72 - Death and the Intermediate State, Part 2 | Striving For Eternity | Andrew Rappaport

Welcome to another of a long list of classes in the Striving for Eternity Academy.

We're glad to have you with us. This is part of our School of Systematic Theology.

We are in, been going through several of these. We're in book number four, which we're calling the

Doctrine of the Church and Doctrine of Last Things. Today's lesson is going to be lesson number six.

We're going to continue lesson number six, dealing with the death and the intermediate state.

That's what we have on schedule for today. We're glad to have you with us.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. These classes are offered to you free on the internet, so you can learn some systematic theology.

We have other classes, How to Interpret the Bible, our School of Biblical Harmonetics. We have things on Introduction to Discipling, and we have classes on the major Western religions and Introduction to Them.

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.org. You could pick up book number four in the

Systematic Theology. We're glad you've been with us. If you're new, you're late in the game.

This is lesson number, get this, ready, 72. That means that if you're new to this, you missed 71 great classes, and actually, you shouldn't start here.

We don't want to start on the topic of death. That's really a bad place to start, but actually, a lot of what we've been saying throughout these classes, throughout this whole course, is that you got to start at lesson number one.

Why? Lesson number one was dealing with the attributes of God, and if you don't have the attributes and nature of God right, all of your theology really is not based in God, but in your interpretation of the

Bible or Systematic Theology or something like that. The point that we're trying to say is that we need our theology rooted in God.

Theology is the study of God, theo meaning God, ology is study, so it's the study of God, the knowledge of God, but if we're going to say we want to study

God, but we don't want to look at his attributes, the study of God is going to be based on his attributes. Where are we going to get it from?

We're going to get it from the Bible. We go to the Bible as the only way that he can communicate to us, so we can understand the things that he would teach us, and we gain these things from looking at his word, his revealed explanation or communication of himself to us.

That's the only place we can go to understand these things, absolutely, but when we look at this, when we look at theology, and we understand all these different doctrines we go over, and we look at the intermediate state, and there's people that disagree, the issue is we've got to be rooted and have a right understanding of who

God is, because all of the rest of the theology is based on that foundation, so I encourage you to go in those early lessons, get an idea of who

God is first, though if you're watching live, hey, watch this now and then go back later, okay?

So last class, we were dealing with the issue of physical death, and we mentioned about the whole issue of death and what happens, but today, we're going to deal with the intermediate state.

There we go. So, when we look at the intermediate state, we're going to look, and if you have a syllabus,

I encourage you to open it up, let me give you a definition for the intermediate state, so you have that to examine and know what we're talking about when we speak of an intermediate state.

The intermediate state is defined, if you see in your syllabus, as the conscious existence of the personality, both the godly and ungodly, between the time of death and resurrection, so those are your blanks there, death and resurrection, alright?

Now, this definition is packed, okay? Every word has meaning. The conscience, they're aware of it, they know what's happening, when people are sitting in this intermediate state, they're aware of it.

Existence, not only are they aware, but they exist. They're not in a non -existent state, they're in an existing state, so they're conscious of it, they're not in oblivion.

So it's a conscious existence of the personality, that part of us that's made in the image of God, that part of us that's spirit, that immaterial part of us, and it's both the believers and unbelievers, the godly and ungodly, and it's that time between the point that every person dies until that part of what we'd say is the second resurrection, there's a resurrection where we'll be raised,

I believe, kind of everyone agrees that there's a point where everyone is going to be put before the final judgment.

So it's kind of that period, okay? Wherever you put that resurrection, people have differing views.

If you remember in the intro, the overview class, we talked about this, that there's a post -millennial which says that the resurrection happens after a kingdom, pre -millennial thinks the resurrection happens before the kingdom, the first resurrection, they would end up and then that there's a amillennial which would really say that there is no kingdom, but many of them would hold to that there is a period where everyone's raised and stands before a judgment seat, okay?

