most important doctrines that we hold to in the church is who God is. And once you begin to know who God is, you have to understand God will deal with sin. One of the most important realities to see is that Jesus Christ went to the cross to redeem us from destruction. That destruction that he redeemed us from is the torment of an eternal hell.
Hell is not a curse word. It is a place. It is an abode. It is a destination for the damned.
And hell is a reality. There are many people who try to dance around it, prance around it. And it hasn't just started in our generation. I love Brother Clinton, he said, you know, that our generation has more apostasy than revival.
Why do we have more apostasy than revival? Because we preach that people can get saved without repenting. We preach a heaven without a hell. We preach that people can become church members without becoming a member of the body of Christ without being saved.
We preach the people, we may share them the new birth, but we would hold from them the baptism of the Holy Ghost. There's many things that we do in the church and it's a self-defeating cycle that we do because we try to make things sound beautiful and popular, but people need reality. The worst thing a doctor can do is withhold from you the reality of the situation. I believe that God is a healer.
I believe there's a higher power than that doctor, but we need we need godly doctors to be truthful to tell us the truth, the diagnosis so that we know what we're up against. There is such a reality and we need that. It's a horrible doctor to withhold judgment because they don't want to hurt your feelings. And so when it comes to the doctrine of hell, it is important to remember this.
When the other story Vance Havener has written a lot about revival in the church, he was an old Baptist minister one time. He said that he was teaching on hell one time and one of the guys in the church, Adeekon, came up to him after church and said, you know, I really don't want to hear about hell. I would rather hear about the meek and mild Jesus. And, oh Vance Havener, he said, well, you know where I learned about hell from the meek and mild Jesus.
One of the realities that you'll see in the Word of God is that the person who taught us the most about hell is Jesus himself. It came from the words of Christ, the temperature of hell, the horror of hell. We learn more from the mouth of the incarnate Son of God than any other place in Scripture. And I believe God designed it that way for a reason just so people like that won't have any ground to stand on.
Here in Psalm 9, we're beginning in verse 17. It says, the wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. So here's the reality. There is a hell and the wicked will go there.
Amen? The wicked will go there and all nations that forget God. So there will come a day and an hour when God meets out justice, when justice will be served to the wicked. Now gospel minded folks will know and understand we've all been on that wicked side at one time.
And thank the Lord for the blood of Jesus Christ, where we once were sinners, now we're saved, where we once were lost, now we're found. We once were blind, but now we can see it is the blood of Jesus Christ that it owns for our sins, not our own works, not our own efforts. But we know the Book of Romans teaches us that we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. So we all deserve this same judgment, but it is those that refuse the atoning work of Christ that will find this judgment.
That's what the Lord specifically shows as wicked and we'll get into that in just a second. But I do want you to see that God will judge people and he will judge nations. You might see wickedness going on in the world and if those people don't repent, they will meet their maker and it will not be a good thing. Hell's real.
And we need to remember that and especially in times like that we live in and there's been other horrible times like the Nazis in Germany when they were persecuting the Jewish people or when people were enslaving other races and when people were at war with one another in fierce opposition and murdering and raping and pillaging other people, we know that God will hold them accountable unless they repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And I love the fact of Jeffrey Domer's testimony. He was one of the most wicked people that lived. He actually ate people, kept them in his refrigerator, very wicked person.
He believed in evolution and his dad while he was on death wrote, send him a video of Kent Holvin teaching about creation and how evolution is according to Kent Holvin quote unquote stupid. And this guy watched that DVD series about how evolution is wrong and he realized God is the creator. And if God is the creator, he's going to have to face him one day and he repented and he got saved on death row. The most one of the most wicked people that ever lived in America and he got saved on death row and he actually they showed his interview on 2020.
You can find it. You can look it up and he actually began to preach the gospel to other people there in prison. Now how amazing is that? That's how amazing our God is.
And I don't believe we were too much far behind him in our wicked ways. We all sinned. We all came short of the glory of God. In God's eyes, you know, it's you either owe 550 but either way you owe God.
And the only way to get that debt paid is if God himself paid that debt on that cross. That's the only way that debt gets lifted off as us. We can't get it off our own back. Pilgrims progress taught us that.
We can't get that debt off on our own. God had to get that debt off for us and he did. He paid that debt on the cross. The song says Jesus paid it all.
