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Amazing Facts

Joe Crews

No Place to Hide

01 No Place to Hide

02 No Place to Hide

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Fire! Fire! International law demands an equitable trial before an accused can be punished. Yet a famous judge has been accused of an execution without trial or jury. I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz on the amazing facts broadcast, facts which affect you. 1 of the most solemn and most important questions that has ever been asked was an all-solemnity asked by the Apostle Peter. I read it in 1 Peter 4, verse 17, and this is what he asked, ìWhat shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel?" We ought to do some very serious thinking about this question, friends. This is not a question for careless speculation, as so many other questions are. We can't afford to be vague about the answer to this question, Neither can we afford to be evasive about it, either.

It's too awful, it's too terribly important to make any mistake when we give the answer. The very reputation of God himself is at stake in the answer to this question. Most people today have the wrong answer to the question that Peter asked, and because this answer is wrong, millions of people living in the world today hate God, who might otherwise love him. Now, I can't overemphasize the importance of the topic that we are going to be spending a bit of time with today. Many people are skeptics, agnostics, critics of Christianity, because somewhere they have heard the wrong answer to the question that Peter asked.

To illustrate, let me mention Colonel Robert Ingersoll. Robert Ingersoll might have been a prince of preachers because he was a brilliant man, instead of the notorious infidel that he was, because he received the wrong answer to this question. When he was just a little fellow, his father said to him 1 day, Robert, do you know that there are little infants in hell, not over a span and length, who will be in hell, screaming and begging for mercy throughout eternity." Now, Robert thought a little while, and then he said, Well, if God does that, I hate him. And he grew up hating that way, feeling that hatred for God. The years went by, and he was lecturing all over the country, airing his views, when 1 day a very close friend of his was converted.

He had a wonderful experience in the Lord Jesus, and the joy and peace that only Heaven can give became his. And so he wrote a letter to Ingersoll and asked him this question. He said, Bob, how can you get up before an audience with a lot of intelligent people in it and run down a religion that will do for people what this has done for me? A few nights passed by and Ingersoll got up before his audience at a great, big auditorium and told about the letter, his friend's experience. And then he read the letter.

And then he said this, "'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not running down a religion that will do that for a man. I'm not preaching against a religion that will lift up downtrodden men, but I am preaching against a religion that some creatures preach." What he meant by that was that he was bitterly opposed, in addition to other things, to the teaching that was being taught in many, many quarters about eternal torment. The tragedy of this whole thing, friends, is this. Hell as it is commonly taught today is not a Bible doctrine at all. The doctrine of eternal suffering is not at all based on this book, the Bible, and it seems a tragedy that Ingersoll didn't understand that.

Now, don't misunderstand me. The Bible does teach the doctrine of hell. It's right in the Bible. Yes, indeed, there is a Bible hell. But it has nothing to do with what has been taught by many of the churches down through the years and has been used to frighten people, as it were, into the Kingdom of Heaven.

You say, well, what does the Bible say about hell? I wish we had time to go into all the different aspects of it, but of course we don't. We're going to be able to give you only a very brief summary of what the Bible teaches. First of all, I think we should all realize that the word hell has several meanings in the Bible. A lot of folk, when they think of hell, think about burning.

Every time The word is mentioned, they get a little mental vision of someplace of burning somewhere. Well, that's all right, but it doesn't always mean that. The fact is that the word is sometimes, in fact, the word hell is used 55 times in the scripture, no more or less. 55 times only, and 42 of those times it refers to the grave, G-R-A-V-E. In the Old Testament the word translated hell is sheol.

In the New Testament it is Hades. Both mean the same thing, the grave. Forty-two times out of fifty-five times the word hell, as it appears in our Bible, means a grave. 12 times it is translated from the word gehennah, and means a place of burning. 1 time it is translated from the word Tartarus, and it means a place of darkness.

And so we ought to realize when we are reading through the Bible and the word hell comes along, it may mean 1 of several things. We should never get the idea when we see the word hell in the Bible that it refers always to a place of burning, because the scriptures show that 43 of the 55 times it's not referring to a place of burning at all, but to something entirely different. Now today we're going to discuss the place of burning mentioned 12 times in the scripture. We're going to ask the questions and then turn to the book of God and let the Lord Himself, from the pages of Holy Writ, give the answers. The first question is, when is hell?

Or we might put it like this, is hell burning now? Let's have God's answer now. I'm turning to Matthew 13, the first book of the New Testament, and I'm going to begin reading with verse 40. If you'll listen very carefully, you'll see that God gives the answer here very clearly. Verse 40, "...as therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world.

The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Now there it is, friends, very, very plain, isn't it? The Scripture just simply, clearly, plainly and decidedly says that sinners are going to be cast into that furnace of hellfire at the end of the world. Now friends, this is Christ's doctrine. Churches may be wrong as they often are, preachers may be wrong as they often are, but Christ is never wrong, and he says sinners will be cast into the lake of fire or hell fire at the end of the world, not when they die, as is so often taught today.

