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Malachi 4:2-3 Explained + Understanding Hell
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Mr. Camping, I would like you to read Malachi 4:2 & 3 and tell me what you think about it.
HC: Yes. The question is raised concerning Malachi 4:2 & 3. There we read, "But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. And ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked. For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, sayeth the Lord of Hosts."
Now this is speaking about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as He came when He went to the cross. He is the Sun of Righteousness. He came with healing in His wings. He is the one who made it possible that we could have victory over our enemies, the kingdom of Satan, because that's what we belonged to before we were saved. And for us who are born again because Christ went to the cross, Satan is a defeated foe. We tread upon him. We have no fear of him any longer. He has been vanquished by Christ's going to the cross.
Now you'll notice in verse 5 of the same context, God goes on, and He says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." This chapter opens in verse 1 talking about the day, the day that is coming. And now He talks about Elijah the prophet being sent before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers."
Now we know from Luke:17 that this prophecy of verse 5 was fulfilled by John the Baptist. John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah. Notice the very similar language in Luke 1 to what we have just read in Malachi 4:5 & 6. There we read, as God is telling Zachariah about his son, John the Baptist, who would be born to him: "And he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just," almost identical language, you see, to Malachi 4, "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
Now the "great and terrible day of the Lord" that's in view in Malachi 4 is the atonement, the day when Christ hung on the cross, when He paid for our sins, when He became sin for us and God poured out His wrath on Him. But before Christ went to the cross, before this dreadful day of the Lord came, John the Baptist came, as a fulfillment to the promise that Elijah would come and turn the heart of the fathers to the children. That is, John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, to preach repentance and to cry out to Israel that they had to turn away from their sins.
Now this is when Christ came with healing in His wings, when He came as the Sun of Righteousness, when He vanquished Satan so that Satan is as ashes under our feet. Now while He defeated Satan in principle, and we read in Hebrews 2:14 that through Christ's death He destroyed Satan, and we read in Revelation that He dealt a death blow to the head of the dragon, and while this was accomplished in principle, we will not see it in its full impact until the judgment of the last day, when Satan is removed into hell.
CALLER: At that time, at the end of the world, we will grow up as calves of the stalls.
HC: No. Malachi 4 in its totality is being fulfilled throughout the New Testament period. We grow up as calves of the stall now. The body of Christ is growing, and it's flourishing. It has been for 2,000 years. Of course in the Old Testament calves were given as a sacrifice, but in Romans 12:1 we are commanded, as born again believers, to lay down our lives as a living sacrifice. And this is occurring amongst all the nations of the world. There are those who are coming into the body of Christ and those who are born again are those who have surrendered their lives to Christ, to serve as ambassadors of His.
CALLER: About John the Baptist. Also, at the end of the world there are also many many true Christian people that are preparing the way of the Lord just before His second coming. Many Christian people are preparing the way of the Lord.
HC: But that is not in view in Malachi 4. And actually, the believers are preparing the way of the Lord. And incidentally, the Bible does not use that language of Christians in connection with the second coming of Christ. The Bible does not say that as we bring the Gospel we are preparing for His second coming, although in a sense we are. As we bring the Gospel, and witness to the world, God brings in the elect, those who are to be saved. And when the last one has been saved, then the end will come. The Bible says in Matthew 24:14, or thereabouts, that when this Gospel has been preached to every nation, then the end will come. And in that sense we are preparing for the end of time. But God does not use that kind of language in speaking about the work of the believers insofar as I know.
CALLER: You don't have the attitude that everyone will be saved.
HC: Oh, no. The Bible teaches that "Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are thereon," and "Narrow is the way that leads to everlasting life, and few there are that find it." It's only a remnant chosen by grace out of all the peoples of the world that actually become born again believers.
CALLER: Back at verse 3, it isn't the devil that is burned to ashes. He will be burned right along with the wicked, but it says "the wicked." It doesn't separate the devil and the wicked. They will all burn together.
HC: Yes. You see, when Christ went to the cross, He actually guaranteed damnation upon all of the unsaved of the world who would die unsaved. By virtue of the fact that Christ endured the judgment of God for our sins, this guaranteed that judgment would also come upon the unsaved. And so they automatically are under condemnation, if they do not become saved. Every man is a sinner, and the wages of sin is death. It is eternal damnation, and so that condemnation rests upon the unsaved. And so in that sense they are already identified with hell.
It's interesting, you know, in the New Testament that God in three or four places speaks about the angels who rebelled. And He speaks of them as if they are already in hell. Now they aren't actually in hell, because they're still active in the world throughout the New Testament period. And even as the New Testament was being written, they were very active as demons, and so on. But nevertheless God uses language as if they're already in hell, because their damnation is guaranteed at the cross, and it's as if they are already in hell.