And as his blood flowed down that hill, the atoning offer of God for our sins was offered once for all. Once for all. And so we see here that the wicked shall be turned into him. God will.
There will be a day of reckoning. And you know, sometimes we think, well, you know, I hope that so and so doesn't go to hell. I hope that so and so doesn't go to hell. I don't, you know, I don't think that God wants anybody to go to hell because it says God's not willing that any should perish.
God doesn't want anybody to go there. In fact, you'll see this in a little bit. God doesn't want us to go there. But the reality is if we as sinners reject the offer of the atonement, that's exactly where we'll go.
Now here's the reality. God will meet out justice. The wicked will have to answer for their sins. They may not have to answer for it in this life.
That's a reality. It messes some folks up socologically. Some people may get away with murder here. They may take it to their grave.
But guess what? When they go in that grave, they don't have to answer for it. It's not that they get away with it. Nothing gets outside the eyes of God.
God is all knowing, all seeing and God is perfect in his justice. If someone dies outside the blood of Christ, they will meet the justice of God. And if they're wicked, they will go to hell. That's just the reality.
Now here's something else as we see that that another reality is that wicked judges would withhold justice. Wicked judges. If somebody murdered your family and you caught them, you videoed them, you had evidence and you took them to court and the judge said, well, you know, I know this old guy and I feel like he just needs another chance. I'm just going to give him two hours of community service.
That would be wicked because that's not justice. That's not just. The crime doesn't fit the time. The time doesn't fit the crime.
That's wicked. And so when we look at sin, one lie between me and you doesn't seem like that much. But when you consider the fact that God is holy thrice, holy, holy, holy, completely and totally, holy, and you consider the fact that when we just tell one little white lie, it infringes upon the holiness of God, the character of God, the design that God created us and created the world. We've gotten against the wisdom of God.
We've gotten against the character of God. And we've gotten against the desire of God. And you know that we're the only people that do that. Dogs don't do that.
Cats don't do it. We do. Us and some of the angels. And yet, and God offers us reconciliation.
But what I'm trying to get you to see though is that God wouldn't be just if he didn't bring justice. If he didn't bring divine and perfect justice, he wouldn't be a just God. But he is just and the justifier according to our faith in Jesus Christ. Now a couple of things that I want to touch on just real quick is about Hill.
You can go ahead and turn over with me to Matthew chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25. And we're going to go down to verse number 41. It's a long section, but we're just going to hit on this point for just a second.
Now I'll tell you this, Hill, for a working definition. All right. Here's a working definition of Hill. Now some of you might say, well, Hill is just hot.
It's long, it's hot. It's bad. It is. But you may not know some of the things that we're going to go through tonight.
Like this, Hill is the unseen realm for the soul and the spirit. It's where the soul and the spirit goes between death and the resurrection. It's limited. There's going to be a resurrection.
The people in Hill will come out of Hill for a little bit. We're going to touch on that. So there's, there's this Hill is basically a torture holding place to hold people in between death and the second resurrection. That's exactly what it is.
So that's our working definition. Now, whenever you begin to diagnose and examine the Word of God, and you know that the Bible was written Old Testament, Hebrew, New Testament, Greek, there's many words for Hill. Hill can actually represent the grave. It can represent the burning part of Hill.
It can represent where the Old Testament saints went before Christ took his blood to the throne in heaven. It can represent, you know, like Jonah was in the belly of the well and he considered it Hill. It's a bad time, you know. So there's many different ways that you can look at it, but there's a word for each one.
But big, the main words in the Old Testament, the word for Hill is shield, shield. You probably have heard that. And in the New Testament, it's Hades. Hades.
Now, there are other areas where in the realm of Hill, there's also an area called the Lake of Fire. You might have heard of that. The Lake of Fire. This is going to be the destination that everybody goes to that's not in Christ.
The Lake of Fire in the Old Testament is called Tofit. And in the New Testament, it's called the Jihinah. That's the Lake of Fire. That's the burning place of eternity.
That's the place that you don't want to go. But those that are in Hill will go there. There's two other places that we want to talk about. The other one is the bottomless pit.
That one is involved in this as we discuss Hill. That one you'll see in a little bit in the book of Revelation. And then the last one is the place where the fallen angels are imprisoned. That's a Hebrew word called Tartarus.
We'll look at that in a little bit in Second Peter. So there's different aspects to Hill. There's different areas of it. There's a place where the fallen angels are in prison.
