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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

Aron Crews

01 If God is Love... Why Suffering?

02 If God is Love... Why Satan?

03 If God is Love... Why the Bible?

04 If God is Love... Why the Sabbath?

05 If God is Love... Why the Rules

06 If God is Love... Why the Church?

07 If God is Love... Why Death?

09 If God is Love... Why Delay?

08 If God is Love... Why Hell?

This afternoon's presentation is entitled, If God is Love, Why the Delay?

But before we get to that, as usual, we're going to have a brief review of last night's presentation, which was, why hell?

The popular view held within Christianity today and throughout much of church history has been the view of hell that if someone chooses not to accept the free gift of salvation that Jesus, that God provides for us, then God will send them to a place of eternal conscious torment.

This is the popular view held within Christianity today.

We began by asking the question, what has been the fruit of this popular tradition within Christianity?

1 from Lauren Anderson says that, so revolting to my moral nature is the creed of eternal torment, punishment, that it more than any other cause "'produces the most widespread unbelief.

"'Compared with this, all objections to Christianity "'fade to insignificance.'" In fact, it is totally true that many people have been turned off by this view of eternal torment.

They look at that Christian's claim that God is love and that also God will send you to burn eternally if you don't accept his gift, and they think this is just ridiculous.

In fact, Charles Darwin was 1 of these who believed in God, but eventually the more and more he thought, amongst certainly other reasons, but eventually the more and more he thought about the Bible apparently teaching in eternal torment, the more this anchored him in his unbelief and atheism.

There's really these 2 views, eternal torment, then what I believe that the Bible teaches about hell, that it's a place of death and annihilation, these 2 views of eternal torment and annihilation have 2 separate presuppositions.

1 of the supposition for eternal torment is of the natural immortality of the human being, or sometimes referred to as the immortality of the soul, while annihilation has the presupposition of conditional immortality, meaning immortality, eternal life, is a gift of God, not something innate to our human nature.

Then we look through the passages of the scriptures and concluded that the Bible teaches quite clearly conditional immortality and this idea of natural immortality actually began all the way back with the father of lies himself, Satan as the serpent in the garden, telling Eve, you shall not surely die.

We then began to look at, Okay, what does Jesus teach?

First of all, we need to define our terms.

Well, the process to get to hell, if you wanted to go there, here's a roadmap.

You begin with death, then you wait in the grave, a dreamless, unconscious, sleep-like state, then eventually there is a resurrection.

Hopefully by God's grace, all of us will be in the resurrection of those who are saved and go to heaven.

Those who are lost will be resurrected and show up in the place that we call hell, which the term that Jesus uses for it is Gehenna.

Gehenna is the place and experience of the bodily resurrected unsaved in the final judgment at the end of the age.

This is the word that Jesus uses as the place of final judgment for the lost.

We see that the background for this term, Gehenna, is found in Jeremiah and Isaiah, where Gehenna is quite literally the Valley of Hinnom, a geographical location, a valley just south of Jerusalem.

And the background prophecy that Jesus would have had in mind was that in Jeremiah 7 and Isaiah 66, basically in this location, there will be a slaughtering of the wicked.

Their bodies will be left as corpses, given as food for the birds and the beasts, eventually being consumed by worms and their leftover bones consumed by the fire." All of this points to a complete and total annihilation of every single atom of the being, of the person.

As Jesus says, rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

Jude tells us that Sodom and Gomorrah was inflicted with the punishment of eternal fire, and we discover that what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is that they were turned to ashes, condemned to extinction, and this is an example of what's gonna happen to the ungodly.

So when Jesus says that the wicked, the goats on his left, will go into the eternal fire, this eternal fire is the eternal punishment, and we know that eternal fire reduces things to ashes, making, condemning them to extinction.

The eternal punishment, therefore, is an eternal death, not an eternal life in an uncomfortable, torturous place.

Death, or excuse me, eternal life is always contrasted with death.

As the most famous verse in the Bible says, John 3 16, whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Many people have the view of Jesus knocking on the door saying, it's Jesus, let me in.

From what I'm gonna do to you if you don't let me in.

That is quite literally what many people believe the God of Scripture is.

