Eternal Judgment
Eternal judgment! It scares some. Eternal judgment? It makes others laugh.
To
the religious, the foreboding threat of "eternal judgment" portends a
fearful apprehension of a stern judge condescendingly looking down from
a majestic throne upon a quaking skeleton of a person who is barely
able to keep his knees from knocking against one another.
To
those "modern sophisticates" not given to religious "superstition," the
archaic threat of "eternal judgment" is scornfully looked upon as an
ancient remnant out of man's distant past, a useless appendage, a
shriveled-up relic of a bygone age.
Yet in clearly listing "the
principles of the doctrine of Christ" in Hebrews 6:1-2, the Apostle
Paul concludes these absolutely foundational principles of God's Word
with the phrase "eternal judgment."
"Eternal judgment" in 1974?
Sneers of ridicule — or perhaps chills of fright! "Eternal judgment"
seems to do everything to the modern mind except portray what it really
means.
Disregarding for a moment the fine distinctions between
the Hebrew words translated "eternal" (olam, ad) and the Greek word
(aionios), let's for a moment consider what
the English word "eternal" means. How can we
express it? A line that has no ends, the progression of time forever?
How
can the human mind ever conceive of anything without beginning and
without end? Let your mind wander in space or in time — then in both.
Consider the earth, the solar system, the sun, our Milky Way galaxy (in
which the earth is but tucked away in one small corner), the galaxies
within our local galactic structure, and then the universe of galaxies
on beyond — all engrossed in endless eons of time.
In order to
appreciate eternity, let's understand infinity — since eternity is
similar to the mathematical concept of infinity as applied to time.
There
is a basic mathematical fact that says that any number divided by
infinity is zero. All other fractions, say 7/8 or 1/1000, for example,
change as you change the quantities in either the numerator or the
denominator.
But if you put infinity in the denominator of any
fraction, you can choose whatever number you want for the numerator — a
million, a billion, even a googolplex (look that one up in your
dictionary) — and the fraction still equals zero. Even with an immense
number in the numerator, the infinity completely cancels it.
No
matter how big you make a number, you can never approach infinity. You
can multiply the number of grains of sand on all the beaches by the
number of drops of water in all the oceans by the number of electrons
in the entire universe — and you still are not even getting close to
infinity! Anything compared to infinity is but nothing!
The
physical is finite, no matter how long, no matter how large. What God
offers is eternal, beyond the physical — incredibly beyond,
incomprehensibly beyond! Physical events and time spheres no longer
have meaning. When eternity is considered, a million years spent on
each planet in the entirety of the universe becomes but a moment.
Nothing
in the physical creation even approximates eternity. Nothing physical
is eternal; nothing physical will ever be eternal. Eternity by its very
nature, by the enormous vastness inherent in the word itself,
transcends the physical. This is what God offers us! Eternity. Beyond
the physical.
The human mind can almost comprehend the meaning
of eternity. This is remarkable by itself. We can begin to
conceptualize eternity. We can think of that line with no beginning and
no end; we can think of the unending vastness of time that
occurred before our birth and will go on after our death.
We can
consider eternity, but we cannot comprehend it. Whenever we try, we
become frustrated. Our brains balk, our gray matter turns into soup. We
can understand just enough to understand that we can never understand.
That's
the uniqueness of the human mind — almost but not quite
able to comprehend.
It's there
— eternity is there — but just out of our reach, just beyond our grasp.
Is
this coincidental? Isn't it strange that what our Creator holds out to
us as the ultimate goal of human life — eternity — is something we are
almost able to comprehend, but yet with the awesomeness of mystery
still surrounding it?
Even assuming the entirety of the universe
is as old as cosmologists tell us — some 10 to 15 billion years old
— the totality of this time (as incomprehensibly endless as it
seems compared to our short 70-odd year life spans) is but a few
fleeting seconds in the endless vastness of eternity. It is far less
than one small grain of sand compared to the multiple billions of tons
of sand on all the beaches surrounding all the oceans in the entire
world.
