An Appointment You Will Keep....Regardless

You may do all in your power to put the thought of death away from you. However, you cannot escape the fact that you must die. You KNOW that you must die and face God. Maybe the reason you are reluctant to think about death is that you also know that judgment follows death as surely as night follows day. I an seriousness, could I possibly press a more sensible or important question upon you than this -- What is going to happen to you when you die?

Conscience, common sense, and the Bible all declare to you that there is an eternity that you must face. As you read these lines, you know I speak the truth. You know the above text of Scripture is as true as can be. If you and I were talking over a cup of coffee, you might grin and say, "Ah com on John, you are just trying to scare me." However, as you think about the words DEATH...JUDGMENT...ALL MEN, your "heart of hearts" deep inside of you is saying to you this very moment, "Sure, man, he's telling it like it really is. I must die and face God my Creator."

Honestly now, what is so fanatical about earnestly considering the most definite appointment you will ever keep? Is IS appointed unto YOU to DIE< and it is just as certain that judgment before Almighty God will follow -- AND YOU KNOW IT! I fail to see anything either funny or stupid about honestly facing such awesome facts. If you refuse to face them or to think about them, it is you who are playing the part fof the fool.

Did you ever ask, "Why is death inevitable? Why must men die? Where did death come from" The Bible teaches us that death is the penalty of sin. "The wages of sin is death..."(Romans 6:23) Our sin earns "wages" and God is honest -- HE pays those wages. "...in the day thou eatest therof thou shalt surely die" was no empty threat by a God either unwilling or unable to carry out His oath. The very existence of death itself is proof that God will keep every one of His curses as well as every promise. The fact that you are personally certain to die establishes your personal guilt. You have been disobedient to God your Creator and Lawgiver. God's law justly demands perfection or punishment. Law without any penalty, or without the enforcement of the penalty is not really law, it is merely advice. God's law is not just "good advice." It is the voice of authority from our sovereign Creator and Judge. By disregarding, despising, yes, and deliberately disobeying God's Law, you and I have earned God's curse. God is no liar. He is holy and just -- He will execute judgment where it is earned and deserved. Physical death, followed by eternal death or damnation, is the "earned wages" of every man. Death and judgment are certain, and you know I am not 'putting you on.'You know I am telling God's truth.

There is Another Person's death that you ought to think about. I has already taken place. It was also by Divine appointment and was a direct result of the just and holy judgment of God. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was 'delivered (bound over to die) by the determinate counsel... of God...' The death of Jesus Christ was no 'tragic accident' of history , nore was its real cause in man. It was God Himself Who appointed and delivered Christ up to death as a victim of justice and judgment, and it was God Himself Who adminstered that awful judgment upon the head of His own beloved Son. Hear what the early Apostles said 'For a truth against they holy Child Jesus whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsover THY hand and THY counsel DETERMINED before to be done.'(Acts chapter 4:27,28)

Now that is really amazing! The very Son of God not only died, but He died under the wrath and curse of His Father Whom He loved and Who also loved Him. Why did the Holy Father so deliver up His Son to such awful treatment, and why did the Son wo willingly give Himself up to such a sacrificial death! The answer, my friend, is the very gospel itself. Jesus died under the Father's curse so that guilty sinners like you and me might be righteously forgive. The just judgment of God fell upon Jesus Christ in order that the holy love of God might righteously fall on poor lost sinners like us. Yes, that is the gospel message. That is what 'Christ died for our sins' means. Christ, the Just One, was judged and condemned so that we, the guilty ones, might be delivered from the judgment we have earned and be accepted as God's own sons. The Apostle Peter put it this way: 'For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God...' (1 Peter 3:18) God completely forgives and fully accepts every guilty sinner who turns from sin and believes the gospel promises. God is 'rich unto all that call upon Him...,' and He turns none away who seek Him with their whole heart.

We cannot escape death. It is an appointment we must keep, and we will keep it whether we are ready or not. However, by God's grace and power, we escape our just judgment and condemnation. How? By bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ, in true repentance and faith. I urg you to read the gospel of John and the book of Romans. PRAY that God will open their pages to your heart and bring God' grace and forgiveness to you.

May God the Holy Spirit be pleased to bring you to understand and believe the gospel as set for by Isaac Watts in his great hymn.

In the highest sense, the spiritual sense, the eternal sense, the only thing that really matters is souls. People are the only thing coming out of this creation.

Politics, government, business, all pale in comparison, although that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay due regard to the care of our fellow men, or to the interests of posterity. Quite the contrary.

Those with the best view of heavenly things are the ones we should look to for the wisdom we need to properly provide for the things of this earth.

—I agree with CynicalBear that denying the existence of an eternal place of torment gives hope that you “won’t be punished forever”.—

Well, if you are annihilated, you are, in fact punished forever, just as a convicted murderer is punished for all time when he is executed.

—or at the very least does not last forever.—

what does that even mean? Is it time never ending, or is it something outside of time? And what is with this belief in a “torture” beyond what any man can even comprehend?

What of folks like Pharaoh, who’s heart God hardened. Is he going to suffer and suffer and suffer for all eternity? What exactly is the purpose of that? Do you really think those of us that are saved are going to take pleasure in watching others suffer?

There is a LOT of scripture that talks of eternity, hell, lake of fire and eternal life. If you don’t have eternal life, you are not alive. And those in the lake of fire do not have eternal life. They have, literally, eternal death. One who is not alive cannot feel pain, torture, etc. The natural man, without the spiritual man, merely ceases to exist. At least, that is what scripture says. And throwing one into a “lake of fire” is gonna end their body pretty darned fast.

Sorry, I had to quit last night when it was time for supper and then I had to put the children in bed.

And what happens to a person when they are put into a lake of fire?

