R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 598

What Will Heaven Be Like?

Does the Bible tell us what heaven will be like?

When I was in seminary, I studied under an extremely learned professor who I was convinced at the time knew the answer to every possible theological question. I remember I was so in awe of him that I asked him one day with stars in my eyes, "What's heaven like?" I asked him as if he had been there and could give me a firsthand report! Of course, he steered me immediately to the last two chapters of the New Testament, Revelation 21 and 22, in which we get an extensive visual image of what heaven is like. Some dismiss it as being pure symbolism, but we must remember that the symbols in the New Testament point beyond themselves to a deeper and better reality than they themselves describe.

It's here that we read of the streets of gold and of the great treasuries of jewels that adorn the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven. In the description of the New Jerusalem, we hear that there's no sun and no moon, no stars, because the light that radiates from the presence of God and from his Anointed One is sufficient to illumine the whole place by the refulgence of their glory. We are told that there's no death, there's no pain, and God wipes away the tears of his people.

I remember as a child having that tender experience (not often accessible to adults) in which I would scrape my knee, or something would go wrong, and I would cry and come into the house, and my mother would stoop over and dry the tears from my eyes. I received great consolation from that. But of course, when my mother dried my tears, there was always the opportunity the next day for me to cry again. But in heaven when God wipes away the tears from people's eyes, that's the end of tears—there are no more tears after that.

And so heaven is described as a place of utter felicity that is filled with the radiant majesty and glory of God, where God's people have become sanctified, where justice has been brought to bear, and where his people have been vindicated. There's no more death, no more disease, no more sorrow, no more sickness, no more hatred, and no more evil. And then there is an experience of healing in that place. And that's just a glimpse, but it's enough to get us started.

©1996 by R.C. Sproul. Used by permission of Tyndale.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. ©1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links We Liked (3/19/11)

Here is a round-up of some of the notable blogs and articles our team read this week.

CCEL - When doing research or looking for classical Christian references, (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) is the site I usually visit first.  CCEL is chalk full of digitized versions of some of Christianity's greatest works and I am usually able to find what I need.

The Gospel Depends on a God Who Does Not Depend on You - We must begin by asking if God needs us to exist or to be fulfilled and happy. The God of the Bible is one who does not need us at all. In theological language, this is the doctrine of divine aseity, literally meaning "from-himself-ness." God is a-se. He exists independent of the world, as one who is self-sufficient and self-existent.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir interviews Rob Bell:

In a follow-up discussion, Christian radio host, Paul Edwards, had an opportunity to speak with Mr. Bashir about the interview.

Lexham Bible Dictionary - Our friends at Logos Bible Software have launched a project to build a continuously edited, digital-only Bible dictionary. They are also seeking contributors.

If you could ask John Piper & R.C. Sproul a question, what would it be?

[image error]Two servants of the church with two ministries focused on a passion for the holiness of God…

On Friday, March 24th at 7:45 p.m. EST, John Piper and R.C. Sproul will join together here in Orlando for a ministry reflections discussion on the valuable lessons learned by each throughout their ministry experiences, their theological distinctives, as well as attempt to encourage the next generation of Christians and leaders in the church to stand firm in the truth of God's Word.

If you have always wanted to ask one or both of these men a question, start tweeting your questions now using our Ligonier 2011 National Conference hashtag #lmnc or leave a comment on our Facebook page. We will try to incorporate some of them into our time with these men.

 

Noblesse Oblige

[image error]Watching The King's Speech reminded me of the purpose of kings who reign but don't rule. They serve an important function for a given culture, one that in turn touches on the whole nobility. Kings serve as "public persons," personifications of the morals and manners of the nations. This concept, rightly understood is the broader context for what we mean when we speak of noblesse oblige, the obligation of the nobility. Too often we reduce it down to a sort of financial "to whom much has been given much is expected" principle that argues if you have a lot you have an obligation to give a lot. Instead it understands the more subtle workings of leadership. A given culture is not made up only of its highest classes. It will, however, always reflect its highest classes.

Consider the history of Israel. The spiritual rise and fall of God's people in the Old Covenant isn't told through following a single middle class family across the generations. Neither, strangely, are we given accounts of faithful high priests during the good times and unfaithful prophets during the hard times. Instead we follow the lives of the kings. When they succumbed to idolatry, the nation succumbed to idolatry. When they destroyed the idolatrous high places, the nation was blessed. Those who rule over a nation will set its course, then and now. The behavior of those in power, therefore, has deep and profound influence beyond the mere exercise of that power.

