Automatic Transcript Generated:
Speaker 1
Person. Richia, right? How do we.
Speaker 2
I think so. Something along those lines. We apologize if we don’t get your name correct.
Speaker 1
I like the name.
Speaker 2
It’s pretty name. How can a good God allow people to go to hell? Why didn’t God just forgive Adam and Eve? Why doesn’t God stop suffering? Why did God allow Satan to control this universe? If God was omnipotent, why doesn’t God stop Satan? Wow. This really ties into a lot of stuff we’ve just been talking about. There’s a lot of questions in there. I’m sure you can handle them. He was on mute.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I know. I’ve got a little situation here, but I saw you written some versions, but I think we’re perfect. So I think Jay has a great answer.
Speaker 1
All right.
Speaker 3
If that’s okay.
Speaker 1
I’m sorry. Doing so much talking today.
Speaker 3
I never stopped talking. So it’s good to do some loose thing. I have two ears and one mouth.
Speaker 2
And you’ve got a little one there who needs some attention.
Speaker 3
Yeah. She’s sick this week.
Speaker 1
Yes. No, better. All right, so where do we start in this? Well, I always suggest we start with the key to the Bible. The fundamental key to understanding the Bible is this one. John four eight. He who does not love does not know God. For God is love. We need to see everything in the Bible through the lens. God is love. I mean, if you believe the Bible is true, then this verse must be true. And if you’re reading a verse to not be consistent with this verse, you need to go back and understand its context and try to understand how is this showing us God is love? And I think we’re ready to talk about a little bit. Why did God have to kick Adam and Eve out of the garden? Because they rebelled against God. They rejected God. They wanted to listen to Satan. They said, we trust Satan more than God. And God’s like, okay, I have this deal with Satan, and you chose to go with Satan. Now you can’t have access to the tree of life because then you would live forever. And the worst thing to have is a murderer, thief, adulterer sinner living forever and destroying the universe, destroying themselves.
Speaker 1
So God kicked them out, cut them off from the tree of life. But none of this means God didn’t forgive them. God forgave them. Right? Because it says God made them clothes out of lamb skin, and that lamb skin had to come from a lamb. A lamb died that day. God put in place the plan of Salvation. As we heard Tina talked about earlier, God promised that that day the seed of a woman would come and would crush the head of the serpent, but he would be bruising his heel. He was pledging that Christ would come and would die for us. So he forgave them. And he provided the plan of Salvation. And part of that plan of Salvation is mankind is now going to be on probation. We’ll have our short lives to live during which we can choose whether to rebel against God or accept his gift of Salvation and choose to obey his wonderful requirement to love everybody and to love God. Note this. Genesis 217, God’s warning says, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die.
Speaker 1
Notice the punishment. There is not you’re going to burn forever and, and ever, ever and ever. It is the day you eat it, you shall surely die. The wages of sin is not burning forever, it’s death. You’re going to die. So God, because he’s, so merciful, because he is forgiving didn’t immediately kill Adam and Eve. He had the right to under the law to do it, but he didn’t. And it’s probably some of the reason. Why didn’t he immediately kill Satan? Because I say Satan is under the same law. Satan has sinned and Satan could be destroyed right away if God wanted same thing for Satan and all of his other Angels. So why is God holding out? Why is God holding out? And by the way, we talked about John 316 earlier, right for God to love the world. He gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life. Who has the everlasting life? Those who believe God. It doesn’t say the sinners are going to have everlasting life running forever. It says, no. The alternative to having everlasting life with God is perishing, it’s being destroyed.
Speaker 1
So the Bible is so consistent on that. There’s a couple of verses which I understand how you can most people might think they mean burning forever and ever, but do you go with that understanding from a couple of verses or is the greater weight? It’s better to believe what 99% of the Bible says that 99 should have formed then the other 1% that seems to be in conflict of it means we’re not reading those verses correctly. So why did Adam and Eve have to be kicked out though? What happened? Isaiah 59 two, it says, but your iniquities, our iniquities have separated us from God. It’s sin that separates us from God. It’s not necessarily God separated us from Him. We need to start looking at is our sins. What we’re doing is separating us from God. We’re separating ourselves from God. If we want to approach God, we need to start being in harmony with Him and it’s for our own protection. By the way, if we were to be in the presence of God, what would happen to us? What would happen to us?
