On the Doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment

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I want to invite you to keep standing and open your Bibles with me.
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We're going to be looking at two passages, Daniel chapter 12, if you want to make your way there.
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And then we're going to be looking at the final verse of Matthew chapter 25.
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And we're, in our lesson today, going to be comparing these as both the lesson from the Old Covenant Scriptures and the New.
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So in Daniel chapter 12, we begin chapter 12 with these words.
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At that time shall arise Michael the great prince who has charge of your people.
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And there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time.
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But at that time, your people shall be delivered.
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Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
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And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
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And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
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And now turning our attention to the last verse of Matthew chapter 25, Jesus is finishing a parable, actually a lesson on those who come to him at the end.
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And he says in verse 46, and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of the word and may now as we seek to understand this word and this very difficult and yet sobering subject, may we have our eyes open, may our ears be unstopped, that we might hear the truth of the word.
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And I pray Lord that you would keep me from the error of teaching anything that would be against your word.
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And I pray it in Jesus name, Amen.
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As most of you know, one of my great joys in life is getting to teach the Bible and I'm always happy when during the week someone sends me a message or a question about the Bible or gives me a call and says, hey, I don't really understand this, or can you help me understand a particular passage? It's a joy to know that people want to know and people care and are studying.
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Well, a few days ago, I got a message.
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I received a question from a person through social media, not a member of our church, but someone else.
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And the person works alongside a member of the Jehovah Witness movement, so they had been engaging in conversation while at work.
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And for those who don't know, because I know not everybody keeps up with different theological positions, the Jehovah Witness movement, one of its defining characteristics is that they deny the doctrine of hell.
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They do not believe in eternal conscious punishment or eternal conscious torment.
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They believe that when the body dies, the soul also dies.
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And when the resurrection happens, it will only be a resurrection of those who in the Jehovah Witness community have earned their place in the new kingdom and everyone else will simply remain dead.
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It's called the doctrine of annihilationism, the annihilation of not only the body, which dies and goes to the natural process of decomposition, but that the spirit itself also at death is annihilated.
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And in fact, I have distant family members on my mother's side who are in the Jehovah Witness movement and how they got into that was the the man of the family, how he got into the Jehovah Witness movement was he was brought up in church and he'd always heard about hell and it didn't really it wasn't something he could comprehend.
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He couldn't get over the fact that hell existed and he didn't like the idea of hell.
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So when the Jehovah Witnesses came calling, they came to talk to him and he asked them about hell and they said, well, hell is not real.
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It was invented by the Roman Catholic Church.
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It's a it's not something that's biblical.
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It's a it's a it's a medieval view of the afterlife.
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And it's it's something that's been pushed along by media and Dante's Inferno and things like that.
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It's just not real.
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And he liked that.
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He liked that it wasn't a reality that he had to deal with anymore.
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So he became a Jehovah Witness because of the doctrine of hell.
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And the person sending me this note this week wanted to know, well, how do you engage the subject? And what Bible passages should you use? And I imagine that this inquirer is not alone in his question.
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You may not have been engaging Jehovah Witnesses in your life, but I would guess that most of you have at some point had a question about hell and the doctrine of eternal perdition.
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We may have even found ourselves somewhat like my relative in a place where we had a hard time reconciling this with our own personal sensibilities and wondering if there was a misunderstanding somewhere or maybe we've just missed what the Bible teaches or maybe everything we've heard up till now has just been wrong.
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And I didn't come this morning just because I wanted to preach on hell.
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This isn't something that gets me out of bed excited to come and preach on this particular doctrine.
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But as you know, we have been studying through the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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And it just so happens that on the same week that I received the question about hell, this is where we are in the confession.
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And because I'm not one who ascribes to coincidence, I believe it was the mercy of God that it's all sort of worked out together in his providence.
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So it's interesting that it's all worked out this way, but I want to remind you what the confession says.
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I'm sorry it's not printed in your in your notes this week.