A person with a mortal body would be incinerated, but what kind of body will the resurrected unsaved people have? I don't know, but if the Bible tells me that they can remain alive in a lake of fire, just like Anti Christ who is a man will remain alive during the 1000-year reign of Christ, I believe it.

You like to emphasize that annihilation IS eternal punishment. Really? I mean, once a person is annihilated, when that person does not exist any longer, how can that person be punished? I think you mean that those people are "not rewarded" eternally. That's not necessarily the same thing than punished. I think of my son, he gets rewarded when he gets As in his report card, punished if he gets an F... but what about other grades? he's neither rewarded nor punished. That's what you are suggesting for the unsaved. And that is NOT what the Bible says.

I must confess that your idea is nice, kind of makes sense in a human way of thinking. But, what does Prv. 16:25 say? There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

I can tell you are NOT going to change your mind... and neither am I. I just hope you don't send someone to hell based on a false sense of security.

—A person with a mortal body would be incinerated, but what kind of body will the resurrected unsaved people have?—

That is the important question upon which all positions on this rest. The bible says that Christians are “natural man” and “Spiritual Man”. It also says that men who are not Christs are not “spiritual men”. So what exactly is thrown into the lake of fire in their case? I dunno. It is why I think the “lake of fire” thing is like “wheels within wheels” and Locusts with the faces of men and the hair of women. Heck, it could be the surface of the sun. 8->

But the thing that I keep focusing on is that the bible strongly implies that what we interpret as the passage of time is merely a part of the creation in which we live. It is not part of eternity. So the whole concept of “frying in a big vat of fire for ever and ever “in eternity” is not something we can really comprehend. And I do not consider God to be a vindictive God. Rather, It is as if he treats the non believers and tares, weeds, chaff, to be thrown out.

That is huge to me. It represents an attitude. They are not actively punished by God any more than you “punish” the weeds you pull out of your garden. Rather, it is a simple removal from your presence and your world, like so much dust you sweep up and toss outside or into the bin.

And another important thing to notice is that the difference between those that are written in the book of life (there’s that word again) and those thrown into the lake of fire is not how good they were. Rather, it is that each person in each group CHOSE to accept the atoning blood of Jesus or not accept it. The whole “feeling the punishment every day for eon after eon” thing just doesn’t “seem right”. I use those words because TWICE Solomon says, “There is a way that seems right to a man but its end is death.”

Doesn’t mean I’m wrong here, but it does mean I need to search the scriptures and pray and meditate on it. And that is what I have done. Once I dropped the turn or burn thinking God remained just as just as he ever was in my mind, but also more “true” to his nature as I read scripture.

And I base that last sentence on what God did to his enemies in the OT. He did allow them to suffer as he tried to turn them to him, but when he was done, he simply had them wiped out. I see that as a sort of symbol of what happens to the non believer if they die in their sins. They are simply cast out. And without the presence of God, life cannot exist in any form.

—I think of my son, he gets rewarded when he gets As in his report card, punished if he gets an F... but what about other grades? he’s neither rewarded nor punished. That’s what you are suggesting for the unsaved. And that is NOT what the Bible says.—

No. That is not what I am saying. I’m not even thinking on that plane. It is all black and white to me. It is binary. You are either Christs or you are not Christs. That’s it.

And people can get all A’s and not be Christs or they can be continually flunking and be Christ’s. Although faith without works is dead, it is not the works that save you. It is the faith. Faith in Christ.

Romans 7:23-25

but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

I truly want to be with Him for eternity. I really do fall into the “hate this world” camp. I can appreciate it as much as the next guy, but only as a college student gets through those four years and onto “real life” or a baby in the womb, preparing for birth. Life is a mist. To me, man’s lifespan is one day - today.

And then eternity with Christ, or a casting out as garbage.

If you read Ecclesiastes cover to cover, you get a hint of how I feel about the fate of non-Christians. And the twist at the end hints of the fate of Christians.

—I can tell you are NOT going to change your mind... and neither am I.—

Not true. I did change my mind. I used to believe in the eternal damnation suffering for all time and all that. It is what I got in countless sermons and always thought that it was a foregone conclusion and everybody “knew” that.

Until I actually studied it. That is when I changed my mind.

It has happened with a lot of things, but most far more subtle.

I was a pre-tribulationist when I first became a Christian. I went to an AG church so what do you expect? ;-P

But the more I studied it, the more problems I had with the teaching. I eventually became a “mid-tribulationist” or, more precisely post-tribulation, pre-wrath. This happened in the mid-1980’s. I came across a web site about five years ago that sums up my position really well. It is here:

http://watchmanbiblestudy.com/BibleStudies/Definitions/Def_Pretrib.htm

In a nutshell, Pre-tribulationists see Revelation 4 as the rapture while I see it in Revelation 7, beginning at verse 9.

And this is a little off topic, but I compare the bible to a hologram on glass vs a picture on glass. If you break the picture, each piece contains a piece of the picture. If you break the hologram, each peice contains the entire picture, but from a specific angle.

Every verse in the bible is a view of God from a particular perspective. As one reads the word and adds up the pieces, many of the mysteries and confusing scripture becomes more clear. Sometimes a verse makes no sense because the reader is trying to get it to fit into their own view of what Christianity is rather than trying to learn more about God. And sometimes it “seems right” because it actually IS right.

And as a pastor friend of me mentioned last year, Most Christians spend the first couple of years studying the bible and come up with a specific belief system and then they spend the rest of their life reading the bible to defend that belief system, often ignoring clear evidence that they have picked up some incorrect beliefs. Try arguing the “ever virgin Mary” concept with some catholics and you’ll see what I mean. They have to believe it or many of their other beliefs collaps.

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