So it's this period between death and that judgment seat, okay? There are some varieties in terms that we see in both the

Old and New Testaments. So as we give a definition, I want to first start in the Old Testament, look at some of the terms, then go to the

New. And one of the things that we must understand in this, and where you see as we get to the end where people have some derivations from this teaching, what you're going to see is that many people struggle because they want to apply 21st century terminology into 1000

B .C., 750 B .C., 1

A .D., I mean, you know, they want to have Old and New Testament language to be fitting of our language in our day.

And because people, it frustrates some people because they see Hebrew, which you have to understand

Hebrew is not a technical language like Greek is, Hebrew is a more picturesque language.

It's common with a different way of thinking that, you know, the Eastern and Western ways of thinking are a little bit different.

Eastern way of thinking is more storytelling. It's more fitting with the Hebrew language, which is storytelling.

Greek is more in line with Western thought and Western thinking, which is more precept upon precept, more technical.

So you have to understand that distinction, okay? So as we look into the

Old Testament, we see the word most often used for this state is called Sheol, Sheol, okay?

Now this, if you look in your syllabus, this is often translated the grave or death.

Those are your blanks there, the grave or death. And that's the meaning in the broad sense.

Let's take a look at Genesis 37. If we look at Genesis 37, 35, so Genesis 37 and verse 35, and I'm pausing because my notes say 45.

So I'm wondering if this is, well, let's read this, but I think this is a wrong verse. All of his sons and daughters rose up, comfort him to refuse to be comforted.

No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, to my son mourning, thus his father wept for him.

Okay. So this was the right one. My notes were actually wrong. Good. So here you see the worst use of Sheol.

By the way, I'll note this. Notice the phrasing, I shall go to Sheol to my son.

The issue here is, and this becomes an interesting thing when you get to a passage in Samuel where David loses his son and he says,

I cannot, I cannot, I can go to him, or no, he cannot come to me, but I will go to him.

It's similar in phrasing to this, which is the idea that once someone goes to Sheol, they can't come back to life.

That's the idea of that. It was a phrase of speech, but you see the idea that here you see him going to, knowing that there is this place of grave or death called

Sheol. We could also, there's also Psalm 16, verse 10, and it says, for you will not abandon my soul in Sheol, nor let your

Holy One see corruption. Now notice here, that's David speaking, and David is saying, he recognizes that God is not going to allow him to stay in death.

Now this is where it becomes the issue. Is Sheol hell? Okay, well this is speaking of David, who we would assume is a believer, and therefore he's saying that his soul, his immaterial part of him, his spirit, is going to go to Sheol, going to go to death.

Is that hell? Well, if that was hell, then David shouldn't be there, right?

So the idea here is, when we look in the Old Testament, this idea of Sheol is just death.

It's just what happens after we die. Okay? It's a very broad sense of the word.

And when we look at this, we have to understand that this word is used this way. There's certain languages, certain areas of the world, where we have more words for something than others.

For example, in Florida, or in a desert area, they don't have too many phrases, too many terms for different types of snow.

You know, it's snowing, or it's maybe sleeting. But to them, you know, when it's dusting, it would be snowing, because they really don't get much snow.

But if you go to somewhere like Alaska, you have all kinds of, I think they had like 27, if I remember correctly, 27 different words for different ways of describing snowing, because they have a dusting, they have a sleeting, they have, you know, all these different ways of illustrating something, because they have to deal with it often.

In Hebrew, there's Sheol. That's the major word that's used. Now, it's used not in a technical sense, and that's the thing.

So not only do we see that Sheol refers to the grave or death, but it's also the place, the abode of the dead.

That's your next blank, the abode of the dead. So what you see with that is first, it's a place of conscious existence.

Death is a conscious, you're conscious there. Isaiah 14 verse 9 says this,

Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come.

It rouses the shades to greet you. All who were leaders of the earth, it raises up their thrones.

All who were kings of nations. So what you see there is, you see that in Sheol, people are aware that they're there.

They have a knowledge. This is not a non -existence. We're going to get this again at deviations where we deal with some of the false views.

Maybe I should have started with that, but what we end up seeing, I wanted to start with a definition really so we understand what we're talking about, but what we end up seeing is if we don't get the definition right, we don't understand what we're saying, we're going to run into some of the deviations that we see later, things like soul sleep, annihilation, purgatory, things like that.

