Revelation: Part 57

When anyone anywhere, responds to this knowledge by having a desire to know this God, God will move heaven and earth to get the message to them.

Revelation 20. And we come to one of the most fearsome passages in the Word of God. And I saw a great white throne, verse 11, and him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds. And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

You know, God saved most of the teaching about hell and final judgment for Jesus himself, because it is such a horrible thing, that God wanted to say it himself to give it the weight that it should have on our minds. I want you to hold your place here. But Jesus gave an actual glimpse into Hades, or hell, before his resurrection. Look at Luke 16, beginning with verse 19.

Now the reason we know that this is not a parable, is because he gives names of the people. In a parable, Jesus would not give the persons in the parable a name. So this is not a parable, this is talking about something that’s actual history. All right.

So it says in verse 19, now there was a certain rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, gaily living in a splendor every day. And a certain poor man named Lazarus, was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now, it came about that the poor man died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried out and said, father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames. But Abraham said, child, remember that during your life you received your good things and likewise, Lazarus, bad things; but now he’s being comforted here, and you’re in agony. Besides all of this, between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us. And he said, then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.

But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said, no, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead. Sobering words, aren’t they?

When Jesus died, Peter says he descended into Hades. Now, a lot of people have made some very wrong conclusions about that. One of the biggest blasphemies I’ve heard, and it’s been taught by some leading televangelists, is that Jesus had to go to hell and pay the rest that was due for our sins by suffering in hell. When Jesus was about to die, he screamed out the words, paid in full.

The Greek word, tetelestai, which means -it’s translated in John 19:30 as it is finished, but it literally means, paid in full. And then as he died, he no longer gave the distant, agonizing call that he did earlier while he was hanging on the cross when darkness came over the land. He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But when he died he said, father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

You see, he had just paid for sin. Between the three hours when darkness covered the earth and the time he died, he had paid for the sin of the world. And the way we know that is that he was no longer separated from the father and the Holy Spirit. When he said, my God, my God, he said my God the father and my God the Holy Spirit.

God the son was hanging on the cross. And so when he died he said, father, the intimate, into your hands I commit my spirit. So his spirit went to be with the father. But he did descend into Hades, but not into torment.

You see, there were two parts of Hades, weren’t there? He went to paradise just as he promised the murderer that was crucified with him, when he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and he said today, you shall be with me in paradise. That’s where Abraham was. And so he went to be in paradise.

He did go to another part, a very horrible part, of the place of those who were unbelievers. And that is a place called tartarus. There’s Hades and then there’s tartarus. And tartarus contained the people who lived at the time of the flood, and also the fallen angels that were so vicious that God had them bound.

He went to that place, it says in 1 Peter 3, and made a victorious proclamation to them. Because Satan had tried a very clever plan to keep him from coming as the Savior of the world. You see, when God announced that it would be the seed of the woman who would defeat Satan, Satan immediately knew what he was talking about. That it was going to be a man born only of a woman, not of a man, but of a woman, that would become the Messiah and the Savior of mankind.

So what happened during the flood -now, you’re gonna be blown away with this. I’ve mentioned it before, but, you know, I go by exactly what the original Scripture says. And in the Scripture it talks about the fact that angels left their proper habitation and went to a place that was not their proper abode. In genesis it said the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were beautiful and chose among them all they chose.

And apparently before the flood, fallen angels could commingle with human beings. And what Satan was trying to do there was to commingle fallen angels with the human race to the point where there would be no more true humans. And if there’s no more true humans, there couldn’t be a Savior born because he would also be part fallen angel. And in that ploy, Satan hoped to be able to go before God and say, you can’t condemn us, because we’re also part of this human race that you’ve sent down here.

You follow me? 1 Peter says that Jesus went to those who were disobedient at the time of Noah, and that he made a proclamation to them. Now, he didn’t preach to them so that they might be saved because, you know, it’s appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. He went there to announce that in spite of all of the efforts that were made, he still succeeded in coming.

God took on himself a true humanity and voluntarily died in our place to take the penalty for our sins. And he remained then in paradise until it was time for him to be resurrected from the dead. And when he was resurrected from the dead, he emptied the part of Hades that had believers, the Old Testament believers. He emptied the place called paradise.

Now you say, how do I know that? Well, turn with me now to chapter 4 of ephesians. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean, except that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And, see, when he did, it says he led captive -literally, he led captivity captive. Those who were kept in paradise were captive until Jesus paid for our sins.

Why were they captive? Why couldn’t God take them from the earth? Who has the title deed to the earth, or did have until the cross? Satan.

Satan had the title deed to the earth and everything in it. So God in his justice, he won’t violate justice. Even if it’s something he wants. That’s why he died on the cross.

