"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." —Revelation 20:15
Many people are bitter at the idea that a God would cast someone into a lake
of fire to be tormented forever. It was legendary author, Mark Twain
(1835-1910), who said: “If there is a God, he is a malign thug.” This is how
the majority of the world views God. With all the suffering, hatred and
religious fighting going on all over the world, many people get angry at
God. Why does God allow pain, sorrow and suffering?
The truth is that mankind is responsible for his own woes. I know that’s the
last thing people want to read, but it’s the truth. Did God put the United
States government $10,000,000,000,000 into debt? No. Did God brew the beer
that killed thousands of people last year? No. Did God invade Iraq and
murder over one million people? No. Yet, many people find it convenient to
blame God for everything. It’s not God’s fault that wicked people banned
God, prayer and the Bible from the public school system beginning in 1962.
It’s not God’s fault that most Americans are woefully ignorant of truth and
saturated with a love for sin.
It is not God's fault that a generation of hippies in the 1960's decided to
rebel, abuse themselves with illegal drugs, and live in fornication.
This is a direct consequence of Rock 'N' Roll. As a result, a group of
evil people made abortion legal in 1972 at a federal level. We are paying
the price today. Now homosexuals are screaming for their "rights."
For the Wages of Sin is Death
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
God is Holy, i.e., morally perfect. God is the ultimate Lawgiver. Someone recently said to me that God is the biggest mass-murderer in the world because he killed nearly everyone with the flood of Noah's day. That's a pretty bold statement. Does not God have a right to take life, since He is the One Who creates life? Who are we to decide what is right and wrong based upon our finite and corrupt human reasoning?
The fact of the matter is that everyone of us deserves to burn in the fires of Hell forever. The reason "why" people get upset with God over the problems in this life is because we think we deserve better. We think humanity deserves better. We want to see every little child eat a good meal. Yes sir! We want to see all wars come to and end forever. Amen! We want everything to be good; but there's a big problem... we want to live in sin and still secure God's blessings. It doesn't work that way. Americans can hypocritically sing, "God Bless America" all they want; but God will NOT bless a ruthless nation of baby-murderers!!! God will NOT bless a vile nation of liars, cheats, pornographers, boozers, fornicators, stiffnecks, lesbians, astrologers, marriage quitters, perverts and sickos.
This sin-loving world deserves to suffer. Most preachers today have lost touch with the reality of God's Law. Here's a brief quote from Jonathan Edwards' classic sermon entitled, "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God"...
"Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies."
SOURCE: Jonathan Edwards, SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD.
You won't hear that on the Oprah Winfry Show! Jonathan Edwards is correct... our sins are so loathsome to God that if it weren't for God's undeserved mercy, we'd all plunge into the depths of eternal damnation into the Lake of Fire!!! There can be no salvation without the Law of God that shows us our desperate need for the Savior, Jesus Christ. We all deserve to be severely PUNISHED in the torments of Hell because of our own sins. Thankfully, Jesus paid the price for our sins with His own precious blood (1st Peter 1:18,19), so we don't have to go to Hell when we pass into eternity. Jesus is Precious!
If people could only grasp just how wicked they
are, and the extent to which we have all violated God's holy Law, no one
would ever question why God would punish someone in the flames of Hell for
all eternity. Is that a gamble you're willing to take?
Man's Freewill
Blaming God for the problems of this world is to say that God should override man’s freewill and force Himself upon us. If God did that, then we’d blame Him as well. Sin is the culprit; not God. God never created Satan; he created an upright archangel, Lucifer, who chose to rebel and sin on his own. God never created a fallen world; Adam and Eve sinned and allowed sin to enter into the world (Romans 5:12). God is not to blame. It is not His fault. God is doing a good job.
When Adam and Eve chose to eat of the forbidden fruit, they sinned and opened a Pandora's box upon humanity. To date, God allows mankind to make their own decisions, and to suffer the consequences thereof. The world is in a mess today because of man's greed, love for war, selfishness, racial hatred, and love for sin in general. Sin is violating God's Law. Consider the sinful pride and arrogance of Las Vegas, a city so vile and wicked that they've nicknamed it "SIN CITY." They might as well spit on God.
The average person complains often about the "evil rich people" who control everything and afflict those who are less fortunate; but they'd do the same exact thing if they were rich. We are all rotten sinners, looking out for number one, self. Only by yielding to God's Holy Spirit through obedience to the Scriptures can any believer please God (2nd Corinthians 10:5).
