Hell and Everlasting Punishment
Part 2: Blackness of Darkness Forever

“Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.” (Jude 13). God says in 1 Samuel 2:9: “the wicked shall be silent in darkness.” They will be so stunned and dumbfounded with the condition in which they find thmeselves that they will be speechless. Psalm 49:19 says, “they shall never see light.” Peter speaks concerning the wicked: “to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.” (2 Peter 2:17).

Think of a place without the sun, moon, stars: without an electric light, lamp light, or candlelight but forever darkness. Think also of people being like “wandering stars,” going round and round stumbling in the darkness, totally alone, forever and ever. Groping blindly for anything and finding nothing. This is the reservation of the wicked. Thinking of this is so awful the mind cannot dwell upon it very long.

Jesus spoke of those who “loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19), and since they hate the light and do not come into the light, they get darkness forever. Jesus also spoke of those who “shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:12).

“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungoldy has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.”
-A.W. Tozer

“The most dreadful torment of the lost, in fact that which constitutes their state of torment, will be this coming to themselves, when too late for repentance.”
-H. Alford

The true light is shining right now, may God help us all come to it before the day is spent.

“You and I can never imagine all the depths of hell. Shut out from us by a black veil of darkness, we cannot tell the horrors of that dismal dungeon of lost souls. Happily, the wailings of the damned have never startled us, for a thousand tempests were but a maiden’s whisper, compared with one wail of a damned spirit. It is not possible for us to see the tortures of those souls who dwell eternally within an anguish that knows no alleviation. These eyes would become sightless balls of darkness, if they were permitted for an instant to look into that ghastly shrine of torment. Hell is horrible, for we may say of it, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the horrors which God hath prepared for them that hate him.”
-C.H. Spurgeon

“We have underestimated the total war to which the devil has committed his horde of demons and men alike? Is it not true that cataracts have formed over our eyes (maybe with watching too much T.V.) so that we have completely misjudged the horror of that eternal hell to which at this moment millions of souls are marching? Does such a picture stir your soul and stab your conscience? Are you sleeping at the price of another’s peril? Recently, when a hunting dog ferreted into a pile of rocks and was trapped, men fought with cold, rain, and fatigue for two days and nights to find the entombed dog. Are not men more than dogs? Will men be entombed in hell forever because you were playing instead of praying?”
-Leonard Ravenhill

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Hell and Everlasting Punishment
Part 1: Abiding Wrath

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth no the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). This verse says that the wrath of God abides on the sinner right now and if he dies unsaved God’s wrath will abide on him forever. “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God; But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath.” (Romans 2:5,8).

“Let this awful word Wrath, settle into the conscience of every soul; for God hath spoken it!” And every Preacher, and every prophet of God has warned of it: Enoch, Noah, Moses, the Psalmists, Isaiah, John the Bapist with his ‘flee from the wrath to come;’ the Apostles – from Romans to Revelation; and the great Preachers and Evangelists of the Christian centuries, – the men who have won souls – the Reformers, the Puritans, the Wesleys, Whitefields, Edwardses, Finneys, Spurgeons, Moodys, – all have told of man’s guilt and danger, of the coming judgment, and of the wrath of God upon the impenitent and unbelieving.”
-William R. Newell

“There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays His rough wind. Otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor. The wrath of Godis like great waters that are damned for the present. They increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given. The longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose…

And consider here more paticularly whose wrath it is. It is the wrath of an infinite God… It is the fierceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. Thus we read of ‘the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.’ (Rev 19:15). The words are exceedingly terrible, if only it had been said, ‘the wrath of God’, the wrod would have implied that which is infinitly dreadful. But it is said, ‘the fierceness and wrath of God’. The fury of God! The fierceness of Jehovah! Oh, how dreadful that be! It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it for all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery…

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul that has not been born again. however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh, that you would consider it, whether you are young or old! Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and flee fromt he wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over every unregenerate sinner.”
-Jonathan Edwards

Hearing such solemn admonitions about the reality of an abiding wrath must make us stop and consider how we are living our lives, the soul that God has given us to be accountable for. How short is time, how long is eternity! May we do violence to our normal thinking and actions and place our thoughts firmly on these eternal subjects that will be life to us if we allow them to be.

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For more articles like this and old vintage audio sermons go to:
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I have found it very important of late to dwell on some main subjects and themes in the Scriptures, those of: Eternity, Hell, Heaven, and Judgement. I am praying that by going through many different facets of the topic of hell that this much neglected theme will bring about a renewed passion for the lost, and also a renewed sense of the holiness of God and our being holy in light of it.

George Whitefield (1714-1770): “It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God.”

So may these series of articles make us dwell upon eternal things and if we hold to these truths we will not be the same in this life

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For more articles like this and old vintage audio sermons go to:
http://www.sermonindex.net