Heaven, Hell and Everything In Between (part 11)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, we praise you this morning for your goodness, for your kindness, for your love that you have poured out on us in Christ.

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Lord, we thank you. Even as we study this topic of hell and your wrath, the hatred that you have towards sin,

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Father, I pray that you would cause us to have a greater understanding of you and of what you have accomplished on our behalf.

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In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, last week we were talking about hell and really some,

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I mean, we started off with that really kind of silly quiz from the fire and brimstone crowd,

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I mean the legalistic crowd really when you get right down to it, but we started talking about the historical decline in terms of American evangelicalism and their view of hell and I argued in part

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I think that one of the reasons that hell has fallen into disfavor, thank you

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Charlie, that hell has fallen into disfavor is basically it is a lack of understanding of God's righteousness, a low view of sin, maybe too high a view of man, but I think there's really another core issue and that is a low view of scripture, a low view of scripture because when you read again and again about God's judgment, about the day of judgment, about Hades, about Sheol, about the pit and all these things that we're going to look at in the weeks to come, you can't think that this is some kind of, as Spurgeon says in a quote we might not get to today, but a metaphor or that it is merely meant like if you're some kind of child and hell is just a place to scare you into being good, the message of Christianity is not be good, be a better person.

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I listened to the Tiger Wood thing the other day, I didn't really listen to it, I think I was one of five Americans who saw no part of it, but I read the accounts of it afterwards and he said, you know, what

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I want to do now is to be a better person, okay, be a better person, but there's no forgiveness in that, there's no kind of redemption in that.

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And the Bible doesn't talk about, you know, merely being a better person, it talks about being perfect, talks about the one who is perfect, talks about what he redeemed us from and it wasn't from, you know, a lack of self -esteem, it wasn't from a lack of being good, it was from the just punishment that we all deserve because of sin.

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I see that hand. Yes, I have,

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Daniel asks, have I ever asked anybody what's the point of being good and I have asked that, because if there is no objective standard, in other words, if somebody says, well,

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I don't believe the Bible, I just believe in being good, well, what is good? Did Jesus ever ask that question?

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He said, why do you ask me, right, what is good?

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Who is good? What is the purpose of being good? What is the standard of good?

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Apart from the Bible, there is no meaningful standard, right? So, yeah, I've asked that and, you know, generally, here's the answer from an unbeliever, from a pagan, from an atheist, will say something like this, well, what being good is, is doing no harm to someone else.

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That's being good. What's the problem with that? Leaving God out of the equation, that's, you know, just ignores

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God altogether. No, it doesn't, other than, you know, it is, yeah, well, it's just kind of the lowest standard that they can set and somehow justify it.

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So, I think that's basically the idea. So, we talked about the, really, the devolution of the doctrine of hell in evangelical history and we started talking about or we talked about Mark 9 and then we talked about Luke 16 and Abraham's bosom.

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I want us to begin this morning, actually, a passage I read last

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Sunday. Let's turn to Revelation 14. I think we may have read this last week, but that's okay.

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It's a good place to start. Revelation 14 verse 9 and I'll read that while you all are finishing your coffee.

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Then another angel, a third one, followed them saying with a loud voice, if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of his anger.

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And he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb.

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Oh, well, a short period of time of torment. Verse 11, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

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They have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image and whoever receives the mark of his name.

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So apparently, even if you're some kind of universalist or somebody who doesn't believe in hell, there are people who are going to be tormented forever and ever.

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To say otherwise, you'd have to allegorize Revelation 19. Right here it says, the passage very clearly affirms the idea of eternal conscious punishment of unbelievers.

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With respect to the judgment of the wicked city of Babylon in Revelation 19, 3, a large crowd in heaven cries hallelujah, the smoke from her goes up forever and ever again, eternal punishment.

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After the final rebellion of Satan is crushed, we read the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the fire of sulfur or the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were and they will be tormented forever and ever.