You better believe in me, you better love me or else.

That's what we call an abusive boyfriend, right?

Rather, the teaching of Scripture is, is that because of sin, all of us are on our way to death.

We have a terminal disease called sin that will kill us and Jesus says knock knock I'm here let me in.

Because I want to save you from the fire inside your house that will destroy you.

This is the plan of salvation, not the plan of manipulation.

God has given us eternal life, and this eternal life is in the Son.

If you don't have Jesus, you do not have life.

So in the end, the unsaved will get what they want.

Frankly, life apart from God, and Life apart from God cannot last long.

Then we ended last night with the reality that Jesus, beginning not with the cross, but hours before in the Garden of Gethsemane, said, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to the point of death.

In other words, Jesus was experiencing hell for us.

Ultimately, to the point on the cross, right before he gave up his last breath, he cried out, experiencing complete and total rejection and shame, vicariously, substitutionally bearing our sins and our shame, and he cried out, "'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' So we concluded that the good news about hell, that hell in fact does testify of a God of love.

No 1 is burning now, no 1 will burn eternally, hell is fair, you don't have to be there, and Jesus would rather go to hell for you than live in heaven without you.

So, now with that brief review, we're going on to today's presentation of why the delay.

Jesus promised in John chapter 14 to his disciples and through his disciples to us today, if I go and prepare a place for you, where he said, let not your heart be troubled, I'm gonna go away, and if I go away, I will prepare a place for you and I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also." He gave a promise that he would come back.

Well, that promise was given how long ago?

And in fact, obviously, he has not come back yet.

He told his disciples as he was ascending, or rather, he was ascending into the clouds, departing the ascension, going back to heaven, and then the angels that were there with his disciples told them, this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.

Right, repeatedly all throughout the New Testament, they say estimates are 1 out of every 25 verses is communicating something about the return of Jesus, often communicated in a way that he will return soon.

And so Philip Yancey, a prolific Christian author who unfortunately came out with a moral fall not too long ago, but nonetheless, he wrote in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, a very popular Christian book, he said, so many times in the course of writing this book, I have felt like 1 of those disciples, peering intently at a blank blue sky.

I look for some sign of Jesus, some visual clue, like the disciples' eyes might ache for a pure glimpse of the 1 who ascended.

I have concluded, in fact, that the ascension represents my greatest struggle of faith.

It challenges me more than the problem of pain, more than the difficulty of harmonizing science in the Bible, more than the belief in the resurrection and other miracles.

Why did Jesus have to go and why the delay?

Well, the Bible does provide an answer for that that we're going to explore this afternoon.

On 1 occasion, Jesus was leaving the temple, really for the last time, and in Matthew 23, he had, this is the woe to you chapter, and he was just really, you know, beaten down and discouraged.

And so his disciples tried to cheer him up by pointing out, Jesus, look how beautiful the temple is, right?

Jesus then turned to his disciples and said, do you not see all these things?

Surely I say to you, not 1 stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.

Like they're trying to cheer up Jesus, like look at the temple, and he's like, oh yeah, the temple, it's going to be destroyed completely.

What do you mean it's going to be destroyed?

Tell us, Jesus, when will these things be?

That is the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age.

Now, the disciples didn't have a very clear chronology of different prophetic and important events.

So in their minds, they were thinking that the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary and the end of the age, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus were 1 and the same event.

So Jesus, not ready at that point to fully explain that no, these are 2 separate events, actually answers both questions, giving signs that would happen in the world leading up to both the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world.

He goes on to say that these signs that he communicates to his disciples are the beginning of birth pains.

And so basically, as we go through the list of understanding the signs of the second coming, we're to understand them in the context, not that these things haven't happened before, ever in human history, but rather that they're gonna get more frequent and they're gonna get more intense leading up to the climax of the second coming.

Just like my wife is pregnant and the bigger her stomach gets, the more she's like, oh my back, oh my leg is, what is it called?

Sciatica, I have no idea what that is, right?

But something with pregnant women and their leg, I don't know, right?

Series

Restoration 2026: If God is Love...

09 If God is Love... Why Delay?

Transcript

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