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The Gift that Keeps on Giving! Part V | |
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We know that we will all leave this world at one time or another. Psalm 49:12 What we don't know for sure is when we will leave and what will happen to us after we are gone. Perhaps you have read all this about sin, heaven, hell, salvation and the last days, but you find yourself not believing. I cannot prove to you that what the Bible prophesies about Hell, judgement and the Last Days is true, but just because you don't believe, doesn't mean that it will not happen. What if it is true...and you are not ready? But man, despite his riches, does not endure; he is like the beasts that perish.
(Hover you mouse curser over the scripture references to read the verses.) Meeting with God...Face to Face: 1. We will stand before God.
For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.
2. We will account for our actions...
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.
If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account?
Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, "He won't call me to account"?
It is written: "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.
3. We will be judged.
Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment
The LORD takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people.
Wrath of God: 1. Who will experience the Wrath of God?
2. What is the wrath of God?
He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power
The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 'where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.' Everyone will be salted with fire.
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name."
We have all experienced hard times, pain, sadness, hopeless feelings even destruction, but even the worst we could experience in the world is nothing compared to the pain, anguish, loss, emptiness, fear, and just plain hopelessness that hell seems to promise. |
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