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Let's go ahead and look at Matthew 25, 41 and when someone has that, would they read that please?

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We're on page 40, sorry. I don't know why you all can't read my mind on that.

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I'm very confused. All right,

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Becky, I've got my eye on you. Go ahead, Dan. Just 41 is fine.

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Okay, so that eternal fire obviously prepared for the devil and his angels but other people are going to or other beings will be there and it's going to be at the judgment day when

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Jesus sends them in there. Let's move on to number six.

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The idea that there will be an eternal conscious punishment of unbelievers has been denied even by some evangelical theologians.

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It has previously been denied by the Seventh -day Adventist Church and in the new handout today, I kind of quote what they talk about a little bit and by various individuals throughout church history.

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Those who deny eternal conscious punishment, in other words, that you're in hell aware, fully cognizant and afflicted often advocate annihilationism, a teaching that after the wicked have suffered the penalty of God's wrath for a time,

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God will annihilate them so that they no longer exist. This is 6A. Many who believe in annihilationism also hold the reality of the final judgment and punishment for sin but they argue that after sinners have suffered for a certain period of time, bearing the wrath of God against their sin, they will finally cease to exist.

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So in other words, this idea that it's kind of a temporary focused time,

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I kind of like to put it in rather human terms.

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It's kind of like you receive a spanking, a severe spanking for sure but a spanking and then it's over and then you just cease to exist.

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What does that tell us? What would that tell us about God's wrath, God's justice and God in general if that was the case?

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What would be the purpose of just punishing people for a little time and then causing them to cease to exist? Which sounds more vengeful?

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I mean, this is going to sound counterintuitive but which sounds more vengeful? A God who punishes people forever and ever in hell or a

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God who just focuses punishment on for a little period of time and then annihilates them? Thoughts?

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What's that? His holiness and his glory would be decreased if he punished them temporarily.

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I agree because it does kind of minimize sin but think about this. What would be the point of God just saying, you know what, to show everybody that I really don't like sin,

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I'm going to pour out my wrath on them for, I don't know, 30 years and then they're going to cease to exist.

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Well, why 30 years? Why not 15? Why not 10? Why not 5? Why not 1? Why not half an hour?

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Why not 5 minutes? Why at all? In other words, if you're going to just strike them out of existence, then what's the big deal?

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And I think what that does, I think it does, I think it shows us that God is serious about sin, that his holiness is something that needs to be upheld, that he's saying, listen, this is how much violating my law costs and it's not some minimal little punishment.

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It's something to be avoided and it's something that will last forever and it's something that will ultimately bring glory to God but not because he gets joy out of the punishment itself, it's because he has to show his absolute hatred of sin.

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Yes, Pam? Well, I think that's a good point.

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I think it kind of shows his attributes are exhaustible, in other words, that there's an end not just to his wrath but his kind of sense of justice.

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You know, I'm done. I don't think those ever go away. Steve? Steve says, and I think this is a good point, that the fact that people are suffering eternal torment, we won't look at it and go, whew,

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I'm so happy I'm not there. But what we will do now as we contemplate what we've been rescued from, do we love

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God more because we know that we've been rescued from eternity and hell or do we love God more because we know that, you know, we don't have to spend three minutes in a kind of a cosmic microwave?

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I think it's because we know that we've been saved from God's full fury and wrath, that we don't have to face his judgment, that we've been redeemed from something that we never could have done ourselves but that we deserve.

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We deserved eternity in hell, the conscious wrath of God poured out on us eternally.

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You know, we did do this last week, didn't we? See, you've got to keep me up to date here.

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We talked about that. I knew we talked about the history. I just got the wrong asterisk. Okay, so we closed last week by talking about Vatican II, talking about John Paul II and hell is not punishment.

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That quote is just so sick from the Pope. Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life.

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That's 43H, halfway down the page. I mean, think about what that says, that hell is in this life.

