Introduction
* On the night of April 14, 1912, during its first trip from England to New York, the Titanic struck an iceberg. The collision tore a 300-foot gash in its hull, and in 2½ hours the unsinkable ship sank. Some 1500 people died.
* On May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the mighty German Zeppelin, Hindenburg, was attempting a mooring. The Hindenburg was one of Nazi Germany’s finest airships. It was supposed to represent the greatness of the German Reich and its leader, Adolf Hitler. It had just crossed the Atlantic on its maiden voyage of the year when it exploded. 36 people died.
* On August 31, 1997, Diana, the Princess of Wales, was killed shortly after midnight in an automobile accident in a tunnel by the Seine River in Paris.
* On September 11, 2001, hijacked airplanes, in the hands of terrorists, crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nearly 3000 people died.
* On the day after Christmas 2004, a monster tsunami hit several countries in South Asia and Africa, and 150,000 died in one day!
* On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina battered the gulf coast of the United States. It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history. Its damage is estimated at $75 billion dollars making it the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. As of March 20, 2006 the confirmed death toll stood at 1,604, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1928.
* Today 150,000 people die.
I. WHERE WILL YOU BE THE MOMENT YOU DIE? Luke 16:19-23
Note: There are only two destinations after death.
Note: This passage does not teach that rich people go to hell and poor people go to heaven.
A. If You Accept God’s Word You Will Be In Heaven. John 14:1-6
Illustration: The Master’s There
In one of his books, A. M. Hunter, the New Testament scholar, relates the story of a dying man who asked his Christian doctor to tell him something about the place to which he was going. As the doctor fumbled for a reply, he heard a scratching at the door, and he had his answer.
“Do you hear that?” he asked his patient. “It’s my dog. I left him downstairs, but he has grown impatient, and has come up and hears my voice. He has no notion what is inside this door, but he knows that I am here. Isn’t it the same with you? You don’t know what lies beyond the Door, but you know that your Master is there.” (Christian Theology in Plain Language, p. 208.)
B. If You Reject God’s Word You Will Be In Hell. Matthew 13:49-50
Illustration: Whatever Happened To Hell?
The following are some of the cults listed by John Ankerberg and John Weldon in Facts on Life after Death. Listed also is each group’s divisive opinion about both heaven and hell along with its founder’s quotations.
1. Christian Science, founded by spiritist Mary Baker Eddy, teaches, “There is no death.” They believe that “heaven and hell are states of thought, not places. People experience their own heaven or hell right here on earth.”
2. Edgar Cayce, a spiritist and New Age prophet, said that “the destiny of the soul, as of all creation, is to become One with the Creator” and that no soul is ever lost.
3. New Age cult leader Sun Myung Moon of The Unification Church believes that “God will not desert any person eternally. By some means...they will be restored.”
4. Mormonism, founded by occultist Joseph Smith, argues, “The false doctrine that the punishment to be visited upon erring souls is endless...is but a dogma of unauthorized and erring sectaries, at once unscriptural, unreasonable, and revolting.”
5. Jehovah’s Witnesses, founded by Charles Taze Russell maintains that the wicked are forever annihilated because “the teaching about a fiery hell can rightly be designated as a ‘teaching of demons.’”
6. The Church of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgianism), founded by spiritist Emanuel Swedenborgh, emphasizes that God “does not condemn anyone to hell.”
7. Eckankar, a New Age religion founded by Paul Twitchell and Darwin Gross, insists, “There is no death”...and that there is no eternal hell.
8. Lucis Trust and the Arcane School/Full Moon Meditation Groups, established by New Age spiritist Alice Bailey, argue that “the fear of death is based upon...old erroneous teaching as to heaven and hell.”
9. The Love Family (The Children of God), founded by spiritist David Berg, views hell as a temporal purgatory: “The lake of fire is where the wicked go to get purged from their sins...to let them eventually come...out.”
10. Rosicrucianism, an occult philosophy, declares, “The ‘eternal damnation’ of those who are not ‘saved’ does not mean destruction nor endless torture,” and that “the Christian religion did not originally contain any dogmas about Hell.”
