Nov 30 Part 2 of the Lake of Fire study

And welcome to everyone and welcome to All Things Fulfilled. I'm William Bell and we're going to be talking about part two of the lake of fire and just touching on a few other things regarding it before we close out this part of our study and move into the next section. Hope you've had a good week and I want to make sure that I got all my ducks in a row here. So give me just one moment. I think we got that going. Yeah. And, um, looks like the audio is good. So if there's any problem with that, you know, go ahead and, and let me know, but it looks like we're good. Okay. Good morning to you, Eric. And to Ron, I believe it was on as well. I would grateful to be here on last week. We talked about the lake of fire and we spoke a little bit about some misconceptions, death and Hades. Um, we talked about the judgment on Jerusalem. Uh, we mentioned that, um, it was a judgment on the, um, as well on the centers that are listed in Revelation 21 and verse eight. Uh, we also, uh, talked about the judgment on Jerusalem being a judgment on the nations because, excuse me, because of the impact that it has, um, in terms of how they were affected. And I think it even extends, uh, beyond that. And then some, uh, studies coming up, you know, I'll touch on some of those things a bit, uh, because I think that they're important for us to, uh, to take a look at. And, uh, and then we have a statement that the text says, all nations shall serve you. Uh, that's Psalm 86 and verse nine, all nations whom you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. Then we have Isaiah two and verse two that says it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, come and let us go up to the house of the Lord or to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his path for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and rebuke many people. They shall beat their swords and the plowshares and their spears and the pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah two and verse four in Zechariah 14 and verse 14, it says, Judah also will fight at Jerusalem and the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be gathered together. Gold and silver apparel and great abundance. So you can see there's an influence and there's an impact there. And we mentioned some of that when we talked about even how modern day wars affect more than one country, more than the country that it's involved in and affect other countries that are interrelated with it. Zechariah 14, 15 and following talked about all shall be such also shall be the plague on the house, excuse me, not on the house, on the horse and the mural on the camel and the donkey and on all the cattle that will be in those camps. So shall this plague be. And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts on them, there will be no rain Zechariah 14 and verse 17. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain. If they shall receive or they shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles. Actually in the language itself from the text, it says, this shall be the sin of those nations. So there seems to me a clear indication that the nations were to come up after this judgment on Jerusalem and worship. I realize that some people take that to be a reference to the historical destruction back in the time of, you know, the Babylonians, et cetera. But I think we can look at it to be also in terms of what was taking place in the future. And, you know, we can see that even a little further. Now, another thing that we said was that many of these ideas that we see concerning judgment were those that came from the Greek philosophers, et cetera. And, you know, they're platonic ideas and they go through all of these concepts about hell and Tartarus, et cetera. And a lot of that is crept into the church. People think that it's biblical. What's interesting that I found in some of the studies that I'm doing is that Christianity branched into three different areas. One, you had the Coptic church in terms of Egypt and Ethiopia. And of course, you know, we get a lot of the Apocrypha concerns and the book of Enoch from that particular branch. But the first sect was the sect of the Nazarenes, which was directly a Jewish sect. It's the earliest sect that's mentioned in the scriptures. They were the earliest followers of Christ. And they were the ones who escaped the destruction of Jerusalem, went into Pella. And as I understand it, they survived for about five centuries before we stopped hearing anything about them historically. And then you had the group that was the Grecian influence and the Roman influence. Of course, you know, this is the group through which Christianity became a state religion. And it was that group that had been largely influenced by platonic ideas. You have to understand that the first two groups would have been connected more with the Hebraic culture and mindset and position as far as the scriptures were concerned and would have maintained some relationship to them, particularly the Nazarenes. And that's documented. But the other group would have moved, would have been less involved with the Hebrew, because when you read about them, you read that some of them studied and learned Hebrew or were taught it, like Jerome, etc., and others. So they would not have been as familiar with that. And the chances are more likely that they would have drifted off into Gnosticism, that they would have drifted off into