Hell, the Lake of Fire and Beyond

Broadcaster

On the Flood's Lesson

John David Clark, Sr. - December, 1989

Approximately 1,500 years after God created this earth, mankind had so perverted itself with lust, greed, and hatred, that the Creator determined that it was in the best interest of all creation for Him to destroy life on earth. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." Gen. 6:5-8.

It escapes the notice of the casual reader of the scriptures, that the flood was very much more than a flood. It was a catastrophic re-creation of both heaven and earth. After being within the confines of the ark for a year and ten days (Gen. 7:11 & 8:13-16), Noah and the seven people with him stood upon ground of what amounted to a new earth, and they observed the previously unknown phenomenon of a rainbow, hanging in what amounted to a new heaven. In his second epistle, Peter refers to the prediluvian cosmos as "the world that then was", in contrast to "the heavens and the earth,which are now." The titanic forces unleashed upon this world are unimaginable. Nothing like them had ever been known, nor has anything like them been experienced since. An indignant God tore this earth apart and reshaped it according to His own will. So terrible was the destruction, it is a marvel that even the ark survived, and had God not cared for it, it certainly could not have withstood the power of the Creator's wrath.

The waters of the flood originated from many places. It was not simply a hard, steady rain for forty days and nights because not only were the "windows of heaven opened" but "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up." The geography of the earth was violently and completely rearranged, with colossal convulsions. The one, gigantic continent suggested in Genesis 1:9 was ripped apart, thus forming in a year the continents as we know them today. (It doesn't take God a billion years to do anything). The physics of heaven and earth were re-created, so that rainfall became a common occurrence. Before the flood, it isn't mentioned, "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth....But there went up a mist from the earth, and it watered the whole face of the ground" (Gen. 2:5-6).

There are many, many differences in the order of the cosmos which were effected by the event called "the flood", but time will not allow us to pursue them further just now. Suffice it to say that when Noah and his family stepped out of the ark, it was very much as though they had stepped onto an entirely different planet, with new ground rules for survival, and new laws of the universe with which to cope.

Of all this, I would invite your attention to the biblical phrase "it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." Think on that for just a moment. In the beginning, everything God created pleased Him. "And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." He had good feelings when He beheld His creation. He put forth an effort to do a good thing, and he did it, but in only a little more than 1500 years, the crown jewel of His work - man - so disgusted and outraged Him that He could not bear the thought of allowing him any longer to exist. He dearly loved man and freely gave him dominion over a paradise-like planet, and then, in righteous indignation, destroyed them both. Adam's race was cursed with death, and even though Noah escaped, he and his fellow survivors still bore that curse, and passed it on to succeeding generations. It is still "appointed unto man once to die."

Jesus did not undo that curse. He did not come to undo that curse. Faith in Jesus will not exempt one from having to die a natural death. But faith in Jesus will give one the hope of escaping what the Bible calls "the second death", which is the Lake of Fire, where souls who will not submit to the lordship of Jesus will be tormented day and night forever (Rev. 20:10-15), in a darkness so thick that words fail to describe it. It is worse than hell. Hell itself will be cast into the Lake of Fire. It is a place of absolute hopelessness and pain. "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The screams of the damned will be the only sound. Only by faith can we understand that such a fearful place even exists. Please do not go there. Please seek the Lord while he may be found. The great joy of life on earth is the hope that we may have in Christ.

But my point in this BROADCASTER concerns a message which I found myself preaching some weeks ago, and was stunned by the thought, but as time passes I become ever more certain of its truth. And that is, as God was at first pleased with his creation of man, yet later regretted ever doing so, could He be now at the point of regretting that He ever created the body of Christ, though in the beginning it was the joy of his heart. It is a terrifying thought to contemplate, that our Lord should be so disgusted and angry with us that He would even regret that he made the excruciating sacrifice that he did, but I believe the body of Christ has come very close to provoking Him that much. "But God is patient" you say? Well, don't you think tolerating 2,000 years of division, murder and persecution of Jews and others, constant rejection of the holy Ghost and the truth it clearly teaches, and a thousand other abuses of His holy name, is patient? "But God is merciful" you say? Well, don't you think that allowing almost a thousand denominations to exist, but still providing food and clothes and shelter for their leaders, and sending the light of His son on those who are using His Son's name ignorantly, leading others into paths of darkness and damnation, and giving health, and friends, and money, and all things, to believers who turn from holiness to possess this world's goods, and doing all this for 2,000 years is merciful? God didn't tolerate the Jewish perversion of His ways but for approximately 1,500 years!

I believe the situation is grave. If you don't sense a mounting terror in your spirit for the things coming upon the congregation, much less this wicked world, I wonder if you, too, have been deluded by the empty promises of doctrines of men. God is demanding unconditional surrender to His will.

Yes, it seemed hard to think that God would regret creating in Christ a new race of men (cp. 1Cor. 15:45), and when those words began to proceed out of my mouth during my sermon, I stopped them. "I can't say such things", I thought. But it was God. His heart is broken. His wrath is kindled. He will forgive, but only if we repent. Otherwise the curse which Paul warned would befall the saints will become a living reality, “...because they received not the love of the truth...God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

May God help us to see the seriousness of this hour in human history. The destruction of Adam's race, except for Noah, "happened unto them for examples", Paul wrote, "and are written for our admonition." The destruction of the congregation, except for those who obey God, is certain, though we who say so are ridiculed and ignored, as was Noah in his day. The body of Christ is not the Bride of Christ, my dear reader. The bride is that part of the body that obeys the will of the Father. Please don't mistake God's patience to be approval. Please don't mistake his mercy and blessings on your life to mean that he accepts your lifestyle. He detests every way of living except His. He loathes every teaching that doesn't come from heaven. He is irritated by every saint who does not stay filled with the holy Ghost. His toleration of our ways by no means is an indication that they are acceptable to Him. But, because God still blesses mankind, men continue contentedly in error, as if God will not judge us for such things! "What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself; but I will reprove thee....Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. He that offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God." from Psalms 50