Today we will just recap the last week or two on what we have been looking at, which has been leading up to the teaching of eternal judgment. What is the penalty for sin? Is it to suffer forever in Hell consciously, or is it to be eternally destroyed?
So we have been looking at how we have arrived at this point. Last time we saw that God has given us Biblical calendars of history that He has set in the Bible. In Genesis 5 and 11, we find calendars that can be trusted. They are perfectly accurate. They are precise, and they can be shown to be exact.
We also saw, when we project into the future, that there is a very interesting timeline that goes from the flood of Noah’s day, which occurred in 4990 B.C., into the New Testament Era, which comes after the Cross. This interesting timeline is from 4990 B.C. forward 7,000 years. And by the way, we do not pick the number 7 or 7,000 just because it fits, or for anything else like that. We chose this number because God said to Noah in Genesis 7, “For yet seven days” and I will destroy the earth. Then in 2 Peter 3, we find that God says, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” and He says this in the context of the destruction of the first earth by the flood and the destruction of this second earth by fire. Right in the middle, this verse is given.
We know that this is how God wrote the Bible. He wrote it in parables. So we wondered if those seven days represented 7,000 years. Then we found that when we went from 4990 B.C. and added the 7,000 years, we got to A.D. 2011. We discovered that this would actually be 7001, but there was no year “0” when they developed the Gregorian calendar, our calendar, so we minus 1 and we have 7,000 years exactly.
If this exact 7,000 years turned out to be A.D. 2095, people would probably not be so concerned. They would not be so bothered or disturbed by this information. But this turns out to be the year 2011, which is right around the corner. We are in the year 2007. So this is only 3 ½ years away, and even less than that because we are a month away from the year 2008. So it is basically 3 years until A.D. 2011.
Because of this, all kinds of people do not like this idea of dating these events when it hits home. When this timing lines up to be in your own generation, in your own lifetime, then this really affects some people to a great degree. If someone was to come up with the year 2155, then, sure, let them. They would not comment on that. But we are looking at A.D. 2011! Now this is something, and it is really affecting every individual’s life who is alive upon the earth today. Everyone should have an interest in this and truly wonder if this is true or not. Everyone should be checking this out.
So we saw that God has given us a timeline. He even gives us time paths in the Bible through Daniel 9. God said “seventy weeks” to Daniel, and then He told Daniel to project these weeks into the future where it lands on the coming of the Messiah and then goes into the end of time.
So time paths are Biblical. God has given them to us. He has given us examples of them in the Bible; therefore, it is very acceptable. It is Biblical and it is right to find significant dates in the Bible and to project them into the future, especially as God is telling us about the seven days of Genesis 7 and that one day is as a thousand years and that we see that we are right there.
If the world that we are living in was as it was maybe a hundred years ago, with at least an outward standard of morality to some degree, then maybe we would question this. If there was not the wickedness and evil running rampant over the face of the earth as we find today, or if the church was giving some kind of appearance, at least in word, of adhering to what the Bible says, then we might say that this is the wrong generation. Maybe then we would be able to say that this is not the right time and that maybe 2011 is not a possibility. If we could say, “Look at the church! Look at all the faithful pastors and teachers and preachers that are out there! Look at how they are teaching about the judgment and election and all these truths that the Bible teaches!”
But the problem is—and we are well aware of this—that the world is the most evil it has ever been. “Every imagination of the thoughts of (man’s) heart was only evil continually” at the time of the flood, but that was a very small number of people and they did not have the capability to commit sin that we have today.
One of the great temptations of Jesus from Satan was when “the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” Then Satan said to Him, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
Look at this end time generation. God has opened up Internet and television. Through the electronic medium, we have the ability to view the whole world. You can have whatever you want. Whatever your particular sin is, you can have easy access to it and it can be delivered right to your home, right to where you are, in the privacy of your house and nobody else has to know about it. People can fill themselves up with the lust of the eyes or whatever their particular sin is.
