Writings and Sermons of Stephen

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• Creation's Jublilee

• This book is dedicated to those who are called to the Ministry of the Conciliation as Ambassadors of Christ, to tell the world the good news of the Restoration of All Things.

  Suggested Price:  $10.00 each - Published by Restoration Bible Church

  PO Box 325 Royal Oak, Michigan 48068, USA

  First Edition (1000 copies) . . . 1991

  Second Edition revised (1000 copies) . . . 1993

  Third Edition (3000 copies) . . .  1994

  Fourth Edition, revised (3000 copies) . . . 1999

  ©copyright 1991 - All Rights Reserved - Printed in USA

  CREATION'S JUBILEE

  By Dr Stephen E Jones

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Millennium Question..........................................................1

  Chapter 2: The Sun of Righteousness, or the Fire of God............................7

  Chapter 3: The Lake of Fire, or the Molten Sea.........................................18

  Chapter 4: Does God Punish Endlessly?...................................................35

  Chapter 5: The Restoration of All Things..................................................46

  Chapter 6: The Three Resurrections Are God's Three Harvest-Festivals......61

  Chapter 7: The Two Covenants...........................................82

  Chapter 8: The Effects of Adam's Sin on Man's Nature.......................101 

  Chapter 9: The Restoration of all Nations................................132

  Chapter 10: The Tension in Creation....................................................150

  Chapter 1: The Millennium Question

  Men have long speculated on the ages to come.  What will happen, when, and in what order?  What will the condition of men be when they are raised (1 Cor. 15:35)?  What is the purpose of the reign of Christ in the age to come, known to the Hebrews and early Christians as the Kingdom Age, or the Messianic Age?  How does it differ from the age that follows it, described as "the new heaven and the new earth" having a "new Jerusalem"?

  Perhaps even more confusing to people today is all this talk about going to heaven either at the moment of death or at a future time.  If that is so, then why return to earth in a resurrection, and why a millennium at all?  I have encountered people in the ministry who were puzzled by this as well.  If they are so puzzled, perhaps that is why the average Christian is also puzzled.  They have been receiving contradictory teachings and do not have the keys to sort it all out for themselves.

  It is our purpose in this book to break the seals on this topic and boldly strike out on what we can only call an awesome adventure.  The first door can be unlocked only with the key of understanding the three main feast days of Israel.

  The Three Feasts of Israel

  Passover was the first feast of Israel, occurring in late March or early April. The people gathered at the place where God had placed His name, carrying with them the firstfruits of the barley, which was the first crop to ripen in the Spring. Fifty days after the barley was offered to God, the people gathered again before God to give Him the firstfruits of the newly-ripened wheat. About four months later, in September, the people gathered a third time to give God the firstfruits of the wine, for this was the time of grape harvest.

  These three feasts are prophetic in many ways. They speak of three stages of development in the Kingdom of God upon the earth. They speak of three anointings or manifestations of the Spirit that are associated with each stage of Kingdom development. And finally, the firstfruits themselves foreshadow the beginning of a greater harvest to come.

  From Moses to Christ was a Passover Age, reflecting the first level of anointing and empowerment, wherein the Kingdom of God operated on a relatively small scale in the House of Israel. The day of Pentecost in Acts 2 began a Pentecostal Age with an enhanced level of the Holy Spirit's power, and this brought the Kingdom of God an entirely new empowerment. But even Paul acknowledged three times that this was only an EARNEST of the Spirit, a downpayment of something better that was yet to come. He looked for a Tabernacles Age, in which the FULLNESS of the Spirit would be poured out, and the Kingdom of God would be established in the earth in its highest form and with its greatest power.

  The key to understanding the Kingdom of God is to view it in its three stages of development, rather than pitting one view against another. Some say the Kingdom is NOW, and they are certainly correct. Others say the Kingdom is FUTURE, and they are correct as well. A few even say that the Kingdom of God began with Moses, and they too are correct. The Kingdom of God did indeed begin in the time of Moses when God first organized Israel into a Kingdom at Horeb. But the Kingdom of God was manifested in a greater manner under a Pentecostal anointing in the second chapter of Acts.

  But the Kingdom of God is also yet future as of this writing. We await the outpouring of the Spirit under the feast of Tabernacles, which will manifest the Kingdom of God in its highest form on the earth. Only this view is large enough to encompass both those who believe the "Kingdom Now" idea, as well as the "Future Kingdom" viewpoint.

  Under Moses, the people of Israel no doubt thought that the Kingdom of God had come in its fullness in their day. It was not revealed to them that there was much more yet to come, except in a progressive revelation of the prophets who came later. Even so, most of the people did not understand the true meaning of their own feast days. They were focused upon the rituals themselves in trying to please God. This is why they did not recognize the true Lamb of God when John pointed Him out to the people (John 1:29), nor did they see that He would have to die at Passover for the sin of the world.

  The early Church understood clearly the meaning of the feast of Passover. They wrote extensively about its fulfillment in Jesus' death. But the people were only Pentecostal in their outlook. They had moved up one level, and this had greatly increased their understanding of the plan of God. However, they had little or no understanding of the feast of Tabernacles. Pentecost was their prime focus, and this is perfectly understandable, for it was a new and marvelous thing in the earth. To many, it was the end and goal of all history. But the revelation of Tabernacles was not clearly understood, because it was too early for this to be revealed. Kingdom people had to have opportunity to explore the marvels of Pentecost before overwhelming them with a serious revelation of Tabernacles.

  So God saved the revelation of the feast of Tabernacles for the end of the Pentecostal Age in the twentieth century. We believe that the Pentecostal Age was meant to last for just 40 Jubilee cycles, or 1960 years (49 x 40). We believe that the Pentecostal Age began in 33 AD and began to come to an end in 1993. We believe that the year 1993 began the transition into the Age of Tabernacles.

  The pattern for this is found in the story of King Saul and David. When King Saul was crowned king of Israel, the prophet said in 1 Samuel 12:17, "Is it not WHEAT HARVEST today?" The day of wheat harvest was the day the priest offered the firstfruits of the wheat to God on the feast of weeks, commonly called Pentecost.

  Saul was crowned on the feast of Pentecost. This made him a pentecostal type in the Old Testament. The reign of Saul was also a type of the Kingdom of God in the Age of Pentecost. It was truly the Kingdom of God, but it was not to be an enduring dynasty. This promise was reserved for the next stage of development under King David. The transition from Saul to David was seven years and six months (2 Samuel 5:5).

  If this time period is prophetic of the transition from Pentecost to Tabernacles in our day, then the Tabernacles Age could begin toward the end of the year 2000 AD. Only time will tell.

  The First Resurrection

  Speaking of faithful believers, Revelation 20:4-6 tells us:

  4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.

  This "first resurrection" is a limited resurrection. Because we are told that they are "blessed and holy" (vs. 6), we know that only believers will inherit life at this first resurrection.  We are told that the rest of the dead will remain dead for another thousand years.

  There are two main views regarding this first resurrection. Some believe that this first resurrection is simply the moment of salvation for the believer. At salvation, they say, the believer goes from death to life, and this they equate with resurrection. Believers then are called to rule and reign with Christ in an overcoming life on earth. They interpret the "thousand years" as an indefinite time period, on the grounds that the Greek word is plural and therefore should read "thousands," rather than merely one thousand years.

  On the other hand, we believe that the term "resurrection" is never used in the Bible for anything but a physical raising from the dead. We certainly understand that the believer is given life at his justification, but this does not negate the need for resurrection. Paul made it plain in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the pattern and basis of our own resurrection. Jesus took time to carefully explain to His disciples that He had been raised in a physical body, though He was certainly not subject to the limitations of our present flesh. (See Luke 24:36-43.)

  As for the time period of a thousand years, the Greek term used is chilioi, which is the plural of chilias.  However, this is a case where we cannot simply use Strong's Concordance to prove the point.  One must also know how Greek grammar works  The term "thousand years" consists of an adjective ("thousand") and a noun ("years") which it is describing.  Since the noun "years" is plural, Greek grammar demands that the adjective "thousand" must also be plural.

  This is different from English grammar, but we cannot judge Greek grammar by English rules.  And so, while we might be tempted to read the literal Greek as "thousands (of) years", in reality it should be read in English as "a thousand years."

  We run across the same problem in 2 Peter 3:8.  (Here Peter refers to Psalm 90:4.)

  8 . . . One day is with the Lord as a thousand (chilioi, "thousands") years, and a thousand (chilioi, "thousands") years as one day.

  Once again, in Greek, the adjective must agree with the noun that it describes.  In this case, "thousand" must agree with the word "years", which is plural.  And so, while the literal Greek would read "thousands years", in English we must render it a "thousand years" in order to allow our translation to conform to the rules of English grammar.

  By contrast, we should show an example where the word "thousand" is singular in the original Greek.  Such is the case in Revelation 7, where we read, for example, in verse 5:

  5 Of the tribe of Juda were sealed twelve thousand (chilias, singular).  Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand (chilias).  Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand (chilias).

  In this case, the word "thousand" is the noun, rather than the adjective.  Thus, it does not need to agree with another word grammatically, even though we understand it to be referring to a plural number of Israelites.  The word is a collective noun, much as our English words "sheep" or "deer".  Thus, it is written in the singular, even though technically there are TWELVE of these "thousands."

  And so, while we encourage people to use a good concordance, we must yet use some caution and realize our limitations.

  Therefore, when John tells us in Revelation 20 that some will reign with Christ for a thousand years, the translation is correct, even though chilioi is technically plural. We believe that the period of a thousand years is a fairly precise figure.

  The Tabernacle in the Wilderness was designed in its very structure to indicate a 2,000 year Church Age, followed by a 1,000 year Kingdom Age.  The Tabernacle was divided into three areas: the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. The outer court typifies the Passover Age with its Brazen Altar. Because it had no ceiling, one cannot measure the outer court like we can the tent of meeting. Yet it signifies the Old Testament era.

  In the tent itself, the Holy Place typifies the Pentecostal Age and was 2,000 cubic cubits (10 x 20 x 10 cubits). The Holy of Holies typifies the Tabernacles Age and 1,000 cubic cubits (10 x 10 x 10 cubits).  In man's approach to God, the Tabernacle was built to show the way to God; and even its room's dimensions portray the time of Pentecost and Tabernacles.

  Those who teach that there is no future thousand-year reign of Christ assume that we now have all the necessary spiritual empowerment to reign on earth NOW. The view does not take into consideration that Pentecost only gave us an earnest of the Spirit (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; and Eph. 1:14). They do not see that the Kingdom of God is manifested in stages, nor do they see that Pentecost can never fully establish the Kingdom. Christians cannot fully reign on earth under the anointing of Passover, nor under the anointing of Pentecost. Only a Tabernacles anointing is sufficient to fully manifest the sons of God.

  In other words, when a man is justified by faith in the blood of the Lamb, he receives a Passover anointing from God, but this does not bring him personally into the fullness of the Spirit. When a man receives the Spirit of God through the anointing of Pentecost, he receives a fresh anointing, but it is only an earnest, and he is still left with imperfections by which he falls short of the glory of God. Only when God pours out His Spirit upon us in the fulfillment of Tabernacles will we find the perfection and immortality we seek.