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Again, that's my mistake, but I'll read it to you.
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It's a very short.
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It's one of the shorter articles in the confession.
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This is Article 7 of the London Baptist Confession of 1646.
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This is what it says.
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And this is life eternal, that we might know him the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent.
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And on the contrary, the Lord will render vengeance in flaming fire to them that know not God and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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This article states emphatically the belief that there are really only two destinations that are available for the individual.
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There are only two places that after you close your eyes in this world, that you will open your eyes to either to eternal life, which we define in Scripture as a heavenly kingdom, a heavenly home, the presence of God, or what the confession calls the vengeance of flaming fire, which we define as hell.
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What I thought was interesting when I was looking at the confession, and I want you to know the confession is just a tool, it's not Scripture.
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And when I was looking at the confession, I noticed it didn't mention something.
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The confession does not mention the condition or the duration of hell.
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It simply speaks of vengeance in flaming fire.
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And I think that there are some people who could probably take that ambiguity and find some ways to weasel out of the reality of hell if that's all they had was that confession.
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Well, thank God we don't have just that confession.
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We have the whole Bible.
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And if that's all we had to go on, we might could we weasel our way into an annihilation view or some type of a temporal punishment view.
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But the Bible, the Bible is not ambiguous.
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In fact, this is one of those subjects where.
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As much as the as much as those who don't want to believe it, try to find ambiguity, the Bible really comes across very, very clear on this subject when the Bible addresses the reality of eternal punishment.
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It speaks in clear terms, and although sometimes poetic language is used, the language that's used is obviously meant to convey a very real, literal hell.
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And like I said, this is not this is not a subject that is, you know, I've heard some guys, it's like the old pastor, the two ministers that were campaigning at the same church.
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Have I told you this story? There were two ministers that were campaigning to go to the same church and the church says, well, we're here the first minister on one Sunday and then the next Sunday we'll hear the next minister.
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And they both came and they both preached the same text and they both preached on hell.
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Same text, pretty much the same sermon.
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And so they called the second minister in and they said, OK, we've heard you both preach and we want to call you as our minister.
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And the minister said, well, I'm I'm happy to come, but I have to know it's my understanding that the man who preached the week before me preached the same text and pretty much the same message.
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Why did you choose me? And they said, well, you both preached on hell, but you preached like you didn't want us to go there.
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You see, when I talk about hell, I'm preaching because I don't want any of you to go there.
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And I think sometimes that's lost.
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I think sometimes that message is lost.
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Why do we preach about hell? Because it's real and because I don't want any of you to be there.
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I'm not in control of the salvation of your soul.
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I leave that to God.
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But I'm going to tell you the truth.
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As the as the Old Testament says, when a watchman is set, he's told to give the warning.
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And if the warning is given and it's not heeded, the watchman is.
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Clear, because he's given the warning.
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So as I said, the Bible talks about hell in unambiguous terms.
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And what we're going to talk about today is and you'll notice the title of the message on the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.
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What does that mean? Well, we're going to look at those three that that phrase in three parts, eternal conscious torment.
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Because I think that that pretty much sums up what the Bible teaches about the doctrine of hell.
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So let's look at the first word.
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The word is eternal.
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One of the most difficult things I think that the human mind has to grasp when we think about God is the subject of eternality.
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When we think about God and we think about the the reality of God, we have to think about something that we really can't imagine.
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And that is the idea that God is forever.
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Now, most of us can think about forever forward.
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As I've said, most of us can think, well, we're going to wake up tomorrow and then we're going to go back to sleep.
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We're going to wake up the next day and then we're going to go back to sleep.
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And that's just going to go on forever.
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And one day we'll die and we'll wake up in heaven and that'll go on forever.
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We can imagine forever forward.
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But when we think about eternal, eternal does not mean a long time.
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Eternal means outside of time.
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Eternal means not bound by time.