Now what you end up seeing here is that you see that we're a consciousness. We're going to see this throughout.

Now this is going to confuse some people. Who is the ruler in Sheol? I understand.

I mean there's so many movies out that talk about Satan being the ruler of hell. No. Deuteronomy 32, verse 22.

Look at this. Now who's speaking here?

This is God speaking, not Satan. Sheol is ruled by God.

And I don't know if that shocks some of you. I hope not. God is sovereign. God rules the earth.

I know. It doesn't look that way. Why? Because he's given stewardship to his creation on earth to be stewards.

And we're doing a really bad job of it. I'm just saying. I mean we're not doing very good with our stewardship of this earth.

But what we end up seeing is that God is still in control. God's still sovereign. And he is the one who rules over death.

Third thing is it's a place sometimes described as punishment. Yikes. This is in Psalm 9.

We'll look there just here. The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget

God. So the wicked are going to return there. The wicked are going to go to Sheol. Now you see this.

We don't have time to look at all of them. But let me give you some others. The last verse of Isaiah talks about this being a place of burning that will last forever.

I like to go to Daniel 12, 2. Daniel 12, 2. Reason is because that talks about eternal life and the eternal contempt.

And the issue there is, again, whatever, there's eternal life. The opposite of it is this what

Daniel calls eternal contempt. But it's the idea that it is an ongoing existence of consciousness.

There's a contempt. You can't have contempt in nonexistence. So you are being in constant contempt.

So that is the place. That's just yet another description of this intermediate place.

Well, actually, that would be the eternal place, technically, in Daniel. But we'll get there.

Let's look at the New Testament. In the New Testament, we have several different terms. Now, the one used probably the most would be

Hades. Hades. And this is equivalent to Sheol. That's your blank there.

This is equivalent to Sheol in that it describes the grave. If you look at Revelation 20.

Revelation 20 and verse 13. Revelation 20, 13.

And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them.

And they were judged, each according to them, according to what they had done. Now, leave this up for a second because I want to point some things out.

Notice here that the sea gave up the dead who were in it. So there's this idea of the sea where death and Hades, they give up their dead.

So death and Hades, both being mentioned. So the idea here is those who are dying at this time, those that die, and then all those in Hades.

I believe this is a judgment time where anyone who basically enters into a death at this point, and all the people who are in Hades as well.

Which means, Hades, people were aware of what was happening and they come to this part for their judgment.

Okay? This is their judgment. And so, here you see, this is where they're cast into the lake of fire.

And so, to be precise, the eternal resting place that we would be is called the lake of fire.

It wouldn't be Hades. Now, if you say that people will spend eternity in hell, technically you could say that, but you're using hell in a broad sense.

Hell, for many people, refers to both Hades and the lake of fire. Some will refer to hell just as Hades, and some will refer to hell as the lake of fire.

And so, I'm saying this just to say that we have to be careful in our language.

To be a little bit more precise in the way we speak, we're going to spend eternity in the lake of fire.

That avoids the ambiguity. Okay? There's no more confusion. Why? Because we're saying that's the place.

So, if someone has this idea of Hades, and this is where some people get an idea that Hades is spoken of as temporary, as we just read, then they think, oh, well, then we're going to go into non -existence.

It's only going to be temporal. Well, Hades will be temporal, not the lake of fire, and that will be eternal.

And so, that's a distinction that has to be made. And when we use the term hell in a general sense, in a broad sense, and it refers to both of these states, it can give confusion.

Okay? So, I'm trying to be precise so that we don't run into confusion. Okay? So, it's also, yikes!

Again, we got that punishment thing going. It's a place of torment. Let's look in Luke 16.

Luke 16, verse 23. Luke 16, 23, speaking of Hades, which is this word that's similar to sheol, or death.

And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw

Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his side.

Now, notice here. He's in Hades. He's in torment. He's conscious.

He's aware. Now, I know many people take this as a literal account because this is different than any other parable.

This parable has the name of an individual, Lazarus. It's also different than any other parable because every other parable in the

New Testament, you have a heavenly truth being explained by something earthly.

