How can a loving God condemn anyone to hell? The Reformation Society, we started last week a program on answering skeptics, evangelizing skeptics. We need to give answers to various tough questions they like to ask. And this one, we look at 1 Peter 3 verse 15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you with meekness and fear. So we must always be ready to give a defense and reasons. And notice God is a reasonable God. Though our sins be as scarlet, yet they can be as white as snow. And God wants, come, let us reason together. We should give a reasoned answer. This requires study, preparation, thinking. How can a loving God send anyone to hell? One of the common objections that are thrown at us is summarised in these words, how can a loving God send anyone to hell? I remember being asked this in the army by the worst blessed seamen in our barracks and I said, if you were the only person on the planet, God would have to make a hell just for you. I mean, he had regaled us with his stories of his two-timing, using and abusing gods. You know, this foul-mouthed pagan then, he said, how can a loving God send anyone to hell? Well, he is loving, including to the victims that you've abused. So don't expect to get away with that one. But then you also hear, what about the Eskimos and the Pygmies and other primitive remote tribes who've never heard the gospel? Would God condemn them just because they haven't believed in someone they've never heard of? Well, the short answer at last, very emotionally laden statement is, no, of course nobody's going to be condemned for not believing in whom they've never heard of. We are all judged according to the light that we have received. In Romans 1 we read, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to the salvation of everyone who believes. For the wrath of God, the anger of God, is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Because what may be made known of God is manifest in him, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor were they thankful. But they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." Romans 1, 16-21. Everyone has the benefit of general revelation in nature. We can see something of the Creator in His creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows His handiwork. You don't need to look for evidence of God with a microscope, you just need a telescope. Look up at the skies. Although the microscope will also show you a lot, especially when you get down to DNA and the intricacy of what Darwin foolishly called the simple cell. Nothing simple about the human cell. The existence of God is revealed and clearly perceived through the things that God has made. The invisible qualities of God can be understood by looking at the visible things of creation. In the light of this general revelation, the whole world is without excuse if they reject God. No one can claim ignorance of God as an excuse for refusing to honor Him or to be grateful to Him. That is the main emphasis of Romans chapter 1. We all have the light of creation and we also have the light of our conscience. We have creation, we have conscience, and we have Christ. Perhaps you've read Don Richardson's book, Eternity in the Heart. How many have read that book? It's a magnificent book, and I've met Don Richardson. He's written to us as well. He likes some of our writings and books. Don Richardson was a missionary to Urangara, which is the other part of the island that includes Papua New Guinea. And he, you might have seen the film Peace Child. Anyone seen Peace Child or read the book? Peace Child's another great work of Don Richardson. He's a real statesman in missionary service. In case after case, he documents how even the most primitive tribes in the most remote regions of the world, they have basic understandings of the Creator, and creation, and right and wrong, and the need for redemption. It's pervasive throughout the world. Interestingly, he commented that every single religion with the exception of one, Islam, has a redemption analogy, such as he found in Peshawar. But he said, Islam has no concept of redemption. It's a strange anomaly. All the religions in the world have some understanding of the need for sacrifice and for reconciliation and redemption. And there's a redemption analogy in even these remote primitive tribes, like the tribe he went to in Eranjara, where when he told them the gospel, they thought Judas was the hero, because they highly extolled treachery. And they thought that Judas did such a brilliant job of betraying Christ, they thought he was the hero of the story. And yet, he found even there, in a tribe of cannibals, he found that these people had a redemption analogy which was known as the peace child. To bring peace between two villages, they had a the child of one chief would be swapped with the child of another chief and these babies would be brought up and this brought peace between these tribes because the chief had to adopt a child from the other village, from the other tribe that they were normally at war with. Now, how many would have seen the film More Than Dreams? These are well worth seeing, especially if you are called to minister to Muslims. These are five true stories, dramatized, of Muslims who came to Christ, everywhere from Nigeria to Egypt, just amazing stories of God's revelation and greatness. In these different examples, you hear of Muslims who had no access to missionaries, no formal evangelistic work accessible to them. They had no access to the scriptures. However, no doubt in answer to prayers of Christians, they came to great conviction of sin, were confronted by the reality of Jesus in very vivid dreams. They had visions of a man with nail-pierced hands and nail-pierced feet, with a spear thrust in his side, and this led them to seek Christian missionaries and the scriptures, and they came to full salvation. inspiring and just showing that many Muslims are experiencing dreams, often during Ramadan, interestingly. And this is intriguing. Now, you also need to understand what primitive tribes like this say, that people haven't heard the gospel. Well, Apocalypto should be required viewing for anthropologists and these university students who seem to think of the superiority of naked pagan savages are the ideal and that the Christian civilization is bad. That was basically Jean-Jacques Rousseau's vision. The more civilized you are, the worse you are, and the more pagan savage illiterates and running around naked on the beach the more admirable and noble. And so to prove this, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who laid the foundations of the French Revolution, he had 26 children. He didn't bring one of them up. He abandoned all of them to the poorhouse. He literally abandoned his children. And he thought that was more noble. Let the state bring up your children rather than the parents, because the parents are going to corrupt them with civilized ideas and Christianity and so on. But the naked savage, his term was the noble savage. To him, the more savage you are, the more noble you are. And I think Anthony, having met a few savages in prison, would disagree with that. But this is the kind of nonsense that these philosophers give. I had a debate once with a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that was his actual name that his parents gave him, head of the Atheist Society up at the University of Cape Town, saw them on the hillside. He literally argued the same arguments that Jean-Jacques Rousseau did, true to his name. There's still people today who believe, but if they would see Apocalypto where they would enslave whole tribes and then march them up these pyramid structures to rip out their beating hearts to make the sunrise tomorrow, then you'd kind of understand what life is like away from the influence of the Gospel. When we've been engaged in personal evangelism in the streets, in the marketplaces, we've sometimes had people come and say to us, I don't believe in the Bible, I don't believe in the law of God, I don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, on those occasions, we normally ask them, well, by what standard do you live? Well, generally these people then present some high standards of ideal behavior, often a variation of the golden rule. like Christ gave us in the Sermon on the Mount, you hear you get these illiterate atheists saying, well, I believe of doing to others as I want to be done unto you, not doing to others what I don't want to be done unto you. I think you're borrowing limbo from our forest to build up your worldview. But then ask them, have you always lived up to your standards? Have you ever violated your own standards? exception, they invariably answer no. On no occasion have I ever found someone who dared to suggest that they'd always lived up to their own standard. They'd even violate their own standards, their own conscience. So even these people who say they don't believe in God or the Bible, well, by what standard do you live? Well, this standard here, will it be always lived up to? No. So what's their point? The heart is deceitful above all things. Jeremiah 17 verse 9. The heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? We don't even know our own hearts. We're all capable of being far more depraved than we actually express because God's grace in restraining our evil. And we live in a society that often has restraints and families and friends. We're all capable of much worse than we do. We need special revelation in the Holy Scripture. Yes, we have general revelation creation. The Bible is the book of God's words, just as creation is the book of God's works. Now, general revelation is in creation, but special revelation through the Bible is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. But general revelation leaves all men without excuse. We're all guilty lawbreakers. Even these people who say, I don't recognize God's law, they even violate their own laws. Romans 3 verse 10 to 18. As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They've all turned aside. They've all together become unprofitable. There's none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they've practiced deceit. The poison of asps, snakes is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace they have not known, even those who claim to be of the religion of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes. That's all found in Romans chapter 3. This