Tag: judgement

After death – what?

Imagine asking an auditorium of 1,000 people to say where they expect to spend eternity – heaven or hell. (Of course, a number would refuse either option, preferring to think they will be annihilated). But I would imagine, out of the 1,000, maybe one person would admit they deserved hell. In other words, basically no-one ever seriously believes they will end up in hell. How about you?

Most religions have beliefs about life after death; it seems our human psyche requires some sense of justice being done in an ultimate divine assessment of our lives. The problem, of course, is to get anywhere further than a vague unfounded hope.

Some think that the idea of hell comes from the Old Testament with its God of fiery fury and righteous wrath. Interestingly, the Old Testament has only sparse allusions to anything like hell; for the most part its notion of the afterlife is hazy. Daniel 12.2 refers to the end-time possibilities of “everlasting life” and “shame and everlasting contempt”.

It was Jesus who spoke a lot about “eternal life” and the alternative that he called hell. He warns of being “cast into hell” (Mark 9.47), and in the Sermon on the Mount of those “in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5.22). He describes it as a place of torment – “a fiery furnace – in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13.42). The lost, he says, “will go away into eternal punishment” (Matthew 25.46). While some of the dead will be received into God’s presence along with Abraham the father of the faithful, Jesus describes others as being “in torment”, and “in anguish” (Luke 16.23-25).

This is so often overlooked because we consider Jesus as being essentially kind and ready to forgive: but for Jesus it was an act of kindness to warn us that there is a hell to avoid and yet an eternal life that can be ours after death.

How can we know truth in this hidden domain? God only knows, ultimately. But Jesus affirmed that he, the incarnation of God, had “come down from heaven” to “bear witness to the truth” and to say “whatever the Father told him to say” (John 6.38, 18.36, 12.49-50). 

Ultimately God alone knows what will happen to us after death. But in Jesus, he came down to tell us. More, he came to warn us – for hell is not merely for those guilty of committing the most horrific crimes. Hell will be the righteous punishment meted out to all sinners, “according to their works” (Matthew 16.27). And since the Bible clearly teaches that we have “all sinned” (Romans 3.23), it invites us all to be saved from hell by finding forgiveness and receiving the gift of eternal life, which Jesus promised to those who repent and believe in him.

Jesus came out of heaven not just to warn us of hell: he gave his life on the cross to make salvation possible. On that basis he promises eternal life to those who entrust themselves to him as Lord and Saviour. “To him all the prophets give witness, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10.43). This is how to avoid hell. Jesus said, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life; he does not come into condemnation but is passed from death to life” (John 5.24). “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish [in hell] but have eternal life” (John 3.16).

Clive Every-Clayton

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God – an unavoidable inconvenience?

When an atheist like André Comte-Sponville admits he’d like to be able to believe in a God who loves him and is kind and gives good things to him, he commits two mistakes. Firstly, his definition of God sums up only the positives of the best kind of God he could envisage, voluntarily overlooking God’s more distasteful attributes.  Secondly, he seems to think that people can just imagine God anyhow they like – little realising that God is objectively how he is (existing, really there, with all his divine attributes intact), whatever people may think about him.

More logical atheists have other ways of ousting God, one of which is to deny that he is the Creator of mankind, pretexting that evolution, including macroevolution, suffices to explain our human existence. Erudite philosopher and theologian R.C. Sproul, writing concerning modern secularists who adopt this evolutionary viewpoint, asks: “Why would they be happy to find out that they are a cosmic accident and that their final destiny is annihilation?” This, for many who have no clear Christian faith, is the logical outcome of their atheistic presupposition; they accept unthinkingly that they must have issued forth from a mass of confused and chaotic matter which gives them neither purpose, nor meaning, nor hope. Why do people believe in such a worldview? Dr. Sproul esteems there is “only one answer: evolution offers people an escape from accountability. When we die it is over. We don’t have to worry about facing a holy and righteous Creator.”  

The deep-down human fear of such accountability is an unpleasant apprehension underlying the rejecting of God: the simple way to deal with the dread of an ultimate divine judgment on our lives is to deny that there is a Creator and Judge. “But if macroevolution is in fact true,” the theologian-philosopher continues, “we should be in utter despair: we would have to recognise that we are utterly insignificant and that our lives and labour are meaningless”.

Jordan B. Peterson in his latest book intelligently proposes that the reality of personality is fundamental to existence, and particularly to our human reality: he reminds his readers that this chimes well with the Bible’s basic statement that we were created in the image of God, so ultimate reality (God himself) would be personal. “The idea that we are reflections of the divine nature is valid,” he concludes.  

He strikingly goes on to propose that “perhaps our reductive materialism is a reflection of something worse than mere ignorance: maybe we insist on the deadness and intrinsic meaninglessness of the world to rationalise our unwillingness to accept the immense burden of opportunity and obligation that a true understanding of our place in a truly meaningful world would necessitate”. He dares to conclude: “Perhaps it is not religion that is the opiate of the masses. Perhaps it is instead that a rationalist, materialist atheism is the camouflage of the irresponsible”!!  

As modern intellectual leaders like Peterson discern and expose the atheism that causes our present hopelessness and meaninglessness, some are turning again to the inspired basis of Genesis 1.26-27: “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. This foundational fact – and this alone – furnishes the rational basis for our human value and meaning. Our species has the high calling of having been created in God’s likeness at the beginning – though we have fallen away from that likeness by turning from God. Without this key we cannot understand ourselves.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Gentle Jesus

If it was up to you to envisage how the Almighty Creator were to visit his creation, this planet, how would you set it up? How do you think people would expect such a divine intervention to take place?

Would he arrive as twice the size of a human, descending in a kind of parachute into Rome to slay the Emperor and take his place? Or zooming in on the Areopagus in Athens to confront and confound the leading philosophers like Plato and Socrates? Or again, shining in blinding glory while zooming over a war zone calling for conflict immediately to cease? Or would he be wandering in the mountains and coming to the grotto of a “holy man” to quietly introduce himself without overwhelming him?

Well, you could think of several scenarios which could have a degree of plausibility about them. But not many outside the reach of Christianity would come up with the idea that the Almighty would show up in a new-born baby, fragile and vulnerable, utterly dependent on the care of his parents. The God revealed in Scripture could have come in his power and glory (as the Lord Jesus is predicted to return at the end of the age); but instead, he chose the humble way: the baby grew up to say “I am gentle and humble of heart”. A strange divine visitation indeed!

What message does this Gospel record seek to communicate? Surely not that God is weak and feeble. No, rather that he comes not to pour down his wrath on a wicked world – even though that would be perfectly justified – but to “seek and to save the lost” (as Jesus put it in Luke 19.10). What does that imply? Well, first of all, humankind is “lost”. What does that mean? It means we have erred and strayed from the right path, we have forsaken the way of righteousness, and have embarked on a dangerous “broad road that leads,” according to Jesus’ warning, “to destruction” (Matthew 7.13). Here came a divine guide to stand in our way, to turn us back from our errors and sins, and to offer us forgiveness and moral renewal that will clean us up and set us on the right road. 

When Jesus was travelling and preaching, he would at times express his compassion for lost humanity in tears and lamentation – longing for people to get wise and turn from their evil ways. “How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings”, he mourned (Matthew 23.37), grieving over the hardness of people’s hearts who obstinately refused to hear his loving warnings. His coming into the world was an act of mercy, offering pardon and grace – at the cost of his life.

This extraordinarily gentle approach opened the era of grace – when rebels against the Almighty who lay down their arms and surrender to his will are guaranteed pardon and eternal life. That era still endures; anyone may turn to Christ and receive him and his saving work which will grant them a new abundant life that he promises to give. But the offer ends either when Jesus returns in power and glory to judge the nations of the world, or at “death, after which comes the judgment” (Hebrews 9.27). In that day, the gentle Jesus, meek and mild will be revealed as the all-powerful Creator he is, and he will fulfil his role as righteous Judge and upholder of justice in the universe. It is in our highest interests to get ready for that judgment day.

Clive Every-Clayton

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How does God feel…

What do you think passes through the mind of God as he looks down on his world and us, the human creatures he gives life to? Is it sorrow, seeing how we neglect him so much? Is it eager desire to intervene and put things right? Is it holy anger at the horrible deeds so many of us do? Or may it be complacency, suffering long over our moral madness but still managing to smile? Or compassion, looking forward to the time when he would come to our aid?

How would he desire to improve things? By cataclysmic judgments to bring us in repentance to his footstool? By tears of love, showing his desire for us to be better and to reform our ways? Or would it be by flattering us with “well-done” and smiling benignly at our efforts? Rather, wouldn’t he seek to gather us together and calm us down long enough for us to pay attention to what he wants to say to us?

At least one thing should be clear in the light of his dealings with human failings in Bible times: His feelings would show his divine love, his pure holiness, and his profound wisdom. He has feelings he would want to convey, he has a judgment he would righteously render, and he has advice that would bring the necessary improvement.

In fact, when he sent his Son Jesus into the world, these were the services he rendered to humanity in those days; and as human nature hasn’t essentially changed over the centuries, we may well listen and learn from the divine wisdom that Jesus brought: it is still there for us to read in the New Testament.

“The time is fulfilled,” was his first big public statement; “the kingdom of God is at hand” – meaning he himself was the King of glory come to open up the Kingdom of God to all believers. Then he gave two vital pieces of advice in succinct bullet-form: “Repent and believe the Gospel, the Good News” (Mark 1.15).

This means that when God looked down on humankind in those days, he saw their need to repent and to hear some good news. I’m sure that as he looks down on our society today, he has the same attitude and would repeat the same message, so let’s think about it.

To “repent” means essentially two things, but both are an appeal to change. To repent is first of all to re-think. Jesus didn’t need to do an in-depth study of the thought forms of his day, quizzing the lecturers on what they were teaching the people. Whatever they were saying, Jesus with his divine insight knew that it was wrong: they hadn’t got it all together. Indeed, they were in darkness and he proclaimed himself to be “the light of the world” (John 8.12). He would bring us truth that we could never grasp without his revelation – and how much we still need that truth!

Secondly, to repent means to change our ways, to quit doing evil things, to turn from sin and start out on a new path, learning to live in righteousness and holiness. How we need that challenge today! 

The false ideas we hold to and the sins we keep committing are the source of our problems; so God wants us to change and calls us to repent.

But there’s “Good News” that God wants us to receive and believe: he’s keen to forgive us and to remake us as we commit ourselves to Christ and to that he calls us too.

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The west is not the best

We live in a global village: news is broadcast to our phones as it occurs, wherever in the world it may be happening. The influence of Western thinking still touches the corners of the globe. But people in the majority world need to be informed by those of us in the West who see the bankruptcy of Western scientific philosophy, that the West, dominated by secularistic thinking that ignores the God of creation, is not the best. 

There is hope of an upturn in Western thinking, however, as the hopelessness of atheistic philosophy becomes more and more apparent, bringing in its train all kinds of moral, social, and mental ills. A better story is being sought, though the passing falsehoods of relativistic atheism still hang in the air we breathe and sadly infect lands further away. People in those lands should realise: the West is not the best. To those who look from afar thinking that the West is Christian, I would say that the general life-style of the masses in the west is godless, not Christian. True, there are many Christians in the West, and in past ages they have gone throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel; but as their influence in society waned in the West, vain and futile godless philosophies have risen to supplant the Christian consensus. 

This state of affairs is due to change, however; the West needs a revival of Christianity, and believers need to regain the confidence to proclaim afresh the life-enhancing truth of the Gospel. This Gospel message speaks of world history in four stages:

First, Creation. God made all that is, and he declared his creation “good”. There was no fault in his working: he made man and woman to reflect his own nature as they were made in his likeness. He made them in relationship with himself where they found deep joy and fulfilment.

Second, the first couple turned away from God’s will, expressed in his commandment. Thinking (as many still do today) that they knew better than God what was right and wrong, they chose to disobey, and in doing so their nature – human nature – became twisted, corrupted, sinful. Banished from enjoying close and friendly relationship with their Creator, they founded their social order independently of God, even antagonistic to his will. All the people of the world suffered from that original perversion; all are born sinners, out of fellowship with God – indeed, under his holy displeasure.

Third, God set in motion his major opus – the salvation of lost men and women. Beginning with revealing to Abraham promises that through his posterity all the world would one day be blessed, God spoke to men of old through the prophets until finally his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born, an incarnate human revelation of God. Jesus grew up to teach God’s truth and ultimately to give his life for the redemption of humankind. Thanks to his atoning sacrifice, as the Gospel is proclaimed throughout the world, millions find, through faith in him, the forgiveness he promised and new life, eternal life, in renewed friendship with God.

The fourth stage is still to come, foretold by the prophets whose predictions of the first coming of Christ proved true. Jesus himself revealed that at the end of the age he would come in glory to judge the world in righteousness, ushering his believing flock into eternal life, and punishing the unrighteous with the just penalty that is their due.
Throughout the world, this Gospel message gains believers who escape that ultimate judgment. Will you be among them?

Clive Every-Clayton

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Is there a hell?

When a well-known criminal monster, whom I will call Y____, much hated for his horrible and widely publicised wickedness, died in prison, the headline filling the front page of a tabloid shouted: “Burn in Hell, Y_____”. That not only expressed disgust at evil, it also revealed the positive human requirement of punishment for crimes committed. Hell would be the just penalty for sin.

Is there a hell? The question is rarely discussed openly; it may deeply perturb our hearts, as it did mine when I was a teenager. It deserves a clear answer, and as I have said before, only God knows the answer, so only he can tell us. When his Son Jesus came as his spokesman into the world, he left us in no doubt. He spoke of one sinner, who “died and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment…” complaining, “I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16.22-24). He taught that at the last judgment, the lost “will go away into eternal punishment” (Matthew 25.46). More than once he warned, “in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8.12, 13.50). He insists that “it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God, than… to be thrown into hell” (Mark 9.47). However you may wish to interpret these passages, you cannot escape the fact that Jesus taught there would be severe pain suffered after death by unrepentant sinners. This is a most solemn warning.

Would you rather I said, “It’s okay – we’ll all get to heaven”? From another context, the words of a political advisor are relevant: “If you want to help people, tell them the truth; if you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear”. If God has given us such a serious warning, preachers must faithfully teach the truth he has revealed, not alter it in the vain hope of helping people. 

What I can say, however, is that even if you’re the worst offender, you can escape hell and go to heaven if you receive forgiveness from God in this life. That is why I have written a lot in previous blog posts about forgiveness: everyone desperately needs it!

When the Son of God came to earth, he wept over the unrepentant masses and urgently warned us: “Unless you repent you will perish” (i.e. in hell – Luke 13.3). He so wanted to save us from hell that he suffered the most horrendous agony on the cross for us. On the cross he was bearing your hell and mine – the punishment that we deserve – in our place. He died for you because he loves you; he wants to save you from hell. His death made atonement for our sins so that God, in all justice, may forgive us. If there is no hell, we cannot understand why the Son of God should have suffered such an agonising death.

The cross is the supreme measure of Jesus’ love for you. As awful as was his suffering, so strong is his love, bearing it for you. So you can be forgiven, redeemed, transformed, and made ready to go to heaven – if you repent and turn in faith to Christ your Saviour. Ask Jesus to forgive and save you from hell – and he will! “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved” (Romans 10.13). 

But if you would spurn Christ’s love and reject God’s wondrously merciful offer to free you from hell and grant you heaven, what do you think you would deserve?

Clive Every-Clayton

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Hope of heaven

The deep reason why we all apprehend death is that we fear some kind of judgment in the next life. People of various religious or philosophical persuasions do all sorts of difficult things to try and free themselves from that fear. Both the anxiety and the religious or mental effort we expend on this issue testify to two essential truths.

First, we understand in our conscience that evil ought to be punished. This intuition comes – whether we realise it or not – from the fact that we humans were originally made in the likeness of a good and holy God. He endowed us with an understanding of good and its opposite, making us conscious that we are responsible to him for our behaviour.

The second essential fact that this fear communicates is the realisation that we have done reprehensible things. Our conscience is not clean; this should instruct us that we need forgiveness, and only God can forgive.

God did not create us with the total freedom to potentially commit all kinds of misdeeds without ever facing any kind of divine assessment with some corresponding sanction. This is built in to who we are: we are God’s creation, answerable to him for our lives. We are not chance by-products of a haphazard impersonal explosion of material substances; that kind of philosophy leads logically to moral chaos and is unliveable. Fortunately, God himself has told us, by sending his Son, Jesus, that “the Creator, at the beginning, made man and woman” (Matthew 19.4). The same Jesus informed us also that there would be a day of reckoning.

Now it is of the utmost importance to be ready for that Day of Judgment, because it determines our destiny for ever and ever. It will either be bliss or horror. There is no half-way house. The invention of “purgatory” was an erroneous idea of some early Christian thinkers, but it has no basis in the sacred Scriptures. On the contrary, Jesus taught that at the last Day, when all will be gathered for the final judgment, there will be only two camps – the saved who are “blessed” to enter into God’s glorious kingdom, and the lost who Jesus said “go away into eternal punishment”, describing it as “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25.46, 41). 

Those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, in a decision of repentance and faith-commitment to follow him, may legitimately nourish the hope of “eternal life” because Jesus made that formal promise in the Gospels. Listen to his words and pause to take them in: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5.24). Did you get that? No judgment – that is, no punishment, no hell. Passed from death to eternal life. Wow! That’s worth having! How? By faith in Jesus and in the Father who sent him to be our Saviour.

Jesus says again, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3.16). That’s how to be sure of not perishing in eternal punishment – by entrusting yourself to Christ as Lord and Saviour, to believe in him, to follow him, and obey his teaching. Jesus added, that “whoever believes in him is not condemned” – there is that assurance again – no hell. Instead, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Is there any hope?

Hope is the confidence that a positive outcome will occur. The reason many are hopeless today is that they see no reason to expect a good outcome in the world in which we live. I’m not going to list all the horrors that we may fear – I think we know them all too well. The question is rather, how can we have any hope that things in the future will be better than the present?

The difficulty is that human nature does not essentially change. We will always be that mixture of good and evil. If good people prevail in government, peace and prosperity might come; if evil people rule, we may suffer the opposite. And when you study history, you may well conclude that there is little hope that life will be peaceful and things will go better.

Some trust in the advances of science, and we must be thankful for every progress in the field of medicine, in particular, that will improve our well-being. But still we will all face death. Others look to Artificial intelligence (AI) with great expectations, while many fear what such “intelligence” may do. It all depends on who wields and guides that AI – for good or for evil. And as the very notions of good and evil are disputed and twisted, the future still looks bleak.  

These blog posts deal with “authentic hope”: how can hope be authentic? When we wonder who can tell what the future holds, the answer is – only one person: God. He is not bound by time, as we are: he is eternal. He sees the end already. He knows where everything is headed, and indeed, he has the almighty power necessary to ensure that his ultimate good purposes will be fulfilled. As he is Lord over all creation, he alone can give us authentic hope for the future (as well as true hope for answers to our existential questions). He, and he alone, knows the future. In fact he holds the future in his hands. 

The Bible speaks a lot about hope. There’s a text in the Bible that speaks of people “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2.12). If God alone can hold out hope for our future, then those without God are without any solidly grounded hope.

Not many people realise that God has unveiled the future of our human existence. The greatest element in the biblical hope is that the world will end with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and glory. “He will come to judge the living and the dead”: that phrase of the Christian creed sums up what lies ultimately ahead of us all. No evil-doer can escape the final judgment of God. If there was no ultimate reckoning, then all justice is meaningless. But God has inscribed the presentiment of just judgment in the conscience of every human being. This serves to prevent many horrible crimes and atrocities, but those who bypass the restraints of conscience should realise that they will nevertheless face ultimate judgment.

Now this, of course, for all of us, is not exactly joyous hope! We would not like a God of absolute holiness to examine the details of our lives and administer justice according to our misdeeds. While that is not “good news”, there is wonderful good news in the message of the Gospel of Christ. Through faith in our Lord and Saviour, we may be absolutely delivered from the condemnation due to us on that judgment day. This good news gives real hope, as I will share further. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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