This is something that is new to our generation and so sin is multiplying across the face of the earth as it has never been before. And I do not think anyone could contest this. I mean would anyone really argue that the world of our day is as moral as past generations?
Some people try to bring up Rome or things like that, but then you read the Bible and you read about the Roman law and how they were so careful not even to whip someone who was a Roman citizen. Everything had to be done decently and in good order.
No, the past generations were not like what we have today in our present world. This present world is a world that really has been given up. It has been given up. The cold hearts of men are in evidence everywhere, as men easily go after their sin.
This is the same situation with the church. It is far worse with the church. There has never been an organized church like we have today. We can easily list the sins of the church, from ordaining homosexual bishops and pastors, to ordaining women, to falling over backwards, to speaking in tongues, to being slain in the spirit, or to just denying the Bible truths on just about every point there is. They do what they want to do. They do what is right in their own eyes; and you see, that is the problem.
So when we project that 7,000 years, it does not fall in a glorious golden age that many theologians thought would come for the church. Nor does it fall at a time when the church is striving to be faithful in teaching the Gospel of the Bible and in teaching the true salvation of the Bible. It falls on a church that has fallen away like never before in the history of the world, and this fits perfectly.
2 Thessalonians 2 told us that there must come “a falling away first” before the last events of the end come with the man of sin taking his seat “in the temple.” 2 Thessalonians 2 informs us that this is when the return of Christ will be, and we are in that time. We are in that day, so we should be taking this seriously. Therefore, I think that we really ought to be examining the very definite and real possibility that this world can and will end in three years, in a short amount of time.
More than this, we were also looking at how when we go that 7,000 years from the flood to A.D. 2011, and on a separate road, on a different time path, we saw that the Church Age came to an end in May of 1988. Then 23 years from this also takes us to 2011. From Pentecost 1988 to May 21, 2011 is 23 years from the end of the Church Age. This is an exact 8400 days and the number 84 is very much involved with the Great Tribulation.
We also saw how 1988 was the 13,000th year of earth’s history, as well as how some of the information in the Bible points to the number 13 representing the end and when we could expect the tribulation. Plus we also saw that the Great Tribulation would be 23 years, and we saw all of these things entirely separate from anything having to do with the flood or the 7,000-year time path.
1988 to 2011 is a perfect 23 years. Going to May 21 is 8400 days. Then when we go 7,000 years from the flood into 2011, where do we land? We land at the end of the Great Tribulation.
So, okay, May 21, 2011 lands at the end of that 23-year period. It does not hit you at first, but think about it for awhile. May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar, the Biblical calendar. So what is so special about that?
Well, if we go back to Genesis 7, we read in Genesis 7:11-12:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
This was the 17th day of the 2nd month of the calendar in Noah’s day, which was based upon his life span. It was a 30-day-month calendar, different than our calendar today. We have some months of thirty or thirty-one, even one of twenty-eight. So our calendar is different than the Biblical calendar, which was based on the moon spans or about twenty-nine-and-one-half-day months.
Because of this, we cannot say that it is exactly 7,000 years. We do not know actually how Noah’s calendar would fit into our calendar or into the Biblical calendar, the Hebrew calendar. But do you see what God is doing? The end of the 23-year period of Great Tribulation, the 8400 days, falls on May 21, 2011. Coming seven thousand years to that very date, happens to be in the Biblical calendar, the Hebrew calendar, the 17th day of the 2nd month when God shut the door on Noah and when the flood waters began to come.
You know, this is amazing! God fit these dates into three different calendars: our calendar, the Hebrew calendar, and Noah’s calendar. Who could orchestrate something like this? It takes an Infinite Mind to do something like this, and it falls on the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar.