these platonic ideas about, you know, hell and burning fire and, you know, being into Taurus. I'm going to see if I can find some of the concepts that they had regarding these things. I don't know if I can find them. I'm not going to put them on the screen, but I wanted to see if I could just, you know, pull up some of them. So give me a moment to look at them, because I will share some of these with you before we move on. Let's see. Got to go through a whole list of information to try to find it. But let's see what we come up with. All right. Yeah. So you have Plato, who the resource says, uses eschatological myths to portray post-mortem judgment, reward, and torment. And these are some of the clearest classical Greek descriptions of Hades as a punitive realm. In some of his writings, one, the myth of judgment, he described torment as souls judged after death. The wicked are sent to Tartarus for punishment. You may recall, I did some studies on Tartarus. I would recommend that if you haven't listened to them, you go back and you listen to them, because it did not, as far as the Hebrew scriptures were concerned, when you look at the origin of that, you don't see this idea that Plato introduced and that had been picked up by this Greek extension of the church. You have this idea, this looks like Rodimanthus or something, judges souls stripped of earthly disguises. Great sinners are sent to Tartarus where they suffer openly as examples for others. Tyrants and unjust men receive unceasing torment. So you kind of see how this stuff is coming in, in the representative line. And then think also, you know, when you start thinking about these indulgences and other doctrines that came out of that, you can see how the influence might have kind of fueled some of these concepts that were practiced. But Plato has some of the most descriptive. The wicked are cast into Tartarus and undergo the penalties they deserve. And that was, you know, written pretty early. This is Plato's most detailed description. And then he has the Republic Book where he says that there were souls witnessed returning from a thousand-year punishment. The unjust suffered tenfold for every injustice. Many come from below, from Hades to Tartarus, reporting horrors of torment. And great criminals, tyrants remain trapped below and cannot ascend. The representative line, those who had lived unjustly came up from beneath the earth, travel worn and covered with dust. Where do you see any of that in the scripture? Nowhere. But, you know, these are the ideas that came in. And when they describe torment, explicit geographical description of Tartarus as the deepest abyss. Well, you do find in scripture that Tartarus indicates, you know, an abyss. And that was generally representative of a deep part of water, as opposed to, and when we looked at that in the lessons before, you know, that's where it led us back in Job, as we were looking at those terms. But he says, you know, it's the deepest abyss where incur, incurable, curable, whichever is, that's the best I can do with it. Souls are eternally punished. And, and so they have this categorical division of souls, reformable centers. So they had centers that you could reform. And after they're in hell or torment or Tartarus, et cetera, and they had temporary torments. But the incurably wicked were cast into Tartarus forever. So who knows that might have kind of been the basis of some of this doctrine of purgatory, where you could pray people out or, you know, they, they were reformable, you punish them for a minute or two and bring them out. I don't mean a literal minute, but you get the idea of what I'm trying to say. And, and so the impure far beneath the earth to a place of punishment, desire-driven unjust souls suffer consequences before rebirth, not as elaborate as Georgius, or I guess this is Fado, but still affirms post-mortem torment. And then you have non-Plato Greek sources describing that, you know, again, notice these are coming from Greek influence. Odysseus meets several eternally tormented centers in Hades, and you have Titus stretched out over nine acres. Vultures eat his liver daily. Tantalus, eternal hunger and thirst, food and water flee from him. Sisyphus rolls a boulder uphill endlessly. That's his torment. He's got to push the boulder uphill. And so, you know, those were classic images of torment in the Greek afterlife. And there are more that are listed there, you know, just to give you an idea of some of that that's going on. And all of this is taken from, you know, this Greek mythology and misinterpreting words that are found in the New Testament. And, and these have been used to manipulate people quite sufficiently in terms of their understanding. Now let's talk about, you know, perishing in the lake of fire, because you see the word perish a lot when you talk about, you know, judgment, etc. It is often believed that to be cast into the lake of fire means to perish in hell for all eternity. And I know that not everybody shares these views that I'm holding, but I, you know, when I did the studies on Sheol and Hades, looking at every single scripture in the Old Testament, I just couldn't find anything that suggested what you've just listened to in terms of Greek philosophers. Again, these are the myths of Platonism and Greek philosophers who introduced these concepts. They have been believed and acted upon, promoted by many to promote the doctrine of hell based on mistranslations of various