Eternity as a concept defines the boundary reaches of the
human mind; almost, in a manner of speaking, the interface between the
physical and the spiritual. Because nothing physical is eternal. The
physical by very definition is subject to change and decay.
To
those of us who are extremely busy every day of our lives (whether
commuting to work, putting in a hard day at the office, getting our
exercise, coming home at night, having dinner, playing with the
children, perhaps going out to a party or a movie and coming home to bed
— a real packed day in a very busy week), a year, 365 days, is an awfully long time.
And
yet the reality of eternity is always there. It never leaves us; it is
just overshadowed by what may seem to be the more pressing needs of the
moment: How much do eggs cost now? Will I have enough gasoline next
Sunday? Will I be promoted on my job? What movie shall we see this
weekend? When are the in-laws coming to visit? How are the children
doing in school? Who is going to win the Super Bowl?
Yet, all the
while, the absolute reality of the eternity of time that will follow
your death is ever-present and ever-real. If you don't feel its
pressure, you are deluding yourself. If you do feel its pressure, you
could go insane.
But we are not left without hope. The Creator
God — the God who created us, who designed our human minds able to
almost comprehend eternity, has given us the knowledge — knowledge that
has had to be revealed — of what eternity can mean to human beings.
Wouldn't it have been diabolically sadistic for a benevolent Creator to
have designed the human mind able to almost comprehend the existence of
eternity, and yet have designed the human spirit unable to attain its
mastery? What mental cruelty! What a travesty it would have been if
such were the case!
But as Paul described in this culminating
doctrine of God's Church — eternal judgment — God in His Word takes us
beyond, takes us to reality, takes us to sanity, takes us to eternity.
To
an American populace fed by a Watergate-saturated media, a people who
have learned to collectively disregard their superiors, "judgment" is
something that no one else can do to you. To those steeped in the
"heaven-hell Churchianity" so long offered as the biblical model,
"judgment" means a decision reached after carefully considering every
sin that you have ever committed from the first time you ever hit your
baby brother or talked back to your parents until your last, wheezing
gasp as an old man or woman about to expire.
How many sins do
you think you have committed in your life? How long would it take
someone to read a detailed account of every one of them?
Let's
assume the average person sins about once a day, and since God says a
sin is a sin, we'll include all the "little" sins as well as the
horrendous ones. Consequently, in the average lifetime, the average
person might sin roughly 25,000 times. (Granted, some of these sins
would take longer explanations, covering three to four pages of written
material to describe the exact situation; other of these sins might
just take one to two lines, explaining why you "had" to utter that
unfortunate word in that unforeseen circumstance.)
Now, facetiously
assuming that in the future God would have to consider the lives of,
let us say, ten billion human beings, and giving God the benefit of the
doubt that He could go through all the intricate details of every
single sin in the fleeting instant of one second, it would still take
God roughly (and this is, of course, extremely rough) 100 million years
to fully analyze the totality of everybody's sins. And, of course, God
couldn't make a "judgment" until He did such — or so we might be led to
believe.
Isn't it strange that when we hear the word "judgment"
we automatically feel bad. We have a negative, depressing mood
overwhelm us. Why does the word "judgment" evoke such a reaction? Is
this what God intended His Word to portray? Is this what Paul meant in
Hebrews 6:2, when he spoke of eternal judgment?
If the judgment
referred to is the harsh, severe rendering of a decision based upon
everyone's sins, and considering the fact that the enormous word
"eternal" is used to describe this judgment, human existence itself
could indeed be considered the breakable toy of a sadistic monster-God
who has enjoyed playing a colossal cosmic joke on all of His hapless
creatures.
But, thank God, our God is the real God! And the judgment of this world's religion is as fallacious as it is foolish.
When
we read of "judgment" in the Bible, we should experience waves of
elation and joy, great excitement, enthusiasm and expectation
concerning the fantastic events awaiting us in the future.
