Eternal Judgement

All of us are familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. That because of their sins, because of a society totally in rebellion against God, God actually destroyed them with fire. And Sodom has become a symbol of a place that becomes so wicked that God says, I cannot bear with that wickedness anymore. And He destroyed their city and killed everybody in it. In the New Testament, both Peter and Jude used Sodom as an example of God's judgment. Look at Jude, verse 7. Let's go to Jude. Now we don't quote from Jude very often, but the book of Jude in itself is an incredible sermon. And maybe here sometime in the future I'll give a whole sermon just on this book. But Jude, verse 7, it's the middle of the sentence, but he says, "'As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in a similar manner to these, have it given themselves over to sexual immorality, and gone after strange flesh are sent forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.'" The word vengeance there just comes from the word to mean justice. In other words, this was just. What God did here was right. It was good that these people were destroyed, as they were destroyed with eternal fire. Seems like a sort of a lasting punishment, doesn't it? Fire. And yet, Sodom isn't burning today. You can't go to the Middle East and find Sodom. There's a couple of different places that the archaeologists think that they've found it. One is just outside the Dead Sea. Others think it's under the Dead Sea. But there's ruins of at least two cities there that they have found. And they're trying to figure which is Sodom, or is it one Sodom and one Gomorrah? But there's always a…but they know where the Bible says those cities were. There's ruins of cities there that suffered some kind of catastrophe. But it suffered eternal fire. Now, thinking of that, of a group of people who suffered eternal fire, let's go to something Jesus said in Matthew 11. So, what is the eternal fire that they suffered?

Where is it? Why is it still burning today if it's eternal? Matthew 11, verse 20.

It's about Jesus…or Jesus is saying this. It says, Then he began to rebuke the cities of which most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. Woe to you, Terezin, woe to you with Sidia, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done entire and sighted, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable for tire and sight of in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it should be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.

So, Sodom has not yet appeared before God, the people of Sodom, for their judgment. Now, they suffered judgment from God, but here it says they have not yet appeared before God. In the day of judgment, we've been going through Hebrews 6, 1, and 2, the basic doctrines. What we're going to talk about today is eternal judgments. And it's somewhat complex, and in another way it's very simple.

And this ties into the concept of the resurrections that we talked about last time. You have to understand the resurrections to understand eternal judgments. So, we talked about last time how there's at least two and probably three different resurrections. And these resurrections are to life. The first resurrection are people who are actually given a spiritual body, and they're resurrected from the grave, and they meet Christ in the air. The second resurrection is a physical resurrection with a physical body.

And at the end of that, there are people who are either changed into spirit or they go to the lake of fire. Now, in a simplest form, that's what eternal judgment is. But let's go through reviewing a little bit of what we covered last time. Let's go through now the concept of eternal judgment. Did not God judge Sodom? In a way He did, yes. He killed them. I mean, that's a judgment.

And yet, they are waiting to be in the day of judgment, which is a resurrection. So how do we put those things together? Did they suffer eternal judgment? If so, why did they have to be resurrected? So how do we answer these questions? To start the discussion, we have to understand that there's two kinds of judgments that happen on all of us because we sin.

Two kinds of judgments. One is temporary. All sin has a negative impact on our lives. We think our sins can be secret. Oh, it's only in my head, right? I only envy in my head. So that's, I haven't hurt anybody, so I haven't sinned. I've only coveted in my head. And yet, thou shalt not covet is one of the Ten Commandments.

So you're actually breaking a law of God. Any time we sin, there is a negative consequence of that sin, even if it's a private sin that nobody knows about, even if it's only in your own mind. There's a negative consequence on who you are, on your own happiness. And all thoughts eventually create actions.

How you think is going to be who you are. We're all products of how we think. So, and obviously, if you drive a car, if you're drunk and you drive a car into a telephone pole at 100 miles an hour and break every bone in your body, there's a very negative consequence to your sin.

If you're in jail because you committed armed robbery, there's a very negative consequence. That is actually a judgment upon your sin. So we realize that there are negative consequences because of sin. Because it's the way God designed things. But secondly, there are judgments because of sin. There are judgments on us from God. When God destroyed Sodom, it was a judgment. It was a punishment. Humanity receives physical punishments from God because of our sins. But they're temporary. We also all suffer death because of sin.