words, such as Sheol and Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. In the curses of Israel, they would perish. The word perish, abad, and the Greek apoleste, future tense of Apollon, you have some of these words in the scriptures. One, let me turn there and just kind of read a couple of these passages, Leviticus chapter 26 and verse 38. Leviticus 26 and 38. Let's see what that, what that says. All right. Verse 38, the text says, and this is in the, in the curses that God mentions for Israel for transgressing the law and that they would receive as we laid out on these studies, talking about the wrath that they would experience. The text says they shall stumble over one another. This is verse 37. I'm just kind of leading into it a little bit. As it were before a sword, when no one pursues and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies, you shall perish among the nations and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. So there's the word perish that's used in that text. You have it used in Deuteronomy 20 and it seems, it appears to me to mean nothing but death. They would perish, meaning that they would die. They would be killed by the sword or by the judgments that God brought on them through their enemies in Deuteronomy 28 and verse two, this is a 22. This is another parallel text to the judgments that are mentioned in Leviticus chapter 26 in verse 22. The text says, the Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching and with mildew, they shall pursue you until you perish. Did he mean that they would pursue them until they go to hell and torment? No, the text says they will pursue you until you perish, until you die. 29 and verse 10, let's see what that one says. 29 and 10. I think I got the wrong, either I got the wrong book or the wrong chapter there, but let's take a couple from, let's look at one in Ezekiel chapter five and verse 12. I'm just trying to give some ideas of how the term is used in scripture for perish, because we have that text word used several times in the New Testament and associated with this, you know, eternal torment and fire. Ezekiel chapter five and verse 12 says, one third of you shall die of the pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst. And one third shall fall by the sword all around you. And I will scatter another third to all the winds and will draw out a sword against them. And so this one just says that, you know, they would be scattered to the wind and consumed in their midst. I'm wondering if that's where the word perish is found. Let's see in Matthew 24, 29, which is one in the New Testament. And we're going to look at, you know, several others in the New Testament as well, because I want to get some of these passages in front of you that deal with this. Matthew 24 and verse 29. And I think that's, well, I don't want to express what my thought is on it at this point in terms of what it is. Let's just read it and see what it has to say. All right. Matthew 24 and verse nine says, all these things are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my namesake. Apparently there's a text that speaks of perishing. I don't know how I missed that in some of these references that were given here, but here's some that I know that are there and that they're very clear. All right. In Jonah, we find the word perish. The text speaks about what happened when Jonah was sent to preach to the Ninevites. And the text says, who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. All right. Was he talking about going to torment in hell, or was he talking about dying as a result of the enemies that were going to come upon them being used by God as an instrument against them? Then he says, but the Lord said, you have had pity. And he's talking now to Jonah in the next chapter saying, but the Lord said, you have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished. So did he go to hell or torment forever when he perished? No, this is talking about the plant in this case that perished. And then he says, and should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock. In the new Testament, Jesus calmed the storm to prevent the saints from perishing, which is a present active indicative, by the way. Notice he calmed the storm to prevent the saints from perishing. In other words, they were in a state or a condition where they were perishing and Jesus calmed the storm to end the tumultuous winds that were going on to prevent them from continuing to perish. Well, they were not in torment in hell from that. It says in a great windstorm arose and the waves beat into the boat so that it was already feeling, but he was in the stern asleep on a pillow. And they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? So perish doesn't mean to experience eternal torment in hell. Mr. Ando, all the way from Jukwa in Ghana, we met at a wedding that I went to attend there. So good to hear from you and thank you for tuning in. There's Zola Flowers, Morris, all the way from South Africa. And by the way, Zola, I talked to a lady that we met in Burkina Faso, who you might want to get in touch with. I'll give you her number. But she's there. I think she's in Pretoria. So good morning to all of you. But, you know, these friends, one was a high school classmate and the other is a gentleman, a preacher that I met from who lives near Solomon Bido, or at least kind of in the area, not too far from him. But anyway, let's get back to the message. So