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And that's why it's hard for us to imagine, because eternity is a place where time no longer exists.
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It's simply a constant state of being.
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God's been in eternity forever, which is sort of a redundant way of saying it.
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God's been in eternity for eternity.
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He lives outside of time.
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You know, oftentimes if you were to if I had a big erase board up here, I could draw a line for time and I could say, here's the here's the beginning of time.
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This is when God created the world.
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And and here's when Adam came on the scene seven days or six days later.
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And here's when Abraham came on the scene a few thousand years later.
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And here's here's when when Noah was on the scene and when Moses was on the scene and when all these people were on the scene, you could you could outline a timeline and you say, now, where is God? He's the board because he's not bound by that line.
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He's not even bound by the board.
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I remember I heard Dr.
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White say one time and it's really I can't even get my mind right.
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He said, you realize God is as much with Abraham right now as he is with you.
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That God's not bound by time.
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And not just that Abraham still lives.
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But that timeline that we live on, God is not bound by that at all.
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That's why he can say, I've determined the end from the beginning.
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That's why he can give an absolute definition of what will happen in the future.
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Because he's not bound to the right now.
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And I don't understand it.
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I don't know why it is and how it is, but it is.
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And so when we think about hell and we think about this idea of eternal, I think it's hard to wrap our minds around even that word.
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But I want to say this, that word eternal applies to both heaven and hell.
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And there's a blessing there for those of you who are in Christ, because there's going to be a day when you step out of this body, there's going to be a day whenever you die and you're going to be with the Lord.
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And then there's going to come another day where there's going to be a resurrection of the body and you're going to receive that new body.
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And that's the state and condition you're going to be in forever.
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And there will no longer be sand falling through the hourglass.
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There's no longer going to be a day where you're looking forward to that hole that you're going to be buried in.
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There's going to come a day when you're forever is forever and ever.
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You know, sometimes I ask somebody, how are you doing? And they'll say, well, I woke up this morning, I'm doing good.
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You know, and that's a joke some people give.
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You know, in heaven, you're going to wake up every morning.
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It's going to be eternal outside of time.
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I don't know if we're going to have to sleep.
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I kind of think I'll miss that if we don't, but when the Bible describes it, I want to read to you from Revelation 21.
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I read this when I preach funerals for believers, because this passage is so powerful about what we have to look forward to as believers.
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It says in Revelation 21, verse one, it says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no more sea.
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And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.
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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.
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Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for these former things have passed away.
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Praise the Lord.
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That's an awesome reality that we have to look forward to.
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And it's an awesome reality that we know if we have somebody who has left this life in Christ, that's where they have to look forward to as well.
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That right now they're with the Lord.
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But there's coming a day when there's that new Jerusalem that we're all going to share and there's a beautiful truth of heaven with God in Christ there forever, outside of time, outside of the boundaries of pain and the restrictions of of the flesh is of deterioration.
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And there's great comfort that comes in that.
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But let me say this, when we think about hell, the comfort comes to an end.
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Hell is never described as anything except the worst possible condition that a person can imagine.
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Far from the peace and comfort of heaven, far from there being no tears and no death, hell is the opposite.
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It is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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If there's sleep in heaven, there's no sleep in hell.
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If there's comfort in heaven and there is, there is none in hell, there's always conscious waking torment.
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And in our minds, even in the darkest places of our minds, we have a difficult time imagining such a condition.
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And as a result of that, because it's so hard for us to imagine, people just decide not to believe it.
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Thus, the doctrine of annihilation becomes popular.
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There were some great theologians of the past who laid in their lives, gave way to the doctrine of annihilationism because even though they were so sound and so committed to the doctrine of the scripture toward the end of their life, they could not wrap their minds around the reality of the eternality of hell.
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And so they began to give way to the potential of annihilation.
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Even Luther wrote at times that he wondered about the extent and the eternality of hell.
