Is Hell Real? Metaphor, Myth, or Biblical Reality?
Welcome back to the A Lot of Words podcast. You can find us at alotofwordspodcast.com. Here as always with Matt Smith, senior pastor of Bravess Road Church, lecturer, teacher, author, jujitsu, black belt, many other things. Jujitsu. Still it still kills me.
Speaker 1:Mac got me to do jujitsu once and I'll never do it again. Matt, I got a popcorn question for you.
Speaker 2:You were into it for a second.
Speaker 1:I was into it for a second. I got I learned what I needed to learn then I got out. Well, speaking of Halloween, today's topic is hell. A lot of words on hell, and we do know that it's the All Hollows Eve where that's a good episode that we'll do later as one on Halloween and
Speaker 2:Halloween, all the holidays.
Speaker 1:How it's the devil's holiday.
Speaker 2:I mean, technically, it was I mean, the reformation is the reformation holiday.
Speaker 1:It was.
Speaker 2:Know, All Saints Day too.
Speaker 1:And I I love the this year, inside of our small group, I had an invite to a reformation party, an invite to a Halloween party. And
Speaker 2:I was like,
Speaker 1:let's just duke this out. Love it. So I kept pushing just just to have peace peace with one another. You can have your own convictions about holidays.
Speaker 2:Alright. Hell.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So hell hell is the topic.
Speaker 2:A lot
Speaker 1:of words on hell. We've already had a lot of words, and now here goes gonna be some more.
Speaker 2:People can fast forward that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They can. I think they'll enjoy it probably more than the second thing we're gonna
Speaker 2:I don't understand that. Okay.
Speaker 1:So the first two, you're gonna go off a little bit on this. But yeah, what what is hell? And I think is hell necessary? Are the very big questions. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What is hell and is because a lot people think, oh hell's a metaphor, it's not it's not a real place,
Speaker 2:like Yeah.
Speaker 1:What is it and is it necessary?
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's I mean, the challenge when talking about hell, sorry about that, is like it's Mike. The challenge when talking about hell is like, we have to you have to put guardrails in place because the things we talk about hell reflect on how we talk about heaven and how we think about the gospel. And so hell, in one sense, we have to recognize if it's a metaphor, then so is heaven. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You just can't because it's always it's presented as a parallel. So the basic some of the basic decisions people make when we start having these conversations are based on preference. And that's not fair because there are some scholars that are having a scholastic view, even then, you know, when you start to think like what's pushing our scholasticism, what's pushing us to to study certain things, it's often a preference. Right? Hell as a concept and a place and these ideas feels so, you know, almost just like almost it offends our sensibilities.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It offends our sense of reality. Like we tend to think we're more sophisticated than believing. And then also, feel like we're reacting like Dante's inferno.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, hell is a real place. It's a place. That's the key. It is an actual abode. It is a place.
Speaker 2:And so, the bible uses different terms. So, in the Old Testament often it was Sheol, which meant the place of the dead, and that included both Abraham's bosom, would be paradise, and a place of torment, so it's the story of Lazarus. But in that case, was more just the way they depicted things was more horizontally. There's a great chasm, you know, fixed. And Jesus sort of plays this up in his sort of parable ish story of Lazarus.
Speaker 2:But what we hear about is the Jesus would refer to like Gehenna, which is what we would call hell, is a garbage dump where burning was always happening and it was just a place that represented a constant fires burning and it was a this was where the metaphor idea, this was to represent what hell is. We don't know exactly what it's like, obviously. It's that, you know, you have the our imaginations were fixed by Dante's Inferno and there's the seven levels of hell and all that. None of that's the issue. The idea of hell is it's a place of torment and wrath.
Speaker 2:And so the big term that is eternal conscious torment, E E C T, right? That's the thing that people debate versus like different forms of annihilationism and and all that. I'm sure you'll get to it. But but the basic issue with hell is it's a place. The way we know the most about hell is from Jesus.
Speaker 2:So it's always interesting to me because the red letters in the Bible, so that's like, you know, the Mhmm. What year is this? 2026? 04/07? Yeah.
Speaker 2:06/07?
Speaker 1:Oh, boy. Yeah. It's 2026.
Speaker 2:It's the year where you could actually do the k.
Speaker 1:It's the year of our Lord.
Speaker 2:In 2028, people are what is that? No, what was I saying?
Speaker 1:Witches inferno.
Speaker 2:What is it? Yeah. No, that wasn't what I was saying. This happened to me the other day when we were talking on this. What is happening to me?
Speaker 1:I don't know
Speaker 2:what's I happening such a great thought.
Speaker 1:Don't know what's happening to me that I was like, I'm trying to track.
Speaker 2:Okay. So the basic issue is where am I at?
Speaker 1:Am Hell is a real place.
Speaker 2:It is a real
Speaker 1:That's eternal punishment. Eternal conscience Yeah. Or Or ECT
Speaker 2:forms of annihilationism. Yes. Oh. So years ago, people would look at the red letters of scripture. And that was like the liberals.