This does not mean, however, that we need to pray more fervently that the President would be more true to his confession of a Christian faith. It does not mean that we ought to look harder for a House Speaker who keeps his marriage vows. It is true that our nation's spiritual health is intimately tied to the spiritual health of its rulers. It is false that the men and women on C-Span rule our nation. There is instead a cadre of real power, a conspiracy that rules behind the scenes. This organization, on the one hand, is right out there in the open. Its agenda, however, tends to be overlooked. It is working for absolute world domination, and has been at it for centuries. It is called the church of Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). That doesn't mean that we are with Jesus, and because we have chairs we are comfortable. Instead we now sit with Him in a place of rule. Our seats are thrones. The Bible tells us that we are a royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9). We are now kings and queens, and according to I Corinthians 6:2 we will one day judge the whole world. The good news then is that we, just us, have the power, by God's grace and through His Spirit, to change the whole world. The bad news is that our current cultural mess is our fault. We are kings like Ahab, queens like Jezebel.

A dissolute king can not wring his hands over a decadent country. He has only himself to blame. And so do we. When we start seeing children as a blessing, we will no longer be a nation that murders babies. When we start paying our tithes and living within our means, we will no longer be a nation that consumes half its citizens' wealth through taxation, and that thinks borrowing is the key to prosperity. When we start loving our wives, and our wives start honoring their husbands, we will no longer be a nation of illegitimate children and the seriously confused. When we stop dressing and talking and thinking like teenagers, we will no longer have to live in Slacker Nation. 

We are the nobility of this world. Now we must learn to be noble.

We are the nobility of this world. Now we must learn to be noble.

$5 Friday Specials for March 18

[image error]

It's $5 Friday! Find resources on joy, hymns, inerrancy, the church, and worship. Sale starts Friday at 8 a.m. and ends Saturday at 8 a.m. EST.

View today's $5 Friday sales.

It Takes a Church to Raise a Child

You've got to love the title of this one: "It Takes a Church to Raise a Child." Rev. Mark Bates is senior pastor of Village Seven Presbyterian Church and is a Bible teacher at Evangelical Christian Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And in the March issue of Tabletalk he writes about parenting saying, "Parenting is not for the faint of heart. It is also not something parents should attempt to do alone. Thankfully, those in the church don't have to. They are part of an extended family — the family of God — that can play a vital role in the raising of children."

Having given the biblical background to the church community's involvement in raising a child he asks "How can church members assist parents in raising children to know and love the Lord?" He goes on to offer several practical ways that church members can play an active role in the lives of children and parents. To find out what they are, go ahead and read It Takes a Church to Raise a Child.

A Primer on Inerrancy (pt. 5)

In this excerpt from John Gerstner's Primitive Theology, Dr. Gerstner looks at the issue of inerrancy and seeks briefly and non-technically to present a case for Bible Inerrancy that a serious-minded layman can follow and evaluate. Though by no means an exhaustive treatment, it is one that is sound and faithful to the Scriptures. This is the fifth part of the series. Dr. Gerstner has looked at four unsound bases for sound doctrine and is now in the midst of a discussion of a sound basis for sound doctrine.

This excerpt is longer than most we share at the blog, but there was no easy way to break up this point into a series. So stick with it and you should be able to follow Dr. Gerstner's argument. It's worth the attention you'll give it!

Continued from Part 4

4. The evidence for the Inspiration of the Bible is as follows:

a. Men have appeared in history with powers which only God could have given them, namely, miracles. (The discussion of miracles which follows is reproduced from the author's Reasons for Faith, published by Soli Deo Gloria.)

Concerning miracles there are two important questions to be asked: first, what is the evidence for miracles, and, second, what is their evidential value? If there is to be any argument from miracles, there must first be clear evidence that they actually occur.

Before we proceed to consider the evidence for miracles, let us ask ourselves whether there can be any such evidence. This is a rather absurd question, we grant, but we must consider it. Many persons never face the question at all because they rule out the possibility of miracles before they consider any actual evidence for them. One of the most outstanding Biblical scholars in the country once said publicly, in answer to a question concerning his interpretation of miracles in the Old Testament, "When I meet an alleged miracle, I simply treat it as legend." This scholar no doubt would not bother reading this chapter or anything like it. He knows in advance that any and all alleged miracles are merely legends. But how does he know it? He does not know it; he merely declares it. However, there are more philosophically-minded thinkers who would say that this professor is right in his conclusion, but wrong in the way he arrives at it. They agree that there is no such thing as miracles, and that records of them must be legends of some sort, but these men attempt to prove their statement and not merely to assert it arbitrarily.