There's a place where there's a bottomless pit. And an angel has a key to it. There at one time there were Old Testament saints and then Old Testament wicked folks. There's a section of it where there's burning.
There's a chasm that splits the two. One part of it was called Abraham's bosom. So there's different areas and components of Hill. And then last but certainly not least is the Lake of Fire or Jihinah as we said earlier.
Now here we see that why was Hill created in the first place? Look at verse number 41. Jesus says this in verse 41. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand.
Depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire. That's Gihinah. Into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. You see that's where we see God here telling us that hell was prepared for those that rebelled against him in heaven.
When Lucifer rebelled and he took those angels with him God created a place for them. It wasn't initially for man. It wasn't initially for mankind. This was the abode for the fallen angels and for Lucifer.
And yet we have some hard-hearted, hard-headed people that will find themselves there too. Some people will just reject the gospel. Hell will enlarge itself. It's what the word says.
And they will find theirself there. So whenever you read the word of God, one of the most important things you can do is look at context. And when it comes to Hill, context is exceedingly important because you could be talking about the Lake of Fire in the future. You could be talking about the burning place now.
You could be talking about where Old Testament saints went, where Old Testament wicked folks went, or you could even be talking about where the fallen angels are in chains right now. So there's a lot to it. And it is that context that really helps us understand it. So now we're in Matthew.
Let's turn back to Matthew 5. We're going to go through a couple of these references that Jesus uses about Hill. So Matthew 5, and this will just kind of get us started in the right thinking about what hell actually is. In Matthew 5, we're going to go down to verse 28.
When I have here, verse 28, Jesus said, but I say unto you that who so ever look upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thou right I offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of the members should perish and not that that whole body should be cast into hell. So Jesus here is actually telling you that it's better for you if there's something that is causing you to sin.
We'll call it as the book of Hebrews chapter 12 calls it a besetting sin. If there's something that has been constant and continual in your life, you know what it is, you know where you fell out and you just keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. Jesus is telling you it would be better for you to just go ahead, get a spoon, pull your eye out, than to allow yourself to be caught up into hell for eternity. Many of you know you can pull your eye out.
It's only going to last, I don't know how many years we got. 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, 80 years, whatever, but hell is forever. And so Jesus is here telling us that there is way more at stake eternally than what we experience temporarily. So hell is real.
It's painful and it's long. This shows us the longevity of hell far exceeds whatever temporal things we have to go through in this life. So if I got to go through life, if I got to, you know, disconnect my computer, like there was a movie that about the marriage with Kurt Cameron and he couldn't kick the habit of seeing things on his computer. He unplugged that thing, got a baseball bat to it and he was done.
Sometimes you've got to do like that with your sin. You've got to take whatever your besetting sin is and get angry with it and say, you know what, this is not going to leave me to hell. I don't know what it is going to take, but it is not going to take me out. And so when the Lord goes through different things, he goes through things with your hand and he goes through things with your feet.
It'd be better to cut off your hand, you know, and to go through life maimed or be better to go cut off your feet. If you just can't stop going where you're not supposed to go, right? You know, I get off work and I just got to go by the bar. Well, maybe you need to, you know, get your spouse to take you to work, right?
Well, every time I do this, I just, you know, it's better to go through and look silly to men than to end up in hell. We got to do what we got to do to get ourselves right with God and to live right before God. But he's showing us here that there are things that we do and he's saying you can actually look with lust and commit adultery and be thrown into hell for it. If we're not right with God, if we're not under that blood, if we're not walking in and cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, you know, Jesus said that if any in 1 John chapter 1, John, the apostle, he writes and he said if any man says that he has no sin, he's a liar.
True is not any. But he said, if we have sin, right? God is faithful and just to forgive us if we want, confess it, confess it. Confess it means we agree with God that it's wrong.
How many of you know that's far different? That's far different than somebody saying, oh, I messed up a little bit. Agreeing with God is wrong means that you begin to look at it from God's perspective. You begin to see it God's way.
Yes, I agree with you and I'm not going to walk down that road. And so I'm just trying to get you to see what the Lord was showing us here is that there is now you would think somebody's ridiculous. If somebody in our church actually came back to church on this coming Sunday and they had taken a spoon and pulled out both their eyes, you would think, okay, you're taking this a little bit too much. But Jesus said if that is actually a besetting sin, it may look silly to me.