Speaker 2:They were called red letter Christians.
Speaker 1:And it was it
Speaker 2:was a a liberal movement. Mhmm. And they're like, we just like the red letters. And so to people that weren't paying attention, what they're really trying to say is we don't want all the doctrines about Paul the apostle Paul says, we don't wanna hear about the church. And they were liberals.
Speaker 2:And so they were, you know, LGBTQ, this, that stuff. They were they were liberals and they called themselves red letter Christians, but they didn't even read the red letters. Because all the things we know about hell are in the red letters of the bible, really. Mean, that Jesus talked the most about hell. And then and so it is a place and he talked about it as a warning and it is an eternal and it is conscious and it's torment because it is a place where God's wrath is poured out on unrepentant sinners for eternity.
Speaker 2:Who for eternity are unrepentant. But in that whole picture and and what's happening here, you have to ask yourself a question. The most compassionate person that's ever existed, Jesus Christ, talked the most about hell. So hell's not this like dirty doctrine where we like think, oh we gotta put our, you know, are the underwear drawer, we don't even about this. Like Jesus talked the most about hell and he is the most loving, most compassionate human being who's ever lived.
Speaker 2:So this discussion shouldn't if when we find ourselves in trembling and fear and not wanting to listen to it, and this is from Christians and non Christians alike, I think we we're kind of, I think, misappropriating what compassion and love actually looks like. Is an important subject because it's real. And we can't fathom it. And so the idea that there's a place So I guess the two premises is this. The Bible makes it clear that every single human being will live forever.
Speaker 2:And there's a resurrection. You have a resurrection unto life, and a resurrection unto torment. But in both cases, we are given bodies that will live forever. New bodies, in one sense, glorified bodies in the sense of saints, and bodies that are fit for hell. Now, we don't know the kinds of torment that hell's gonna be.
Speaker 2:Like we don't know what it's gonna be like, I don't know one thing or other, but we do know a few things that are really helpful. One, hell is not a place where Satan is king. Mhmm. Satan, eventually you see in the end of Revelation that hell is thrown into the lake of fire and that that's still, you know, where it's eternal torment burning also. So is death and the rest.
Speaker 2:But this idea, this picture here is that, you know, the medieval one was that Satan somehow ruling in hell. That is not true. Satan is suffering in hell. The person ruling in hell is God. And God is, his wrath and his justice are displayed and poured out in hell and he's glorified for it.
Speaker 2:And we struggle with this concept immensely because for us, even when people describe that, that resist eternal conscious torment, which is just the plain basic teaching of of what's happening and when people say no, not, no, it's not, I'm like, alright, let's let's be serious here. It's the plain teaching here. The thing that we struggle with is when you listen to people talk about it, they'll talk about words like torture. They'll talk about words like, but they don't ever talk about words like justice and wrath, unrepentance. And I I think actually, even though he made it metaphorical, CS Lewis in The Great Divorce did one of the greatest depictions on hell in some sense because he reminded there's essentially a scene where there's like a tour bus in hell that gets to go up to heaven.
Speaker 2:And no one really wants to go, but a few people get on the bus. And when they get to heaven, they can't even get off the bus because the grass is so sharp, because they're so wispy and you know, not not real. Mhmm. But the main thing I think is important is if people in hell wanted to go to heaven, like where God is worshipped, I don't mean want to go to a place where there's like, they get everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because heaven isn't about getting everything. Heaven is the thing that makes heaven heaven is God, right? Yeah. And so if you were to go down to hell right now, people that are in torment, not happy, do you wanna go to heaven where God is worshiped? Where everything is an act of worship?
Speaker 1:And they're like, no, I hate that man.
Speaker 2:Thank God. And they never repent of that. So I think that too, like the book of Revelation describes for us something we never pay attention to. Everyone thinks Revelation is just about the future. It's about revealing, unveiling.
Speaker 2:And it does two things. It unveils to us the true nature of the son. This is who Jesus Christ is. It also unveils the true nature of human beings because there's you see people in Revelation that say, like, the moderate person. The most moderate, non interested, moral, unreligious person you know.
Speaker 2:When they're confronted with worshiping God or not, the bible talks about them being hardened like the same sun that melts wax, hardens clay. And you see the the revealed character of the depravity of man on display as people at one point know God is punishing them, know they should repent, but as their tongues are being burned up, they're gnawing their own tongues off, they're still gnashing their teeth at him and refusing to repent. And we always think this isn't evil people anymore than they are, but they're us. Mhmm. They're the normal people.
Speaker 2:It's your neighbor, it's your grandma, it's your aunt. And you could get a taste of it. As soon as you talk to a nice moral person and you get down to like the confrontation about Christ, in the nicest way possible, the ad hominems, the way things like our nature, we don't like God. And it takes God to fix it. So hell is a place where people are given their own they they're, you know, permanent in their unrepentance and they never stop.
Speaker 2:They live forever in unrepentance, and so forever they're under God's wrath. And it's an eternal punishment. When Jesus died on the cross, this is the gospel aspect, he didn't just, like, take death, like, for the annihilationist. He just say, oh, so the option is you die or you live forever. Like, that's not scary for an atheist.
Speaker 2:He took hell for us. So the only reason because otherwise, Jesus could suffer an eternity of torment in three hours because he's an eternal being. Mhmm. That he can suffer all that. He can accomplish that when he says it's finished, he suffered that forsaken.
Speaker 2:He suffered the whole effect of God's full wrath when he propitiated his wrath. Well, the idea that hell is, like, you know, not the satisfaction of God's wrath, it starts affecting what Jesus actually accomplished in the gospel. God's wrath is full and it is an eternal wrath, which is why just a human being couldn't suffer it for a certain amount of time, but it needed to be Jesus needed to be both God and man to be able to take an eternal, eternal wrath for us. That's what he took. And so that's that picture.
Speaker 2:And so hell is a really important Now, on the other end, it's so impossible to fathom hell because the idea of eternity is so impossible to get our minds around. And I use this analogy when I was preaching, but I can't help myself. You know, my favorite picture of trying to understand this is actually this old show they used to have on, I think maybe Netflix. It was called Locked Up Abroad.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Love it. And I told you to watch it, remember? I was telling you, I'm like It's incredible. Because but the thing that was so great about the show, it was about these people that would be like, I don't know, some like college girl. And she's like a party girl and they meet someone at a party and they're like, hey, you can take a trip to Ibiza.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But we'll pay for the whole thing, give you everything, all you have do is take this suitcase. And they know something's up, but in all the backs of their minds, they think, well, if I get caught, I can just say I didn't know. Like there's there's a sense in which they're like, I and so here they are, they go to the airport and this is this is a documentary about like the, you know, retelling and all of a sudden like the dogs catch them or whatever and they they go to the room and they get thrown in like a Colombian prison. There's no like phone call, there's no nothing.
Speaker 2:And you could see them saying, no wait, I didn't know this. And then all of sudden the realization hits as they're being driven there and there's no they're they're there for twenty years.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And there's people like, you just can't. If you tell somebody, you're gonna spend the next ten years in this room, you can't process that. If I say to you, you're gonna spend the rest of your life in this room, every Christmas, everything, and all of a sudden you're like, can't you say anything? Can't you change it? Like every Christmas, every Halloween, every New Year's, every birthday, everything in this room forever until you die.
Speaker 2:I can't process that. Like most of us can't, we don't think about it. But there's people right now, that's their existence. It actually exists but we can't process it. And so just because people can't process eternity one way or another doesn't mean it's not true.
Speaker 2:We're told it's true. When Jesus talks about hell, he talks about it, again, as in a parallel to heaven. So it's eternal destruction away from the Lord. Destruction not meaning annihilation but just versus eternal heaven, you know, eternal life. And so these things go in parallel.
Speaker 2:So again, if hell is shortened, if it's limited, if it's finite in some way, well then heaven must be as well. And that's not how scripture speaks about these things. So, and then obviously the resurrection. So hell's a real place. It's a place where God's wrath is poured out.
Speaker 2:It's a place where God's glorified and his wrath is poured out. It's a place where the people never repent. And that last point's really key because if people could repent in hell, then we could just torture people this side of heaven into heaven. Do you just It's like the Holy Spirit isn't the And that's the whole point is like the Holy Spirit is a regenerating force in the gospel, right? He himself regenerates us.
Speaker 2:Well, if these are unregenerate people and the Holy Spirit's not regenerating them, they won't repent, which means they don't want heaven. They'll never repent, which means they are always gonna be under God's wrath and they'll always want to be. And so that kind of compatibilistic idea anyways, I don't know if I answered your question.
Speaker 1:You did. Yeah. Yeah. To that, well, you talked about annihilationism a bit, and I do wanna bring up purgatory. Because you you had just said that people who are in hell, one, they don't want to come out of it because they don't want the heaven that actually exists.
Speaker 1:Tell us, like, where did the idea of purgatory come from? Like, why does it exist, and why why do you think people are so drawn to it?
Speaker 2:Purgatory is the stupidest thing.
Speaker 1:Tell us what you really think about
Speaker 2:Well, I just here's what gets me.
Speaker 1:I just I'm in this moment, like, was driving the other day, and
Speaker 2:some of my kids asked me something about the Mormon temple. Yeah. And like, Mormonism is so stupid. Right? Like, God forgive me.
Speaker 2:Like, if you're Mormon, I'm not saying you're stupid, but Mormonism is so stupid. Like, it's such a, it's so obviously fake.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Nehi, Moroni, like changing the stuff. Can't, you just read the Bible and be like, there's a 100% that's not true.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Purgatory, a 100% is not true. But it's based on a couple things. But essentially in Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, the basic idea is that you don't get grace imputed to you, it's infused and essentially they make justification a transformative process, not a declarative one.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of words about that but you we should do it on justification. But if like you're driving right now in the car, I said that, you didn't catch what I just said. So justification is declarative, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If declare you just and righteous, or I declare you condemned, it's a declaration. You're not changed in any such way by the declaration. The declaration is forensic. We know that sanctification is a process of actually transformation and change. But it's from justification, which is an actual step where God is declaring you not only not guilty, but righteous with the righteousness of Christ.
Speaker 2:Well, the Catholic puts that at the essentially, they talk about this initial justification, but really, that happens at the end of this transformative process. In other words, the gavel doesn't really fall and declare you justified until you've actually become good. It it is so antithetical to the actual gospel. This is why Catholics and Protestants literally cannot come together. The Catholic doctrine at this fundamental level, the idea that grace is an infusion process that transforms you gradually until one day you are righteous, so when God says not guilty and with the righteous of Christ, you actually ontologically are those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's so so alien to what the scripture's saying, which is that at the moment of salvation, like God has imputed righteousness, it's a sudden thing. He calls you a saint. This is all about a declarative thing. You're not actually, like, he treats you as such and then eventually the sanctification process will become one and we long for glorification where we are ontologically those things. Catholicism doesn't have that.
Speaker 2:So what do they do about the fact that you're not perfect when you die? Mhmm. Like how do you do it? So you have this purgatory idea that you didn't get enough grace and there wasn't enough merit. So you go to this place where you can kinda, here's what offends me the most about this.
Speaker 2:It misappropriates grace and it misappropriates what Christ accomplished at the cross. That somehow you're gonna work off the rest of your issues. Well so that fundamentally makes the cross ineffective. Like the cross just didn't Jesus just couldn't do enough but you have to do more or something. It's so offensive to the basic premise of what Christ accomplished on the cross with wrath, satisfying, propitiating God's wrath.
Speaker 2:And so for the purgatory idea, that's really what's going on. It's this place where And they also were so funny about the gospel that they just needed some place where you could like continue to go and that's where indulgences came from. You could get your friend out of purgatory by giving money to the church and stuff. But there's nothing in the Bible about purgatory. It's offensive to the cross.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It misappropriates the gospel. If you believe in purgatory, you are not saved.
Speaker 1:It
Speaker 2:is a fundamental rejection of the gospel. There's no purgatory. Like, it is because the basic premise of the gospel is his righteousness gifted to you. Literally, like Romans one, right? And we say the gospel is the righteousness that comes by faith.
Speaker 2:That's what we get is the righteousness of Christ that comes by faith. To reject that, that's what purgatory is, is to reject that. Now you don't have that righteousness yet. You gotta get it. So, yeah, I don't don't even get it.
Speaker 2:So stupid. Anyways, I don't know if that
Speaker 1:I did. Sorry. No, don't need a history on purgatory. Just need you telling us how dumb it is. To that point, you know, having dealt with a few parents, you you brought this up teaching on Tuesday nights before, but is are we punished in hell?
Speaker 1:For instance, I grew up in a church where it was infant baptism, but if that infant died before they were sprinkled as a baby Oh gosh. Then because they were born with a sin nature, that baby is in hell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is challenging. So here's the deal. Our sin nature, we're totally depraved which means, not that we're as bad as we could be, it just means that we have a fallen nature. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It means all of our preferences, that we're born with a nature that wants to sin. And so the root is our nature, the fruit is our action. We look at the fruit to tell us about the root. That's the whole point of the law. You break the law.
Speaker 2:The point is, it reminds us, oh you did, you sinned, you murdered, you lust, you did. That tells you that there's something wrong with the root. The law isn't about behavior change, it's something that tells you what's wrong with the root. But the mistake we make sometimes is to think that we're judged by that root. In other words, the reason that we do sin acts is because we have a sin nature.
Speaker 2:But the judgment that we're given is on our sin acts ultimately. But sometimes it gets conflated in the bible. It is our sin nature that ultimately causes judgment because our sin nature causes us to sin. This is controversial. So people that do the infant baptism idea have some funny ideas too, but everyone has to deal with, I mean we could do a whole thing on kids and Yeah, plan to It sounds like we're kinda going that direction right now.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna go down that road too far, but suffice it to say, the basic premise that we know is your sin act, like the bible says you'll judge You're as a court of yours. Judge by what you do. Well, the reason you do those things, so in other words, the things that we do aren't our ultimate problem. Even though we're judged by them, the root that causes us to do those things is what needs to be fixed. In other words, the things we do are symptoms.
Speaker 2:But those things are the things we're judged for. So for example, be angry and do not sin. Like, well anger we know is a root problem, but there's still an action that you shouldn't do. You know, so that's when Jesus gives the sermon on the mount and he says if you look, you know, you've heard it said that you should not commit adultery. But I say if you even look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart.
Speaker 2:He is not equating lust with adultery. In other words, if you lust, you know, you think about a woman with lust, you can't say, well I may as well commit adultery, it's the same thing. Like there's a fundamental difference. What he's saying is the same heart, the same root that has lust is the same heart that leads to adultery. Like in other words, this lust tells you you have the heart of an adulterer and you just haven't had the opportunity yet to do it.
Speaker 2:Like, it's telling you something about your root. That's the whole point of the law. How do you fix the root? You can't. You need a savior.
Speaker 2:That's why Jesus tells Nicodemus, you know, you're a teacher of Israel and you don't know these things. Like, we need a savior that changes our nature. But how can I be born again? Like, and then he was, the wind blows where it wishes. So the fundamental issue that the entire law was pointing to was the need for a new nature.
Speaker 2:Well, the actions that we do are the things we're judged for. So that's the key. So that means that in hell, punishment is not just neutral. So gosh. There's so many subjects here.
Speaker 2:But let me we're punished oh gosh. There's so much I wanna say. Wanna say it really brief. You people in hell are not they're punished differently. Just like in heaven, there's different reward for our actions, just like there's different punishment for our deeds.
Speaker 2:You know, it's not that Dante's seven levels of hell, we don't know what that looks like exactly, but, Hitler's having a worse time in hell than, you know, grandma, whoever, who just, you know. You know, when we talked about Judas, he goes, you know, woe, it would be better if you hadn't been born, like, as if there's bigger sin that's being committed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Again, people say, well no, all sin is bad. I'm like, well all sin is disqualifying. It doesn't mean all sin is equally bad. That's the key caveat. It's true, all sin, even the smallest sin, is enough to show that you aren't able to go to heaven.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't mean all sin is equally bad. It's such a fundamental nuance that we have to capture. And so what we suffer in hell is for our deeds. And so that's true which really brings up another point is limited atonement or particular atonement, that's my preference. But limited atonement, people are very offended by.
Speaker 2:The idea that Christ died for the elect on the cross. People say no, he died for everyone in a universal sense. But like, so for example, like, say take the youth group thing, where they have the cross and the the youth pastor's teaching the the nature of what happened with Christ, he says, everyone write down your sin. And then you come up and you nail it to the cross. There's truth to it.
Speaker 2:So I'm not saying you're wicked, but the problem is Jesus didn't die for lust. He didn't die for adultery and murder. Because if he did, then God's not mad at those things anymore. The whole purpose of what was accomplished with the cross was the propitiation, the satisfaction of wrath. So if the atonement was generalized and just applied to you, then the only sin God still has wrath for is unbelief.
Speaker 2:This is where people get into big trouble. So then the people at hell, the only reason they're tormented is unbelief, so that just feels like torture because it's like, you're doing all this just because I didn't believe in Jesus, like, that doesn't make sense, what kind of love you got? I'm like, no no no no no no no. It is your unrepentant deeds. God's wrath isn't satisfied on those deeds.
Speaker 2:He didn't die for those deeds. And the other one is, when we look at Romans six, I'm supposed to consider not my sins dead but myself dead. He took my place. So anyways, I know we're covering a lot of giant doctrines. We talked a little bit about infant salvation and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:But they all relate to help. They relate to the idea of what was accomplished on the cross and wrath. The idea that God's wrath is real and eternal and you're an eternal being. It is these are fundamental to the the picture, the story, and the gospel and what's true. So
Speaker 1:yeah. So yeah. You had affirm like that like the baby is not suffering eternal torment.
Speaker 2:No no no not at all. So okay, okay, so we have to do a separate one but there's okay, a book I'd recommend on this is Safe in the Arms of God by John MacArthur. Yeah. Just really briefly, the central premise, when David's child dies after Bathsheba, he says, I'm gonna go to be with him. There's a premise in the bible that the young ones go to heaven.
Speaker 2:Well, why? We would say the very fact that they die before some sort of age where their sin is accounted to them would put them as the elect, right? Which has some really interesting corollaries. People say, where do you get age of accountability in the Bible? Like, well, don't exactly, but you get this premise that infants are not condemned.
Speaker 2:You get this premise here. And you have a picture of sort of accountability with sin. The problem is, at what point are you aware of your sin act to such a degree that you're culpable for it? And that's kind of the idea. Right?
Speaker 2:So you see this right now with families, like ahead of the family and with here's your family and here's your kids and here's your thing. We trust the parents and we talk to the parents and they're over the kid and they know when are you accountable for your actions? The Bible doesn't specify, I mean, you have like pictures of the bar mitzvah where all of sudden the young boy at, you know, 13 would go and now he's standing in the synagogue as a full fledged member, you know, as an adult rite of passage. Some pictures of age of accountability in the Old Testament, for example, when they would count. So for example, this is again, what I'm trying to say is I don't know.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. If I had to pick an age of accountability, if I had to pick one, I'd say somewhere around twelve thirteen, kind of where we see that. That's But it's arbitrary. It's so arbitrary. But there is a sense in which we're not accountable for this.
