Edition 454: January 29^th 2019

The importance of hell:

Introduction:

This is a highly positive edition, perhaps the most positive you will read in a long time. It is positive in that it puts back a major doctrine of Messiah into its rightful place, after it has been ignored or removed by blind guides in pulpits.

Isaiah 14:12-14 “How you are fallen, from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations. You said you will ascend into heaven and exalt your throne above the stars of God...You said – ‘I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol (hell), to the lowest depths of the pit.” (Luke 10:18)

Some names for hell in the scriptures include: Hell, Hades, Sheol, Gehenna, Tartarus, Outer darkness, and the Lake of fire. There are many other types of hell seen in the Bible.

There are various degrees of eternal reward for believers, and there are degrees of punishment in hell for unbelievers. Here are some appropriate verses: Matthew 10:14-15, Matthew 11:20-21, Hebrews 10:29, Revelation 20:12.

God is the creator of hell and He has the keys!

Revelation 1:18 “I am He who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Hades and death.”

The principle of hell:

We see a most important list of the six foundational doctrines of Messiah for the church in Hebrews 6:1-2. Every single doctrine in the Bible finds it place somewhere on this foundation. The final doctrine is “Eternal judgement.” This includes judgement itself, and hell. Please note that it is an “elementary foundational doctrine.”

As a teacher / pastor, you have no right or authority to remove any part of the foundation of growth in Messiah, for your flock, because you deem it uncouth or unpopular! You have no right to change it, or water it down as most have done...just when it is needed most!

Canned, dead religion has created heaven on earth and no hell, except by name, and even that, many blind ministers won’t even use. New doctrines that exclude hell are all false, and their authors are blind to the demons on their back.

An obvious essential principle is to warn, as a danger approaches. The nearer it gets the more frequent and louder the warning must be. Yet when it comes to eternal judgement and hell, the opposite is true within many churches.

Judgment and hell:

The one big thing the unsaved world, and media in particular have not bargained for, is coming judgement. Judgement is the great revealer. It sees deeper than any radar, with perfect sight, and has perfect memory. It is the spotter, the locater and the red flag!

It hides nothing! We as believers have the great privilege of having ourselves cleansed now by the judgement of the cross, and by judging ourselves now as we go forward.

In Eden God answered sin with judgement. At Babel, He answered sin with judgment. At the flood He answered sin with judgement. At Sodom, He answered sin with judgement. At the cross He answered the sin of the world with judgment.

Do you think you will escape judgement?

If you think about it, judgement is only bad and harmful if you love sin and have no intention of repenting from your wicked ways.

Judgement destroys sin, it purges and cleanses. It is good – very good!

Only those in darkness can live in peace in this world of sin. But at Armageddon they will run and hide from the light of judgement.

The characteristics of hell:

Hell is not a place of correction. That is a hell-born Catholic concept. Hell is a place of eternal punishment. Correction is for this life. There is no hope of escape from hell, once there.

Isaiah 38:18 “Sheol (hell) cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your truth.”

Hell is a place of torment, punishment and suffering – for eternity.

Luke 16:23 “Being in torment in Hades, he lifted up his eyes...”

2 Peter 2:4 “God did not spare the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, reserved for judgement.”

A central characteristic of hell is that it comes after judgement and is therefore just and fair, being based on God’s law.

If there was no law, no one could legally be sent to hell.

If you remove the law, there is nothing to repent of, because law identifies what sin is. Law is for sinners. If you remove it, because of the nature of man’s heart, you have anarchy and tyranny.

1 Timothy 1:9 “The law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners...”

Romans 7:7 “...I would not have known sin, except through the law...”

I am not referring here to living under the law rather than grace, but that is another subject.

Satan’s ace is to get rid of law so there will be lawlessness and get rid of hell, so there will be no punishment. But there is no such thing as lawlessness and no such thing as no hell.

Charley Finny taught on how to preach to get no enduring results: “Preach love and grace with no law or accountability. Love with no law, and repentance gets lots of decisions for Christ, but no enduring results.”

(Dr. Finny was a hellfire preacher about 250 years ago, who has the record of the most converts remaining faithful to the Lord till their death. He was one of my spiritual fathers.)

The tragic results of removing hell from your thinking:

The removal of hell-teaching from the church makes the church inoffensive, with no fear of the Lord, repentance, or centrality of the cross. It fills the church with twisted, popular doctrines and nice happy, spiritually blind, dumb people.