Some would offset the evidential power of miracles by claiming that there never could be enough proof of a miracle in the face of the overwhelming evidence of natural law against it. David Hume once argued that there is more evidence for regularity in nature than for irregularity (supernaturalism); therefore, regularity, and not irregularity, must be the truth of the matter. The argument is palpably unsound, indeed irrelevant. Certainly there is more evidence for the regular occurrence of nature than there ever could be for any supernatural occurrence. But the argument for miracles is not meant to be an argument against the regularity of nature. It is merely an argument against the regularity of nature in every particular instance. Indeed, the argument for miracles rests on the regularity of nature generally. There is no such thing as supernatural events except as they are seen in relation to the natural. And they would not be extraordinary if there were nothing ordinary against which background they are seen. They could not be signs of anything if they were not different from the status quo. When one argues for the occasional miracle, he is, in the same breath, arguing for the usually non-miraculous. If all nature became supernatural, there would be no room for miracles; nothing would be a miracle because all would be miraculous.

At the same time, all the evidence that there is for the regularity of nature generally is no argument at all against the occasional miracle. Such evidence simply argues for the fact that the normal course of nature is natural. It does not rule out or in, for that matter, the possibility that the irregular may happen. It only proves that as long as there is nothing but nature to take into consideration, there will probably be no deviation from the order with which we have become familiar. If there is a God, all the evidence of an undeviating nature from its creation to the present moment does not provide the slightest certainty that nature will continue the same way another moment. The same God who made it, and preserved it in the present pattern for so long, may have fulfilled His purpose in so doing, and may proceed immediately, this moment, to do otherwise than in the past. Only if the evidence for the regularity of nature were somehow to show that there is no being outside nature who can in any way alter it could there be an argument against the possibility of miracles. But this the evidence does not do, does not purport to do, cannot do. Therefore it can never be regarded as an argument against miracles. In the strictest sense Hume's objection is irrelevant.

What is the relation of unpredictability in modem physics to the notion of miracle? Certainly the universe is no longer thought to be fixed in the sense that it once was. The quantum theory has satisfied most physicists that there is such a thing as indeterminism, or unpredictable behavior, in the laws of nature. As Bertrand Russell has remarked, while psychology in our time has become more deterministic, physics has become less so. Some have utilized the concept of indeterminacy in nature as a wedge for miracle. Having felt fenced in by the arguments based on the regularity of nature, they have welcomed this apparent avenue of escape by which they may remain scientific and still affirm miracles. Indeterminacy runs interference for the power of God, or more piously we should say, makes it possible to believe that God may act miraculously inasmuch as he acts indeterministically in created nature.

So far as we can see, the situation for the credibility of miracles is neither improved nor worsened by indeterminacy. For one thing, indeterminacy is hardly a proven concept. Or, more precisely, it would seem more likely that man cannot in every case determine the laws by which nature operates than that she herself is indeterministic. It is conceivable that in the area of quantum physics, no less than elsewhere, nature is deterministic, and what is undetermined are the laws of her behavior. Nature may be determined, but man has not determined how. If this is the case, the to-do about indeterminism is wasted mental effort.

If nature herself is indeterministic, then what? Then it still would remain highly unlikely that an indeterminism in nature could explain why once and only once, thousands of years ago, a man walked on water, but no one else has been able to do so before or since. Presumably the indeterminism of nature could never be employed to account for such a unique phenomenon. Furthermore, if this is the explanation, Christ Himself was deceived. He should have been surprised to be around at the one moment when nature was behaving differently from all previous times. He should have been as much amazed as the others, unless (and here is the hopeless supposition) He were a downright, sophisticated fraud who took advantage of the most unbelievable opportunity that the world could imagine. Furthermore, there is the matter of His actual predictions, which would be rendered impossible in an indeterministic universe.