Okay? You have a sower of seeds. Maybe you could see someone out there sowing seeds.

And Jesus looks at that and takes that to picture something that's in heaven. Okay?

He uses an earthly picture for a heavenly truth. And you don't use names, proper names.

And so, people argue this is a real accounting because of that. However, a couple of things that I see as an issue there.

I actually take this as a parable, though different parable than every other. Maybe you want to put it in the category of illustration.

That's fine. There's nothing that says Jesus can't use a proper name in a parable.

That's not a definition God gives us anywhere. So, we have to be aware of that.

Just because this one's different than the others doesn't mean it's not an illustration of something.

It's also really God giving, just explaining what's going on after death.

Now, I say that to say this. Some people say, well, this is a parable. Therefore, that Hades is not a real conscious torment.

Well, I'm saying this to say I do take this as an illustration. I do take this as a parable. Much of it based on some of the language.

I don't want to exegete this now. If you have questions, you can contact us. But the issue being is the phrasing of Abraham's bosom.

Seeing Abraham. Those are things that would be an issue,

I think, where it doesn't seem likely that he would describe being in God's presence as Abraham's bosom.

And that Abraham is the one that's doing things and not Christ, basically.

Not God the Father. So, I think this is an illustration.

However, for those who want to say, well, this is just an illustration or a parable. And therefore, it's not teaching that there's a real conscious torment in hell.

The issue you have there is that this parable would make no sense if the intermediate state is not a conscious place of torment for the ungodly.

If that is not true, then this parable makes no sense.

And Jesus' whole argument is undermined because he's stating something that's not true to make a point of a truth.

It would logically make his argument invalid. And I believe that God, working within the creation that he created, the laws of logic,

I think, that we understand come from his nature. And therefore, he cannot violate his nature.

Thus, he can't violate the laws of logic. So, he wouldn't make invalid statements.

Logically invalid statements. Or logically invalid arguments, I should say. So, I believe that though this may be a parable, and I do believe it is.

And I've done a lot of study on it in way different ways. But though I do, I still think it makes absolutely no sense if there's not a literal conscious torment for the wicked.

So, I don't think that just saying it's a parable gets you around that. So, that's

Hades. Let's look at Gehenna. Gehenna was a garbage dump. Okay, we believe it was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.

It's a place that was... Basically, remember, this is before the time...

And they didn't have as much garbage as we have today, by the way, back then. But it would be a time where they would take things to an area and burn the refuse.

They didn't have dumps. I remember when I was... Oh, I'm dating myself because it was a long, long time ago.

But when I was dating my bride... She wasn't my bride at the time. When I was dating my bride, before we were married, she lived in New York and I lived in New Jersey.

And I used to have to go through Staten Island. And there is an area of a waste dump. And, I mean, it was one of those things that you drove through holding your nose.

I mean, you did not want to breathe. Because that stench...

You know, I shut the air off. I closed the windows. When I'd get close to there, it'd be...

You know, it's like you're driving through and you're just like, Oh, no, I don't want to smell that. It's horrible. That's what happens.

And Gehenna was that. Gehenna was a place of a stench where there was constant burning.

Because they'd just dump more garbage there and burn it. And that's what you would do with the garbage to keep it.

They didn't have areas like we have with bulldozers and being able to bury it so that it could decay.

So this is the word primarily used by Christ and always referred to a place of eternal punishment.

Now, Gehenna being a physical place, well, many people will say, well, that's a physical place. He's speaking of a place.

But let's take a look at some ways, like in Matthew, how he uses this. And you're going to see...

Excuse me. In the way that Jesus uses this, we end up seeing that he means this as an illustration of something more.

Matthew 5, verse 22. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire or Gehenna.

So this is an idea of judgment. Notice this.

He's speaking of a judgment that happens after you die. And yet he refers to it will be liable to Gehenna, to a place of burning.

Well, I think he's using this as a picture, as a description, of something that we would have a better understanding of.

Or they would, sorry, have a better understanding of. They understand what Gehenna was. It was a place no one wanted to go to.

Matthew 23. And let's look at verse 15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across the sea and land to make a single proselyte.