11. Unitarian Universalism confesses the following: “It seems safe to say that no Unitarian Universalist believes in a resurrection of the body, a literal heaven or hell, or any kind of eternal punishment.”
12. The Theosophical Society, founded by medium Helena P. Blavatsky, declares, “we positively refuse to accept the...belief in eternal reward or eternal punishment.” Hence, “Death...is not...a cause for fear.”
13. The spirits everywhere proclaim their allegiance to cultic teachings, declare Ankerberg and Weldon. “Ramtha,” the spirit speaking through medium J. S. Knight, claims, “God has never judged you or anyone” and “No, there is no hell and there is no devil.” “Lilly” and other spirits channeled through medium Ruth Montgomery argue that there is no such thing as death” and that “God punishes no man.” (To Hell and Back, by Maurice S. Rawlings, M.D., (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1993), pp. 81-83.)
II. WHAT WILL YOU BE THE MOMENT YOU DIE? Luke 1623-24
Note: Hell is a place of literal, eternal torment.
Note: Hades is used in the NT to refer to the underworld, the region of the departed. It defines the intermediate state between death and the future resurrection. Of the eleven times the word is used in the NT, it is rendered as “hell” by the AV with one exception (1 Cor 15:55, where “grave” appears).
On the one hand, Hades seems to be the gathering place of all souls (see Acts 2:27,31, where it is the Greek translation of “Sheol” in Ps 16:10). In Luke 16:23-26 all the dead are located in the underworld, but the word “Hades” itself is used only of the place where the wicked are punished.
Wherever the righteous dead went before Christ’s resurrection-Hades or heaven-we know from Paul’s testimony that to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ (2 Cor 5:8). Those who die in the Lord in this age go immediately into the presence of the Lord. Those who die without Christ go to Hades, where there is torment (Luke 16:19-31). They will later be brought from Hades to appear before the great white throne of judgment, after which they will all be cast into the lake of fire and experience eternal damnation (Rev 20:11-15).
Gehenna is the eternal abode of the wicked. Whereas Hades is the intermediate state, Gehenna is eternal hell. Wherever it is used in the NT, it always means the place of eternal damnation.
The valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem was the place where human sacrifices were offered to the pagan god Moloch in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh (2 Kings 16:3; 31:6). The dead bodies were thrown and burnt there. The prophets warned of judgment to come because of such sins (Jer 7:32; 19:6 cf. Isa 31:9; 66:24), and because of these threats, the valley came to be a symbol for eternal judgment. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Copyright 1984 by Baker Books. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)
A. Those In Hell Will Be Tormented By Eternal Flame.
“…I am tormented in this flame.” (v. 24).
Mark 9:43-48
Note: The language of this passage is taken from the LXX of Isaiah 66:24. The worm that dieth not is a figure of speech drawn from the actual valley of Hinnom, where worms were continually at work. It is a picture of the unending torture and destruction of hell. (The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1962 by Moody Press.)
Literal Fire?
Is the fire spoken of literal fire? It is an accepted law of language that a figure of speech is less intense than the reality. If “fire” is merely a figurative expression, it must stand for some great reality, and if the reality is more intense than the figure, what an awful thing the punishment symbolized by fire must be. (Wm E. Evans, The Great Doctrines of the Bible, Moody, p. 262.)
B. Those In Hell Will Be Tormented By Perpetual Memories.
“…remember that in your lifetime you received your good things…” (v. 25).
Poll: American Men
American men are among the world’s “most pagan,” according to pollster George Barna. A study reported in The Barna Report, his newsletter, found that the church has little or no influence on many American men.
About one in three American men claims to be a born-again Christian, but only 28 percent attend church on any given weekend. Other forms of religious activity—including Bible reading, Sunday school attendance, and giving time or money to a church—have all declined among American men since 1991.
Barna also found that even men who claim to be Christians often hold unorthodox beliefs that are at odds with biblical Christianity. For instance, 28 percent deny that Jesus was physically raised from the dead, while 27 percent say He committed sins. Surprisingly, 55 percent of self-identified Christian men agreed that all people “experience the same outcome after death, regardless of their way into heaven.”