they asked the question, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? That was an experience going on at the time, but they were not in hell and torment. So it doesn't mean dying in eternal torment in hell. And then we ask, did Jesus send the swine to eternal conscious torment? It says in a great windstorm arose and the waves beaten to the boat. So that was already filling. And suddenly they cried out, what are we to do with you, Jesus, you son of God. I read those two scriptures together and suddenly they cried out saying, what are we to do with you, Jesus, you son of God, have you come here to torment us before the time before the appointed time. And I don't think he was going to the place that the Greeks were talking about. It shall be in that day says the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they shall no longer be remembered. I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land, Zechariah 13 and verse two. And he's talking about cutting them off from the land. They will perish from the land. Back to Matthew eight and verse 32, he said to them, go. So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine and suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea and watch and perished in the water. Again, that couldn't be hell. That couldn't be this concept of hell that people have and that they have imposed on the scriptures. Jesus used the term in Luke 13 and verse one to talk about the fate of the people who rejected him that would expect that they, uh, when they would experience this in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, it says they were present at that season. Some who told him about the Galileans, whose blood pilot had mingled with their sacrifices. I remember as a young preacher that, um, this text was used oftentimes, even in the invitation, uh, to warn people of being, you know, of, of perishing and, and going to hell. And I looked at it even maybe, uh, even before becoming a preterist or sometime thereafter, but I looked at it and I said, this can't be what that's talking about, but notice he says, I tell you, no, but, uh, he says, do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? Now, what had happened to them? It says that pilot had mingled their blood with the sacrifices, which means that they died, they perished. And so Jesus asked the question, he answered and said to them, do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Now, what is he saying? He's saying, they're going to die in the same manner that these Galileans did. They're going to be put to death. Their blood will be mingled with the sacrifices. Look at what happened in the destruction of Jerusalem and what Josephus describes. And you will see that that was basically literally true. Or he says those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam failed and killed them. Do you think that they were worse sinners than all of the men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but except you repent, you will all likewise perish. That's just speaking of their dying in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Then you have second Peter chapter three and verse six, when Peter talks about the flood of Noah. And he says that the world that then was, or that then existed perished being flooded with water. Now, wait a minute. If they perished and perish means to go to hell, you know, in torment, et cetera, there are those who look at second Peter two and three and use that to talk about these people being reserved to judgment, that they would experience judgment at a later time. So how could their dying in the flood be an eternal torment as, as many people have understood it. Then you have the text in John chapter three and verse 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, should not die. And the word is consistent pretty much all the way through, but have everlasting life. Now, everlasting life is contrasted over against perishing. Jesus is the only one who has immortality. So the only way a person can live forever is through Christ. There is no living forever for those who are unbelievers. They die, they perish. Let me look at a couple more scriptures and then we'll close the lesson in Matthew 16, starting in verse 24. And you have this parallel in, you know, the synoptic gospels, and you have a reference to it actually in John chapter 12. Also when you think about it, but in Matthew chapter 16 and verse 24, notice how Jesus interchanges the words in this text to talk about dying or losing one's soul. In my understanding, it's just one's life. He says to his disciples, if anyone comes, desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Now the cross was a symbol of suffering and death. I don't think Jesus went to torment when he died on the cross. I'm pretty sure that he didn't. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. That just means he dies in the cause of serving Christ. Like Jesus told him in John 16, the one who kills you, told the apostles, or is that John 13? It's one of those texts. The one who kills you will think that they're doing God a service. So he's saying here, for what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? In one text, he says they lose their life. The other text says he loses his soul. Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? So in my judgment, he's using the terms interchangeably there to talk about one's life, talk about dying. And then I'll end on 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Stephen George says, Jesus's use of likewise in Luke 13 was the kicker for me. Once I stopped reading right past that term, that's right, and stopped to think what that was saying, I realized it wasn't what we've been saying for so long. And that's absolutely correct. And so let's look at our last scripture for this morning. And that is 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 18. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 18. This is in the context of the resurrection, but he's saying something about these conditions that would be true if there were no resurrection of the dead. And of course, that's a whole other study. I've done that study once, and I'm going to be doing more on it in time to come. But in 1 Corinthians 15, if you will notice, and let's just start reading at verse 12 to kind of get a little gist of the context. Now, if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Now, it wasn't everybody who was saying there was no resurrection. It was just some among them who were saying that there were no resurrection of the dead ones. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen because he's showing the solidarity between Christ and the dead ones. These are Old Testament saints who had already been dead. Since Christ was a part of them, it couldn't have been anyone beyond the death of Christ because they were already dead and Christ rose out of that group. So they had to have been the Old Testament saints. They couldn't have been New Testament saints that he's talking about. And there were some in Corinth who were denying the resurrection of these Old Testament saints like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, et cetera, and others. And so he says, and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching empty. And your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up the Christ whom he did not raise up if the dead rise not. Now, he didn't say that the if Christ is not raised, the dead are not raised. He said if the dead are not raised, Christ was not raised. And so we need to really focus in on that. But he also said, for if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. That's what I just said before that's found in verse 16. Now, these are the verses that I want you to focus on, 17 and 18. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. See, that's the consequence of not being raised. It means that you're still in your sins. Then he says, also those who have fallen asleep in Christ. Now, what were they supposed to receive? They were supposed to receive life. Jesus told him, if a man keep my word, he shall never see death. And so they were already in the process of being made alive. When you look at the language, it's in first Corinthians 15. But he says, if Christ is not risen to the living, you are yet in your sins. And to the dead ones, you've perished, you cease to live, you die, you're done. So consistently through the scriptures, the word parish meant to die. So when we're looking at Revelation 21 and verse eight, we're not talking about anyone going to some eternal conscious torment. We're talking about people being put to death, severed from Christ, never having the opportunity to live with him forever, as we see expressed in Christ being the only one through whom we receive immortality. That's going to wrap up what I have to say. I've already spoken on it in previous texts and lessons. You can go back and look at it. But I wanted to add that little extra on some of the sources of this platonic doctrine of conscious torment, hell and etc. And also look at the word parish so that as we read those scriptures, we understand that it's just talking about dying. So I hope that helps everyone. And if any of you are first time listeners, we hope that you will come back because we'll have more interesting information for you studying straight from the scriptures as best as we possibly can to explain it as simply as we can. We also encourage you to visit our YouTube channel at All Things Fulfilled where we have over 1000 videos there on these subjects and others that will help you get grounded, I believe very well. And then there are others who are publishing videos as well. But you can do that. We get messages all the time from people who study from those videos and it changes their life. They come out with an awareness after their study and are really appreciative of the things that they learned. Share the video for others because you know people that I don't know, you have contacts that I will never see or be involved with. Share the message with them by sharing the link on your pages and other social media. And with that, we're going to say good morning to you. And we will be starting in Revelation 21 and verse 9 on next week. So with that, have a good morning. Let me say hello to all of the people who are here. Let's see, we have Eric, of course, he's always first in line. And then we have Roosevelt, Tyrone Johnson, Carol, Beatrice, Robin, Zola, Abednego Ando from Ghana, Alan Ash, Gail Simpson, Steve George, Heatherington, Deborah, Sherry, here for her first time, so we welcome you and hope that you'll come back. There's Dale and Tommy Braswell. And if there are any others who are there that I missed, charge it to my head and not to my heart. And those of you who come in later and watch the broadcast, we appreciate you as well. With that, we're going to close out and say have a good morning.