is reality. The presupposition underlying the question of how can loving God condemn anyone to hell is a misunderstanding about the nature of man and the nature of God. It portrays a lack of understanding of the holiness of God, the justice of God, and the sinfulness and depravity of man. As Moses was told, take off your feet, you are standing on holy ground. We don't realize what it is to stand before holy God often. When do we take off our shoes to go into a church or in our prayer time? Unfortunately, many Christian ministers have consistently presented such an unbalanced portrayal of the attributes of God that most people only think of God as loving and merciful. You even see foul-mouthed pagan criminals on the streets talking about, but isn't God love? Doesn't God love me? Isn't God merciful? Won't he just forgive my sins? So, some way or another, they've missed the justice of God, they've missed the holiness of God, and they've just grabbed onto the, oh, God loves me, that means I can sin and get away with it. I can still get to heaven even after committing all these abominable crimes on earth. However, the angels in heaven are not singing love, love, love, all you need is love. That's a Beatles song by the way. They're not out there singing mercy, mercy, mercy. They're singing holy, holy, holy as we began this evening's meeting. The holiness and the justice of God demands that unrepentant murderers, and blasphemers, and rapists, and thieves, and liars, and persecutors of the church, that they must be dealt with. So what do you think God should do with the wicked? We should turn the tables and ask our enquirer, what do you think God should do with unrepentant murderers? Like the inter-Hamburg mass murderers who slaughtered over a million people in Rwanda back in 1994. And I've met some of them. Some of them are car guards and pioneers all around here. into Humber who would have been 14 or 15 at the time of the genocide in Rwanda, and that's who did most of the hacking to death of the people of Machetes. And they're down here being called guards and they say, so are you going back to Rwanda? No, I can't go back to Rwanda. Why not? They might tell you, but they can't go back because they were part of the mobs that were cutting people's limbs off. And they're down here in Cape Town. They've fled all over the place. What should God do with rapists? And this woman was a victim of rape. She's getting stoned to death for the crime of being raped, which is a crime under Sharia law, because a woman is responsible for every rape. A woman has the power of enticement, says Sharia law, so 90% of the blame for a rape is on the woman. Does that make any sense to anybody? But this is what happens in this case. This is Pakistan being buried up to waste and then stoned to death. What has God to do with the persecutors of the church? People like Mao Tse-Tung, Castro, Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin, who literally killed the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda and cooked and ate a whole lot of his body parts. He used to snack on his brains at night. He literally kept the brains of the Archbishop in his fridge. What has God to do with people like Samuel and Michel who pledged to destroy the church? What has God to do with baby killers? Abortionists? What has God to do with the blasphemers? And we've got a lot of blasphemers. Slime Magazine, Newspeak, Useless News & World Report, the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, Hollywood. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. This is Britain's opening of the Olympic ceremony. Does that look like Satan to you? I think they said it was Voldemort or something like that, but he's a satanic figure too. And, of course, the Paris Olympics 2024, blaspheming creeps and promoting everything from Lucifer, Pale Rider, through to Birmingham Games, the Commonwealth Games in 2022, where you had people literally bowing down before a giant bull with a woman riding the beast. There's a woman on top of the beast, riding the beast, and you've got all these people below, literally, with shards of light bowing before it. What has God to do with blasphemers? What has he to do with the Marxist mass murderers who killed tens of millions of people? Just in China, something like 60 million people. And in Russia, 66 million people killed in Russia under the Communists. What has God to do with Muslim terrorists who have murdered how many people? Beheaded Christians. Persecutes the church such as those who bombed the church in Sudan. What has God to do with wife beaters? On the left you see a famous TV personality in Saudi Arabia before her husband beat her up and how she looked afterwards. She was famous, so this came out. And she was brave enough to let herself be photographed after being beaten up. But of course, many of these are hidden behind hijras and hijabs, these different veils. And so in many cases, you can't even see the eyes, which are bruised because they've got these screens where even the eyes are covered with mesh, and what has it got to do with the wife beaters, and the ivory poachers, and the rhino poachers? What has it got to do with cruel vivisectionists? These beagle dogs on the left are being forced to smoke cigarettes all day, every day, in machines. to study the effects of tobacco, which, would you believe it, is bad for you. And it kills these dogs. Dogs don't have the capacity to handle it. And anyway, people who choose to smoke, choose to smoke. These beagles obviously didn't give their consent. And then those eyes being ricked, that's rabbits who don't have the same way of cleaning the eyes with tears like we can. And they have these horrible vivisectionists dropping shampoo onto the eyes of these rabbits, who cannot get rid of the shampoo, to study if these would be bad for them. Not that I think any of us stand in the shower and put some shampoo directly in our eyeball, but they do this in these tests, and those companies are listed by Beauty Without Cruelty as one that we should boycott. What has God to do with thieves like the so-called veterans who too young to have even fought in the war before the 1980s in Zimbabwe, who invaded the farms and destroyed 5,000 commercial farms in Zimbabwe? What has God to do with the liars and race-basers and the hate-mongers like the Robert Mugabes? What has God to do with the gossipers who murder people's characters? What has God to do with the two-timing hypocrites who condemn racism and then embody racism and the deceivers like the Vladimir Lenins of this world? How can a holy and living God not punish evil? God is a God of love and light. He is a God of mercy and he is a God of justice. And so even his own people that he had chosen in Jerusalem suffered the wrath of God in AD 70. Great tribulation poured out upon him. The very people who had said, we have no king but Caesar, release Barabbas, crucify Christ, let his blood be upon us and upon our children. What has God to do with them? Well, even his own people, who he had promised all kinds of protection to, God poured out his wrath, and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is one of the most frightful events to read. For the wrath of God is great that has been aroused against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry, and you person away, when his wrath is kindled but a little. That's in Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage? Why do the kings of the earth conspire together against the Lord? John 3 verse 36. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. He who does not believe the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God, the anger of God abides on him. It's not that you're in danger of wrath someday. The wrath of God abides upon the unrepentant today. God is angry with the wicked every day, the scripture says. And just think of Noah's flood. Only eight human beings survived in the ark. The rest of humanity, possibly billions of people. It could have easily been billions, according to the Creation Museum, which studied the stats, were killed in the flood. But thousands of animals and eight human beings received mercy in the ark, and the rest were destroyed. I mean, if we can just understand the anger of God that was poured out upon that evil generation in Noah's time, and rejected God's offer of salvation in the ark, it should make us fear today. Think of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God poured down fire and brimstone upon these wicked cities. But to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, gay pride is what got Sodom fried. And so today, having these pride months, how about a humility month? We could do with a humility month. But no, we've got a pride month. And pride comes before destruction. And the middle letter of pride is I. The middle letter of sin is I. The middle letter of lie is I. The middle letter of Lucifer is also I. And so just even remembering Lot's wife, who looked back longingly towards Sodom which was being destroyed, did not listen to the angels whom God had sent to rescue them. And it's not that Lot was that righteous. It's not that Lot's daughters were particularly righteous. It's not that Lot's wife was righteous, but because of the prayers of Abraham. And God had said if he could find 50 righteous people in Sodom, he would restrain his hand. I don't believe that Sodom was much worse than our societies are today. But we do have more than 10 righteous in the city. And so that is what withholds God's hand at the moment. By God's grace and mercy, he hasn't poured fire and brimstone on the entire world right now. But I'm sure that London and Paris, certainly Paris, and Los Angeles, New York, I'm sure Washington, D.C., I'm sure they deserve all the wrath that God poured out in Sodom and Gomorrah. But because of the remnant of righteous who are praying in these cities, God's hand of judgment has been withdrawn. God has indignation and wrath for those who don't obey righteousness. Let no one deceive you with empty words. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. And today, you can actually go to see the pillars of salt and the areas partly under Dead Sea, where Sodom and Gomorrah now lie, buried and now underwater. But doesn't God love everyone equally? Not only do most people question how God can send anyone to hell, they presuppose the goodness of man and they fail to understand the holiness and the justice of God. But most people also presuppose the egalitarian heresy. But doesn't God love everybody equally? The answer is clearly no. The Bible is quite clear. There are some who God hates. Actually, there are many whom God hates. Proverbs 6 verse 16. There are six things the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination to him. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in rushing off to the evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord amongst his brethren. Now, here's a question, does God hate you? That was the title of a tract I distributed to invite people to a youth group that I ran downtown in Cliff Street in the local Congregational Church there. I'd been asked to start a youth group. So to attract people to this coffee bar, put out a post of, does God hate you? Because they'd all heard the God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life type of thing. So I thought, well, let's go the other way. Does God hate you? And that at least got their attention because they were inoculated against it as God loves you. Just like the wicked Cain, murderers like Cain who killed his brother Abel, the first murderer. You know, it's an interesting thing. People like to go into the genealogies. And there's always some people in the genealogy that you'd prefer to forget about. The pirates and so on. But we've all got a murderer in our ancestry. Cain. Cain killed Abel, and considering he's one of the first sons of Adam and Eve, that means we are all related to at least one murderer, probably multiple actually. But God hates the wicked. He hates liars and murderers. He hates the proud. He hates those who rush to do evil. He hates false witnesses. God hates those who sow discord amongst brethren. Those are amongst the ones that God declares He hates. So when you've got God loves you, well you've got a problem because we read in the Bible that God loved Jacob but he hated Esau. So God loves you or God loves everyone except Esau. And then you can add and the proud and the liars and the murderers and so on. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. The fear of the Lord is to hate pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth. I hate, says God. Psalm 119, the longest Psalm in the Bible, declares, I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. Now this is David speaking. I hate the double-minded. That's like the hypocrites, the two-faced, double-standard people. But I love God's law. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. You need to be like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Refusing to commit idolatry, even if everyone else is doing it, even at the point of threat of death. Our God, whom we serve, is able to save us, and He will. But even if He doesn't save us, we still won't bow before you adults, nor will you serve your gods. You've got to cling to what's good and abhor what is evil. Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will make a stand for me against the workers of iniquity? And Daniel was one who stood up. And we need to be a Daniel. Dare to be a Daniel is a great film that we love. And I'm sure Daniel didn't need to have a sleepless night. He probably had a nice night with his head resting on the lions and with their warmth around him because an angel of the Lord said to the lions, Daniel's one of ours. Be patient, you'll get a meal tomorrow. And when all the tattletales were thrown in. And so Daniel could rest because he knew the line, the line of Judah. Jesus is the line. Satan just roars and pretends to be like a lion. Now in John 3.16 we read, for God to love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting love. So God does love the world, he loves the whole world, in the sense that he sends common grace upon all. He makes the sun shine on the righteous and on the unrighteous. He causes rain to fall on the fields of the wicked and of the just, or we wouldn't get any rain. He loves the world so much He came in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Everyone has benefited from the coming of Christ, even his enemies. All the tremendous blessings that have come from the Word of God and the work of God's Holy Spirit have blessed everybody. Hospitals, schools, the abolition of slavery, the rule of law, Christian charity, missions, so much more have immeasurably improved the life of every person on earth. So there's common grace and there's a sense that everyone has benefited from the love of God. But egalitarianism is unbiblical. Remember, the French Revolution was launched by... Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, or Morté, or Death. So the French Revolution was Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, or Death. And they chopped the heads of 40,000 people by the guillotine, murdered another 300,000 with firing squads, and then slaughtered millions more in the Napoleonic Wars that followed. So the French Revolution was an absolute catastrophe and disaster, even though it celebrated around the world like it's something good. But egalitarianism, the fact that everyone is equal, that is a communist heresy. That's a lie. It's not biblical. Common grace does not mean that God loves everybody equally. Not even a declaration from the United Nations can force God to adhere to that. You don't get egalitarianism in the Bible. Pigeons are not equal to eagles, not in any sense. They can't attain the same height, they can't see as well, they can't fly as fast, and they're not as well armed and equipped as an eagle. An eagle can plummet down at 280km an hour. He strikes his prey with his talons at about 130km an hour. Instant kill. He doesn't need his beak at all. If you get hit by a 120km an hour moving car, you're dead. There's no second chance after that. When an eagle's talons hits its prey at 120 kilometers an hour, it's just phenomenal how these animals are designed. The eagle can see so effectively. You know that he's actually got windscreen wipers, and he's got goggles. Literally, he's got an inner membrane that's transparent, as well as the outer eyelid that we all have. transparent membrane moves about five times every minute across his eyes, lubricating them, sort of like windscreen wipers. And when he plummets, this transparent membrane protects his eyes from the dirt and grit, so he doesn't damage the cornea of his eyes or anything like that while he's plummeting for the kill. If an eagle could read, you could put a newspaper three football fields' length, that's 300 meters away, and he could still read it. Their eyesight is so precise, so brilliant, And the way they can see, they can see something like 12 to 20 times better than the best eyesighted person of us could. If you were 20-20 vision, the eagle is something like 24. He can see telescopically even. He can zoom in. He can see in ultraviolet at night. So you see the urine tracks of rats and rodents and others that he's going to track and see where the hotspots are, where they're coming from. Eagles are phenomenal. They are engineering precision. But you can say all birds must be equal. It doesn't matter. Falcons and eagles are far more superior to pigeons. Simple fact. Zebras are not equal to lions. No one is equal. Not in opportunity, not in skills, not in talent, not in gift. You're traveling through the park. My daughter was reading the guidebook to the Kruger Park, spotting animals and so on, and she said, there's 2,500 lions in Kruger Park and 100,000 impalas. I guess the Kruger Park's not a democracy. Yeah, that's an observation for a young girl. I think she's only nine at the time. But that is the fact. Nature is not a democracy. And we can claim that, well, there's all egalitarianism out there. But Jesus is the King of kings. He is the Lord of lords. We need to understand nothing is equal. People are not equal, not in our abilities, not in our energy, not in motivation. Some people work hard and sacrifice a lot. Other people squander their resources and engine gambling and vices. You have people such as in university who stay home, don't go to parties, they study hard, they do their assignments. Should they be forced to share their marks with the people who were partying all the time and smoking crack and didn't bother to study and do their assignments and so on? Why should the students who studied harder give their marks to the people who did no studying and so on, or the people who do the work, or the people who don't do the work and so on? Secular humanist philosophers like Rousseau might wish everyone to be forced to be equal, but it's all proven unworkable. And to create the workers' paradise, they murdered millions upon millions. French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, a great cultural revolution in China, the Cambodian Revolution. Winston Churchill said socialism could only work in heaven where they don't need it, or in hell where they already have it. And I think that's a good observation. Socialism is legalized theft. Margaret Thatcher well observed, the problem with socialism is, sooner or later, they run out of other people's money. Proof positive we've got in our cabinet here, you can see a one Rhodesian dollar note, which is worth so much more than a hundred trillion dollar Zimbabwe note. The hundred trillion dollar Zimbabwe note that we've got in the cabinet there, was after it deducted 16 zeros. And it couldn't buy half a loaf of bread. So that's what socialism does, it steals from everybody. The Bible says do not covet, the Bible says do not steal, and socialism violates that. It's institutionalized theft, it's legalized theft, and it's institutionalized covetousness. Hard work is rewarded. Those who are unprofitable servants, Jesus said, will be cast into outer darkness. In the parable of the talents in Luke 19, our Lord Jesus taught, He would generously award those who are faithful and wise in serving Him, but the unproductive He will condemn. For I say to you that to everyone who has will be given, and whoever does not have, even the little he has will be taken away from him. There is nothing egalitarian about the Bible. Equality before the law is commanded. We have a common law for all. including for the foreigner in New Mexico. However, no one can enforce equality of effort nor equality of results. Some people will study through the night, other people will get to bed early and sleep, or party, or whatever. And you can't force equality of results, you can only give