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Hell is now. It's not imposed externally by God.

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Why would he say that? Why would John Paul II say that, besides the fact that he believed it, besides the fact that he discounted the

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Bible? Yeah, they've really,

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Charlie says that Rome has really kind of adopted a form of universalism and so if they say there's an actual hell, then certainly that would have implications for a lot of what they're teaching and I think here when he says it's not a punishment imposed externally by God, I think again it's this idea of protecting

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God as a God of love only and it really justifies a lot of what they do.

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I mentioned last week, if you study the 70s, 1970s in terms of international politics, what you would find is if you go into Central America, the

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Catholic Church was very involved in places like Nicaragua and El Salvador and other things but it was this liberation theology which amounted to communism because hell was a place on this earth and they were here to deliver people from hell, meaning poverty, meaning oppression, really concerned with the things of this world and not of the next because they don't really consider hell to be a genuine place of punishment but a place, a problem now.

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John Wenham, number I here, he's an evangelical, British evangelical said this in 1974, the terrors of hell belong to the world which lies beyond death.

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For a single being to endure pain hopelessly and unendingly, well that kind of sounds like hell, or even to pass out of existence, annihilationism and forfeit forever the joys of heaven is more terrible than any temporal suffering.

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So he says listen, this is 1974, this is John Wenham and we're going to see that he changes here but he says listen, hell is a real place.

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This is me summarizing what he says or kind of translating it and he says it's going to be more terrible than anything you can possibly suffer in this world.

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Now that's 1974 and we'll see what he says a little bit later. Oh, right now, 1991. How many years is that?

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God created man only potentially immortal. Immortality is a state gained by grace through faith when the believer receives eternal life and becomes a partaker of the divine nature.

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Immortality being inherent in God alone. So you're not necessarily going to live forever until you get saved, right?

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Jesus said that he granted eternal life so I mean you could make a biblical case for that, sort of, but what is spiritual death?

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Is it ceasing to exist? Let's look at Ezekiel 18. Ezekiel saw a lot more than the wheel.

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Ezekiel 18, 1 to 4 and who would like to read that please? Go ahead,

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Bruce. The soul who sins shall die.

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Now is that talking about conditional mortality? The idea that if you sin and you don't repent or you don't come to faith in Christ that you will cease to be, this kind of idea that Wenham, sort of, morphs into in 1991.

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The Bible knowledge commentary, that's what BKC is in your notes. In case you ever wonder what those abbreviations are you can ask me and I'll be happy to tell you.

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The Proverbs point was that children were suffering because of their parents' sins. That's what the people of Israel used to say.

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And it's true that Jerusalem was suffering but as stated in the Proverbs the thought that they were suffering was not because of their sins but because of their parents' sins.

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So these people were blaming God for punishing them unjustly. Let me just read that verse again here.

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The fathers eat the sour grapes so they sinned but the children's teeth are set on edge.

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In other words, and with a question mark there, meaning what? Meaning look, they did it, they ate the sour grapes, why are our teeth all uncomfortable?

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In other words, why are we suffering for what they did? God saw that this false proverb had to be refuted yet as with all false doctrines a kernel of truth in the teaching made it seem plausible.

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In the Ten Commandments God indicated that he was a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

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The point of these passages was that the effects of sin are serious and long lasting, not that God capriciously punishes the innocent for their ancestors' evil ways.

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Heard a man teach one day on this generational curse, as it's frequently called, that God visits the sins of the fathers on the third and fourth generations.

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It's interesting because we hear false teachers use that and we hear a lot of different interpretations of it but he gave an explanation

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I thought was very good. He said you have to contextualize it, you have to put it in the time that it actually was.

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And what do we know about Exodus, about that time period? Is it very likely, for example,

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I live here and I have family in Bakersfield. I live here and I have family in Maryland. I live here and I have family in Colorado.

