Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

Proverbs, Chapter 28, verse 1, King James Bible

VK: Hi! Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m Victoria K. We’re so happy that you are able to join us today on Anchored by Truth as we keep going with our series we call “The Seriousness of Sin.” We’re doing this series because there is an ongoing effort in our culture today to eliminate sin as a “real and present” danger to our lives and eternal salvation. In the studio today we have RD Fierro who is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, sin is a pretty unpopular concept in our culture today – and even in the church. Why do you think that is?

RD: Sin is unpopular because it the word sin, the idea of sin, embodies three elements that are out of favor in popular Western culture: God, transcendent moral and ethical standards, and judgment. Today our culture hates the idea that someday an omniscient God will pass judgment on everyone who has ever lived. Yet, as much as we hate the idea we can’t get away from it.

VK: The Bible is very clear that no matter how much people try to deny that God exists and they are sinful it doesn’t work. The book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 18 through 20 say, “From heaven God shows how angry he is with all the wicked and evil things that sinful people do to crush the truth. They know everything that can be known about God, because God has shown it all to them. God's eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all he has made. That's why those people don't have any excuse.” That’s from the Contemporary English Version.

RD: Right. We all know that God exists and we know that we are accountable to Him. We may deny it our whole lives but our denial doesn’t change the reality. That’s the biggest reason we are doing this series. Because the reality is that sin poses a danger to every person on the planet. Sin can dramatically affect lives in the here and now.

VK: Like driving drunk, or stealing your neighbor’s property, or failing to pay your taxes …

RD: Yes. Sin can and does affect lives in the here and now but even more seriously, sin imperils our eternal destiny. Unrepentant sinners – if they remain unrepentant until death – will face an eternity in hell.

VK: And that’s what we spent our last two episodes of Anchored by Truth discussing. We spent an episode discussing the reality of hell and we spent an episode discussing the nature of hell. There are a lot of cartoonish and Hollywood movie portrayals of hell but none of them ever approach the nightmarish truth.

RD: Yes. Hell is an eternity of despair, desolation, and destruction. That eternity is depicted in the Bible by a number of horrible images – a lake of fire, a burning pit of garbage with worms that don’t die, a deep abyss filled with smoke and torment, etc. But regardless of how horrible the Bible’s depictions are the reality will be much, much, much worse.

VK: So, the possibility of winding up there is pretty serious. And the reason people will wind up there – if they don’t rely on Jesus as their Savior – is sin. Sin is so serious because it has eternal implications for the sinner.

RD: Right. Unredeemed sinners have only one destination and it is not heaven. And there is only one way for any sinner to be redeemed – by the atoning blood of Christ Jesus. Fortunately, Christ’s atonement is available to any and all who will simply ask for him to become their Savior – their advocate if you will.

VK: And that’s why you titled one of your fiction books The Prodigal’s Advocate. We are all prodigals. We all need an advocate.

RD: Yes. That’s why I wrote Prodigal’s Advocate. It’s a fictional allegory designed to help people understand that we are all sinners. We all need an advocate to represent us before the judgment seat of God. Otherwise we will be there on our own and an imperfect being standing on their own before an infinite and perfect Judge is not just a dire situation – it is a situation from which recovery is literally impossible. And that’s why we’re doing this Seriousness of Sin series. We don’t want anybody to experience the desolation and destruction of hell.

VK: Because hell will be eternal – and no how long we live on this earth our time on this earth will be just a blip of time in eternity. So, today you wanted to conclude our discussion about hell and move on to how we can all be certain for ourselves that sin, hell, and judgment are real. But you said that there is one more topic about hell that we need to cover.

RD: Yes. We began this discussion as we were closing out our last episode. We need to get rid of the idea that hell is some kind of a giant party place where sinners will be with their sinful friends and all of them together with just continue sinning for all eternity.

VK: A sort of “hot but happy” scenario. I know what you’re talking about. I have heard people flippantly say “I don’t care if I get sent to hell. That’s where all my friends will be.” Or something like, “I won’t mind being hell as long as the beer is cold there.”

RD: A lot of people seem to have the notion is that hell will be like an earthly prison – a hot one maybe – but like a prison with Satan as the warden and the demons as prison guards. So, they reason that in hell the prisoners may be miserable but they will be free to move about and talk to each other. But there are Bible verses that directly contradict that notion that anyone in hell will have freedom of movement.

VK: For instance Revelation, chapter 20, verses 1 and 2. Those verses say, “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him …” That’s the New International Version. There is also a verse in the book of Jude that talks about demons being bound with chains..

RD: It goes without saying that anyone bound with chains is certainly not going to be roaming about. Now, I don’t know if the chains mentioned by Jude or John, who wrote revelation, are literal or whether God is simply using images that would have been familiar to the audiences in the age when Jude and John wrote. But whether the chains are literal or not the language Jude and John used sends a very clear message that demons and people in hell are going to be confined. Will they be confined together or separately? We don’t know. But there is no Bible verse that indicates that the prisoners in hell will have the opportunity to be sharing their misery with one another.