equality before the law, that's the same standard that we use to judge everyone. And there's all kinds of inequality in the scripture that must aggravate egalitarianism. We read Enoch walked with God. Enoch pleased God. Enoch was taken up to be with God. Abraham was chosen to be the father of the faithful. Abraham is described as a friend of God. We read that Moses spoke to God face to face. David is described as a man after my own heart. And his wicked Absalom, his son Absalom, is condemned in the scripture. Even though Absalom could have pointed to, but my dad failed, my dad sinned. Yes, that's true, but David now repents. Absalom did not. He was proud and arrogant. John the Apostle is described as a disciple whom Jesus loved. In a sense, like Jesus' best friend on earth, which some egalitarians would condemn. How can Jesus have a best friend? That's not right. Did Jesus not have the right to have someone he related to better? The one who could rest his head upon the Lord's chest during the Lord's Supper? Is that comfortable with him? Yet, when the Apostle John met the Lord Jesus, the risen Lord Jesus, as reported in the book of Revelation, he fell on his face like a dead man. Even the closest friend of Jesus on earth, when he met the risen Lord, he fell prostrate on his face like a dead man. And yet you get these arrogant characters who claim, when I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God, why did you do this? How could you do this? And they think they're going to backtrack God. Not a snowball's chance in hell. They'll be calling for the mountains to fall upon them. They'd prefer to be buried under an avalanche and to face the wrath of the Lamb and see those eyes that'll blaze with indignation. Those eyes that could be so loving and forgiving to the woman caught in adultery, blazed with holy indignation against these religious hypocrites, the Pharisees. You can just see the difference with how Jesus dealt with repentant sinners. as he dealt with religious hypocrites. And it may upset some people's egalitarian instincts, but the Lord did not treat everyone in the same way. The Lord made it clear there would be different degrees of judgement. He warned it would be better for the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment than for Capernaum. Now Capernaum is a religious city, a believing city. How could it be worse for Sodom and Gomorrah? I mean worse for Capernaum than for Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah are the epitome of evil cities. But Sodom and Gomorrah never had a Bible. They never had Jesus or his apostles walking in their streets or healing in their streets. Sodom and Gomorrah didn't have the Messiah in their streets. But Capernaum had the Lord Jesus Christ himself and his apostles walking and working in their streets, healing in their streets. and yet they reject it as grace and mercy. It will be far worse for a religious city like Capernaum on Day of Judgement than it will be for evil Sodom and Gomorrah. And therefore you can bet it will be similar. There might be some Pagans in some remote jungles will find more mercy on the Day of Judgment than some religious hypocrites, ministers, theologians, heads of denominations and abominations out there. On the Day of Judgment, if we judge according to the life we have received, doing much is given, much is required. Doing much more is given, much more is required. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, but if he loses his own soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul? This is the question. Hell is real. And Jesus is the only Savior. We are lost. Jesus is the way. We are deceived. Jesus is the truth. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. Jesus is the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. Only Jesus saves. We will be judged according to the life we have received. Too much is given, much is required. Too much more is given, much more will be required. The scriptures make it clear there will be different degrees of rewards in heaven and different degrees of judgment even in hell. Each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it. It will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each person's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work that he has built endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss. But he himself will be saved, as so those through fire. So are we building on a solid foundation, the rock of Christ, with good materials like rubies and gold and silver? Or are we building with hay and stubble? And what about the Eskimos and the Pygmies? And other remote tribes that have never heard the gospel? Well, actually, there's far more Pygmies in the Congo who've come to Christ than there have been Belgians, for example. So we've even had a Pygmy at one of our Biblical Worldly Summits in Cape Town. There are many millions of Christians in the Congo, vastly more. There's something like 200 times more Christians in the Congo than there are in Belgium, which once ruled the Congo. These days you would rather say, what about the poor pagans in the middle of Europe than to say what about the poor pagans in the middle of Africa? Africa is outstripping North America, Asia, and Europe in the number of Christians. We have 680 million Christians in Africa right now. And we're going to be up to 1.2 billion Christians in Africa officially according to Operation World by the year 2050, which is not that long from now. The number of Christians in Africa is about to double in the next 25 years. So when people are asking what about the poor heathens who never heard the gospel, also think of the reality of heathenism. If anyone doubts the depravity of man, you only need to read David Livingstone's accounts of what central Africa was actually like prior to the coming of the gospel. Or you can read Henry Morton Stanley's writings through the Dark Continent and in Darkest African. We've got all these books in our library here. The reality of heathenism before the coming of the gospel and the coming of civilization is clearly portrayed in these works, such as these horrible big pits where they would start bushfires. And yet, you know, the way the pagans talk now, the Greens and so on, is that before the gospel people really lived in harmony with nature and they weren't destructive like we are today. Well, they'd start forest fires that would herd wild animals into big pits, where they would fall onto stakes, and terrible suffering, huge waste. Very few of those animals could be cooked and eaten. Just massive amounts of destruction, huge amounts, you know, thousands upon thousands of animals killed, and tens of thousands of acres of forest and bush burned. And this was standard practice before the coming of the gospel. A good man is kind to his animals, the wicked are cruel to theirs. And in village after village down the original heart of darkness, the Congo River, Henry Morton Stanley documented the skulls and bones of victims of cannibalism. Tens of thousands of victims openly portrayed their skulls on tops of stakes and all of this. And for people to glamorize this and suggest, as Robert Mugabe said, Africa knew nothing about suffering until the gospel arrived. It was just the missionaries with the gospel, they ruined everything. What a lot of nonsense. Who would want to get their heads knocked out of the crop carriers, put on a stake, as so many of these chiefs were running the place, and the slavery, the wholesale massacres, the slash-and-burn destruction of vast herds of animals, and you want to glamorize that and say they were more in tune with nature and we should go back to pre-Christian paganism? There are no sincere good people in the world, earnestly seeking God. God's not going to condemn any good people. There are no good people. People are not going to get condemned just because they've heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, although that's the only way of salvation. But God has plainly manifested his eternal power, his being, and his character to every human being on the planet. It's evident in creation. Through general revelation in creation and through our conscience, every human being knows there is a God and that we're accountable to God. And yet every human being disobeys God. This is a fact. Jesus Christ came to a world that he had already condemned, that was condemned, lost, on his way to hell. People are not condemned. Just take a parachuting analogy. If you jump out of a plane, it's not the parachute's fault if you die. If you leave the parachute behind you, jump out without a parachute, it's going to be your choice that kills you. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the other end. And yet, the parachute would have saved the person, but you can't blame the parachute for the man not putting the parachute on. You've got to blame the person for not putting on the parachute. Don't jump out of a plane without a parachute. I mean, is that not clear to us? So you can't blame the Saviour if people reject Him. Christ came to redeem a world that was already guilty of rejecting its Creator and of violating the Creator's laws. Now the best form of defence is attack. The Gospel is under attack. We need to counter-attack. We dare not be passive or neutral or inactive. The situation is desperate. The needs are urgent. Christian civilisation itself is under attack. The essential foundations for our faith and freedoms are being undermined. We have to get back to the Bible. We're seeing a war against God, and it's everywhere. The paganization of Saudi, the criminalization of our communities, the burning of churches, burning of Christian flags. In this battle for the mind, it's a battle for truth itself that is at stake. The Bible is being attacked in Hollywood, in the mass media, the mainstream media. It's being attacked in Hollywood films. The Bible is being attacked in university campuses. The war against the family includes attacks on the institution of marriage itself. They are trying to destroy marriage and the family, because the family is the basic building blocks of society. There's a war against the pre-born. You can see it. How many million people does Doctors for Life estimate have been murdered in South Africa through abortion? Well, the current stats are 260,000 babies every year, on average. Now we've been talking about 2 million being aborted in South Korea since 1997, but do you estimate