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Transcript 286A
What Will Happen to Those Who are Not Saved?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello. Now some will be saved, and others will not be saved. What will happen to those who are not saved?
HC: The question that has been raised is, What will happen to those who are not saved? Now there are only two kinds of people in this world. There are only two kinds, insofar as salvation is concerned. There are those who are saved, who are born again, and those who are unsaved.
Now what did Jesus say? "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Only through the Lord Jesus Christ can we be saved. Why is this? Because only if our sins have been paid for by Christ, can we stand without condemnation before God. If we do not have Christ as our Savior, then there is no payment for our sins. Then we must atone for our sins on our own behalf.
Now what does the Bible say about the payment that we must make? "The wages of sin is death." Now when we just look at that verse as it stands alone, we might think that it's simply talking about annihilation. And in fact, you read a verse like John 3:16, and there it also suggests annihilation. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And frequently we associate the idea of annihilation with the word perish. If someone has perished in a gruesome fire of some kind, he is pretty well annihilated. He ceases to exist.
Actually, in the Bible God gives us further information. First of all, when God created man and angels, and incidentally, God did not create an imperfect world. He did not create imperfect angels, either. The fact is, God created men and angels not as robots, but that they did have a will. And both Lucifer and man did rebel against God. Now why God permitted that, that's another question altogether. But nevertheless they did rebel against God, and so we have the whole matter of sin in the world.
Now when God created man, what did He say to Adam and Eve? "In the day thou eatest of this tree, thou shalt surely die." Now think about that for a moment. We realize, therefore, that God had created Adam and Eve, that is, mankind, with a potential to live forever, because had they not rebelled against God, then of course they would never die. And then you have the implication of living forever.
Moreover, the Bible says that God created man in the image of God. Now the image of God results in all kinds of relationships. We're in the image of God in the sense that we can think in terms of God. We have a sensitivity toward the worship of God. Animals don't have these things. The fact that we have a mind that can create, that we can imagine things, that we can build things, that we can analyze, that we can think out, that we can talk and communicate as we do, with some of the intricate thinking that goes on, are all evidences of the fact that we have been created in the image of God.
But perhaps also included in this image of God is the fact that man was created to live forever. Now when man rebelled against God, and God said, "Thou shalt surely die," God did not imply by that, even though we might gather that, just looking at this simple language, that man would cease to exist, that he would be annihilated. God is simply indicating that "if you sin against Me, you're going to exist somewhere else, apart from Me." But to be apart from God is death. To be apart from God is death.
We see this very vividly when Christ went to the cross. Now there He endured the equivalent of an eternity in hell for us. And yet He didn't die physically when He said, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" In fact, when He died physically, He didn't really die physically, because He said, "father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."
And so physical death is not the real essence of the suffering that we are to endure. It is an aspect of it, but not the real essence. The real essence is to be separated from God. Man was created in the image of God, and he was created to have fellowship with God, and to enjoy God's blessings.
Now there's no man, regardless of how wicked he might be, who really understands what it means to be altogether separated from God. There are people who speak rather glibly about the fact that they have endured hell because of some suffering they experienced. Maybe their suffering was very traumatic, and terribly grievous. But it was not hell, because even though they may have suffered physically very greatly, it was never suffering that would be so intense as to be forever separated from God's presence.
You see, as long as we're on this side of the grave, as long as we're on this side of eternity, of Judgment Day, we're always in the presence of God. God's blessings are overshadowing us. God restrains sin in our lives. I'm talking about unsaved, wicked men and women. God brings other blessings, like the warm sunshine at time, and the benevolent rains, and the fragrant flowers, and the sound of the meadowlark. One blessing or another blessing is always going to be present. And many times we're not even aware that any of these blessings are there. Even under the most difficult circumstances there are certain blessings that accrue to mankind simply because God has not abandoned His creation.
But hell is to be abandoned by God. Hell is to be cast away from Him forever. And our minds can't comprehend that. Our minds can't get hold of the awfulness of this, because there's no way that we can imagine what it means to be without the presence of God, because God is always present in the world. We just can't imagine it. We can talk about it and speculate about it, but we can't really come to grips with it.