But if you knew how bad hell was, it would be better to do that than to allow yourself to continue sinning that way, drifting away from God, not being right with God and go to hell. That's a serious indictment about the longevity and the painfulness of hell. So basically, he's just saying do whatever you got to do to avoid it. That'd be the way I would say it.
But do whatever you got to do to avoid it. You know what, sad? Jesus here is telling people do what you have to do to avoid going to hell. But you know what, sad?
Today's churches? We do everything we can do to avoid teaching about hell. How you going to avoid something if the pulpit's never teach about it or preach about it? I mean, they treat hell like it's a curse word.
When it's a reality of an eternal destination of the wicked, some of these pastors, they drink and curse. They can't preach about hell. Now, here's the sad reality. Jesus is basically telling us to do whatever you have to do to avoid it.
Do we? Do we? Some of us are so casual. You know, the, I said I wasn't going to bring up Leonard Avon who in this one, but here it goes.
He said, and I shared this on Sunday, but he said, you know, the problem with our generation is back in the day when there was revivals breaking out, the pastors were staying up in the pulpit and they would say, you are lost. But today they say you are loved. And that's the difference between yesterday's church and today's church. And that's why people don't run to the altars.
He said in revival, you don't have to call for people. Come to the altar. Come up. Come on.
Come on. In revival, you don't have to do that. People just come. The Holy Spirit, births within them.
A desire and a need to get right with God. You don't have to, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to put a Hershey's kiss at each step. So they start walking up there like a little rabbit, you know, boom, boom, boom. You don't have to do that in revival when the Holy Ghost is moving, because people know I'm not right with God.
I need to get right with God and I don't care what's stopping me. I'm going to walk through that wall if I got to so that I can get the God and get right with God and get cleansed, get my sin under the blood of the lamp, because I don't want to die in my sin. Or like the woman with the issue of blood. She had a sickness and she wasn't going to let anybody's, she would, she would have walked through a wall to get to Jesus.
Didn't matter. Didn't matter. That's what I love to see that. Just people say, you know what, you keep preaching.
I'm going to the altar. You just keep on going. But I need to get something off my chest. I need to get it right with God.
And that's what's so important. And so we see here this reality. Now let's go over to Mark chapter 9. We'll take this a little bit further.
Like Brother Havner said, we're going to learn more about Hill from Jesus than anybody else. The Meek and Mile Jesus, right? The Meek and Mile Jesus. Mark chapter 9.
We'll go down to verse number 43. Here's where we start seeing a little bit of the reality of Hill. Hallelujah. This is just kind of picking up a little bit in that same passage, same vein of thought.
Jesus says in verse number 43 of Mark 9. And if the handoff in the cut it off, it is better for the to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell into the fire that shall never be quenched. Where the worm died not and the fire is not quenched. Now he goes also into the foot and the eyes as well.
And he replays these things. But the key points I want you to see about Hill is that there's a fire that will not be quenched and a worm that will not die. A lot of theologians disagree about what the worm means, but nobody disagrees about what the fire means. There's a fire that is never quenched.
That means this is an eternal fire. There's pain along with fire. It is hot. I don't know how hot it is, but I know it's hot.
It's because it's from the divine justice of God. So it's hot. If it wasn't, if it wasn't that bad, Jesus wouldn't have had to go to the cross and become a sin offering for us. He wouldn't have had incarnate in flesh and humiliate itself for us.
He wouldn't have had to step off the throne of glory and come down here and be born in a manger if sin wasn't that bad and hell wasn't that hot. But sin is that bad and it will destroy lives. The wages of sin is dead all the time, every time. And hell is still hot.
And so when we think about the divine fire of God, it has to be hot because of what Jesus stepped off the portals of glory to come here for, to rescue us from that end. So it's not that Jesus just came here to teach us how to say yes, man, and no man. He came here on a rescue mission to rescue us and redeem us, not only just to be reconciled to the Father, but so that we don't perish in eternal, torment, flame, fire. That's the point that we're seeing here.
So it's a fire that's never quenched. Here are stories. You know, these martyrs, we've talked about this, these martyrs, one of the martyrs of the faith, that the Catholic Church burned for believing in believers' baptism, they tried to start the fire and the fire burned out. They lit it again.
Fire burned out. Lit it again. Fire burned out. And at this time, this guy was in so much pain and misery.
