This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, June 26, 1983, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville,
New Jersey. Now let us once again seek the
face of God in prayer together. Our Father, we bow in quietness
of heart before you, confessing once more that we are not sufficient
of ourselves to think anything as from ourselves. We acknowledge
that left to ourselves, we will have no lasting, no life-transforming
impression even from the most solemn truths of heaven and hell
and the great realities of eternity. We confess that sin and the world
and the archenemy of our souls, the devil himself, so conspire
that, left to their influence, we shall be utterly indifferent
to the most weighty matters of our own highest interest. O Lord,
will you not come And as you have done for many of us in the
past, making the great issues of heaven and hell to become,
in a sense, the only issues that mattered to us, so we pray that
you would do that tonight for careless sinners, for men and
women and boys and girls who are making a swift and straight
line to the pit of destruction. O Lord, arrest them tonight.
And for any of your weary saints who need to catch, as it were,
that glory of the world to come by their eye with fresh clarity
and faith tonight, O Lord, minister to them, we pray. Come to us
in all of our need and glorify yourself by answering the cry
of our hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now will you hear again the Word
of God as I read just several verses from one of the most solemn
passages in all of the Word of God, and surely one of the most
solemn from the lips of our Lord Himself, Matthew's Gospel, chapter
25. And I shall read verses 31 to
34, and then verse 41 and forty-six. But when the Son of Man shall
come in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He
sit on the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered
all the nations, and He shall separate them one from another
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and shall set
the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then
shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, you
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world. Then shall he say also to them
on the left hand, Depart from me ye cursed into the eternal
fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. If our Lord spoke with any intention
of conveying reality, then our Lord spoke in such a way as to
indicate that there was no doubt in His mind that heaven and hell,
and only heaven and hell, are the ultimate destiny of every
single human being who has ever been born upon the face of the
earth. In the light of this clear teaching
of our Lord, and in the light of many other strands of biblical
witness, we commenced last Lord's Day evening a series of studies
that will carry for a few weeks this summer on the very sobering
themes of heaven and of hell. In our opening study last Lord's
Day evening, I began to set before you the importance of the biblical
doctrines of heaven and of hell. And as I did, I used terminology
which I explained at the very outset, the terminology being
the orthodox doctrines of heaven and hell, and by the orthodox
doctrines I mean nothing more or less than the teaching of
hell as understood by the Christian Church throughout its history
that understanding embodied in its confessions, its creeds,
its hymnology, and in its ordinary preaching by the ordinary foot
soldiers of Jesus Christ, as well as by its most eminent preachers,
teachers, and theologians. And the orthodox doctrine of
heaven and hell can be briefly stated in these words. Hell is a place Hell is a place
of conscious torment of body and soul for all of the unrighteous,
and heaven is a place where body and soul of the righteous will
know full and complete bliss in the immediate presence of
Almighty God. And as we begin to study this
great segment of biblical truth, or these many segments and these
great doctrines, it is important that we feel something of the
weight of the centrality of these doctrines in Holy Scripture.
And last Lord's Day evening I had time only to develop two lines
of thought respecting the importance of the doctrines of heaven and
hell. I affirmed in your presence that integrity in handling the
word of God demands the orthodox doctrines of heaven and hell,
and secondly, that sympathy with dominant elements of biblical
religion was impossible apart from a belief in the orthodox
doctrines of heaven and hell, and we traced out from many passages
the great place that these doctrines have in biblical religion, all
the way from a motivation to conversion, motivation to mortification,
an integral part of gospel preaching, a major dimension of comfort
and consolation, the doctrines of heaven and hell are brought
forward again and again and again, so that we may say without any
fear of contradiction from anyone who accepts the testimony of
the Bible as true, that there can be no sympathy with dominant
elements of biblical religion. if there is not a conviction
concerning the biblical, the orthodox doctrines of heaven
and hell. Richard Baxter, in what is rightfully
called a classic work on heaven, called the Saints' Everlasting
Rest six hundred and, I think, yes, seventy-two pages, expounding
the glorious biblical doctrine of the saints' everlasting rest
in the presence of God. In the introduction, when Baxter
is seeking to open up the importance of the doctrine of heaven, he
writes as follows, I have found, says he, by reason and experience,
as well as Scripture, that it is not our comfort only, but
