CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JUDGEMENT DAY
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left...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.'"
On that day, there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth, and cries of fear, and cries of stark, pure, rage at the fate now clearly discernible to those going to hell. The picture that confronts me when I contemplate that Day makes my heart ache for the people standing on His left hand. I have no sympathy for the devil and his angels; but the people standing there upset me enormously. It upsets me because my Lord gave Himself to be humiliated, suffer, die, and descend into the grave and hell precisely because He loved those people. My heart's desire is to be standing there at the right hand of God on Judgement Day and look over to those standing on his left hand and see standing there only the devil and his angels. But as things stand today, I don't expect to see my wish come true. As things stand today, there's a world of people going to hell. I believe those of us in Christ Jesus have an obligation to do everything in our power to stop it.
The world will be stopped from going to hell when the people in this world believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins and rose from the grave. I have written this book in order to demonstrate that the message we presently send the world is being used by Satan to prevent the world from believing the gospel. The message I propose to send, I believe, can accomplish stopping the world from going to hell, if the world will allow God to be God. If not, the message I propose to send will at the very least remove from those going to hell any ground of complaint against the love or the justice of God, and on the Judgement Day, those going to hell will stand before God without excuse, utterly condemned by their own willful refusal to glorify the God who did everything necessary to prevent them from going to hell.
I am convinced we must change the message we send the world because the message we presently send the world leaves the world enormous ground for complaint. Our doctrine of election and predestination makes it clear to the world that only those God chooses to believe the gospel will actually enter the Kingdom of God. Saving faith is a gift from God, a gift we tell the world is only available to the chosen few. Our failure to tell the world that God could have made a way for everyone to be saved from going to hell is a failure to correctly explain the message in Scripture. Such a failure leaves those going to hell with an excuse before God. We must understand that if God does intend for some to go to hell, God intends for those people to enter hell fully aware that they cannot blame God for their destination.
When we fail to provide a message that proves conclusively that God could have chosen to allow everyone to enter the kingdom of God if everyone decided to believe God, we say words that will be used by Satan to harden the hearts of people against the God we want sincerely to glorify. People will, and do, say, "If only those chosen by God can believe, then if I don't believe, it must be God's fault. If he really loved me, he would allow me to believe! If that is the kind of God that actually exists, I don't like him; his kind of love is no love at all!"
God is a Just God. He listens to reasonable complaints about injustice. On Judgement Day, the people going to hell will do everything in their power to blame someone else for their eternal destiny. Those people will hurl their complaints in God's face and God will turn to look at us. He will look at us because He gave us an obligation to tell the world about Him and His plan of salvation. What would we feel if Judgement Day was today and we stood before the Judgement Seat of God as He turned to look in our direction?
It is a truly awesome thing to stand in the presence of Power, of Royalty. One morning I sat near the President of the United States of America. It was the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. and the featured speaker was President Jimmy Carter. Prior to that day, I had an affinity for Jimmy Carter because he was a Georgian like me, although I didn't really know him. But his willingness to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast had deeply impressed me, convincing me that he had a heart for the Lord. As I sat there at my table eating breakfast, about fifteen feet from where the President sat, my eyes wandered in his direction. I felt enormous gratitude that the man who was President would allow his prestige to be added to the Prayer Breakfast, which I considered to be a genuine symbol of this nation's attempt to return to its Christian roots. Altogether, it was a magic moment for me: there I was, an ex-convict, sitting close enough to the President of the United States of America to see him putting a piece of bacon on his fork. Then the President looked up and his eyes locked on mine. I must have silently communicated what I was feeling toward him at that moment because he smiled at me.
Dazzled is the word that fits what happened to me. His smile was dazzling and I was dazzled. Dazzled is a funny word: it looks funny, it sounds funny. It's a great word for describing what happens when something totally unexpected and unprecedented and completely joyful happens in a person's life. When he smiled at me, every fiber of my being leaped out in a return smile. My heart sang in joy, not because Jimmy Carter smiled at me, but because the President of the United States of America had smiled at me.
Well, someday I'll be standing in a crowd in the Presence of God Himself. I hope you can imagine how much I want God to smile at me on that Day. I've had a taste of being dazzled, and my heart longs to be dazzled by God. But if Judgement Day came today, I would be standing there when God turns to look at His people in response to the accusations being hurled against Him by the people going to hell. At this moment I do not anticipate that He would be smiling when He looks our way.
What would we do? At this time, I imagine all I could do is yell out from the crowd, "I tried! I tried to tell them!"
At this point in my life I'm not sure what else I will say; that has yet to be determined. But you can be sure I'll have something else to say. I see two possibilities: I will either say, "Your people tried to help me tell them, and the world wouldn't listen,"; or I will say, "I tried to get your people to help me tell them and your people wouldn't help me, so they never got to hear."
