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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Three Kinds of Divinely Appointed Suffering, #2
And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. (Matthew 18:9—NIV)
Let's take a look at three of the causes of Divinely appointed suffering:
The torment of Divine wrath.
The chastening of God's sons.
The pruning of our personality that produces fruit.
The Torment of Divine Wrath
We shall divide the torment of Divine Wrath into two sections:
The total destruction of the personality.
The partial destruction of the personality.
The total destruction of the personality. There is a Lake of Fire. There is a fiery Gehenna.
Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matthew 25:41—NIV)
I simply cannot hold with those who teach that Satan and the wicked will be in the Lake of Fire for a season and then released. The torment of Divine wrath is not a suffering to purification but to the destruction of the personality. It is "the eternal fire"!
Satan, his angels, and some people are so desperately wicked that although they suffered for a million years they would remain unchanged. Their torment would only confirm them in their evil nature. Were they released they would immediately continue with their work of destroying the creation.
God knows what He is doing and saying. If God says it is an eternal fire then it is an eternal fire. I know of no passage of Scripture that suggests the devil will finally be released and serve God with a pure heart.
In a matter as serious as God's wrath we must be very careful to adhere to the Scriptures. The idea of remaining in a lake of fire for eternity is incomprehensible to us. Yet if this is what the Bible says, then this is what shall take place.
If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:15—NIV)
Christian teaching holds that all who are raised in the second resurrection, the resurrection that will take place when the earth and the heaven have fled from the Presence of God, are cast into the Lake of Fire.
First of all, this is not what the Scripture states.
Second, the entire population of the earth will be raised at this time with the exception of those found worthy to participate in the first resurrection. If God threw everyone except the royal priesthood of the first resurrection into the Lake of Fire, we would have no inheritance; for the inheritance of Christ and His saints is the nations and the farthest reaches of the earth.
Third, this would mean those who have never heard the Gospel would be hurled into the Lake of Fire because of their sin of not hearing the Gospel. This is the kind of wicked imaginings that proceed from the spirit of religion, not from the counsels of God. God judges no person on the basis of truth he has never heard.
To be continued.