September 2007 Q & A
QUESTION:
Mr. Hunt, a question has been troubling me as long as I've been a Christian...and I've never heard a sensible response. How can God send the overwhelming majority of humanity into everlasting conscious torment? I know there must be punishment and justice, but the traditional view on this seems cruel and not consistent with God's loving nature. Undeserved eternal joy in His presence for believers shows God's love-but never-ending pain and torment from the God who "is love"?
RESPONSE:
This question bothers many. John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul all taught everlasting punishment (Mt 3:12; 18:8; 25:41, 46; Mk 9:43-48; Lk 3:17; 2 Thes 1:9). If the suffering in the Lake of Fire is not everlasting, then neither is the joy of heaven because the same Greek word for "everlasting" is used for both.
An equally troubling question would be why eating some fruit merited Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden, instant spiritual death, and brought the physical death, disease, destruction, pain, wars, and sorrows that mankind has suffered ever since. Isn't that contradictory and a denial of "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8, 16)? No, it is because of His unchanging love and character.
God is also holy and just. In love, He warned Adam and Eve of the dire consequences of disobedience. To go back on His Word would make Him a liar. Why would we believe anything else He said?
Lets start with "In the beginning God created..." (Gn 1:1). All that followed must be because of Him. Because He is love, He made man in His image so that man could eternally love God and his fellows. God is an eternal Being. Thus, man, made in His image, could never cease to exist. God's loving purpose was that man would forever dwell with Him in intimate fellowship and love-not that he would suffer forever in the Lake of Fire.
God knew what Adam and Eve and their descendants would do-but He did not predestine man to sin nor to be in torment eternally. The Lake of Fire was "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt 25:41). God "will have [i.e., desires] all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth....Christ Jesus...gave himself a ransom for all..." (1 Tm 2:4-6). Salvation is for "whosoever believeth on him" (Jn 3:16). To forgive Christ-rejecters would undermine both God's integrity and His justice.
No one who spends eternity in the Lake of Fire (and many will) can blame God. They will have sent themselves there. In love, God designed man so that His love would not be "an extra" but as spiritually essential to life as water is physically essential. The analogies of water and thirst are used repeatedly in Scripture: "My soul thirsteth for God" (Ps 42:2); the rich man in hell likened his torment to thirst, begging for a drop of water on his tongue, saying, "I am tormented in this flame" (Lk 16:24). It is obvious that he didn't mean physical water, a physical tongue (his body was in the grave), or a physical flame, but something even more real.
The rich man was suffering from the spiritual thirst that sin's separation from God has brought and that Christ came to quench. But he had rejected Christ, trying to find satisfaction in food, sex, wealth, possessions, position, etc. Jesus told the woman at the well, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst," and He said to the Jews, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (Jn 7:37). The final invitation in the Bible is "whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rv 22:17). Clearly, such passages refer neither to physical thirst nor to physical water.
Spiritual thirst results from sin's separation from God. Most people foolishly seek to satisfy that thirst with things of this world. Those who seek after God find true satisfaction in Christ. The central feature of heaven is "a pure river of water [obviously not physical] of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rv 22:1).
On earth, there is much to distract and tempt both saint and sinner, dulling true satisfaction for believers and turning them from God. For unbelievers, that thirst is seemingly satisfied without God-until they die. Separated from their bodies, from all companionship and earthly enticements, they can no longer dull conscience or escape the innate thirst for God. That thirst will torment them eternally with regret and remorse as the horror of their sins is revealed in the fire of God's purity, holiness, truth, and justice.
QUESTION:
I met you years ago. I'm 21, attending a Nazarene university, am at home in the Messianic Jewish community, and believe that Yeshua Jesus is the Messiah, Son of God, and Savior. But I've been struggling...is God fact or fiction...? I was taught Liberalism in public high school and that contributed a lot to these doubts. I had a good breakthrough with God last Wednesday, felt Him move in me and comfort me, but the feeling didn't last very long, though I know it was real. My mother retold to me her testimony of being saved out of the hippie movement...and seeing the Shekinah glory. That gave me peace...yes, God is real after all. I just wish I could see such a manifestation...as my dad and so many others have. Then I thought: "Just because God is real, does that make Him right?" The devil and demons are real but wrong...so how can we be sure God is right? I want more than anything to prove these doubts wrong and regain my confidence, once so strong, and I know you are the right person to ask.
I need God so badly...I want nothing else but Him for the rest of my life-but I have all these worries and doubts....I've prayed and prayed and thought doubts were conquered but I guess not. Do you know what to do?
RESPONSE:
Many young people in evangelical homes and churches have similar doubts but hide them. First of all, don't look to feelings-they fade or change, as you know. Experience is no better. All Israel experienced going through the Red Sea, the Shekinah glory day after day, daily manna, water out of the rock, audibly heard God declare the Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai, promised to obey, yet rebelled.