We read in Jude 6, And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. In II Peter 2:4 he says, For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment." He's using language as if they're already in hell, as, if they're already being consumed, as if they are ashes. And that's the language of Malachi 4.
Now they're not actually there, but their judgment is certain. Ever since the time of the cross, there's no way that they can escape the judgment.
CALLER: When fire is in the process of burning them to ashes, that isn't the same as being ashes, which will annihilate all, we're told in the Bible that the affliction will never arise a second time. There will never never be another devil developed.
HC: Now you've introduced two questions. First of all, the Bible does not teach annihilation. That is not taught in the Bible. When the Bible uses language like ashes, or burning, or I'll remember them no more, or whatever, God is not speaking about annihilation. There are too many passages in the Bible that would make that an impossible idea. There are too many passages in the Bible that speak about everlasting damnation, that say that "the worm dieth not," that say, "there is weeping and gnashing of teeth," that speak about eternal torment, and so on and so on.
But as God speaks about hell, and the wrath of God, and the terrible condition that will prevail, we must remember He's talking about a condition that's outside of time, that's outside of our ability to really fathom, because we don't know what eternity is. We don't know what it is to be without any blessing whatsoever from God. We have no idea about these things, because these are not part of our experience in this world.
But God does give us word pictures, of burning and of ashes, and of worms that do not die, and so on, outer darkness, and a lake of fire, and so on. God gives us these word pictures in order to indicate to us the awfulness, the dreadfulness of hell. And yet, as He gives all of this, there's no question at all that He talks about eternal damnation. It's not something that is annihilation. Annihilation is just not taught in the Bible. If you might find a number of verses, if you grouped those together and took them out of the Bible, without letting the rest of the Bible be a commentary on them, you could find verses that might seem to teach annihilation.
CALLER: Well, we are told what eternity means, as far as the devil and all his subjects are concerned. Sodom and Gomorrah were burned with everlasting fire. Sodom and Gomorrah are in the bottom of the Dead Sea, and they are not burning now. No place is there perpetual fire.
HC: Oh, I know. But remember that Sodom ant Gomorrah have not come to an end. The peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah have ceased to exist momentarily on the face of the earth, but they will be raised on the last day. And their damnation is not complete. Just because we see them destroyed by fire back 4,000 years ago, that doesn't mean that that's the end of their damnation.
CALLER: I agree with you there, but I'm just referring to the term everlasting. And there's another thing that brings up the same thought, what is the definition of everlasting?
HC: You see, we don't even have to struggle with that. If you read Revelation 14, for example, God says there in verse 10, speaking about the unsaved, "The same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb." And notice: "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever. And they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."
Or again, we read in Revelation 22, where it's talking about those who are in the New Heaven and the New Earth, which of course is going on eternally. And it says in verse 15 of Revelation 22: "For without are the dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." In other words, they continue having existence, but they are not a part of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
And there are other phrases of this nature in the Bible that assure us that hell is eternal. It is not annihilation. Now many people want to believe in annihilation. Perhaps they want to believe it because they are not really certain of their salvation. And after all, if I'm annihilated, that finally is not so bad because then I have no conscious existence. I may be missing Heaven, but I don't know that I'm missing it, and there is certain peace in death.
But that is a figment of our imagination. That is not the wrath of God. That isn't the way that God portrays His wrath. It is not to cease to have conscious existence. It's to cease to be under any blessing of God. When Christ hung on the cross,: He said, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" and that's hell. And no human being has ever experienced being totally forsaken of God.
CALLER: It would be a very uncomfortable feeling. But ashes, as everybody knows, represent something that has been and no more exists. If you burn up a box, and have ashes, and walk on those ashes . . .
HC: Yes. Now if you took a verse that speaks of ashes, and isolated it from the rest of the Bible, then I would agree with you. God is indicating annihilation, because something that is burned up physically is annihilated. It ceases to exist.
But that is not hell. We have to read about those ashes in the light of everything else the Bible speaks about in connection with the nature of hell, in connection with the nature of eternal damnation, or in connection with God's wrath. And then we get a vastly different picture. Then we realize that there is existence of the unsaved after Judgment Day and while the New Heaven and the New Earth continue to exist. And there of course there is eternal bliss, and all is marvelous and wonderful, because we're in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But while this is going one, there is also conscious existence of the unsaved. But they are in a place of torment. They are in a place bearing the wrath of God, because they have violated the justice and holiness of God. And we don't know exactly what that punishment is. All we can do is look at the language of the Bible and realize that it must be super awful. It must be super terrible. And there's no escape. There's no way out. There's no end to it. It's like a person who has been consigned to jail for the rest of his life, because he's committed a crime. He's in jail. He can't get out. And regardless of what's happening out in the world, the beautiful things, the marvelous things, he's in jail. And he has to stay there until he dies. Now his life may be circumscribed by, let's say, seventy years. And so he may spend fifty years in jail. But for mankind who is unsaved, his conscious existence will continue forever and ever. And he will be outside of all of the blessings that come to those who are born again believers.