To
give what must be a very weak analogy: Think of the graduation day
after four years of high school or college. That's the day when, after
thousands of hours of hard work and classes, homework, periods of
nervous exhaustion, tension and concern — finally, after all that, a
person has made it! He has completed the course; he has achieved the
goal. Following each graduation, every individual has won some new
place. For example, many high school students have been accepted at the
colleges of their choice; many college students in the medical, dental,
law, or professional or graduate schools of their choice.
There
are generally few failures; although some each year do fail. But
graduation for the vast majority is a very happy time — a time of
confidence, achievement, success and joy.
So it will be with
God's judgment. Only God's "graduation day" will be from far more than
a few years of study; it will be from a lifetime — and the rewards will
be far greater than any diploma or promotion, because from God's
graduation the rewards will be eternal.
The "judgment" is really
a decision — a decision that your Creator, your personal Father in
heaven, the very God who gives you breath and life, the Being that
hears your prayers and loves you more than any father loved any son,
makes for your benefit.
The judgment is when God decides or
informs you of His decision of what, where, and how you will be
spending eternity. And for the vast majority, this will surely be the
greatest moment in their entire lives — incomprehensibly
greater than everything they have done before!
The
marriage supper in Revelation 19:9 and the breathtaking new heaven and
new earth of Revelation 21 can only begin to hint at the magnificent
reality that God has planned for all human beings.
As God the
Father has structured all spiritual and physical reality, there are
many areas of responsibility in the future that are needed to be filled
by individual human beings. This is why Christ said in John 14:2, "In
my father's house are many mansions ...." The universe is a big place,
and eternity is a long time. God has a lot to do (even though we may
not know much about it now — see Hebrews 2:8-9) and He has created us
to become sons to help Him administer all reality forever.
How
does God decide what individual responsibility or position (or whatever
God chooses to call it) each of us will have in the future? He knows
and loves us personally, and will choose the best possible situation
for every one of us. We will surely each have our own specific areas of
responsibility, our own personal likes and dislikes — we will not be
like statues in a garden, or candles in a monastery, set up merely to
adorn or make God feel better. We will be real personalities doing real
jobs, individually and personally.
Our Father, your Father, knows
you personally. He knows the type of work, recreation and situations
that you enjoy the most. He has designed reality to give you everything
that you have always wanted.
But you have a responsibility also.
You have to qualify. You have to attain the requirements for
"graduation" — and, as you do attain these requirements, God will
determine how well you have done and give you your reward in direct
proportion to how successful you have been. As Christ said in Matthew
16:27, referring to the time of His spectacular return to earth: "...
And then he [Christ] shall reward every man according to his works."
How
long does it take God to "judge" an individual? Does He quickly come to
a decision in a few minutes, upon being given the "pluses" and
"minuses" of your entire life? Or is judgment a process?
I Peter
4:17 states that "the time is come that judgment must begin at the
house of God ...." In fact, judgment and development of the people of
God today must take place in order that God may, during this age,
develop such a group to assist Him in "judging," in ruling, in
developing, in encouraging the vast multitudes of people to be taught
in the millennium following the return of Christ.
And what of
the multitudes of untold billions who have long since died and who have
forever been forgotten — from those who died in the Noachian Flood or
perished from the Black Death to those who were vaporized in the
atomic-bomb blast over Hiroshima? Are these people lost and forgotten?
Is there a "judgment" reserved for them?
Remarkably and
incredibly, the biblical "plan of salvation" — which is a
religious-sounding term indicating the process by which the Eternal
Creator works with the human beings He created to bring them into the
God family — will eventually be made available to everyone.
That
means everyone who has ever lived, from a fifth-century, newborn baby
that died after two weeks of a labored life in some backward province
in China, to old men who have lived beyond 100 years of age in the
Caucasus of Central Russia.
All who have not been called of God
in this life will eventually have that opportunity as fully and
completely as anyone has ever had the chance — all will have their
chance, their first chance, in the future.
But what of us — we who
are readers of this unique magazine, The Good News? Many of us will not
be in future groups that will be called of God. God only gives one
chance to every individual; but that chance must be a real chance.