Speaker 2
Well, look at when Moses was before God and it was so bright and nobody else could be there. It was blinding.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And just Moses coming from being in the presence of God, he was so bright and luminous, people couldn’t even stand to look at Moses, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, God is in this. His Holiness is just so amazing. You take even prophets like Isaiah and Daniel, these people, when they’re in the presence of even just an angel, they fall down. They can’t even handle the presence of an angel. What can we do in the presence of God? So whenever we see God in the Bible, if he’s showing his glory, if he’s truly in his divine form, he’s wrapped up in a cloud. He’s doing something to conceal his divinity. Like Christ, he came wrapped up in flesh to hide his divinity so that we could be around him and approach him. So that’s a very important concept there of what’s going on. And then we come to let’s take a look at two Corinthians 518. It says, now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus and has given us the Ministry of reconciliation. That is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Speaker 1
Is there a word that keeps showing up again and again? There reconciliation. Exactly. Is it that God needs help to reconcile himself to us?
Speaker 2
No, he’s constantly doing that. He’s constantly trying to do that, but we keep getting in the way of it.
Speaker 1
He’s more like that parent, right, where a kid has walked out and left the home and the dad, the mom wanted to do everything to get that kid back want to re establish that relationship. And the kid keeps saying, Mom, Dad, I don’t have anything to do with you. The parents are trying to reconcile. They’re trying to bring it back. That’s how it is with God. God wants to be able to bring us back into his home, into his fold, into his loving environment.
Speaker 2
That’s what he wants. The reason that kid left wasn’t because that kid had an issue with mom and dad and left. It was because somebody else told that kid a lie that made that kid doubt the relationship with mom and dad. And that’s why the kid left, because the kid was told a lie and the parent is just there thinking, what has just happened? How have I lost my child? The parent was not guilty of anything in that situation. God was not guilty of failing Adam and Eve at all.
Speaker 1
The only thing God did was or just like those parents, those parents didn’t say, I’m going to lock you in a room and make sure you never leave me out of love. They trusted their kid, right? So just like God trusted Adam and Eve to have love, you have to have trust. You have to give breathing room. You have to allow people to have choices. Because forced love is not real love.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
God chooses. He doesn’t have to write, but he chooses to prove his love, to win us back. And he also chooses to go out of his way to prove how bad sin is. Now, can you imagine the moment Satan starts thinking simple thoughts in his head? God just Burns them up, it disappears. He tells Angels, everybody, Satan was starting to think some really bad things. I couldn’t risk having them around for your benefit. Just trust me. Can you imagine all this? The Angels are just staring. They’re like, Whoa, where did he go? Why did God do that? Could God do that to me? Wow, God seems like such a tyrant. I’m really now scared of this. God right. God didn’t do that. He is so patient because he wants to demonstrate just how bad sin is, just how awful it is. Why can never be tolerated? So let’s even go back for a moment here about the moment here about being in the presence of God. Can we even afford to do that? Let’s look at Exodus 20 417, Exodus 24, verse 17. It says to the Israelites, the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain.
Speaker 1
Consuming fire. The glory of God is like a consuming fire. If we jump now to Isaiah 33, verses 14 to 16, it says, the sinners of Zion are afraid, fearfulness has seized the hypocrites. They say, who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with the everlasting burnings? Oh, there’s everlasting fire. Where is this he who dwells? Or he who walks righteously and speaks uprightly? He who despises gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes, who stops his ear from hearing a bloodshed, and who shots his eyes from seeing evil? He will dwell on high. His place of defense will be the fortress of the rocks. Bread will be given him. His water will be shore. So who is the person that will dwell in the everlasting fire? According to Isaiah 30, 314 to 16, is it the wicked or is it the righteous? The righteous, it’s the righteous. Wow. So think about that. Who’s dwelling in hell? What most people think is hell. Like the everlasting burning fire. It’s the righteous. The presence of God. God’s glory is everlasting fire. So when God talks about in the Bible, I want to refine you like, I’m a fire and I want to refine you.
