05 -- JESUS GIVES US A GLIMPSE BEYOND THE GRAVE TO TEACH AND WARN US
In this great passage in Luke 16:19-31, Jesus lifts the veil that hangs between thins world and the spirit world, so that we might know what to expect after death. He does this so that we will be forewarned and not make the wrong choice. This lesson was not given to satisfy our morbid curiosity, but rather that we might have light and truth on the future state. This is not the idle dream of some visionary person. It is the actual record that came from the lips of the Son of God. It is not vain speculation. It is light and truth given by the Son of God for our instruction and profit. To ignore it or try and explain it away is to reject part of the light and truth that Jesus came to give to the world. It is just as much a part of His teaching as the parable of the prodigal son. May God help us to see this fact. Some people only want to accept that which is pleasing to them. They have a tendency to ignore or explain away that which does not fit in with their prejudices and preconceived ideas. However, this is: a dangerous thing to do. It would be better to bring our views in line with the teachings of Jesus. After all it is by His word that we are going to be judged. If we have the light and then reject it we will be condemned by the light. Christ has given it to us to teach us the way.
Some people try to explain this passage of Scripture away by saying that it is nothing but a parable. Now if it was a parable that would not take away the point of its teaching, for Jesus used parables to teach truth. Hie does not use parables just to entertain people. When Jesus did use a parable it was always true to the facts that it was used to teach. So, if this was a parable then the truth meant to be taught by it would be the same.
However, I am convinced in my own mind that it is not a parable. There is nothing about it that would indicate that it is a parable. When Jesus spoke by parable, in other places, the context clearly states or indicates that a parable is being used. There is nothing here that would even suggest that it is a parable. In fact, everything about it would indicate otherwise. Jesus does not say, "Let us suppose there were two men." He says, "There was a certain rich man. There was a certain beggar," and then He even goes so far as to give us the name of the beggar. As Bud Robinson once said, "There, my brother, you have his name and his post-office address." That is true. Jesus is here talking about two real characters in life. They lived just as we are living today. They died just as we will die some day, and after death they found themselves in a state of conscious existence, just as we will some day find ourselves. Jesus is telling us about the state of those two men so that we will know what to expect after death.
In this passage there are several very vital truths brought out. These truths are worthy of our serious consideration. Whatever our opinions may be about this passage I am sure that anyone can see that Jesus meant to teach these things:
This passage teaches that death does not end all for us.
This passage teaches us that there is a state of conscious existence beyond the grave.
This passage teaches that Christian people will be in a state of rest and happiness. It also teaches that the lost will be in a state of suffering or torment. These things are clear and plain. No one can miss this in the teaching of Jesus.
The record says that the rich man was in torments. The rich man himself testified that he was being tormented in this flame. Abraham admits that the rich man is in torment. Certainly Jesus meant to teach that this man was being tormented in the after fire. Whatever else this passage may teach it certainly does teach that there will be torment for lost people after death.
If this were the only passage in the Bible on the subject, then we might be able to explain this teaching away, but this is not the only passage on the subject. There are numbers of others that teach the same thing. In all the utterances of Jesus on this subject He was very clear and emphatic in His teaching, that there will be suffering or torment for lost souls. He speaks of everlasting fire, everlasting punishment, weeping and gnashing of teeth. He tells us that the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Now, this is His language and His teaching. It is just as much a part of His teaching as anything He ever said about God, eternal life, or any other subject that He ever mentioned. To reject this teaching is to mutilate His teaching and it means we wilt be plunged into darkness. We will have a one-sided conception of eternity and the future state of men and women. My dear reader, I wish I could get you to see this fact. I am not trying to win an argument. I am not just trying to prove that I am right and some one else is wrong. I am not trying to uphold the creed of some sect or denomination. I am trying to get you to see what Jesus the Son of God taught about hell and eternal punishment. It is worth your while to listen to what He says on the subject. Whether you agree with me in my theology is of minor importance in comparison to knowing the truth on this subject. His word will stand when the world is on fire. May God help us to accept His word on this subject!
Many times I have had people come to me and ask me if I think this fire is literal fire, like we have in our furnaces and stoves. I am frank to confess that I do not know. The only thing that I know is that Jesus says it is eternal fire and that it will never be quenched. It is not my business to change His words and say that He does not know. I will take my stand with Him and declare that there is a place of eternal fire, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. I could not preach less than this and preach the truth.
