Will God punish the wicked in fire for all eternity? Doesn’t eternal torture contradict His love and justice? What does theBible really teach about the punishment for sin? Part 1 of 2

Will God punish the wicked in fire for all eternity? Doesn’t eternal torture contradict His love and justice? What does theBible really teach about the punishment for sin? Part 1 of 2

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Amazing Facts

The Fate of the Lost

Doug Batchelor

The Fate of the Lost, Part 1

This presentation is brought to you by the Friends of the Amazing Facts Ministry.

Coming to you from New York City at the historic Manhattan Center with your host, Doug Batchelor.

Join this exciting journey of discovery as we learn the truth about Bible prophecy, explore the timeless wisdom of God's Word, and see how it relates to our lives today.

From the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, it talks about 2 destinations, 2 destinies, the saved and the lost.

We talked about Christ and the devil, Good and evil, light and darkness.

Jesus said, if you're not with me, you're against me.

You want to be on the winning team, am I right?

No, I don't want you to hyper focus on the losing team, but we need to understand because not understanding this affects what you believe about the reward and the rewarder.

And that's why this subject is such an important subject in our study tonight.

You know, I always like to begin with an amazing fact.

A couple of years ago, Karen and I were some friends from the Amazing Facts Board.

We went to Italy and we visited the city of Pompeii.

I was living on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.

And they've done a lot more excavation, I found, since then.

You probably have heard the story about the cities of Pompeii and Herculean that they're at the base of Mount Vesuvius, a massive volcano in the background.

And even from 62 AD, they started noticing that the ground would occasionally rumble and they'd have these earthquakes and they seemed to be having signs that there was some growing activity and swelling on the mountain.

For the next 17 years, the signs continued to mount and increase, but the people in these cities, they didn't seem to worry too much about it.

Now, Pompeii and Herculean, Pompeii in particular, they were something like the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.

In fact, a lot of the soldiers would go there after they served their term for R&R.

And so during this 17 years of time, the volcano tremors increased.

They knew there was a lot of seismic activity, but life went on day after day.

People were just preabsorbed in their fun, their hedonism, pursuit of pleasure, and then the whole thing blew.

In 79 AD, there was a massive eruption that buried both of the cities in ash and pumice and some that were not killed right away were killed by the pyroclastic cloud of superheated gases that came rolling down the mountain like a tsunami and they were scorched alive the first time they inhaled it.

Well, years later, about 1748, I think it's 1600 years later, they did some excavations and they started to find the ruins buried under all of this ash.

And they noticed that they kept running into these cavities in the ash and someone said, you know, there was probably something there.

And so they poured the plaster of Paris into these cavities and they found the grisly truth that these were the hollowed out spaces where people had been, their bodies had decomposed other than the bones, and they were able to see people all around the city, thousands had died, in the very positions in their final writhing deaths that the disaster caught them.

It makes us think about another terrible destruction that came that the Bible speaks of.

By the way, just a little side note you may want to think about.

Jerusalem had been destroyed by the armies of Titus in 70 BC.

I heard 1 historian say that hypothetically, based on the time that they served, many of the soldiers that were involved in the destruction of Jerusalem could have been vacationing at Pompeii when the city was destroyed.

Well, the Bible kind of compares this to the destruction of the wicked and we're going to go find out what do the people on the streets have to say about this subject of hell and the punishment of the law.

I think the purpose of hell is just to let people know that there's Negative repercussions for things that you do in this world whether Whether you get punched for it right away like it is coming later on so like it's a belief system within yourself to be like, okay I'm doing something wrong.

Nobody could see me, but there's a thing coming later on in the future that will punish me, so let me watch myself and know that God's watching me and live a good life.

To scare people away from doing bad things.

The absence of God is hell, and that can be here, that can be the afterlife, it can be anywhere.

In Christianity specifically, I would say it's just, I think there's a lot of fear-mongering around it, but I think it's also just, I think it's really supposed to be like a place without God.

I don't think there's a lot of the talk about it is not exactly what the book says, you know?

To ensure that you make decisions that are going to be, that are not going to negatively impact the people around you.

Hell represents a very hot place from my religious background.

A place for non-believers that, you know, you go after you die if you like have not done enough good deeds within your lifetime.

I think it's a being where the I think it's a place where like the most evil and wretched people go in a Bible it describes hell as like Place where non followers of Christ go I believe hell is a place where all the bad people go in the end I thought we living in hell.

According to the word of God, there's a lake of fire.

I don't think hell is just straight fire.

There might be some fire in there, but I don't feel like it's like that.

But there is some type of torture there for sure.

Yes, it's a flame of fire where you suffer all for eternity.

I feel like what hell truly is, is your own perspective of your own reality of life.

You know, I actually found that in the answers from the people on the street, there's a little more unity on this subject than some of the others.

You know, what's interesting is virtually every religion in the world believes that there is some kind of reward.

Even those that believe in reincarnation think if you live a bad life, you're gonna come back as, You know, something else, a crocodile or who knows.

But you live a good life, there's a reward.

And almost all religions understand that there are consequences for the way that you choose to live your life.

Interviewing people on the street or is the Word of God the final arbiter?

We're gonna find out what does the Bible say on this subject.

There are, there's a lot of misunderstandings on the subject of hell.

First of all, question number 1, we're gonna go using our question answer method.