Every human being suffers death because of sin. Now, that death can either be temporary or eternal. And here we have to begin to understand the difference between temporary judgment and an eternal judgment. So you and I suffer bad consequences because of our sin. At times, we were punished by God because of our sins. And we all die because of our sins. But all of that is temporary. There is an eternal judgment that comes beyond those temporary judgments.

In fact, if we go through why God corrects us at times and punishes us at times, it's to get us to repent so that we don't suffer an eternal judgment. God will actually correct us so that we don't and give us a temporary judgment, sort of like a parent spanking a child, which is a temporary judgment, knowing that running out in front of a car and getting hit is a much more severe judgment.

It's a consequence, right? So God will give judgments to save us from greater consequences. So we understand now temporary judgment. We have to look back on Sodom. And the only way we can take Jude and the only way we can take Jesus and put them together is that the punishment on Sodom was a temporary judgment. They have not yet suffered or experienced eternal judgment because Jesus said in that day of judgment, it will actually be easier for them than many of the religious people who were following God. Remember, He was talking to Jews who worship the true God.

And He said it will be easier for them in the day of judgment. Now He's talking there about eternal judgment. So then we have to go back to a question that we talked about in terms of the resurrection. And that is the state of the dead. We talked about last time how the immortality of the soul is not part of the Old Testament that's agreed upon by almost all religious scholars, no matter what denomination they come from. And that they say, well, something was taught different in the New Testament.

Well, we looked at that last time and just briefly showed where that doesn't work. It would take two sermons to go through all that information, but it doesn't work. Let's look at what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9, because this gives us an understanding of the overall sort of biblical viewpoint of death.

And it's a rather sad, depressing viewpoint, but this is where Solomon was going through a time of repentance, a time of depression, because he realized God had given this great gift of wisdom, and he had spent years of his life wasting it. He had this great gift from God, and he spent years and years of his life wasting it. And to come to that realization was quite overwhelming to him. Look at verse 2. All things come alike to all. What event happens to the righteous and to the wicked, to the good, to the clean, and to the unclean, to him who sacrifices, and to him who does not sacrifice? As to the good, so is to the sinner. He who takes an oath is he who fears an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil. Madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. For to him who is joined to all the living, there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. He says, you know what? Everybody dies. He is just overwhelmed by that. He is depressed by that. Good people die. Bad people die. What happens to people when they die? Verse 5, For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. This is remembered last time what we covered was how in the New Testament it is referred to as sleep. Now, when you go to sleep, have a good sleep, and you fall asleep, and you wake up, you know, it is an hour later and you have no memory of anything. How many people have said, there is an old saying that my mom would say, wow, you were so in such a deep sleep, you were dead to the world.

It is like you don't remember anything. It is like people have told me many times after going into surgery. They come out of the surgery and they say, hey, I don't fear death anymore. I've been there. They said, count backwards. I got to 98. I woke up and it is three hours later. And then at three hours, there is nothing. So that is what death is. I know nothing. You feel nothing. You think nothing.

And they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love, their hatred and their envy will have now perished. Nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun. And so there is this sort of negative viewpoint that he goes through here. But then last time we went through, remember Isaiah and Job and other places where Daniel, where it talks about, I will wake up. I will wake up. So the Old Testament, I will wake up. The New Testament, you sleep and you wake up. The question is, and I was reading something recently, it was very interesting, that a scholar said, okay, I looked at the Bible, I agree, when you die, you go to sleep and you wake up the resurrection, but you still have an immortal soul.

It just couldn't give that up, even though the Scriptures' conclusion was that, yeah, when you die, you go to sleep. But when you wake up, you still have an immortal soul. Well, let's go to 1 Timothy 6.

1 Timothy 6.

Giving up the idea of the immortal soul is one of the most difficult things for Christians to do because it's just so much part of their whole religious thought process. Especially, as I said before, if you're in Eastern Orthodox or Catholic environment where you pray to dead people, if they're not awake, your worship is meaningless.