"We walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7). Does that mean without proof_? No, otherwise the Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, etc., could "walk by faith." No matter how ridiculous the belief, "believers" could say "I have faith." We could not reason with a JW, atheist, or even a Satanist who also has "faith."
Feelings? Mormons have a "burning in the bosom." Experiences? I've met people all over the world who've had the most amazing and seemingly miraculous experiences possible, but many were into
the occult.
For true faith, God has provided three powerful witnesses: creation, conscience, and the Bible. The sun has not been in the sky forever or it would have burned out by now. The same is true of all the other stars in the universe. So there was a time when the universe did not exist. Nothing existed because things (matter) wear out. Nor do we get something out of nothing. There is only one sensible possibility: someOne, without beginning or end and with the power to create all from nothing, has always existed. This fact is beyond our comprehension; but we are driven to it by all we know. There is no other alternative! No atheist or liberal, no inner doubts, can change these facts.
Everything is made of energy, but energy, being a thing itself is not eternal but part of the material universe subject to the law of entropy and thus had a beginning. Nor could energy plan, design, and create the incredibly complex and intricately related parts of even a single cell, much less place on every cell in written language the DNA instruction manual that every cell (plant, animal, or human) must follow and without which there is no life. No physical life exists without written words!
Words convey information, and that can only come from an intelligence. The information on DNA requires an infinite Intelligence! The Law of Biogenesis says, "Life only comes from life," as Pasteur proved. The so-called Big Bang (which didn't happen) would have sterilized everything a trillion times over. No life could have come out of that ball of fire!
So our Creator, who always existed, must have been the source of all life. As I said, no atheist or liberal can change these facts. There are no sound arguments against the above. The very first verse in the Bible presents what all mankind is driven to, no matter how reluctantly: "In the beginning, God created...." There exists an eternal Being who is our Creator. The first verses in John declare that Jesus Christ is the Creator and that "in him was life" (Jn 1:4), and He is called THE WORD OF GOD. On this basis alone, we would believe the rest of the Bible; but there is more: conscience.
Why are you worrying about whether God is right or wrong, good or evil? Because all humans made in God's image innately have these concepts. Morals and ethics didn't come from energy, which knows nothing of right or wrong, nor from a Big Bang or from the molecules in
your brain.
Again the Bible explains: "the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts ...accusing or else excusing one another" (Rom 2:15). Mankind lives for self in violation of conscience, like a cancer cell no longer following the DNA. Jesus said: "Ye must be born again." Peter explains, "Being born again...by the word of God...which by the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Pt 1:23-25). Unless the rebel believes the gospel and is reborn into harmony with the Word of God, he remains a cancer that must be cut out of God's universe.
Finally, prophecy is the supreme way God proves His existence and the infallibility of His Word. Hundreds of prophecies foretell the entire history of Israel, many already fulfilled, the rest in process of fulfilment. No one can deny this! As for Christ, there are scores of specific prophecies foretelling His coming that prove His identity that no one can refute.
Put your faith in the One who has revealed Himself in creation, conscience, and His infallible Word, especially through prophecy, and no doubts can come.
QUESTION:
I have read most of your articles over the years. Perhaps I missed something, but if Christ was crucified on Thursday, then the high Sabbath that began the 7-day feast of the Passover would have been followed immediately by the weekly Sabbath. When could the Jewish leaders have asked Pilate to seal the tomb...and the women have bought linens and spices to wrap His body...without violating either of these back-to-back Sabbaths?
RESPONSE:
Here's the picture. The Jewish day begins with night right after sunset, not with morning right after sunrise. No leaven may be in the home during the seven-day feast of unleavened bread that begins with the Passover supper. All leaven must be removed beforehand. This is done during a time called "the days of unleavened bread" (Acts 12:3).
The final 24 hours just before the Passover supper are called "the day of unleavened bread"-the day (Nisan 14) "when the Passover [lamb] must be killed" (Lk 22:7) by "the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel...in the evening" (just before sunset-Ex 12:6) to be eaten "that night [just after sunset] roast with fire" (v. 8).
Of course, Christ's disciples would need all of Nisan 14 (which began with night just after sunset) to prepare the "Upper Room" for the Passover supper the following night, removing all leaven and preparing a lamb slain just before the next sunset, to be eaten that night (not knowing that Christ would have been crucified). It was during the night that preceded the slaying of the lamb the next afternoon that Christ was betrayed: "the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread..." (1 Cor 11:23). The "last supper," from which Judas went out to betray Christ, was not the Passover supper. The next day, the rabbis had not yet eaten the Passover (Jn 18:28).
Surely the rabbis would have obtained permission to guard the tomb immediately after Pilate's death sentence. They had no time to lose because of these two Sabbaths approaching. The women would have procured the spices and linens immediately for the same reason before the two pending Sabbaths.