He wouldn’t just compromise his justice in order to save us. He had to pay for the penalty of the laws we broke by dying in our place. And in the same way, since he gave the title deed of the earth to Adam, when Adam became the benedict arnold of eternity and rebelled against God, he gave the title deed to Satan. And God could not disannul that until the second Adam, Jesus, came and died for our sins.

Once he paid for them, it took away Satan’s authority to have the title deed. You follow me? Okay. I’m going over a lot of complex theology here, but I hope you can follow, and I think you are.

All right, now… In John 5, or I should say John 5, yes. John 5:28-29 it says -Jesus announces and predicts two kinds of resurrection here. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, the voice of the Son of God, and will come forth.

Those who have done good, here’s what the Greek says, in fact, if you’ve got a new American standard Bible, look next to, it says those who have done the good, and then it’s got deeds, plural, in italics. Anything you see in italics means it’s not in the original. Okay. You follow me?

It’s not in the original because the good, definite article, and the word good is singular. Very important. Those who have done the good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done the evil, singular, to the resurrection of judgment or condemnation. So he predicted the two different kinds of resurrections, and why you would be in one or the other.

Why am I emphasizing that good is in the singular?

What one good thing can we do? Accept Christ, that’s right. That’s why it’s in the singular. There’s only one thing that you can do to go to heaven.

The good thing that you can do is to acknowledge you’ll never be good enough and to accept the gift of pardon that Jesus died to give you. What’s the evil? To reject him. See, the Gospel of John has some of the most deep theology of any of the books of the Bible, and yet it’s written in such simple language.

That’s the signature of the Holy Spirit. He took an uneducated fisherman named John, and wrote through him in his limited knowledge of Greek, the most profound book in all the Bible. All right, now, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 22 and 23. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.

All right, now, I’m gonna go through a few things, though, that I thought were very important about books that have some bearing on this case here. I’m just gonna give a bunch of Scripture here, so you can just mark it down and read it later. In the book of -in the book of Nehemiah 7:5 it says, then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the people, to be enrolled by genealogies. Then I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up first from Israel which I found -in which I found the following record and so forth.

Well, you know, books are something that God caused his people to keep. And with Israel, the book of genealogy was one of the really, really important books. This is why in the time of Jesus’ birth there was no trouble tracing his genealogy to see that he was both a son of David, through his mother, through one of David’s sons, nathan. But through his stepfather, from whom he got the legal right to the throne, Joseph, he got the legal right to the throne through David’s son, Solomon.

Now, why is that important? If he was physically born of the line of Solomon, he couldn’t have been king. Because in Jeremiah 22, a curse was put on the Solomon line and never another person from Solomon’s line could be king again. And that was on jeconiah.

So God set up his own dilemma. So how could -how could -how could there be a Messiah who would be a blood relative of David, and yet also have the royal line and the legal right? God put it together by the perfect romance, Joseph and Mary. Mary was descended from David through nathan; Joseph was descended from David through Solomon.

So Jesus got his blood right through his mother and his legal right by adoption through his father. Interesting, isn’t it? All right, let’s look at the -or just write it down, Psalms 56:8. I love this verse.

David said, you have taken account of my wanderings. This is when he was very sad. He had been a refugee and being hunted down and everything else. He had been promised a kingdom and he was hiding in caves for years.

But David says you have recorded all of my wanderings. You’ve taken account of them. So he was about to go into a pity party when he remembered something. He says you have taken account of all my wanderings.

Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Every time I go to Israel, I try to find and buy one of the little beautiful little flasks. You know what they are?

They still have that practice in the Middle East. When a person is grieving and they cry, they put that to their eye and they let the tears go into this little flask. And that’s what David’s talking about. And he says, God knows every tear I’ve shed.

And God knows every heartache I’ve had. God knows and remembers every suffering I’ve had. And it’s all written in his book. And he will make it up to me when I get there.

And believe you me, he will. You will never suffer anything in this life as a believer, and you just trust him. Even if you don’t, God’s got a record of it and he’s gonna reward you for it. Because every time he allows you to suffer, it is for some purpose that he has.

Either to make you grow, or as you go through suffering by faith, it causes others to see the reality of Christ in you. And that’s something you don’t hear much taught about today, do you? It’s a shame because that’s a big part of christianity. There’s the book of life, and we know all about that, Psalms 69:28 mentions it.

David said may they be blotted out of the book of life, and may they not be recorded with the righteous. Psalms 139, verse 16. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in your book they were written, the days that were ordained for me. In other words, how long I’ll live.

When as yet they were not one of them. Every part of you, every molecule, was written in God’s book from the foundation of the earth.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

Thank you so much for standing with me as a watchman on the wall. I pray daily that he will reward your faithfulness and protect and prosper you in these difficult times. Thank you again for being a vital part of my team.