Some would affirm the a priori impossibility of miracles because of the nonexistence of God. They rightly state that a miracle, to have meaning, must be the work of an intelligent, powerful, and purposive divine being. In this we go along with them. Then they say that since there is no such being as this, there can be no such thing as a miracle. And we agree with that. If it can be shown that there is no God, it will also be shown in the same effort that there is no miracle. But the non-existence of God cannot be proven, while His existence has been.

What is the positive evidence that miracles have occurred? A discussion of this subject with any degree of fullness would require an entire volume itself. We must delimit the field. And so we will consider here only the miracles of Jesus Christ.
Everyone knows that the Gospel narratives (considered only as good historical sources, not necessarily inspired) tell of a large number of miracles that were performed by Christ. A great many more are alluded to, but not related. This is so generally known that I feel perfectly safe in assuming the readers' acquaintance with the accounts of Christ's healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead, walking on water, multiplying a boy's lunch to feed more than five thousand hungry persons, and a host of other such deeds.

No one disputes the fact that the Gospel accounts tell of Jesus Christ's performing miracles. There have been attempted naturalistic explanations, to be sure, but so far as we know no one has attempted the job of showing that all accounts of the apparently miraculous are merely accounts of natural events which were misconstrued by the writer or reader. For example, who would care to show that John's report of Thomas' placing his fingers in the side of the resurrected Christ to feel his former wounds was not meant to present an essentially supernatural event, namely, physical resurrection? Persons may or may not believe what John says, but how can they doubt that John presents them as happening? As even naturalistic New Testament critics usually say, there is no doubt that the early Christians believed these supernatural things did occur.

If it is granted that the biographers of Christ say He wrought miracles, the only questions remaining are: can these writers be believed (please note again we are not, in a circular fashion, assuming their Inspiration but the well-established historical value of their manuscripts), and, if so, what do the miracles prove?

Can these writers be believed when they relate that Christ wrought supernatural deeds or miracles? Well, why not? People are assumed to be reliable in their relating of events unless there is some reason for thinking that they are not so. What reason is there for thinking that these writers are not reliable? So far as they are known, they have the reputation of honesty. Was there some bias present which would have tended to corrupt their honesty in the case of these miracles? There is no evidence of bribery by money or position. Their reporting of miracles as vindications of Jesus did not bring them into good standing with the powers in their own community. It caused Peter and John to be imprisoned and all the apostles to be brought into disfavor with most of the Jewish community. It stands to reason that a person cannot advance his own worldly interests by championing a person condemned by law and executed as a criminal.

But what about their other-worldly interests? Is it possible that these men believed that by shading the truth and relating what did not occur they would thereby gain an interest in heaven? Did they think that because of their lying about "miracles," Jesus would own them in the next world?

Merely to ask this question dispels it. The whole picture of Jesus is that of a teacher of righteousness who required His disciples to make righteous judgments and speak the truth which alone could make free. It would not seem reasonable to believe that they could have thought they would please Jesus by telling lies about Him, and actually earn His praise in the world of perfect righteousness to come.

Or could they have been sentimentalists? That is, could they have supposed that, by telling what they knew to be untrue, they could nevertheless do good? Could they have felt that if people could be persuaded that this Jesus was a supernatural being with supernatural powers, they would then obey Him and walk in paths of righteousness? Could they have supposed that by doing evil this great good would come? Is it possible that they, knowing there were no miracles, were nonetheless willing to follow Christ to the death, but that others would need the help of such superstition?

There is an insuperable objection to this "pious fraud" idea. As we have already mentioned, Christ Himself is depicted as a teacher of strict truth and righteousness. If the disciples had told deliberate and huge falsehoods, their very zeal would have led them into the grossest kind of disobedience. They would also have known that their own souls were in peril, for Christ had said that a good tree brings forth good fruit, and that He would say to liars in the last day, "I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity" (Matthew 7:22–23). "If you love Me," Christ had said, "keep My commandments." It seems incredible that the disciples, in their very zeal for Jesus, would zealously disobey His commandments, that in their desire to be with Him and advance His cause they would seal their own doom.

So much for the inherent improbability of such a course on the part of the disciples. But there is equally great difficulty in the external situation. Even if it were conceivable that the disciples so forgot their Master's teachings and their own spiritual interest as to violate this grossly His canons of righteousness, it does not at all follow that those to whom they addressed themselves stood to be deceived. After all, the disciples would have foisted these "pious frauds" upon those among whom they were supposed to have been done. They would have told the very people who were supposed to have been present on the occasion the fiction that Jesus fed five thousand. They would have told the people of Cana themselves that Christ turned water to wine at a feast in their small community, which everybody in that community would immediately deny ever took place there. The "pious fraud" idea, even if it were psychologically thinkable, could be historically thinkable only if it were perpetrated in a different land at a different time. But that in the same generation these things could have been preached as having occurred among the very people who knew that they had not occurred is hardly credible.