I will say this, I have found by observation and experience that there is more than one kind of fire. I have found that there is a fire that can burn in men's minds and hearts, and the longer it burns the hotter it gets. It does not have to be replenished from the outside, but furnishes its own fuel. There is the fire of guilty conscience that can burn and burn for years and the longer it burns the hotter it gets. Many people can testify to this fact. In fact, many people do testify to it each year. The Federal Government at Washington receives a number of letters each year with sums of money enclosed in them. They come from people who have taken something that did not belong to them, and their conscience would not let them rest until they did something about it. Sometime ago I read in the newspaper about a wealthy woman in New York City that ran off with the family chauffeur. They carried a large sum of money with them and intended to live together and have a good time the rest of their days. However, it was only a few months until they were found dead in each other's arms. They had rented a room in a cheap hotel in New York City and had committed suicide. On a table by their bed they left a note with this message on it: "George and I thought we could go against the laws of God and man and live as we pleased, but we found ourselves in hell. We are going to end it all in this way." The trouble is they did not end it all. They did not get out of hell. They just, got in so deep they will never get out. However, they found out by sad experience that it is not safe to trifle with your conscience.
No doubt you have either read or heard of the Scarlet Letter, that striking story that was told of the minister who seduced a fine girl in his congregation and stole her virtue. Finally, the people of his church learned that she was an expectant mother. They called her before the church for trial. She refused to reveal to them who the father of the child was. She was expelled from the church and was forced to wear a scarlet letter, A, on her garments to show to the world that she was guilty of adultery. No one suspected that the pastor of the church was just as guilty as she. He went on about his business and the people thought he was a great saint. In fact, they often talked about his piety. However, that minister had to meet that girl every day on the streets, and he had to stand and look at her accusing eyes on Sunday, as she sat and looked up at him. He had to live with the consciouses that he had sinned against God and that beautiful girl. Finally he could stand it no longer. One day he collapsed in the pulpit. When they rushed to him and pulled aside his clothing to minister to him, to the amazement of all they found a scarlet letter, A, in the skin on his chest. He had a fire in his own breast that had burned and burned and burned until it had burned clear through to the outside.
I don't know whether there will be any other kind of fire in hell or not, but I do know that if there is only the fire of conscience to burn, and burn, and burn, then that will be hell enough for many people. To have to live forever with a guilty conscience would be enough hell for many people. God would not have to send any coals of fire to hell to make it hot for them. They have their own hell within their own breast.
Some years ago a man came back from Texas to North Carolina and walked into the sheriff's office and confessed to murder. He told them that twenty years before he had killed a man in a quarrel, and then had fled to Texas and had been there ever since. He told them where they could find the man's grave. No one knew about this crime. In fact, the people had thought these two men had left the country together. After this man had made his confession and was being tried for his crime a young man went up to him and said, "You are the biggest fool in forty-eight states. No one knew about this crime but you, and you had kept the secret for twenty years. You could have kept it the rest of your life and lived as a free man." The old man looked at the young fellow and said, "Son, I am not as big a fool as you think. You have never had to live with a guilty conscience. I have been in hell for twenty years now, and I wanted to get out and have a little peace before I die. I had rather be in jail and have peace than to be free to roam the world with hell in my breast. I have never had a minute's peace since I killed that man, until I came back and confessed. You have no idea the hell I have lived in." None of us can realize what kind of hell he had passed through unless we have had somewhat the same experience. Just think of having an eternity of that and no chance of ever getting relief and peace. That would be hell enough for anyone, if there was nothing else but the fire of conscience.
However, there are other kinds of fire and they can burn just as hot and last just as long as the fire of conscience. The fire of remorse can burn in the human breast until it will almost dethrone your reason and drive you to suicide. In fact, many people have committed suicide just on account of the fire of remorse. Others have become mentally unbalanced in worrying over something they have done and could not rectify. The fire of remorse is one of the greatest fires known to man.
I remember sometime ago I was holding a meeting for a brother minister, and one day he asked me to go out into the country with him to make a call. As we drove out to the home the pastor told me about the man we were to call upon. He was a fine citizen and a loyal member of the church. A few days before the revival started he had accidentally run over a tramp and killed him. It was purely accidental and no charges were brought against the man. However, the pastor said to me, "We are very uneasy about him. It is preying on his mind until we are afraid he is going to break under it." I shall never forget the experience I had in that home. The wife met us at the door and her eyes were red from weeping. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hand. The man's mother was an invalid, seated in a wheel chair. As we sat there she wrung her hands and wept. She said, "Poor William, we are so uneasy about him. We are afraid he is going to crack under this." Finally we went up to the bedroom to see the man, and found him cringing and hiding under the covers like a scared animal. He would peep out from under the cover at us and whimper and cry like a frightened puppy. He said, "O, if I could just forget it and go to sleep. If I could just slip off into sleep for one night I believe I would get over it, but I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes I can see him there in the road dead, with the blood oozing out of his mouth, nose and ears. I can see his eyes rolled back in his head! Just to think that I snuffed out a life and did not give him a chance to pray and get right with God! They tell me he was drunk, and no doubt he died and went to hell, and I am to blame for it. I believe it is going to drive me crazy."