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My wife, Carol, read that last paragraph and stopped me writing for a moment. She was made uncomfortable by the image of me standing before God accusing His people of willfully refusing to participate in doing what was necessary to eliminate just accusations being hurled against God, of willfully refusing to help me tell the world about our union with Christ.
Until my wife stopped me, I had always thought it was actually possible that Judgement Day might come and, on that Day, the world would be able to bring a case before God designed to prove that the failure of the Church was responsible for the world going to hell. If you want to know how I got that idea, listen to what the world says about the Church, about Christians. The world delights in telling stories about the Inquisition, about the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, about any and all examples of how the Church has contributed to the disorder and confusion that so easily besets the world.
It is a historical fact that the Church of Jesus Christ on earth has done much to impede the world from meeting the risen Jesus Christ. Anyone who denies the historical facts will never be heard by the world. As a person who has a heart to see the world turn to Christ, I decided long ago that I had to face the errors and abuses created by the Church throughout history. But, until my wife stopped me, I had never realized that I had also inadvertently begun to believe a terrible idea: That the Church itself would always be open to accusations of complicity in the world's decision to go to hell.
Such a belief is pernicious in the extreme. To believe that the Church will always be open to accusation is to believe that Jesus will not be able to control His Body. When my wife stopped me, and I meditated on the logical conclusions of my attitude toward the Church, I realized that I was dead wrong: there is no possibility that I will stand before God on Judgement Day and be able to accuse my brothers and sisters in Christ of refusing to do what was necessary to stop the world from going to hell. The reason this possibility does not exist is because God simply will not allow Judgement Day to occur until the Church has actually accomplished what it was created in Christ Jesus to accomplish. God will not allow Himself to be accused of complicity in the world's going to hell. He will eliminate all just grounds of accusation. And he will use the Church, His Body, to eliminate those grounds of accusation. Until the grounds of accusations have been removed Judgement Day will simply not come for this world.
How will God remove the grounds of accusation? Scripture tells us clearly how God removes excuse from people who claim they never knew there was a God like the one Scripture talks about. Paul builds his entire analysis of the plan of God around the fact that God reveals Himself to everybody who lives: Rm 1:17-20, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what he has made, so that men are without excuse."
That explains how God removes Himself from accusation from those who claim to not know the God Scripture talks about. But what about those who claim they did not get a chance to know about Jesus and God's plan of salvation through uniting the world to himself in Christ? How does God intend to remove that excuse?
I suggest the Bible teaches that Judgement Day will not come until everyone who has ever lived, is now alive, or ever will live has been confronted by the risen Jesus so that each person has the opportunity to know with their own senses that Jesus Christ is risen today. The grounds of accusation against God will be removed when each person understands they have been in the presence of the Jesus who defeated the power of death, and in spite of that knowledge, decided to reject the opportunity to follow Jesus out of death and hell.
Anyone who has found themselves in the position in space and time where the risen Jesus was present to their senses, and then rejects the opportunity to follow that Jesus, removes forever any excuse or accusation that God did not do everything necessary to prevent that particular person from going to hell. The person who so rejected Jesus would have to admit they had denied the evidence of their own senses rather than surrender their highfalutin self-image and accept the role in eternity of being a child of God.
Is it actually possible that each and every person on earth will have to opportunity to meet the risen Jesus? God has given to each person created a gift. That gift is the ability to sense the things that actually exist in the world around us. On the day of Pentecost, God began to pour out His Spirit on all flesh. I believe that day, God made it possible for every person alive to know with their own senses the presence of the risen Jesus.
Please notice this: when I italicized the phrase "with their own senses" I began to spotlight a train of thought that can have revolutionary consequences in the Church and in this world. Everything I have written in this book has been designed to bring us to this point: God could have made a way in Christ Jesus for everyone who ever lived, is living, or ever will live to actually experience the presence of the risen Jesus of Nazareth as a material fact as apparent as any other fact in the universe. In other words, as Paul experienced the presence of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, in the same way everyone on earth might experience the presence of the risen Jesus.
Such an experience has revolutionary consequences in the life of a person. Before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul had founded his world view on his interpretation of the message contained in the words in Holy Scripture. After meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul no longer founded his world view on his interpretation of the message in Holy Scripture: Paul's world view was founded on one, simple, material fact--Jesus of Nazareth is alive from the dead.