Although the witnesses of these events might have gotten away with such reports among highly credulous strangers who knew nothing about the events in question, they could never have deceived the very people among whom the miracles were supposed to have taken place. It would therefore seem impossible to impeach the honesty of the witnesses. All the factors actually favor their honesty, which must be assumed in the first instance unless there is some reason for questioning it. But when we examine any possible reasons, we find none. Candor requires that their record be received as a record of what they thought took place.

But the question still remains whether what they thought took place actually did take place. Granted that they meant to tell the truth, but did they succeed in their honest intention? With the best of intentions men have often been grossly mistaken. Is it not possible that these writers were similarly mistaken? In other words, there remains the question of the competency of the witnesses.

We note, in the first place, that they had the best possible jury to test their competency—their own contemporaries, among whom the events related were said to have taken place. If the writers had been palpably contradicted by the
facts, the people to whom they related the facts would have been the very ones to expose them. If they had been misguided zealots, the non-zealots to whom they spoke could have spotted it in a moment and repudiated it as quickly. If they had garbled the actual events, eyewitnesses in quantity could have testified to the contrary. If these historians had actually been bigoted, benighted fanatics with no historical sense, incapable of distinguishing between fact and fancy, between occurrences in external nature and in their own imagination, thousands of Israelites could have made that very clear.

As a matter of fact, their record went unchallenged. No man called them liars; none controverted their story. Those who least believed in Jesus did not dispute the claims to His supernatural power. The apostles were imprisoned for speaking about the resurrection of Christ, not, however, on the ground that what they said was untrue, but that it was unsettling to the people. They were accused of being heretical, deluded, illegal, un-Jewish, but they were not accused of being inaccurate. And that would have been by far the easiest to prove if it had been thought to be true.

Actually, the Israelites of Jesus' own day, so far from denying his miraculous power, admitted it. They not only admitted it, but they used it against Him. Precisely because He did miracles, they condemned Him. That is, they attributed the miracles, which they admitted He did, to the power of the devil (Matthew 12:24). We are not here concerned with the accusation, but with the incidental admission. What we are concerned with here is that hostile, contemporary leaders freely admitted that Jesus' miracles were true, however evil they held their origin to be. The fact they did not dispute, only the interpretation of it. The witness they did not question. The competency of the writers was not doubted by the very generation which alone could have challenged it. It seems highly irrelevant on historical grounds for subsequent generations to raise such questions when the generation in which the events are said to have occurred did not do so. Later generations may object on philosophical grounds, or argue a priori that these things could not have happened. Those arguments have to be met on their own grounds, as we have attempted to do. But the historicity of certain events cannot be questioned by people who were not there when they were not questioned by the people who were there. We may or may not agree with the Pharisees' interpretation that Christ did His works by Satan's power, but we are in no position to contest the Pharisees' knowledge of what He did. They were there and we were not.

This corroborative testimony of contemporaries, friends, and, especially, enemies, is the main vindication of the competency of the Gospel witnesses. But there is also the feasibility of the documents themselves. These miracles are not fantastic things such as those recorded in the apocryphal accounts of Jesus. They are of a piece with the character of Jesus Himself—benign, instructive, redemptive. He Himself was a special and unique person; it is not surprising that He had special and unique powers. Indeed, it would be more surprising if He had not had them. Never man so spake, never man so lived, never man so loved, never man so acted. As Karl Adam has said, Jesus' life was a blaze of miracle. Miracles were as natural to Him as they would be unnatural to other men. He was a true man indeed, but He was no ordinary man. Miracles are surprising when attributed to other men; it would appear surprising if they had not been associated with this man.

Some have asked whether the miracles may not be naturally explained as the result of Christ's unusual knowledge and understanding of the laws of nature. May he not have possessed some occult acquaintance with the secrets of nature that enabled Him to unleash certain of her powers in a perfectly natural manner, however supernatural it may have appeared to those unfamiliar with these esoteric laws?