Speaker 2:A great example of this is the book of Numbers. You know, the people that walked through the Red Sea basically denied wanting to go in the land and God says all of you are gonna die in the wilderness. So that means that Oholiab, Emezalab, all the guys that built the tabernacle, they all died in the wilderness, everyone over the age of 20. When they did a census, everyone over the So is the age of Kelby 20? I'm like, I know a lot of 17 year olds that are kind of, would be I pretty stoked that don't All I'm saying is, we don't know, but we know that God's good, that His wrath is real, that we're judged for our sin acts.
Speaker 2:When is a sin act like actually like accounted to us? But our nature is the reason for that act. And that's the key. And the nature is the fundamental gravity that you're going to commit that act. So I think that, again, I think MacArthur's book, Safe in the Arms of God is the best treatment of this, but in the Presbyterian kind of more covenant theology background, they have different views and it's a little more Catholic than I think they would be comfortable with.
Speaker 2:But I think that this accountability is a better picture of like understanding the sin act. Mhmm. You know, anyways, I don't there's a lot we could get into.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, how does that does does God make people and force them into hell?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So God doesn't alright. So when people talk about predestination and they talk about, you know, God the the same the same question people like, you know, gave you, like, God made me this way. Yep. Like when someone's born with like mental retardation, we say like, oh yeah, God made me this way.
Speaker 2:Like that's not fair. Mhmm. What the Bible says, God made Adam and Eve. And Adam and Eve made their kids. And so my parents made me and their parents made them.
Speaker 2:And their parents made them ultimately back to Adam and Eve. Like, God superintends the process. David says I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Obviously God is the one that allows us to be made. Like that's what he's talking about in that way.
Speaker 2:But the problem is that the generative nature of sin is that that is passed on us. The the idea of predestination, predestination is all having to do with God's decree. Oh gosh. Alright. So God's decree, think about it like a blueprint to build a house.
Speaker 2:So if I have a blueprint on how the house is gonna be built, that blueprint is encompasses my own actions, my own free will and the free and fallen will of people that makes them compatible to accomplish this blueprint. But the blueprint isn't the action. The decree isn't the action. That would be fatalism.
Speaker 1:Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In other words, God's like, this is what I planned to happen. I planned to happen. That makes so you could say, happens because he ordained it would. But we are free creatures and so far as I can do what I want according to my nature. It's fallen, so I can do what I want according to my fallen nature.
Speaker 2:God has a free will. He can do what he wants according to his nature. So again, our nature, our definition of free will has to allow God to have one. And so a lot of people will say, you know, no one has a free will. Like, God has a free will, right?
Speaker 2:He can do what he wants, but he can't sin. So free will has to be, I can do what I want according to my nature. Our problem is we can do what we want according to our nature. Predestination and this whole thing is that God chose that some people that deserve hell, that should go to hell, he would choose to have not go to hell. The idea that God chose to create so that these people would go to hell is true in some sense.
Speaker 2:But double predestination, the problem was it's more fatalistic. It implies, if you squeeze the question, it implies that people were somehow neutral and God made them bad. The person that exists, exists only exists because that person only exists as a reprobate. They only exist as an unrepentant. They only exist.
Speaker 2:So for example, this is what you get with classic Armenianism versus classic Calvinism is not a debate about determinism. That's not one of the options. So for example, when people don't like Calvinism, they don't like predestination, they say, I don't like that because I don't like that idea, the idea that the future is determined. I'm like, well, that's called open theism, which is a literal heresy. Like, I don't say that lightly.
Speaker 2:That's not a real option. The debate between classic Armenianism and classic Calvinism is the basis for God's election, his predestination. The Calvinist says, properly, that the basis is God's own free choice, unmerited. In other words, grace began before God said let there be light. That's Ephesians one.
Speaker 2:The Arminian view is different. The Armenian view basically asserts that free will is this libertarian idea and that God looked down the quarters of time to see what you would do. But notice how meritorious that is first of all. Secondly, it makes you preexistent. But third of all, God looks down the accord of time to see that you would do this, so then he elects you.
Speaker 2:So what actually did you do? Like, what actually did he do to okay, whatever. The whole premise is when and if God looks down the quarters of time in his plan, all he sees is you sinning.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He doesn't see you being secretly righteous, like, he sees you sinning. And so he chose the mystery that he chose some of those people to be saved. So the best analogy I can give, a lot of people we smuggle in. So double predestination is one of these. We smuggle in a false analogy.
Speaker 2:Double predestination offends us because we think people were neutral and God made them bad. That's not true. So the best example I have is some people describe I think one author who I like, used some analogy of of to to go against predestination all this. And he said it's like these boys that are going swimming and old man withers that says no trespassing.
Speaker 1:Is that Geisler?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Geisler said it, yeah. And I like Geisler but he's wrong about this. And he said chosen but free, think. And so these boys are basically going to a swimming hole and it says no trespassing. And the boys, you know, end up going in the swimming hole and it ends sign was there because it's quicksand and they're all drowning.
Speaker 2:And so the old man withers comes out with his rope and only saves some of them. And like, what kind of god is that? Is he incapable of saving all of them? No. Clearly.