  The first two feast days were fulfilled on historic dates according to the plan of God. No one has been able to enter permanently into a feast day's fulfillment ahead of its historic fulfillment. Moses entered into Tabernacles temporarily when he came down the mount with his face glorified (Exodus 34::29; 2 Cor. 3:7), but even he could not retain that glory permanently, for neither he nor the other overcomers could be perfected apart from the corporate body (Heb. 11:40).

  There are many more such evidences that we could put forth, except that many of these require an in-depth knowledge of prophecy which is outside the scope of this book.  And so we hope that these few words will suffice at least the majority of the readers for now.

  The Second (General) Resurrection

  One thousand years after the first resurrection comes the Great White Throne Judgment, in which ALL the (remaining) dead are raised.  This will include both believers and unbelievers.  This is proven by Jesus' words in John 5:28,29, where He speaks of this general resurrection:

  28 Marvel not at this: for THE HOUR is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice,

  29 And shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment.

  Note that this is a single "hour;" that is, both just and unjust will be raised at the same time. This is obviously not the first resurrection, where only believers are raised. This is a clear description of the second resurrection, where ALL who remain in the tombs will come forth for judgment.

  Note also that there will be believers raised at this hour, along with unbelievers,  Jesus says that the just will be given "life", while the unjust will be judged.  Many teach today that all believers will be raised at the first resurrection; and all the unbelievers will be raised at the next resurrection.  This simply cannot be true, if Jesus' words are to be believed.

  Paul offers a double witness to this teaching that the second resurrection will include both good and bad.  He says in Acts 24:14 and 15:

  14 But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets;

  15 And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both the just and unjust.

  This can only be referring to the second, not the first resurrection, because only "blessed and holy" people are raised the first time.  We must conclude, then, that NOT ALL Christians will be raised in the first resurrection.  Some must remain in the grave until the second resurrection, otherwise the statements by Jesus and Paul would be incorrect.

  When we look at the rather detailed description of the second resurrection in Revelation 20, we find hints that there will be believers judged at that time.  The very fact that the Book of Life is opened (20:12) hints at this.  Why would the Book of Life be opened, if no one standing there were written in it?  Furthermore, verse 15 strongly implies this when John says:

  15 And whosoever was NOT found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

  Certainly this means that many WILL BE FOUND written in that Book.  And those who are will be given Life at that time as Jesus said.

  Who are these believers?  Why would they need to be judged?  I believer the key is found in Jesus' teaching in Luke 12:35-50.  Jesus first speaks of the faithful and wise steward"  (12:42) who will be made "ruler over His household." Such people will inherit the first resurrection and shall "reign with Him a thousand years."

  There is, however, another kind of servant.  Keep in mind that he is still called a "servant" of God, a believer, but he is not "blessed and holy" by any means.  Jesus continues in verse 45:

  45 But and if that servant say in his hear, My lord delayeth His coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;

  46 The lord of that servant [Note: Jesus is his Lord] will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder [separate him from those of the first resurrection], and will appoint him his portion [immortality] with the unbelievers.

  In other words, these unsanctified servants will receive their immortality AT THE SAME TIME the unbelievers get their portion.  But this does not mean their portions are the same.  Jesus made this clear in the next few verses when He said that the unsanctified servant will receive either few or many stripes (lashes), according to his deeds.  Even so, it does NOT say that he will be classed as an unbeliever or that he will lose his portion (allotted inheritance).  It merely says that he will be cut off from those who shall reign with Christ in His Kingdom. It also says that the unsanctified servant will receive his portion at the same time as the unbelievers.

  Keep in mind that in God's Law, a beating was a punishment that was done immediately in front of the judge and was strictly limited to 40 stripes (Deut. 25:3).  Other punishments, such as restitution, required a sentence that normally took time for the sinner to work off the debt.  And so Jesus uses the term "many stripes" and "few stripes" to indicate a relatively mild form of punishment that is administered and quickly ended.  This is not the "the lake of fire" mentioned in Revelation 20, but it is certainly the "fire" that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 3:15.

  11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

  12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

  13 Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by FIRE; and the FIRE shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

  14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

  15 If any man's work be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by FIRE.

  I do not believe that the fire is literal. Christians in whom Jesus Christ is laid as a foundation, but who built upon that Foundation with wood, hay, and stubble, will not burn in a literal fire. Their WORKS and their flawed CHARACTER will be tried by fire and will be burned. This will not be to destroy them, but to purify them and make them fit for the Kingdom of God.

  The unbelievers themselves, however, will be "cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 20:14 and 15). The question is whether or not this is a literal fire that differs from the other fire in which certain believers are tried. This will be the subject of our next chapter.

  Back to Index

  Chapter 2:  The Sun of Righteousness, or the Fire of God

  But unto you that fear My name shall the SUN of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings (lit. "sun rays").  Malachi 4:2

  Malachi compares the coming of Christ to the dawning of a new day, which was known to the Hebrews as the Messianic, or Kingdom Age. The watchers of the night see the Morning Star first, followed by the first rays of the sun as dawn breaks. In Psalm 19:1 David says "the heavens declare the glory of God." He also describes the coming of Christ as "the Sun, which is as a Bridegroom coming out of his chamber."

  A large portion of God's revelation comes through nature. Jesus revealed the Kingdom mostly by telling parables that depicted such things as farming, tending vineyards, and astronomy. This is one of God's favorite methods of revelation. So it should come as no surprise that the dawning of the sun should hold some major keys to understanding the coming of Christ.

  Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of the sun is its LIGHT. This theme holds a prominent place in the Bible, because Jesus is to be "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh in to the world." Most people have already had a great deal of teaching on that subject, so we will instead deal with another theme-FIRE.

  God's Fire Brings Faith, Not Fear

  When God revealed Himself to the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai, He spoke to them by a voice issuing out of a consuming Fire. Deuteronomy 4 tells us,

  33 Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?

  36 Out of heaven He made thee to hear His voice, that He might instruct thee, and upon earth He showed thee His great fire; and thou heardest His words out of the midst of the fire.

  We know that Faith comes by hearing the Word (Rom.10:17). Yet a large amount of Bible teaching is spent on making people AFRAID of the Fire of God through hellfire and brimstone preaching. Many feel it their Christian duty to scare people into the Kingdom, and so they describe in great detail the most awful place they can imagine in their own minds. Yet when God chose to reveal Himself to Israel, He came as Fire, not to frighten them, but to test their faith. We read of this in Exodus 20:18-21.

  18 And all the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. 19 Then they said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, lest we die." 20 And Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin." 21 So the people stood at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was.

  God SPOKE out of the midst of the Fire. Paul says that Faith comes by hearing His voice.  The revelation of God did make Israel fearful, and they withdrew from His presence. Moses told them that God had manifested Himself in this way in order to prove them, or test their faith. If God had called them into a rose garden, the people would have needed no real faith, because they would not have had to overcome any fleshly fear. God makes it difficult in order to see if we really do trust Him not to destroy us when we do as He asks.

  True godly fear is different from fleshly fear. Godly fear is trusting God in matters of life and death. This is the fear of God that was required of Israel and of us as well. For this reason, Moses told the people to "fear not," and then seemed to contradict himself by telling them that God had come to prove them, "and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not" (Ex. 20:20). These are two different qualities of fear. The first makes us run from God; the second makes us run TO God. The New Testament tells us that "perfect love casteth out  fear" (1 John 4:18). This tells me that true godly fear, when mature, is actually perfect LOVE.

  The fire of God should dwell within each of us as a burning love and desire to please Him. Moses had the Fire within his own heart, as we shall soon show, and so He was able to approach God without fear.

  If the Fire of God makes us fearful and does not increase our faith, then something is wrong either in our own hearts or in our understanding of God. Perhaps God is not being portrayed correctly.  Men are describing the Fire incorrectly and imparting a carnal fear, often inadvertently. Fear has become such an ingrained way of life for many Christians. The victorious life of unshakable faith in God is quite rare, and, I believe, impossible without knowing the sovereignty of God and His love for us.

  It is our purpose here to try to impart Faith by teaching the truth about the Fire of God.  May you hear His voice speak out of the midst of the Fire.

  Fire and the Divine Law

  From His right hand went a fiery law for them.  (Deut.  33:2)

  Is not My Word like as a fire?  saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?  (Jer. 23:29)

  The Word of God, or particularly His Law, is like a Fire because it reveals the very character and nature of its Author.  The purpose of the Law is to define sin (1 John 3:4).  Otherwise, as Paul said, we would not have known coveting is sin, except the Law told us, "Thou shalt not covet" (Romans 7:7).

  When we hear the Word of God coming out of the midst of the Fire, we are only afraid because it unmasks the sin within our hearts which we have so desperately tried to hide all our lives.  All our defense mechanisms, self-justification, our rationalizations, our projection of guilt upon others, our blindness and refusal to see our own hearts as God sees them--all the secrets of the heart are made manifest by His Word when we hear it speaking to us out of the midst of the Fire.

  Yes, this can be fearsome.  The 10 Commandments give the general Law principle, and the Statutes define specifically how the principle is to be applied correctly.  The Judgment of the Law are the penalties for each transgression.  They are designed to restore the lawful order through restitution wherever possible, and to restore the sinner as well.

  When we become Christians, we come before the bar of God's justice as repentant sinners.  We claim the death of Jesus as payment for all our sins--past, present, and future.  From that moment on, we form a new and different relationship with the Law.  In time past we were afraid of its judgment; now we voluntarily submit ourselves to its judgment and teaching, that we may learn what sin is and how to refrain from sinning.  As Isaiah said, we begin to learn righteousness.

  Paul said that "by the law is the knowledge of sin."  (Rom. 3:20)  How could we be expected to know what sin is and do something about it, if we have no knowledge of what sin is?  And how could we know what sin is except by the Law?

  So this new relationship with the Law is known to us as learning obedience, or sanctification.  It comes AFTER and BECAUSE OF justification.  We submit ourselves to the fiery Law, and Jesus leads us through the fire of circumstances, a baptism of fire, and God begins to refine us as gold.  As we draw near to Him, He speaks to us out of the midst of the fire even as He spoke to Israel of old.

  This is as fearsome to our flesh today as it was to Israel at Sinai.  The fire activates our inner fears that always accompany the sin in our hearts.  Men today still run from the fiery Law that God spoke to men out of the midst of the Fire. They are still afraid of it, and out of this fear came the antinomian doctrine ("anti-Law").  These are those who justify their sin by saying, "We are no longer under the Law, but under grace."  What they really mean is, "We will uphold the laws that we agree with, such as those that define murder, theft, and adultery as sin; but anyone who brings up a law we disagree with or do not want to comply with--well, we are not under the law but under grace.

  And so a great many Christians today have little or no knowledge of God's Law.  It has been shuffled into the corner to gather dust like some out-of-fashion clothing.  And because of this, Biblical teaching normally is lacking in 2 areas:  (1) knowledge of the Law itself, and (2) knowledge of the penalties for its violation; or what to do about restoring the lawful order in a practical manner.  These penalties are known in Scripture as Judgments of the Law.

  I saw a bumper sticker some years ago which read:  "Jesus is coming soon, and boy is He mad!"

  This arises out of the common teaching that when Jesus comes to judge the earth, then all those bad guys out there will be in big trouble!  Well, to some degree that is true, but such teaching has a blind side because they have never made a study of God's judgments in terms of His Law.  Even human judges know that they must judge cases dispassionately and equitably.

