Jesus and The Furnace of Fire
Posted: Friday, December 05, 2008
by Denny Smith
Hell is not real for most people. They think little about it and really do not believe that if there is such a place they could end up there. Hell would only be reserved for characters like Hitler, Himmler, Stalin, murderers, child molesters, etc., the very worst society has to offer. It is not a place for the average man or woman is the general thinking.
Hear Jesus, "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth." (Mat 13:41-42 NKJV)
Many people who think they know Jesus would say, "No, he would never do that." Well, if not he is a liar. If he is a liar you cannot depend on a single word he ever uttered for who would know when he was lying and when he was not? But, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2).
Let us take a closer look and see who it is that will be cast into this furnace. It is "those who practice lawlessness." (Matt. 13:41 NKJV) I know vast numbers of people while good in many respects, many proclaiming that they believe in God, who never make any effort to obey Jesus and thus they practice lawlessness. The New Testament is the law of Christ, the law he gave, the law he is talking about in the passage under discussion.
Have they ever been baptized for the remission of sins? (Acts 2:38 ) No! Do they intend to? No! Do they worship God? No! Do they "forsake the assembling of ourselves together?" (Heb. 10:25 NKJV) Yes! Have they put on "the whole armor of God?" (Eph. 6:11 NKJV) No! Do they intend to? No! And the list could go on and on. Just common ordinary day folks. Where are they headed? You say don't judge. I am just quoting Jesus. He is the one that said that those who practice lawlessness will be cast into the lake of fire. I just happen to know what lawlessness is - disregarding his word.
Paul, for example, gave us a list of sins in Gal. 5:19-21 ( NKJV), "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Paul says, "and the like" meaning this is only a partial listing of sins. There is another long list that can be found in Rom. 1:24 -32 and then we find this in the last verse, verse 32, "those who practice such things are worthy of death." (NKJV)
Sin is lawlessness, "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness." (1 John 3:4 NAS) It is those who practice lawlessness, Jesus says, who will be cast into the furnace of fire.
To be saved a man must love Jesus. "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed." (1Co 16:22 NKJV) "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me," says Jesus. (John 14:21 NKJV) The apostle John says, "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:3-4 NKJV) "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?" says Jesus. (Luke 6:46 NKJV) If Jesus is not your Lord, he is not if you are not obeying him, are you going to avoid the furnace of fire?
But people say I know what the word of God says about this or that but I know how I feel in my heart and thus the standard for being saved and for living a faithful obedient life, for determining what is and is not sin, ceases to be what the book, chapter, and verse of the Bible teaches and becomes instead the feeling in the heart. That feeling becomes the standard for salvation and the word of God is cast aside. Commandments no longer matter and especially if they prove inconvenient or troublesome.
I love God. I will be saved. How do you know? My heart tells me so. Just as long as your heart tells you so it makes it so? Well, Jacob felt Joseph was dead, felt it in his heart, but that did not make it so. "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9 NKJV) People head to death and judgment with a faith built on personal feelings (quicksand) rather than on the word of God (a solid rock).
"Therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall." (Matt. 7:24-27 NKJV)
There are so many who consider themselves saved that never even enter a church door and many more who enter it only occasionally. They do not know God's commandments and make little or no effort to learn them. They rarely, if ever, read the Bible and have no desire to study it. The Hebrew writer tells us that there is a time when we "ought to be teachers." (Heb. 5:12 NKJV) There is no way most people can obey that directive for they have never studied enough to even think about being a teacher.
They have never made any effort to "study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Tim. 2:15 KJV) Other versions read a little differently but the exact same idea is in them all. Their indifference to the word of God is great but they are still going to heaven according to the general consensus of the public.
I write this article today because I am scared. I am scared for people I know and love. I am scared for the many who are likeable, kind, and caring people - we would call them good people by our standards. I am scared for they are not sacred, not at all. They do not know enough to be scared. Like an infant running toward the busy highway having no concept of the consequences that awaits them they go day by day walking toward the precipice from whence once the last step is taken there will be no return, the final step into hell.