He said, for the love of God, put more wood on there. I mean, he was begging them to kill him. This thing had gone on almost all day. His legs were barely there anymore.
His arms were falling off. And then the fire finally consumed him. But how many of you know God's not going to have to stay in there and blow on this fire to kind of keep it going? It's going to be hot, fierce, long, and it's never going to quench.
It's going to do exactly what God wanted to do. Now, let's look into hell a little bit. Jesus shows us a little bit in Luke chapter 16. Well, Jesus opens up the veil a little bit so that we can see down in there, see what's going on.
Luke chapter 16, we'll begin in verse number 19. This is the story of Lazarus and the rich man. We're not going to go all the way through it, but we are going to hit some key parts of it. Luke chapter 16, beginning in verse 19.
Now, I was talking about this with Sister Lindsey earlier, but whenever Jesus tells parables, if he ever says a certain man or he uses somebody's name, you know, it's a real situation. It's only a parable if he says, you know, like, a woman was lost to coin and then she was looking for it. He didn't say a certain woman or he didn't use the person's name. But whenever the Lord, when you look at the parables and the stories that Jesus told, this is an actual event that took place and Jesus is recollecting it and sharing the details of it.
So there was actually a rich man and there was actually a beggar named Lazarus. Verse number 19, there was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and found linen and fared sumptuously every day. There was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores when desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.
Now, I just want to point out that sometimes this misses some people, but I just want to point it out that Lazarus was not at his own gate. Lazarus was at this particular person's gate and some people believe that Lazarus was actually a family member of this guy. That's why he was laid at this guy's gate. It was just, you know, it wouldn't just like, oh, just throw me by somebody's house, but he was, you know, it was a particular relationship that this was pointed to.
This could be, you know, this rich person not taking care of a family member, a nephew or, you know, one of the things that the Lord gets really animated about is when we neglect the fatherless, the orphan or the widow. This could be a person who was orphaned. This could be someone that this rich man should have taken care of but didn't. But either way, this rich man passed by him all the time, lived his sumptuously as life.
Lazarus had a bad time. And so we see here down in verse number 22, it says it came to pass the beggar died and was carried by the angels in the Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments and see Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. So what do we see here?
We see that hell's torment once again. It's fire, it's torment. But what else? It's a conscience torment.
He's aware of where he is. He's aware of who Abraham is. He's aware of who Lazarus is. He can see.
He can feel. He can look. He can realize that he's not where they are. So it's not that when you go to hell, it's just lights out, it's over or you don't understand everything that's going on.
But it is this reality. It is a consciousness to it. It is an eternal conscious torment. Okay?
So there's consciousness that exists in hell. That's important to realize. It's important to realize. Number, look at this next part.
It says that in verse 24, it says, any crowd. I said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Sin Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame. So he's aware of where he is.
He's aware that Lazarus is not there. He's aware that it's hot and that he's on fire, that he's burning. And he desired just one. Look, if you had a request, it would be get out of here.
His request was for one drop of water. That's how painful it was. One drop of water won't do nothing when you're on fire. But when you're in that much excruciating pain, one drop of water is what are your requests?
And he didn't get it. He didn't get it because there's a chasm between where Abraham was, where Lazarus was, and where he was. This chasm is defined as the great chasm. Abraham's bosom is where the Old Testament saints would go when they died.
This is where Jesus led captivity captive according to Ephesians chapter number four. When Jesus went down into the earth, he rescued the Old Testament saints. He preached, he said, I am the one that you trusted that you believe. And he brought all of them up to glory.
There was no possible way for them all to go to heaven until Jesus' blood had cleansed the temple. Lucifer sinned in heaven to file heaven, and Jesus' blood atoned for it. And when Jesus came up to heaven as the resurrected Christ, as the first fruits, he brought all the souls of the Old Testament saints that went on before him. And not only that, when he led captivity captive, he made the way where there was no way for you and for I.
So there's a place where everybody's soul and spirit goes when it dies. It doesn't roam the earth. You hear people talk about ghosts or you hear people talk about this or that? Those are demons.
Okay? When somebody dies, their soul and their spirit goes to one of two places. It either goes to hell like this guy or it goes to heaven like you'll see in a minute. There was a time when people died, they would go to Abraham's bosom, but they're not there anymore.