Now totally separate from all that we have been studying, we now come to the three Feasts, the three main Feasts of Israel. Remember there was the Passover; there was Pentecost; there was the Feast of Tabernacles. We know that the Passover was fulfilled by the Lord Jesus. When He hung on the Cross, the spiritual meaning of the Passover was fulfilled. We know that Pentecost was fulfilled on that very day in Acts 2 when God said, “the day of Pentecost was fully come.” Pentecost had to do with the firstfruits, the sending out of the Gospel into the world so that the firstfruits, those whom God intended to save, would come in. The third Feast was Tabernacles or Ingathering, which was held simultaneously at the same time of the year, in the seventh month of the Hebrew year.
If we go back to Exodus, God speaks of these three Feasts in Exodus 23:16:
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.
So by saying that the Feast of Ingathering is in the end of the year, He is really giving us information that points to the end of the world, to the end of the “acceptable year of the Lord”, to the end of that “year of Jubilee” as it is going forth in this time of the “latter rain.” The actual Feast of Tabernacles is in the seventh month. It is not the end of the year for the Jews, but God has His reasons for saying this, and it was actually legitimate to say that it was in the “end of the year.” However, spiritually, this is pointing to the end of the world, and we know that God has a spiritual harvest to bring in. He is bringing in His people. He is saving His elect, and this is going to be the harvest that He is gathering, the ingathering. Once He saves the last of His elect, then the purpose for this world is done.
So totally separate from the flood, totally separate from the Great Tribulation, there is information in the Bible that points to the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Ingathering as being a feast that spiritually would be fulfilled by the bringing in of God’s elect and the end of the world. The difficulty in this is that in 2011, we would expect Christ’s return to be in October when the Feast of Tabernacles would be occurring, specifically October 21, 2011.
So here is another thing that is amazing; it really is. I cannot imagine how anyone could come up with something like this, other than God Himself. When we come to May 21, 2011, we find from May 21 to October 21 is five months. This is a five-month period in our calendar, a period of 153 days. There are 10 days left in May, the 30 days in June, the 31 days in July, the 31 days in August, the 30 days in September, and the 21 in October. Add this up and it is 153 days exactly and it is five Gregorian calendar months, five months of the calendar that we use today.
So we might just let this go and wonder if we fell short. We thought that we had the correct time path. Everything looked good. It fell on May 21, the 17th day of the 2nd month, so we are just five months short; we have to keep studying.
Let us go back to Genesis 7. God is describing a total destruction, a total ruination of the whole world by water, and He says in Genesis 7:22-24:
All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
This is 150 days in Noah’s calendar. And we can actually know from the following chapter, where God tells us that this was the 17th day of the 7th month, that these 150 days were five months exactly and that the months were 30-day months. This is how God kept track when He used a Biblical calendar patriarch as the calendar reference point. He used 30-day months.
So God said, “For yet seven days” and I will destroy the earth—and so we know, 7,000 years. Following that seven days, “the LORD shut him in.” He shut Noah and his family in the Ark. We know that it was the 17th day of the 2nd month. And in 2011, at the very end of an exact 23-year Great Tribulation period, it is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar.
So all of this matches perfectly, but we were five months short. We were five months short, and here God speaks of five months when the water is fifteen cubits above the highest mountain upon the earth—prevailing, destroying, no life. It is all destruction. It is all a terrible tragedy for mankind for five months.
So this is why we have begun to look at the language of five months in the Bible, but there are not really a lot of places to go. There is information in Luke 1 concerning Elisabeth. Elisabeth conceived miraculously. Remember, it was a miracle because she was of an old age. God used normal means. That is, He blessed the marriage relationship. But God, none the less, performed a miracle. It was the same way with Sara. He gave her a child in her old age, and that was a miracle.
So we read in Luke 1:23-24:
And it came to pass, that, as soon as the days of his ministration…
This is speaking of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. It continues:
…were accomplished, he departed to his own house. And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, …
So this is one reference to five months that we have in the Bible.
Following this, the angel Gabriel is sent to Mary to tell her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee” and that she will be with child. Then Mary is going to go to visit Elisabeth, and this will be in Elisabeth’s sixth month.