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I have family in Hawaii. So how would what I do,

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I have family in Seattle. Man, I have family all over the place. I have family in Utah. Maybe we should just get a map out and put it.

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No, that's... How do sins of the father impact the third and fourth generation?

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Well, back then they all lived where? They weren't scattered all over the place. They lived in one house, one tent, one communal gathering.

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And so when the father sinned, there were ramifications when that became known.

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There were ramifications to everybody. Why? Because you would look at them all differently and there were sometimes consequences for what they did.

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I mean, there were plenty of examples in the Old Testament where judgment was brought about upon whole families because of one person's sin, an entire family would be wiped out.

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And he's saying, look, that's not the case here. You know, you guys aren't being punished for what your fathers did.

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You're sinners. And I want to set you all straight. You're not going to be held accountable for your father's sins.

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You're going to be held accountable for your own sins and the soul that sins shall die, shall experience spiritual death.

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Going on in this commentary here. Blaming others for their misfortunes, the people were denying their own guilt.

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It's not our fault. It's our father's fault. This was wrong because every individual is personally responsible to God.

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For every living soul belongs to me, the father, as well as the son.

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Those who are guilty will receive their own deserved punishment. The soul who sins is the one who will die.

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The people of God could not rightly charge God with injustice. And they do this over and over again.

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In Isaiah 40, another place where they blame God or say that he is not treating them rightly.

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And he just says at the end of chapter 40, he just basically says, look, do you not know?

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Have you not heard? And he goes on and he just tells them, listen, these are all the things that I've done on your behalf. I'm not unfair.

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I'm not unjust. I do what is right. And you guys essentially need to be quiet.

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There is no injustice with God. And spiritual death is punishment. Let's look at Matthew 10, 28.

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It's interesting, thinking back, we haven't done this, but what did God tell Adam and Eve would happen to them if they ate of the forbidden tree in Genesis?

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He, he told them that they would die. Now, did they die? They began to die and they died spiritually.

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How did they die? God told them they would die and they did die. How did they die? They had, they suffered separation from God, which is death.

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It's just not the way we think of death. And Brian's also right. They did begin to die physically because up to that point, there was no decay in them.

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There was no death. Yes, Daniel. Yeah, Daniel says, many people say that, you know, being separated from God would be no punishment at all because they don't really want anything to do with God.

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Well, you know, to clarify this, and I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past, hell is not merely separation from God in the sense that, you know, he lives in West Covina, you live in Massachusetts.

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How many of you know where West Covina is? I do because that's where I grew up. Really this morning, it's just, you know, it's autobiographical.

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But it's not separation from God in this, you know, in geographic sense or, you know, merely in having some kind of abrogation of a contract or something like that.

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It's separation from the right relationship with God of seeing and benefiting from all his good attributes.

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Hell is, it's union with God, but it's union with the wrath and the justice of God, not with the love of God.

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Yes. Charlie notes that the fact that he's not in a rubber cell is...

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Is that what you said? I'm sort of paraphrasing what you said. He just talked about common grace.

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Listen, common grace not only, you know, has to do with our own sanity and with rain and all those things, but other things that we don't frequently think about in terms of government.

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You know, the surest way to know about the grace of God is to just think about what the world would be like if tomorrow morning we woke up and there were no governments at all.

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Sometimes we don't like our government, we don't like some of the things that they do, but the idea of having no government, you know,

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I'm taking an excursus here. This is a word that I'm really using on, or working on using, because I just like it.

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It's a detour. You know, it's a highway, it's a mouse trail, rabbit trail, whatever those trails are.

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If we had no government, and there are people who, you know, advocate this idea of no government because, you know, then you simply pay for things.

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You pay for your own private security instead of police and all this other stuff. Here's the problem. What does that look like?

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I mean, there have been so many movies made like this over the last several years, you know, post -apocalyptic type things.

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What does it look like? I'm guaranteeing you that all these, by the way, I've never seen a Mad Max movie, but that's what the world would look like.