  The first great theologian of the early Church, Origen, was fond of telling his audience that the "wrath of God" is NOT an emotional reaction, but rather had a remedial purpose.  He had drawn heavily from the writings of Philo, of Judean living in Alexandria in the first century before Christ, who well understood the purpose and function of God's Law.  What is that true purpose?  Isaiah says:

  When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.  (Is. 26:9)

  Theologically speaking, the Law can save only the righteous.  It can only condemn sinners.  Yet if one looks at the Law practically, it is everywhere apparent that the Law seeks to save sinners by means of judgment.  It teaches thieves to work for a living by demanding that they work to pay restitution to their victims.  And when the debt for their sin is paid in full, they are no longer under the Law, but are free to work for their own benefit.  In this way, the Law weeks to restore and educate the sinner, rather than destroy him, maim him, or label him and ex-convict, thereby hindering his ability to work.

  The Baptism of Fire

  The first and most immediate way in which we may experience the Fire of God is by the baptism of Fire.  This does not mean that we must be burned alive in a literal flame.  An early Church leader 1800 years ago, Clement of Alexandria (Origen's teacher), described it:

  Fire is conceived of as a beneficient and strong power, destroying what is base, preserving what is good; therefore this fire is called "wise" by the Prophets . . .  We say that the fire purifies not the flesh but sinful souls, not an all-devouring vulgar (earthly, natural) fire, but the "wise fire" as we call it, the fire that "pierceth the soul" which passes through it.  (Stromata VII, 2:5-12)

  In another place Clement again describes these fiery judgments of God as being "saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion."  (Stromata VI,6)  Where did he and many others like him get this teaching?  They got it from the Word of God, particularly where it teaches about the baptism of Fire.

  In Malachi 3:2 and 3 the prophet says:

  2 But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap;

  3 And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

  Four hundred years after Malachi penned these words, John the Baptist said of Jesus in Matt. 3:11,12:

  11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE;

  12 Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable FIRE.

  Jesus Himself said in Luke 12:49 (lit. translation):

  I came to send FIRE on the earth; and what will I do if it is already kindled?

  There is no record that Jesus ever burned anyone with fire when He came 2,000 years ago.  He did not call fire down from heaven upon His enemies.  However, His ministry did burn the chaff out of people, most notably His disciples.  It was not a literal fire, but the spiritual fire of tribulation, trials, and testings of their faith.

  t was a common teaching in the early Church that the baptism of fire was to be applied in two different ages: (1) in the present age, when we repent, or accuse ourselves before God, submitting to His discipline, even as David did; and (2) in the next age, when our works are tried by fire (1 Cor. 3:12-15).  Both occasions were considered to be baptisms of fire.  Those who wished to avoid the second one must submit to the first.  In either case, they said, we must enter the Kingdom, or Paradise, by means of the Flaming Sword of the Cherubim who guard the Tree of life (Genesis 3:24).

  Not that this concept was especially new, for all of the men and women trained of God throughout the Old Testament went through the same crucible of fire.  Jesus intimated that this Fire had already been kindled.  It is the way God has always refined His people to separate dross from gold.  It is the way God removes the chaff from the wheat in our hearts.  For thousands of years, God had dealt with His people by this "fire".  He has done it for 2 reasons:  (1) To cause us to know Him as He is, for He has revealed Himself to us as Fire; and (2) to train us for service.

  We are all born with hearts that are "desperately wicked."  The gold in our heart is alloyed, mixed with impurities not readily apparent until He sits as the great Refiner.  He puts our hearts into various solutions and begins to stir the mixture, patiently waiting for the big reaction.  When the time is right, suddenly a moment of crisis hits, and a lesser metal crystallizes and falls to the bottom or foams to the top.  The impurities are dealt with one by one, using different solutions, until finally a fine gold powder falls out of solution, ready to be put in the fire to melt it into a solid lump.

  When people face adversity, they often go to their pastors to find out why God allowed such awful things to happen to them.  They get many different responses, but often the pastor quickly tries to justify God.  "Don't blame it on God; it's the devils fault," they say.  Or some say, "God is obviously very angry with you; you must have done something terrible to deserve God's wrath like that." (One of Job's friends believed this, but he was wrong.)

  More often than not, God is merely refining you.  It's not that you have done something bad that brought God's judgment upon you.  We all go through such trials periodically.  It is, of course, because we are all alloyed, so in that sense it is because of sin within us.  But He does not subject us to the fire for the purpose of destroying us, but of refining us to teach us righteousness.

  He is, after all, our heavenly Father.  He is not like imperfect earthly parents, who often punish rather than chastise.   If they are mentally imbalanced, they have even been known to continue beating a child until he is seriously injured or even dead.  I have heard of some parents even burning their children, supposedly to teach them obedience. But God is not like this.  God's judgments arise with healing in His wings, not to roast us to death, but to heal us of all ills, the greatest of which is the sinsick soul. Until we know this side of God's nature, we do not really know Him very well at all.

  Moses' Example

  Moses learned firsthand how God trains His people.  Circumstances forced Moses into the harsh wilderness, where the sun of righteousness beat down upon him, driving him by heat, by hunger, and by thirst into the merciless sand.

  Moses faced many adverse circumstances during the next 40 years, which taught him how to rely upon God in numerous impossible situations.  In trying circumstances, where he could turn to no one else, he had only one avenue to walk-prayer to God.  When Moses emerged from the wilderness 40 years later, he was a very different person.  He had been refined 40 years by the Fiery Sword of the Cherubim into the type of man capable of forming a new nation and leading them to the Promised Land.

  After 40 years of training, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush to call him into service.  The burning bush that he saw was his own heart--a natural, earthly bush indwelt by the presence of God.  A bush that was saturated with Fire, but yet not consumed  A bush that could dwell with the "everlasting burnings" (Isaiah 33:14,15) and live.

  After Moses, it became Israel's turn to learn the same lessons in the same harsh wilderness where Moses had met God.  God led them first into a trap by the Red Sea.  He put Israel's gold into a refining solution which suddenly brought out their inner FEAR of Pharaoh.  How else could this worthless impurity have been made manifest?  God did this on purpose, not to make them afraid, but to bring their fear to light so it could be eliminated as dross by the mighty hand of God as He opened a way through the Red Sea.God led them through hunger and thirst and through enemy territory.  It was no picnic on the way to the Kingdom.  It was hard training.  But God will have no spoiled brats inheriting His Kingdom.  Heb. 12:6 says:

  6 For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.If anyone would rather go the easier route or if any would envy the wicked who seem to have it all, keep in mind that this is the mark of an illegitimate son, not a true son of God (Hebrews 12:8).

  His sons have a great task ahead of ruling over cities, regions, and nations.  He will give these jobs to those who are called.  And those He calls, He also trains in order to qualify them for rulership.  And so He comes to purge His people.  He sits as a refiner of silver and of gold.  He comes as the Sun of righteousness to heal us inwardly of the pollutions of the world.  He comes as a Fire to try our faith as gold (1 Peter 1:7).  This is the true baptism of Fire, which He has already kindled upon the earth.

  The Fiery Law Corrects us

  A truck driver recently was called to haul a load of zinc.  He had just finished hauling a load of tomatoes and neglected to wash out the inside of the truck before loading the zinc.  When he reached his destination and opened up the back end of the truck to unload the zinc, it exploded in his face.  No one had told him that the acid in tomatoes would react in this way to zinc.

  Zinc is one of the impurities that must be removed from gold in the refining process.  It is highly volatile.  As a mineral, it is also very bitter tasting.  Many of us have zinc (bitterness, wormwood) in our hearts.  Someone comes along with acid behavior, and we explode in his face!  There are many tomatoes out there whom God uses to refine the zinc out of our gold.

  For every zinc problem, there is a corresponding tomato.  That is a spiritual Law.  The dross must be removed before our hears can be refined by the baptism of fire into pure gold.  It will not leave our hearts by itself it must first manifest itself, crystallize, or bubble to the surface before Jesus removes it out of our lives.

  Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart. (Leviticus 19:17)

  Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of they people. (Leviticus (19:18)

  This kind of impurity does NOT automatically flee from our hearts the moment we are justified.  It is something that Christians learn as a part of the sanctification process.  There are many such impurities in our hearts, but as we follow Him through the Fire, listening to His voice calling to us, our faith begins to grow.  We soon come to see a tremendous truth:

  All good things work together for good to them that love God. (Romans 8:28)

  No matter how hot the fire, no matter how desolate the wilderness around us, the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings.   The crucible of God shall bring forth pure gold, for the Word spoken out of the midst of the fire shall not return to Him void, but shall accomplish its intended purpose.

  The justice of God's Law demands restitution and correction.  All sin is reckoned as a debt to be paid to the victims of injustice, and the judgments are always in direct proportion to the magnitude of the crime (sin).  For theft, the judgment is to repay the victim double.  For any accidental destruction of a man's person or property, the one liable must pay all costs.  These penalties not only recompense the victim, but they train thieves to work rather than to steal.  They train careless men to be careful.

  God's law is based upon the principle that justice is never satisfied until full restitution has been paid to all the victims of injustice.  Nowadays, under man's twisted system, we incarcerate the thief, and the poor victim is almost never repaid.  Furthermore, the thief's penalty seldom fits his crime.  He is not corrected, because his sin is not treated as a debt to his victim, but to "society" in general.  He does not work off the debt.  He only rots in prison with nothing to do but brew about vengeance and learn from his buddies how not to get caught the next time.  Justice is seldom done in such cases.

  These laws of men have conditioned us to think in terms of punishment for the criminal, rather than righting the injustice.  And when that does not seem to work, we get mad and demand more punishment (stiffer or mandatory prison sentences).  We have a punishment mentality, rather than having the mind of Christ, which would lead us to know the precise measure of restitution to be paid that would correct the injustice and restore the lawful order.

  That means when we sentence a thief to five years in prison, he emerges still a thief, because the victim has not been repaid his costs.  The Bible makes no provision for a prison system, because such a system does nothing to re-establish the lawful order.  It only punishes the sinner.

  In cases where restitution is impossible, due to the nature of the crime, the penalty is death.  In cases of premeditated murder, the murderer is incapable of repaying the victim two lives.  In cases of adultery, the adulterer is incapable of restoring the lawful order.  What is done cannot be undone except by the direct power of God.

  And so in such cases, God instructed earthly courts to set aside the case and await the final judgment at the end of the age.  The sinner was put to death to await his judgment.

  There were cases, however, where God mercifully intervened to judge such cases immediately.  In those cases, the murderers were not put to death, but merely placed in the hands of God, the highest and most merciful Judge.  For instance, Cain was sent into exile.  David, too, who murdered Uriah, was dealt with directly by God.  He submitted to the baptism of fire, the troubles that beset him from then on, and God refined his heart as gold.

  Righteous Judgment Purifies the Sinner

  The more one studies God's Law, particularly the spirit behind it, the more one is stuck by the wisdom and love of its Author.  There is no judgment without remedy.  Men punish; God purifies.  When men judge, they determine penalties that are invariable either too harsh or too lenient.  When the great American Prison Experiment was born in 1796 with Philadelphia's first "penitentiary", the criminal was supposed to be put into solitary confinement with nothing to do but read the Bible and pray.

