus referenced my brethren as in the ones who have gone to prison.
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As my brothers, those who are suffering as my brothers, those this is specific to the church.
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And so I do think part of the part of the relationship that's expected of believers, and again, this could take me on a on another ride, but part of the expectation of relationship among believers is that they would care for the brethren, that there would be a concern for one another.
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The, you know, brother, anyway, and I've talked about this, the one another's a scripture, right? That's the whole the whole church is one another, one another, one another.
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Do you love one another? Do you care for one another? You know, when when when when somebody is sick and hurting, are we loving them? Are we caring for them? Are we taking care of them? And so, you know, I've said this many times.
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If you have a need and and and I don't know about it, I can't help you, but I want to help you.
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So please tell me the need, because that's the role of the church, is that we love the brethren first and most.
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If you're experiencing something that you have need, don't let pride keep you from asking for help, because that is why we we are here to love one another and to to give water and food and care and comfort and ministry.
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That's our job.
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Should never be embarrassed to be ministered to.
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Because the church is for that purpose, to minister to the saints.
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And so I think I just think that that phrase, my brethren, there is is is very important.
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But now I want to just specifically look at verse 46, and this will be where we really make our argument tonight, because our question is, is hell real? I think verse 46 should leave us without doubt, at least to what the position of Jesus is.
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And I will know this.
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My theology should be in line with Christ.
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He is the very son of God.
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He is God in the flesh and his his theology is right.
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Jesus never wondered about the tulip.
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He knew, you know, Jesus never wondered about omniscience and omnipotence or any of those other doctrinal things that we may discuss.
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Jesus knew.
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And so if I want to know about God, I look to Christ.
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If I want to know about theology, I look to Christ.
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And so when Jesus said, and these verse 46 will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
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I want you to notice in the text, and I don't know if the King James is different.
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I'll check in just a moment.
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I know you have one right, brother.
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Is the word eternal used there or is it everlasting, everlasting? But is it the same word both times? Read it to me from the King James.
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And these shall go away.
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OK, thank you.
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And I think that that's fine because they both mean the same thing.
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But just understand in the Greek language, it is the same word, the eternal and eternal in.
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But they mean the same thing, right? Everlasting and eternal are the same.
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And that's the point of this text is there is a parallel that's happening here.
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The righteous will go away into eternal life and the wicked or the cursed will go away into eternal punishment.
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And so here's here's the question.
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If you want to make this.
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If you want to make hell less than eternal from this text, you have to also make heaven less than eternal.
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Because it's the same language used in the same context, used, in fact, as a parallel of itself.
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Therefore, if you say hell is not eternal.
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Then heaven must not be eternal.
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And I've never met anybody who said that.
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I've never met anybody who believes in heaven, even Rob Bell, who would say hell or see me heaven has a has an expiration date.
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One day we'll just cease to be in heaven and we'll just cease.
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See, because that's the argument for for for a lot of these guys, even those who believe in hell, often they believe hell has an expiration date that the the the the textbook term is annihilationism.
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And annihilationism is the idea that the soul will be punished, but that at a certain date, sometime in the future, that soul will simply be snuffed out.
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The fires of the eternal lake of fire will snuff out that soul and the soul will simply cease to exist.
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Now, I understand the comfort that that would bring.
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You know, at least there's some some sense of pardon or yield.
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Yeah.
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Would you say, yeah, some relief.
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But again, are we arriving at that from the text or are we arriving at that from our own desires? The text, I don't think, allows for that.
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Those on the left have eternal punishment.
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Those on the right have eternal life.
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And the same word eternal is used for both.
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So that being said, I would then simply ask this question.
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What warrant would we have to come to any other conclusion than that hell one exists and that hell two is eternal? I don't think that we would have warrant to come to any other conclusion from the text.
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Now, I realize there are other arguments.
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And one of the one of the main arguments that you will hear is that there are different words used for hell.
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There's actually three specific words.
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There is the Greek Hades or Hades, which is used for hell or the place of the dead.
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That's typically a parallel of the word Sheol.
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So it's not always in reference to the fiery hell.
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It's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol.
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And then there's Gehenna.