Tolerance of, and relevance to the modern ways of the world, is simply tolerance of thoroughly modern Satan.

Silence and neutrality in the face of sin, gives it licence. It does not mean that the consequences, judgement and hell, have been neutralised!

Dante, the Italian poet of the Middle Ages wrote: “The darkest places of hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Satan’s ace is love and peace with sin neutralised and hell removed, no righteousness, and no judgement to come.

If Satan can remove hell from the Christian’s doctrine there would be all manner of evil in the church – just like it is today!

If you could remove sin, evil and hell, you would have a terrible, evil, sin-filled heaven.

Fools think they can remove judgement and hell because they remove the words for it!

If you eliminate wrath or severity you also interfere with grace. If there is no sin-guilt there is no need of acquittal, which means there is no need of grace and mercy. Your salvation is then as valuable as a rotten pea instead of a pearl of great price.

Grace and mercy shine brightly in view of hell. Where there is no hell, grace and mercy are dull to non-existent.

Avoiding hell-teaching, plays right into the hands of hell.

World leaders in hell:

Isaiah 14:9 “Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming. It stirs up the dead for you, all the chief ones of the earth, it has raised up from their thrones, all the kings of the nations.”

Ezekiel 32:21 “The strong and the mighty shall speak out of the midst of hell with those who help him...”

Isaiah 5:14 (Amp) “Sheol the unseen realm of the dead, has enlarged its appetite, and opened its mouth without measure, and nobility and her multitude and pomp, descend into it.”

Psalm 9:17 “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”

You could add to this all the celebrities and famous entertainers of the day as well, with very few exceptions!

Some general verses on hell:

Psalm 55:15 “Let death seize them; let them go down alive to hell.”

Proverbs 27:20 “Hell and destruction are never full. So the eyes of man are never satisfied.”

Isaiah 33:14 “...Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”

Matthew 3:12 “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn. But He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 22:13 “...Bind him hand and foot, take him away and cast him into outer darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Revelation 20:10 “The devil who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Proverbs 23:13-14 “Do not withhold correction from a child; if you beat him with a rod, he will not die, you shall delver his soul from hell.”

Romans 2:5 “In accordance with your hard and impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God.”

John 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

How many go to hell:

Obviously, it’s impossible to know, but we do see some scary indicators in the scriptures.

Only those on the “narrow road” are saved, while those on the “wide road go to destruction.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

The theme of many and few, with many going to destruction and few being saved, repeats often in the Bible. Here are some of the verses:

Luke 13:23. Revelation 3:4, 1 Peter 3:20, Matthew 9:37

Many will seek to be saved but will not. They want salvation, but are not prepared to change their ways and meet the conditions. (Luke 13:23-24)

I strongly encourage you, even if saved for a long time, to read through the verses under the “Salvation” tab on the right hand side of this website.

God desires all to be saved. (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9) But we see that He predestines those to be saved that He, in His foreknowledge knows will turn to Him. (Ephesians 1:4)

If you are truly born of God, there will be signs and fruits: “He who is born of God overcomes the world”. (1 John 5:4) Those born of God are given authority to become children of God (change) (John 1:2) “He who is born of God loves.” (1 John 4:7)

Galatians 5:22 lists the fruits of the Spirit of God in your life. They are: Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

The fruits of the spirit of Satan in people are seen in the previous verses, Galatians 5:18-21: Legalism, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery , hatred contentions, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissentions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelries and the like.

John 10:10 “The thief (Satan) comes to kill steal and destroy.” He is the “father of lies.” (John 8:44)

Churches who will go to hell:

The messages to the seven churches in the Revelation are profound, accurate assessments of the church. These messages relate to seven historic churches, to all churches today, and then there is an amazing prophetic plot of the course church history here as well.

Every church can find its identity within these seven. (Revelation chapters 2 &3)

The church of Thyatira is interpreted by most (including me) as relating to the Catholic, and other orthodox churches. These are clearly not saved. (Revelation 2:20-24)

The church at Sardis relates to the spiritually dead churches of the reformation. (Revelation 3:1-3)

The church of Laodicea, the lukewarm church, relates to many end-time, spirit-less churches. It is spat out. (Revelation 3:15-16)

Much of the church today is entering a new dark age of gross blindness. Its clergy are dead bones dressed in Nicolaitan fancy, garb.