Hell enlarged itself because we're still sending and they had to make more room for the more sinners. It's a sad reality. But the next thing I want you to see is that he says this. He said, but Abraham said, son, remember us now that in our lifetime, receive us thy good things, likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he's comforted and now art tormented.
Now it says, inside all this between us and you, there's a great gulf fixed so that they which would pass from hence to you cannots. Neither can they pass from us to us that they would come from this. Then he said, this is rich guy, I pray they therefore father that thou would ascend him to my father's house, or I found brethren that he may testify to them. Unless they also come in to this place of torment.
Now I'll stop right there. Here's what I want you to see. This guy was so conscious and aware of what was going on. He remembered who he was.
He remembered he had a family and he remembered he had a family that wasn't right with God. And after a drop of water, his very next concern is that nobody else comes to this place. Listen to that testimony. This is a real person.
You don't have to go buy somebody's book about I spent 15 minutes in hell. First off, I don't believe him. Or I spent 15 minutes in heaven. You know what?
Paul got caught up to the third heaven and God told him zip your lip. The things that he saw were too much for us to bear. Now was Paul. Paul got caught up to the third heaven and he was not allowed to share what he saw.
So, but here's a reality. This guy was conscious of the pain. He's conscious of the reality that is there and he still remembers that he has family members and he remembers that they're not right yet. So, how bad does it have to be?
A. And secondly, when you go to hell, it's not that you forget where you are. One of the sad realities is if today in today's church, if people do talk about hell, one of the things that they'll say is, oh, it's just a Christless reality. It's a Christless eternity.
It's a godless eternity. How many of you have ever heard somebody describe hell as? It's just a place where God's not there. It's a godless eternity.
You know what's sad? People live godless lives now. So, if we lie to them in that way, they think, okay, well, the way that I live now, I'm just on my own. I make my own decision, do what I want, when I want, go where I want, live how I want.
Nobody's going to tell me what to do. This is my godless reality. Well, hell is not just that. It is actually torment conscious torment eternally.
So, it's not just that it's a godless reality. It's a tormenting reality. So, we're actually deceiving people in the church whenever we we try to sugarcoat and we try to, you know, not, you know, whenever you tell people, you get, you start talking to people, you don't just want to tell all your bad side. That's what people think.
No, this is our bad side. No, this is reality. This is reality. People need to know that hell is real, that it's hot, that it's eternal, that it's tormenting, that it's conscious torment, that it's not just a godless reality, but a tormenting reality, flame of fire for eternity.
And so, we see here that this guy, he was aware that he, that his family wasn't saved. How many people do you believe are in hell today, realizing their family's not saved, in desiring it. They don't want them to come there. There's no partying going on in hell.
There's no partying going on there. So, let's go a little bit further in this study and let's talk about where we go for just a second. Let's just take a quick detour, second Corinthians chapter 5. There's other places we'll go, but we're just going to hit this quick on our way to the book of Revelation.
So, second Corinthians chapter 5, because after Jesus, after Jesus went to heaven, it changed. When he led captivity captive according to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 4, he led captivity captive, and he made a way so that whenever we die, we know where we go. Second Corinthians chapter 5, and there's other passages. One of the greatest examples is like whenever Stephen was stoned, whenever Stephen was stoned, heaven opened up and he saw Jesus.
He went to be with Jesus. Jesus gave him a standing ovation. He saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And Jesus welcomed him in, and he was so enamored with the beauty of Jesus.
He said, Lord forgive him. He's in there being stoned. While he's being stoned, he says, Lord forgive him because he didn't see them. He didn't see the pain.
He didn't see the end of his life. He didn't worry about his family. He saw Jesus, and he fell in love with him even more than he already was. He saw the beauty of the risen Savior, and he was ready to go worship him, adore him, and lavish him with his praise.
He got caught up. You hear a good worship song and a good revival? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He saw Jesus, and there was no coming off of that.
He wasn't looking down. He wasn't worried about what time it was. He wasn't worried about dinner. You know, I got to go turn off that dinner.
He wasn't worried about none of that. He got lost in the spirit when he saw the beauty of the Savior, and if you'll do the same thing, you'll receive the same thing. So that, and that's Stephen. Listen up all here, second Corinthians chapter five verse six.
He said this, he said, therefore we are always confident. We, we are always confident knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. So we know this is a reality because we walk by faith and not by sight, but when we exit this body, we'll be present with Jesus.