So the only thing I can think of is that Elisabeth was hid for five months. After five months, the Lord came. The Lord came in her sixth month. So this is one possibility of how we can understand this five-month period. Following the five months where Elisabeth was hid, the Lord did come. He was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, in the sixth month of Elisabeth. So this is one possibility, because we are expecting that after the five-month period, the world will be totally destroyed and God will recreate a new heavens and a new earth. So in that sense, He will come for all those unsaved on the earth in totally destroying them.
Another place where we find a five-month period is what we have been hearing about in Revelation. We read in Revelation 9:1-5:
And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
When we read about the “bottomless pit,” this is language of Hell. It continues:
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
It is mentioned again in verse 10:
And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.
So what we have learned is that the 7,000 years came from Noah’s day—this is all based on the Bible—and it lands on May 21, and 23 exact years also comes to May 21. Plus, God joins them together by them both being the 17th day of the 2nd month. So we are correct, and this means that May 21 is the time when God shuts the door. He closes the door.
In the case of the Ark, the Lord shut them in. The word “door” is not mentioned there, but there was a door on the Ark. So He shut them in, sealing their safety. I think that this is why God says, “the LORD shut him in.” He is indicating that this is a positive thing for the believers because He has saved His elect. He has rescued them. He has delivered them. They have all found refuge within the Lord Jesus Christ.
God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” God “delighteth in mercy.” And so God’s first emphasis is that He shuts them in. But at the same time, He is also closing the rest out or leaving them without to where they cannot enter into the Ark in the days of Noah, nor can there be salvation.
One of the problems that we had before when we were studying the phrase, “immediately after the tribulation of those days,” and Mark 13 where it says, “in those days, after that tribulation,” was that some people were trying to say believers would be upon the earth, that they would be here during this time. They were also saying that the literal sun would be darkened and the stars would literally be falling to the earth and the moon would literally be turning to blood.
But, no, this can not be for many physical reasons. We cannot have stars that are ten times the size of the sun falling to the earth and the earth still remaining. This is one of the reasons that we dismissed all of this; this is not a possibility.
But now God has opened up some more information about a period after the tribulation, a period of time after that 23-year period. He says, “in those days,” and “those days” happen to be more than a day or two. They happen to be five months. “In those days,” literal, physical, celestial bodies are not being destroyed, but, spiritually, the Gospel is removed. The door is shut. There is no more possibility of salvation after this point. God will, therefore, not leave the believers upon the earth because believers carry the Gospel message and believers suffer persecution for the Gospel’s sake that others might be saved. Once the last of the elect do become saved, then there is no reason or purpose of any kind for believers to remain upon the earth. Their job will be over.
So God is going to shut the door on salvation and He will remove His people. Therefore, we can expect there to be a rapture. There will be a gathering, a lifting up of the elect people of God. Then there will be this five-month period.
Now the question that we are beginning to study is what is going to happen during this time. What is going to happen is that man will be tormented, according to Revelation 9, for these five months. But what follows this? What will be that payment for sin? What is that “destruction”? So now we are beginning to study what this “destruction” is.
To tell you the truth, I have never considered the possibility of annihilation; never. I did not grow up in a church, so I did not hear or start believing in eternal damnation from a church. I started listening or following the Gospel through Family Radio. I especially heard information about judgment and eternal damnation through Family Radio, specifically through Mr. Camping. That is where I learned about eternal damnation. I did not learn about it from any denomination or any church. But the issue is this, where did Mr. Camping learn it? Where did he learn it? Mr. Camping was a product of the church for many years.
So I heard this and then when I read the Bible, because I had heard that there was eternal suffering and a consciousness of the unsaved in Hell, I was reading passages that all seemed to agree with this. So what would have been the need for checking this out any further? I did not really see any need, so I never really spent much time studying this issue, to tell you the truth.