And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell or Gehenna as yourselves.

So he says that, you know, they're saying a child of Gehenna. Why would that be a child of Gehenna? What's a child of Gehenna if Gehenna is a picture of something more?

Staying in chapter 23 of Matthew, look at verse 33. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell or Gehenna?

You see the idea there. They're going to be sentenced where? To the refuse pile outside of Jerusalem?

No. They're going to be sentenced to a place that is pictured by that refuse place.

And so it shows the idea that this is something that happens afterwards. And it is a punishment.

They're conscious of it. They're aware of it. I keep bringing this up because we have to. This is where, look,

I understand this is something that none of us want to deal with, especially if we have loved ones who've died.

Okay. Some of you may know that my mother died when I was younger. I was raised

Jewish. I have no reason to believe, and I understand some of you think this is horrible for me to say, but this is what is true.

And I have to submit to God and truth. But I have no reason to believe that my mother, who

I loved dearly and think was the sweetest woman ever, I have no reason to believe that she's not in Hades right now.

That sounds horrible. I understand. That she is suffering in getting a proper punishment for her sin.

I have no reason to believe that she repented and put trust in Jesus Christ and is with Him now in heaven.

And that sounds horrible. I understand. But the reality is that God is glorified and just and holy because that He will punish every and all sin, either by His work on the cross or by punishing people for the things they have done.

And so I understand, though, that people don't want to think about loved ones in punishment.

And so because of that, many don't want to think that there's actually a hell. I understand that.

But we cannot allow our feelings to dictate doctrine.

We have to look at what Scripture says and submit to that. And I find when

I look at most of these groups that deny a literal, eternal, conscious punishment, that almost always it starts with someone that didn't like the idea of punishing, of their loved ones being punished.

And that's the issue. Just because our loved ones get punished, in Revelation it says there's a day that's coming that every tear will be wiped away and there will be no more tears.

And that's because I think we will see and understand God's righteousness and justice when He judges the wicked.

And we're going to see the wicked as being wicked. We're going to see how wicked we really were. And we're going to understand the grace a whole lot better,

I think. Let's look at the last one, Tartarus. Tartarus is used only once. It makes it harder to understand what it is.

But Tartarus is used and seems to be a reference to a prison of fallen angels.

And it is a synonym as a place of punishment. We only see this once in 2 Peter 2, verse 4.

2 Peter 2, verse 4. And so what you see here is that these angels are in a conscious punishment.

They are in this place called Tartarus. And that's where it is. In our English we're calling it, it's translated as hell.

But it is a different word. We only see it once. And the only time we see it is with angels.

Could humans be there? I don't know. Couldn't tell you. We just know that this is used to refer to those angels.

And if you look in the context, it's a specific group of angels. Angels that are mentioned, I believe, in the time of Noah before the flood.

These angels, I believe there's angels that intermarried with men, or women

I should say, somehow. And had offspring that corrupted mankind. You say, well that sounds like Greek mythology.

I'm just telling you what I think scripture says. And if it sounds like Greek mythology, well maybe that's where the

Greeks got it from. But the reality is, just because it doesn't make sense to us, doesn't mean it's not true.

Alright, let's look at the design. We looked at the definition. We spent a lot of time on that. And I want to get through it. So, design.

Jesus Christ is said to be the first fruit of all who will resurrect at the second coming.

1 Corinthians 15, 23. I'm not going to look there. Since He is our pattern, our question is, where was

Christ between death, the death on the cross, and the resurrection three days later?

This becomes an interesting question. So, Jesus Christ dies, and then is raised from the dead.

That resurrection He does is described as the first fruits of our resurrection. So, the day that He died on the cross,

Jesus promised a thief in Luke 23. In Luke 23, verse 43,

He says, Today, and if you're looking in your blanks there, that's your blank. Today, you will be with me in paradise.

That's your second blank, paradise. So, it's today. That very day, the thief was going to be with Jesus where?

Paradise. Where are we going to be? Where is the thief going to be the moment

He died? Paradise with Jesus. In verse 46 of the same chapter of Luke 23,

He committed His spirit, that's your blank there, His spirit into the hands of the Father, that's your blank there.