Speaker 1
And it talks about gold. What’s special about gold is gold doesn’t deteriorate in fire. Gold gets purified. So in Revelation Three, God says, I want my Church, I want you to buy me gold. Refined in the fire. God wants us to be like that gold that we can stand in his presence, to be able to stand like, if you look at Revelation Six at the end of that chapter, it ends with the question, the world is being devastated, God is appearing, and people are quick and in their knees and they shout who can stand in the presence of God, who can stand in the presence of the Lamb. And we know. We know that’s right. We got it up on the screen. Revelation 617, we’re told here in ISIA 33, it is the righteous people who can stand in his presence and stand in his glory, the fiery flames, the consuming flames of God’s love. And if we are not in harmony with God and we’re rejecting him, those flames can become flames of destruction and devastation to us. It would literally be held for an unrighteous person to live in the presence of God.
Speaker 1
They will not be able to live in the presence of God. That is eternal torment, to live forever and ever and ever in the presence of God and hate God and reject God.
Speaker 2
Oh, excuse me. Go ahead. Oh, I’m sorry.
Speaker 3
I was just thinking that goes so perfectly with the verse that I always think about when I think about what is hell and what is the destruction of the wicked, what is their reward. And it’s very clear when you look at the verse in Psalms 37 20, and it says, but the wicked shall perish, just like John 316, those that don’t believe they perish. And it makes it even more clear here in Psalms 37 20. And the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs, they shall consume into smoke, they shall consume away. And so they burn, but they burn up. And just like it says, like the fat of lambs, because back when they did the daily sacrifice, they offered a lamb and they would burn the fat. And there was a symbol of sin. And just like sin, if we cling to sin, we’ll consume away with it and it Burns up because that’s the way it goes. And I know that there’s a verse in Revelation where people say, oh, it says that the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever. And I was like, yeah, the smoke does.
Speaker 3
But that doesn’t mean they’re burning still. Their smoke goes up because they just like smoke consume away. And I think that’s a fair and adjust God who just says, you don’t want to be with me, okay? In me is life if you don’t have me life. So you’re truly death. And here you’re destroyed, and that’s it. And so I think that God in his mercy allows that. And I don’t think that’s as well for any of us, but I think merciful in doing that.
Speaker 2
And can I just say what a powerful concept that you just talked about here? I feel like we need to take a minute to pause and reflect on this, that most people think of Hellfire as the place where people are just destroyed.
Speaker 1
Forever.
Speaker 2
Where people are just suffering forever and ever.
Speaker 1
God will reconstruct their body so he could just burn it again somehow.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Which is just weird. It just doesn’t even make sense the character.
Speaker 1
God is so sadistic when we’re talking about the lies being told about God. One of the biggest lies being told about God is this idea. He does want to burn forever and ever, the wicked.
Speaker 2
But what you have also done here is you have connected this consuming fire to being a place where righteousness stands. You just completely flipped on the head. What this concept that we understand as this consuming fire is about. Most people think of it as the fire where wicked suffer. You just said it’s. The fire where righteousness stands and is actually able to stand and be strong. And I don’t mean like, oh, I’m stronger than you strong.
Speaker 1
But just be able to stand on your 2ft.
Speaker 2
Just be there and just be like, there’s fire around me.
Speaker 1
Whatever.
Speaker 2
There’s fire around me.
Speaker 1
Like shattering me. Check out Vandigail in the furnace.
Speaker 2
Whoa. Like, mind blown. How big of a concept? That is a different perspective. That is a healing perspective. That is because that says it’s not about running away from a fearful God. It’s about running to the character and the love of God. That is like, though everything around me is burning. That is evil. I’m still okay.
Speaker 3
Yeah. I went.
Speaker 2
Say one more thing on that also, which is though the sin and the evil and the wickedness that may be a part of me is being burned away. I am still standing there. Okay. Because I am choosing righteousness. I’m choosing to hang on to the good and let the evil be burdened unless the evil be burned away.
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Mind blowing.