When this came up, my children were the first to hear this. At first, they said, “Dad, Mr. Camping is teaching there is no Hell!” My response was, “What! No hell?” But then we learned that what Mr. Camping is teaching is that there is no eternal suffering of the unsaved in Hell, and even that was a shock. It was a shock, and I thought, “Wow!” But then I began to think about how Mr. Camping is also someone whom God has been using to bring forth a great many truths from the Bible during these days. So I decided to wait and hear what Mr. Camping had to say. The Bible tells us to be like the Bereans who “searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” So I began to search the Bible concerning this issue.
At this point, let us turn to Job 20:5-8, where we read:
That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: …
By the way, Anita just pointed this out to me. This does not say, “perish like his own dung.” It says, “perish for ever like his own dung.” I have not had the chance to check out the Hebrew on that word, but dung perishes and it is gone. This says, “perish for ever like his own dung,” which is a very significant point. It continues:
…they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
Now let us go to Psalm 37. We are going to look at a few verses that I had never really considered before to hear what they have to say. We read in Psalm 37:20:
But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.
They are going to “consume away.”
Now let us go to Psalm 49:10-12:
For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.
We know that once a beast dies, it has no further existence.
Now let us go to Psalm 146. This verse is especially significant to the question of whether or not there is a conscious suffering of the unsaved, after God’s judgment. In Psalm 146:3-4, it says:
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
So let us just imagine that God is raising someone up, but his thoughts have perished. “What did I do? What crime am I guilty of?” His thoughts are gone, all of his thoughts, all the knowledge of his sin has perished. It has left him. We think that someone will be suffering in Hell, but where are his thoughts? This is an issue that goes right along with conscious existence.
Now let us go to 2 Peter 3, and we are going to spend a little bit more time on this. 2 Peter 3:10 says:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
This is what we have expected. The earth and its works will be burned up. When we look at the world around us today, all that we see is going to be destroyed: the artwork, the architecture, all the designs of man, all the progress throughout the centuries that man has made on this earth, all of his labor and all that he has put into building up this world, all these works of the world are going to be burned up just like that and destroyed completely and totally. We can see why God has warned us repeatedly, repeatedly, to not love this world.
Let us turn over to 1 John 2:15-17. (This is just the opposite page in my Bible.) We read there:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
God has told us to not put our trust in the things of this world. He has warned us to not attach ourselves to the things of this world because this world is going to go up in smoke.
When God destroys this world, will it ever come back again? When we read about the “fervent heat,” we know that it will be gone, as it says here in 2 Peter 3:11:
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation…
The world is going to be destroyed by fire. It is going to burn up and be gone in a puff. Puff, and that is it! Totally destroyed, everlastingly destroyed! Nothing in this world will ever come back into being again.
People get attached to the things of this world. I know someone who is so attached to things that she looks back to her youth, to the things she lost, and she still regrets it. She is still sad and really sorrows over those things, those possessions that she had when she was married a long time ago. But they were lost somehow, and she is still bemoaning them many, many years later.
And this is how it is. People get attached to the things of this world. They love the world. Sadly, this is the inheritance for all of the unsaved. This is their inheritance. All they will ever have is in this life. So this is their riches. This is their blessing, in a sense, from God. This is all that they will experience.
So we can imagine why they are so sad when they lose things and when they do not have all of the things that they would desire in this world. They want more. They want all that they can have and all that they can experience.
But God warns them to not think about the things of this world, to not care if you do not have money, to not let it bother you if you do not have a big house or fancy cars, to not worry about the things of this life, because “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” The world will be burned up. It is utterly, totally, and completely going to be destroyed. Everything that you had will be gone, just as Job said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” So why be concerned about all of these things?
When we read a verse like this in 2 Peter 3:10, we have to keep in mind that all that I just said is true. But there is something else in view here, so let us read 2 Peter 3:10 again:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
This word “works” is what makes this verse interesting. This is the Greek word ergon and it is used many times in the New Testament. It is overwhelmingly used, greater than 90% of the time, to mean the work of the Law. So let us look at a few examples of this.