I am scared because their indifference is great. I am scared because they presume, just presume. I am scared because they have no interest in searching the scriptures to see what they need to do and how they need to live.
Should a man fear God? They do not. If a man has no fear of God it is not likely he will ever repent. That is one reason so many today are able to go on day after day, month after month, year after year, living carelessly and indifferently. They believe God will save them the way they are and have no fear that he will not despite his warnings to the contrary to the disobedient. Hear the Bible on the subject, "by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil." (Prov. 16:6 NKJV) "The fear of the Lord leads to life." (Prov. 19:23 NKJV) When you do not fear God you do not worry a whole lot about keeping God's commandments.
There is a real furnace of fire or else Jesus lied about it. It may or may not be like what we would think of as being a furnace of fire but the effect on the soul will be that of extreme pain and suffering such as physical fire brings to the body. There will be little to no difference with regards to the intensity of the suffering else the analogy fails.
In the book of Revelation in John's vision he saw the great Day of Judgment. "And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books." ( Rev 20:12 NKJV)
His vision of judgment day closes with verse 15, "And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire." ( Rev 20:15 NKJV) I cannot imagine such a thing. That does not mean I do not believe it but the horror of it is more than the mind can grasp. Can you imagine the fear, the terror, the panic, the hysteria, when one realizes this is his or her fate?
No wonder there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth." The phrase "weeping and gnashing of teeth" is used 4 times in the book of Matthew (Matt. 8:12 , 22:13 , 24:51, and Matt. 25:30 NKJV). In each instance the phrase is used by the Lord Jesus himself, in red print in your Bible. Does Jesus lie? When was the last time you had pain so bad you had to gnash your teeth? Could you bear that for eternity?
Hell is a place of unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43 ), a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48 ). These are again the words of Jesus himself. Paul, in a passage that is obviously talking about hell, speaks of God's "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil." ( Rom. 2:8-9 NKJV) Is a man stronger than God who created the millions of stars in the universe? Can a man withstand God's indignation and wrath?
Jude speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah and says that they were "set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jud 1:7 NKJV) The Hebrew writer spoke on the topic saying, "For we know Him who said, 'vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord. And again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Heb 10:30-31 NKJV) Peter says, "For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? Now 'if the righteous one is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?'" (1Peter 4:17 -18 NKJV)
We have become so accustomed to talk only about the love of God, of his mercy and grace, of his forgiveness and salvation that we scarcely can comprehend anything else from him. However, God is also a God of justice, of holiness, and righteousness. What kind of a Father would God be if he said, "Okay, so I sent my son into the world to suffer and die for you and you rejected him and made his commandments of no account paying no attention to them and caring less? So you did your own will rather than mine, you come on up into heaven with us anyway and we will forget all about it. What is a little spilt blood?"
If God was to say a thing of that kind what kind of God would he be? Would he be good? God cannot be a good and just God and let man get by with man doing his own thing. Jesus cannot be Lord of our life if we are. God cannot be God if we are going to play God ourselves with our own lives.
Paul wrote in language so fearful I find it hard to read when he wrote in 2 Thess. 1:8-9 of Jesus' second coming and said of it that his return would be "in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." The phrase "in flaming fire" catches my attention every time I read the passage. Terror will be a mild word to use when that day comes. Are you prepared?
Can you see in your mind's eye that day coming and perhaps for the first time in their life your son or daughter, your husband or wife, your mother or your dad, realizing the horror that is about to befall them? Can you see in your mind's eye the hysteria, the panic, the terror that will be in their faces? Can you see their weeping and sobbing uncontrollably and you unable to do a thing about it? As I said earlier we ought to be scared as we see how people are living so indifferent to God. Are you one of those people? Is one of your family such an individual?
Many are lukewarm, maybe a step up from indifference. Is that a big enough step to avoid the furnace of fire? Hear Jesus in the book of Revelation speaking to the church of the Laodiceans bearing in mind that the church is but the Christians who make it up. He says, "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'--and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked." (Rev 3:15-17 NKJV) What kind of a Christian are you?