What 2 cities mentioned in the Bible that are sort of infamous are given as an example of the destruction of the wicked?

You can read in 2 Peter 2, verse 6, and don't forget you can call out the answers there in the light blue color with me.

And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, God condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly." So if we want to know what is going to happen to the wicked, God said, well, what you saw happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, they were burnt, they were burnt up.

And you can read here in Jude 1, verse 7, Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth as an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Eternal fire meaning that the results of the fire are eternal.

You're looking at just a Google Earth map there that shows an area where archaeologists believe approximately that Sodom was.

Now, in case you don't know, the Bible describes this.

If you go to Genesis chapter 19, it tells us that Lot and Abraham were related.

Lot was the nephew of Abraham, and they had so many cattle, the shepherds were fighting, and they needed to separate to keep peace in the family.

And Lot cast his eyes towards Sodom because it was watered like the garden of God.

It was lush, it was tropical, there was an abundance of vegetation for the animals.

And he thought, you know, I think my flocks will really grow down there and things will really prosper.

And his wife said, You know, they got really good malls in Sodom.

But the Bible goes on to say, that was not a wise decision because the men of Sodom were sinners before the Lord exceedingly.

Now, some people are shocked to find out that the Bible says before God punished Sodom and Gomorrah, God saved Sodom and Gomorrah.

Did you know that before their great judgment day came, 5 kings from the north led by an Assyrian named Chedol-Aomer, they had a confederacy, They came down and they attacked the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and 4 of the other cities of the plain.

And they conquered them and they carried them all the way captive.

And Lot and his family were carried away in the destruction.

The Fate of the Lost, Part 2

In our last episode, we learned that Sodom and Gomorrah were an example of how God is going to ultimately destroy the wicked in the last days, and that the fires of hell are not burning yet.

Today we're going to continue this eye-opening study of what will ultimately happen in hellfire.

We will also look at a few Bible verses that have confused a lot of people about the reality and nature of hell, and what you need to know to avoid it.

Remember, if you'd like to deepen your learning experience, then check out the Prophecy Odyssey Bible lessons and our free offer.

I'll tell you more how to get those resources later in the program.

So thanks for watching, and God bless as you continue your prophecy odyssey.

I went to Jewish schools, I went to 2 different military schools, I went to public school, I went to 2 Catholic schools.

And like everyone else I heard if you're a good boy and you believe in Jesus, you go to heaven.

I was really confused because my mother was Jewish, but my father had been raised Baptist.

They're both atheists, they send me to a Catholic school.

And when I went to New York Military Academy, every week you have to go to a service.

You could choose between the Protestant service, the Catholic service, or the Jewish service.

And I figured I just tried, I kept going, mixing them all up.

But they all kind of said the same thing.

But if you're bad, you're going to go to hell.

I said, I need to know more about that because I figured that's where I was going.

It's a fire, you know, and you'll be down there and you're going to burn.

What do you think that did to my picture of God?

I decided early in my life, I said, not only do I not want to believe that, I can't afford to believe that, because if there is a God, He is the meanest being in the cosmos.

Here I am, you know, just a crummy little kid and I can't help my bad behavior.

And He made me, no 1 asked me to vote on being made or not.

And He made me and he says, if you can't be good, and I found that very difficult, so I'm gonna burn you forever.

But when I learned the Bible truth on this subject, It set me free where I was able to finally love God.

The wage, the penalty, the reward for sin is death, absence of life.

What was the first lie that was ever spoken?

God told Eve, if you eat the forbidden fruit, you will surely die.

He didn't just say you die, he said you will surely die.

That means like the wicked witch, dead, dead, very dead.

And the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

You'll either live forever in heaven or you'll live forever in hell with me and I'm in charge.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you'll not surely die.

What will happen to the wicked in hellfire?

Let's find out what does the Bible say is the reward of the wicked.

Don't worry, we're going to finish talking about the reward of the righteous.

Yell a little while and The wicked will be no more.

Does it say he'll be in a torture chamber somewhere?

Into smoke they will vanish away, diffuse, disappear, gone.

Again, you read in Malachi 4, verse 1 and 3, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all, how many?

This was talking about what the Jews used to do to the fields after harvest.

They still do it in California, the rice fields around us in Sacramento.

They set them on fire and they not only burn up the stubble on top, but he says, it's not just the stubble, it's going to burn up the root and the branch.

If you burn up the root of a tree, it's not coming back.

You will trample the wicked for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet.

You're not going to be walking around on the...

Oh, that's hot, you know, like a Fijian fire walker.

And he's going to create a new heavens and a new earth on that.

Number 6, where will hellfire be located?

Now I should pause here and you'll understand why.

There are 4 words in the Bible that are translated as hell.

The most common word in the Old Testament is the word Sheol.

People think that hell is the burning volcanic cavern down there somewhere because it says down in Sheol because the Jews buried their dead where some of the pagans cremated their dead, some even above ground.

But the Jews buried them, so they always said down in Sheol.

Then you've got the word Hades, which is from Greek mythology.

Hades was a place that was ruled by the god Pluto who was in charge of the helms of hell and a lot of our myths about the devil come from this concept of Pluto.

Now, this is 1 that has mixed people up because outside of Jerusalem, they've got something called the Valley of Hinnom.

It's also Gehenna, same word, same place.

Series

The Fate of the Lost

The Fate of the Lost, Part 1

Transcript

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