We read in Matthew 11:2:
Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
Or go to John 6:28-29:
Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
We have understood this verse to tie into the faith of Christ. It is all God’s work in the manner of salvation; this is true.
Or look at Romans 4:2:
For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.
Also Romans 4:6:
Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,
As we hear of the earth and its works being burned up, we think of construction and the building of skyscrapers. This is what we tend to think, but this is not the idea that this word gives us.
There is another related Greek word. It is the middle voice of ergon, and it is a different Strong’s number. When Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, one of the rulers of the synagogue said, “There are six days in which men ought to work.” This word for “work” is used more often to describe labor, to describe doing the work that we would associate with buildings in this world and things like that.
But this word ergon has to do with the work of keeping the Law or failing to keep the Law. It is the word that we find in Galatians 2:16:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works (ergon) of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
Again and again and again, we find this word associated with the keeping of the Law.
There are a couple of places in the book of Acts where this word is used to describe Dorcas’ good works. A little later, the disciples came and were shown “the coats and garments which Dorcas made.” These were items of substance, but actually, spiritually, this was pointing to bringing the Gospel that covers over the nakedness, the spiritual nakedness of sinners. And we find another reference in Acts 7 to the work that was involved in building the golden calf. But again, this has to do with the spiritual work of developing a false gospel.
So these are a couple of the instances where ergon is pointing to producing something that had tangible substance, something you could feel. But other than that, ergon has to do with works that are entirely spiritual, the works of keeping the Law. For example, Abraham was justified by works, and so forth, and this was the “work” of the Lord Jesus.
But when God uses this word, “the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up,” we have to wonder how ergon can be burned up. So let us go over to 1 Corinthians 3, and I think that we will see and understand what 2 Peter 3:10 is talking about. We read in 1 Corinthians 3:8-9:
Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.
Notice that He says, “we are labourers.” We are workers. We are workers with God. We are working together to get the Gospel out. Why? So that others might be saved. So that the Kingdom of God could be built up, the house of God, the spiritual “house.” We are “lively stones.” God tells us that we will be constructed, “built up a spiritual house.” The Apostle Paul says that this is the task of the believers.
Then we read in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15:
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work (ergon) 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 (ergon) of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work (ergon) shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
We are not going to have too much time to get into this, but the Apostle Paul is saying that as he ministered in the Gospel, this was his “work,” his “labour.”
Look at 1 Corinthians 9:1:
Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
To the Corinthians, Paul declares, “Ye are my work. In ye, I ministered the Gospel.” So people hear the Gospel and they respond; they profess faith. They are built upon this “house.” So they might be gold or silver; they might be “precious stones.” When the fire is lit and tries every man’s work, then the true believer is going to endure and come through. But then, they might be wood, hay, or stubble; and when the fire is lit, they are going to be destroyed.
This is what 2 Corinthians 3:10 is saying. It is not talking about buildings, even though we can understand that it is related to this to some degree. But the earth and its “works” is referring to how God’s people have ministered the Gospel to the world and that many profess to have become saved and yet they will be left behind. The door will be shut; the door will be closed for a five-month period of time. Following this, there will be a “fervent heat” in which the earth and all therein, including many, many people, all of these “works” will be burned up. The fire will reveal what sort of “work” they were, as 1 Corinthians 3:14 says, “If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.”
What a wonderful blessing if someone is saved, if someone has escaped the judgment of God! Yet 1 Corinthians 3:15 says, “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss.” So there is sadness. There is remorse for those who have professed to be God’s children, yet they turn out not to be. “But he himself,” the one who was ministering the Gospel, like the Apostle Paul, “shall be saved” because he was a true believer. He was saved “so as by fire.” That is, he endured the wrath of God in the person of the Lord Jesus, as Jesus went through the fires of Hell and paid the penalty for sin.
Lord willing, we will try to go back over this a little slower and try to understand this better and maybe pick up from here next time.