Now listen carefully. If the wicked are cast into hell fire at the end of the world, and the end of the world has not yet come, Then how many sinners are in hellfire now, today? Not a single 1, no, not even the worst person who ever lived, because God says that sinners will be cast into hellfire at the end of the world. And when you analyze it, it is completely sensible, It adds up. According to John 12, verse 48, the judgment takes place at the end of the world.

Now, can you imagine God putting a man into hell for punishment before the judgment took place, before the court trial was held? Can you imagine that? What would you think of a judge in your city who sent a man to prison for 10 years and then took him out and had a trial to see if he should have been punished or not, or whether he was guilty or not? You say, well, that wouldn't be fair. We wouldn't stand for that in our city.

Of course you wouldn't. It isn't just. And yet men accuse God of that. But the Bible says that the judgment itself takes place at the end of the world, and God punishes no 1 until after the judgment. Did you ever stop to think what it would mean if he did?

It would mean this. In fact, let's say, for example, Cain, the first murderer, was lost. We don't know that he was, but let's say to illustrate that he was lost. Cain, then, according to the popular teaching, when he died, went to hell for murder. A man who murders today dies and goes to hell.

But he suffers 6, 000 years less than Cain, who committed the same crime. Now, isn't that ridiculous? Yet that's what men accuse God of. And I tell you that such teaching is slander upon the holy name of God. He never punishes anyone until the case is surveyed, comes to trial in court, and the decision is reached, and then at the end of the world all sinners will be punished together in the fire.

The next question is this, where do the dead go, then? If they don't go to hell, where do they go? I mean, the wicked dead. All right, let's read it. This is John 5, verses 28 and 29, and once again the Lord Jesus is speaking.

This is what he said, "'Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming, into which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Notice what Jesus teaches here. He says plainly, too plainly to ever be misunderstood, that the wicked dead are in their graves, just where they are placed at the time they die. And he teaches that those wicked dead are going to be there until the end of the world, when the voice of God is going to call them forth. And they are going to hear his voice from the grave, Jesus said, not from heaven or hell, but from the grave. They'll come forth from the grave and the resurrection of damnation to receive punishment.

That's why we can tell you positively that there is no 1 in hell right now, because the Bible teaches that the wicked dead are in their graves and they are going to stay right there until the end of the world when they will be called forth to receive punishment by the Lord. Now, the next question. What is the punishment or reward that the wicked people receive in hellfire, anyway? Let me read from Romans 6, chapter 23. I know there are many theories on this, but theories are not important.

It is what God says that really matters. Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Well, that's plain and clear, too, isn't it? The wages or punishment for sin is death. Now remember there are 2 deaths mentioned in the Bible, the first death and the second death.

The first death All men must suffer. Hebrews 9.27 says, It is appointed unto men once to die. That's the first death. The second death is a death that the wicked receive in hellfire. And Revelation 2.11 says, He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

No promise here about the first, just the second death. Now let's read another verse from Revelation and see how positively clear the scriptures make it. Revelation 21, 8, But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Now, isn't that clear, friends, how wonderfully clear the scripture is? The Bible specifically teaches that the punishment that the wicked receive in hellfire is the second death. And the difference between the first death and the second death is simply this, there is no resurrection from the second death.

But now back to Romans 6, verse 23 again. We need to analyze this verse. If people really believe this verse, there would be very little question about the subject of the punishment of the wicked. Does it say, ìThe wages of sin is everlasting life in hell, fire, but the gift of God is eternal life in heaven?î No, it doesnít say that. It says nothing of the kind.

Now let me ask you a question. Is that not what is taught today almost everywhere? Then we'll tell you today it doesn't make any difference how you live or what you do, you still receive everlasting life, if righteous in Heaven, if wicked in Hell. But when we go to the scriptures, God has an entirely different story. He says the wages of sin is death, not everlasting life in hell fire.

But the gift of God is eternal life, so the wages of sin is death. It's not everlasting life in purgatory or in fire or hell. It's not everlasting life at all, it's not life of any kind or any fashion, anywhere, any time, any place. It's the opposite of life, it's death. And that's the punishment the wicked receive.

But let's go a little further and see how the Bible describes the destruction of the wicked. Here is a very graphic picture in Revelation 20, a very interesting chapter. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, shall go out to deceive the nations, which in the 4 quarters of the era, Gog and Magog together and together debattled, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea, and they went upon the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints about in the beloved city, and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them." My friends, there it is! They're smitten and destroyed by God's great fiery atomic blast, and they're devoured, they're burned up, they're destroyed. And that is exactly what the Bible teaches about the wicked and hellfire.

And now, this is Joe Cruz saying goodbye for today. You

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