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But I want to show you, remember we read the opening text this morning? We read from Daniel and you know what I love about Daniel? There's not a lot in the Old Testament about life after death.
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There's really not.
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I mean, if you compare how much in the New Testament talks about heaven and hell and what happens after you die and you go back to the Old Testament, relatively little compared.
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But Daniel tells us that even in the Old Testament, there was that promise of life.
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And he says in chapter 12, verse 2, he says, there's going to be a resurrection from the dust of the earth.
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People shall awake and some will awaken to everlasting life and some will awaken to everlasting shame and contempt.
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Now, in the Hebrew language, the word everlasting there can have a stopping point.
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It can have a point of discontinuation.
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Everlasting can mean simply a long time.
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But what I like to point out to people in this particular text is that if hell is only a certain amount of time, then heaven is as well.
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Because they're used in a parallel.
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Some will be raised to everlasting life.
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Some will be raised to everlasting contempt.
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If the second everlasting is not really everlasting, neither is the first.
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And so I use that and I compare that.
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And this is what I told the guy when he sent me the question, how do we why do we believe that hell is eternal? I said, go to Jesus's words in Matthew 25.
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He's talking about the fact that at that great day, there's going to be a multitude brought to him and he's going to separate the sheep from the goats and the sheep will go to everlasting.
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And in the Greek, it's no question.
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Aeonion in the Greek means eternal.
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It is eternal life.
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And those who are not.
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To eternal.
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Torment.
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Punishment.
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Now, that's not the only two passages in the Bible, but these two are significant because they they they're they're using a parallel of language that which goes to heaven.
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And I've never met a person who said heaven's going to only be a little while.
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I've never met a person who said heaven is temporary.
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Everybody who believes in heaven believes heaven is eternal.
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So why do we make hell? Temporary.
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Because we don't want to believe it because it's hard to believe.
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So we find a way.
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To make one the one that we like, the good one, the positive one, that one's the forever one, but the other one is not.
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Beloved, if I can get anything across to you today, it's this eternal torment, eternal heaven are both eternal.
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And I've heard the question, I'm getting a little off my notes, I have to be careful because I have a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it.
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But when it comes to.
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Heaven and hell, the idea of eternal and the eternality of it, people say, well, why is it that temporary sin equates to eternal? Punishment.
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The answer is twofold.
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Number one, we have sinned against an eternal God.
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And therein lies an eternal consequence.
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It's not we who are doing temporary sins that matter, it's he who is eternally offended that matters.
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That's the first.
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But the second, I think, is more, at least for me, when I heard this, it registered in my brain such an absolute moment of clarity.
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When this pastor I heard say this, he said, what makes you think that in heaven those people are going to stop hating God? Or in hell, what makes you think that when they hit hell, they're going to automatically become righteous, their hatred for God will go on forever, and thus their reward of that hatred will continue forever.
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That's a that's a powerful thought.
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They're not going to get to hell and start worshiping God.
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They're not going to get to hell and start praising his name.
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They're going to abide at enmity with him and under his wrath forever.
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It's a powerful thought.
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The second word, as I said, that's the word eternal.
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The second word is conscious, because a lot of what the argument against hell sometimes I hear is that, yes, hell is real, but it's not conscious torment.
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It's not a conscious reality.
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People are simply going to be, as it were, like an eternal dreamless sleep.
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The soul is like, and I don't know if you've ever been put to sleep for surgery or something, it's going to be like that, except for no, no dreams, no nothing.
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It's just shutting it off.
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The computer is going to go dead, the mind is going to go blank, you're going to go to complete blackness, but not even blackness, because it won't be anything there to see it.
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It will be an unconscious, as some have defined it, a terminal punishment.
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Just you're terminated.
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But that's not what the Bible says.
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The Bible teaches that the unrighteous are conscious in their punishment.
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In fact, I'll show you a passage just to point this out.
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I mean, you've all read that Jesus talks about gnashing of teeth and weeping, and you know that's conscious, right? You don't do that in your sleep.