From these verses, we can conclude that Jesus' spirit, the immaterial part of Him, went to be with the

Father in heaven, while His body, the material part, remained in the grave on earth.

This is the pattern of every believer according to 1 Corinthians 15.

So, that's the design. Let's look at some distinctions. I want to try to see if we can get through this.

So, the righteous, we have two distinctions. The righteous, the wicked. Those two.

Those are the two groups of people that everyone fits into. You're either the righteous or the wicked.

So, let's start with the righteous. The righteous go immediately, they immediately receive the presence, that's your blank there, they immediately receive, received into the presence of the

Father and Jesus Christ. We saw that in Luke 23 already. We can see this in Ecclesiastes 12, 7.

But let's turn to 2 Corinthians 5, 1 -8.

2 Corinthians 5, 1 -8. For we know that if the tent, that is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For in this tent we groan, I feel like groaning sometimes as I'm getting older, just saying.

But, verse 2. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.

If we indeed are putting it on, we may not be found naked.

For while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened, not that we will be unclothed, but that we will be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

Verse 5. He who has prepared us for this very thing is

God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee, or a down payment.

Then look at verse 6. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the

Lord. For we walk by faith and not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the

Lord. The idea there being is the moment we're away from our body, we're with the

Lord. So it's the idea that it's immediate. It is not that we go into a non -existence until the judgment, but that we will be, the righteous will be immediately in the presence of God.

And I believe that everyone kind of believes that. Some just think the wicked go into non -existence until a judgment.

Letter B there in your notes. It is a place of greater happiness than serving the

Lord on earth. Philippians 1 .23. He talks about wanting, we really should read context here, but he says,

I'm hard -pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ that is far better. He's discussing here that he's got this desire whether to be dead or to be alive.

If he's dead, he gets to be with Christ. But to be alive, he gets to serve the Philippians. He's hard -pressed between the two.

I love the word for hard -pressed. It's a little graphic, but it's a word for guardrails.

It would be these two guardrails. When they would want to slaughter an animal, say a cow for meat, they don't want it to jump and kick and hurt itself or anyone else.

So what they'd do is put these guardrails and have it very wide at one end. And the animal would go down and it would go further and further and it gets narrower and narrower and narrower until it's hedged in.

It's hard -pressed. It's stuck where it can't move to the right or the left. And that's what he describes to use to describe this.

He is stuck. Paul is stuck between desiring to be dead, to be with Christ, or to serve

God, serve people on earth. He's saying it is far better to be in death. In death, we get to be with Christ.

That's his argument there. That's the point. He's saying better that we be dead, better that we be in the next, in this immediate state so that we could have eternal life.

That's the thing. So what we see there is letter C. Let me move on.

Letter C. The righteous are alive and conscious. There's your blanks there.

Alive and conscious. I'm not going to look up any verses here, okay? But let me just give you some. Matthew 22, verse 32.

John 11, 26. And 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and 10.

Okay? The righteous are alive and conscious. Let's not turn here. But Revelation 14, 13 says that they are at rest.

That's your blank there. They're at rest. So we see that they're immediately received into the presence of the

Father and of Jesus, that it's a place of greater happiness, that the righteous are alive and conscious, that the righteous are at rest, and lastly, that the righteous' physical resurrection is being yet future.

That's your blank there. Future. There is a future resurrection for those righteous who die.

You can see 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, 17. You can also see 2 Timothy 2, verses 17 and 18.

All right. Let's move on to the wicked then. So we see the righteous. We see that it's immediate.

We see that they're in the presence of God. We see that it's greater than living on earth, that they're alive, they're conscious, they're at rest, and there's a future resurrection for them.

Okay? Which means that we're going to talk about some future state. But this is the intermediate state between death and that future state.

What about the wicked? Well, for the wicked, they are under restraint.

We see this, and let's turn there for 1 Peter 3, 19. 1 Peter 3, 19. In which we went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.

What? Yeah, you see that these spirits were imprisoned after their death. And Jesus goes down.