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It'd be a bunch of hooligans riding around and beat up jeeps with machine guns. That's what the world would look like.

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And I'm just like, why would you want to live in that world? What's that? Yeah, it'd be like Somalia.

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Yeah, sadly. Yeah, that is right. There are places in the world that have no government, and it's never pretty.

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You know, and it's not because man is inherently good. Vida. Yeah, yeah.

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Vida rightly points out in Colossians, it talks about how Christ not only created everything, but in all things, or in him, all things consist.

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They all hold together. He is holding the universe together. Just as he created everything by the word, or by his word, he is holding them all together by his power.

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And if he stopped, if he took the day off, everything would fly apart. And we could say the same thing about, you know, common grace extends to reign and government and our physical being and our mental well -being and everything.

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And some would argue about mental well -being, but... Okay, moving along. Common grace.

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Where was I? Oh, I think we were looking at Matthew 10 .28, weren't we? And then we got so distracted.

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Matthew 10 .28, who has a... Okay, Dan.

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Okay, good. Thank you. The main point there is that, you know, we ought to fear

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God. Why? Because he is... Let's look at it this way.

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He is the one who created so many people say hell is here, on this earth. Hell is the living conditions in which you find yourself.

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It's an emotional state. It's oppression by someone, some external force in this temporary existence.

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And Jesus says, listen, he's telling them, don't worry about your external condition.

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Don't worry about your finances. Don't worry about all these things that people worry about. You should be worried about God.

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I remember, I've told this before, but one of my favorite Easter morning sunrise services ever, where Grace Community Church and John MacArthur gets up and, you know, they have three services on Easter morning.

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And he just gets up and he says, I want to tell you about your enemy this morning.

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And he went on for seven or eight minutes and he says, he goes, no, your enemy is not you. It's not

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Satan. He says, your enemy is God. And I just thought, I said, wow, why don't you just reach out and give all the visitors a big hug,

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John? Fear God.

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People just don't think like that. Look at what Kistenwalker says, Jesus then is saying that there is an everlasting future for both the soul and the body.

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Neither will ever be annihilated, but everlasting destruction is in store for those who reject him.

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The attempt to save the body so that it may continue to exist here and now for a very brief span of time, while the everlasting interests of the entire person, soul and body are being neglected is foolish indeed, like exchanging a minor for a major peril.

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You know, you want to worry about these temporary little things that are going to pass away. You should be worried about eternity.

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Interesting concept here that Kistenwalker says that everlasting destruction, that's hell being destroyed forever.

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You just think, how is that possible? How is creating something out of nothing, everything out of nothing possible?

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And yet that's what God does. By proclaiming, Kistenwalker goes on, by proclaiming the message of the kingdom courageously, the disciples will receive the assurance of everlasting life to the glory of God.

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In addition, they will be a blessing to their fellow men. Let them then stand in awe of God.

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Let them revere him in whose hands they themselves, who are soul and body, are everlasting secure.

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Let them not be scared of earthly opponents who can accomplish so very little. In other words, translation, don't worry about the here and now, be concerned about forever.

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Now, this is when I'm the same guy who just a few pages ago was talking about hell and all, you know, in a good way and then said, well, you know,

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I'm not so sure about it. Maybe everlasting life is kind of a condition.

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He says, unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. And that's what I was getting at.

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If you, if you think that somehow God is going to punish you for a little bit and then annihilate you, well, what would be the point in that?

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It almost makes it sound like God has something to prove or, you know, not that he, that he's really upset, but just he has to make some kind of illustration out of you.

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And that's kind of what he comes to. He says, unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. It is a doctrine

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I do not know how to preach without negating the loveliness and glory of God. From the days of Tertullian, it has been the emphasis of fanatics.

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I would say if you took fanatics out and you said gospel preachers, I would say amen. It is a doctrine that makes the

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Inquisition look reasonable. It all seems like a flight from reality and common sense.