our stability, our liveliness in all our duties, our enduring
tribulation our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness,
and all our graces, yea, the very being of our religion and
Christianity itself that depends on the believing, serious thoughts
of our rest in heaven. Baxter is affirming that the
liveliness of all our duties, our endurance in trials, our
honoring of God, the vigor of our love, and all our Christian
graces, that these can only flourish when we have believing, serious
thoughts of heaven. The end directs to and in the
means to know what is indeed your end and happiness and heartily
to take it to be so, is the very first stone in the foundation
of religion. Most souls that perish in the
professing Christian world perish for lack of being sincere in
this point. In a word, we can neither live
safely, profitably and godly, or comfortably, nor die so. without believing serious consideration
of our everlasting rest. Baxter goes so far as to say
that it is not only a matter of sympathy with dominant elements
of biblical religion that is unnecessary, that is impossible
without a belief in these doctrines, but he says that the very essence
of religion is gone without these doctrines being prominent in
our thought and being part and parcel of our deepest convictions. What I want to do tonight is
to trace out one more line of thought with respect to the importance
of this doctrine and then touch briefly on two other matters,
and that will conclude our introduction to the subjects of heaven and
hell. The importance of these doctrines
is not only seen in that integrity in handling the word of God demands
them. Sympathy with dominant elements
of biblical religion is impossible without them, but the doctrines
of heaven and hell are important because honesty in dealing with
the souls of men demands a faithful, proportionate preaching and teaching
of the orthodox doctrines of heaven and hell. Honesty in dealing
with the souls of men demands a faithful, proportionate preaching
and teaching of the orthodox doctrines of heaven and hell. The great longing of every true
servant of Christ is beautifully captured in the language of the
Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 20. As he looks back upon his
three and a half years of ministry amongst the Ephesians, he can
say, not with poetic license, nor with mere desire and wishful
thinking, but as a matter of fact in the presence of God,
Acts 20 and verse 26, I testify unto you this day that
I am pure from the blood of all men. I testify to you, looking
back upon my years of ministry amongst you, that concerning
all those whom I contacted in that ministry, there is not a
one of them who can charge me with being guilty of his blood. Furthermore, I am confident that
as I face the day of judgment and give account of my ministry,
that my God and Father will not charge me with the blood of anyone
to whom I ministered in Ephesus." Now, what does he mean by this
language, free from the blood of all men? Well, as with so
much New Testament terminology, it has its roots in the Old Testament,
and this terminology finds its root system in Ezekiel chapter
3. Here we have the record of the
Lord's commissioning of Ezekiel as a prophet to Israel. and his
position as a prophet is likened to a watchman upon a city wall. Now, before the days of radar
and before the days of missiles, when warfare was conducted in
a hand-to-hand manner, cities were walled in for protection,
and watchmen were set upon the walls to look off into the distance
to see if there were any signs of the approaching of an alien
army. of hostile forces, and it is
that imagery that is captured by the Lord in His commission
of Ezekiel. Follow as I read Ezekiel 3, beginning
with verse 17. Son of man, I have made you a
watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore, hear the word at my
mouth and give them warning from me. As a watchman upon the wall,
seeing an enemy approaching is not to be silent, but he is to
warn the inhabitants of the city. He is to speak to the proper
officials who can marshal the forces and go out against the
enemy. The imagery is carried right
through. Son of man, I have made you a watchman unto the house
of Israel. Therefore, hear the word at my
mouth, and give them warning from me. When I, Jehovah, the
living God, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die,
and you give him not warning, nor speak to warn the wicked
from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall
die in his iniquity. His blood will I require at thy
hand." As a watchman who sees an enemy force coming and is
silent, and the city is invaded in its inhabitants slain, that
watchman will be charged with the blood of the slain. So God
says to Ezekiel, I have given you a task. to tell men of the
realities of my judgment upon sinners. I have said to you,
Ezekiel, that the soul that sinneth shall die. I have told you that
sin will bring death, and you are to warn men. Now, if you
do not warn them, they will die in their sin on account of their
sin. They will not perish because
of your failure, but your failure will be charged to you." And
God brings that charge in this vivid, graphic language. that
he will hold the watchman of God guilty of blood. His blood
I will require at your hand. And Paul takes the imagery from
the charge to Ezekiel, and he says to the Ephesians, I have
been a faithful watchman, and throughout all of these years
I have not failed in my task. I am pure from the blood of all
men. Why? Look at verse 27. I am pure from the blood of all