That's the promise for the saints. The hell is a place where the soul and the spirit of the damn to go. Heaven is the place now where the soul and the spirit of the saved go. Both our bodies got to go to the ground.
Amen. How many of you remember the story of the wheat and the tears? Right? Both of them planted in the ground, but they're going to get harvested differently.
And it's the same thing with us. We, we have bodies, wicked people have bodies. We're both made a dirt from dust. We came, dust.
We're going to go back, but there's going to come a resurrection. Those that are dead in Christ are only asleep. They're going to experience the first resurrection at the trumpet sound when the voice of the Lord cracks the sky. The dead in Christ are going to rise, but not, but not the wicked.
Their bodies will stay there for a while for a little bit over a thousand years. Then they're going to hear your voice, bring them up out of hell and it's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be pretty. Let's look at that.
It's in Revelation chapter number 20. We're going to look at the first resurrection and the second resurrection. Revelation chapter 20. We'll begin in verse number four.
It says, and I saw thrones and they that set upon them, and judgment was given unto them. And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither is image, neither had received his mark upon their forehead or in their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the millennial reign, the thousand year reign of Christ.
Look at this verse five, but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection, blessed and holy you see that had part in the first resurrection on such the second dead has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him at thousand years. This is the millennial reign of Christ again. The first resurrection is the rapture and all those that get saved during the seven year tribulation, they will rule and reign with Jesus for one thousand years literal years, millennium.
That's a thousand. The millennial reign of Christ, he will rule and reign with a rod of iron from a city called Jerusalem. There will be a new temple. It's detailed in the book of Ezekiel.
It's called the Ezekiel Temple. He will rule and reign. We will rule and reign with him. We will reign with him.
When we come back on those white horses after the marriage supper of the lamb, it is not to just lolligag, but we'll actually be establishing his kingdom throughout the world for a thousand years. That's what it says. We'll reign with him. And all the wicked will still be in the ground and their soul and their spirit will still be in hell.
We'll be reigning over tribulation folks, people that make it through and people that live during those thousand years. Then there's going to be another change or you could call it a dispensation, right? Here's another change. He says in verse seven, when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.
He shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Meagog, together them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breath of the earth encompassed the camp of the saints about in the beloved city. As Jerusalem fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast, listen, here we go, into the lake of fire and brimstone.
That's Gahina, New Testament, Greek, that's Gahina. There's more to that, but just so that you know, the devil gets cast in the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, they've already been cast in there and shall be, listen to this, tormented day and night forever and ever. The devil's going to get his day. He's going to be tormented day and night forever and ever.
So is the false prophet and so is the anachrist. There's, look, there's coming a day, it may be really quick, there's coming somebody on the scene that's going to, that's going to bring a one world government in. And there's going to be a church established, a one world religion. And both of those people are going to be with Lucifer in the lake of fire first.
They're going to be the first three in and they're going to be tormented day and night forever. Now how many of you know when God says this is your punishment and it's forever? It's forever. It's eternal.
It's eternal. Now let's continue in just a little bit further saying with me. Verse number 11, he said, and I saw a great white throne and hymn that sat on it from whose face, the earth and the heaven fled away and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great.
Now these, these are not us. This is not the church because the church has already been resurrected. Okay. Now I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God and the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
Here we go. And the seagave of the dead which were in it and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged. Every man according to their works and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
So hell, if you want to be biblical about it, hell is not forever because hell gets put into the lake of fire. Hell, Hades or sheal however you want to say it, is at one point going to be actually picked up by God and thrown into Gehenna the lake of fire and it's going to be tormented. All the people, death is going to be in there, hell is going to be in there, the devil is going to be in there, the antichrist is going to be in there, the false prophet is going to be in there and all the people, all the people that are in hell right now and all the people that are going to hell will also go in that lake of fire forever. Tormented.
Day and night, forever. That's the destination of those that reject Jesus. Here's the thing I want you to see though, that everybody gets resurrected. We talk about it.
You know, you can't read first, that's the only chapter four without clicking your heels and getting excited. The dead end Christ rise first. You know, we do, we rise, the dead end Christ rise and we which are alive and remain are caught up together with them. But you know what, a little bit over a thousand years later, those that are in hell, they get resurrected and they get resurrected to get judged and how would you like that?