  "Reformatories" were next set up under a slightly different theory.  But a simple glance at the prison system today should suffice to tell us that they do not reform or make men penitent.  Any criminals who amend their ways do so IN SPITE OF the prison system.  It is a tough road, however, since they are never really forgiven, never again have equal citizenship rights, and are continually handicapped in trying to obtain employment.

  Such is the fire of man's wrath.  It punishes without purifying.  It spends astronomical amounts of money to obtain "justice", only to destroy the sinner totally or partially.

  The ancient Greek word for fire in PUR.  It is the root of a number of English words used today, such as PURGE and PURIFY.  This is what the fire of God does, for it characterizes the very nature of God and His Law.

  In the next chapter, we shall study the nature of the lake of fire that burns with fire and brimstone (Rev. 20:15 & 21:8).  We will see that Jesus had already kindled a fire on the earth.  He came as fire with a baptism to go with it.  He continues to come as fire to all who will follow Him into the crucible.  And He shall yet come as fire.  Even so, Lord, come quickly.

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  Chapter 3:  The Lake of Fire, or the Molten Sea

  In our previous chapter, we established that the Fire of God describes both His divine nature and law (word), which expresses it. We saw from Isaiah 26:9 that the purpose of God's judgments (i.e., penalties for sin) was to bring the inhabitants of the world to a place where they would learn righteousness. We saw how the Fire of God purifies us, for God sits as a Refiner of gold and silver (Malachi 3:2 and 3).

  Justice is never satisfied until full restitution has been paid to all the victims of injustice. It is bad enough that our civil courts seldom recompense the victims. But the civil courts ultimately reflect the will of the people. If the Church had not abandoned God's true judicial system long ago, the civil courts would not have done so either. The laws and government of a nation simply reflect the religious view of its citizens, except in cases where one nation is occupying another.

  In the case of the judicial system itself, how can we expect our judges to establish justice in the courts, prescribing judgments that are neither too lenient nor too harsh, when the Church itself prescribes an infinite and horrible punishment upon all sinners alike, regardless of the nature of their crime? The courts are merely reflecting the values of the people.

  Which is worse, to sentence a man to five years in prison for theft, or to sentence him to a torture chamber for all eternity? Civil judges today know that the punishment should vary, depending on the severity of the crime. Yet much of the Church is still influenced by the Roman logic that the purpose of punishment is to deter crime, rather than to restore justice. With this mindset, it is logical that if punishments are severe enough, law and order will be maintained, and the people will be obedient.

  If they had been students of the divine law, they would have understood that the purpose of judgment is to restore the lawful order by restoring the lost property to the victim, while restoring the sinner to grace and forgiveness.

  The White Throne Judgment

  In Revelation 20:11-15 we are given a description of the great White Throne Judgment. John says,

  11 And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

  Take note that these men are all judged on the basis of their deeds. We are saved by grace apart from our works, but when it comes to the judgment, those not justified by the blood of Jesus Christ are judged according to their works. God does not just lump everyone together and give them all the same judgment, as is commonly taught. We will prove this as we proceed. John continues:

  14 And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

  At first glance, this seems to imply that everyone receives the same judgment. But if this were so, then how could they be judged according to their deeds? The lake of fire is a general picture of the process of judgment-NOT a specific judgment in and of itself. The lake of fire is the fiery law itself, and the law consists of many different types of judgment, which fit the specific crime committed.

  This is made apparent by Daniel's description of this same White Throne Judgment in Daniel 7:9 and 10.

  9 I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His vesture was like white snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire. 10 A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before Him; thousands upon thousands were attending Him, and myriads upon myriads were standing before Him; the court sat, and the books were opened.

  What John called "the lake of fire" in the book of Revelation, Daniel describes as "a river of fire." God's Throne itself is pictured as a fire, which then flows like a river out upon the people standing before Him. Very few today would describe the lake of fire as Daniel did!

  The meaning is quite clear. The river, or lake of fire is God's justice being administered to the sinners. What is the nature of that justice? As always, it is defined by God's Law, for all sin is judged by the Law.

  A throne is a universal symbol of the law by which a king rules, or judges. Thus, the "fiery Law" of Deut. 33:2 is pictured in vision form as a fiery throne in Daniel 7:9. They are one and the same.

  Is the Fire Literal or Spiritual?

  Most people would agree that the lake of fire is indeed God's judgment upon sinners. The real disagreement comes in defining the nature of that judgment, that is, the specifics of how it works out in practice. Is it a "literal" fire? Is it a "spiritual" fire? We believe it is not literal, but it is certainly of a spiritual nature, because the Law is spiritual (Romans 7:14).

  All of our misunderstandings of the lake of fire would easily be solved by a study of God's Law. After all, this is the most relevant factor in this matter of judgment. Paul says in Romans 6:23, "for the wages of sin is death." Ezekiel 18:20 confirms this: "The person ["soul"] who sins will die."

  Anyone who studies the divine law will see that death is the worst possible punishment that can be meted out. Even when a man was guilty of multiple murder, the maximum penalty was death. There is no sin worthy of being burned at the stake, much less being burned in a torture chamber for an eternity.

  There were some instances where the dead body of the offender was to be cremated rather than buried (Joshua 7:25; Lev. 21:9). This was the most dishonorable way to die in Scripture. In the New Testament times, the bodies of such criminals were thrown into the valley of Hinnom, which was Jerusalem's city dump. It constantly burned, as even modern dumps do. In the Greek, this valley was called "Gehenna," and Jesus used it as a warning in Mark 9:42-50.

  47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell [gehenna], 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

  Take note that the worms here are not immortal or fireproof. The city dump constantly burned, and in the places where no flame had yet reached, there were countless worms, or maggots, to consume the garbage. But there is no record that anyone was ever cast into gehenna as a means of torture, except in ancient times, when the Canaanites caused their children to die by fire to the god, Molech. Jeremiah speaks of this in 32:35.

  35 And they built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.

  This ungodly practice, performed in the valley of Ben-hinnom (i.e., "the son of Hinnom," or gehenna in Greek) was a direct result of their religious doctrine of the fiery underworld, a teaching that was well developed in Egypt, Babylon, and Canaan. The Hebrew Bible's description of the state of the dead stands in stark contrast, and the few times it does speak of fire are quite obviously symbolic.

  When Jesus spoke of gehenna, he was simply quoting Isaiah 66:24, where the prophet speaks of the final battle at the end of the age. He closes with this description, which Jesus ascribes to gehenna:

              24 Then they shall go forth and look on THE CORPSES of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence to all mankind.

  This is hardly a description of eternal punishment in some spiritual torture chamber. It is very much an earthly scene, the kind we might expect to "go forth" and look upon after a disastrous war. On the other hand, it certainly is representative of the lake of fire, as we shall see. Yet there is no indication from this verse or from Jesus' quotation of it that men will be eternally tortured in gehenna. Torture was not a lawful biblical judgment.

  Although some parallel does exist between gehenna (the city dump) and the lake of fire, the valley of Ben-hinnom, or "gehenna," was nothing like a lake. Jesus used the parallel in order to describe two things about the lake of fire: (1) the people would be outside the New Jerusalem; and (2) it would be a place of shame. Beyond this, the theme ends and only resurfaces under a different name and another kind of symbolism.

  John did not call it gehenna, because the purpose of the literal gehenna did not adequately describe the fire flowing from God's throne, nor was gehenna a part of the temple symbolism which was John's primary theme throughout the book of Revelation.

  The Laver, or the Molten Sea

  One must always keep in mind that the book of Revelation was written by a Hebrew. He did not interpret the Old Testament from a Greek or Egyptian perspective. His focus was upon heavenly things, particularly the True Temple in heaven. The religious symbolism of the earthly temple referred only to the heavenly reality and must be viewed in that light. John views all of history as a fulfillment of prophecy displayed in the ceremonies and vessels of the temple.

  In view of our present topic, we must study the laver, the place of cleansing and purification for the priests as they washed themselves (baptism), the vessels, and the sacrifices. This "water baptism" set up in the days of Moses, was itself only an earthly manifestation of the heavenly baptism, the baptism of fire.

  And so, John points to the temple laver and calls it the lake of fire. In essence, as we shall see, the picture is meant to portray the Refiner's Fire, complete with the cauldron of alloyed mineral and its impurities, as the Refiner begins His work.

  The book of Revelation is written from the perspective of a priest who is familiar with all the rites and ceremonies that had been performed in the Temple of Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 A.D. John was apparently a former priest in Jerusalem. Of this we have evidence from a letter of Polycrates (later bishop of Ephesus, where John also ministered). His letter is preserved by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in the fourth century.

  "For great luminaries sleep in Asia, and they will rise again at the last day of the advent of the Lord . . . And there is also John, who leaned on the Lord's breast, who was a priest wearing the mitre, and martyr and teacher, and he sleeps at Ephesus." (Eccl. Hist., III, xxxi)

  A footnote explains that the word "mitre" here is petalon, which is used in the Septuagint of the high priest's diadem, but what it means here has never been discovered. For some strange reason, Eusebius again quotes Polycrates in Vol. V, ch.13, where he uses the term "breastplate," rather than mitre. Whatever the case, it is clear that John wrote from the perspective of a priest and may have been revered as a sort of "high priest" of the Church in Ephesus.

  Both the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon used water in their lavers, rather than molten gold. Yet the water was meant to portray molten gold. Gold is the divine nature, and so the laver itself would portray God's refining process. In our fleshly state, we could not survive a baptism of fiery gold, and so water baptism became the substitute and type of the true baptism of fire.

  In the days of Solomon's Temple, the laver was called "the molten sea" (1 Kings 7:23). When gold has been refined to its absolutely pure state, molten gold is as clear as crystal. If Solomon would have filled the Temple's laver with pure gold and melted it, it would have looked like "a sea of glass like crystal" (Rev. 4:6). In Revelation 15:2 John described it as "a sea of glass mixed with fire."

  What John saw in heaven was the laver, the lake of fire, as pictured in the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon. The laver was used to wash (baptize) in order to be cleansed, or purified ceremonially. The purpose of the law was to teach righteousness to the inhabitants of the world. The purpose of fire is to purify. So it does not strain our imagination in the least to consider both the laver and the lake of fire to be for the purpose of divine purification, rather than a place where men are tortured forever.

  The lake of fire is portrayed in Scripture as the final place where the great Refiner sits to purify the hearts of men and prepare them to dwell in the divine presence in fellowship with God. This is the true purpose of the laver. At present only the true priests of God and of Christ (Rev. 20:6), that is, Christians in this present age, have access to that great laver. Even as the Levitical priests of the Old Testament purified themselves daily at the laver, so also are we baptized to signify that God has purified our hearts. In that final Age, the Lake of Fire shall be applied universally to those in need of purification.

  Fire and Brimstone

  There are some who argue that the fire must be a literal place of burning and torture, because it is often associated with "brimstone." Revelation 21:8 says,

  8 But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

  Does the "brimstone" prove that this is a literal fire that tortures men? Actually, the very opposite is true. Brimstone is sulphur, as any concordance will show. The original Greek word for sulphur, or "brimstone," is theion. Its root is theo, which is the same word usually translated "God." (Note: Theology is the study of God.)