To this there are several negative replies. For one thing there is a moral objection. Jesus Himself referred to His works, or allowed others to refer to them, as evidence of His supernatural power. It would have been palpable dishonesty to do so if He had known all the time that He was merely exerting secret, but natural, power. Thus He asked His disciples, if they could not believe Him for His words' sake, to believe Him for His works' sake (John 14:11). He reassured the doubting John the Baptist of the reality of His Messianic calling by appealing to the miracles He wrought (Matthew 11:2–4). He did not object when Nicodemus said, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him" (John 3:2). The blind man whom He healed believed on Him because of this miracle, and Christ took full advantage of that belief to press His claim to being the Messiah (John 9:35ff.). He refuted the Pharisees who had criticized Him for forgiving a man's sins by pointing out that He was able to do the equally supernatural thing of instantly curing his sickness. "Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thine house" (Matthew 9:5–6).

The Messianic prophecies had frequently foreseen the Messiah as a miracle worker. Jesus not only knew this, but obviously pointed to Himself as qualified in this very particular. If He did not believe Himself to be possessed of supernatural powers, He must have known Himself to be engaged in palpable fraud and deliberate deception. So from the moral angle, if Christ wrought what He wrought merely by an unusual knowledge of nature and not by supernatural power, He must have been a lying deceiver. That is more difficult to believe than any miracle with which He has ever been credited.

Second, on the supposition before us, His own argument in His defense would be an argument against Him. That is to say, when the unbelieving Jews claimed that He did His works by the power of Beelzebub, He replied, "How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end" (Mark 3:23 ff.). But if Christ really did not do true miracles, but only took advantage of His superior knowledge to play on the credulity of His times and later times, then He would have been perpetrating fraud as the prince of deceivers, and as such He would have been the devil's instrument. For He regarded the devil as the father of lies, and He would have been his son. Not only is such a thing utterly unthinkable from a moral standpoint, but it is, as His argument makes it, utterly irrational. For Satan would have been using lies to destroy his own kingdom. By these frauds of his servant Jesus, he would have been establishing the kingdom of Jesus, which was founded on truth and which called men to repent of their sins. Thus Satan's house would have been divided against itself, for Christ, the son of lies, would by His lies have been destroying His father's kingdom of lies.

Third, if Christ had the kind of knowledge which this theory attributes to Him, such knowledge would have been as miraculous as the miracles it attempts to explain away. For centuries before and for centuries after, no other person but this solitary, untutored Jew knew how to walk on water. Modern science has performed many amazing feats in this century, but it still is nowhere nearer than it was in Jesus' day to multiplying loaves and fishes by a mere word. Machines can compare, classify, and do hitherto unbelievable things, but with all their powers they still depend on the feeble mind of man, their inventor. They cannot even put a question to themselves, but can only operate with their wonderful efficiency along channels made for them by men. Certainly none of them can anticipate an historical event tomorrow, much less predict the fall of a city a generation hence as precisely as Jesus did (Matthew 24:1ff.). This explanation of the miracles of Jesus, therefore, requires as much, if not more, explanation than the miracles. It would be the miracle to end all miracles. Intellectually, it would be straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.

To be continued...

Excerpted from Primitive Theology by John H. Gerstner.

Hell

We have often heard statements such as "War is hell" or "I went through hell." These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell.

Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use the word lightly may be a halfhearted human attempt to take the concept lightly or to treat it in an amusing way. We tend to joke about things most frightening to us in a futile effort to declaw and defang them, reducing their threatening power.

There is no biblical concept more grim or terror-invoking than the idea of hell. It is so unpopular with us that few would give credence to it at all except that it comes to us from the teaching of Christ Himself.

Almost all the biblical teaching about hell comes from the lips of Jesus. It is this doctrine, perhaps more than any other, that strains even the Christian's loyalty to the teaching of Christ. Modern Christians have pushed the limits of minimizing hell in an effort to sidestep or soften Jesus' own teaching. The Bible describes hell as a place of outer darkness, a lake of fire, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of eternal separation from the blessings of God, a prison, a place of torment where the worm doesn't turn or die. These graphic images of eternal punishment provoke the question, should we take these descriptions literally or are they merely symbols?