You get out of the flame and the torment of hell that the rich man was in, that he wanted just to drop a water. He didn't want his family to come there. You get out of that for just a minute to get judged by God and then get thrown with the devil that deceived you, hell that held you, death that bound you and get put all with them in a lake of fire forever. That's not a good situation.
It's not a good situation. Well, you know, the Lord, the Lord has a lot more to say about hell, a lot more to say about hell. But I will just say this that Jesus taught us this. He told Peter in Matthew, he said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church.
The gates of hell shall not prevail against his church. Meaning that in Jude tells us that we can actually save people and pull them out of the fire. That there will be people that don't want anything to do with God. But you can pray, you can begin to wear them down, you can begin to wear down their pride, you can begin to wear down their their stinking thinking and you can begin to sow those seeds and pray for that anointing and God can say some folks.
Our job is to be about his business until the last day. I love the Moravian slogan, which is, you know, made the lamb that was slain received the reward of his suffering. You know what, he suffered on that cross for all the world. He did for all of it.
Every single sin, you know, in all things in heaven and in earth and under the earth, he did that for all. He paid the price for all. John the Baptist said, behold the lamb of God who taken the way, the sin of the world. Not just mine, not just yours, the sin of the world.
Christ paid for it. Now what do you think's gonna happen? If Jesus, and we don't understand, believe me, we don't understand the gravity of the situation. We don't understand the gravity of this.
God is holy and he decided to have mercy on us, humble itself in carnate and flesh. That in itself, that in itself got the angels singing. They couldn't understand it. Hark the herald angels, see?
They were beside themselves. They were beside themselves because the God that created them, the God that ruled and reign in heaven, on the portals of heaven, that same God that they had worshiped for all these ages, they saw him incarnate into a babe, in a manger, in flesh. He was made a little lower than angels so that he could redeem us. It was the spotless sinless blood of the lamb of God that was necessary to redeem us.
And we don't understand how far that chasm from his holiness, all the way to that cross, bleeding and dying for us. We don't understand that, but you can get a glimpse of it in this reality. Those that reject it get tormented a day and night forever. That's how much it cost him.
That's how much it cost him to incarnate and rescue us. That's how much of a price he paid to go to Calvary. So when we preach the cross and when we pray about the blood and we confess our sins and we repent and we believe, that's way more going on than we think. It's not just about having a good life.
It's not about how to be a better you. That's why the gospel we preach, it's not like Thomas the train or the little engine that could. That's how a lot of churches are. I think you can.
I think you can. I think you can. Keep trying. I think you can.
I think you can. I think you can. Atta boy. Atta girl.
You got it. Atta boy. Atta girl. You got it.
Now we have a gospel to preach. We have souls going to heal. There's a reality of eternal torment. That's why we magnify the Lord.
Jesus said if he's lifted up, he'll draw a home in unto him. The more we lift up the Lord Jesus Christ, the more people will see and behold his beauty and God will do what he does. God will convict him on the inside. God will begin to change him on the inside and the Holy Ghost will bring that conviction and they'll get saved.
Our job is to lift up magnified Jesus to preach the truth, to not withhold the reality of eternity from these people. This is necessary if ever before in our generation. Our generation. And I'll tell you this in closing.
General Booth who started the Salvation Army. He said this. He said if I could take my men and let them spend five minutes in hell, I wouldn't have to have a Bible college. Now that's real.
I love that guy. General Booth. If you could take us, if we could go experience hell for five minutes, I don't think we would ever have to ask anybody to sign up for, you know, to go out, witness or preach or teach or we wouldn't have to encourage people to, you know, take some tracks with you, share the gospel, pray for your loved ones. We went to do that.
It would be so ingrained in us. Nobody had to tell us to do none of that stuff because we would understand the magnitude of the reality of what we're talking about tonight. So, the greatest thing that we can do is make sure we don't go to hell. And the second greatest thing we can do is make sure we bring others in heaven with us, sharing the gospel with them.
Amen. Well, we're going to close right here. But if anybody has any questions or comments, we'll go ahead and take them before we leave. By the way, thank you for this Bible study.
Lord, we thank you for the truth of the Word of God. Lord, we pray that you would ingrain it in our lives, that you would help it become a part of us, our spiritual DNA. Lord, we pray that these truths, Lord, would change us and help us to change others. Lord, I pray that you would bless those that hear and study this message.
Lord, we ask it in Jesus' holy name. Everybody says, Amen, amen.