PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION VI

Jesus Christ. “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are chronicled in the form of letters. With respect to the communication of facts, the letter is the most reliable genre in literature. God has made it easy to find salvation, for it just so happens that the way of salvation is written down in detail in the most popular, most easily obtained, Book in all of history. On one side of the Book it is prophesied that a Saviour will come. On the other side of the Book, the Saviour has come. His circumstances, character, and conduct are the same in prophecy as they have fallen out in reality. He was born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem; he was descended from the tribe of Judah; he was called a Nazarene; he fled into Egypt; he died in Jerusalem; he fed the hungry; he healed the sick; he raised the dead; he was despised and rejected; he was acquainted with grief; and he was numbered with the transgressors. All of this and more was prophesied of the Son of God hundreds of years before he came into the world as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man. It would be remarkable for even one specific prophecy to come to pass in the life of any man. But the prophecies concerning Jesus are not only specific, but sundry. One writer counted thirty-three prophecies coming to pass in the life of Jesus in one single day. God has made it easy to notice who it is that he sent into the world to save sinners from their just deserts. Elijah and Elisha raised the dead through the power of God; Jesus was the power of God who raised the dead. Unlike any man born in history, he had power over his own life. “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10.18.) He was subject to the Father, but had the prerogative of God, for he was and is, God the Son. Now he is the authority in heaven who will judge the quick and the dead on earth.

Jesus was more than a teacher. He was more than a prophet. He was more, and is more, than man has ever been and that man can ever be. He did not miss the mark; he came to earth to obey the law of God, and fully and flawlessly did so. For the sins of man he died on the cross. The way of eternal life is through trust in what he did for sinful man. What did he do over and above the miracles that authenticated his ministry? He obeyed God’s law to the letter; and he died the death that man deserved for breaking that same law. This was satisfying to God; but that satisfaction does nothing for a sinner unless he puts his trust in Jesus. To benefit, through faith, from what Jesus has done, is the only way to heaven. To want another way to heaven is an insult to the holiness, mercy, and wisdom of the Triune God. Refusing to be saved in God’s way leaves the sinner open to God’s justice and wrath. Justification is necessary, and can only be obtained through faith in Jesus’ name; no man who rejects the gift of God through Jesus Christ can be justified.

But either sinners want to work up to heaven instead of get pulled up by free grace through faith, or they want to get eternal life through someone other than Jesus Christ the Lord, the Mediator of grace. When sinners pray to Mary, they rely on their own prayers as much as they do on Mary, do they not? Neither prayers nor Mary can save. Only Jesus can. Some sinners are offended that God the Father would accept the sacrifice of his Son as the deed to satisfy his wrath. But while the Bible says that Jesus suffered the wrath of God, it also says that he laid his own life down in order to do it. What sinners are put off by is not the treatment of Jesus by the Father, though; that is their excuse. They are put off by the repentance that the Bible requires. If going to heaven through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for sin comes at the cost of repenting first, that is too uncomfortable for them to contemplate. It is due to the corrupted nature of a sinner that he refuses eternal life so he can go on sinning. But how long can he sin for? These are not the days of Methuselah—therefore, how long? Can a sinner sin for seventy or eighty years? He can’t do it for much longer than that. What is eighty years compared with eternity? Why enjoy sinning for less than a century if it means being punished for an eternity of centuries because of it? The average sinner would rather receive the wages of sin than repent; that is, he would rather keep his sentence of death leading to hell than receive eternal life if the reception of this life means that he must repent first. Since the offer of eternal life is extended, and since this present life leads directly to damnation, there is nothing more urgent than to receive the gift of eternal life. This present life is uncertain; the offer of life eternal is temporary, and is withdrawn at the moment of death. The reception of eternal life comes with one condition. It must be received through Jesus Christ, which means: by faith in his name, which faith implies: the repenting that Jesus preached. 

Some sinners claim to reject the offer of salvation because Christians do bad things. So often this is nothing more than an excuse as well. Even if sinners are sincere in this concern, and even if bad things are done by Christians, or have been done, in the name of Christ, that does not mean that the salvation that God provides through Christ is a lie. Many cruel deeds have been done in the name of Jesus Christ. But is it right to hate the way of salvation because counterfeit faiths exist? Numerous churches and masses of professing Christians have made a mockery of the name that is above every name. But this fact does not nullify who Jesus is, the good that he did on earth, the merit of his death, his power to save, or the certainty of his promises. Jesus is not responsible for the misconduct of persons who pretend to follow him. He is not guilty of the misdeeds that are committed in his name; in fact, he died for the misdeeds of others. He must be evaluated according to his own person and record, which are equally blameless. Can it be wise for a sinner to let all the infamy that has been done in Jesus’ name keep him from obtaining the gift of eternal life from God? God the Father has chosen Jesus Christ alone for sinners to be saved by, regardless of Roman Catholic Inquisitions, Salem Witch Trials, cultic churches, and ministers getting caught with prostitutes in cheap motels.  It is right to criticize false Christianity. But it is dumb to reject salvation through Christ because of all the wicked deeds that have been done in his name. Do we throw our money out because counterfeit bills exist? How much less ought we to throw away the pearl of great price (the way of salvation through Jesus Christ the Lord) because some false professors wear fake gems? 

Obdurate sinners will be denied heaven no matter what their excuse is for rejecting the offers of grace. There is no way to heaven by going around Jesus. He cannot be gotten around. He is all-powerful and omnipresent; he stands in the way because he is the Way. There are no other futures for a man to come to than eternal life and everlasting death. His destiny must be one or the other. Jesus himself endorses both of these ends, and only these, in his closing Revelation to John the apostle, right near where he declares himself as the beginning and end: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22.13.) One end will terminate thus: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (verse 11.) This is one future. The other end will be: “he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” This is the other future. Who are the righteous that are spoken of in this last verse? These are the “blessed…that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (verse 14.) The ‘blessed’ are not saved by doing what is right; they do what is right because they are saved. Their lives have been cleaned up; this is why they live clean lives; this is why some of them have been called Puritans.     