Although God has given mankind a free will to
decide for himself; He has also commanded us to "repent" (Acts 17:30). The
reason why there is so much evil in the world today is become of man's
stubbornness, pride and love for sinful pleasures. God is NOT to blame.
Sadly, our actions DO affect our loved ones, as
Madalyn Murray
O'Hair found out when her wickedness ended up getting herself, her son
and her granddaughter murdered.
Charles Spurgeon on God’s Justice
God is the ultimate Lawgiver. He is not unrighteous to throw the abominable,
who reject His gift of free pardon, into Hell. Consider the following quotes
by the mighty man of God, Charles Haddon Spurgeon...
"First, we cannot expect that the God of the Bible would allow sin to go unpunished. Some may imagine it; they may dream their intellects into a state intoxication, so as to fantasize a God apart from justice; but no man who has any common sense, can imagine a God without justice."
"You cannot conceive of a good king or of a good government that could exist without Justice, much less of God, the Judge and King of all the earth, without justice in His heart. To imagine Him all love, and no justice, would be to make Him less than God. He would not be capable of ruling this world if He had not justice in His heart."
"There is in man a natural perception of the fact, that if God exists, He must be just; and I cannot imagine that you can believe in a God, without believing also in the punishment of sin. It would be difficult to imagine Him elevated high above His creatures, seeing all their disobedience, and yet looking with the same composure upon the good and upon the evil; you cannot imagine Him giving the same reward of praise to the wicked and to the righteous..."
"This world is not the dungeon where God punishes sin... judgment is reserved for the next world... Your own consciences will tell you that God must punish sin. You may laugh at me, and say that you have no such "belief." I did not say you had, but I said that your conscience tells you so, and conscience has more power over men than what they think to be their belief. As John Bunyan said, ‘Mr. Conscience had a very loud voice, and though Mr. Understanding shut himself up in a dark room where he could not see, yet he used to thunder out so loudly in the streets, that Mr. Understanding used to shake in his house through what Mr. Conscience said.’ And it is true so often."
"You say in your understanding, 'I cannot believe God will punish sin;' but you know He will. You don't want to confess your secret fears because to do so would be to give up what you have so often most bravely asserted. But because you assert it with such boasting and high-sounding words, I think you don't really believe it, for if you did, you would not need to look so big while saying it... I know that when you are dying you will believe in a hell. Conscience makes cowards of us all, and makes us believe, even when we say we don't, that God must punish sin."SOURCE: Charles Spurgeon, sermon entitled, TURN OR BURN, preached December 7, 1856, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens (Note: some false teachers have tried to use this particular sermon by Spurgeon to teach Lordship Salvation; but by careful consideration of the word "renunciation," it is clear Spurgeon wasn't).
God is a holy (morally perfect) God, Whose
holiness demands justice! If God were to break His Word, then he would be
unholy and untrustworthy. The Bible clearly tells us in 2nd Peter 3:9 that
God is “not willing for any to perish… but that all should come to
repentance.” God never casts anyone into Hell with a smile on His face or
joy in His heart. I am leery of professed Christians who rejoice over the
death of the wicked. The Bible plainly states in Ezekiel 33:11, “As I live,
saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that
the wicked turn from his way and live.”
Hell wasn’t created for mankind; but rather, for the Devil and his angels.
Every human soul that enters Hell will be there only by their own CHOICE.
Everyone either chooses to trust or reject Jesus Christ as their Savior. The
issue is sin. We are all sinners condemned under God’s Law (Romans 3:19-23).
Only through the sin-cleansing blood of Jesus Christ can anyone go to Heaven
(1st Peter 1:18, 19). No amount of self-righteousness or religious
experience can save a person from Hell.
Conclusion
People mutter all kinds of accusations against the God of the Bible. Oh
listen my friend, God is a Good God! He is VERY Great. Those who curse and
blame God will not persist in their blasphemies forever…
Psalms 2:1-5, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us…
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure."
There is only one way you'll ever get a pardon from God to escape the judgment of Hell—the blood of Jesus Christ. The Son of God left His glory in Heaven and came to the earth to suffer and bleed and die on a Roman cross to pay for OUR sins. He didn't have to do it because He didn't have any sins of His own (2nd Corinthians 5:21). But, He loved us so much that He did it anyway (Romans 5:8). Friend, if you go to Hell, you'll have no one to blame but your own self.