I suspect they are symbols, but I find no relief in that. We must not think of them as being merely symbols. It is probably that the sinner in hell would prefer a literal lake of fire as his eternal abode to the reality of hell represented in the lake of fire image. If these images are indeed symbols, then we must conclude that the reality is worse than the symbol suggests. The function of symbols is to point beyond themselves to a higher or more intense state of actuality than the symbol itself can contain. That Jesus used the most awful symbols imaginable to describe hell is no comfort to those who see them simply as symbols.

A breath of relief is usually heard when someone declares, "Hell is a symbol for separation from God." To be separated from God for eternity is no great threat to the impenitent person. The ungodly want nothing more than to be separated from God. Their problem in hell will not be separation from God, it will be the presence of God that will torment them. In hell, God will be present in the fullness of His divine wrath. He will be there to exercise His just punishment of the damned. They will know Him as an all-consuming fire.

No matter how we analyze the concept of hell it often sounds to us as a place of cruel and unusual punishment. If, however, we can take any comfort in the concept of hell, we can take it in the full assurance that there will be no cruelty there. It is impossible for God to be cruel. Cruelty involves inflicting a punishment that is more severe or harsh than the crime. Cruelty in this sense is unjust. God is incapable of inflicting an unjust punishment. The Judge of all the earth will surely do what is right. No innocent person will ever suffer at His hand.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of hell is its eternality. People can endure the greatest agony if they know it will ultimately stop. In hell there is no such hope. The Bible clearly teaches that the punishment is eternal. The same word is used for both eternal life and eternal death. Punishment implies pain. Mere annihilation, which some have lobbied for, involves no pain. Jonathan Edwards, in preaching on Revelation 6:15-16 said, "Wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing and forever cease to be that they may escape the wrath of God."

Hell, then, is an eternity before the righteous, ever-burning wrath of God, a suffering torment from which there is no escape and no relief. Understanding this is crucial to our drive to appreciate the work of Christ and to preach His gospel.

Excerpted from Essential Truths of the Christian Faith.

Articles & Devotionals

"Are those who have never heard of Christ going to hell?" by R.C. Sproul
Can a Person Be Evangelical and Not Believe in Hell? by R.C. Sproul Jr.
Degrees of Punishment
"I Believe in the Life Everlasting" by R.C. Sproul
The Great Separation
Hold the Fire and Brimstone, Please by Burk Parsons
The Horror of Hell by Tom Ascol
The Reversal of the Curse by Very Poythress
Take Hell Seriously (Part 1) by R. Fowler White
Take Hell Seriously (Part 2) by R. Fowler White
Weeping and Gnashing

Media

Can We Enjoy Heaven Knowing of Loved Ones in Hell? by R.C. Sproul
The Gates of Hell by Burk Parsons
Hell by R.C. Sproul
The Intermediate State, Heaven and Hell by R.C. Sproul
Is the Exclusivity of Christ Unjust? by Alistair Begg

Resources

Getting the Gospel Right book by R.C. Sproul
Heaven CD by R.C. Sproul
Hell CD by R.C. Sproul
Loved by God CD by R.C. Sproul
Now, That's a Good Question! book by R.C. Sproul
Saved from What? book by R.C. Sproul
Unless You Repent book by Jonathan Edwards

Ministering by the Life-Giving Spirit

"Following a 1970s Jesus Movement conversion, I served in youth ministry, where I subjected poor students to nearly every fad imaginable — all, I told myself, to have young people come to Christ. I then served as a pastor, an office I have held for thirty years. Along the way, I have made many blunders — far too many to chronicle here. One mistake that I hope to avoid, however, is ministering with external methods that cannot give life."

This is what David Hall writes in his column for the current edition of Tabletalk. He goes on to suggest the remedy to this kind of temptation. "Over the last thirty years, I have noticed a great reduction among my repertoire of ministerial gimmicks, while reliance on a smaller number of powerful tools has significantly increased. One thing I'm pretty sure of: this pastor has very little to offer other than God's Word, and the effectiveness of that depends on the work of the Holy Spirit."

Read about the source of Dr. Hall's confidence in ministry in Ministering by the Life-Giving Spirit.

The Heresy of Perfectionism

[image error]
An ancient heresy of the distinction between two types of Christians, carnal and Spirit-filled, is the heresy of perfectionism. Perfectionism teaches that there is a class of Christians who achieve moral perfection in this life. To be sure, credit is given to the Holy Spirit as the agent who brings total victory over sin to the Christian. But there is a kind of elitism in perfectionism, a feeling that those who have achieved perfection are somehow greater than other Christians. The "perfect" ones do not officially—take credit for their state, but smugness and pride have a way of creeping in.