Speaker 2:So he just leaves some of them to die and what kind of gross doctrine is that? Well, that's basically the kinds of questions we're getting with troubled predestination. Or why doesn't God save everyone? Or why doesn't all of them are based on the same thing. That we're just kind of innocent, that we made in some sins, we all sort of ought to be saved.
Speaker 2:That God ought to be saving everybody. The problem is, the analogy that is false, it's smuggling in so many things. The real analogy that scripture gives is I go on a trip and I want you guys to watch my household and my my kingdom while I'm gone. And while I'm gone, you decide to rape my wife, kill my dog, beat my kids, steal my stuff. You're in the middle of tormenting my son and I come home and decide to pour out my, like, just to literally sacrifice my beloved son in order to save one of the murderers.
Speaker 2:Nobody in that story is like, why don't you save all the murderers? The shock is that I saved one of them. The problem with that is that we don't like to realize that's who we are. We are not victims in the gospel story that are being saved by someone else. We're the perpetrator.
Speaker 2:We're the aggressor. We're the bad guy. In fact, we would when we really understand the gospel, you wouldn't really wanna see it in a movie. The the grace only looks good when you're getting it, not from the outside. No one wants to see a movie where the guy that's going around murdering everybody, all of a sudden is fully saved and given heaven.
Speaker 2:That's that's the gospel. Like the bad guy is saved. That's me. Mhmm. That's why I'm Barabbas.
Speaker 2:That's why that's the whole story all along. And so the hell and the the doctrines of double predestination, we it all centers on this main premise. We're essentially good, we don't deserve wrath, we ought to have heaven, and all that comes back to the sin in the garden. I'm kinda I'm kinda good. I'm kinda like God without God.
Speaker 2:We just don't see that we're we actually are who the Bible says we are. And the law is trying to show it to us, our actions try to show it to us, we refuse to believe it. So health seems offensive, double predestination is like this thing we made up to make it as if God did something abnormal. The abnormal thing is that God chose to save anyone at all, that he was as patient as he's been. And I know it's so crazy to us, but like that main doctrine about our nature is the one we really struggle with the most.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, it hopefully answers the question that no one is in hell who doesn't deserve to be. Mhmm. Because it's the the odds and deserves that you touched on. Going back to what you initially spoke of, how Jesus spoke about hell pretty much more than any other doctrine, I'll leave this as the last question.
Speaker 1:We can always do a hell two point o. But there's a serious lack in evangelism and speaking about hell. Do you think that's like a fear? Is it nest like, is it a true gospel presentation if hell is not presented, or if the wrath of God is not presented?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I like the word wrath more than hell. I think hell is more incidental in the sense that it's a place. Right. So I don't know that the place is the necessity.
Speaker 2:Think God's wrath, but it is helpful if someone asks the question to be able to describe what God's wrath is.
Speaker 1:Mhmm, yeah.
Speaker 2:There is no gospel without wrath. Because what are you saved from?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is the, you know, what's the name, Living Water Guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah yeah. He's all over the news right now.
Speaker 2:No, not Kirk Hammer, the other guy.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, the other guy. But Kirk's all
Speaker 2:over. Yeah, but my whole point was, you know, the whole idea is like if we present people a false gospel, what we're doing is inoculating them from the real thing. Give them just enough gospel so that they have the antibodies to resist the real thing. The the real gospel is not Jesus is gonna give you purpose in your life. Like, that's, it's it's true, you have purpose, but that's not the good news of the gospel.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The good news of the gospel is Christ's righteousness, which has to do with God's justifying sense that you're not only not guilty, but that you're righteous. And so, we are saved. The the the real news is that God is mad at everyone that doesn't look like him. He made man to look like him.
Speaker 2:He doesn't look like him. And so every time someone sins, you know, you are a walking, living, breathing image bearer of God, and God's wrath upon you is that everything you do is a declaration about him that's untrue. That's why God said to the ancient Israelites, right, don't make any pictures of me, grave an image, because he said, already made a picture of myself, a walking, talking, living, breathing picture called you. And every time we walk around, we are saying things about God that aren't true because we're representative. Someone's like, what's God look like?
Speaker 2:I'm like, look at Brett. Look at Matt. I'm like, oh. And so, God's not insecure. God's not a liar.
Speaker 2:God's not this, but I am. And so I'm a walking false advertisement. God's wrath is proper against people. It's a mystery he allows them to go. The thing we're saved from is that wrath.
Speaker 2:And so Christ takes our image, lives a righteous life we should have in his active obedience, and basically, what does he say? This is my son in whom I wanna please. This is the one who looks like me.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then he offers us and takes our place, takes our punishment. So two Corinthians, God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteous of God. Jesus didn't become sin ontologically. He was imputed to be me. In other words, Jesus, God looked at him, he imputed to him, he calculated, pretended that he was Matt Smith and then treated him as such.