it could be more like 6.5 million? So it could be more. In our country, that's more than the population of Cape Town. killed in the whole country in the last 30 years. And that's just criminal. That's absolutely wicked. There's a war against the pre-born. Ultimately, all of these are symptoms of a greater war against God himself, as seen in Nigeria, where in five years, Boko Haram attacked 1,000 churches and killed 17,500 Christians in just a five-year time period. That's from the year 2010 to 2015. There's a war against God. And by the way, one of the most popular economists in university campuses is Karl Marx. Yet Karl Marx was a Satanist, as well documented by Richard Wilber's book Marx and Satan, which we have in our bookshop and library here too. Karl Marx was an occultic Satanist. He hated God. And it's so important to understand Marxism is occultic. You can't have a Christian communist. That's a contradiction in terms. That's like having a God-fearing atheist. We need to know the word of God, and we need to know the works of God in history. Study to show yourself approved unto God, and always be ready to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason for the hope that's within you. May God grant them, the skeptics, repentance, so that they may come to know the truth, come to their senses, and escape the trap of the devil. Contend earnestly for the faith, once full, delivered to the saints. Now this is a chapter in my book, Answering Skeptics. Why does, how can Loving God send anyone to hell? We've got it in audio, got them on sermon audio, we've got a whole lot of these in different formats like in joy magazines. I said I've got a new book out with a whole of these foundations for our faith, which is based on all the articles I wrote in this Answering Skeptic series, and the book is in our bookshop too. These are just some of the tools we can use to reclaim our campuses for Christ. Universities should be Christian, uni veritas. One truth. Most pagans don't believe in truth, let alone that it can be known, or that there's one truth. There's many truths. Your truth, my truth, everyone else's truth. There's more than two genders as well, according to them. But univeritas, one truth. So all university should be Christian. Let the pagans open up a polyversity, or a diversity, or an aversity. But university should be Christian. There's some excellent tools from Where the Master for evangelizing skeptics, like the Evidence Bible. And we've got other resources that can help to give ammunition to anyone trying to seriously fulfill the Great Commission. All available from Christian Liberty Books. Upcoming events. Not this coming Sunday, but the following Sunday, the 6th of October, we'll be having Life Chain Sunday, International Life Chain Sunday. carried out all over the world. Some years have been over a million people involved in 1,400 venues. We've been running LifeChange in Cape Town for 32 years, since 1992. And there'll be a March for Life in Durban on Kruger Day. 10th of October, which used to be a public holiday. We actually have a film planned to screen here, Uum Kruger. It's the biggest big screen epic ever produced on the Anglo-Boer War. And it's the only film I know produced on the Anglo-Boer War from the Boer perspective. So don't expect it to be pro-British. But in fact, I don't know any other film on the Anglo-Boer War except the Australian one that glamorizes these war criminals, Breaker Marant, these Australians who are running around killing missionaries and murdering prisoners and so on. And the Australians made a very well-made film, mind you, Breaker Marant, but that's from the Australian perspective, anti-Brit and anti-Boer. They blamed the British because the British tried these Australian war criminals and shot them for doing exactly what the British high command commanded them to do, and what everyone else was doing too. When they wanted to finally have peace with the British, they needed some scapegoats. So they, not strung up, they shot these Australians. They were war criminals. Breckenrant was definitely guilty of murdering civilians and prisoners of war and so on, in cold blood. But anyway, this is now a broad perspective on the Anglo-Boer War. And for Kruger Day, I thought that would be a nice way to celebrate for that screening. Next week, by the way, we plan to show Unplanned, which is a phenomenally good film on the pro-life side. It's a true story of a woman who was directed the largest abortion clinic in Texas and how she became a pro-lifer and It's a wonderful story. The abortion clinic today is a pro-life centre. Abortion clinic closed down shortly afterwards. A real victory. It's an inspiring film. I think if anyone sees that film they'll understand abortion better and be highly committed to the pro-life message. So that'll be next Thursday night. We've got a Reformation History workshop coming up here on the 16th of October in the morning, Wednesday the 16th. Everyone's welcome, even though it's primarily at home schoolers. And we'll have a primary school program downstairs as well. Upstairs we'll deal with the high schoolers and the parents. And then on the 10th of November, remember, International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted is coming up. Something to mobilize more churches, focus on the persecuted church. Today there are 400 million Christians worldwide. In 67 countries where the government's persecuted Christians, we don't enjoy the religious freedom we have. Well, you can get a lot more on our Frontline Mission SA.org website, and this presentation will be uploaded next week up onto our YouTube video and on Sermon Audio. Any questions? Questions, complaints, criticisms? How can a loving God send anyone to hell? Anybody want to add something or ask a question concerning this? You said 400 million persecuted Christians worldwide. That's correct. 400 million. It works out to 1 in 6 Christians in the world is living under persecution today. And it works out to 1 in 3 Christians in Africa. because of the north of Africa being mostly Arabic and Muslim. So we've got 17 countries in Africa where Muslims are the majority and where Islam is the official religion. So most of those countries persecute the church severely, as in violently. Some of the most violent countries in the world against Christianity would of course be North Korea, and it would include places like Iraq, Iran. Interestingly, there are millions of Christians now in Iran. Interestingly, before 1980 when the Shah of Iran got ousted, the number of Christians in Iran was less than 500. and now it's hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iran. The Ayatollah has actually helped fulfill the Great Commission. He's been so harsh and so strict and so extreme and so totalitarian that Iranians have sought Christ, and many Iranians have come to Christ. There's a very strong underground church in Iran today. But Christians are hung in Iran. They are shot in Pakistan. They're stoned in Somalia. There's a lot of vicious persecution there. And Nigeria, northern Nigeria must be one of the harshest, most violent places in the world to be a Christian today. So no, persecution is not over. And of course, read China. Tremendous amount of persecution there. Cuba. I think, mostly now, there's a hatred of believers, all believers in that. One days, when the churches of Cuba were angered, Well, one of the problems that many people don't think about much is In the Middle East, there's a lot of Christians, and when America bombs somebody, the Christians get in the neck. They can't get the American drone or whatever that got them, so they take out their wrath on some poor mind-owned business, a Syrian Christian or Coptic Christian or some poor guy who's just mind-owned business, never been involved in politics. The next thing, they get literally strung out or beheaded because America is a Christian country, right? The Christians are bombing us, therefore, let's take it out on the local Christians whose families have been here for about 2,000 years. It's very unfair and brutal, but it gets worse than that. When the Americans decided to abandon and betray the Christians in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, they left behind, when they abandoned all the weapons to the terrorists that they came to fight, they also left the records of the people who were their translators, their informants. And so, of course, the Americans did the same in Vietnam. They left every detail, their photographs and so on. They didn't destroy those papers. And so, those people end up, if they were lucky, in a concentration camp. And so the betrayal of Christians by America has been immense. Whenever the Americans come and they've been welcomed by the local Christians thinking at last we're going to get some freedom because that's what they do, isn't it? And the Ukrainians found the same thing. where Ukrainians came over the lines to America at the end of the Second World War and told of plots to kill General George Patton, for example. And next thing, each one of them were taken and given back to the NKVD, who tortured them all to death, of course. So there's been a long pattern in the West of treachery towards Christians. When Israel went into Lebanon back in 1982 to fight the PLO, the local Christian militias took their side and helped them. And so when Israel betrayed them and just left, these Christian villages and groups that had aided Israel, thinking, you know, Jews, God's chosen people, Christians, we're friends, allies. But the IDF used them, abused them, abandoned them, and they got slaughtered afterwards. So there's been a lot of churches. The poor Christians in the Middle East, it's the only place in the world where Christians are less now than they were 10 years ago. Christians have been growing everywhere else, but the loss of Christians in the Middle East. In the year 2010, when we had the last World Mission Conference in Cape Town, Lausanne 3 it was called, Cape Town 2010. There were 50 million Christians in the Middle East. Now there's not even 12 million Christians in the Middle East. We've lost 3 million Christians net loss in the last 14 years. It's just catastrophic. Everywhere else the church is growing. And of course people have come to Christ in these last 14 years too, but the net loss is 3 million less. That's how bad it is. And of course you've got to blame Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton's Arab Spring, which they sponsored, which overturned governments that were protecting the Christians and brought in thugs like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who destroyed 79 churches in just one weekend. And murdered who knows how many Christians, including beheading Christians on the beach. Things like that, which I'm sure many people have seen pictures of. So that was horrific. You were going to say something else? Compared to the Middle East and North Korea would be, I'd say, well, North Korea is a few weeks before Christian survival would be normal. As far as I know, all the monitoring of the World Watch, monitoring of persecuted Christians puts North Korea as the worst anti-Christian state on earth because they don't allow any expression. But the thing about the Middle East is that Christians are allowed and tolerated and have been there for centuries and entrenched. But the attacks come in fits and waves, so it's more violent, I would say, in the Middle East, and sporadic, whereas in North Korea there's a constant grinding down Christians. Anybody who comes to Christ in North Korea is already guilty of a crime. There's no legal way you can be a Christian in North Korea. So one of the best messages we had at the Cape Town 2010 Missions Conference was a North Korean girl whose father had been a Communist Party member, He got converted to Christ and he got killed. She came to Christ and she fled into China, which you wouldn't think that's an improvement, but in China she could at least survive and got through to South Korea, which took quite a lot of work. And she is studying theology and missions in order to go back to North Korea to be a missionary to her people. That was very moving. So North Korea is definitely the worst place, but I think it might be more violent elsewhere because there's more churches to attack and more Christians. So it's sporadic in the Middle East. They certainly have tried to destroy the church in North Korea. They don't want to tolerate one Christian. Not one church. Whereas the communists in Russia, they still have Basil's Cathedral and a few others as places that tourists could go to and have photo ops and bring Billy Graham to so that they could say, look, we have religious freedom in Russia because propaganda is super important and North Korea isn't trying to be popular. North Korea doesn't care. They don't even allow one church open, not even for propaganda purposes. Christianity, you can't tolerate it at all. And their logic is, Christianity brought down communism in Russia, in the Soviet Union, so we can't allow any Christianity here. And China's acting the same way. China cracks down heavily on the church. And yet, we still get Bibles printed in China. And you may say, how is that possible? Well, they're printing them in English, and they print them in the smallest font possible, so you can barely read them. And is there a market for Bibles you can't read? Yes, there is. There's people in particularly America, as we know, who want to buy vast amounts of Bibles and say, you know, we've taken so many thousands of Bibles and here and there, and support this project. And I wondered when somebody affiliated with us was bringing in 40,000 Bibles in one container. Now I know logistics because I've organized hundreds of thousands of Bibles. And the Bibles I print, as you can see in the reception display cabinets downstairs, they're a kilogram each Bible. to be readable. But these bibles that were being distributed up in Sudan by one of our friends and affiliates, it was less than 0.40, like 40 grams, not a kilogram. We opened them and said, holy cow, read this thing. It's such a small type. But that's for people who don't read or care about the results, but they're just one numbers. We took in, OK, how do you get 40,000 bibles in a container? You can't get 40,000 kilograms, which would mean 40 tons of bibles in a container. We know that. 17 tons is max to fit into a container. But these guys could do that because their bibles are so, so small. They're all printed in places like China. That's when you don't care about the quality. So there is a market for buying unreadable bibles. for those who are interested in numbers and not results. Sadly. So any other questions on how can a loving God send you on to hell? Last week someone asked the question, God's judgment is so extreme that sins that are done for a short time would have an eternity of punishment. And so I thought it's necessary to deal with this. Because I don't think we realize the seriousness of our sin and the holiness of God. The only way people will come to understand it is we've got to preach the Old Testament. People need to understand the Old Testament stories and examples. Here's Aaron's sons bringing strange fire into the temple, into the tabernacle, struck with lightning, destroyed, struck dead there. In the early church even, when you had Nice and Sapphira lying in church testimony, and they get struck dead. If we don't understand the law of God and the holiness of God, we won't appreciate the grace of God and his mercy. So we're failing, generally, to preach the law of God, which is the school whilst to lead us to Christ that we can be justified by faith. It's so important we know the Old Testament stories and that we understand the holiness of God. Even the requirements of the priest, the requirements to enter into God's presence, to enter the Holy of Holies, the Day of Atonement. When we understand that, then we appreciate the grace of God in the salvation of our Lord Jesus. But people don't appreciate grace and they don't fear God. When we don't know how holy God is, we don't realize how sinful we are, and we don't appreciate how great is the salvation Christ has offered and procured for us. So if somebody wants to bring up hell, it's not something for us to avoid. We don't need to be embarrassed about it. Let's get to the heart of the faith. Charles Spurgeon said, if I can get a man to think about eternity for just five minutes, I can lead him to Christ. Most people don't think of eternity, which is why the best evangelism you'll ever have is at a funeral. People are more serious and more open and listening to eternity, considering eternity at a funeral. So you will win people to Christ at the funeral if you will preach the gospel, whereas you wouldn't at a wedding. Average wedding is one of the most frustrating times for ministry. The minister knows almost no one's listening, everyone's distracted. At a funeral, you have people's attention. If you can adequately present the gospel. I don't know how you're talking about John. He was able to say, here I am. Can you worship without knowing him, I pretend to you. Now God commands all men everywhere to repent. Yes. So I've always found that a very encouraging message. That is, yes. But it also should put fear in some people, the idea that the Lord would say it would be worse for Capernaum on Day of Judgment than Solomon Gomorrah. I mean, what a shocking thought. There could be some seriously religious people who are going to be really shocked on Day of Judgment when the Lord says to some Depart from me Christ, I never knew you. But Lord, Lord, we proclaim the gospel in your name, we healed the sick, did miracles in your name. And Lord, some of these people who are saying Lord, Lord, and who are claiming to perform miracles on earth, depart from me, I never knew you. I mean, that should put fear, especially in the minister, when you're reading the Bible, not many of us should be teachers, because we teachers will be judged with greater strictness. That's very sober talking. That's actually kind of terrifying. And he was, as I said, I think Charles Bridgerton said, he feared going to the pulpit. He found it an awesome, terrifying experience, and it should be. It's a serious thing to handle the word of God. May we never handle the word of God lightly or unfaithfully. If God is going to judge those who have been blessed more severely than those who never heard a clear preaching gospel, then it's a solemn, serious thing. Many Christians may be absolutely horrified and devastated on that judgment. But when I say Christians, I mean in a broader sense. But do you wonder how many people are in the pulpit who don't even believe the gospel? When you've heard that there's whole denominations, or should I say abominations, that have accepted the whole LGBTQ agenda, or debated does God exist, does hell exist, does the devil exist? What is marriage? How many genders are there? If they can't get those basic things right, what are they preaching to the pulpit? How can people like that even be ministers of the gospel? We're in a serious stage. There was a time when almost everyone on earth feared hell and feared God. But now, if hell's mentioned, it's normally in a joke. And Chip's talking about, you know, when I have a party with my buddies in hell. But hell is a place of loneliness. They're not going to see their buddies. And yet, how many people talk like that? Even on the streets you can talk to some people, you know, you're going to heaven or hell, and say, I want to go to hell where all my friends are going to be. And what do you think is going to be down there? Raucous party, all you can drink beers up, open bar. I think some people are thinking that. They don't have an understanding of the wrath of God. And then I even had somebody coming along and saying to me, your God is my devil. Your God sends people to hell. My God would never send anyone to hell. There's only one God. And that's what God revealed in the Bible. And God does send people to hell for offending him. And many people think of the devil ruling hell like his personal thiefdom. But in fact, hell is a place of judgment prepared for the devil and his angels, and those who choose to follow Satan. So again, this popular notion of hell being some kind of nice place for the really in crowd, you're going to be having this wonderful party. Absolutely bizarre. I think they're going to rain in hell. Goodness me. It seems that the interpretation of holiness doesn't have any gravity to it. It's almost like a sense of comfort. Holy is a four letter word in many people's dictionary. Many people just hate the word holy and of course part of the problem could be the hypocrites you've had out there and they've been the popes and how many cardinals have been total hypocrites. So when people think of