There is a direct relationship between the decline into sin of many churches as well as society, with the removal of hell from teaching and preaching.

Hell-teaching creates spiritual balance and godly health.

Ministers who don’t teach clearly on hell have no fear of the Lord in them, none of them! That should be a giant warning light and red flag right there!

By refusing to preach on hell because it’s not politically correct, or for any reason, legitimises sin, and gives it license.

Of course there is a misuse of the preaching of hell, in the form of brow-beating. But that is the case with other important doctrines too. That does not justify its removal.

Hell and severity is an appropriate biblical tool of warning used by our Lord and His disciples.

►Love warns, hate does not!

Ezekiel 3:18 “When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand.”

Those who won’t teach on wrath, judgement and hell are man pleasers. They seek the approval of man. They have the blood of many on their hands, just like Herod who had John the Baptist executed to find approval from his guests.

Here at The Prophetic Scroll, you will always get your needed dose of heaven and hell-teaching!

“It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31) But it is also a fearful thing to be loved by the living God!

The role of the mass-media in sending people to hell:

“He who has an ear let him hear” Is a commonly used phrase in the Bible. It implies that only certain types can hear God. You have to meet the conditions. If not, you automatically have ears to hear the world through its god, Satan and his voice, the mass-media.

As we approach the great end-time dramas, Satan knows his time is very short. (Revelation 12:12) And as a result, turns up the volume of his media circus.

“The spiritual man judges all things.” (1 Corinthians 2:15) He will not be influenced by the godless media. The mass-media judges all things according to its fallen, polluted, skewed, demonic base. The “spiritual man” must receive from God’s media and reject the world’s media.

We are to “Love the truth. (2 Thessalonians 2:10) We are to know that the “truth is the foundational pillar of the church.” (1 Timothy 3:15) But we must see that this is a great hindrance to the love of world and the love of self. That is why Satan is attacking the very pillars of truth today.

Here is the shocking purpose of Satan as the antichrist, preparing the world for hell:

Daniel 8:12 “An army was given over to the horn (antichrist) to oppose the daily sacrifices (in the new temple) and he cast the truth down to the ground. He did all this and prospered.”

Today, more and more, the battle is for the truth. The battle is for the truth in you.

Judgement is not according to the media’s world-view. It is not according to intellectual, liberal, democratic ways. Judgement is not according to one-world globalism or the variable values of situation ethics. It is not even according to love, but is according to truth.

The United States of the Earth, a New World Empire, a New World Order, Globalism, and Multilateralism can only come about by domination, of the dumb masses, violently, or by their voluntary capitulation. It can only come about by the light of the world, the church, going out and the “truth being cast down in the street.” (Isaiah 59:14)

One of Satan’s main strategies (also seen in the media) is to destroy the will to resist him. He uses: Demoralisation, neutralisation, personal disarmament, demilitarisation, through the removal of the spiritual warfare gifts of the Spirit.

One of the most powerful factors of salvation is release from guilt and sin in forgiveness. Heaven will be eternally holy, free from sin and evil. Hell will not. It will be a place of punishment, but also of ongoing evil and torment.

The following words relate to those in hell: Regret, anguish, grief, sorrow, and panic.

The following words relate to heaven: Peace calmness, comfort, assurance, delight, joy, and relief.

Finally

The rapture of the true church will take place in an atomic second, and it will be irreversible. There will also be a “rapture” into hell, also irreversible, at the Second Coming! (Matthew 25:31-34 Matthew 24:28)

Our God will wipe away every tear, all death, suffering, pain, mourning and sorrow, but not for the unbeliever!

There is extreme contentment and satisfaction in living for eternity. Make every moment count for eternity.

A radical fanatic is one who loves the Lord more than you do. A bigot is someone who despises the powers of evil more than you do. Both are deeply loved by our Lord.

What sets your soul on fire? Is it the things of the world or heaven?

At the end of the day (your life), you will know the truth according to God and not your own ideas anymore, or the media or your family or friends. You will stand absolutely alone before the living, eternal God who has the keys to your eternal future in His hands.

So then, the doctrine, preaching and teaching of eternal judgment completes the all important, elementary foundation for all believers.

I took the background picture in the giant sycamore tree forest in Mkuze Game Reserve. I thought the base looked a bit like a crouching lion, so I put a lion into the picture.

Shalom and grow in His Grace!