1 Timothy 6. Now, let's start in verse 11.

He's writing to Timothy and he's giving him some pointers here. So it's sort of a personal passage. He says, but you, O man of God, flee these things. He's talking about fleeing from sin and fleeing from the bad things of life. And pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, law of patience, gentleness, fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession and the presence of mighty witnesses. I urge you, in the sight of God, who gives life to all things. Now, notice he's got to lay hold of eternal life. And it is God who gives life to all things.

And before Jesus Christ, who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ appearing, which He will manifest in His own time. He, who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Notice this. Who alone has immortality, dwelling in inapproachable light, who no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.

Only God possesses immortality. Now, God can give eternal life. He says, lay hold of eternal life. God can give eternal life. But the possessor of immortality is God. I automatically think of Jesus saying, I am the life and I am the resurrection. You don't have it. I have to give it to you. I am the life, I am the resurrection.

So the idea that we possess immortality as human beings is non-biblical. So then we step back and say, okay, then what are the turtle judgments? And once again, the simplicity of the concept is really there. But the enormity of its impact, if you understand this, along with the resurrections, creates a whole new way of looking at the Bible. So we have a type of judgment that takes place on you and I today. You and I are being eternally judged today. The world is not. It's suffering its temporary judgments. But if all those called of God, all those who are saints throughout history, back to Abraham, all those who are given God's Spirit, are being judged today, and you say, how do you know that? Because we receive our eternal judgment at the return of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15. We actually read parts of 1 Corinthians 15 last time when we talked about the resurrections.

Let's start in verse 50.

The resurrection chapter, which explains the first resurrection in great detail. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, once again, the reference of death asleep, but we shall be changed. In other words, there's going to be people alive when Christ comes back and their death will be instantaneous. They will simply die and be resurrected. They will die and change immediately. 2 Corinthians 15. He says, You see what He's saying here? This mortal thing, this body, remember we talked about how the body and the spirit come together to create the soul. They're one thing. The Bible doesn't teach the duality. They're components, but they create one thing. The photonic philosophy was there was a duality, spirit and matter. Matter was basically bad and evil. Spirit was good. You got a spirit inside a body. You spent your whole life, your spirit, trying to get out, and then it goes someplace. He ended up with reincarnation, which is sort of strange. But your spirit is trying to leave. This is why Origen, one of the great early Catholic theologians in the second century, third century, believed that we were all created and we were in heaven before. And God put us in these bodies that teach us a lesson, and that's why we just spent our whole lives trying to get out of the body, trying to get out of this, go someplace. And that's what the Bible is all about. The Bible is all about how God creates a living soul, which is the breath of God, a spirit from God, put into a body. And when one dies, the other dies, because it's one thing. And he says, we must, we are mortal. We must put on something. And it's interesting here because he's talking in the context of getting a new body. Okay. We must, the immortality comes with the resurrection of a new body, and we literally become a new person. Now we are who we are. We have our memories and our personalities, but we literally become a new person. Verse 54, so when this corruptible is put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed in victory. Death, where is your sting? Oh, Hades, where is your victory? Hades means is a Greek word for hell. So he says, hell loses.

Hell doesn't contain us. So those who are being judged now, when we receive our eternal judgment, unless we commit the unpardonable sin, that's a different subject, then we receive our eternal judgment when Christ comes back, which is eternal life. And that is one of the eternal judgments. There's two eternal judgments. Hebrews 9. I want to talk a little bit about this first. Since we mentioned it, we talked about the resurrection last time. I want to show the reward, if you will, of this resurrection, the judgment. Now we always see judgment in the negative sense, don't we? A judgment is always bad. No, there's a good judgment from God. Those who have received His Spirit and Christ lives in them, and they become Christ-like through the power of God, then the judgment is a good one.

Just like there's two great mistakes we make in our relationship with God. One is, all judgment is bad. You're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, and God never makes a good judgment on us. Well, that's the whole idea when Paul talks about Christ's righteousness being imputed to us. God makes a good judgment on us in spite of the fact that we're not perfect yet. We also make the mistake of saying all God's answers have to be yes in prayer. And no, they don't. God's answer can't be no. So we make those two mistakes. We impute or we enforce on God what we want. Well, understand we want, we should want a good judgment. We should not fear if we're following God, if we're humble before God. We should not have to fear Christ's return. We should look forward to it because we will receive a good judgment, which is to be changed. Hebrews 9, 27. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this, the judgment. Now, some will say, see? They'll take this verse out and say, after this is the judgment, means the moment someone dies, they're judged. So when you die, you immediately go to heaven or hell. The problem is, let's look at it in the context of the next verse, okay? And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this, the judgment. Now, this is still part of the same sentence, by the way. So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many to those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. So those who eagerly wait for Him are waiting for His judgment. You die and then the judgment. When does the judgment start? Or when does the judgment happen for those who are waiting for Christ and His return? So we all in this room could, because I don't know what Christ is going to come back, we all could suffer temporary judgment and die physically, and then be resurrected and receive eternal judgment, which is eternal life. This is why when a righteous person dies, even though we grieve, we should also realize that a righteous person is now set aside for the resurrection.

God says, your judgment is done. Your judgment is complete. You will be resurrected. And that should actually encourage us to realize, wow, God's, you know, that person is complete. And they will be there in the resurrection. Actually, it should motivate us to want to be also there in the resurrection, to see those people, to be with those people.

So we see here that the judgment on the church, once again, is reinforced here in Hebrews, happens at the return of Jesus Christ. Second Timothy 1. As all these sermons I've been given on Hebrews 1 and 2, it's more like a Bible study.

But it's so important that we remember these things. Second Timothy 1, verse 8.

Once again, it's very personal. Now, this is a letter between Paul and a younger man who is a minister that he cares about. He calls him his son. So there's all these personal comments in what he says. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share with me in the suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who had saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. He goes back and says, remember Timothy, you were called not because you were better than anybody else, not because of your works. You were called by God for His purpose, and He's going to do His will in you as long as you submit to Him. But has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

He has brought, He has shown the light, He has opened the understanding to what real life and immortality is. And so we get sometimes the attempt to say what immortality here means, life in heaven. No, immortality means whether you live forever or not. He has brought immortality. We didn't already have it. But this is an encouraging scripture where Paul tells Timothy, be encouraged by the fact that you were enlightened. You have seen the light. God has opened your mind, and therefore you can have life and you can have immortality. God's judgment on you is, I want to give you life. When God looks at us, He doesn't say, I want to send you to the lake of fire.

He looks at us and says, I want to give you immortality.

What is it like to receive immortality? 1 John. I know I read this probably a couple times a year because it's one of my favorite passages in the entire scripture.

So this is going to appear in sermons from time to time. 1 John 2.

So encouraging here, John is reminding Christians about the positiveness of the judgment God is offering them. God is saying, you stay with me and my judgment is a good one.

I will give you what you cannot have. I will do what you cannot do, and I will give you eternal life.

You can reject it. Free will. You can say no.

But the encouragement is, He's giving it to you. All you have to do is grab a hold of it. Remember what we just read? Paul told Timothy, grab hold of eternal life. Hold on to it. John writes here in verse 28 of chapter 2, and now little children abide in Him. He's talking about Jesus Christ here. Then when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before a man is coming. He says, live in Him and you can have confidence you won't be ashamed. You can have confidence that you will rise to meet Him in the air. I remember a man telling me one time he had a recurring nightmare. He was at the resurrection. He was standing there and everybody's going up and he's just jumping and he can't get off the ground.

How come everybody else is going to be resurrected, not me? This is not good. Okay? This is not a good thing. And here, John's dealing with that exact same kind of worry. He says, if you abide in Him, that's interesting because we always talk about Christ abiding in us. You abide in Him, you live in Him. When you do this, you can have confidence when He comes, you'll be rising.