men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel
of God. I have not shrunk back from declaring
everything that God has revealed about Himself and His dealings
with the sons of men. I have not only declared to you
that God is your Creator, God is your Maker and the Sovereign
Ruler of His world and all creatures in it, I have not only declared
that you are sinners, I have not only declared that God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, I have
not only declared repentance toward God and faith toward the
Lord Jesus, Acts 20, 21, But He also declared to men that
there was a place where the impenitent would be found, and that for
all eternity. He declared to them what God
had revealed about this place called Hell and this place called
Heaven. And He recognizes that if He
were to be honest in dealing with the souls of men, if He
were to escape being charged with their blood, He had to be
a man. who would not shrink from declaring
the whole counsel of God. Now, since so much of the Scriptures
points to the realities of heaven and hell, honesty and fidelity
in dealing with the souls of men demands the clear, proportionate
proclamation of these things. I am not saying that heaven and
hell must be the dominant note of every sermon. That would not
be proportionate preaching. There is much more in the Bible
than the doctrines of heaven and of hell. But a Bible without
the vigorous doctrines of heaven and hell is a mutilated book. There is no way a man can give
proportionate, faithful exposition to this book. and not frequently
touch upon these great themes of heaven and of hell. Now you
see there are many who upon being pressed will admit their belief
in these things, will make an occasional allusion to these
things, but of a living faith that leaps out with burning conviction
in preaching presses the solemnity of these issues upon the consciences
of men, they know precious little. It is sad to say our generation
is a generation marked by many forms of deviation from the norms
of Scripture, even in the ranks of those who claim to believe
the Bible. But certainly one of the most
glaring evidences of this is the absence of an overall pattern
of serious, sober, earnest, truthful proclamation of the biblical
doctrines, both of heaven and of hell. The great emphasis in
many branches of evangelical Christianity is away from heaven
as the place of the believer's rest. the place upon which he
fixes his eye amidst all of the inequities and injustices of
this life. And we are being told more and
more that if we are to have any kind of credible Christian testimony,
we must have a greater concern for the now. And social consciousness
and social involvement and the social implications of the gospel
are not the great themes of the liberals anymore. They are the
dominant themes of the majority of many circles of evangelicals. The whole idea that we hold up
before the people of God this great hope, this world is a mess! But God in grace has come to
us in Jesus Christ and offers us deliverance and tells us that
He is preparing a place where all will be sorted out. We are
told that is pie in the sky, by and by religion, and that
will not do for this generation that has had its social conscience
greatly honed by all of the injustices in the area of the unequal distribution
of wealth and racial prejudice and all of the rest. This is
the day when if you're to preach the gospel with relevance, you've
got to take heaven out of the world to come and press it into
this world. My friend, I'll keep heaven where
God put it. Lay not up for yourselves treasures
on this earth where moth and rust corrupt. Even when it's
forced distribution of wealth, it is still going to be moth-eaten,
and it's going to corrupt. But lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and thieves
do not break through and steal. For where your treasure is, there
will your heart be. And in the history of the Church,
never, never has the Church been more effective in bringing real,
godly change in society here and now than when it has had
its heart and its affections most firmly fixed in heaven and
upon the world to come. When the church has been most
otherworldly, she has been most powerful to influence this world. And I stand to protest against
this carnalizing of the Christian message. Likewise, with the doctrine
of hell, we are told, how can you go to a ghetto and tell poor
people, who have been pressed down by all the social inequities
and by all of the exploitation, and tell them that they are wretched,
rebel sinners and there is something awaiting them that makes the
ghetto look like heaven? You can't do that. You'll be
turned off. Well, my friend, I have no warrant
from God to manipulate His message, and I say to the affluent upper-middle
class man with his three cars and his yacht and his summer
home, as well as to that poor man who has been exploited and
manipulated, I say to them both, you are sinners! You are bound
for hell! Repent and believe, or you'll
burn forever in the lake of fire. And I say to the man who thinks
that his heaven is now amidst his affluence, my friends, small
comfort you'll draw from all of your possessions when you
join those who weep and wail and lash their teeth. And I say
I trust with compassion to that penniless man cast upon the good
graces of the state for his daily bread. I say to him, my friend,
the poverty you now know and the grinding inequities is nothing
compared to the agony of the hell that awaits you unless you
come to grips with what you are as a sinner in need of a Savior
and repent and believe and come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Honesty