holy they think of some horrible stereotype My understanding is holiness is to the soul and the spirit what health is to the body. Only a hypochondriac would want to be sick. Most of us like to be healthy. Many people, while they want to be healthy in the body, they don't want to be holy in the soul because holy isn't cool, holy isn't with us, holy isn't the in thing. We've got to be with the fashions and the fads and the trends of today. Very sad sadly, but plainly, it's not just Hollywood that's changed a lot of people's outlooks on God and on faith and heaven and hell, but it's also many of our churches. And you can see the devil has been busy infiltrating seminaries and turning them into cemeteries. In many places, theologians seems to be a code word for atheists. Sorry to interrupt you. I do have two questions. Well, I don't know about pots, dentists and furniture describes sections, but there certainly is going to be degrees of punishment. Anthony, you want to answer that? There's a lake of fire which nobody's in now. It is for Judgment Day. They're just prepared for the demons, angels. But on Judgment Day, everything belongs to the demons, angels, who go into the lake of fire. The place that we call hell, Bala Fitya, is a place of torment where the lost souls of men are tortured day and night by demons. But on Judgment Day, everything will be thrown into the lake of fire. There's no one in there yet. That's helpful. So we should consider, right now what we often refer to as hell is Hades, or Sheol, the abode of the dead. On the Day of Judgment, there's the Lake of Fire, in terms of fire and brimstone, which is the everlasting death. So, plainly, many people have confused the two concepts of the Lake of Fire, but it is a place of darkness, it's a place of loneliness, and so these people who think, I'm going to be with my friends having a party, obviously are completely deluded. We see the place of torment in Luke 16, where the man is tormented, the rich man is tormented. That is the place of torment where the souls of men are being held by the white corset. But everything is going to the lake of fire. Yes, so that does help. Does that answer your question? Can I go to my second question? Yes, please. When we talk about the wrath of God. The wrath of God or the anger of God, yes. I'm taking it in the form of tribulation. Is it going to occur after the rapture of the church or before the rapture of the church? Well, the wrath of God has been in existence for as long as man has been in sin. Sodom and Gomorrah experienced the wrath of God pouring down in fire and brimstone, coming from heaven, consuming these wicked cities. You can imagine the Assyrians surrounding Jerusalem being struck dead in one night. 185,000 Assyrians while they were besieging the city of Jerusalem. You can think of the judgments and punishments, the ten plagues that hit Egypt, and then the tenth plague that wiped out the firstborn of Egypt. The charioteers, the elite of the Egyptian army, pursuing the children of Israel, suddenly being ambushed at the Red Sea as God closes both sides of the Red Sea. He kept the sea open for Israel to pass through. And when the Egyptians came and think, oh, we're going to slaughter them, God ambushes them, takes them all out. That's the wrath of God. So the wrath of God has been around for quite a while. It's not just something in the future. And we shouldn't. But you're asking another question, really. You're asking about, is a tribulation coming before or after the rapture? Or is the rapture coming in the middle of the tribulation? I don't believe that anyone's going to escape tribulation. Any tribulation we've got to go through. Christians have gone through tribulation in Russia, in the Soviet Union, in China, Mozambique, Congo, northern Sudan, northern Algeria. It's an American concept. It's a wishful thinking, we get wrapped up in cotton wool and bubble wrap and we get embargoed to heaven, we get raptured to heaven, we don't get bruised, bumped or inconvenienced on the way. And so this business of pre-tribulation rapture is a false teaching which only started in about the 1830s, 1840s, and we have this in common with the cults, like the Jehovah's Witnesses believe in this pre-tribulation rapture thing and the end of the world, but we won't go through any of the tribulation. I don't accept any of that. Yes. I think sometimes people try to mix tribulation and the rapture, which are totally different from one another. Because when we speak about tribulation, it is what has always been true. And the Bible says, I think, in the book of 2 Timothy, chapter 10, verse 12, that all that may be done in Christ Jesus to the nation, and we should not rely on other people. Absolutely, it's just not the way. That's very helpful. Thank you for clarifying that. That's true. Jesus said, in the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. So tribulation is part of our experience. But the wrath of God is far greater than any evil people can do on earth. When God is angry and God pours out his judgment upon the wicked who have steadfastly refused to repent, that will be a different category. You can't compare the wrath man can bring on us with what God can bring upon the wicked. So Jesus said, do not fear man who can only kill a body and after that can do no more. Rather fear God who can destroy both body and itself, hell forever. So plainly Jesus says we should fear God not man because God's wrath is far greater than anything man can do to us. There's a lot of speculation about the end times, but there's no doubt about the fact that Christ wins. He is the conqueror. The brethren just say that the church relieved tribulations but not the wrath of God. How about 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 13-18 when they say that the church has been ruptured before the tribulation? Yes, so of course the word rapture doesn't appear in the Bible. It's a word that explains the taking up of people from earth to be with the Lord. So people are concerned in the Thessalonian church, what's going to happen for those of our brothers who are looking forward to the Lord's return, but he hasn't returned yet and they've died. And so the Apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonians, by the way that's the first book written in the New Testament on Thessalonians. He says, comfort one another with these words, that the dead in Christ, we will not perceive dead in Christ, they will rise first. The Lord will return with a shout and with the sound of a trumpet, and it's going to be a great return of Christ. But the dead in Christ will rise in that day. And this, by the way, is why we bury bodies with the feet facing north towards Jerusalem. Of course, if you're in northern Europe, facing south, and if you're in America, facing east. And every Christian is buried so that on the day of resurrection that they'll sit up in their graves and be looking towards Jerusalem. Mount of Olives where the Lord is going to return. I mean that's a magnificent thought that we don't just put them in rows arbitrarily. Graves are sited as Christians so that the feet face towards Jerusalem and as they rise they will set up facing the right direction. Otherwise, you know, you've got to get up and cover your shoulder and so on. It could be quite stiff at that point, who knows? But it's a wonderful thing at a funeral to know that the day will come, as the Australian's fore says, when the dead will, and Christ will rise. And then we who are still alive at that time, we will be caught up in heaven to meet them in the air. But the Lord will return with his saints, those who died in him, and those who are still alive at the time that he returns. That's an exciting prospect. Can you imagine that day? There's no time there. It simply says that those who are not will not die before those who are dead already. So there's an extra line that says that the church will be there or the church will not be there. It's not going to be there. It's going to be there. Yes, that doesn't explain whether it's pre-mill, pre-trib or anything like that. But the point is when the Lord returns, the dead in Christ will rise first and we use the Lamb will rise first. So that is not telling you much about eschatology but it's telling you a lot about the resurrection. The best book in the Bible about the resurrection is 1 Corinthians chapter 15. That tells us about the resurrection. And 1 Thessalonians 4 is a good passage to comfort people who are mourning the loss of a dead one. But he said also that the church won't be representing the people. He was saying that the eschatology thing in 1 Thessalonians 7. Yeah, it's not telling you when, but it's saying when the Lord returns. The dead in Christ's eyes. And in my opinion, I think that the word is right because it tells us when, but when we read Daniel chapter 9, verse 27, it can also give us, what can I say? What great insight. You should study the book of Revelation in the light of the book of Daniel. Yes. And they say that there is one week when Jesus Christ died and he went back to heaven. And they say that Jesus will come after the one week when the antichrist will go on earth. I don't think you're going to get those words in the book of Daniel, but some people are putting that interpretation on it. But Daniel is super helpful. If you read Daniel and Revelation together, it sheds light on one another. It's very helpful. Not very secret, no. Yes, so it's not quite like the way the Left Behind series put it, you know, where everyone's confused and planes are crashing. Even 20 minutes into the rapture there's still planes crashing at different times. It's kind of a funny film in some ways. No, I think there's been a lot of fiction given about the rapture and left behind and all of this. But it doesn't sound very secret when there's a great shout and the voice of the archangel and the trumpet sounding. So the day of resurrection and the Lord's return is going to be a very noisy public event and every hour we'll see him. This is not going to be something done and people saying, what happened? Where's all these Christians gone? Yes. I believe so. And a key reason here is we've got in John 5 verse 54, Jesus says, the day is coming when all who are in the grave will rise, the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to everlasting condemnation. So the Lord Jesus is speaking about the unity of the eschatological complex, the