Now God gives us word pictures of hell. And the word pictures are pretty terrible. Jesus, oh yes, whom we always want to say how He loved, and how He wanted the very best, what does He say? In verse 41 of Matthew 13: "The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His Kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers.'' And this means everyone who has not been covered by the blood of Christ, everyone who's not born again. And this actually is going to include the bulk of the earth's population, because there's only a remnant chosen by grace that really do become saved.
And what will He do?: "and throw them into the furnace of fire. There men will weep and gnash their teeth." That's kind of ugly language, isn't it? We read in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 66, in verse 24: "And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against Me, for their worm dieth not. Their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh." Now if this was annihilation, the maggots couldn't continue to live forever, on an annihilated body. There would be nothing to live on. But these maggots, these worms, in this spiritual figure here, go on forever. The spiritually dead, those who are forever removed from the presence of God, who are abandoned by God, this is hell. And this is the kind of ugly language that we read concerning them.
We read in Revelation 14 another word picture of hell, in verse 9 "If anyone worships the beast [the beast is a figure of the kingdom of Satan] and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand [that is, he is a slave of Satan, which is of course characteristic of every unsaved person], he also shall drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of His anger. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. And they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
I don't know why it says here that they will be in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. While God will abandon them, yet God will be aware that hell is being paid. I suppose that this is the way we would have to look at it, even as Christ went to the cross and endured hell for us, in the presence of God and in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the believers, too. They also were there and witnessed at least some of the suffering of Christ.
Well, hell is the least pretty picture that anyone could paint. There is no language that you could talk about that would describe the enormous awfulness of hell.
If I were unsaved tonight, and I knew what the Bible said about hell, as I do know, and realizing that I have no guarantee that I'm going to breathe until tomorrow morning, I would be so frightened, I would be so panic-stricken, that I wouldn't sleep tonight, until I had made may peace with God.
Now some would say, "Oh, Oh, I see. You are trying to offer a gospel that is a fear gospel, a gospel where you're scaring people into Heaven." Well, suppose that you had knowledge that a friend of yours, if he stayed in that house, there was a bomb there, and that at ten o'clock it was going to blow, and it was such a large bomb that the whole house was going to be destroyed, and your friend would surely be killed. And it's already nine-thirty, or nine forty-five. It's going to go off in fifteen minutes. You desperately want to save your friend, because you certainly don't want to see him be killed by that bomb.
So you go into the house, and very sweetly, very kindly, you say, "Friend, I love you. And you know, we're having a good time outside. Why don't you come and join us?" You never mention the bomb. You never mention that death is just around the corner. You just talk very graciously, very sweetly. And your friend says, "I appreciate your kindness, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing in the house here, and I've got to finish what I'm doing. Maybe later on I'll come out. Okay?"
That isn't the way you'd go to your friend, is it? You'd go running into the house, and you'd say, "Friend! You've got to get out of here! There's a bomb here, and it's going to blow up, and it's going to destroy you. And you only have a few minutes. You've got to leave right now" Are you scaring him? No, you're not scaring him. Well, yes, you are, in a real sense. But not really. You're telling him the truth; you' re telling him what his desperate plight is, what his condition is. And he'd better get with it and get out of there. How is he going to get saved if he doesn't realize what he has to be saved from?
And so it is when we bring the Gospel, and we start talking about the imminence of hell. We're not scaring people, to try to force them into the Gospel. We're telling them the truth about what their actual situation is. And only because they know the truth, perhaps they will be exercised to begin to seek a way of salvation.
And wonderfully, God has provided that way of salvation through the 1ord Jesus Christ. Right tonight, if w will abandon ourself to Him, if we will cry out to Him for mercy, if we will acknowledge that we're sinners, that we're under the wrath of God and there's nothing we can do about our sins, and plead the mercies of God, and cast our lot with Him, we can be saved just as quickly as anyone else in the whole wide world.
And salvation can come tonight. It doesn't have to wait until tomorrow morning. This is what I would desire for all of us who are listening to this program.