The peril of perfectionism is that it seriously distorts the human mind. Imagine the contortions through which we must put ourselves to delude us into thinking that we have in fact achieved a state of sinlessness.

Inevitably the error of perfectionism breeds one, or usually two, deadly delusions. To convince ourselves that we have achieved sinlessness, we must either suffer from a radical overestimation of our moral performance or we must seriously underestimate the requirements of God's law. The irony of perfectionism is this: Though it seeks to distance itself from antinomianism, it relentlessly and inevitably comes full circle to the same error.

To believe that we are sinless we must annul the standards of God's Law. We must reduce the level of divine righteousness to the level of our own performance. We must lie to ourselves both about the Law of God and about our own obedience. To do that requires that we quench the Spirit when He seeks to convict us of sin. Persons who do that are not so much Spirit-filled as they are Spirit-quenchers.

One of the true marks of our ongoing sanctification is the growing awareness of how far short we fall of reaching perfection. Perfectionism is really antiperfectionism in disguise. If we think we are becoming perfect, then we are far from becoming perfect.

If we think we are becoming perfect, then we are far from becoming perfect.

I once encountered a young man who had been a Christian for about a year. He boldly declared to me that he had received the "second blessing" and was now enjoying a life of victory, a life of sinless perfection. I immediately turned his attention to Paul's teaching on Romans 7. Romans 7 is the biblical death blow to every doctrine of perfectionism. My young friend quickly replied with the classic agreement of the perfectionist heresy, namely, that in Romans 7 Paul is describing his former unconverted state.

I explained to the young man that it is exegetically impossible to dismiss Romans 7 as the expression of Paul's former life. We examined the passage closely and the man finally agreed that indeed Paul was writing in the present tense. His next response was, "Well, maybe Paul Was speaking of his present experience, but he just hadn't received the second blessing yet."

I had a difficult time concealing my astonishment at this spiritual arrogance. I asked him pointedly, "You mean that You, at age nineteen, after one year of Christian faith, have achieved a higher level of obedience to God than the apostle Paul enjoyed when he was writing the Epistle to the Romans?"

To my everlasting shock the young man replied without flinching, "Yes!" Such is the extent to which persons will delude themselves into thinking that they have achieved sinlessness.

I spoke once with a woman who claimed the same "second blessing" of perfectionism who qualified her claim a bit. She said that she was fully sanctified into holiness so that she never committed any willful sins. But she acknowledged that occasionally she still committed sins, though never willfully. Her present sins were unwillful.

What in the world is an unwillful sin? All sin involves the exercise of the will. If an action happens apart from the will it is not a moral action. The involuntary beating of my heart is not a moral action. All sin is willful. Indeed, the corrupt inclination of the will is of the very essence of sin. There is no sin without the willing of sin. The woman was excusing her own sin by denying that she had willed to commit the sin. The sin just sort of "happened." It was the oldest self-justification known to man: "I didn't mean to do it!"

In one strand of the Wesleyan tradition there is another type of qualified perfectionism. Here the achievement of perfection is limited to a perfected love. We may continue to struggle with certain moral weaknesses, but at least we can receive the blessing of a perfected love. But think on this a moment. If we received the blessing of a love that was absolutely perfect, how then would we ever commit any kind of sin? If I ever loved God perfectly, I would will only obedience to Him. How could a creature who loved God perfectly ever sin against Him at all?

Someone might answer: "We could still sin against Him in ignorance." But the perfect love with which we are called to love God is a perfect love of our minds as well as our hearts. If we perfectly loved God with all of our minds, from whence could this ignorance flow? One who loves God perfectly with the mind is perfectly diligent in studying and mastering the Word of God. The perfectly loving mind perceives correctly the light into our paths. A perfectly loving mind doesn't make errors in understanding Scripture.

But could we not still make mistakes because our minds are less than perfect? I ask why our minds are less than perfect. It is not because we lack brains or the faculty of thinking. Our thinking is clouded because our hearts are clouded. Take away the cloud from our hearts and our minds are illumined by the clear light of God.

A perfect love would yield perfect obedience. The only perfected love this world has ever seen was the love of Christ, who exhibited perfect obedience. Jesus loved the Father perfectly. He sinned not at all, either willfully or in ignorance.

Excerpted from Pleasing God.