What do sinners do after they sin? They clean up; or they at least prefer to be clean than dirty. What would it be like to be left filthy forever? Is a dirty destiny to be desired more than a holy one? Holiness is indeed unapproachable. It makes us uncomfortable. It made saints like the prophet Isaiah and the apostle John exclaim and tremble. But once the saints are fully redeemed at the general resurrection of the dead, holiness will attract them more, even by an infinite measure, than the grossest lusts allure the most debauched persons right now. It may be that sinners will long for their sins even from hell. But whether they will long for them or else loathe them, it is certain that they will not be able to enjoy them. They will see, from their place in the abode of the damned, how happy the saints are in the city of God. “The wicked in hell will be sensible how the righteous in heaven enjoy the favor of God” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 215.) Better to be slowly starved to death while having to look at people feasting than to be conscious that others are delighted forever while we are eternally miserable. The Lord Jesus says that ‘everlasting fire’ was ‘prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matthew 25.41.) Yet he says that this is where unsaved sinners must go. To have to go where even Satan and his fellow demons must go must be a worse outcome and destiny than the best writers of horror have been able to imagine. The only way to a better future is through Jesus Christ, who went through hell on the cross to save all sinners who are willing to repent.       

That person is rare today whose impression of sin, death, Jesus, faith, and the afterlife even marginally agrees with the Bible’s revelation of the same. There are many things that we can afford to be wrong about. But subjects that the future of our soul swivels on are not things that we can afford to misapprehend. The wages, or payment, for sin is death; there is no righteousness, outside of Christ, to cancel that payment; this is why death outside of faith in Christ must be everlasting. We have sin; we are sinful; God will not dwell with sinners. Sins must be turned from, and they must be seen by God as either covered or cleansed by Christ (depending on which figure of speech one prefers to use.) Sinners who won’t repent will be shut out of heaven because nothing unholy is permitted entry there. Life on earth is our probation. If our probation fails, we are undone forever; there is no purgatory to make up for a botched probation. The future of man is an ever-dying existence in unquenchable fire. We have seen people in the process of dying; imagine this process going on without end. Hell and the lake of fire are worse than that. Through faith in Christ the future can be better, even by infinity, than what heaven can be imagined to be. Happiness in heaven is proportionate to the misery of hell. One future is as high and heavenly as the other is bottomless and hellish. The whole creation groans and travails right now (Romans 8.22), that is, until it gives birth to something new. The entire cosmos will be renovated on the basis of Christ’s redemption. The saints of God will enjoy the full scope of God’s creation, from the Milky Way to the Pleiades and beyond.   

“To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth on him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10.43.) When the apostle Peter uttered this, “the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word” (verse 44.) The truth of verse 43 has, therefore, been certified from heaven. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners from their sins, just as the angel sent to Joseph said (Matthew 1.21.) Look at all the witnesses in these few verses: ‘all the prophets,’ Luke (the author of the book of Acts), Peter, the angel, Joseph, Matthew, and the Holy Spirit. Even more witnesses could be called forth to testify that Jesus is the Saviour that sinners need. Who but stiff-necked sinners determined to go their own way would demand more? It will be—it must be—no future but conflagrations for sinners who ‘pull away the shoulder’ (Zechariah 7.11.) Warnings in Scripture can be shrugged off here and now; not so there and then.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION V

Gift. “But the gift of God is eternal life.” No fault more perilous can be made than the assumption that persons who have no interest in God while on earth go automatically to heaven when they die. This seems to be the default religion of irreligious people. Go to practically any funeral, and you will hear a eulogy that will prove this point. The deceased usually has no history of loving God, no marked up Bible, no evidence of a point in life of turning from sin—nothing that should convince a pastor that his departed soul has been welcomed by angels and is now at rest in ‘a better place.’ There is no ‘Better Place’ for these exaggeratedly eulogized folks; there is no ‘Nirvana’ for Buddhists and Hindus; there is no ‘Happy Hunting Ground’ for American Indians; there is no ‘Paradise’ for Muslims; there is no ‘Valhalla’ for warriors and soldiers; there are no ‘Elysian Fields’ for heroes. There is only ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’ for sinners who become Christians. The kingdom of heaven is holy. It does not cavort with sin. We have no reason to believe that a person who went on in sin all his life has gone to a place that is the very antithesis of sin. It is true that even the Christian sins, for sanctification is a gradual process that stems from the regenerate soul. But any Christian in more than a name has his confession and testimony substantiated by an upstanding life, notwithstanding his occasional faults. To assume, and even declare, that a deceased person, regardless of lifestyle and belief, has been ushered into the care of heaven, is what pastors unjustifiably do and what families and loved ones routinely expect. The gift of God is eternal life. This gift comes by an act of grace. Grace is holy, and therefore consecration must exude from any sinner who has received the gift. To be holy is to be set apart. If a person is not known for standing apart from sinners and what sinners do and must be judged for, that person has not received the holy gift of eternal life, and there is no heaven for him.  Grace makes a person hate sin more than like it. If a person has not been tiresome in his denunciation of sin, it is wrong to assume that he has had grace worked into him. A soul saved by grace and in possession of eternal life is daily outraged at sin. “Horror has taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law” (Psalm 119.53.) Can this honestly be said of the last person we knew who was eulogized? Was that person habitually horrified upon hearing of wickedness like extramarital liaisons, abortion, idolatry, euthanasia, oppression, pornography, homosexuality, and perversities by any other name? 

Death happens because of sin; life happens by the gift of God. Both are eternal futures. The exchange of one for the other is characterized by the power of sin being broken, which is what an operation of grace will do. It is true that every man has lied, and this reality is stated in the Bible more than once. It is a hard thing to lie no more; probably no one can live up to that. But we must reckon with the fact that even lying must be overcome, for liars, not just murderers, “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21.8.) It seems out of sync for lying to be put next to murder, idolatry, and whoredom (debauchery) as a sin that a person will be consigned to the lake of fire for committing. The question is not: Have we lied? We all have. The question is not: Can we stop lying from now on until we die? The questions that help us to know if we are the kind of liar condemned in the verse are these: Is our profession of faith a lie? Do we feel guiltier before God than before man when we lie? “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51.4.) Have we ever struggled with the ethical issue of Rahab lying to save the Hebrew spies? Have we ever struggled with the ethical issue of lying to save Jews during the Holocaust? Christians are wont to grapple with questions like these.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION IV

Life. “But the gift of God is eternal life.” We should like any other future than a hellish one, even if we have to play country-gospel on a harp for the first thousand years. We should pray God to give us, through any process that is necessary: comfort instead of torment; instead of regret, relief; instead of weeping, laughing; instead of banishment, welcome; instead of isolation, company; instead of outer darkness, the glory of God and the light of Christ; and instead of being forgotten, that white stone with our heavenly name written inside it (Revelation 2.17.) We should like for our future, anything but the loneliness that being ‘cast out’ by God entails. 

Incorruptible riches will be the treasure, and holy raptures the experience, of all sinners who abandon their condemning sins here and now. Heaven might not seem like an attractive option to those sinners among us who fancy themselves tough guys—until they’ve been breathing suffocating fumes for a minute or so, or bobbing in the lake of fire for a second or two. It is one thing to snicker at the rigors of this little world when we have been blessed with a strong constitution. But we should be mindful that when it gets hot, we run for shade and water; that when we get weary, we go to sleep; that when we get lonely, we talk to someone; that when we suffer a setback, we receive help. How would we bear an eternity of heat? What is it like to never be allowed to sleep? Everyone has been lonely. But once a person has hell for his abandonment, there can be no visitation or consolation ever. That will be, in fact, the perfection of loneliness. To scoff at heaven and joke about hell is easy to do from an easy chair with a beer in the hand. But he who thinks himself too mighty to need soft living in the kingdom of heaven does not take account of his own weakness. One moment in hell, and, like the rich man in the parable, the sinner will change his mind. 

Think not that heaven is powerless to keep a sinner out if suddenly the sinner decides he wants in. The heavenly realm is not the harmless place that it has been made out to be. The commonest angels there can overtake the mightiest kings here. “And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces” (1 Chronicles 21.16.) The way people talk when a loved one dies, they must suppose that they and their loved ones will have it just as they like hereafter. Whoever thinks that he will go automatically to heaven no matter how he has lived his life is in for the worst kind of awakening. Whoever thinks that he will be able to break out of hell, take heaven by storm, and fashion a beer commercial to live in, is ignorant of basic metaphysical facts. Whoever thinks that he will be able to cross the chasm between hell and heaven in order to rule in heaven as he ruled on earth is ignorant of his own impotence. The powers of heaven will never be overcome, neither by partiers nor politicians. Because heaven is so impossible to imagine, I frequently meditate on what the Bible tells me will not be included there. “As wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God” (Psalm 68.2.) This judgment will be fulfilled to benefit the saints in heaven. ‘The poor of this world’ will be found ‘heirs of the kingdom’ (James 2.5), while the rich oppressors who blasphemed God by their conduct will be locked out (verse 6.) If the men who control the world right now could get into heaven in their impenitent state, they would tear down the pearly gates, paint the streets of gold in gaudy colors, and begin immediately to contrive ways to take over and oppress. Heaven would be too hot; so they would impose taxes. Heaven would be unhealthy; so they would force vaccines. Heaven would be too holy; so they would announce pride parades, ban heavenly speech, and imprison every outspoken angel and saint. Heaven will be free of oppressors because it will be free of sinful indulgences. The kind of restraint that we need on earth will be operative in heaven; and yet heaven’s new inhabitants will be freer than they ever imagined a sinless state to involve.    

Life in heaven will be the enjoyment of what God himself is satisfied with: his expulsive glory. It is a controlled expulsion; but it is more than merely self-generated. Glory is the resplendent emanation of who God is. Whatever the Creator of creatures, worlds, and spirits is satisfied to bask in is unimaginable, which is why heaven is practically indescribable.    

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION III

Death. “For the wages of sin is death.” We are all familiar with physical death: the separation of the soul from the body. But there follows another after that: the separation of the soul from the goodness of God in eternity, which happens because the soul would not unite with God while on earth. It used to be common knowledge that Jesus spoke of hell more than heaven. Since the wisest Teacher spoke of hell more often than he spoke about heaven, it must be more useful to scare than it is to coax. The final Revelation is given for the ‘servants’ of Jesus Christ, the already saved (Revelation 1.1.) The specific revelation of hell is given (note the ‘Pharisees’ in Luke 16.14) for those who are under condemnation. It is always a good idea to rake some truth up from the bowels of hell—from the story that Jesus told as he looked into it with his piercing eye, for most of us are still in peril of perishing. The story is a comparison of the dissimilar futures that two souls came to after their deaths on earth. One man is called ‘the rich man’; his future ended up being hell. The other is Lazarus; he had been the beggar at the rich man’s gate. We will stick to the rich man’s future, and the characteristics of it. (1) The rich man was in torment. He said: “send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue” (Luke 16.24.) The rich man will condescend to let the beggar touch his tongue with his dirty finger? If it has water on it, he will. (2) He was denied his request for relief: “son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented” (verse 25.) (3) He could not leave his place of confinement: “there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence” (verse 26.) (4) He was depersonalized, known only as ‘a certain rich man,’ while Lazarus was dignified with a name. The rich man’s future, then, came down to this: conscious torment, no relief, no escape, and no name worth remembering. There is some argument about whether this parable is historical or not. There is no consolation in the opinion that Jesus told a story that is not historically true. There is no proof that the story is not historical; there is no proof that this story is merely a parable. In any case, Jesus didn’t waste his time telling stories that do not touch, in decisive and material ways, ultimate reality. As a matter of fact, be it a parable or not, the story of Lazarus and the rich man only dimly conveys what an experience of hellfire is. “But those things that are used as similitudes, instead of exceeding the reality, are only faint images and shadows of the torments of hell” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 35.) Stories of hell are told to make the strongest impression on sinners in order for them to take every possible pain to avoid what is not possible to convey the horribleness of. Jesus taught spiritual truth. He did it plainly and by parable. It makes no difference whether the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is historical or not.

This future—the wrath of God endured in hell—will be the unending reality for every unfortunate soul who refuses God’s alternative offer. Not only that, but it gets worse than hell when hell and all of its grimacing inhabitants are cast into a lake of fire at the final judgment: “This is the second death” (Revelation 20.14.) What we thought was quintessential (hell) ends up being merely penultimate (because the lake of fire is even worse.) This is the future of man without God. Thin-skinned Christians do not like to hear the tribulations of hell referred to as ‘torture.’ But torture means anguish that is inflicted. And what is that but a description of being punished? To be punished by provoked omnipotence must be a torturous experience. This is why the word ‘torture’ is often used in older books of divinity to characterize the agonies of hell. The fate of the impenitent is terrible beyond words to describe. It is an ‘outer darkness,’ wherein is a continual ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 25.30.) Sometimes in Scripture it is difficult to ascertain whether hell is being described, or else the lake of fire that hell is eventually poured into. Hell, hellfire, the lake of fire—it is not wrong to treat these synonymously; but there are two stages of punishment in the afterlife, just as there are many aspects of punishment. There is hell, where remorseless sinners are consigned to wait to be finally judged; and there is the lake of fire that follows upon the final judgment. In the Bible, many similitudes are used to describe the future that impenitent sinners must one day have for their everlasting experience. How all of these similes agree and harmonize exceeds our ability to fathom, no matter which, whether hell or the lake of fire, is the subject. “Everything that gives an idea of an extreme misery is used to set forth hell torments because no one is sufficient to express it” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, pp. 35, 36.)

Considering the future that obstinate sinners are headed toward, what a shame it is that the majority of them will not pause to contemplate their likely destination! The future that they are speeding toward is more harrowing than their worst nightmare. The agony will be worse than the most lingering, painful death. It will be worse than dying of stomach cancer forever. The nightmare will be one that no soul will be able to wake from, for souls in hell will be eternally awake. The irreversibility of this outcome is the worst aspect of it. 

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION II

Sin. “For the wages of sin is death.” One of the biblical definitions of the word ‘sin’ is ‘offense.’ Anything less than perfect obedience to God is an offense. To sin is to offend God by falling short of his holy law. We all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23.) The wages for our offense is death; but ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Far from falling short, we no longer aim to obey God, do we? But we seldom call our shortfall ‘sin.’ This word ‘sin’ has become an unacceptable word in our society. The more wickedness is done and encouraged, the less mention is there of wickedness being sinful. Abiding sin has made us hate the word ‘sin.’ Our society scoffs at the mention of something as ‘sin.’ But should something that we are condemned to hell for doing be something to scoff at? The reason for the scoffing is that we wish to live in denial of what we permit ourselves to wallow in day after day. Sin is tolerated, while being held responsible for it is unpopular. Righteousness makes us uncomfortable because righteousness is a light that points out the darkness of sin. The next time you see something wrong being done, yell out the word ‘sinner’ and then observe the reaction. It is a myth that people are dumb to the word ‘sin.’ They know that it means an accusation of guilt. This is why they hate hearing the word brought up. Compare how indifferent people are to cursing, to how terrified they are of praying, in a public place. Terrified faces show a horror of holiness and righteousness. When a young woman took a man aside in the mall in order to pray for his soul, I stood back and watched the reactions. Bystanders were visibly uncomfortable at what they saw and heard. Who else but guilty sinners can curse God thoughtlessly one minute, and in the next be embarrassed by, or insulted at, God being prayed to? 

When confronted with reverence to a holy God that he is at odds with, the sinner turns away in disgust. This world is dark and mean and lewd. These are the days when, “The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted” (Psalm 12.8.) Our heroes consist of entertainers, villains, and cheaters. Man pays tribute only to what feeds his lust, pride, and greed. Most songs are about fornication, adultery, and violence. Movies are degenerate. Professional sports are corrupt. And if celebrities are wicked, and if they are nevertheless admired, then the vilest men are indeed exalted among us. They are idols, and are even spoken of that way. These are the days when evil is called good while good is called evil (Isaiah 5.20.) Virginity is laughed at while promiscuity is praised. Serious literature is shunned while trashy books fly off the shelves. So far are we from acknowledging sin that we have been inventing euphemisms to make allowances for vicious behaviors. A young hulking thug, for example, who stomped his teacher almost to death because she took his digital game away, was said to be suffering from ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder.’ He had been detained, before this, not in a prison or asylum, but in an ‘Intensive Behavior Group Home.’ When sin is no more sin, pretty soon crime is no more crime; and then law-abiding citizens are targeted by both brutal ruffians and their political abettors, which is persecution of the best persons among us by a combination of anarchy and tyranny. The Western world has been stabbing itself for a long time now; it’s finally slitting its throat. ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder,’ by the way, are dreamed up diseases that make drug manufacturers a lot of money. 

What will the end of these things be? We are going backwards nationally and running after hell individually. Each man must come to the end of his life on earth; and each one must begin his future in another world. For sinners who will never repent, the sooner their life on earth ends, the better it will be for them in hell. “Sinners are little sensible that hellfire grows hotter every day they live in sin; by their sins, they increase the heat of that furnace more than the heat of Nebuchadnezzar’s was increased for the three children. If they go on in sin therefore till they die, it is no advantage to ‘em to live long; the sooner they die the better for them. If they should live twenty years longer and then die in sin, it would be a great Calamity to them that they lived so long” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 79.) This might seem like risky preaching. But it’s the preaching of truth. Sinners want to live long; but this means a worse experience in hell unless they repent in time. In this present age of weak minds and faint hearts it should be said that suicide would not be a good solution because this would make one’s hell begin sooner than necessary. Each day out of hell is worth a world of kingdoms; each day out of hell is an opportunity to learn how to avoid going there; each day out of hell is a blessing forever lost to any who are in hell already. Suicide, furthermore, is murder; and murder, even of oneself, is just another way of turning hell’s temperature up. Living long, in any case, without repenting, occasions and ensures the accumulation of wrath to oneself.        

An Englishman by the name of Tom Parr is reputed to have lived to the age of 152. His years are 1483-1635. Such longevity in a man is outstanding in the comparatively recent past. There was another Englishman by the name of Henry Jenkins who eclipsed even Tom Parr. His years are 1500-1670. “There were also four or five in the same parish that were reputed all of them to be 100 years old or within 2 or 3 years of it, and they all said he was an elderly man ever since they knew him” (Anthony Cumby, Evidences of the Great Age of Henry Jenkins, p.6.) Henry Jenkins’ great age was so believed to have been authenticated that a mural of black marble was fashioned in his honor to preserve the knowledge that he had lived so long on the earth. The inscription reads: “Blush not marble/to rescue from oblivion/the memory of/HENRY JENKINS/a Person obscure in birth/But of a Life truly memorable/for/He was enriched/with the goods of nature/if not of fortune/and happy/in the duration/if not variety/ of his Enjoyments/and/tho the partial world/despised or disregarded/his low and humble state/The Equal Eye of Providence/beheld and blessed it/with a Patriarch’s Health and Length of days/to teach mistaken man/these blessings were Entailed on Temperance/Or a life of Labour and a mind at Ease/He lived to the amazing age of/169/was interred here Dec. 6/1670/and had this justice done to his memory/1743” (Ibid., pp. 10, 11.) Well, congratulations to Henry Jenkins. But at last, even for him: Gutta cavat lapidem. (The drop wears away the stone.) 

We tend to admire men who live to a hundred years of age or more; and it is our duty to live as long as we can because life on earth is a gift of God. But unless aged patriarchs and elderly matriarchs are reconciled to God before they die, they have done nothing more than store up more punishment to receive at the day of God’s wrath. Man stores up punishment by living long or sinning big. To bring so many men to greater punishment, God withdraws his restraining grace; and, sinking deeper into sin, these men go on to commit dishonorable deeds of the grossest kind, like sodomy (Romans 1.27), a sin so wicked that it is rarely forgiven because seldom repented of. To meet a Christian who was once a homosexual is a rare thing; it is so rare that it might be called a phenomenon. The acceptance and normalization of homosexuality is the measure of how filthy a nation’s character is, and of how far from God that people have distanced themselves. A people so flagrant, and that so readily dismiss God’s natural order, are eventually given over to a swarm of hostile behaviors, which are delineated in Romans 1.28-32. Are the USA and Canada not nations full of people who are ‘filled with all unrighteousness’? Most of us do not commit homosexual acts; but multitudes of us celebrate that lifestyle; and almost everyone else defends its ‘right’ to flaunt and strut. What mayor disallows a pride parade? Does irreverence and unrighteousness not characterize North America and Europe? We should never mind how evil the rest of the world is until we have studied history to learn how far toward hell the Western world has fallen. Then we might wake up before we are taken over by violent migrants from third world countries. 

Have we not been delighting in wickedness progressively since at least the year 1900? Sin is part of us. We think about it; we talk about it; we act out our offensive conversations and thoughts; we even celebrate sinners who commit the vilest abominations. We ‘have pleasure in them that do them’ (Romans 1.32.) The end of all this countenancing of sin is the future death, not only of body, but of body and soul in ‘the second death.’ This must be the destiny of all sinners who refuse to repent. The consequence of continuing in our despicable condition is the second death, the death with no end to it in a fire that will never be extinguished. Therefore the wretchedness of an impenitent, unredeemed sinner cannot be overstated.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION I

This is my second study on Romans 6.23. It is less technical and more fluid than the first one, and emphasizes the end that man is coming to as his ‘future,’ a future that will have no end, and that, once entered upon, will be as unalterable as it was inevitable. This study is not a vain repetition of the first one on the same verse, though its deductions and conclusions, because tethered to theology, are indistinguishable.

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.)

What is the future of man? With the Bible for our Seer, it is possible to foresee the future. In few words, I will attempt to answer this question from the Bible. Where discoveries and inventions are concerned, what man will accomplish on earth is hard to tell. Hundreds of years ago it would have seemed like magic to produce an image of a man suspended in time (photos), to fly above oceans and mountains in tubes (jets), to hear voices in real time from a thousand miles away (phones), to see a man move around on a screen (television), to see the same in real time (live streaming), to send messages across the world that are immediately received (emails), to carry whole libraries in our pockets (thumb drives), to have surgery done on an infant in the womb, to have power enough to exterminate the human race (the atomic bomb), or to see a man walk on the face of the moon. But no matter what man will make his future on earth to be, he cannot remain on earth for long to experience it, for each man must soon die. That sentence is irrevocable. Cryogenics will not reverse it, and reincarnation will not supply a new body for our soul. Eastern religion and Western science must both fail on account of their ignorance and the power of God’s curse for sin. Neither East nor West can, or will, put man on a path that will subvert what ‘the Judge of all the earth’ (Genesis 18.25) has decreed. Man has been dying since the time of Adam; he will continue to die until the end of time; and his body will stay dead until the resurrection. No matter how much a man hates and fears to die, he dies anyway. His spirit cannot resist his appointed hour. When a man dies, his spirit leaves his body. This event begins the everlasting future of man, whether he likes it or not and whether he is ready for it or not. His spirit, which is the essence of his life, cannot be willed to perpetually dwell inside his body. God will not suffer that to happen. When the spirit is called back by God, life leaves the body, and physical death occurs. What happens then? 

What is man’s future? What happens after death? What then? There is a negative future that each person, even from the womb, begins to irresistibly move toward; and there is only one alternative to it. These two futures are summed up for us in one brief verse: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.) This is perhaps the most compacted statement of vital information in the whole corpus of literature. A more serious ‘diverb,’ furthermore (a proverb in which a contrast is set forth), will not be found in any book anywhere. No verse, even in the Bible itself, contains more compression of saving truth than we find written here. The assertion is that death happens because of sin and that eternal life can happen by the gift of God through Jesus Christ. This gift does not preclude man from dying physically, as we all know. It is offered to save us from a more ominous death—what the Bible calls ‘the second death’ (Revelation 21.8.) The second death is an everlasting death in a lake of fire; the second death is an always-dying but never-ending death. The future of man is this death. The alternative future is eternal life, which may be received as God’s gift ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ 

There may be several levels in this verse, because of the comprehensive meaning of the word ‘death’: spiritual, physical, and eternal. I fix on death as eternal, because: (1) The last words of Romans 6.22, ‘the end everlasting life,’ introduce verse 23 to us; and verse 23 is given to preach the end that is the opposite of that. Therefore the ‘death’ that is mentioned in 6.23 must be as everlasting as the ‘life’ that is mentioned in 6.22. (2) In Romans 6.23 the two possible ends of man are contrasted. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Because of a divine curse, this is man’s future; this is his future by default. ‘But the gift of God is eternal life.’ This is the exception; this is the future that a sinner may obtain by ‘the gift of God.’ Because ‘death’ is presented in parallel with ‘eternal life,’ we are meant to be mindful of the eternal duration of each. There is a life to everlasting; and there is its contrary: ‘everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians. 1.9.) There are two sequences in our verse: sin and death; gift and life. Then there is the Mediator, Jesus Christ, through whom the good future is received in exchange for the miserable one, life in exchange for death. 

Only the grace of God can cause a condemned man to receive eternal life in place of the appalling future that he is speedily and heedlessly on his way to experiencing. But the grace of God operates through knowledge. More perfect knowledge of man’s future may be used by the Holy Spirit to induce a sinner to turn to God for eternal life through faith in Christ. Romans 6.23 may be divided into five parts. What better use of time can there be than to briefly consider these five parts one by one?

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION VIII

Conclusion

Samuel Hopkins, an American theologian from the 18th century, wrote this in 1792 in his Treatise on the Millennium: “If it were known when the Bishop of Rome first became what is designed to be denoted by the beast, the time of his fall, and of the end of the church of Rome, and of Satan’s kingdom in the world, when the Millennium will commence, could be ascertained to a year” (Samuel Hopkins, A Treatise on the Millennium, p. 107.) On the next page, after crunching some numbers, he hints that the millennium might commence in 2016. That year is well behind us now. Another Bible scholar named Bryce Johnston said this in 1794 in his Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, quoted by another Bible scholar called George Bush in 1832: “The Millennium must commence immediately upon the final overthrow of Papal Rome: But it was formerly shewn in its proper place that Papal Rome shall be completely overthrown in the end of the year of Christ 1999. The Millennium therefore, which both in the order of this prophecy and in the nature of the thing follows close upon the overthrow of Papal Rome, must commence in the beginning of the year of Christ 2000” (George Bush, A Treatise on the Millennium, p. 25.) Our twentieth century millenarians and their twenty-first century successors have done the same kind of thing that Mr. Hopkins did in 1792 and that Mr. Johnston did 1794. Instead of using dates associated with Papal Rome for their time-stamp, they have used 1948 (because of Israel’s victorious War of Independence), 1967 (because of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War), Y2K (because of the number 2000 and the supposition that all the computers were going to crash), 2012 (because of the Mayan calendar), and their opinions on the mid or pre-tribulation rapture as their means to set dates again and again for the return of Christ. Readers that have read, with care, books by Hal Lindsey, Grant Jeffrey, and Jack Van Impe, have noticed this. These men have set dates so often that it is not even necessary to quote from their works to prove it; and quoting from these authors is hard to do, anyway, after their books have been indignantly cast away. Selling startling books has been more important to writers like these than the exercise of caution through the knowledge of erstwhile folly. And springing from this lucrative platform has been irresistible for writers good at rehashing the impulsive prognostications of others. Caeca invidia est. (Envy is blind.) Books on what one charismatic crier has called ‘the last of the last days’ will continue to be published, probably, until the last minute of the last day; and even then the date will be gotten wrong.    

Older books on the millennium, though, in spite of their faults, are often brilliant in their insights, arguments, and assimilation of historical knowledge. George Bush’s Treatise on the Millennium from 1832 is faulty because he interprets the book of Revelation through the lens of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But his book is valuable for its presentation of the theological history of millenarianism. Millenarianism, also known as premillennialism, aka Chiliasm, was, he says, extensively believed by Christians during the first three centuries of the Church. This belief, however, he also says, and with convincing evidence, originates from the Jewish tradition that the world will subsist for seven thousand years, the last thousand being, as was supposed, a thousand years of rest. Chiliasm is, most probably, one of the sundry traditions of the elders, regardless of how long the world, in its present fallen form, will last. Quoting a French Protestant divine by the name of Daubuz, he relates the following: “Now that tradition was grounded upon the allegorical exposition of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest of God in the seventh; and that a thousand years are with God as one day” (George Bush’s Treatise on the Millennium, p. 26.) So the premillennial literalists who accuse amillennialists of being at fault for interpreting a thousand years allegorically, have, for their interpretation of a thousand years, an allegorical basis. They take the millennium literally; but this literal interpretation is based on the allegorical application of a ‘day.’ How far back does their tradition of a literal millennium go? On the next page of the same book, completing the quote from Daubuz, we read: “Now that the Jews had it must be plain from this, that we find it in St. Barnabas, who wrote before St. John many years. And indeed we give very good reasons in our Commentary to think that the notion is as old as the Deluge, because we find it pretty plainly to be also the tradition of the Chaldean Magi, and perhaps too of the Egyptians.” I have not read Charles Daubuz’ Perpetual Commentary on the Revelation of St. John or what St. Barnabas wrote; but I provide the information above to show the likely source of a dogma that is far less expository of the Scriptures than a dogma needs to be. 

“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day” (2 Peter 3.8.) There is no rationale for literalizing ‘a thousand years’ on the basis of this allegorical saying. The meaning of the saying—the reason for St. Peter using the saying—lies on each side of the verse. On the one side it is used to reprove; on the other its use is to encourage. So on the one side the message is to scoffers who say that the second coming will not happen because it is taking a long time. The answer to them is: From your flippant perspective it seems that way; but from the Lord’s perspective it will arrive soon enough. On the other side the message is to saints who feel that that the promise of the Lord’s coming is slack, or delayed. The answer to them is: From your fretful perspective it seems like that; but from your Lord’s perspective it is even at the door. Plain, or literal speech, is sometimes meant allegorically; an example of this readily comes to mind. We see it in Luke 14.26 from Jesus: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” But if allegorical speech is ever meant to be taken literally, an example is not so easily thought of. Since the Revelation of St. John of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is a series of visions, the interpretation of a vision is the doorway to coming to an understanding of the ultimate book of God’s word; and visions, in the Bible, are usually symbolic, and therefore to be interpreted allegorically. 

After dashing through most of the dreams and visions that are recorded in the Bible, I see that the interpretation of visions and dreams is a minefield only to careless walkers; or, it is not so much a minefield as it is a field to glean from. First, dreams and visions are sometimes used synonymously, or nearly so. We have this in at least two instances in the book of Daniel. “Thy dream,” says the prophet to king Nebuchadnezzar, “and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these” (Daniel 2.28.) The other occurrence even more obviously shows the synonymous association. “I saw a dream which made me afraid,” says the king, “and the thoughts upon my bed and visions of my head troubled me” (Daniel 4.5.) He ‘saw’ a dream means that he had ‘visions.’ Second, a dream might be so blunt and to the point as to bear a literal interpretation. We have this in Genesis 20.3: “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.” There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 31.24; 1 Kings 3.5; Matthew 1.20. Third, a dream might be allegorical, which is usually the case with dreams. This we have in Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars doing obeisance to him (Genesis 37.9), for the celestial bodies bowing down to him signified his parents and siblings becoming reliant on him for sustenance in the future famine. There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 40; Judges 7.13; Daniel 7. Fourth, a vision is sometimes literal, and needs no interpretation. We have an instance of this in the life of Samuel when still a boy. In this vision the LORD spoke to him plainly of Eli: “I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end” (1 Samuel 3.12.) There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 15; Luke 1; Acts 9.12. Fifth, a vision is sometimes figurative, allegorical: what Jonathan Edwards calls ‘mystical.’ Examples of this sort are not wanting. Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is one of the most obvious and well-known (Ezekiel 37.) Others of this kind include: Daniel 8; Acts 10; Revelation 9.17. To sum up: These dreams and visions, except for the last one cited, are either plain, needing no further explanation; or mystical, but explained to us in their respective passages. In the book of Revelation, though, verse 9.17 being one example out of many in that book, we have mystical visions that require the aid of the Bible at large for their understanding. This has been shown by comparing the casting down of Satan (Revelation 20.3) to the testimony of Jesus concerning Satan falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10.18.) So while it is true that most of the figurative dreams and visions that the Bible has recorded are interpreted for us in their immediate contexts, what St. John saw in the spirit requires, for its interpretation, the understanding of adjacent contexts and outlying texts together. Just as calculus and algebra are more difficult to learn than addition and multiplication, the Revelation of St. John is harder to figure out than the books of Ruth and Esther.     

What is recorded in the Apocalypse is what John the apostle saw in visions. What a seer sees in visions is not always to be taken literally as we would see the sights in three dimensional form standing before us. St. John was in the spirit when he saw the heavenly Revelation; but he was still a mortal, not glorified, man. Therefore he was shown what he was shown in the fashion that a mortal would be able to be shown it. And this Revelation had to be communicated like that too, from St. John the mortal to mortal saints. So what we have in Revelation are pictures condescended to mortal capacity. To take what is revealed in this last book of the Bible in literal form would be like interpreting the dream that Pharaoh had (Genesis 41) as seven lean kine eating seven fat kine and to put the foot down and exclaim, “It has to mean that! We have to take what the Bible says literally.” But, for examples, blood ‘even unto the horse bridles’ (Revelation 14.20) and ‘locusts’ emerging from the pit of hell (9.3) and ‘the thousand years’ (20.2-7) are about some things else, just as the lean kine eating the fat kine was about famine. If God showed to Pharaoh something as earthy as a famine in symbolic pictures, how much more likely is it that he would use symbolic pictures to show an apostle things that are heavenly?

Chiliasm appeals to our carnal lusts. Even non-Christian readers are attracted to books about a thousand epicurean years on earth. In the early days of my faith, I read many of these voluptuous books. Then, little by little and more and more, in accord with the principle that the apostle Paul communicated to disciples in Corinth (1 Corinthians 13.11), this childish pursuit was put away. The premillennial belief has a lot to do with escaping the great tribulation by the rapture, and enjoying earthly pleasures (not unlike ‘Turkish delights’) for a thousand years before these things pass away forever in the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. Proponents of premillennialism believe that there will be, near the end of their golden millennium, a final uprising by Satan and his henchmen. This is fine; a conflict like this indeed happens near the end of time. But this insurgency will be followed, they say, not only by the defeat of the devil and his evil bands, but also the destruction of that rich millennial earth that took so long to perfect. Would it make sense to burn up a paradisiacal world that has taken 1,000 years to build and beautify? It makes more sense to believe that the Lord will finish this present earth with fire (2 Peter 3.10), the same earth that is being destroyed right now by Communist and Globalist degenerates: that he ‘shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth’ (Revelation 11.18.) These two verses are well matched, especially since Revelation 11 is one of the seven chapters in this book that brings us to the end of history. Those chapters are, by the way: 3, 7, 11, 14, 16, 19, and 22. Each of these chapters ends with the closure of history, but with progressive continuance as new details and features are added until the last ‘Amen’ in the Bible. This way of dividing Revelation is an old one; I heard it first through Martyn Lloyd-Jones in an audio sermon; he seems to have gotten it from E. W. Hengstenberg, a German theologian from the 1800s. I saw hints of a division like that in Bede’s Explanation of the Apocalypse from the eighth century; and also in Victorinus’ Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John from about the turn of the fourth. This mode of interpreting the book of Revelation, along with an amillennial understanding of ‘the thousand years,’ is not something to insist on, even though it may be something that we are convinced of. The interpretation of the Apocalypse as a linear sequence of future events, though, with its ‘rubber meets the road’ millennium, is exhausted on account of having been humiliated through the long train of preposterous books that have been written by its leading advocates.                     

From the Confession of the Evangelical Free Church of Geneva, A. D. 1848: “We expect from heaven our Saviour Jesus Christ, who will change our body of humiliation and make it conform to his own body of glory; and we believe that, in that day, the dead who are in Christ, coming out from their tombs at his voice, and the faithful then living on the earth, all transformed through his power, will be taken up together into the clouds to meet him, and that thus we shall always be with our Saviour.” This Confession goes on from this to outline the truth on resurrection and judgment without touching on a millennium of whatever kind; no millennium is mentioned in the Confession at all. Christians do not have to agree about the nature or length of the millennium. It can be left out of a Confession because it is a peripheral matter, not a preeminent one. Sadly, because of their zealous adhesion to a literalistic millennium, with its numerous auxiliary teachings, many Christians, no doubt, would be perplexed at it being omitted from a summary of essential doctrine and might even have qualms about subscribing to a Confession of Faith on account of this omission. When I was first introduced to Reformed Confessions, and still a millenarian, I wrote this in the margin near the end of the Belgic Confession: “Where is the Mill?” That is what reading Charles Ryrie’s and C. I. Scofield’s notes on the Bible can do to a person. It can influence a reader to pay more attention on subsidiary matters than on matters of great moment. The great Confessions of the Christian Faith do not include articles on the millennium because the kingdom of God does not necessarily involve a matter-of-fact thousand years of peace on this present earth. There is a kingdom within, which is what the Lord focused on during his ministry; and there is an eschatological kingdom that he did not ignore. These aspects of the kingdom are complimentary; the one will follow upon the other. The kingdom of heaven is entered through regeneration, by being born again by the Spirit of God. This aspect is the essence of the kingdom; this is first; this is fundamental. This aspect is as intangible as what must be conquered by the Lord for our entry into it: Satan, Sin, and Death. The eschatological aspect, for its part, is the ultimate manifestation of God’s rule over every creature, especially his regenerated saints in the new heaven and the new earth: the everlasting kingdom of God. To focus attention on a literal millennium that hinges on one passage of Scripture from the Bible’s most allegorical book, is unwise and reckless; in so many cases among so many writers, this focus is more a monetary move or a prejudicial move than a righteous one. The subject of the millennium, though, because it is in the Bible, and because it is a subject that has been lately abused by fanatics for financial gain, deserves some attention. Working on the subject, because it is biblical work, is a blessing; but, as Bede confessed in his Explanation of the Apocalypse, it is ‘hazardous labor.’ My confidence that amillennialism is correct and that its rival views are false, notwithstanding the hazard involved in the foregoing labor, is stronger than it has ever been; I can barely restrain myself from being dogmatic about it. That the thousand years is allegorical is supported by the ‘first resurrection’ being allegorical and the binding of Satan being allegorical as well; and the interpretive apparatuses that are used to come up with this figurative point of view are exacting and forthright, not incompetent and underhanded.   

Whether there is a literal millennium to come or whether there is a figurative one right now, this gospel age will end in glory: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11.9.) Christianity (in the face of persecution or opposition by first century Jewish Leaders, the Roman Caesars, the Roman Catholic Priesthood, Barbarians, Muslims, Communists, Evolutionists, Polytheists, Atheists, Institutionalized Religion, Religious Cults, all the Humanist Ideologues, and all the Savage Tribes of Heathendom) is the reason why there has been enough peace in the world to keep us from destroying each other and our planet these last two thousand years. When this verse runs over into a new earth, it will pour out its blessings without intermission and opposition forever. Then we will look back and understand each prophecy to perfection, whether it originates from the hardest sayings of Daniel, the last chapters of Ezekiel, or the Revelation of Jesus Christ to his servant John.