theological term. One day, in fact some translations say one hour, a day is coming, an hour is coming, when all who are in the grave will rise. It's not that there's going to be a secret resurrection for the righteous now and then a more public one later. It's not that the resurrection is going to be separated a thousand and seven years between the rising of the saints and the rising of the wicked for judgment. There's going to be one day of resurrection, one day of judgment. And that makes mincemeat of a lot of the dispensational ideas of separating out several returns of Christ and several different resurrections. You get that in Helenes' books, but you don't get that in the Bible. In the Bible, it seems there's going to be one day of resurrection and judgment. Because if I say so, Dr, because the Sabirians, they say that there is a sound of trumpet, and it goes up the neck and jaw. have to confront. Well, obviously it's got to include all. No one part of Scripture is wrong, but we interpret Scripture in light of Scripture. We interpret the vague parts of Scripture with the more clear parts of Scripture. So when it comes to resurrection, I've got to read 1 Corinthians 15. That chapter is the clearest, most comprehensive on resurrection. It can be supplemented by 1 Thessalonians 4, but we've also got to remember what Jesus said, that the day is coming when both the righteous and the unrighteous will rise to judgment. which means it's hard for me to fit in the idea of separating several comings of Christ and several different judgements and resurrections. It looks like the unity of the eschatological complex is what the theologians called it. There's the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead and day of judgement all seem to come at the same time. That wrecks a whole lot of books of some best-selling authors but that's what the scripture teaches. That's not the main subject for tonight, so that's why it needs more time evidently to discuss this in practice. For example, many American base of faith is we believe in the pre-tribulation return of Christ. My father-in-law had that in his mission statement, and when we were behind the Iron Curtain ministering in the days of communist persecution, 1980s, I said to him, do you realize that your base of faith precludes you working with any of the persecuted church? He was in a state of shock and we had to go back and get his mission to change the base faith to take out the pre-millennial return of Christ. We believe in the bodily return of Christ. Because nobody in Eastern Europe believed in the pre-tribulation rapture. Well, they were going through tribulation. I mean, why would they believe in a pre-tribulation rapture? And so, the Christians in Russia, in Ukraine, Romania, Albania, they didn't believe in the pre-millennial ritual of Christ. That pre-tribulation rapture, that is a uniquely American and British speciality. So that convinced me too. The persecuted church, some of the purest churches on earth, the ones who suffered persecution and stood firm, they didn't believe this uniquely Californian interpretation of Hellency and who the other characters had been pushing there. So, when I was converted, 1977, we were singing I Wish We'd All Been Ready by Larry Norman. We were watching films like A Thief in the Night and we were all into pre-trib rapture. I could say I was a rapture fever fanatic. We were the terminal generation. We were in the last days, the last hours, the last minutes. We were in the last seconds. Jesus coming before the end of this year. We were absolutely sold on this, I have no doubt. But when I started ministering amongst the persecuted church, I saw they didn't know any of this. They didn't believe any of it. I have to change my way of thinking. Some of the finest Christians I've seen on the planet, the ones who stood firm in persecution, they knew nothing about it. And they just read the Bible. They didn't have Helency's Lake, Great Plains, Earth, and so on. There's a new world coming. And they just said the Bible. And these people knew their Bibles better than these Californians. So I completely changed my perspective when I saw the persecuted church. The church in China rebuked the Western missionaries. They were telling them that they'd be left before tribulation. And it never came. They went through tribulation, vast amount of tribulation. And they said that the American teaching made a weak church. It wasn't prepared for persecution. So this idea that, don't worry, tribulation is coming, but we won't be part of it, we're going to be raptured before. That is deadly. That doesn't help Christians to have the backbone needed to say, Our God, whom we serve, is able to save us. But even if he doesn't, we still will not bow before your idols, nor will we serve your gods. We need the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Daniel mentality of, I'm not going to bow, I'm not going to bend, I'm not going to burn, I'm going to stand for Christ. That's it. And we need those kind of Christians. So I think there's a bit of make-belief and wishful thinking theology. People in California don't want to get inconvenienced. As Bill Bathman said, it's not that the American Christians aren't willing to suffer persecution for Christ, they just don't want to be inconvenienced. And so, I'm afraid that is the view in the world today. We can't go to church, it's raining. It's cold. It's freezing, something like that. And so this whole idea that, well, God can't want me to go to church today, it's cold, I'm going to stay in bed. And where does that come from? Premal, pre-trib rapture, you're a privileged people, it's not going to happen to you. No, that doesn't make a strong church. It makes a bunch of entitled brats and weaklings, softies, pushovers. Did you hear about the person who called themselves a pan-millennial? It's all going to pan out in the end. Yeah, I mean that is a bit of a flippant response. But in one sense, we could all be wrong, but it hasn't happened yet. And my father-in-law, Bill Bethlen said, and Brother Andrew, who is a good friend of us, didn't believe in all this either. So he's saying, we shouldn't split fellowship over something that hasn't happened yet. So, we could all be wrong if we're predicting what's going to happen in the future. What if we're all wrong? We've got to be more gracious. So, to have a mentality, we've had some churches that cut fellowship. We even had Phil Bethkin had churches in America cut fellowship with him because he was friends with Brother Andrew, who didn't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. And, you know, really, that kind of mentality. It's just another form of division. Yeah, you can see the enemy's work. Confuse, divide and conquer. Corrupt and conquer. That's his way. Anthony, would you say something to wrap this up? I mean... You know what, I think that this... I understand what's going on in our system. Let's say there's a new war coming, violence, etc. Instead of doing the work, getting down, winning the loss, trying to go to every trial and error, trying to take the crossroads we should be doing, they haven't done it, and they've become totally defective. That's the first thing. The second thing is, you're right, in the 18th century there was no rapture teaching in the church. That's an important point because actually historically the Protestant churches identified the papacy as Antichrist because they are continuing to perform the Mass as they claim they are re-sacrificing Christ for our salvation, which is a once-for-never-to-be-repeated sacrifice. They're diminishing Christ. It's an abomination what the Mass is doing. Not only that, but they claim the papacy is Antichrist, because the papacy claims to be the vicar of Christ, the mouthpiece of Christ, triple crown of St. Peter and all of that. And so, to distract Protestants from identifying Catholicism as Antichrist, they came up with a future Antichrist and things like this. Bear in mind, though, that the Apostle John writes of the spirit of Antichrist and many Antichrists. So some people have confused the beast of Revelation 13 with Antichrist, whereas John makes it clear there are many Antichrists. So I could say Islam is Antichrist. In fact the reformers taught that Islam is one of the legs of the beast. The two legs are Rome and the one leg The Western Empire became papal and the Eastern Empire was conquered by Islam. So Islam is one of the two horns of Antichrist. The Pope and the Marmalade are two horns of Antichrist. That's the way the church spoke about it. And they condemned the papacy as being the Antichrist papal system because they were the main persecutors of the church at that time. So that's the way people like Martin Luther and John Calvin and William Tyndale, the short Bible, the reformers in the Netherlands, that's how they saw it. Islam and papacy are two horns of Antichrist. But now the Jesuits introduced this clever idea that, no, but it's something else coming in the future, to ignore the history of the church, which Fox, Books of Martyrs documents, the biggest persecutor of the church through the ages being the Roman Catholic papacy, and then overtaken from the 7th century by Islam. So how effective is that to get your people confused and divided, and looking for a future Antichrist, ignoring the present one that's around you? So, plainly, I think we have been deceived. And I think there's a lot to learn from our ancestors in the past, like the reformers, and a lot to learn from the persecuted church today. And that's been my perspective. So, if I've got to choose between some Hollywood preacher from Los Angeles or the persecuted church, I'm going to choose the persecuted church for a better understanding of the scriptures. It's just a refreshing view to look at things the way they did. So one of our friends in East Europe said, in the West, you have a theology of prosperity. In the East, we have a theology of suffering. It is a privilege to suffer for Christ. Now, that makes a strong church. They've got backbone. As opposed to the wimps and weeds who say, don't worry, the Lord's going to rapture us before any inconvenience hits us. But you can see what's going to be more popular. But that's not going to make for a strong church. So we do need to be careful and cautious and humble, realizing we might have all misunderstood it. If it hasn't happened yet, then we shouldn't split fellowship over it.