As we left that home and drove back to the city, I turned to the pastor and said, "If an innocent man can suffer like that over a thing he could not help, what do you suppose hell will be like for the sinner?" Reader, can you imagine the anguish of a soul in outer darkness with nothing to do but think and remember all of his sins, and then realize the awful consequences of that sinful life? Can you imagine what that would be like to a father, who had lived in sin and been instrumental in his children being lost and damned forever? Can you imagine what hell will be like for a man like Hitler to have to spend eternity thinking over his sins and the consequences of his sinful, selfish life? If there was not a literal coal of fire in a million miles of him he would still have hell enough in his own breast to burn, and burn, and burn throughout the endless eons of eternity. That would be hell enough. God would not have to lift his finger to add to that man's punishment. He has hell in his own soul. This is the kind of fire that can never be quenched. It will never go out.
Another kind of fire that does not need to be replenished is the fire of memory. Psychologists tell us that we never forget anything. It makes an indelible impression on the memory that never can be erased. You remember that Abraham said to the rich man in hell, "Son, remember." He was doing just that very thing. He remembered Lazarus and his poverty. He remembered his five brethren. I imagine that was one of the things that was causing him torment. No doubt he was remembering them and his influence upon them. He at least was concerned about them and did not want them to come to that place. May I say that incidentally this man tells us why he was in hell. He was not there because he was rich. He was not there because he had failed to feed Lazarus. He said, "Perhaps if Lazarus goes back and testifies to them, they will repent, and not come to this place of torment." He implies that if they would repent they would not come to hell. If he had repented he would not have gone there. He was lost not because he was rich, but rather because he would not repent of his sins. He was like a lot of people today. He loved sin and would not give it up, and that is why he was in hell. But now he is remembering, and he does not want his five brothers to make the same fatal mistake he had made. I trust that God will use this message to save some one from making the same mistake. If you will repent of your sins and get right with God you will not go to that place.
One of the worst forms of insanity that a person can have is that kind where you get something on your mind and can't get rid of it. A person may be perfectly normal on every other point but they have something on their mind they can't throw off, and they worry about it, on, and on, and on. I have had to deal with a number of such cases. I have tried to reassure them and get them to think about something else, but they would come right back to that one thing. It haunted them day and night until they became insane.
Some years ago I visited an insane asylum where they had over twenty-one hundred cases. Everywhere you went you saw people thinking and thinking. Some would be walking the floor thinking. Some would be sitting in chairs thinking. Some would be gazing out the window thinking. We went into a shop where some of the patients were working. Some of them were doing the most childish things. I said to the man who was showing us around, "What is the idea of this? These people are wasting their time doing those silly things." He turned to me and assured me that they were not wasting their time. In fact he said that was the best thing in the world for them. He told me that if they could get the patient's mind off of himself, and get him to think of something else, then there was hope for him. However, he said there were some cases that could not be helped, because they could not think of anything else but the thing that had driven them crazy. We went into what he called their worst ward and saw their worst cases. He carried me into a long room where they had twenty-one bath tubs and each tub had a man in it. They were suspended on canvas and covered with canvas. There was a hole cut in the canvas just large enough for the face to stick out. Cold water was being sprayed over those patients. I asked him why they did that, and he told me that these were their worst cases. He said, "They get to thinking and worrying. Their fever runs up and we have to do something to quiet them down. We put them in these tubs and let the water spray over them to cool them off and quiet them down." Then he took a thermometer out of his pocket and put it in the mouth of one of these men. We stood there and talked and he explained the treatment to us. Finally he took the thermometer out of the man's mouth and said, "Look, that man's temperature is 102 right now, and he has been in that tub for nearly two hours." I walked down that long row of tubs and looked at those poor wretches and my heart went out in pity to them. One poor fellow twisted his head around and followed me with his eyes. Finally, as I stood in the door to go, he raised up as far as he could, and with a wild look in his eye, he screamed, "I did, Mister! I did! I sure did! God knows I wish I hadn't, but I did!" I don't know what that poor wretch had done, or what he thought he had done, but whatever it was, was burning like fire in his mind, his soul, and even in his body.