CALLER: So God will perform a miracle to keep people burning, actual burning, and suffering in burning hell. He'll perform a miracle to . . .
HC: The problem that you're raising is that you must remember that our minds are conditioned to think in terms of space, length, width, height and time. These are the dimensions that we understand. When the Bible speaks about eternity, when the Bible speaks about life after death, we can't really know what this is. There is no way that our minds can really fathom that, any more than we can fathom an angel. We don't know what a spirit is. We can't draw a picture of a spirit. We can't describe a spirit, actually. We really do not know what an angel is. We know they're ministering spirits. The Bible says that. But we, could never really detail or draw a picture or make a diagram of any kind of what an angel is, because our minds are not qualified. God has not designed our minds to think in terms of spiritual beings and to think in terms of eternity. We can just get a little bit of an idea, and that's all.
And so when God talks about hell, or when He talks about Heaven, God uses language, He uses word pictures of things that we know about. But that still does not really describe what it is.
For example, in Revelation 1 there's a beautiful description of the Lord Jesus Christ, with His hair of white wool and His feet of burnished brass, and so on. And of course it's a work picture. It's not a real picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has a spiritual body. God is a spirit, and they that worship Him worship Him in spirit and truth. And yet as we look at this word picture that God descries in Revelation 1, we begin to get insights as to the nature and the character and the marvelous beauty, and so on, of the Lord Jesus Christ and the work that He came to do. But we're never going to get a real picture of what He looks like, because our minds can't get hold of any kind of a picture of what He really looks like.
Now the same thing is true when God describes hell. He uses figures of a burning furnace, and a lake of fire, and of ashes and of a place of outer darkness, and a place where the worm dies not, and a place where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And all of these figures of speech are pictures to indicate one central truth, and that is that hell is terrible. Hell is awful. Hell is the worst kind of punishment that our minds can get hold of, and it goes on forever and ever.
Just what it is, I don't know. I don't know what it is. We see the essence of hell, we get a real insight, if we get any kind of an insight into the essence of hell, on the cross, as Christ says, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Now He was enduring hell for our sins. He was not literally burning. He was not literally in a place of fire. And yet He was enduring hell. The awfulness of God being rejected by God, abandoned by God, was torment that is absolutely indescribable. There's no way that we could ever know how grievous this really was for Christ. And yet that was the essence of hell.
And so as we read all of this language about hell, we must not think of eternity as somehow identified with time. We have this song that we will praise God 10,000 years, and so on, and it will Just be the beginning, or words to that effect. Well actually, that's a word picture again of eternity. Eternity is something that is outside of our ability to understand, however. It's something far more glorious than just a continuation of time, because eternity is not identified with time. It's a concept beyond our ability to take hold of.
And so is hell. But we know that hell is super terrible, and the marvelous thing is that God comes with His message of salvation, and He says that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we will humble ourselves before Him and acknowledge our sins and turn away from our sins and abandon ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, then we need not go to hell. We need not experience the wrath of God. We can be His children, and we can have eternal life. And that is the wonder of the Gospel.
CALLER: There was something said about time tonight, and the definition of time in the Bible is found about Nebuchadnezzar. He went out and ate grass like an animal for seven years.
HC: No, for seven times.
CALLER: Seven times. And so that's the definition of time. There was something said that the Bible said nothing about what time meant.
HC: No, I don't think that was said. Time is something we understand. The Bible indicates that God gave the sun to rule over the day and the moon and the stars to rule over the night. And therefore we have a very excellent knowledge of time. We can very accurately calculate the passing of seconds and minutes and days and years. We can relate one historical incident to another by the passage of time. God has put this within our minds. We really can know time.
But that's quite different from eternity. We often think of eternity as just being infinite time. Well, that's one way of speaking about it. But actually, eternity is outside of time. Eternity is unrelated to time. Eternity is a concept that our finite minds, that are created in terms of time, cannot understand. It is outside of time. The sun is no more in the New Heaven and the New Earth. There are not time keepers. And so all we can do is leave it to the Lord that whatever it is, it is super glorious for the believer and super terrible, super awful, for the unbeliever.
But thank you so much for calling.