The presence of that material fact in Paul's consciousness created a revolution in the life of Paul because the knowledge of the risen Jesus forced Paul to reinterpret everything he had ever understood being taught by the words in Holy Scripture. The revolution consisted of Paul being changed from a person who totally depended on his interpretation of the message in Holy Scripture as the foundation upon which his security with God was anchored, to a person who depended for his security with God on the one, simple, material fact that had revealed itself to Paul's senses on the road to Damascus. And, never again, in his interpretation process did Paul for a moment consider that his interpretation of the message in Scripture was what determined his standing with God. His relationship with God was based totally on a new foundation: the risen Jesus had revealed Himself to Paul and Paul had determined to follow Him.
The fact that Paul had actually followed the One who revealed Himself to Paul on the road to Damascus explains how Paul became equipped to do everything he accomplished in the years that followed Paul's journey to Damascus.
Christians today must understand that Paul is more like us than any of the other Apostles who write to us in Holy Scripture. Paul is like us because Paul never saw Jesus with his eyes, Paul never heard Jesus' words with his ears, Paul never received food from the hands of Jesus as did Peter and John and Thomas and all the rest of the Apostles. Paul was one "born out of time" because what Paul learned about Jesus, he learned after Jesus had departed from this world in the flesh. For this reason, Paul was in exactly the same relationship to Jesus in space and time as we are today!
Just as Paul's relationship with Jesus Christ was founded on a material fact, so too can our relationship with Jesus be founded on a material fact. But we've got to experience the presence of the messenger with our own senses. And there we've got to take our stand.
We must understand that the fundamental difference between the ministry of the Church today and the ministry of the Church during the lifetime of the Apostles is this: we have the New Testament Scriptures; they didn't. Because they did not have the New Testament Scriptures, the Apostles depended totally on the Holy Spirit to verify the message about Jesus Christ, the gospel of God's plan of salvation. Without that verification there was no way for people to know the Apostles were preaching the truth.
How did the Holy Spirit verify the gospel preached by the Apostles? The Holy Spirit verified the gospel by revealing to the senses of people that Jesus is alive. For this reason, the Apostle Paul called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Christ. When the Holy Spirit verified to the senses of people that Jesus was alive, people at that moment either accepted the witness of the Holy Spirit or they rejected the witness of the Holy Spirit. The point is, God gave them evidence that was plain to their senses. In rejecting this evidence, people left themselves no excuse before God, and no accusations that could be hurled against the Church.
The history of the Church in the ages following the age of the Apostles is replete with examples of how the Church fell into the error of asking people to believe the Church's interpretation of the message presented in Scripture, rather than alerting people that God was capable of verifying to their senses the message revealed in Scripture. When the Church asks people today to believe our interpretation of the message presented by Scripture, rather than telling them that God has provided a way for them to sense for themselves the validity of the message in Scripture, we become the Pharisees who participate actively in the world going to hell.
Listen to what Jesus told the Pharisees in John 5:39-40: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." Today when Jesus says those words, He is not only talking to the world, he is also talking to the Church. Just as the world must come to Christ to have eternal life, so, too, the Church must come to Christ to have the ability to fulfill our calling.
Paul amplifies the point Jesus was making to the Pharisees in Gal. 3:24-25, "So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come we are no longer under the supervision of the law."
What is the "faith" that has delivered Paul from the supervision of the law? How can this "faith" protect us from reproducing the errors of the Pharisees?
Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Only after meeting that Jesus did Paul actually understand the Jesus that is the subject of virtually every book in the Old Testament. Before Paul met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul had been a Pharisee who knew all about the Scriptures except what God wanted Paul to know. Paul had diligently searched the Scriptures and utterly missed the point! Jesus had said, "These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." When Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul finally understood what Jesus was trying to tell the Pharisees. Jesus was telling the Pharisees that life is not to be found in the Scriptures; life is found in a person. Jesus. The risen Jesus who is not only a character in a book, but is the living, breathing essence of life itself. Jesus is life. In Him we live and move and have our being; in him all things hold together. If the Jesus you believe in is only a character in a book, only a person who lives because you have decided to believe He is alive, look again! Jesus is alive whether you believe it or not! The fact that you believe He is alive is not what equips you to do the will of God. The fact that He is alive is what equips you to do the will of God. If you do not understand for a material fact that Jesus is alive, if you only believe Jesus is alive because the Bible says He is alive, there is something that God intends to do for you. God wants to reveal to your senses the presence of the risen Jesus. God has never intended that His people find their refuge, their hiding place in a character in a book. God wants you to know your salvation as clearly as you know the hand in front of your face--clearer! God wants to reveal Himself in Christ Jesus to you just as He revealed Himself to Paul on the road to Damascus.
And not only you: the world!
The fact is God can to seen to have provided a way for everyone to be saved, if everyone asks Jesus to save them. All they have to do is knock, and the door will open that leads directly into the kingdom of God. BUT THEY HAVE TO KNOCK ON THE RIGHT DOOR!