Now, some people have a large problem with this. They say that where Jesus was in that time between his death and the resurrection, what they argue is he went to hell to pay for sins.

No, he went to hell to preach. Now, some say, well, if he went to hell to preach, then people have a second chance.

I don't believe that's what it's saying. I believe that what he's saying is he went to proclaim that the justice is done.

These wicked who thought that God would not fulfill his promises, and he went and said, see,

I've paid the punishment. Really to kind of let them know they're without excuse.

That God did do everything that he promised he would do. But you notice there the issue that they're imprisoned.

They're restrained. So for the wicked, the wicked are in a state of restraint during this time.

So it's not a big party as people think. Oh, yeah, I'd rather be in hell partying it up with my friends.

Hell will not be a party. It will be a prison. And it will be far worse than earth.

People think earth is hell. You ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, hell is going to be far worse.

All right? And when I say hell, I use hell to refer to that intermediate state.

Okay? Not the eternal state most often. Just so you know. So the wicked are not only under restraint, but letter

B, and that was your blank there, by the way, restraint. The second blank, they endure conscious torment.

They endure a conscious torment. And we saw this in Luke 16.

Let's not turn there again, but we saw that in Luke 16. It's a conscious torment. If it's not a conscious torment,

Luke 16 makes no sense. And then third, they are already receiving punishment from God.

They're already receiving punishment from God. 2 Peter 2 .19.

Or, sorry, 2 Peter 2 .9. 2 Peter 2 .9 says, Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

Do you see here? The unrighteous are in a punishment currently. And they stay in that state of punishment consciously until that day.

Alright? Until that judgment. And at that judgment, we won't turn to Revelation 20, but you can look at Revelation 20, verse 10, 15.

Sorry, that's Revelation 20, verse 10 and 15. Or look at Revelation 21, verse 8, and you're going to see letter

D there. They will be placed in the lake of fire. That's your blank, the lake of fire.

The eternal place of torment at the Great White Throne Judgment. So, as we saw, that they're in this temporal place until that judgment.

And at that judgment, that's when they're thrown into the eternal resting place, the lake of fire.

Okay? Now, with all of that said, well, that's actually just a grounding for us because we need to start now dealing with the deviations.

But I will go quick. Have no fear. Let me deal with some of the deviations. There's three major ones that I want to address.

One, soul sleep. Who advocates for this? Well, Jehovah Witnesses and Seventh -day Adventists are probably the two biggest groups that advocate for this.

And like I said, they advocate for this out of a starting with the whole reason that these groups started was they had a disdain for hell.

I think it was, you know, the Jehovah Witnesses judge,

I want to say Russell Tather, Judge Russell. Anyway, I'm drawing a complete blank.

Sorry about that. I should just look in my own book, What Do They Believe? And I'll know the history, right? I did write a book on the subject.

I should know it. But age, age, it just catches up with you. So, but Jehovah Witnesses, what you end up seeing with their founder is that he did not like the idea of hell.

And he thought hell was being used. Back then with circuit riders and whatnot, hell was being used to scare people into heaven.

Bad, bad way to try to argue for people to come to repentance. You don't try to scare them into heaven by giving them a fear of hell.

I mean, the reality of hell, yeah, but don't, don't, yeah. But because of that, he didn't like that idea.

And because of that, well, he started a Bible study and started teaching that there was this idea of soul sleep.

Now, the explanation of this is that a soul becomes non -conscious at death.

And they continue in that state until the resurrection. So there is no intermediate state for them.

They believe it just goes, the wicked at least, go into a non -conscious state. And they wake up as if you're sleeping.

They wake up and there's the judgment. And then they go into non -existence.

A refutation, we don't have time to go into it, but a refutation, you can look up Matthew 17, 1 -8.

Luke 16, 17 -21. Luke 20, verses 37 -38.

John 8, 53 -56. Just for a few.

Now note, those who teach this, really it's because of a misunderstanding of the word sleep or sleeping referring to the dead.

When people say that someone is sleeping or asleep, it doesn't mean they're in a, it's not describing, it's describing their appearance.

That's your blank there. It's simply describing their appearance and not the determination of their existence, of their soul.