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You know, I debate with people from time to time and one of the things they say is if you, if you stoop to using the

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Nazis in your illustration, you've lost the argument. And I would say on a theological level, if you stoop to using the

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Inquisition or the Crusades, you've lost the argument because those really have nothing to do with the

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Bible and nothing to do with Christ. Why would anyone want to preach hell?

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Why would you want to do that? Because you're commanded to, you're commanded to preach the word?

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You know, Paul said, I did not shrink from preaching to you the entire counsel of God, except for that bit about hell,

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I didn't really go for it. No, it's the whole thing. We need to understand all of God, all of his attributes, all of the truths that he has given us.

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It would be sinful to not talk about hell when God spends so much time talking about it.

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Jesus spent a lot more time talking about hell than he did about heaven. It's a very real place.

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Yeah, imagine, you know, you're a, what's a really nice car? Lamborghini. You're a

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Lamborghini salesman and you go out with somebody for a test drive and you drive, of course, because you can't let somebody else drive a $200 ,000 vehicle.

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And so you're driving, you know, really quickly and you just tell them, Hey, notice all the leather, notice all the fine appointments. Isn't that seat comfortable?

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And you just keep going faster and faster and you're heading straight for a cliff. And then you go and you just go watch what this baby can do.

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And they go, what about the cliff? And you go, ah, you know, it only lasts for a minute. It's really nice car though.

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Yeah. They need to be warned about what is going to happen after this life. John Stott says, do

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I hold to eternal punishment of the wicked in hell? Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and I think that's an important phrase right there.

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Emotionally, I find the concept intolerable because I think ultimately that is what takes so many good men and women and moves them away from the

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Bible is this idea that they just cannot handle this emotionally and do not understand how people can live with it without either.

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Now, listen to this, cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. In other words, he says, if we understand hell rightly, there are only two responses.

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One is to cauterize. What does that mean? Take like a hot branding iron to stop the bleeding, right?

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Your arms bleeding. You just take something in super hot. You just go, shh, you stop it.

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Says you've got to cauterize it. You've got to stop that. So, cauterize it so that you won't feel it anymore.

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Burn off the sensitivity or he says cracking under the strain when you really consider souls and the balance going to hell.

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He went on to affirm that he would submit to scripture. John Stott said that.

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However, he subsequently tried to prove annihilationism by taking unique definitions of specific words for further.

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John Stott argues that eternal punishment is not fitting for finite sins. In other words, infinite punishment for finite sins, he says, would there not then be a serious disproportion between sins consciously committed in time and torment consciously experienced throughout eternity?

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Isn't there an imbalance here? You know, when I think about eternal torment and I put that on one side of the scale and then

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I put, you know, a finite sin done within a certain period of time, maybe it was a lie that you told that, you know, lasted 30 seconds.

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How are you going to punish somebody forever for that? Attune. Another commentator says this in conservative circles.

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There is a seeming, and this was in the 1980s, he says, there's a seeming reluctance to espouse publicly a doctrine of hell.

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And where it is held, there is a seeming tendency toward a doctrine of hell as annihilation.

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It's a lot nicer. Yes, Bruce. Sounds like Romans nine.

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Who are you? Oh, man, who answers back to God? And, you know, ultimately, good point, Bruce. I mean, what we're talking about here is kind of recasting

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God. And I want to give the benefit of the doubt, you know, to someone like John Stott has written so many great things.

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You just think, well, here's a man with a certain amount of humility and recognizing that a lot of people are going to hell.

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And he says, I can't even fathom this, that this is just beyond my ability to grasp.

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And it doesn't seem fair by human standards. And so they somehow think, well, if I wouldn't do that, and I'm certainly not

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God, then why would God do that? And it's looking at it upside down.

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You know, it's looking at it and going, well, like what Bruce said, God is the creator. God sets the standard.