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But the passage that I like to point people to is Revelation chapter 14 and Revelation 14 verse 9.
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And I realize this is in the greater context of Revelation, which I would need to sit and really go over if we were exegeting this passage.
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But I want to just point out something in this passage.
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In Revelation 14, verse 9, it says this, And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will also drink of the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
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And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name.
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This is certainly talking about the end times.
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This is talking about a reality of something that will happen.
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And some people argue, well, this isn't about everybody in hell.
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This is just the worshipers of the beast.
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We can have that conversation another time.
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I don't think that really holds up as an argument.
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But we know this.
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If you want to limit it to that group, that group particularly, specifically, will have no rest day or night forever.
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The text clearly says it.
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The fire of their torment goes up forever and ever.
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And I believe the same can be applied to the lake of fire in Revelation chapter 21 or 20 rather.
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Unconscious torment is not torment.
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It's simply unconsciousness.
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And it doesn't line up with the text.
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But finally, the word torment needs to be examined.
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And again, just quickly.
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Because this is the part about hell that most hesitation where this is the part where most hesitation comes to consider hell eternal is bad to consider hell to be conscious is bad, but to consider it to be eternally conscious torment.
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Causes some people to take a step back.
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In fact, some people think that their hell is going to be a place where they gather with their buddies and have a party for eternity.
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I've heard people say that, well, I don't mind going to hell, all my friends will be there.
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What makes you think you're going to be spending time with your friends? And anything other than misery? What makes you think you're going to be spending time having a kegger in hell that doesn't work that way? I remember and brother Jim, remember this, too, we used to do the judgment house together and there was a scene of hell and I played the devil one year.
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I'm not going to lie.
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I was I was the devil in the judgment house play.
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But I remember the way the judgment house was set up was that the devil was was in charge of hell.
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He was the he was the ringleader.
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And they were talking about how they were going to sneak people into the torments of hell by lying to them and deceiving them.
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And he had a little minion that was there.
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And, you know, that was the way that hell was set up.
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Beloved, the devil suffering the same.
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The Bible says hell was created for the devil and his angels.
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So he's in the torment as well.
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It's not like you've got a hierarchy of demons that are all kind of having a party and the devil's in charge.
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No, he's he's the first one in the lake, but he's not alone.
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And the Bible, Jesus in Mark, chapter nine, this is so sobering to hear.
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Just imagine your savior saying this to you.
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Mark nine forty two, he says, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
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And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
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It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go into hell to the unquenchable fire.
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And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.
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It would be better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.
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And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out.
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It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
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That is your savior speaking.
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That is the Lord Jesus Christ, God, the son speaking.
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As John MacArthur said, Jesus was a hellfire preacher.
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Jesus warned about the dangers of hell more than he preached the promises of heaven.
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You read your Bible and see.
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Jesus said it would be better to be physically maimed and to live this life in that state than to go into heaven or to go into hell perfectly.
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Well, I remember years ago I went to a hospital room, a man who I knew was an atheist.
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It was he was a family member of a he was a member, a member of our family, extended family.
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And I was called and said, hey, he's in the hospital.
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He's had severe issues, going to have to have major surgery.
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Can you go and talk to him? And I said, sure.
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And they said, well, just know this.
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He is an atheist.
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And I said, OK, you know, I appreciate the heads up.
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So I went and as I went to see him, I was sort of in my mind.
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And I don't know if you ever do this, if you ever like go through conversations in your head before you get there, like, how am I going to say this? What am I going to say? How am I going to bring it up? And so I'm praying the whole time I'm walking to his room, real nervous.
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I get to the room, I stop, take a breath, say a final prayer.
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And I walk in and there he lays very, very defeated looking, found out he was going to have to have part of his intestines removed and be put on a colostomy, very serious situation.
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So he's physically down for the count.
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And I went and I sat down and I started talking to him and I didn't immediately bring up the gospel.
