We have been looking at Hebrews 6 for a couple of weeks, and we have seen that the Lord Jesus is the foundation of all Bible truth. Let us just read some of these verses again. We read in Hebrews 5:12-6:3:
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit.
We have seen that this passage is not what we thought it was. I have looked at this before and in reading these verses, I thought that the basic principles, “the first principles of the oracles (Word) of God,” were repentance, faith, resurrection, and eternal judgment. Then we were to go on into deeper things like the teaching of election or the end of the Church Age, the kinds of things that are really difficult to immediately see in the Bible because of the way in which God has written the Bible. This is how I viewed this passage. But actually, the “first principles” of the Word of God are the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the “foundation” that we read of in 1 Corinthians 3:11:
For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
This is dealing with those who profess to be saved and also with Bible knowledge. We can not build Bible knowledge on any other kind of foundation other than Christ Himself and a right understanding of Christ Jesus—who He is and what He did. He is God in the flesh and He came to save His people. This has to be the basic groundwork. This is “the pillar and ground of the truth.” Then everything can be built upon this and we can go deeper into the Word of God and begin to partake of “strong meat” and not the “milk of the Word.”
So when we read in Hebrews 6:1:
Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection…
It then speaks of these doctrines: repentance from dead works, faith, resurrection of the dead; and we saw that the history of the church was not one in which all of these teachings have been easily understood. These are some of the most confusing teachings, as far as when you look at churches and their various understandings of what faith is, of what repentance is, of baptism.
How many different branches of the church have split off because within them, they have all kinds of different doctrines concerning baptism? There are the Anabaptists and the Reformed Baptists, etc., and their ideas of what baptism is and what faith is. It has been very confusing for the congregations to figure out these basic principles, if they were the basic principles.
So the reason for this confusion is because they are not the basic principles. They are built upon the basic principle, who is Christ. You have to have Jesus as your Saviour in order to understand anything in the Bible, and then you can begin to learn more about the Word of God.
Last week, we saw included in this list was the “laying on of hands.” We were wondering why “laying on of hands” was included in these other major doctrines of great and monumental importance, doctrines such as baptism, resurrection, and eternal judgment. And right in the mix, God speaks of “laying on of hands.”
We looked at the few verses in the New Testament that talked about the “laying on of hands.” We saw that in every place where the “laying on of hands” was found, there was imparted blessing. It was even indicated that the “gift of God” is received in salvation through the “laying on of hands.”
We know that the church has really misunderstood this idea of the “laying on of hands,” and this still goes on today. Whenever anyone enters into the ministry, the bishop or the minister, whoever it is who is going to bring someone into the ministry, will lay their hands on that individual. Basically, the person kneels down before them, and they literally and physically lay their hands on that person.
Why do they do this? They do this because they think that, mysteriously, this will impart some kind of grace. This has to do with the apostolic succession that has been carried down from the apostles, up until our present day. This gives legitimacy to their church and to the minister. They think that God desires this and wants them to do this because it speaks of “laying on of hands” in the New Testament. But really, they misunderstand this.
This whole idea of “laying on of hands” goes hand-in-hand with the verse in 1 Timothy 3:15 that says:
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
We have heard this verse explained, and we understand that, grammatically, “the pillar and ground of the truth” could be referring to the “church” or it could be referring to “the living God.”
Of course, we know that Jesus is the only “foundation.” He is the “rock” that everything must be built upon, so we know that “the pillar and ground of the truth” is not the church. It is not the church; it is Christ.
God wrote this so that those who are in the churches and congregations and in authority can think that they are the custodians, the ones who are to take care of the truth of the Word of God. They believe that they are the ones who are to watch over the Bible, that they are the caretakers of the Word of God.
Actually, this was true during the Church Age. God did give the Bible to the churches and they were to be caretakers. However, they were not to believe that they were “the pillar and ground of the truth” but that they were those who were just commissioned by God to carry the Gospel message faithfully. This is no different than any believer because all believers are commissioned to “go forth” into the world with the Gospel. So they misunderstood this verse and took it further to think that they were the ones who held the “keys of the Kingdom,” that they were the ones who had the market cornered on the truth.
Of course, now that we have come to the end of the Church Age, they are still insisting on this and think that anyone who goes out of the church is then “outside” and subject to damnation. This is because they believe true salvation to be within the church, and a verse like “laying on of hands” just fosters this kind of idea. They believe that they are the ones who can give this gift.
Another good verse that points to this is 1 Timothy 4:14:
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
The “presbytery” would be referring to the elders. This would be those who are in authority in the church, so this would seem to mean that they are those who can give the “gift.”
In other verses, God really paints this kind of a picture. Here, we have a little bit more information because this verse speaks of “prophecy.” But in other verses, it speaks of the “laying on of hands” and then the imparted “blessing.”