  Sulphur, or theion, was considered to be sacred to the ancient Greeks. It was used to consecrate for divine service, to PURIFY, and to cleanse. They used it in religious rites to purify their temples. They would even rub it on their bodies to signify consecration to God. In its verb form the word theou means "to hallow, make divine, or to dedicate to God."

  And so, to a Greek reader, a lake of fire and brimstone (sulphur) would signify a lake of divine purification or consecration to God. Consequently, in Virgil's classic Greek epic, The Aeneid, 741-742, 745-747) we read:

              "Therefore we souls are trained with punishment

              And pay with suffering for old felonies--

              Some are hung up helpless to the winds;

              The stain of sin is cleansed for others of us

              In the trough of a huge whirlpool, or with fire

              Burned out of us-each one of us we suffer

              The afterworld we deserve."

  This "fire and sulphur," taken symbolically by the more educated or by the higher degrees of religion, was only literalized by the uneducated. The priests generally allowed them to be deceived, of course, because they also believed that fear of fire was a good religious motivator.

  The early Christian Church of the first few centuries after Christ knew this. This is shown by their writings. Unfortunately, some also believed in "the doctrine of Reserve." That is, they would withhold some teachings from the novices until they were mature Christians. They did this specifically with the teaching on the lake of fire, allowing novices to take their words literally, rather than spiritually, so that they would be better motivated to turn to Christ.

  Exactly how much this contributed to the rise of hellfire teaching is hard to say, but it certainly was a factor. They may have justified such a practice in their minds, but with our modern 20/20 hindsight we can see where it led the Church in later years.

  The Early Church's Teaching on Fire

  The essential view that we will present here was held by most of the early Christian Church as well. In support of this statement, we shall endeavor to present to the reader a few samples from the most influential of the Christian leaders in the first few centuries. Our purpose is to show that our view is not strange or out of step with at least most of the early Church fathers.

  1. Clement of Alexandria (150-213 A.D.)

  Clement's full Latin name was Titus Flavius Clemens and was related in some way to the Roman Emperors, though it is not known just how. He was born in Athens and later moved to Alexandria, the hub of Greek culture and religion. Being very well educated, he started a Christian school there, with the aim of explaining Christ to the Greek world. He also wrote a book called Miscellanies, in which "the task Clement had set himself was to make a summary of Christian knowledge up to his time" (Donald Attwater, Saints of the East, p. 37).

  As we saw in Chapter Two, Clement believed the fire to be an instrument of God leading to conversion. He considered the Greek idea of fire to be far more scriptural than the Egyptian view, which one writer described as follows:

  "The Egyptian Hell was particularly impressive and highly refined . . . Confinement and imprisonment played an important role. The tortures were bloody, and punishment by fire was frequent and terrifying. . . . When it came to the topography of Hell, the Egyptian imagination knew no limits . . . Intermediate states or phases in the other-worldly process of purification did not exist." (Jacques de Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, pp. 19, 20)

  On the other hand, the Platonic Greek view had some remarkable likeness to the Hebrew view. The above author attributes Clement's view on purification to Plato, who in turn got it from Virgil and other early Greek poets. However, the view of fire as a lawful cleanser from sin, rather than a means of torture, is well established in the Old Testament as well as the New. Jacques de Goff continues by writing on page 53,

  "From the Old Testament, Clement and Origen took the notion that fire is a divine instrument, and from the New Testament the idea of baptism by fire (from the Gospels) and the idea of a purificatory trial after death (from Paul)."

  In Clement's own words, he says plainly:

  "God does not wreak vengeance, for vengeance is to return evil for evil, and God punishes only with an eye to the good." (Stromata, 7, 26)

  Clement headed the Christian school of thought in Alexandria from 190-203 A.D. He had to flee for his life during the persecution of Serverus in 203, and he spent his remaining years teaching in Antioch and Palestine. And so his most brilliant student in Alexandria took his place as head of the school. His name was Origen.

  2. Origen of Alexandria (180-253 A.D.)

  Like his predecessor, Origen was not the bishop of the city, and yet he was by far the most influential Christian for the next century. He was the first to write a systematic theological commentary on the whole Bible. He took great pains to learn Hebrew, not only that he might better argue the case for Christianity among the Judeans, but also that he might correct some of the mistranslations of the Septuagint Greek version.

  Around 230 A.D. he visited Antioch, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, and though he was only a presbyter (not even a priest), he was asked to speak from the pulpit. He accepted. When Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria back home, heard of it, he was filled with envy and rage, demanding that he cease immediately and return to Alexandria. Origen meekly returned, and the incident was forgotten.

  A few years later, Origen again went on the same trip and was this time prevailed upon to be ordained a priest, so he could teach from the pulpit. He accepted. When Demetrius heard of it, he was again filled with rage and envy. Origen was excommunicated from Alexandria on the grounds that he had emasculated himself in his youth and was therefore not allowed to preach from the pulpit. (Origen had taken Jesus' words in Matt. 19:12 a bit too literally in his youthful zeal, but had repented of it afterward.) Demetrius quoted Deut. 23:1 to support his case, although he had never raised the issue in the 20 years prior to that time. Yet the bishop of Rome at the time agreed with the verdict, though none of the other Palestinian or Greek churches did. Soon the issue died down and was forgotten for another 150 years.

  And so Origen spent the last twenty years of his life in Palestine, where a wealthy patron hired six secretaries to help him write his books. His writings were the most influential in the whole Greek world, though he was relatively unknown in the Latin West. In his book, Against Celsus IV, 13 Origen continues the teaching of Clement by writing:

  "The Sacred Scripture does, indeed, call our God "a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29), and says that "rivers of fire go before His face: (Dan. 7:10), and that "He shall come as a refiner's fire and purify the people" (Mal. 3:2,3). As therefore, God is a consuming fire, what is it that is to be consumed by Him? We say it is wickedness, and whatever proceeds from it, such as is figuratively called "wood, hay, and stubble" (1 Cor. 3:12-15) which denote the evil works of man. Our God is a consuming fire in this sense; and He shall come as a refiner's fire to purify rational nature from the alloy of wickedness and other impure matter which has adulterated the intellectual gold and silver; consuming whatever evil is admixed in all the soul."

  We dealt with the topic of the Great White Throne Judgment earlier. In his book On Prayer XXIX, 15 Origen further writes:

  "They are purged with the "wise fire" or made to pay in prison every debt up to the last farthing . . . to cleanse them from the evils committed in their error . . . Thus they are delivered from all the filth and blood with which they had been so filthied and defiled that they could not even think about being saved from their own perdition . . ."

  The teachings of Clement and Origen were NOT unusual. The basic view of the divine Fire restoring sinners was the majority opinion for many centuries in the Greek-speaking Christian Church. Unfortunately, many in the Latin Church of the West did not read the Scriptures in their Greek original, but only had a very inferior Old Latin version which Jerome eventually re-translated as the Latin Vulgate. And so the Latin West did not set the theological tone for the Church until Augustine in 400 A.D.

  3. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389 A.D.)

  St. Gregory was well educated in Alexandria and Athens. Having a call to the ministry, he went to Pontus with St. Basil, where the two compiled a collection of the writings of Origen, called Philokalia, or "Love of the Beautiful." Gregory was a quiet man, a perpetual student, the kind of person who spent his whole life studying, having no desire to make a name for himself. However, the people would not allow this. In 361 Gregory was forcibly seized by the people and compelled to become ordained as a priest. So much for the quiet life.

  He then pastored the church at Sasima, a village in Cappadocia. For a few months Gregory was also bishop of Constantinople, where it is said he accomplished more in a few months there than in twenty years in Caesarea. Gregory was one of the four Eastern Doctors of the Church. In addition to that, according to Robert Payne:

  "Of all the Fathers of the Church, he was the only one to be granted after his death the title "Theologian," which until this time was reserved for an apostle -- John of Patmos." (The Fathers of the Eastern Church, p. 179)

  I include these credentials to show that this was no insignificant, back-woods, self-styled pastor. Nor was he an ambitious, self-aggrandizing leader as many were in his day. Gregory of Nazianzus was one of the most prominent Christian leaders of his day and well loved for the fruit of the Spirit, which he manifested daily and consistently. In fact, this red-haired Cappodocian had quite a sense of humor and was the only one who was known to have ever dared to laugh at his friend Basil, who was very stern and austere, the father of Eastern monasticism. At any rate, Gregory wrote this about the lake of fire:

  "These (apostates), if they will, may go our way, which indeed is Christ's; but if not, let them go their own way. In another place perhaps they shall be baptized with fire, that last baptism, which is not only very painful, but enduring also; which eats up, as if it were hay, all defiled matter, and consumes all vanity and vice." (Orat. XXXIX, 19)

  Thus, he calls the lake of fire a "baptism" whose purpose is to "consume all vanity and vice." He does say it is "very painful," but then, I often find that laver baptism very painful myself. Yet I submit to it, because I know it is God's method of purification.

  4. Gregory of Nyassa (335-394 A.D.)

  St. Basil, the dear friend of Gregory of Nazianzus, had a younger brother also named Gregory. He was a bishop of Nyassa in Cappadocia. Robert Payne writes of him:

  "The Emperor Theodosius had recognized him as the supreme authority in all matters of theological orthodoxy, and . . . he was treated with extraordinary respect." (Robert Payne, The Fathers of the Eastern Church, p. 164)

  Again, the same historian says:

  "Of the three Cappadocian Fathers Gregory of Nyassa is the one closest to us, the least proud, the most subtle, the one most committed to the magnificence of man. That strange, simple, happy, unhappy, intelligent, and God-tormented man was possessed by angels . . . He employed all those resources of Greek philosophy to help him in his task . . . In Eastern Christianity his Great Catechism follows immediately after Origen's On First Principles. These were the two seminal works, close-woven, astonishingly lucid, final . . . Athanasius was the hammer, Basil the stern commander, Gregory of Nazianzus the tormented singer, and it was left to Gregory of Nyassa to be the man enchanted with Christ . . . Four hundred years after his death, at the Seventh General Council held in A.D. 787, the assembled princes of the Church granted him a title which exceeded in their eyes all the other titles granted to men: he was called "Father of Fathers." (Ibid., pp. 168, 169)

  This was an ironic twist of history, for that same council also pronounced a curse upon all who taught that the fire of God would cleanse, rather than torture men for eternity! One might think that perhaps Gregory was out of step with mainstream Christian thought for believing and teaching the restoration of all mankind, but Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia says of him,

  "Gregory's religious position was strictly orthodox" (i.e., mainstream Christianity in his day).

  In fact, he was called "the bulwark of the church against heresy," taking part in the Council of Nicea and other later Church Councils. In his book De Anima et Resurrectione, he wrote about the nature of the second death:

  "They who live in the flesh ought, by virtuous conversation, to free themselves from fleshly lusts, lest after death, they should again need another death to cleanse away the remains of fleshly vice that cling to them."

  In another book, Orat. In 1 Cor. 15:28, he wrote:

  "When all the alloy of evil that has been mixed up in the things that are, having been separated by the refining action of the cleansing fire, everything that was created by God shall have become such as it was at the beginning, when as yet it had not admitted evil . . . this is the end of our hope, that nothing shall be left contrary to the good, but that the Divine Life, penetrating all things shall absolutely destroy Death from among the things that are; sin having been destroyed before him, by means of which, as has been said death held his dominion over men."

  These are just a few of the writings of the early Church leaders. It is well known by those who have studied early Church writings, this was the majority view. In fact, it was practically the ONLY VIEW for the first few centuries after Christ and the apostles. The early Church had quite a number of doctrinal disputes, but this issue was NOT EVEN DISPUTED. In fact, it was taught by all the major theologians of the day in the churches that the Apostle Paul founded.

  Six Schools of Christian learning

  There were six Christian theological schools of thought known to have existed in the first few centuries. The first and earliest was in Alexandria, where Clement, Origen, and others clearly taught that sinners are purged by the lake of fire. The theological school at Caesaria in Palestine was next. The writings of both Origen and Clement were highly esteemed there, and Origen actually lived there during his most productive years.

  The school of Antioch, which had its feet more firmly planted on the ground, disputed with Origen over his allegorical method of interpretation, but they agreed wholeheartedly with his view on the "lake of fire." The same with the school founded at Edessa in the fifth century.

  It was only the Latin school (based in Carthage, but which included Rome) that taught the doctrine of endless punishment. Augustine, the "champion" of endless torments, wrote that there were:

  ". . . indeed VERY MANY (who) . . . do not believe that such things will be. Not that they would go counter to divine Scripture." (Enchiridion, 112)

  Augustine was the most influential of the Latin Church fathers. He was a teacher of Rhetoric first in Carthage and later in Milan, Italy, where he was converted. He then retired from teaching and moved back to North Africa, where he was soon ordained as a priest and later as the bishop of the town of Hippo.

  Before his conversion in 386 A.D. Augustine had been of the sect of the Manichees for nine years. This was to be both an asset and a liability to him in later years. It was an asset in that the Manichees had been fond of quoting Paul's views on predestination, which happened to agree with their eastern philosophy. Augustine was to become virtually the first Christian bishop (that we know of) since the Apostle Paul to teach the doctrine of predestination.

  On the other hand, the Manichees had also instilled in Augustine the idea that the end of all things, the goal of history, was a final separation of the kingdom of Light from the kingdom of Darkness. He incorporated this teaching more fully than any before him in his idea that eventually all sinners would be separated from all the righteous, and that they would eternally exist in that sinful state. Most of the Church before him, particularly in the East, had taught that one day evil and darkness would cease to exist, that God may be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). We shall explain this more fully in our next chapters.

  Augustine's rigorous views stated that God had predestined a few for salvation but for most to be tormented eternally. His view of predestination was later toned down by the Roman Church, in order to accommodate fully the view of eternal torment without portraying God to be overly unjust. These are topics that we will deal with fully in a later chapter as well.

  The Manichean sect was founded around 240 A.D. by a Persian named Mani. It was a cross between Persian, Dualism, Buddhism and Christianity. From Persia they adopted the idea that good and evil were both eternal forces, or kingdoms. They were said to be of equal strength, although each would ebb and flow at various times. At present the light and darkness were mixed, and the goal of history was to separate them by a wall. Yet evil would always exist, they said, because it was eternal and therefore just as powerful as good.

  Bishop Archelaus in 277 A.D. wrote a book against the Manicheans called The Acts of the Disputation with Mani the Heretic. He argued against Manicheanism (and thus also against Augustine) by proving that one day all evil-including death itself-would cease to exist (1 Cor. 15:25,26).

  Titus, bishop of Bostra, also wrote a book around 364 A.D. entitled, Against Manicheans, where he said,

  "The punishments of God are Holy, as they are remedial and salutary in their effect upon transgressors; for they are inflicted, not to preserve them in their wickedness, but to make them cease from their sins. The abyss . . . is indeed the place of punishment, but it is not endless. The anguish of their sufferings compels them to break off from their sins."

  Augustine's theological opponents all argued against his views on the grounds that he had gotten his theology from the Manicheans. Some of these charges are true, others are not. It is clear, however, that the nine years he spent as a Manichee oriented him to think more deeply in areas that the Church had not thought of before that time. It depends upon one's point of view as to whether Augustine was justified in his various views. From our perspective, we note only that his City of God ends with the final separation of good and evil, light and darkness, and that both are eternally preserved in their respective places. Augustine would certainly not have come to this conclusion on his own; he really did get it from the Manichees.

  One other very influential theologian was Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428). He asked, "Who is so great a fool" as to believe that God would resurrect men merely to destroy them forever with torments? (Fragment IV)

  During the Dark Ages, when the doctrine of eternal torment was "orthodox" in Europe, its judicial shadow came with it-burning people at the stake. It was argued that God was going to throw them into an endless torment of fire anyway, so the Church was only initiating it a few insignificant years early. Besides, such "justice" served to instill fear into the hearts of people of going against the Church in any way-not only to avoid the stake, but to avoid the burning hell.

  This tactic was certainly effective; no one can argue that point. But if one has opportunity to study the divine justice of Bible Law, it soon becomes apparent that such punishment is of heathen origin, rather that of the Bible. In every nation, the popular belief about divine justice has always served as a model for the justice of man. In the Dark Ages, they thought they were imitating God; in reality, however, they were imitating the heathen who burned their children to Molech in the valley of Ben-hinnom.

  In Chapter Four we will show biblically that the Greek and Hebrew words for "eternal" and "everlasting" are mistranslations brought in through the Latin Vulgate around 400 A.D. Then we will deal with the more positive subject of God's great Restoration.

  Back to Index

  Chapter 4:  Does God Punish Endlessly?

  In this chapter we will briefly prove from plain Scripture that God's punishments are NOT endless.  The English translations which use the term "eternal" and "everlasting" in relation to both divine punishment and life in the coming age are actually mistranslations of the original Hebrew and Greek.  Furthermore, these incorrect translations do away with the Hebrew concept of the Kingdom Age, the Messianic Age, or as it is usually called in the Bible, "The Age".

  "Everlasting" in the Old Testament"

  Whenever our English versions use the term "everlasting" or "eternal" in the Old Testament, the original Hebrew word is normally olam. It actually means "to hide, keep secret, obscure".  It is best expressed by the English word "obscurity".  In actual usage, the word refers to an INDEFINITE period of time, but one which is NOT eternal -- that is, an age.  The End of that age is obscure and generally unknown, but not endless.

  For example, in Jonah 2:6, the prophet prays for deliverance out of the belly of the great fish.  He says:

  6  I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever (olam); yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord, My God.

  Did Jonah remain in the belly of the fish for eternity?  Obviously not, or he would have been recycled fish bait many times over.  In  the darkness he had no concept of time, and so those  three days and nights are described as being olam, an obscure amount of time.

  Another example where olam is clearly a limited period of time, or an age, is found in Exodus 21:6.  It specifies that a servant may serve his master "for ever" (olam).  This is not for eternity, but only for the remaining life time of the servant.  No one could know how long the servant would remain alive, so the amount of time was indefinite, or obscure.

  One very interesting verse is Psalm 45:6.  It shows that there is time AFTER olam.  This proves beyond doubt that olam itself cannot refer to eternity, because when the Psalmist wished to express eternity, he had to say "olam va ad", or "the age and beyond".

  6  Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever (olam va ad, "the age and beyond").

  There are many other examples where olam is obviously a limited period of time, but we do not wish to bore the reader unduly.  We shall simply list a few from the Psalms in the event that some readers may wish to study this further:  Psalm 78:66; 79:13; 86:12; 89:1; 110:4; 112:6; 115:8.

  "Everlasting" in the New Testament

  The New Testament was written in Greek.  It often quotes verses from the Old Testament, and when it does so, it usually quotes from the Septuagint.  This was the Greek translation of the Hebrew O.T. that was used widely during the time of Christ and the Apostles.

  In Hebrews 1:8 the author quotes from Psalm 45:6.  In this verse, olam is rendered by the Greek word aion. Compare also Hebrews 5:6 and Psalm 110:4.  This is the closest Greek equivalent and thus was used by the Septuagint.  And so we can safely say that aion is meant to convey the same meaning as the Hebrew concept of olam.

  But what about the Greek word itself?  Does it really mean an age, or a limited period of time?  Yes, it does.  It does not really carry the idea of "obscurity", but is DOES mean an age just like olam.

  Let us prove this.  One of the most obvious N.T. passages where aion refers to an age is found in Matthew 13, where Jesus interprets His own parables.  We will begin with verse 38 in order to show how obscure the KJV is in this matter:

  38 The field is the world (kosmos) . . .

  39 . . . the harvest is the end of the world (aion).

  40 . . . So shall it be in the end of this world (aion).

  Most Bibles have a marginal reference here which explains that in verses 39 and 40 it should read "AGE", rather than "world".  How do they know?  Simply because the Greek word is aion, rather than kosmos.  All translators know that aion refers to an age.  It is a reference to a limited period of TIME, not to the "world" or to the "world-order".

  Eternity is endless; ages have both a beginning and an end.  Hebrews 11:3 tells us:

  3 Through faith we understand that the worlds (aionas, "ages") were framed by the Word of God.

  Aionas is simply the plural of aion in the Greek.  It says God "framed" the ages; therefore, ages had a beginning.  This is witnessed also by Hebrews 1:2.

  2 (God) hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds (aionas, "ages").

  And so once again we see that Jesus created the ages of time.  Time simply did not exist before creation.  Time is a created thing, just like space.  In fact, Paul makes reference to a promise of God which He made BEFORE time began.  It is found in Titus 1:2.

  2 In hope of eternal (aionian) life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began (pro chronon aionion, "before the ages began").

  "Eternal Life"? or Life in the Kingdom Age?

  This verse also makes reference to God's promise to us, which is aionian life.  Many have assumed that this is a reference to immortality itself.  It is not.  Its is a specific promise of immortality in IN THE KINGDOM AGE.  In other words, it is a reference to the First Resurrection, where men inherit life in "the Age", that is the Kingdom Age.

  As we saw in chapter one, a few believers will inherit life at the first resurrection; but most believers will have to wait for the general resurrection.  The "high calling of God" that Paul speaks of in Philippians 3:14 is NOT to inherit life (immortality) at the general resurrection, where some believers will get their portion "with the wicked".  The high calling is to inherit life in the first resurrection.

  How do we know this?  Because in Philippians 3:11 Paul describes this "high calling as being the "out-resurrection" (exanastasis).  It is the only time in the entire N.T. that Paul puts an "ex" in front of the usual word for resurrection (anastasis).  It is his way of differentiating this "high-calling" resurrection from the general resurrection.  Unfortunately, words often lose their voltage in translation.

  All through the New Testament we find countless references to "eternal life".  Yes, of course we will inherit eternal life, or immortality.  But the trust of this phrase is to be understood through Hebrew eyes, not through our modern English eyes.  In the Hebrew concept, it was correctly believed that we would be resurrected at the beginning of the Kingdom Age.  The Messiah would come to rule that Kingdom, and His people would rule with Him.  In other words, they would be given aionian life, "Age-abiding life", or life pertaining specifically to the Messianic, Kingdom Age.

  I have found no evidence that they knew of more than one resurrection back in the O.T. era, any more than they knew there would be an Age of Grace before the Kingdom Age.  This was something that was to be revealed with Jesus and the Apostles.  And when they did reveal it, they made it clear (as we saw in chapter one) that those who attain to that high calling would be given life 1,000 years BEFORE the rest of the believers.

  Consequently, we find references like Luke 12:46 which appears to teach that believers ("servants") who do not watch for His coming will not inherit eternal life.  In reality, it merely says that such people will not inherit the first resurrection.  They will not have the privilege of ruling with Christ in immortality and incorruption during the Kingdom Age.  And so we are everywhere exhorted to strive to inherit aionian life, which is the prize (Phil. 3:14).

  Jesus Will Reign for the Ages of Ages

  In Luke 1:33 we find that "OF His kingdom there shall be NO END".  If Luke had used the term aionian here, he would have been incorrect.  The things OF the kingdom shall truly be everlasting, not age-lasting.  But Jesus" reign lasts only until all enemies are subdued (1 Cor. 15:25-28).

  In Hebrews 7:16 the writer refers to Jesus' "endless life".  The word he uses is akatalutos, which means endless.  He would have been wrong if he had said Jesus only had aionian life.  So he chose his words carefully.

  In 1 Timothy 1:17 we are told that Jesus is the King of the Ages.  That is, He is the rightful Ruler of the earth who shall reign during the final two Ages of time.  There is first the Kingdom, or Messianic Age (i.e., the "Millennium"); followed by the Age of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

  After the 7th thousand-year period (sabbath "day"), God will kindle the lake of fire to purify the wicked.  The believers will simply receive "few stripes" or "many stripes", up to 40, according to Bible Law (Deut. 25:1-3).  God prohibits beatings of more than 40 stripes.  Why?

   Forty stripes he may give him and not exceed; lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then they brother should seem vile ("be degraded") unto thee.

  God's judgments are carefully measured in order to prevent us from being "degraded".  They correct us, rather than destroy us.  This is true for both believers and unbelievers, for it is the same Law that is used for all law breakers.  Now to quote 1 Timothy 1:17:

  17 Now unto the King eternal (aionon, "of the ages"), immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever (aionas ton aionon, "for the ages of the ages").

  God is, of course, "eternal".  No one disputes that, for it is always assumed.  But Paul is bringing out another aspect of God's character and position.  He is the King of the Ages and shall rule in the final glorious Ages of the earth.  It says that He shall reign for the ages of the ages.

  The Greek phrase (see above) is aionas ton aionos.  The word ton means "of-the".  It NEVER means "and".  Further, the phrase "ever and ever" really makes no sense, because it implies that it is longer than a mere "ever".

  Some translators do a song-and-dance routine, attempting to show that the phrase is an idiom meaning "forever and ever".  They say it signifies ages tumbling upon ages.  If that is the case, then Holy of Holies ought to be idiomatic of "Holy and Holies".  The Song of Songs should be idiomatic for "Song and Songs".  Or perhaps we could say that the Holy of Holies is a Holy Place tumbling upon countless other holy places.  The Song of Songs is a Song with an infinite number of stanzas.

  No, the Bible talks about the MOST Holy Place and the GREATEST Song and the GREATEST of the Ages.

  There are at least three good literal translations that are very accurate in their rendering of olam and aion.  Rotherham's The Emphasized Bible and Young's Literal Translation use the terms "age-abiding" and "age-lasting", rather than eternal or everlasting.  The Concordant Version prefers to translate it as eonian, since our English word "eon" means "an age", and the English language has simply borrowed the word "eon" from the Greeks.  These three versions are available in most Christian bookstores, so we will not belabor the point further.

  Jerome's Latin Vulgate

  The early Church was mainly divided between Greek and Latin culture and language.  We read from secular histories that the Roman Empire had conquered the Greek-speaking world shortly before Christ's birth.  The Romans borrowed a great deal from the Greeks, but the language and cultural barrier always remained in place.  The thinking was just plain different.

  The Greek philosophers were mostly concerned with "the perfect (ideal) man".  The Greeks pursued the ideal man by studying virtue and beauty; the Romans pursued their perfect government by studying law and order.

  These differences surfaced in the early Church as well.  Both cultures had a tendency to interpret the Bible through the colored glasses of their own cultures.  As time went on, they got farther and farther away from the Hebrew perspective.  And so both Greeks and Romans had their own unique shortcomings and blind spots, even as we do today in our own cultures.

  The blind spot of the Latin Christians was their belief that in order to maintain law and order, it was necessary to threaten men with the worst possible tortures in the afterlife.  This obsession with maintaining law and order appears to have been a motivating force behind the Latin idea of God's eternal retribution upon sinners.

  I do not know when the Old Latin version of the Bible was translated for the benefit of the Romans.  It was not a good translation by any scholar's standard.  But finally, a scholar arose who was well qualified to revise the old version .  His name was Jerome.

  Jerome was born in 347 A.D. in Italy.  His parents were wealthy Christians who sent him to Rome for a secular education.  After his studies he was baptized in the Church at the age of 19.  When he decided upon the monastic life, his parents opposed it, and he had a falling out with them.  Having a bad temper, Jerome never saw them again, nor did he ever mention them again in his writings.

  15:In 373 A.D. when Jerome was in his mid-twenties, he went East, because the Greek world was the land of education and higher theological learning.  He met Evagrius in Antioch and began learning the Greek language.  Later he also learned Hebrew thoroughly.

  From 379 to 382 he lived in Constantinople, where he met Gregory of Nyassa.  He also took Gregory of Nazianzus as his "teacher".  Jerome began reading all the writings of Origen as well that were recommended to him.  When he re-translated the Latin Bible in 390-406 A.D., he wrote in the preface an appreciation to Origen, who had done much translation work as well.  (He also lived in Alexandria for a time.  This was Origen's home town.)  Finally, he settled in Bethlehem, where he headed a monastery for the remaining years of his life.

  It is unfortunate that Jerome's personality was so vindictive and hateful.  He was truly one of the best Christian scholars of the day and admired for this; but his poisoned pen made people very cautious so as not to offend him in any way.  His senseless attacks on Pelagius finally resulted in his Bethlehem monastery being burned to the ground in 416 A.D.  Jerome died on September 30, 420 A.D.

  As for the Latin Vulgate, over all,  Jerome did an excellent job.  His translation became a classic that has been used ever since.  However, we must confine our remarks here to the subject of "eternal"  and "everlasting", because it is through the Latin Vulgate that we inherited these words in the English Bible.

   When Jerome came to the Greek word aionian ("age-lasting"), he had two Latin words to choose from in its translation: seculum and aeternum.  Both of these words had already been used in the Old Latin version that he was correcting.  And in fact, these words were quite close in meaning to the Greek aionian.  And so Jerome used both words interchangeably.

  There was just one problem.  The Latin words had a DOUBLE MEANING, according to a footnote which I found in Augustine's City of God, XXII, i.

  The words "eternal" and "eternity" from Latin aeternus, aeternitas, are related to aevum, which means BOTH "unending time" and "a period of time"; for the second meaning the commoner word is aetas.

  This footnote was put in by modern Latin scholars to clarify the Latin terminology, because Augustine was attempting to prove that aeternus and aeternitas in his Latin Bible was unending time.  In fact, as they pointed out, it also meant a limited period of time.

  Recall the verse we quoted earlier, Psalm 45:6,

  6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever (olam va ad, "the age and beyond").

  Jerome translated this phrase to read in Latin: "in aeternum et ultra," (into eternity and beyond).  It is obvious that Jerome knew that aeternum referred to a limited period of time, an age, rather than "eternity" as we know it today, for there is nothing beyond eternity.

  At any rate, Jerome used both seculum and aeternus in the Latin Vulgate.  Twelve hundred years later, the King James translators simply followed the Vulgate in their rendering of these words.  Whenever the Vulgate said aeternus, the KJV said "eternal"; whenever the Vulgate said seculum, the KJV reads "world".  This is why Matthew 13:39,40 reads "the end of the WORLD" instead of "the end of the age".  Our word "secular" means "pertaining to this world-order, or this age".

  It is not that Jerome's translation was incorrect.  His words were technically all right.  The problem was that they apparently had a double meaning, and that Augustine chose the wrong meaning to champion eternal torment.  Latin scholars thus point out his bias.

  Augustine's Argument in his City of God

  This was actually a series of books written from 412 to his death in 430.  When Alaric the Goth sacked Rome in 410 A.D. it was an embarrassment to the Christian Church that needed an explanation.  After all, it had been contended that such an event could never happen now, because Rome was ruled by Christian Emperors.  The pagans, on the other hand, had prophesied the fall of Rome, now that the pagan gods were no longer being supported by the state.  And so Latin Christians looked to Augustine to explain how this could happen.

  Augustine essentially wrote that all men are divided into two spiritual cities:  Babylon and Jerusalem.  Rome itself was therefore not the issue, because some Romans were of Babylon and some of Jerusalem, the City of God.  And at the end of history, all citizens of each city would be separated by God.  Most would go to hell for eternity; a few would go to heaven for eternity.

  In the latter part of the series, particularly Book 21, he attempted to prove that the punishment of the wicked is "eternal", that is, endless.  Other than philosophical reasoning and quotations from Cicero, the Roman lawyer, (See Appendix 1) his only real "proof" is his interpretation of Matthew 25:46:

  For Christ said in the very same place, including both in one and the same sentence: "So these will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."  If both are eternal, then surely both must be understood as "long", but having an end, or else as "everlasting" without an end.  For they are matched with each other.  In one clause eternal punishment, in the other eternal life.  (To say) "Eternal life shall be without end, (but) eternal punishment will have an end" is utterly absurd.  Hence, since the eternal life of the saints will be without end, eternal punishment also will surely have no end, for those whose lot it is.  (Augustine, City of God, XXI, xxiii)

  Augustine seems totally ignorant of two things: (1) the Greek word aionian did NOT have a double meaning, as did the Latin; and (2) the Hebrew concept of  "The Age".

  Matthew 25:46 actually is teaching that the wicked will go into divine chastening that is aionian (for or during the AGE).  The righteous, on the other hand, will be resurrected to life aionian (for or during the Age).

  In the Gospels Jesus specifically taught on two distinct resurrections.  Luke 14:14 tells us about "the resurrection of the just", where the righteous will be rewarded.  In John 5:28,29 Jesus tells us about the resurrection of both the just and unjust.

  The interim between these two resurrections defines the just will receive life in The Age; i.e., aionian life.  It is a special reward for certain Christians who overcome.  They will receive life an age before their fellow Christians, apparently a thousand years before them.

  It does NOT mean that their reward must end with that age.  God does not plan to take back immortality from them.

  Likewise, when Jesus speaks of the wicked or the unjust receiving aionian judgment, He is once again showing us that their judgment is limited to a specific age.  It has both a beginning and an end.  Judgment is not perpetual with no hope of restoration.  The book of Revelation shows that this age of judgment follows the great White Throne Judgment at the end of the thousand-year Messianic Age.

  And so, the aionian life reward of those who rule with Christ a thousand years will commence at the first resurrection and end with the second.  The aionian judgment of the unjust will commence with the second resurrection and end with the third.

  Consequently, Augustine's argument that aionian life and aionian judgment must both be equal is correct.  The problem arises when he tries to show that both are unending, when, in fact, both pertain to an age.  He plays upon the average Christian's ignorance of "The Age" (aion) and things pertaining to it (aionian).

  The bottom line is that Augustine's argument in his City of God holds no water, and even the Latin scholars who have translated his books know this and inform us in their footnote of Augustine's misleading rhetoric.

  And so we see that in the original Hebrew and Greek languages, the words olam and aionian refer to a limited period of time.  This is why most of the early Christian Church scholars understood the lake of fire to be only for the duration of an age, that is, age-lasting.  Augustine was the first to actually advance an argument against this, and he did so on a very flimsy basis, because he did not understand the Doctrine of the Ages.  After all, he was a Roman, not a Hebrew.

  Furthermore, Augustine was severely handicapped because he was virtually ignorant of the Greek language.  Peter Brown writes:

  Augustine's failure to learn Greek was a momentous casualty of the Late Roman educations system; he will become the only Latin philosopher in antiquity to be virtually ignorant of Greek. (Augustine of Hippo, p. 36)

  What was worse, in time the Latin Church no longer saw the need to learn Greek, and this deficiency perpetuated the error with little chance of correction.  Peter Brown tells us of this:

  Gradually the 'learned fellowship' would cease to feel the need for Greek books.  For they had Augustine. (Ibid., p. 272)

  It is not our purpose to detract from Augustine's genuine contributions to the Church and to Christian thought.  He did have his strong points which made him the most influential Latin theologian of his time.  We will comment later on some of his important contributions to Christian thought, but for now we have necessarily limited our comments to the subject at hand, showing the history of the word "eternal" and how events shaped its modern interpretation.

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  Chapter 5:  The Restoration of All Things

  We have seen earlier from Rev. 20:4-6 that the first resurrection includes only  a portion of the believers.  Some call them the Overcomers; we call them the Firstfruits.  We also saw from John 5:28,29 and Acts 24:15 that a second resurrection would come, in which both just and unjust men would be raised.  This second resurrection is referred to in Revelation 20:11-15.

  After the second resurrection, all unbelievers will be "cast into the lake of fire".  We have already shown that they will NOT be subjected to literal torture.  But we need to focus our attention on the more positive question of what their condition WILL be?

  The State of Resurrected Flesh

  In 1 Corinthians 15:35 Paul expresses some very typical Epicurean banter which Paul had to answer:

  35 But some man will say, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"

  The Bible only points to Jesus as the Example of how the dead are raised.  We read in Romans 8:11 the Spirit of God raised Him from the dead.  The Bible, however, does NOT reveal how this is accomplished.

  As to the type of body the dead will manifest at the resurrection, the example is again seen in Jesus' resurrected body.  In Luke 24:36-39 Jesus appeared to his disciples after His resurrection.  We read here:

  36 And as they thus spake, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, "Peace be unto you."

  37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.

  38 And He said unto them, "Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?

  39 Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have.

  From this we see that Jesus was not a spirit, at least not in the usual sense.  We read in other places that after His resurrection Jesus also ate with His disciples (Luke 24:30; John 21:13).  Spirits cannot eat food, nor do they have marks upon their bodies as Jesus did.

  On the other hand, Jesus did not have ordinary flesh either, for He was able to walk through walls (John 20:26) and to vanish into thin air (Luke 24:31).  In Luke 24:39 (quoted above) Jesus said He had "flesh and bones", but no mention is made of having blood.  Why?  Because the soul is in the blood (Lev. 17:11, translated properly).  Men are buried in a soulish state, but raised in a spiritual state, as we read in 1 Cor. 15:44.

  44 It is sown a natural [psuchikos, "soulish"] body; it is raised a spiritual [pneumatikos, "spiritual"] body.  There is a natural [soulish] body, and there is a spiritual body.

  The soulish body has flesh and blood; the spiritual body has flesh and bones.  There are some who believe that in this present life we have a physical body; but in the next life we will be spirits, no longer having bodies.  Jesus' example shows that this view is incorrect.  While the resurrected body will not be limited by the flesh as we are today, it is yet physical and tangible in some way.

  Perhaps the best explanation of the resurrected body is found in Ezekiel 44.  The sons of Zadok, we are told, will have a reward different from the ordinary levitical priesthood.  In new Testament terms, the sons of Zadok represent the Melchidek Order, those who inherit the first resurrection.  These are differentiated from the Levites, who represent the rest of the Church.  God tells Ezekiel that the "Levites" in that day will be allowed to minister to the people in the "outer court" (the flesh), but only the "sons of Zadock" will be allowed to minister to God as well as to men.

  We are told that the "sons of Zadock" will wear their linen garments when ministering to God; but that they must change into woolen garment when ministering to the people (Ez. 44:19).  Linen here represents the spiritual state; while wool, which comes from animals, represents the physical state.  In other words the sons of Zadok, those who inherit the first resurrection, will be able to move from the spiritual dimension into the physical at will, even as Jesus did.  The rest of the Church will not be allowed this privilege until they are transformed at the second resurrection a thousand years later.

  Jesus was the product of a heavenly Father and an earthly mother.  Before His incarnation, he had authority in heaven.  He was born of a woman as the Son of man in order to receive authority in the earthly, physical realm as well.  When His work was completed, He could say in Matt. 28:18,

  18 All power [exousia, "authority"] is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.

  The goal of resurrection and transformation into His Image is to become like Jesus.  We too have a  heavenly Father and an earthly mother.  Jesus is our Pattern Son, and we follow in His footsteps.  As men are raised from the dead in the three resurrections, they will be given authority in both the heavenly (spiritual) dimension and the earthly (physical) dimension.  Both are important in the plan of God, at least until such time as the Restoration of All Things is completed.

  The Nations in the Final Age

  In both the age to come and the Final Age after it, there will be many unbelievers who will "learn righteousness" (Isaiah 26:9.  It is the purpose of God's judgments to teach men the divine Law and to enforce their practice.  This enforcement of restitution to all victims of injustice also finally results in the restoration of all things.  When the lawful order  is fully restored, then all judgment ceases and God's forgiveness covers the whole earth and its inhabitants.

  God's method of teaching is by putting the principles into practice during that Age and by righting all wrongs of the past ages which men "got away with" at the time.  By these means all the nations of people outside the new Jerusalem will begin to learn His laws, even as prophesied in Isaiah 2:2-4.

   Now it will come about that in the last days the mountain (kingdom) of the house of the Lord (new Jerusalem) will be established as the chief of the mountains (earthly kingdoms), and will be raised above the hills (lesser kingdoms); and ALL THE NATIONS WILL STREAM TO IT.

  3 And many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us concerning His ways, and that we may walk in His paths".  For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

  4 And He will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples . . .

  This prophecy is repeated in Micah 4:1-5.  This is the nature of Jesus' JUDGMENT called "the lake of fire".  It is when the nations are purified.  It is when the nations of all past ages, many of whom never heard the name of Jesus, will be able to learn of Him.  As a result, they will accept Him as King and as their Savior sooner or later.  When they do, they will be able to "enter the city" and thus have access to the tree of Life (Rev. 22:14).

  And so, the unbelievers raised at the last judgment will not have "spiritual flesh" as will the believers.  They are raised to judgment, not to Life (John 5:29.  They will not be immortal, nor will they be incorruptible, as will the believers (1 Cor. 15:53).  They will still be "flesh and blood" which "cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50).  When they turn to Christ in repentance for their sins, they will be much like Christians today, although the world will be vastly different politically.

  Some will gladly recognize Jesus as the King of kings, submitting to the refiner's fire; others will only do so by constraint of law.  Some will be refined in short order; others will need a very long time to pay all the restitution for their crimes against God and men.

  Perhaps their life spans will be divinely set in order to accommodate these differences in time needed for each to restore the lawful order.  We are not told in Scripture.  But at the end of it all, when all enemies have been put under His feet, then death itself shall be destroyed, and God will be " all in all".  That is, the fullness of the Holy Spirit will be in all men, NOT some in all, or all in some, but all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

  Jesus said that the wicked would be cast into "outer darkness" (Matt. 8:12).  This is the part of the earth that is outside the new Jerusalem, which is the kingdom of Light.  It is NOT a literal darkness, for the sun and moon will continue to shine on them even as today.  In Revelation 21:23 and 22:5 we are told that "the city" alone has no need for the sun and moon, since Jesus was there as its Light.  But is does NOT say that the sun and moon will stop shining upon the rest of the earth.  And so this "outer darkness" is comparable to the spiritual darkness in the world today (Matt. 4:16).

  There are many "nations" living outside the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24-27) who will begin to walk in the light (that is, follow its laws in obedience to its King).  These "nations" are the unsaved peoples of the earth from all past ages.  They are not allowed to LIVE in the city, for this is reserved only for the citizens of the Kingdom, who have been given bodies of "spiritual flesh".  Yet there will be people of these other nations who WILL have access to the city, for we read in Rev. 21:26:

  26 and they (the nations) shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it (the          city).

  John also says in chapter 22:

  14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may ENTER by the gates into the city.

  The citizens are already IN the city.  The implication here is that the rest of the people -- those in the "outer darkness", or "the lake of fire" -- may "enter" the city from the outside, if they qualify.

  In the book of Zechariah, the prophet also tells us that these other nations of people will be able to come into the city.  In fact, they will be REQUIRED by divine decree to come to keep the feast of Tabernacles.  Some will obey and some will not.  If they do not, God will keep the "rain" from falling upon those nations.  We read of this in Zechariah 14:16-19.  We begin with verse 9:

  9 And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one.

  16 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of Tabernacles.

  17 And it shall be that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.

  18 And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not up, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen ["nations"] that come not up to keep the feast of Tabernacles.

  19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of Tabernacles.

   This feast is not yet fulfilled as of today, nor will it be entirely fulfilled until God has fully come to dwell with men as the Great Immanuel ("God with us") in its greatest extent.  We will deal with the feast of Tabernacles more fully in our next chapter, but for now we shall make the point that there will be nations outside the Kingdom such as "Egypt" (vs. 18 above), and the families of Egypt (among others) will be required to observe the feast.  If they refuse, the "rain" of the Holy Spirit will not be poured out upon them.

  When the people of these nations that are outside the new Jerusalem see the blessings of God poured out upon others, they will want to learn and obey the divine Law.  They will learn righteousness.  And at the end of that final Age, all of creation will be restored to God.  All authority and powers and kingdoms will be in obedience to Him, for He will put all enemies under His feet.  And only then will that last enemy (death) be destroyed; Jesus will present the full Kingdom, all of creation, to His Father, and God will be all in all.

  All Shall Be Made Alive

  This message of the Restoration of all things was taught by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:22-28.

  22 For as in Adam all die, also in [the] Christ all shall be made alive.

  23 But each in his own order [tagma, "squadron"]:  anointed firstfruits, after that those who are [the] Christ's at His coming ["presence"],

  24 Then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.

  25 For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet.26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

  27 For He has put all things in subjection under His feet.  But when He says, "All things" are put in subjection, it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him.

  28 And when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.

  Most of this passage is self-explanatory.  Yet I should draw the reader's attention to a few critical details.

  Verse 22:  It is evident that all mankind died in Adam -- no exceptions.  In the same manner also shall all be made alive in Christ -- no exceptions.  The "all" in both cases parallel each other and are equal in scope.  Howe