in dealing with the souls of men, my brothers and sisters,
It demands a faithful, proportionate preaching and teaching of the
orthodox doctrines of heaven and of hell, and it demands that
we preach them to all structures and all segments and classes
of society. We don't have sixteen hundred
different gospels. For every different class, surely
we adopt language and illustration and style. Surely we do that. Those of you who come to a wedding,
you know that. Some of you wonder, why at some
weddings does Pastor Martin talk about St. Mark and St. Matthew and St. Paul the Apostle? That's because I happen to know,
upon inquiry, we have a lot of Roman Catholics there. And I
talk about the Gospels and the Epistles because that's the terminology. Sure, love makes us enterprising
in our terminology, in our illustrations. I am not talking about a wooden,
insensitive approach, but I'm saying that the heart of the
message is utterly unchanged. Its dress may be a bit different,
the shape of its hat, the color of the shoe, but the heart of
the message is the same. And we cannot be faithful to
the souls of men unless we proclaim both the frightening horrors
of the damned who go to hell, and the glories, the wonders,
the beauties, the ravishing delights of those who go into the immediate
presence of God in that place the Bible describes as heaven. I want to read just a brief quote
from Hodge. who, speaking of those who feel
they are wiser than God in bypassing the preaching of this doctrine,
writes as follows. More than all this, we should
recognize the superficiality and essential cruelty of that
mock love which makes so many professed theological reformers
disguise from sinners or explain away the real facts as to the
attitude of the Word of God on this subject. even if mistakes
should be made in the way of rendering the aspect of scriptural
teaching more menacing than it really is. In other words, some
men preach hell in a rather extravagant manner. While it might give unnecessary
pain for the present, it could not betray souls to unexpected
dangers in the world to come. But there is no more deadly injury,
no more high-handed cruelty. which any man can perpetrate
upon a fellow creature than that which the theological reformer
is in danger of when, against the apparent meaning of God's
word, against the unanimous judgment of Christ's Church, he softens
the emphasis of warning and assures the impenitent sinner that it
is not after all so certain that he must die the second death
of eternal pain and torment. You see his point? If a man believing
the doctrine of hell is carried away beyond the explicit testimony
of scripture, and allows that testimony to be somewhat embellished
with his own imagination, Hodges points as he may make the doctrine
a little more unpalatable, but surely he cannot be charged with
fatal infidelity to the souls of men. But if anyone waters
down the clear teaching of the Word of God, one iota, and is
wiser than God, and feels that men do not need to be told of
that place where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,
you see, such a one is guilty of a betrayal of the souls of
men that is tragic indeed, tragic beyond description. And therefore,
if I would be honest with your souls, dear boys and girls, men
and women, friends, visitors, I must declare to you as surely
as your body sits upon that seat, an hour is coming when that body
and that soul will either be cast into hell, outer darkness,
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and that forever, or
that very body and soul with which you are present here will
know the unspeakable bliss of looking upon the face of Jesus
in the company of all that is redeemed and perfected in soul
and body will be forever with the Lord. In other words, in
the language of the passage I read at the outset of our study tonight,
your ears are going to hear one of two words, Come ye blessed,
inherit the kingdom. Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire." My friends, that's all I can say for certain
about everyone sitting here. I look back and forth through
these rows and I can say, well, I think of this one and that
one. This may yet await him in his or her future. I would suppose
that, but I cannot say anything for certain about any one of
you except this. The ears with which you hear
me tonight, these ears with which you listen to my voice, they're
going to hear, come ye blessed or depart ye cursed. And there'll
be no smart-mouthing the living God. There'll be no evasion. There will be no debate. There
will be nothing but immediate compliance. Come, ye blessed. Thee shall go into his presence. When he says, Depart, ye cursed,
thee shall go away into everlasting punishment. My friend, am I being
honest with what Jesus said? Then don't go out and say, I'm
not going back to that church, that old hellfire and damnation
stuff. My friend, bad-mouthing this
preacher won't rid you of hell. Two-pawing heaven won't rid us
of that glorious place who are on our way there. You can't escape
these issues. Oh, I plead with you. come to
grips with them, take them seriously. I have tried to convince you
of their tremendous importance along these three lines of biblical
evidence, and now very quickly I am drawing this to a conclusion. Let me just say a word about
what will be the primary focus of our study in these nights
together. The primary focus of our study
will be this. not the intermediate state—you
may have heard that terminology in the past—but the eternal state. And what do I mean by that terminology?