The only good thing that can be said concerning the Christians in the church at Laodicea was that God was going to allow them a little more time to repent. He says, in verse 18, "be zealous and repent." If you are reading this it means you are being granted some time to repent if you need to do so. You have now. If you have family that are still alive as you read this it means they still have time, "if" they will use it, to bring their life into accord with God's will in order to avoid the furnace of fire. Maybe you can help them. You can pray for them and ought to and ought to do so earnestly time and time again.
It distresses me to write an article like this for I know few if any at all will listen. As I said earlier the assumption is that all is well, everything is fine, it is okay, and we are all saved. Jeremiah wrote words that I fear are going to end up being applicable to our own generation as well as to his. "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!" (Jer. 8:20 NKJV) Is God first in your life or is he thirty first, forty first, fifty first, or just not there at all? Is he just a Thanksgiving and Christmas Day God in your life? If so it is time to make some changes. There is a furnace of fire.
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Prov. 1:7 NKJV)
(If this article has been useful why not recommend it to others that you know who need to hear these things. That is one thing you can do. We can only do so much but we can tell them the truth. You can download the article and print it out.)
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)You are correct in saying that sin is lawlessness. I agree with much of what you're saying here. My question is this... do YOU keep the Law? Because, like you said here, if you don't, you're going to hell.I think the real question here is your motivation of heart behind your comment. I do not judge you but the question you pose is mystifying in view of your faith (religion). Why would a person say something like that and especially when his faith is such that he believes that Christ was an impostor and a liar in claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of God. I am concerned with the law of Christ. As a Jew you discount that law for if Christ is a liar then he was a sinner, a deceiver of men, and not even a good man, let alone being the Lord and Savior. Has Judaism now evolved to the point that the law such a man gives as they think he was is considered important? Are you concerned about me keeping a law which to you is of no account spiritually as far as salvation goes?
I am a Messianic Jew. Are you familiar with what that is?I must apologize to you for no I had never heard of a messianic Jew. There are today according to Stephen Tomkins in his book "A Short History of Christianity" (copyrighted in 2005) now over 34,000 Christian denominations in the world (page 245). It is simply impossible to keep track of all the different beliefs held in the world of Christendom as many call it. After receiving your comment I did a quick Google search and some real quick research on messianic Jews.
That said, while I rejoice that you accept Christ as the Messiah why if you do (I am not expressing doubt, I take your word for it) do you call yourself a rabbi for that certainly throws a Christian off into thinking you are a traditional Jew in your religion? Jesus in speaking to a Jewish audience said, "But you, do not be called 'Rabbi'; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren." (Matt. 23:8 NKJV)
Now to answer your original question on the article I wrote in 2008 asking me do I keep the law (law of Christ), I still think that is an awfully strange question to ask and wonder why you would ask it after reading the article, yes I try and do it. It is God's command that we do so. Jesus is "the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him." (Heb. 5:9 NKJV)
Does any man keep the law perfectly? No, John the apostle said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8 NKJV) But, as I think you know full well the difference between the new covenant and the old covenant is the element of grace contained in the new that was not found in the old. Under the old Law of Moses perfection in keeping of the law was required. As Paul said, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them." (Gal. 3:10 NKJV) No one has ever been saved or ever will be by perfect law keeping. That is why there was/is a need for a Savior.
I have not reread my article as I type this but I can assure you the point of the article is not that man can perfectly keep the law of Christ. There is a world of difference between making a good faith, give it all you got effort, on the one hand versus a kind of indifferent it doesn't make a lot of difference whether I do or I don't attitude on the other hand. Must one keep the law (talking about a good faith effort here) to be saved? Yes. Is one saved apart from God's grace? Absolutely not!
Concerning the passage in Matt 23 we have to understand it in context. That same passage says do not call any man teacher or father either. 8"But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.
9And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.
10Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ.[2] If we're going to single out that it says call no man Rabbi and that means we can't use that word any longer... then we have to do the same thing with the word father and teacher as well if we're going to be consistent. So, if the word "Father" is now a forbidden word then we shouldn't see it used in the Bible either. Yet we do... Matthew 2:22
But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:
Matthew 3:9
And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
Matthew 4:21
And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.
Matthew 4:22
And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.
Matthew 8:21
And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
Matthew 10:21
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
So what does this passage really mean then? I would suggest that we understand it in context. It's talking about priorities. We as followers of Yeshua (Jesus) need to understand who THE Rabbi is, who THE Teacher is and who THE Father is. It's not saying we shouldn't use the word Rabbi or teacher or father because that would be, well, just downright silly. Rabbi StanleyI could not disagree more. You have mixed apples and oranges together as though they were identical. Let me quote the entire relevant verses in the passage for all to see.
"They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.' But you, do not be called 'Rabbi'; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant." (Matt. 23:6-11 NKJV)
First of all anyone past junior high age knows without being told that Jesus is talking about using these terms (rabbi, father, and teacher) in the spiritual realm versus the physical realm. There is a world of difference between you calling your Dad father which the Bible clearly permits as the passages you use prove and which no one of accountable age that I know of doubts versus the use of the term father as a title for a mere man in a spiritual context. The Catholics are just as guilty as you when they use the term father to refer to one holding an exalted position among them as you are for using the term rabbi in your place.
In fact, talk about reading things in context, look at verse 6 and 7 which I quoted above. Jesus is talking about the scribes and the Pharisees (see verse 1 of the chapter). What do they want? Jesus says among other things they want to be called "Rabbi, Rabbi" (the last two words of verse 7) which is the very thing he is condemning. The desire was to be seen as one who was special, as one who had a title, and was to be looked up to. I know a preacher that has a doctor's degree. You know what? I am one of the few people who know that. Why? Because he does not want it advertised or attached to his name because of the principle taught in the very passages under discussion here.
In Christianity there is no such thing as titles and places of exaltation. There are teachers, in fact, the Hebrews were condemned "for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again" (Heb. 5:12 NKJV) but there are no TEACHERS running around with a title, and being honored for holding some special position. You run across them out on the street and no one is going to greet them as Teacher but that is not so with you and the Catholic fathers. You may well be greeted as rabbi and the Catholic as father if met on the street by those who are acquainted with either of you. Christ's teaching is that we are not to accept such titles.
Study up on the passages in the New Testament teaching how we are all the same in Christ, all one.
This is too silly of an argument for me to go deeper into. If you think it's wrong to call anyone "father" or "teacher" then I'll leave you to your thoughts. RABBI Stanley lolWell, I guess if you want the title "Rabbi" attached to your name so people can acknowledge your position so be it but rest assured you do so without Jesus' approval and since he gave the commandment you can explain the silliness of it to him in due time.
Hi Denny. Well said. It's true we are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ and not of works, but true salvation and faith are evidenced by obedience and seeking to please God in all of our ways. His grace is there for our times of weakness in this body of sin we lug around with us, but it is not to be taken for granted. I agree, so many people, and sadly too many Christians only talk about God's love and grace and forget about his Righteousness and His Holiness, and Justice. Very thorough explanation. Blessings, Teresa
2 peas in a pod.Strange comment. You have a desire to be given a title and called rabbi. I have no title and desire none yet we are two peas in a pod? Hard to figure.
II Peter 2:9 So the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and how to hold the wicked until the Day of Judgment while continuing to punish them, 10 especially those who follow their old natures in lust for filth and who despise authority.I suppose you are trying to make the point that I am the one who is wicked who will be punished because I despise your authority. If that is not your point I do not know what it is or could be. I really do not despise your authority though, if that gives you any comfort, for I do not attribute any authority to you.
I have decided that sometime between now and the first of the year I will try and get up a full length article on this topic and post it to the wrytestuff, Lord willing. It is far from the most important topic that needs to be written on but as long as men desire titles and position I guess there is a need. I am very busy right now but I will eventually try and write this article and deal with the subject in depth.
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