Hell's bad, but lake of fire's badder than bad

(note: I found the article on the meaning of MAGA and it's at the bottom of this post)

Here's an outtake from a study David Reid, a preacher in Columbus, OH, gave at last week's Bible conference:

Romans 1:18 ("For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness") says the wrath of God is revealed. People are aware of that fact. One of the greatest examples of that is even the people who are atheists and skeptics have had the experience of telling people to, "Go to hell." They never say, "Go to Nirvana."

Why are they saying that? Because they have an awareness of judgment. Romans 1:20 says, [20] For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

When you know God has eternal power and He has wrath against sin and that every human being knows they’re guilty, what's the natural state in which you would live? Fear, guilt, condemnation.

I don’t think people believe evolution because it’s convincing. Does it make sense that a one-cell organism becomes a multi-million celled organism with specialization and enhanced features like eyesight, hearing, smell, etc.?

Nothing in your world works that way, right? Nothing just spontaneously, accidentally improves; it breaks down. If you own a house or car or computer, you know that.

So why do people believe evolution? They believe it because the alternative is a god with enough power to create the universe that knows of your behavior. They like evolution because it’s escapism. How do I avoid the fact that there’s a powerful Creator I have to give account to?

With regard to the subject of eternal punishment, it’s character and duration, you need to understand that at the center of that issue is the human heart’s desire to escape it; to deny it, to pretend it’s not there.

Have you ever had the experience where you’re giving people terrible news, and the news is so terrible they just don’t want to believe it? Are there things in your life that are unpleasant that you would kind of like to pretend they don’t exist? Or just "ignore it and it will go away"? Or maybe someone else will take care of it for you?

That’s exactly how the lost man thinks about eternal judgment.

*****

There are always people who blame God, reasons Richard Jordan. One of the great atheistic minds, Christopher Hitchens, used to do this all the time. He'd talk about "the God of the eternal torture chamber." You've heard people talk like that. You go to hell and that's the "eternal torture chamber that God has to torture people for their sins."

That is so goofy. God didn't create hell because He didn't like people. He created hell because of sin. We saw that back in Ezekiel 28. 

Where did hell come from? It came OUT of what Lucifer was doing. It came out of HIS activities. "The wages of sin is death." The thing that causes people to die, here's the Lord's answer:

[32] For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.

That's the question. Why die when you can live?! As Moses says in Deuteronomy 30:19: [19] I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

That's God's recommendation. But when people choose death, that's not God's will; that's their will.

*****

Here's an old post and will have a new article tomorrow:

An excerpt from a story on NBC News' website about patients' cardiac arrest testimonies--"what the study researcher called transcendent recalled experiences of death, or what many people think of as a near-death experience.  

"That perception can be just a vague feeling that something is happening around them. However, six patients in the study reported 'they may have had a life review, they may have gone to a place that felt like home, and so on,' ” said Dr. Sam Parnia, lead study author and an associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone who is also the director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone.

"Some survivors had positive memories, such as seeing a light, a tunnel or a family member, or feeling intense emotions, such as love, tranquility and peace. Others, however, had a feeling of separation from the body and a recognition that they had died or had delusions of monsters or faceless figures. 

“ 'There’s nothing more extreme than cardiac arrest because they’re literally teetering between life and death, they’re in a deep coma and they don’t respond to us physically at all,' said Parnia. 'What we’re able to show is that up to 40% of people actually have a perception of having been conscious to some extent.' ”

*****

As we know from Luke 23, hell in "time past" had a torment side for lost people and a paradise side for those saved called "Abraham’s bosom." Jesus Christ says of the rich man in Luke 16:23: [23] And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

While the rich man, who’s lost, goes down to the torment side, Lazarus, as a Believer, goes to Abraham’s bosom.

“By the way, the rich man sees Lazarus. He’s conscious. It’s conscious existence in torment. That’s what the text says," explains Richard Jordan.

"Somebody argues, ‘It’s a parable.’ Then the reality is worse than what you’re reading! You make it a parable and that means the reality of it is more severe than the illustration! People have all these ideas to get around it, but you just put yourself in the soup even worse.

“Verse 24: [24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

“Notice that what’s in hell and in paradise has a finger and a tongue. The rich man’s buried body was just a carnival for the maggots up on the surface, but your soul has a physical shape to it--appendages to it that are comparable to your physical body. In other words, it’s REAL; it has substance to it.

“He says he’s ‘tormented in this flame.’ If you say, ‘Well, I don’t believe it’s literal,’ then it’s got to be something WORSE than fire. Whatever it is, it’s going to disintegrate you just like that. If you want to do all the symbolic, figurative and apocalyptic stuff, go ahead, but it just makes it worse; it doesn’t make it less.

“This is why people think the grave is hell because these two guys are there. It’s not. The body’s in hell. Verse 25: [25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

“Do you see how you still have your mental faculties? It’s a conscious ability to think. You know, one the most tormenting things to me about a place called 'the torments of hell' would be that issue of remembering.

“If you’re lost, you’re going to die and go to hell and remember every opportunity you had not to be there. Sure as you’re sitting there, there’s some little bony-fingered demon going to come up into your face and mock, ‘Forever, forever, forever, forever,’ and you’re going to remember it didn’t have to be that way.

“Verse 26: ‘[26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

“So, if Jesus Christ died and went down to the torment side, that verse says you can’t go from the torment side to the comfort side. You see how that works? There’s a gulf fixed where you can’t go back and forth.

“You say, ‘Well, Jesus is God; He could do what He wanted to do,’ and yeah, He’s telling you right there how He set it up to do! He doesn’t contradict His Word.