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God has the right to do with one bit of class he wants and another bit of the same lump as he wants.

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Peggy, did you have your hand up? And Peggy says he's consistent.

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He's immutable. He doesn't change. And if the fallen angels, if the fire of hell is reserved for them, then why would it be different with men?

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And actually, in one sense, it is different with men because there's no redemption for fallen angels. And there is.

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But yeah, right. For the eternality of it. Yes, Pam.

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Well, and that's right. If we're not fleeing the wrath to come, then we just come to God for benefits.

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And as we kind of see a little bit further, this is what it devolves, not evolves, what it devolves into.

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You know, people start with the right view of hell. And then over the centuries, as they gradually say, wait a minute, that doesn't seem reasonable to me.

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You know, God has to be humanitarian, you know, and on and on it goes. Hell is a place on this earth.

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Or maybe annihilationism is the answer. Every time they seek to explain away the truth of scripture, it's just like they go to a lower and lower rung.

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And we're going to see ultimately where that leads. Ankerberg and Weldon said, and I think this is also from the 80s, the doctrine of eternal punishment is the watershed between evangelical and non -evangelical thought.

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In other words, it is the dividing line, the shibboleth. I've been wanting to put that in there for quite a while.

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It divides evangelicals and non -evangelicals. Although, you know, I would argue that pretty much the idea of evangelical, the meaning of it, it's gone.

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In fact, most of you probably wouldn't know this because you don't pay attention to dopey academic societies.

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But a couple of years ago, there was a movement. Well, first of all, the president of the Evangelical Theological Society resigned because he became a

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Catholic. And I mean, this is where all the, you know, really whiz -bang guys hang out, is in this thing.

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And whiz -bang. A couple of them were what we would call, they had views of God where he was, that he learns.

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What is that called? Help me out. He's growing. God is growing. Open theism.

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Thank you, Viner. So the Evangelical Theological Society held a vote and they were trying to, you know, kick these guys through the goalposts of life.

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And they couldn't do it. They couldn't raise the votes. And I'm like, well, then pretty much the Evangelical Theological Society needs to change their name or we need to find some new, you know, they're no longer evangelicals.

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Their point here is Doctrine of Eternal Punishment divides evangelicals and non -evangelicals.

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When friends, they say, such as John Stott, Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, Clark Pinnock. You read

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Clark Pinnock back in the 50s and you think, that guy's brilliant. Now you don't, maybe not so much. He's one of the open theists.

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John Wenham, Basil Atkinson, and other well -known and reputedly, I like that, reputedly evangelical leaders, reject the traditional view of eternal punishment.

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The church suffers serious or even fatal erosion in its doctrinal foundation.

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It's like the waves of the ocean. They just keep coming in and attacking the foundation of the evangelical movement.

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And eventually just wash it out to sea. Listen to this statement from the Church of England 1995 entitled,

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The Mystery of Salvation. This is just one snippet from the document. But it says, And then later on,

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That the only end is total non -being. The ultimate standard is

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God is love. Anything that goes against that cannot be true. That's what they're saying.

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Clark Pinnock, 1990. At least by any moral standards and by the gospel itself.

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My question would be for Clark Pinnock, by whose moral standards? Whose standard are you talking about?

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You know, if you look at things, you might say, Clark Pinnock, you might say, Well, that just doesn't seem moral to me.

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I don't know how God could be like that. Apparently, it doesn't offend God, Daniel.

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Right. And no, what they would say then is,

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Typically, is that they will point to areas like, You know, the worm does not die or whatever.

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And they'll say, well, what that's talking about is not eternal punishment. And they'll explain it some other way.

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You know, there is no eternal punishment in their view. Jesus was drawing an illustration to cause people to want to repent and follow him.

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But really not talking about eternal torment because he just doesn't work like that.

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I mean, they have all kinds of justifications. Well, listen, Clark Pinnock again.