Barna found that less than half of Christian men believe that there are absolute moral truths (47 percent) or that the Bible and religion should be primary influences on moral thinking (40 percent). (Northwest Christian Journal - May 1997.)
C. Those In Hell Will Be Tormented By The Awareness Of Lost Blessings.
“…but now he is comforted, and you are tormented.” (v. 25).
Revelation 22:1-5
D. Those In Hell Will Be Tormented By Eternal Separation From God.
“…between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.” (v. 26).
Matthew 7:22-23
Note: God the Judge
Why do men shy away from the thought of God as a judge? Why do they feel unworthy of him? The truth is that part of God’s moral perfection is his perfection in judgment.
* Would a God who did not care about the difference between right and wrong be a good and admirable being?
* Would a God who put no distinction between the Hitlers and Stalins and his own saints be morally praiseworthy and perfect?
* Moral indifference would be an imperfection in God, not a perfection. And not to judge the world would be to show moral indifference.
* The final proof that God is a perfect moral being, not indifferent to questions of right and wrong, is the fact that he has committed himself to judge the world.
But it must be emphasized that the doctrine of divine judgment, and particularly of the final judgment, is not to be thought of primarily as a bogeyman, with which to frighten men into an outward form of conventional righteousness. It has its frightening implications for godless men, it is true; but its main thrust is as a revelation of the moral character of God, and an imparting of moral significance to human life. (Your Father Loves You by James Packer, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, page for May 3.)
III. HOW CAN I KNOW WHERE I WILL BE WHEN I DIE?
Note: God’s word is my only assurance of missing hell.
Luke 16:27-31
A. God’s Way Is The Right Way.
“…but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” (v. 30).
Illustration: Hundreds of Religions
H. A. Ironside was occasionally interrupted during his sermons with the objection that there were hundreds of religions,” and that no one could determine which was the right way. Ironside would answer by indicating that he knew of only two religions. “One,” he would say, “covers all who expect salvation by doing; the other, all who have been saved by something done. The whole question is very simple. Can you save yourself, or must you be saved by another?” (Source unknown)
B. God’s Way Is The Only Way. John 10:1
“If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.” (v. 31).
Illustration: You Can’t Get There From Here
A young man, new in town, was looking to take his car in for some bodywork. He didn’t know the exact location of the body shop, but set out to find it on his own.
After an hour or so of searching to no avail, he decided to stop in at a gas station and ask for directions.
“Can you tell me how to get to Fred’s Body Shop?” he asked the attendant.
“Sure,” the man replied. “Just head north down this road…; no that won’t work.”
“Here’s what you need to do. Head south and then turn left at the first…; no, that won’t work either.”
“I know,” he said. “Go straight across the street and then…; well, as a matter of fact, that won’t work either.”
After a long pause he replied, “Buddy, you’ve got a problem. You can’t get there from here.”
1. Those who come to Jesus have life. John 14:6
2. All others will experience the second death. Revelation 21:8
Conclusion
1. There will be a judgment. Hebrews 9:27
2. God will punish unbelievers. Hebrews 10:28-31
Ready Or Not, Here I Come!
As children we used to play a game called “Hide and Seek.” The object of the game was for someone to be “It” while the others ran to hide. Whoever was “It” had to hide their eyes, count to a predetermined number, and then go and find all the hiders. The hiders, meanwhile, tried to get back to “Home Base” before “It” found them.
When “It” finished counting (for our neighborhood it was usually to 100) he or she would proclaim with a loud voice, “Ready or not, here I come.” From that point the hunt was on. If you were hidden, you were safe for the time being. Other times, though, someone may not have found a good place to hide. But that didn’t matter. “Ready or not” the hunt was on.
In a sense, death is like that for us. From the moment we are born, it stalks us. Then, at our appointed time, ready or not, it overtakes us. Like the cruel robber that it is, it comes to us, usually unexpected, and steals away from us our most prized possession, life itself. At that point we are taken to one of two destinations – heaven or hell.
Ready or not Death is coming. Are you ready to die?