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Gehenna was the Valley of Hinnom, which was where the sort of the dumping ground of the sort of like the city dump where they would go out and they would dump garbage and refuse.
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And it was it was constantly burning because there was constantly more refuse to be burned.
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And so there was sort of this is always smoldering nasty place.
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And so Gehenna is sometimes used for the word hell.
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The King James translates it all held up.
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If you read King James, Hades is translated hell.
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Gehenna is translated hell.
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One time in the Book of Peter, I think the word Tartarus is used.
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Yeah, Tartarus is second Peter two four.
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It's the only time it's used.
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That's a very specific Greek word which references the underworld.
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But not necessarily is it, I think, making a an argument.
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It's just simply using another common word.
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Right.
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And some people say, well, because of all these different words, we can't come to a conclusion.
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About hell, because the Bible is too sporadic about its teaching.
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And my response to that is simple.
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Jesus tells us that this place, whatever it be like.
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It is a place that we do not want to go.
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Because it is a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
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It is a place where there is weeping.
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And gnashing of teeth.
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There's no relief again.
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I'm not happy to preach this, but it's the words of Christ to say.
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And I remember R.C.
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Sproul.
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He said about the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
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And I want to say for him to say this.
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I was I was both.
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I was both happy to hear him say it, but also somewhat surprised.
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And he said this, of course, many years ago.
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And I heard him heard him say it in a sermon, no less.
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He said he said the reason why there's weeping and there's gnashing of teeth.
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He said there's some people who are in hell who are angry.
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They said there's some people in hell who are who are sad.
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And this we said, he said, if I if I have found out that I have been wrong, I couldn't believe he said he said, if I found out that all my life I had been a false convert, but not a true follower of Christ.
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He said I would be one weeping.
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And I thought, wow.
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One that he was willing to even confess that even someone who has such a powerful testimony and life of service to Christ, you know, would say that about himself.
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But he said he said, I wouldn't be angry.
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I'd be sad.
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I'd be weeping.
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That I have deceived myself.
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Hmm.
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Just a powerful thought.
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Now, again, I don't say that to make us all go home and.
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Wonder and cry into our pillows tonight.
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I don't think we're supposed to live in perpetual doubt all the time.
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And I don't think R.C.
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lived in doubt either.
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But I do think it was a good point.
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That hell, there will be those who are.
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Angry and there will be those who are sad, but it's just it's it's an unyielding reality.
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Some people say, well, why does it last forever? It's a hard, hard question, but I think fairly easy answer.
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Our sin is temporary.
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But our soul is not.
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And when our soul is consigned to hell, we do not cease to be sinners and we do not cease to deserve the wrath of God.
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Dr.
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James White says this, there will be people in hell who still are screaming at God how much they hate him.
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And they'll scream for eternity.
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They will gnash their teeth at God forever.
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I can see you're all so excited.
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I taught on this tonight.
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But understand, I am I am reserving one lesson tonight.
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Next week, we're going to look at the doctrine of heaven and hopefully I'll see more joy than we see tonight.
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Last thought, and then I'll close.
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Many of you have heard of Alcatraz Island and San Francisco Bay, there sits an island called Alcatraz, which once housed a federal prison.
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It was it was considered inescapable during 30 years of operation.
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A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts.
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Most were caught.
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A few were killed.
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Several drowned.
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Five are listed as missing and presumed drowned.
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But many have speculated that at least one of them made it to shore.
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And was able to live out the rest of his life in freedom.
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We'll never know.
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But we do know this as inescapable as Alcatraz may have seemed, many men tried.
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The idea of hell is that it is absolutely inescapable.
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No one is going to swim to freedom.
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From the shores of the lake of fire.
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So may we all know in our heart of hearts that we will be on his right and not on his left.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to study your word.
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I pray that it has been.
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Has been an opportunity for us to be reminded of the important things.
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And the eternal things.
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And Lord, if there are those under the sound of my voice, whether they're in this room or whether they're hearing me electronically, Lord, if there's anyone under the sound of my voice.
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Who has not.
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Repented of their sin and trust in Christ, Lord, that they might hear this message and understand.
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And.
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That the call of the gospel is to repent of sin and trust in Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven given among men.
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By which we must be saved.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.