It's not describing where they are, but how they look. It's a polite way of saying someone's dead.

We have the same way of speaking in our day and age, in our culture. We say someone passed away.

Because it's so much politer to speak of someone who's deceased. You don't want to say they're dead.

Dead sounds so final. So we say they passed away. They've moved on. It's a polite way to deal with the words when someone's grieving.

But it's the idea of death. Same thing here. They're asleep. They're dead.

But you want to be polite about it. Next, annihilation. Jehovah's Witnesses advocate for this.

And this really deals with the eternal state, what's after the immediate state.

But this is the explanation here. The souls of those who continually reject God will be annihilated at the last resurrection.

So in their case, they believe that you go into this sleep state unconscious, you wake up for the judgment, and then poof, out of existence.

Why would God have to wake you up then? I don't know. But to refute that, you could go to John 5 .24.

You can go to Matthew 25, verse 41, 46. You can look at 2

Thessalonians 1 .9. And you can look at Revelation 14 .11 and Revelation 20, verse 10.

Let me deal with it really quick. The last major one is purgatory. The advocates of this is

Roman Catholicism. The explanation is that all who die at peace with the

Roman Catholic Church but are not perfect, have not had all their sins confessed and cleansed by penance, must undergo a penalty of purifying suffering in a temporal state of torment.

So they believe that you've gone into this temporal place where you have to work off the rest of your sins.

If you ever deny that the Roman Catholic Church believes in a works -based salvation, explain purgatory.

What do you go there for? To work off, to pay for your sins.

You pay in punishment. And when your punishment is done, then you're set free. Some refutation for this.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Titus 3, 5. Both of them saying that it's not by works that you're saved, but by grace.

Hebrews 9, 27. 1 John 2, 1 and 2. 1 John 5, 11 to 13.

So those are some others. Now really quickly, wrap up with this. Just to say there's some newer views that are coming out.

The idea that really when God speaks of the gift of eternal life, that we're not born immortal, that we're not created with a nature of our immaterial part of us living forever.

But that is what we get when God regenerates us. The gift is eternal life.

And the idea is that the eternal punishment is being punished eternally without God.

But the problem is you're non -existent, so how do you know that you're being punished? You're not.

And notice the reason I went through all the effort to show, there's a real conscious existence.

The importance of that is to show that this eternal punishment is not a non -existence.

And it's not something you're not aware of. And it's not a non -punishment.

It is an eternal conscious punishment. Okay? And so this idea of conditionalism,

I don't agree with. I'm just saying. Now are these views, let me wrap up with this, are these heretical?

In other words, if you believe in one of these, does that mean you're damned to hell even though you deny it exists?

No, I don't think so. I don't put it to that level. I don't think it's something that you need to believe that you will spend eternity in a lake of fire if you don't repent.

I don't think that that might be fully necessary to be understood to be regenerate.

Okay? And that's how I end up making the distinction with heresy. Is someone,

I believe, that believes in these things going to stay doctrinally sound? I tend to think not.

History has shown that most that go down this road don't stay on the path of Orthodox Christianity for long.

You start seeing them starting to rethink other things and to jettison other beliefs and start rethinking things and it becomes a problem.

So, I really want you to just consider these things but realize that we need to be accurate to what

Scripture says whether we like it or not. With that, if you have questions about this or anything else,

I encourage you to contact us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org. You can email us.

Next class, we're going to go into the second advent of Christ. What is going to happen at His second coming?

We're going to look at that. Again, if you want to get the syllabus or anything else, you can go to store .strivingforeternity

.org. You can pick up my book there, What Do They Believe? You can also sign up to host one of the seminars that we do,

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars. I encourage you to sign up for that. Get us to come to your church and teach how to interpret the

Bible. Basically, we go over in eight hours, six sessions, we give you an understanding of what the

Bible, how to follow the rules of interpretation. With that, until next class, which

I believe is next week. For those who watch live, I'm sorry that we have been with my traveling.

This is a busy time of year. I've been doing a lot of traveling. With that, this happens. We should have class next week as well.

Nothing should impede that. Until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.