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I think I just asked him about his condition, how he's physically and how he was feeling.
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And at one point he stopped me.
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And he said, he said, you know, I came to your church once.
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I said, OK, he said, and I never went back.
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And in my mind, I'm thinking, well, you're an atheist, that makes sense, but I didn't want to say that.
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He said, I went to your church once and I never came back.
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He says, do you know why? So I don't know.
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He said, because while I was there, you preached about hell and I didn't like that.
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And so I never came back and I said, well, I appreciate your honesty, I very few people are willing to be so blunt and just kind of say it like it is.
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And so for the next few minutes, I started talking about the gospel and I shared the gospel again with him and I talked about the fact that God does exist.
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And I told him to look at the building across the street.
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I said, you know, that building had an architect.
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He said, I said, he said, yes.
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And if you ever met him, he said, no.
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I said, but you know, he had an architect because that building shows evidence of design.
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I said, your body shows evidence of design.
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You have a designer.
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His name is God and he's created you and he's given a law that's in your heart.
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You know that you if you face him, you're going to be guilty of breaking his law.
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Yeah, I know that.
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I said, but then as I was getting ready to leave, I said, you need to hear this last thing.
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I said, when you came to my church and I preached about hell, I said I preached about hell because I believe it's true.
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And what kind of a man would I be? If I knew you were in danger.
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And I didn't tell you what kind of a man would I be? If I knew you stood on the cliff of eternal conscious torment.
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And I was afraid to say it, and he looked and he said, yes, that's right.
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Now, I'm not going to say he got on his knees and received Jesus.
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And honestly, I haven't talked to him in quite a while.
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But in that moment, he knew why preaching on hell.
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Matters.
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If we know that it's real, we have to tell people if we know that it's real.
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It's a shame on us if we don't.
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Beloved, hell is real.
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And the most dangerous thing in the world is not that people don't believe in it.
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The most dangerous thing in the world is people think they don't deserve it.
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Did you know this? The Pew Research Center did a study, found out that 58 percent of Americans still affirm the existence of a hell.
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That's over half, 58 percent of Americans in the large nationwide study still affirm the reality of a hell.
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But you know what? Most of them believe that that's a place where people like Hitler and maybe Paul Pott and maybe Joseph Stalin, maybe the guy who shot the church last week.
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That's where people like that go.
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Only four percent, according to John MacArthur, who cited a study in his sermon, he said, according to the study he cited, only four percent said.
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They were worthy of it.
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So while 58 percent might still believe it exists, only four percent said they were really worthy of it.
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Beloved, when we understand what hell is, we understand we deserve it.
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But we understand also that Jesus Christ came to take the punishment we deserve so that we could have the righteousness we couldn't earn, so that when we stand before God, we will not receive the hell that was prepared for the devil and his angels.
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But instead, we will receive that new Jerusalem, that new heaven and that new earth, that new body that he has promised for everyone who believes on his name.
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I pray that to you this morning.
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I pray with all my heart.
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There's nothing more in this world that I want for you.
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I don't I want you to be joyful and I want you to be comforted and I want you to feel love.
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But most importantly, I want you to know Jesus because there is no other name.
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By which we must be saved.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth and I thank you, Lord, that even though hell is a reality that we must face, heaven is a greater reality for those who trust in your son.
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May we be ambassadors for Christ.
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May we be one to go out and share the message of the gospel that men might be reconciled to God through that gospel that we preach by the power of your Holy Spirit.
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And I pray now as we get ready for communion, Lord, that those who are believers would be reconfirmed in their faith, that if there's anything they need to repent of, Lord, that they would repent now and be ready to receive that table.
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And Lord, for those who do not know Christ, that today that they have been warned, the watchman has stood and he has warned.
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And Lord, I pray that you would open their hearts to heed the warning.
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By the power of your Holy Spirit, through the name of your son, Jesus Christ.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing.