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"It is appointed unto men once to die, and then the Judgment". (Heb. 9:27)
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THE QUESTION
The most consequential issue facing any human being is his eternal destiny.
As Jesus Christ said, the one urgent question facing each and every one of us on the earth is this:
"You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?" (Mt. 23:33)
Unfortunately, and as incredible or objectionable as it may sound, because God is just and we are, to a man, rebels and sinners, Scripture makes it clear that the default destiny of all human beings, without exception, is Hell. (Rev. 20:15)
According to Christ, who presumably knew exactly what He was talking about, each of us should be more than willing to take extreme measures to avoid that destiny, to avoid Hell. (Mt. 5:29-30)
And we should fear above death and all else, He who has the power to consign us to Hell forever. (Mt. 10:28)
Yet, the only time most of us think about it, if at all, is during our 3 a.m. ruminations, when we allow ourselves to ponder, even if only for a moment, the deep questions, the ones that we and everyone else have spent all our lives suppressing and pretending to ourselves and others don't really worry us.
"Where will I be 20, 50, or 100 years from now?"
"Do I deserve Hell? What would Hell really be like?"
And when our thoughts then spiral out of control and a deep dread and foreboding suddenly overtakes us, we quickly grab the TV remote, a magazine, an iPod, - anything, to take our minds off eternity and the potential scenarios.
Despite the gravity of the subject it is rarely addressed in church - too discomfiting, too alienating, too...scary.
Worse, it calls into question for many that most sacred assumption of all - that those of us who attend church are "good people" - what could we possibly have to fear at the Final Judgment?
Why warn us?
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THE RESPONSE
The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Chief Priests, Israel's finest citizens in the days of Christ, the blue bloods and society stalwarts, had the same response to Christ and His Gospel as many a modern churchgoer:
"God's favor is upon us. The proof is our worldly success. And, of course, we are nothing like 'the sinners' (i.e., those people we read about in the newspaper). What, really, do we have to repent of?"
Consequently, the subject of repentance, like Hell, is rarely preached in church. It seems so...irrelevant.
Many of us, even if we are churchgoers, confidently survey the particulars of our own lives, and conclude that, deep down, we really don't need Christ's rather unseemly sacrifice to pay the just penalty for our "sins".
We're not even sure we really have any. We're just not that bad, are we?
Like Cain, our expectation is congratulations, not condemnation, at the Final Judgment, because, frankly, over time and with a practiced ruthlessness we have managed to suppress the real truth about ourselves (Rom. 1:18), and done our level best to hide it from others.
And how might one suppress or hide the real truth about himself? Just like the Pharisees did - by doing good deeds, by "living a good life", by going to church, and thus impressing the World (Mt. 23:1-39).
That last sentence might bear another reading, because it is these deeds, this lifestyle, and their apparent "goodness", coupled with the World's obvious approval, which enable today's modern Pharisees, and that includes most all of us, to maintain the deadly fiction of our acceptability before God, to obscure the truth of what we really are (as further described in the following essay, "Our Desperate Situation"), and thus to deceive ourselves as to our ultimate destiny.
And as we know, although they were renowned for their outward virtue, not their "sin", the ultimate destiny of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Chief Priests, the cream of Israeli society, was Hell (Mt. 23:33; John 8:20-23).
...What does this tell the rest of us "good people"?
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THE DECEPTION
Evil is by nature deceptive, and the deception is this:
It is only "other people" who are evil. Not me.
We contrast what we do or have done well in life, with what we suspect we are in our inner heart, the part of us that only we know about, and nevertheless confidently proceed on the basis that God will judge us solely on the former.
Or perhaps we have dishonestly concluded that, because of our outward "goodness", Christ's sacrificial death is, well, essentially irrelevant to or wasted on us, personally.
It is this view which, if not repented of, will ultimately condemn us. (John 3:19-21; Mt. 23:32-34)
We reason, erroneously, like the Pharisees did: "How can a person really and fairly be deemed bad enough to justify Hell if he does so much good, if the World has obviously approved of his life?"
God's assessment that "the human heart is desperately wicked and evil above all things" (Jer. 17:9), "that there are none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:23), that no one shall justify themselves in His sight (Rom. 3:20), that "all our righteousness are as filthy rags before" Him (Is. 64:6), rings hollow to us.
It just flat out doesn't make sense to us - that the Scripture really means what it says, that God's ways or His opinion would differ so much from the World's (Is. 55:8-9), that "what is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight" (Luke 16:15), that the uncompromising, unflinching standard to be applied to our lives is perfection (Mt. 5:48) and absolute holiness, and that therefore only Christ is good and no one else (Luke 18:19).
And so, relying on our "common sense" and our own evaluation of ourselves instead of God's Word, we mistakenly, confidently, in the comfort of our church pews, await the Final Judgment.
In contrast to the Pharisees, the sinners and criminals who flocked around Christ were promised, not Hell, but Paradise (Luke12:32; 23:43).
Because, since Christ has come, as stated above, it is not our sin which is any longer a problem with God (Mark 3:28; John 1:29; 1 John 2:1-2).
It is our "Goodness."
Go figure...
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THE DISCLAIMER
I have no credentials qualifying me to write about the Final Judgment, but, then again, who does? Of course, Christ Himself, Truth incarnate, had no credentials in a wordly sense, and neither did his disciples.
So why should you believe what I say?
Well, you shouldn’t, frankly, until you’ve examined everything within these pages carefully, rolling it all over in your mind and perhaps even asking God for guidance as to whether the message communicated is true. I might also recommend that you read it slowly.
While all the essays but one are short, much of what is said may be simply indigestible at first. Chew on it deliberately and thoroughly.
You will think many times that what I say can’t possibly be true. It will sound to you alternately fantastic, ridiculous, frightening, and foolish. You will refuse to believe that what I say really is an accurate explanation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - the ultimate message for mankind from the King of the Universe.
But, I respectfully submit, it is.
In Christ’s day, the religious types would at times put their hands over their ears when He taught - the message was so insulting and offensive.
The message hasn't changed, and the reaction of the religious types is still the same.