As the pastor and I walked out and got in the car I turned to him and said, "I think I have a new conception now of what hell is going to be like." Can you imagine a soul that has lived in selfishness and sin, that has gone on in sin in spite of God, the church, and mother's prayers, and then that soul being cast out into eternal darkness with nothing to do but think, think, think, think, and think forever? Memory at work, conscience at work, remorse gnawing at his soul, with no ray of light to break upon his vision and no prospects of ever being delivered. My friends, that would be hell so hot that God would never even have to look that way in order to make a soul suffer, until there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. May God help us and deliver us from such a fate as that.
There is coming a time when all the sinners in the universe will be cast out into outer darkness and they will have to spend eternity together. All sin, discord, hate, lust, greed, jealousy, fear, suspicion and everything that is not right will be cast into one place. Can you imagine what that will be like? Would you want to spend eternity in such a place? To a person who loved light, peace, and harmony and such like, it would be hell to have to live with sin and discord forever.
Just the idea of darkness would be enough to make me want to keep away from such a place as that. I love light. There is something about darkness that depresses me. If it is, too dense and I have to stay there too long it makes me feel like I am going to smother, and I catch myself about to scream for help. Can you imagine a soul that was created for light, and fellowship; a soul that liked laughter and song, and then for that soul to be cast into the outer darkness of eternal despair? If there was not one single spark of fire, then that would be too much hell for me.
I have merely made some suggestions as to what kind of fire this could be. I am not saying that this is the only fire in hell. However, the human mind is not able to picture the state and suffering of a lost soul. The best that Jesus could do was to tell us it was eternal fire, everlasting punishment, a place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. It is so awful that it makes me shudder to think of one single soul going there. I would even hate to think of Hitler having to go there. However, according to the teaching of Jesus Christ there will be people that will go there. God help us to do our best to keep them from going there.
I remember when I was a small boy, Dr. Plato T. Durham, one of the most eloquent and powerful preachers I ever heard, came to our church and preached on the crucifixion of Christ. I shall never forget that sermon. It made a lasting impression on my mind. I remember how he pictured Jesus in the garden sweating blood as He prayed. I remember how he pictured Him in Pilate's judgment hall with the spittle and blood on His face. I remember how he told of the scourging, until I hated the man that cut his back like that. I felt that I would like to scratch their eyes out. I remember how he pictured Him as He carried the cross out through the gates and then staggered and fell under the load. I remember how he pictured them stretching Jesus out on the cross and driving the nails through His hands and feet. I shall never forget how he described how those men lifted that cross and let it drop with a dull thud into that hole. It seemed that I could almost see the flesh as it tore under the impact of that jar. I remember how he pictured Him there on the cross as the hours dragged by and finally He dropped His head and gave up the ghost. I heaved a sigh of relief when He finally died.
When Doctor Durham had reached the climax of that great sermon, then he stopped and pointed down at me, as I sat on the front seat, and said, "People, if there had only been one lost soul in all the universe and that one lost soul was this little boy, then Jesus would have endured all of that to save that little boy from hell." I was dumbfounded at that statement. I could not believe such a thing. I felt so little and unworthy that I could not believe that Jesus would have endured such suffering for a poor unworthy creature like me.
However, since I have grown up, and have studied my Bible and found out what Jesus taught about hell and eternal punishment, and since I have come to have some conception of what it will be like for a soul to be lost, then I have come to appreciate what Doctor Durham was talking about. I really believe that if there was only one lost soul in all the universe, and that soul was the worst sinner that lives today, Jesus would endure all the agonies He did endure just to save that one lost soul from hell. My friends, you will never be able to fully appreciate Calvary unless you see it against the black background of sin and the future that awaits the lost soul. God help us to see it! Jesus paid an awful price to save us from hell, but it was worth it, for to be eternally lost is an awful thing.
I am determined that by the help of the Holy Spirit I am going to do all I can to keep men from going there. I trust that God will give me a greater compassion for lost men until I will be able to snatch them as brands from the eternal burning.
O, may God use this message to wake up some church people until they will be aroused and stirred out of their indifference and unconcern! My dear reader, do you really believe what the Bible says? "The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God." If you do believe this surely you will arise and do something to keep people from being lost!
May the Holy Spirit use this feeble message to awaken and arouse some sinner and cause him to turn from his sins and seek the Lord! Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die! Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee life! Seek ye the Lord, while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Lot the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord our God and He will abundantly pardon! Now is the accepted time! Today is the day of salvation! If you will hear what the Spirit saith unto thee, harden not your heart as in the day of provocation! Look to Jesus and be saved! The fountain is open! The waters are being troubled! This is the time to get in! You have no assurance of tomorrow, but you do have now! Let me beg you just now turn to the Lord! Repent of your sins! Plead the merits of Christ's blood! Put your trust in Him and be saved just now! God will hear your prayers and save you just now! Only believe!
No comments:
Post a Comment