Revelation 14:9-13
“A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.”
Growing up in the fifties, my family always attended very small Baptist churches, the pastors were often not well trained, and yet most of them, I believe had a deep love for the people, and did the best they could with the knowledge and training that they had received. They often spoke on the subject of hell, and the devil, and often they would
scare the hell out of me, when they spoke of a literal hell. They preached of a place where the devil, his angels and sinners would be tormented with fire, fire that has no end, where there is no rest, day or night.
From the time I was a small child, I’ve believed in a God, and I’ve believed in His Son, Jesus Christ, also I’ve believed in the Holy Spirit of God, and I believed in a literal place called hell. You might say I had Mom and Dad faith, I believed what they did. Believing in something does not make it true; if it did I would still be looking forward to the Santa at this time of year. Believing in something and placing your faith or trust in that belief, are two vastly different things. I believed in a God, but lived my life as if what I believed about God was not true.
Do you believe that hell as, described above, is a literal place, or is it more like the Santa, a nice story but just an old fable told by not so enlightened people? Would total banishment from God be hell? Jesus said in Matthew 7:21,23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (23) “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Jesus said a lot about hell, and he never said it was made for mankind, in fact this is who it was designed for; “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Jesus, whom you believe to be God, has this to say about hell, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, where the fire never goes out.”
The Bible gives a lot of ink to hell as the place of Punishment, see; Matthew 5:22, 29; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33. The apostle Peter tells us in 2 Peter 2:4, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;” Peter goes on to tell how God did not spare the ancient world, but how he preserved Noah, and how he turned the ungodly cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes but saved the righteous man Lot. Now the rest of the story; “Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.” II Peter 2:9
If you have read to this point and you still do not believe in a literal hell, do you believe in heaven? The same Bible that tells you there’s a heaven, has a lot more ink on this place called hell than it does on the place called heaven. The Jesus whom you are placing your hope of eternal life, talked more about hell than he did about heaven and that should create a big problem in your thinking. Can Jesus Christ be trusted? That is what it all comes down to. My friend Carroll Ray Jr. said, “Faith, is acting like Jesus tells the truth.”
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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