When
a person knows and knows that he knows that there is a God in heaven,
that that God inspired the Bible and has opened that person's way to be
baptized and receive God's Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38) and be put into
God's Church — then, in all probability, he has had his chance.
This
magazine is being sent to those people with whom God is dealing. This
does not mean that every person receiving this magazine is being called
of God, nor does it mean that all who are being called of God have
already received The Good News. But there is both a fearsome
responsibility and an incredibly magnificent promise to all who read
article after article.
We have both an opportunity and a
responsibility: an opportunity to be called of God now in this age, to
help do His work of witnessing to and warning the world, and an awesome
responsibility to commit ourselves and our lives to God in toto now.
When
Peter stated that judgment must begin at the house of God, he was
directing his comments to those whom God was calling. If Peter were
alive today, he would have written those words in this magazine.
The
Good News is not for everyone. It was conceived, and it is written and
edited, expressly for those people who have voluntarily requested it —
people whom God is calling into His Church.
There is no way for
one human being to convince another to "join" God's Church; there is no
argument, no clever phraseology, no emotional pitch, by which one human
being can really convert another. There is only one way a human mind
can be converted. There is only one way for a human being to become a
truly begotten son of God. That is, very simply, if God and Christ call
you, give you their Spirit to work with you, grant you repentance, make
you see the enormity of your sins, make you know that they have their
Church available and call you into it.
We cannot convince you of
anything. The decision you make is entirely up to you. God will not
force you to do anything. He is interested in building character, and
character can only be built through decisions made on a completely
freewill basis.
So please don't interpret anything we have said
in this article, in this issue or in the entirety of our Good News
structure as an attempt by us to convince you — or to allow you to
convince yourself — that you should "join" the Church of God. That's
not our purpose. It never was our purpose; it cannot be our purpose.
What
we try to do is to simply communicate with those people whom God is
leading to His truth, to His Work, to His Church — explaining the
doctrines of God's Church.
How do you know if God is calling
you? There is no "sure-fire" method. You cannot know from any analysis
of your blood. Examining your brain waves won't help, nor will an
electrocardiogram. Only God knows for sure, but you can certainly get a
pretty good idea.
Are you moved deeply when you read your Bible?
Do you really begin to see the plan of God as outlined from Genesis to
Revelation? Do you hunger and thirst for every spiritual article you
read in The Good News? Are you fascinated and excited by the spiritual
concepts you see expounded and explained?
And what about your
own personal life? Do you see yourself as God sees you? Do you feel, on
one hand, excited and enthralled at the prospects for the future, at
the reason why God created you; and, at the same time, do you see
yourself as a worthless worm, a disobedient fleshly being who
desperately needs to be forgiven of his sins by his Saviour?
Finally,
do you yearn for the opportunity to associate and fellowship with
people who have similar feelings to your own — people who read The Good
News magazine, who are themselves thoroughly captivated by the
opportunity to participate in this worldwide Work of God by both prayer
and financial support?
God in this end time, as the return of
Jesus Christ soon approaches, as the need to extend and establish His
Work over the entirety of the world increases, has raised up His
Church. There are now hundreds of consecrated and ordained ministers
throughout the world (and especially in the United States, Canada,
England and other members of the British Commonwealth) whose sole
function is to work with, encourage, help and to serve those people
whom God is calling.
If you have any questions that you would
like answered regarding the Bible, God's plan of salvation, God's true
Church, or your personal life, please do not hesitate to make use of
these ministers whom God has provided for you. If you want to meet
people who have similar views to yours — other Good News magazine
readers whom God has placed in His Church — God is calling you,
or if you simply want some spiritual help and advice, please write to
us and we will immediately inform you of those in God's ministry. Or if
you would prefer faster service, please dial this toll-free number in
the continental United States: 800-423-4444. (Readers in California,
Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii should call 213-577-5225 collect.)
You
may be very surprised to learn that God's ministers are available
within or near your hometown. Again, if you want to meet a minister of
God, write to us. If God is calling you, it is your responsibility. For
"the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God."