VK: And those verses point out another thing. As you mentioned many people think that in hell Satan is the warden and the demons are the prison guards. But those verses from Revelation and Jude certainly don’t support that idea.

RD: No, they don’t. Let’s remember that hell was not originally intended for human beings.

VK: In the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 41, Jesus told His audience. “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.’” Jesus said that eternal fire of hell was prepared for the “devil and his demons.”

RD: So, hell was prepared for the devil and his demons. It was not established as a giant prison to hold people that would be operated by the devil and his demons. I’ve seen books written by people who supposedly had some kind of an after-life or out-of-body experience. One of them I read said that the writer had found themselves in hell before he was finally summoned to heaven. The problem was that his description of what he experienced was like most Hollywood productions portray hell and therefore inconsistent with the Bible. In his description he was in a cave like structure with individual cells that had iron bars on the doors. He had a grotesque, demonic-type being in his cell with him acting as a tormenter. There were many similar figures throughout the part of the prison he could see. These beings were all tormenting various humans and moving them around in corridors and larger chambers where more exquisite forms of pain were being inflicted.

VK: Sounds very Hollywoodish or like a childish sort of imaginary scene. Obviously, such a place would be very unpleasant. But the problem is that is, as you said, inconsistent with the Bible. In the real hell the demons are being tormented themselves. They are not the tormenters.

RD: Right. Satan and the demons hate people. They especially hate the redeemed – the Christians – but they don’t even like the people who claim to worship or serve them. Satan is the master of delusion and deception so he deceives some people into believing that if they somehow worship or serve him he is an ally or friend to them. He’s not. He may hate them a little less than he hates Christians but he still hates them because all people are created in the image of God – and Satan hates God most of all. Satan regards those who worship him as fools and tools.

VK: Fools and tools. Now there’s a phrase.

RD: But that’s exactly what he thinks of them. They’re fools because they trust him rather than trusting the Almighty God who would save them if they would just ask. And they are tools because he can use them to further his wicked ambitions. What they are not to Satan is friends. Satan has no friends and he doesn’t want any. He only wants subjects who will worship him. We saw that in his temptation of Christ.

VK: At any rate the point is that the demons are not in charge of hell or running the place. They are the imprisoned, confined occupants of hell. And they are in at least as much misery there as the people who wind up joining them. Hell and its eternal fire were prepared for them and they know it. That’s why the demons Jesus encountered displayed such a fear of Him commanding them to return to the abyss. Jude and John tell us that the demons are chained. So, chained beings are not chasing anyone around with pitchforks or whatever item the Hollywood prop master wants to put in their hands. Real demons are not masters in hell. They are just another group of miserable occupants. But I suppose that people will assert that the Biblical descriptions of hell are also imaginary – as is the concept of God and sin.

RD: They might but they would be in error if they did so and all denials of God’s existence are artificial and self-defeating.

VK: In fact we did an entire series on Anchored by Truth called “The Lord of Logic” where we addressed the 5 most common objections to God’s existence. In Lord of Logic we showed that all objections to God’s existence are logically indefensible. In other words they are unreasonable in a formal, logical sense. That series is available from our website crystalseabooks.com for anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into that subject.

RD: Yes. And Lord of Logic is a really good series for anyone who wants to assure themselves that their Christian faith is rock-solid not just from the standpoint of the assurance that it provides but also from the standpoint of withstanding any assaults that claim to be based on reason or evidence. But even if people don’t want to explore at the depths that we do in Lord of Logic there is another way that people can quickly determine that everything the Bible says about God, sin, and judgment is true.

VK: How is that?

RD: By thinking about one word: guilt. Guilt is God’s gift to man to assure us that He exists, that sin is real, and that there is a coming judgment.

VK: I’m not sure that most people would think of guilt as being a gift.

RD: But it is. Think about what the concept of guilt implies. For guilt to be present there must first of all be an offense. For an offense to occur there must be a law or standard that defines permissible behavior or activity. And for there to be a law or standard there must be a lawgiver or standard maker. And none of that would be perceptible if human beings did not possess the ability to understand the existence of laws or standards and the implications of violations.

VK: Dictionary.com defines guilt as “[1] the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, especially against moral or penal law; culpability, [and 2] a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.” So, as you just stated for guilt to occur there must first be an offense or crime. And there wouldn’t be an offense or crime if there weren’t first a law or standard. This is sounding very similar to what the Apostle Paul said in Galatians, chapter 3, verse 24 where he said that the “law” was our tutor or guide to bring us to Christ. One translation calls the law our “school master.”

RD: Yes. All human beings, except perhaps some psychopaths, experience guilt. It is probably as universal a human phenomenon as we know about. Even people who deny the existence of God will acknowledge that they experience guilt. But without God what standards could exist that be so binding on their conscience that they would experience a feeling of remorse if they violate them.

VK: I suppose they might say that even if God doesn’t exist that there are laws or standards established by human communities that should govern us all – that these laws or standards are helpful and necessary to ensure harmony and stability in human society.

RD: Sure. They can say that. But that doesn’t answer the question about why peace, harmony, and stability are better than instability and chaos.

VK: Then they might say that peace, harmony, and stability are essential for survival – that human communities are stronger and survive better than an individual can on their own. They might say the impulse to seek peace is a part of “survival of the fittest.” The most harmonious societies are those that survive the best.

RD: And they can say that. But that doesn’t answer the question about why survival is superior to non-survival. Anyone who denies the existence of God is forced to fall back on evolution and deep-time as their explanation for why the world exists and appears as it does. But evolution essentially means that human beings are just the latest product in a long series of the random aggregation of unthinking atoms that happened to collect at one point in time. Well, if human beings are just the product of the random aggregation of atoms why would we think that the preservation of such random aggregations is better than the loss of such random aggregations. If evolution were true then survival is no better than non-survival because there is no basic standard that says it is.

VK: I see what you’re saying. The moment that we introduce the idea that one thing is better than another – that anything can be better or worse than something else – that process implies judgment against a standard by some entity that has the capability of understanding the standard, making a judgment, and then reacting to the results of the judgment. And there is simply no way that the random aggregation of atoms and molecules could create a meaningful standard much less impose that standard in an obligatory way on the other random aggregations of atoms and molecules.

RD: Exactly. The existence of an eternal, omnipotent, holy God that created a universe and populated it with creatures that possessed a portion of His attributes easily explains why that creature is intelligent and morally aware. But even if you could explain the existence of matter, energy, time, and space apart from God you can explain why impersonal material components can create intelligent beings that perceive moral and ethical verities and laws and can feel the weight of those verities and laws on them. And can then experience regret or remorse – guilt – when they fail to live up to the obligations that are imposed on us all.

VK: So, what you are saying is that when people deny the existence of God they undercut their ability to make any moral or ethical judgments at all. How can one random aggregation of atoms make an ethical judgment about other random aggregations of atoms? Yet, it is the people who deny God, especially those who deny the existence of the God of the Bible, who are now most prone to telling us how wrong we are when we display what they label as “intolerance.”

RD: Right. I think of them as being the “tolerance brigade.”

VK: The “tolerance brigade.” Again, there’s a phrase.

RD: The tolerance brigade is the group that goes around telling us that we must tolerate any behavior they find acceptable all while telling us that they do not have tolerate ideas and beliefs they don’t find acceptable.

VK: They judge and condemn others for what they perceive to be the crime of being judgmental and intolerant.

RD: Right. Tolerance as a proclaimed virtue is always hypocritical because tolerance condemns intolerance – which is itself intolerant. Tolerance is a virtue when guided by truth and transcendent values, but left to its own tolerance is just a club that betrays virtue and promotes all sorts of mischief. But the main point I want to emphasize here is that any discussion of what’s acceptable or unacceptable always involves the idea that we can distinguish between the acceptable and the unacceptable. If we can’t distinguish between those two then what’s the point of saying things like “I find that offensive.”

VK: And you hear that a lot these day. When the tolerance brigade wants to get their own way they will often tell us that we are being offensive if we say that certain behavior is sinful and that that behavior will result in condemnation to hell. But they can’t tell us that sin and hell are offensive ideas if they don’t accept the idea that it is possible for an offense to occur. And, as you’ve pointed out, without mandatory standards of behavior that apply to people then committing an offense or crime isn’t possible.

RD: Right. An offense is different from a preference. Somebody may prefer broccoli more than green beans but someone choosing to serve one or the other isn’t an offense. But somebody who steals their neighbor’s property has offended their neighbor because there is a transcendent standard that says that that behavior is not acceptable. Deny God and you deny the possibility of their being transcendent standards. One of the big problems which is well known is that philosophies like pantheism do away with a meaningful distinction between good and evil. But we all know good and evil exist. And we all know that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. When we choose to do things that are wrong or fail to choose to do things that are good then we are committing sin. And we know when we are sinning because we will feel guilty. We may deny we feel guilt but our denials don’t do away with the guilt and the overwhelming majority of the time the denial doesn’t do away with the feelings.

VK: So, the big idea that we wanted to introduce today is that human beings all have an internal way to validate the external reality of God, sin, and judgment. We all feel guilt at some points in our lives. That guilt may be reasonable or unreasonable but even unreasonable guilt still tells us that we have a facility for knowing that some things are right and others wrong. And that we have an obligation to do the right things and avoid the wrong. We may not like this reality but as we have often said on Anchored by Truth our preferences don’t change reality. This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the Holy Spirit who is the Person within the Trinity that Jesus told us would guide us to a knowledge of the truth. The truth is that sin and hell are real but there is a greater truth that Jesus came to save us from our sins and keep us from experiencing the horrors of hell. The fallen angels, the demons that rebelled against God, made an eternal election in their rebellion. But as long as we are in these bodies we can still make a choice that the demons cannot. We can choose to let Christ be our Advocate and represent us before the throne of judgment. And with Christ as our Advocate our salvation is assured.

---- PRAYER OF ADORATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (MARCUS)

VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Opening Bible Quote from the King James Bible)

Proverbs, Chapter 28, verse 1, King James Bible