Simply this. The Bible has a very adequate
doctrine of what happens the moment a person dies in this
life, and his soul leaves the body. And when that happens,
that's when the undertaker takes over. The Bible has an adequate
doctrine of what happens from that moment that you die. until
the moment when our Lord Jesus returns, and in his own words,
all that are in the graves come forth. They that have done good
to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil
to the resurrection of damnation. The Bible has an adequate doctrine
of that period from the time the individual dies until the
coming of Christ and the general resurrection which leads to the
judgment and then what we read in Matthew 25, the eternal disposition
of all men in soul and body into the everlasting kingdom of bliss
or into the lake of fire and everlasting torment. Now that
period is called the intermediate state. And I say the Bible does
have an adequate doctrine of the intermediate state. Luke
16 is one of the clearest passages on the fact that the souls of
all men and women who are strangers to grace immediately upon death
and while the body is buried, the soul is conscious and alive
and is in torment. Likewise, Philippians 1 and 2
Corinthians 5 speak of the intermediate state for the believer. To be
absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But the
dominant emphasis of the Bible with regard to the doctrines
of heaven and hell is not upon the intermediate state, but it
is upon the eternal state that follows the resurrection of the
body and the great judgment. Now, it should be evident to
us why this is so. God made us a body-soul entity. As human beings, we were made
body and soul. As body-soul entities, we live. As body-soul entities, we die,
and there is that violent, abnormal wrenching of the soul from the
body. And it is at the reuniting of soul and body in the resurrection
that we will be formally and consigned to eternal darkness,
or ushered into the consummate bliss of the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And our focus, then,
will be upon not the intermediate state, but the eternal state,
because that is the primary focus of the teaching of the Bible.
You remember, Jesus said, don't fear those who kill the body,
Matthew 10, 28, but fear him who can destroy both soul and
body in hell. And likewise, all of the focus
of the Word of God is upon the resurrection of the believer
at the coming of the Lord Jesus. The words with which we are to
comfort our grieving brothers and sisters who have lost loved
ones points not to the blessedness of the intermediate state, though
that has some elements in the passage, but what are the words
of comfort? This we say unto you, 1 Thessalonians
4. This we say unto you by the Word
of the Lord. that you do not sorrow and greed
as those who have no hope. This is what we say. The Lord
himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of the
archangel, the trump of God, the dead in Christ shall rise
first. He points us to the resurrection
and to the eternal state. So that will be the primary focus
of our study. And then just a word about the
attitude with which we approach this study. As we come to contemplate
the biblical doctrines of heaven and hell, with what spirit should
we approach these doctrines? God has said in Isaiah 55, My
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. For as the heavens are high above
the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways
above your ways. Dear people, it behooves us to
come in a spirit of humility. humility that does not dictate
to God what is just and right and fair with regard to the doctrine
of hell, or what is possible or best with respect to the doctrine
of heaven. You see, the biblical doctrine
of hell, when faithfully preached, often raises objections from
men. It doesn't seem just to me that
a man or woman should suffer forever and ever and ever for
the sins of a relatively brief time. It doesn't seem just to
me. Well, my friend, I don't mean
to be coarse or boorish, but may I say, You aren't God. Your sense of justice does not
govern the world, so I could care less what you think is just. Your sense of what is just and
right and fair does not determine your destiny, nor mine, nor anyone
else's. It is what is just and what is
fair according to the just God of the universe. that will determine
men's eternal state. You better get down off your
high horse of thinking you have a right to determine what is
fair and just, and then absolutizing that into truth. Almighty God has declared of
Himself that as the Judge of the earth He will do what is
right. He has the worship of Seraphim and Cherubim and all
the glorified spirits. Holy and righteous art thou,
O God! Just and holy are thy ways! Though I may not be able to reconcile
in my own finite sinful mind, the perfect parallels between
the revelation of God's utterly just character and the biblical
doctrine of hell, it is not my responsibility to be a reconciler,
but to be a humble receiver of the testimony of the God. Likewise,
with regard to heaven, Some say, how can it be possible that the
body long since turned to dust or eaten by the sharks and the
shark in turn has died and its remains have become part of the
ocean floor? How can there be a resurrection
of the body? Paul had that objection in 1
Corinthians 15. You know what he says to the
person who objects? Thou fool. That's what he says. Thou fool.