He says, verse 29, if you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practiced righteousness is born of Him. So once again, He's encouraging people to live in Christ, to be like Christ, to act like Christ. Behold what manner of love, this is verse 1 of chapter 3, behold what manner of love that the Father has bestowed on us. Mr. Perum was talking about love. It is God's love that causes this to happen. It's God's love that motivates all of this. It's what He does and it's why He does it. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are the children of God. That's the relationship you and I can have with God right now. He's our Father. Christ is our brother. Beloved, now we are the children of God. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. He says, okay, we get a spiritual body and now we can live forever. And John says, I don't know exactly how to explain that. He says, but we know that when He is revealed, and this is really important, we shall be like Him.

When we see Christ, when the world sees Christ coming back, this shining being, eternal, that's what we will be like. Sort of little versions of that. We will be like Him.

Now, for we shall see Him as He is.

A human being in our physical state can't look on God or Christ, God the Father or Christ, in the state that they're actually in it would kill us. That's what it says in the Bible. Our minds, it would kill us. We will be able to see them exactly as they are because we will be spirit. We will be eternal. And that way we're like them. We're not like God and that we'll have all knowledge and be all brilliant and all have all wisdom and that's not all power. That's no, if you're looking for that, you're not going to get there. But we will be like Him and that we will be eternal. How should this motivate us? Verse 3, And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. If you really understand the judgment of God, He says, this is the judgment I will pass on you. This is what I'm giving you. Come now and take the other judgment, the other eternal judgment of death is taken off of us. We celebrate that every Passover. The other judgment is already removed if we will just abide in Him. It's already gone. We literally have to rebel against God to the point that we lose His spirit. We give His spirit back and we go back into this hateful rebellion against God at which we refuse to repent. And then we end up under the second judgment. But you and I have already been released of that judgment if we abide in Him. That's the positiveness of this. That's what motivates us. That's why we want to stay on this path because this is what God's doing in our lives. So that's what we're doing. So that's the eternal judgment on the saints. We also know this is the eternal judgment on those at the end of the Great White Throne. Judgment who have repented, gone through the process, and they are changed. But what about the incorrigibly wicked? What happens to them? They go to sleep, they come up in a resurrection and appear before Christ. And they then are put in the lake of fire.

This is not…the lake of fire sometimes is called eternal fire. Remember, Sodom was eternal fire. Sodom has never been rebuilt. God said, these cities are destroyed, they're gone, that's it. The people have yet to stand before Him in their day of judgment. Their eternal judgment has not taken place. Their temporary judgment took place. I think the United States is going to receive a temporary judgment from God at some point. This country isn't going to last. It's going to be destroyed.

But that doesn't mean all the people in the country have received an eternal judgment. And the whole world is going to receive a temporary judgment from God, right? It's called, we're going to celebrate it. We're going to celebrate it on the beats of trumpets. Christ comes back and fights the world. He grabs and sees his control of the world. That's a judgment from God. The whole world is going to receive a judgment, a temporary judgment from God. But the eternal judgment takes place later. Matthew 10, verse 28. This is one of the most profound scriptures in the Bible about this. Matthew 10. And verse 28. Jesus says, once again, he's not, we'll see through here, he can't be talking about the immortal soul. But he's making a very clear point. And to understand soul, think of breath of life. Think of life. Think of, you know, you're a living being. Do not fear those who killed the body, but cannot kill the living being. But rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Now there's two very important things here. One is God has the ability to take away your life, not just your body. He says a person can kill you and you can die, but you can be resurrected. God will bring your life back. But he says God can also destroy your life. The word gehenna, the word hell here is gehenna. It's used almost exclusively in the scripture by Jesus. The other writers, for the most part, I think James might use it once, but most of the other writers use Hades, which is the Greek word for hell. And there's a reason for that. The reason is gehenna would have no meaning for anybody outside of Jerusalem. It would have no meaning at all. Gehenna was the valley of Hennim, which was a big, giant garbage dump. It had been a garbage dump for years. It had been a horrible place in the history of Israel. In fact, it had been a place at one point back in Israel's history where they actually sacrificed babies to pagan gods. It was a horrible place. And so it just became a garbage dump. It's very interesting that criminals, if you died on a stake and nobody claimed your body, you know what happened to you? You got thrown into gehenna. Romans are going to bury you. It takes too much time. So if you died and you weren't a Jew or there weren't anybody cared for you and you were some criminal and they crucified you, they took the body down and threw it into gehenna. So this has a powerful meaning. They saw bodies thrown into the giant garbage dump and they disappeared. They were no more. So what Jesus is saying here, a human being can take you, they can kill your body and at that point you're unconscious, but God holds on to your life. God can reawaken you.