Speaker 2:The good news is that now because of that, he now looks at me and calculates, imputes, pretends essentially cosplays that I'm Christ and treats me as such. The gospel makes no sense without wrath. The work of Christ makes no sense without wrath. Heaven and hell makes no sense without wrath. The wrath of God is the fundamental in fact, the scariest, I think we've met before, the scariest thing in the Bible is right after John three sixteen.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I think it's three eighteen or 19. He says condemned already. In other words, the gavel, people keep thinking they're gonna meet God and then He's gonna judge you for heaven or hell. But what Jesus says, He goes, they're condemned already.
Speaker 2:Every person you see on planet Earth, the gavel has already fallen. They've already been declared guilty. Every person. And now it's just waiting for one car accident, one cancer diagnosis, one fall for that eternity in hell to start happening. They're not gonna be judged.
Speaker 2:They're already judged and found guilty. Everyone you talk to, everyone you meet, that is the fundamental truth. Jesus himself says it. It's the fundamental truth of the gospel. The law was pointing to the good news is that for those who put their faith in Christ, that gavel now says not only not guilty, but righteous with the righteous of Christ.
Speaker 2:There is no gospel without this. It is actually supremely offensive that people go forward with something other than this because I don't know what people are holding onto. People are letting it go so quickly. So, yeah, wrath's important. You gotta talk about it.
Speaker 2:It's big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I do I do feel I mean, early on, I remember just thinking like I'm a crazy per I would before I knew to talk about wrath, would talk about hell. And I'm like, can be my kids are terrified of hell. I love talking about hell with that because that is where God expresses his wrath. But I do think there's a in Christianity, there's like, this is when we start to sound like weirdos, so people don't approach it.
Speaker 1:Thus, they remove the wrath component as well, which I agree is not a gospel at all.
Speaker 2:But if you're struggling, I think the word condemnation is like, you could stop there.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And say like you're condemned already, in what sense?
Speaker 2:What does that mean? Yes, it means wrath, it means hell. But it's appropriate to talk because gospel's a judicial concept first and foremost. Guilty, innocent, righteous. Condomation, I think, wrath, that's the right terminology.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not Santa Claus God looking down at a bunch of neutral people.
Speaker 2:No, you knew it. Neutral, neutrality is yeah. No one's neutral.
Speaker 1:I had, as you were talking, had one more question. Sean, so you can cut this, because this is gonna be mainly for me and probably for someone else.
Speaker 2:Probably leave it.
Speaker 1:Definitely definitely leave it. But I remember reciting the Apostles Creed in the church I grew up in, and it says that Jesus descended into hell. Mhmm. And, yeah, would you affirm that? Do you think that is untrue?
Speaker 1:Did he go down there and go neener, neener, neener? That's sort of what I was brought up to believe Yeah. And then later through study.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a few ways to take that. I mean, some people say Jesus went to hell and but he says he preached to those. Yeah. Look, what did he do during those three days? I don't think that's necessarily something we want to make part of our doctrine.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say what he did. Mhmm. I think the idea that he went to hell, I don't like the term went. If I were to rewrite the apology, like he suffered hell on our behalf, think would be maybe my preference to understand it. I think the went to part just adds too much.
Speaker 2:It's just not modest enough
Speaker 1:for what
Speaker 2:we know. I just know that he took the entire wrath of God which is all of the eternity in hell. Eternity is the biggest problem we're having with all these conversations. God said let there be light in every star, like or let in the cosmos, not let on that one, but later when we put all the stars in the cosmos, he named them, if they're eternal, there's an infinite number beyond our comprehension like that. The idea that wrath is eternal, that's the one we're sinning against.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Like, if you say something against a king, you get in big trouble. You say something against just a normal person, you, whatever. It's like whoever's stronger. You say something against God, you're blaspheming against him every day using his breath, it is an offense that never ends.
Speaker 2:So Jesus suffered the full wrath of God or he suffered health for us. I think that's
Speaker 1:More modest statement.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think that people in good faith that read the Apostle's Creed that way are probably fine. So I wouldn't, but I think he went to is like, I don't know. I just think it's more, he suffered hell for And here's the key, the work of Christ was not finished when He was raised from the dead. It was finished at the cross.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Being raised from the dead was the preview of what we're getting. Right. It was a proof of purchase, but when He said it is finished, he he spoke those words. It is finished.
Speaker 2:He didn't go to hell during that time. So whether he went afterwards, I don't know. But the the fact he suffered hell, well, he'd already done that. So if he did go, it would have been as a victor Right. Not as a sufferer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's where they got the neater, neater, neater. What we can all agree is that he can definitely walk through walls.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1:just that's right. Well, Matt, thanks for your time again. If you have more questions or any other topics you want us to talk about, go to alotofwordspodcast.com, give us your help questions. And then wait,
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Speaker 2:I hear people say that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, please like and subscribe. But I feel that's too pandering.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I just, like, hear these influencer people say that, so I thought, oh, I'm an influencer now. Right?
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:know. Smash that subscribe button. Make sure you do it.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:I'm the influencer now.
Speaker 1:Again, alotofwordspodcast.com. Thanks for tuning in this week. We'll see you next week with another topic that I don't know what it is yet. See you then.