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How about those who never hear the gospel? Had this question last night at dinner. What about the, you know, how about an unbeliever who says,

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Well, what about the pygmy in Africa? And, you know, I had taught a class once where somebody actually objected to that.

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You know, as some kind of racial stereotype. And I said, okay, how about Aborigines in Australia? Or how about, you know, the buffoon in Buffalo?

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I mean, I don't... It doesn't... It just doesn't matter. The idea is that people who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

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What about them? Well, that's exactly right. That's what you need to say to an unbeliever.

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Well, thank you very much for that. And we can deal with that later. But the question we're dealing with right now is you. You are the issue.

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Don't talk to me about, you know, the unfairness of God or whatever. You need to get focused on where you stand with Him. But what about that?

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What about somebody... What about this whole idea that, you know, somehow... You know, there are all these people who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

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And what about them? How could God be fair? Their perspective is wrong.

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We all deserve hell. Right? That is true.

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Charlie? Okay. So there is no such thing as an innocent person, right?

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Pam? Romans 5 does talk about...

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I'm kind of hurrying along because I want to get to the end. Romans 5 talks about death reign because of Adam's sin.

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And it visited all men. Steve? Romans 1, thank you very much. Romans 1, verses 18 to 20.

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If you read those, we're not going to take the time to read them. But let me give you the Steve summary. Basically, we look around the world.

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We see God's hand in creation. We know that there's a God. We suppress that truth in unrighteousness. And because of that, all men are without excuse.

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I don't care where they are in the universe, they are condemned. I mean, Romans 1, 2, and 3, if you read through them this week, talks about the universal condemnation that all men stand under.

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Without exception. Paul builds a comprehensive case. There is no exception.

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There's nobody who could say, but I didn't know. You knew enough. Listen to what

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Pinnock says. What about those who never hear the gospel? This is fairly shocking. The logic behind a post -mortem encounter with Christ is simple enough.

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Oh, it's very simple. It's just not biblical.

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It rests on the insight that God, since He loves humanity, would not send anyone to hell without first ascertaining what their response would have been to His grace.

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Since everyone eventually dies and comes face to face with the risen Lord, that would seem to be the obvious time to discover their answer to God's call.

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And if it was so obvious, it might be somewhere in the Bible. I mean, that is, and we'll close there, and we'll go from there, but can

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I just say, that is so Mormon. I mean, it's so cultic.

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This idea that somehow God, in order to establish His fairness, has to give people a second chance.

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What is the burden of proof on God? And as we're going to see next time, you know,

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Hebrews 9 .27, this appointed man wants to die and then to judgment. Other things in the scripture would make it very clear to us that there is no kind of second chance.

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There is no, you know, God saying, you know, look, Steve, I realize you never heard the gospel in your human life.

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So, I think it's only fair that you and I have a sit down, and I explain things to you. And now that you can see the gaping maw of hell, would you like to repent?

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There's nothing like that. There is nothing like that. And scripture never talks about it.

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Again, these are scholars of the first rank who write books and books and books and commentaries and journal articles.

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And they go from being evangelical to non -evangelical to basically lying heretic dogs.

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And how do they do it? Because emotion comes first. Their own thinking comes first.

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They don't submit to the word of God to just get back to where we opened up. Scripture is the standard.

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Not what we want, not what we think, not what we hope. Scripture is the standard.

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Let's pray. Father, it is not that with any amount of pride we're not the smartest.

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We're not the best. We're not the brightest. Lord, we are students of your word.

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Make us more diligent students. Make us those who would be believers, not just in thought, but in deed, who would be willing to warn our neighbors and our loved ones of eternity and hell.

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Not just as a possibility, not just as something of some kind of a fairy tale, but a very present reality for those who do not bow the knee to Christ.

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Lord, we have to give the bad news before we give the good news. Let us do both with fervency, with a desire to see you save the souls of men and women.