A model of God that does not present Jesus Christ as the physical doorway through which we pass in order to gain access to union with God is an unbiblical model that denies Jesus Christ his actual place in the universe. Most, if not all, the models currently presented as Protestant orthodoxy deny Jesus this physical role. The door that Jesus calls himself is allegorized into a nonphysical abstraction that has no identifiable place in space or time.
The door that Jesus is, is no allegory but a physical opening located in space and time. The physical location of the door is Jesus' actual material body located in space on the hill called Golgotha, and in time on the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
The words in the Bible are designed to move us to perceive ourselves as physically present in Jesus' body as he hangs there on the cross. The words of the Bible are designed to allow us to perceive that the space and time we now inhabit, in which we live and move and have our being, is physically present in Jesus' flesh as he hangs on the cross. We are to perceive we died with Christ, we are buried with Christ, and we are raised with Christ. In this perception we realize that the distinction between objective and subjective to which we have been in bondage is broken, and we perceive a new distinction between objective and subjective, a distinction that no longer includes separation as an integral part of the relationship between objective and subjective, but now perceives a physical, concrete union to exist among all that is in space and time. This perception does not eliminate the distinction between objective and subjective; it merely eliminates the element to which we have been in bondage: namely, the sense of separation between ourselves and the One, True God.
The perception of this physical context is the only understanding that has the power to deliver us from fear forever.
But the perception of which I speak is not an image we design in our imagination, for that is what I call an abstraction. The perception of which I speak is the perception of what actually occurred in space and time the day Jesus was hung on the cross. That real perception cannot possibly occur until you see clearly that Jesus is God, the God who contained in his flesh all of space and time that day he hung on the cross. I contend the message in the Bible has been delivered to us precisely to allow us to perceive this fact. That is why the message in the Bible is so important. Without the message in the Bible we could never approach Jesus with the proper attitude, and attitude is the crux of the matter when we approach the Creator of the universe.
I have written this book in order to demonstrate there is ground for believing our union with Christ is a material fact. Our senses can connect us to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in precisely the same way our senses can connect us to any historical event, like the Gettysburg address, or Washington's crossing the Delaware, or the assassination of John Kennedy. Even though these events occurred in the past, and even though we are not physically present when the events occur, our senses can receive messages from those events. Because those events actually occurred in space and time, they are material facts that, while subject to our interpretation, have a life of their own. Even though we are required to approach those events through layer after layer of other people's interpretations of those events, the diligent student whose mind remains open to messages from those events, can receive messages from those events that give insight into the meaning of the events themselves. Unless we conclude, as Albert Schweitzer concluded, that it is impossible to find the historical Jesus, we can find ourselves at the foot of the cross looking up at a suffering, bleeding man hanging between two crucified criminals. There, as we gaze upon that man, we can receive a message that will transport us into the presence of God in the material world. We can receive that message if we look at the right man. We can go through the door if we knock on the right door.
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." There is a direct connection between the ideas we contain within us and who we are in reality. Not only is our attitude a product of the ideas we decide to entertain, we are a product of the ideas we decide to entertain. When the Bible tells us we are saved by grace through faith, the Bible is saying we are saved because God gives us ideas that have the power to overcome everything in the universe that would attempt to separate us from spending eternity in the presence of God. The idea that is the foundation upon which every other idea is erected is the idea that Jesus is alive. Without that idea, nothing the Bible says can ever make sense. But when we accept the idea that Jesus is alive from the dead something truly cosmic occurs in the life of an individual.
The reason the world is going to hell is because the world does not believe that Jesus is alive. Unless people believe that Jesus is alive it does no good to try to tell them that Jesus died for their sins. They cannot possibly understand how that could happen if they don't believe Jesus is alive.
As I said in the beginning of this book, we cannot stop the world from going to hell unless we can help people see that Jesus is alive. My analysis of our union with Christ is designed to show you that Scripture gives us a message that can allow us to believe there is a way that Jesus can reveal Himself, His living, Risen From the Dead, Presence to everyone on earth. That possibility simply will not exist if you decide to reject the ideas I have suggested God intends to plant in our minds. Well, technically, the possibility does exist because I believe the ideas. But, fact is, I simply do not have enough faith to believe that my accepting the idea has the power to stop the world from going to hell. But it requires only the little faith that I possess to imagine the consequences of what would happen if every Christian, or even a lot of Christians, decided it was possible that Jesus might reveal Himself to everybody on earth. Acceptance of the ideas I outline here could actually lead to a great awakening in the Body of Christ, an awakening to possibilities for our ministry in the world that were hardly conceivable before now.
Appendix: Why I was driven to write this book.
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