Speaker 3
And I once heard in a sermon, a pastor expressed it that God wants to make us fire proof. And that stuck with me because I was like, that’s absolutely true. If we are free from sin, if we are clinging to Jesus and his righteousness, we will be fireproof. Just like you’re saying, our brothers shadarak me, shaking up to the fire furnace with Jesus. And I think that’s so important to keep in mind the reality of what the Bible is saying about fire and eternal fire and what that means, because I think that the devil has done a really good job in portraying God as this evil. He’s going to burn you in hell forever. And that’s not good character. God is God’s love. And so, yeah, I totally am with you on this train of thought because this is absolutely us not just defending God as far as the Bible homotics, but this is defending character who he is and he is love.
Speaker 1
Exactly. And talk about that God’s character. Let’s take a look at Isaiah 28 starting at verse 21. And we’re talking about here something that God doesn’t like doing. And he only wants to do one time. So Isaiah 21 says, for the Lord will rise up as at Mount Perezim. He will be angry, as in the Valley of Gibian, that he may do his work, his awesome work and bring to pass his act, his unusual act. It’s unusual because he normally does not do this. This is not what he likes to do. And what is this we’re talking about? Verse 22. Now therefore, do not be mockers lest your bonds be made strong. For I have heard from the Lord God of hosts, a destruction determined upon the whole Earth. Look at this, a destruction. The whole world is going to be destroyed. Like you read Peter, I think Jude, they all talk about that. The whole world, including the heavens, our atmosphere, everything is going to melt away in fervent heat. God’s just going to burn everything, start over. So when we talk about not loving this world, yeah, don’t get too attached because nothing you see here is going to be left.
Speaker 1
It’s all going to be burned. And then we get to Revelation 21. I believe it is where it says then I saw a new heaven and a new Earth and actually, oh, I have a verse here that new heaven and new Earth reference in Revelations, actually quoting Isaiah, Isaiah 60, 517. For behold, I create new heavens and a new Earth and the former shall not be remembered nor come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing and her people a joy God wants to create a happy, joyful, peaceful place where we can all feel safe. We’re not going to have our stuff stolen. We’re not going to have people lied to us. Just like as the Facebook user said, God doesn’t want his children to have any wicked people around him to hurt his love, the people he loved. This is why he’s so angry at sin, because he’s seen sin hurting the people he loves. He never wants to see that happen ever again. And the only way to make sure that never happens again is by truly condemning sin, making sure that sin never, ever comes back.
Speaker 1
And so Jesus came in the flesh and in doing so, he condemns in the flesh. But it takes a long time. It says a hot tempered person stirs up conflict. But the one who is patient calms a quarrel, the one who is patient calms a quarrel. God is waiting so patiently to calm this huge, massive conflict he has with Satan. Satan is rebellious. He’s raging the war. And God has to do it the right way to stamp it down and make sure it will never come up a second time. And that’s exactly what the Bible says. Let me pull up that verse, Ezekiel 28, 118 19. Oh, no, that’s not it. No, I have it somewhere, Tina. Oh, is it Nahem? Yeah, Nahem. Says, what do you conspire against the Lord? He will make an outer end of it. He’s going to make an outer end of sin. Affliction will not rise up a second time. Why not because God has let sin run its full course. God has shown that sin will always lead to the murder and kill and suffering of the innocent, the people who don’t deserve it. This is why Christ had to come as a perfect human being, not sin, and yet still have sin kill him and this is why just before Christ comes again God is going to have a people who will have the character of Christ perfected in them and they will again show the love of Christ and the love of God to the world and the world will hate them and want to kill them just because they are perfect, because they are loving, Because they are on God’s side and it’s at that time that God will have to intervene to protect them
Speaker 1
and bring an end to sin at that time, that’s when it’s done. Sin has shown just how wicked, how terrible it is and the universe will know for certainty God is good and sin must be wiped out.
Speaker 3
Yeah, so powerful, it really is and God is so good in how he deals with us and not according to arsons, but according to his mercy. I’m just so grateful that is the God that we serve that he is loving even in how he deals with sinners and rebellion.
Speaker 2
We had a couple of comments here from Olivia as well. She says God is a God of love and justice. Burning a person who sinned for 70 years is not just therefore, eternal fire is not according to God’s character nor nature evil. Humans cannot wish eternal eternal cannot wish eternal hell that for their children. So how could a loving God be that way? Exactly? Yeah, that says it all.
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