But fear the one who can destroy your body and never wake you up by throwing you in the burning garbage dump. There's a power to this statement that you just don't get if you don't understand what gehenna is. It's funny, I read a book one time that said, yeah, the Bible no place teaches that there's an ever burning fire except, you know, hell fire, except for Jesus. Because gehenna means ever burning hell fire. No, it doesn't. It means garbage dump. It's a place and so its meaning is so powerful, it would have been frightening to those people. God can take you, throw your dead body into the burning garbage dump and you never wake up from that. You never wake up. It's a very powerful statement about the Jesus makes, about the judgment on the incorrigibly wicked, those who will not repent. People ask me from time to time, are there people that don't have God's spirit? Can they be thrown into the lake of fire? My answer is it seems so. The Pharisees saw Jesus Christ. They didn't have God's spirit in them. And they denied who He was. And He said to them, you are in danger of the lake of fire. You're in danger of the judgment. It is possible to not have God's spirit, but to know and deny. And that makes it a little scary. I always tell people who are in the church their whole lives, and you know what's true? I've heard this before. Oh, I know this is true, but I want to go have fun and then I'll just come up in the second resurrection. Understand you may not have that opportunity. I know this is God. I know this is true, but I deny the power of it. I choose Satan's way. I choose it. Understand what you're saying. Be very careful. Fortunately, we don't have to, I don't know those judgments. I'm just saying in the scripture, there is a group of people who knew He was who He was, denied Him, did not have God's spirit, and He looked at them and said, you're in danger of the judgment here.

We sometimes can't write a free pass that God doesn't give.

I can't write it. Now, there's lots of people who come into contact with God's way, can come in the church and be here for years and years, and they never get it. That's something different, okay? Not getting it is different from saying, oh, I get it. I just choose to do something else. I love Satan's way, and I'm going to go enjoy Satan's way as long as I can. I'll probably die in the tribulation, but I'll come up and dead, I'll be saved.

That's a real dangerous game to play.

That's a real dangerous game to play because it's making a choice. Revelation 20.

Because I will say one thing. If you make that choice, I guarantee you God's going to make your life miserable because He's going to draw you towards repentance. So to say, oh, I'll do it someday after I have my fun, you're not going to have much fun. It's not the way that works out.

These guys can keep drawing you back towards repentance because He's opened Himself to you. The Creator of the universe opened Himself to you, and you said, nah, maybe later. That's a whole different ballgame than people who just don't get it. They just don't understand. God didn't really work with them. That's a totally different thing. You can't judge somebody for the light they never saw. God doesn't do that. You have to see the light, but to see the light to be embraced by the light. Verse 11. We talked about this last time also. And I saw a great white throne, so this is after the millennium, and him who sat on it, whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. There was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works, but the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. That's interesting. Death itself now. And hell, Hades, which in the Old Testament just means the grave, it all gives up. Everyone who has ever lived appears before God. And they were judged, yeas, according to his works. That death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. Death itself is destroyed here.

And Paul said, the last enemy that Christ would conquer is death. Death itself is destroyed. There is no longer death for human beings after this. There is no longer death for human beings.

Death and Hades were cast in the lake of fire. This is the second death. The second death, the cessation of life. But there is no coming back from this one. This death is forever. And anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. There is no coming back from this. This is the judgment on those who are so wicked they cannot repent. They're going to be people come up in the great white throne judgment who will not repent. They won't. They will not repent.

And they are going to go to the lake of fire.

The Bible does not teach universal salvation.

It doesn't teach that. It teaches that God will not allow human beings to live forever in hell, which is actually a merciful God.