"How does it work? If you’ve over there, you stay over there, and if you’re over here, you stay over here. You see, folks who don’t understand how hell works in the Bible wind up with doctrines that don’t fit how things work in the Bible, period.

*****

"Come to Revelation 20 and notice how hell is not the ultimate end of lost people. Starting in verse 11, it says, [11] And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
[12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
[13] And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

“After the Cross, and the Old Testament saints are moved into ‘the third heaven,’ who’s down there? Nobody but lost people. Today when somebody dies and goes to hell, it’s because they’re lost.

“Isaiah says ‘hell hath enlarged herself.’ It took over the whole place. After Christ comes back, and at the end of the millennium kingdom's thousand years, you have this 'Great White Throne Judgment' where the dead, both small and great--all the people down in hell--stand before God and all the people not found in ‘the book of life,’ i.e. lost people, are cast into 'the lake of fire'.

*****

“The verse says hell and death are cast into the lake of fire. Hell is a temporary holding cell until the final judgment.

"John 3:18 says, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’

“You see that word ‘already’? They didn’t have to become condemned; they are condemned already. God isn’t waiting to see whether you deserve to die and go to the lake of fire. You deserve it! You were already a sinner come short of the glory of God and condemned.

“It’s like if you go to the courthouse and they find you guilty, they then send you out to the county jail, but you return to the courthouse for your sentencing. There’s no ‘finding you guilty’—you’re already guilty, dude! The trial’s already been had.

“If you want see the transcript from your trial—all of your arguments to get around it—go back and read Romans 1-3. In chapter three, Paul says, ‘We have before proven; we’ve taken you to court and proven you that you’re guilty!'

"You were hoping for a ‘not guilty’ sentence? YOU? Knowing about you what you know about you, and you think you’re going to stand before a righteous God?! Well, you know better than that.

“What the Great White Throne Judgment is is the sentencing where lost people are sent to the Big House called the lake of fire. That’s where you’re ‘judged out of the books’ and according to your works.

"The severity of the punishment takes place there and then all of that is cast down into the lake of fire. They don’t experience the second death in hell; they experience the second death here. Hell’s bad, but in the lake of fire there’s something else that goes on that’s even badder than bad.”

MAGA mega-spoken a satanic shout out?

New York Post in September, 2022: "The president’s strident, 24-minute speech outside Independence Hall featured three uses of Trump’s name and 13 mentions of his 'MAGA'— or Make America Great Again — political movement."

“ 'MAGA Republicans have made their choice," said President Biden in the speech. "They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies. Together, we can choose a different path."

*****

"MAGA is recognized as the highest level one can ascend to in the Church of Satan," reads a Christian website. “Make America Great Again” is a literal Satanic spell, just like the Satanic Trinity of “Baal Lucifer Moloch” that’s embedded within the “Black Lives Matter.” 

*****

“There’s a culture in ‘this present evil world’ where the world wants to replace God’s truth with the vain imaginations--the empty rational reasoning of man’s attempt to make himself control things and come up with his own vain ideas; his own ideas about how it ought to work and what the purpose and meaning of life is," says Richard Jordan.

“It’s the culture that’s supportive of the corruption, the trespasses and sins, and that culture makes escaping from trespasses and sins all the more difficult. It’s designed to hold people in to the very thing that keeps them from getting free.

“How in the world can Satan pull that off? Well, that’s when Paul says ‘according to the prince the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.’ You see, Satan is the top ruler of the spirits of the world.

“When it says the ‘prince the power of the air,’ look at Ephesians 6:12: ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’

“Satan has authority up there and he’s the head of the government in all of the invisible realm. The reason he would say ‘the prince of the power of the air’ is that’s the realm where you and I live, not just out somewhere else.

“He’s directing and promoting the philosophy, the course of this world so he can eliminate the Creator. How he exerts his influence and his rulership; he’s the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. He has access, as it were, to their will. He works in their inner man.

“They have no Savior. They have no Holy Spirit within them. They have no light and truth within them. So he has free access to work.

*****

“Listen, the genius of unsaved people is satanically inspired. He’s the creature that works, and he uses that to captivate them; to convince them that they’re God and to eliminate any ability on their part to see any glory in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how he works in the hearts and lives of unsaved people, by having them captivated by that.

“The world system is controlled by Satan; it’s the vehicle that carries on Satan’s philosophy; worship of the lie. It’s the thing that carries on the culture to promote his philosophy of creature worship; of the lie. He’s behind that. He’s the one who’s animating it. It’s his lie that’s being carried.

“If you wonder why the world we live in is falling apart, the answer’s right there. II Corinthians 4:3: ‘But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.’ If people don’t get saved it’s because they’re blind, and when it comes to the gospel, they don’t get it.

“When it says he’s ‘the god of this world,’ he’s behind the ideologies, the opinions, the hopes, the aims, the goals, the viewpoints that are expressed in the world. He’s the one they worship.

“You see, the world does worship a god; they just don’t worship the Creator God and the one that they’re following is the god of this world. That’s what he wanted to be was like the most high God; that was his goal and ambition.

“Verse 4 says, ‘In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’

“His tactic is to blind people; to hide the truth. That’s why he talks about the rulers of the darkness. In darkness things are hid. When things are in darkness you don’t SEE them and that’s why Satan is the ‘power of darkness’ where the light isn’t there.

“That’s why in Ephesians 4 he talks about ‘through the blindness and darkness of their heart.’ He wants to blind people so they can’t see the truth and notice what he doesn’t want them to see: ‘Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’

“He wants to keep people from seeing anything glorious in the gospel. You remember what Paul said in I Corinthians 1: 18: ‘For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.’ "