Thou fool! Then he uses some analogies from
the human experience and human observation, but he says thou
fool. May I say we are fools to bring God to the bar of what
we think possible and what we think best with regard to the
doctrines of heaven and hell. We must come in that humility
that is prepared to receive the plain and obvious sense of the
testimony of God in Holy Oh, may God give me that spirit as
I preach on these doctrines. May God give it to you as you
listen. And then surely not only a spirit of humility ought to
mark our approach to this awesome set of doctrines, but sobriety. If ever Isaiah 66 too should
mark a congregation, to this man will I look, to him that
trembles at my word. Surely trembling before the word
of God should mark us as we stand as it were and look over the
precipice. And with scripture alone to forge
our concrete thoughts and conceptions of hell. Dare to look with Scripture
as our eyes and Scripture as our light into that frightening
abyss. Oh, my dear friend, how can anyone
preach with a felt sense of the reality of heaven and be a clown
in the pulpit? I'll never know. I'll never know. And how one can contemplate the
glories of heaven? the glories of what it is for
a mere mortal to look upon the unveiled face of Christ and in
some sense to see the very throne of God. You remember those incidents
in Scripture when people had what the theologians call a theophany,
a visible appearance of God? Why, they were shocked that they
were alive to record it. I have looked upon God and lived! For Moses said no man can look
upon God in His burning essence and live. You see, not only is
the frightening abyss of outer darkness something calculated
to sober us, but even the glories of heaven, to contemplate the
wonders that God has prepared for His own Though it will be
a sobriety that will bring us to the borders, perhaps, of a
kind of joy and a dimension of exultation we've never known,
it'll nonetheless be a sober joy. We will rejoice with trembling. And then may God give us not
only an attitude of humility and sobriety, but one of simple
faith. You remember what Jesus said
in Luke 24, 25? Oh, fools and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have said. Fools and slow of
heart to believe all that the prophets have said. We need to
cry to God to remove our folly and our sluggishness of heart
that would keep us from believing all that God has said in his
holy word. I remind you again of a text
that we looked at briefly this morning, John 17.8. One of the
evidences that we are the children of God is that we fit the description
of John 17.8. I have given unto them thy words,
and they have received them. And what are many of the words
of Jesus, words about heaven and hell? words that cannot be
misunderstood with respect to that place of conscious eternal
torment, that place of conscious eternal bliss in the immediate
presence of God. And that same Jesus said in Mark
8.38, Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, in this
adulterous and sinful generation of him shall the Son of Man be
ashamed when He comes in His glory. I tell you, that verse
impinges on me as a preacher. If I am ashamed to declare clearly
and faithfully what Jesus says about heaven and hell, He said
He will be ashamed of me when He comes in His glory. If I draw
back from confessing faith in His clear statements, He will
draw back from confessing me in the presence of His Father. And if for no other reason than
the salvation of my own soul, I must preach what Christ has
said. May each of us find in our hearts
the disposition of faith to embrace what we cannot fully fathom,
to embrace in faith what is at some points utterly repugnant
to our sense of all that may be right and fair. And I say solemnly that more
than one person has ended up an apostate when he was confronted
with the biblical testimony about heaven and hell, and in the pride
and unbelief of his heart, refused to embrace it. Don't you play
with apostasy. the pride of God for a heart
that will be quick to believe all that the Scriptures have
said. I trust, dear ones, that these
lines of thought as to the importance of the doctrine, the primary
focus of our study as we examine the doctrines of heaven and hell,
and this word about the attitudes with which we ought to approach
our study, will prepare us all to cry mightily to God that in
the days to come we may taste of the powers of the world to
come, that we'll make every effort to bring our unconverted friends
and loved ones and neighbors unto the sound of the word, and
that God may be pleased to use even this series to rescue some
from hell and prepare them for heaven, that they may know the
bliss of which we will speak, that they may escape the horrors
of the damned, of which we must by truth be constrained to speak
in days to come. Let us pray and ask God to help
us by His grace. Our Father, we cry to You once
again that by the Holy Spirit You will take Your own Word and
indelibly inscribe it upon our hearts. O our Father, we are
grieved when we see the worldliness of so much professing Christianity. When we see, even in large segments
of the evangelical church, a movement away from faithful, proportionate
preaching on heaven and hell, a socializing of the gospel,
a distorting of the major strands of biblical emphasis, O Lord,
have mercy upon the professing church. Have mercy upon our hearts. Have mercy, we pray. And, O God,
may you raise up in our day men who will dare to preach and thunder
into the ears of this generation these great doctrines of heaven
and hell, that they may once again have their formative influence
upon the minds and hearts of men and women and boys and girls.
to the good of their own souls and to the praise of your grace. Seal, then, your word to our
hearts. Receive our thanks for this day, for your goodness in
drawing near to us. Hear us as we make our plea before
you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.