Jonathan Edwards, who preached in the early 1800s, went all through the United States with tent meanings, bringing thousands of people into the Protestant churches. And his sermons are descriptions of what it's like to be in hell, screaming in pain, horrifyingly tortured, little babies, everybody just being tortured forever, and how all the good people are up with God in heaven looking down and laughing at them. Hey, Uncle Bob! Who's a Christian now?

What kind of God is that? What kind of God is that? It's not the God that reveals Himself in the Scripture who takes joy in the suffering of human beings, have His children forever and ever never-ending. I guess, wow, that's your daily entertainment. That's how he described heaven. It's perverse. It's actually perverse.

Now, God takes away the life, the body, and the soul. The living thing is no longer there in the second death. And now, what's that judgment's made? There's only one kind of human being, quote, unquote, left. Those who have been changed, who receive spirit bodies, and are the children of God. There is one Scripture that is sometimes used to promote universal salvation. Let's go there. Second Peter 3, just to touch on this.

Because it's important for us to know, you know, if there's universal salvation, then nothing matters, right? Nothing matters. Everybody gets saved. It's not what it says. So what the Scripture says. Second Peter 3, verse 7. He says, But the heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire, until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but long suffering toward us. Now here's the part that's used. But willing that any, not willing, that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Now that little verse, or part of a verse, is pulled out. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. To say there is universal salvation. Everybody comes to repentance, because it's His will that everybody comes to repentance. Now if that's all that verse said, you might have an argument. Of course, it's out of sync with the rest of Scripture. But look what we said, what we read back in verse 7. But the heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire, until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. You know what perdition means? In Greek? Destruction. So, this passage is talking about the time when God, through the lake of fire, destroys all ungodly men. Period. That's what it says. And then a little later He says, but you know that's not what God really would want. And so you pull the last statement out and create a doctrine of universal salvation when the entire, the whole passage is about how there isn't universal salvation. The passage isn't about that. It's actually proving the exact opposite. I only stress this because we have to realize judgment is now upon the house of God. Now that is a positive thing if we're abiding in Christ.

It's a good thing because every day you can get up and say, God, please forgive me. And God says, I do. Every day you can get up and worship God and serve Him, and He will do things in your life as He prepares you for that event. And He will take you there because He says He will. The other side of the coin is, don't take this lightly.

Don't take this lightly. It is a privilege. The grace of God is an amazing gift. It is a privilege. And we cannot take it lightly. And when we don't take it lightly, we're very positive. We have confidence in that return. You know, when you go to the Feast of Tabernacles, you can get really caught up in all the physical things and come home and say, we had a great time. But you know, there are times when you go to the Feast of Tabernacles and it just spiritually clicks, and you come home fired up for the return of Jesus Christ, for that time of Him reigning on the earth. That's all you want. It's like, I'm living for that. And you come back with that absolute dedication to it. That's the kind of confidence He's talking about. You have confidence those events are going to happen, and you're going to be there. Not because you and I can make it happen, but because God can make it happen.

Now we have faith not in ourselves. We have faith in God. We have faith in what He can do. Too much of the time we're trying to have faith in what we can do, which isn't much. Is that a faith of what God can do, which is eternal?

So the Bible reveals temporary judgments, but also two categories of eternal judgments. We have the eternal judgment on His children at the first resurrection, and also at the end, and during the Great White Throne Judgment, there will be people that will be changed. We also have then the eternal judgment on the wicked who will not repent. And that is eternal death in a lake of fire. In Malachi it says, they will be ashes under your feet. There will be ashes under your feet. Gehenna! The garbage dump will be burned up. God built a new earth and a new heavens. So this completes our series. Let's go to Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11.

This is what we've been covering then.

I'm sorry, Hebrews 6. I want to say Hebrews 11. Hebrews 6.

Hebrews 6, verse 1. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, so we have to start with Christ. And without that, we're not Christians. So we start with Christ. Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God for the doctrine of baptisms, the laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. So we lay. Christ is our foundation. We build these on top of it, which we've now gone through. And then what happens after that? Because there's really a whole other doctrine here. It's called going on to perfection. It's living our lives, built on Christ, built on these things so that we are there when Christ returns to be part of this great plan that God is doing because we are now the children of God. But we're not quite sure what will be when He comes. We just know we'll be like Him.