This actually goes back to the Old Testament where Jacob was going to bless the sons of Joseph. How did he do this? He laid on his hands. In Jacob’s case, he gave the blessing to the younger over the elder. Also, when a Levite would enter into the priesthood, they would lay on their hands.
So this had very deep roots in the Bible, up until this present time, and it is kind of like baptism or the Lord’s Supper in that we do not know how it works. The church will not dare say that they are imparting any grace to any individual, but this will certainly be implied.
Basically, because they are doing this, they think that it does something to them, and yet God is really giving them a figure. He is giving them a picture that teaches a spiritual truth, which is what it says:
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy…
“Prophecy” is how the gift of faith, the gift of salvation, is given to anyone—through “prophecy.” “Prophecy” is just sharing the Word of God. It is declaring what the Bible says. It is hearing the Scripture, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” This is the “prophecy” that is in view. But just to confuse things, God said:
…with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
The “laying on of the hands” represents the will of whomever is in view. So when believers go forth, like going out today and handing someone a tract, they have given someone the “gift of prophecy.”
When you think about it, it is our hands that have been instrumental in giving them the message. In this sense, there has been a “laying on of the hands.” But to think that anyone, any man, could touch another person and by doing this they could be imparting anything spiritual to that person is really a total misunderstanding and a totally wrong way of understanding the Bible.
This also involves the people of today who come forward and are involved with falling over backwards. The person touches their forehead and lays hands on them and they are slain in the spirit and they fall over backward, which actually is giving the indication that they are under the judgment of God. Whoever is teaching or preaching or declaring this kind of gospel is misunderstanding the spiritual truths that God is giving us.
This is why in Hebrews 6, God is including this in this list of very important doctrines. It goes hand-in-hand with how the church is misinterpreting the Scripture in various ways. So let us read Hebrews 6:2 again. Remember that these are all of the things that are built upon the foundation of Christ.
Hebrews 6:2 says:
Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
These are not the basic principles; these are the “meat” of the Word. So it is no coincidence or accident that we are right up against the very end of the world, at the time when Daniel said that the Word would be “closed up and sealed till the time of the end,” and, suddenly, we learn about true faith, that saving faith is Christ. We also learn what true repentance is, and we know what true baptism is. True baptism is not being baptized with water, but it is the baptism of the Holy Ghost to wash away our sins in Christ. I do not know how many, historically, have been wrong about “laying on of hands,” but now we also understand this. We understand these things because God is really teaching us about how to read the Bible and how to understand the Bible, and He is doing this in our day.
But it also says “of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” And interestingly enough, what have we been learning about over the last two-three months? We are learning about the “resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”
These things were sealed up, just like many other Scriptures. But here we are at the time of the end and for God’s own reason, His own good purpose, He is beginning to instruct us and to teach us things that we never would have dreamed of, things that we never would have even considered. These are things that, really, would have been dismissed any time earlier.
We are not going to get into this again, but now, through the timeline of history and through opening up the Biblical calendar of history in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, God has locked in certain dates, like May 21, 2011 and October 21, 2011. These are very solid dates that are coming from the Bible.
Also, we have seen that May 21 connects with the 17th day of the 2nd month, because May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month in the Hebrew/Biblical calendar. This is important because this is the day that Noah and his family entered the Ark and God shut the door. And when God shuts the door, it means that there is no more salvation because Christ is the Door.
Well, I said that I was not going to get into this, but now I am getting into it because it is hard to make these kinds of statements without explaining this a little bit. But this has led us, it has forced us—nobody, I think, went willingly on this—this has forced us to see that the resurrection has to be May 21, 2011, but there is still time because the end of the world has to be October 21, 2011.
If the resurrection must be five months prior, where does this five-month period come from? So we have learned from Revelation 9 that God speaks of five months on earth that are very unpleasant and really terrifying, when you look at. This relates to the 150 days that we read about in Genesis 7 when the waters covered the earth and basically destroyed everything that had the “breath of life” upon the earth, over that 150-day period.
So we are learning about these things and one thing I know is that this is God’s purpose, because this is what Hebrews 6:2 is telling us, especially if we go into Hebrews 6:4-6:
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance…
And we have understood this passage for awhile as relating to those in the churches and congregations of our day. Once God is finished with the churches, it is impossible for there to be repentance or salvation within the church, and this is in the same context of these doctrines that we are reading about that are built on the “first principles,” which is the Lord Jesus. So God leads right into this with these doctrines of the “resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”
Okay, this has been the easy part. Now we are going to have to begin studying eternal judgment, and this is complicated. This is not easy at all because there are many words that are involved. There is the word “judgment.” There is the word “wrath.” There is the word “anger.” There is the word “destruction.” There is the word “destroy.” There is the word for “cut off.” There are numerous words and each one of these words can be translated as several different English words. Lester is here and he told me last week to tell everyone to look this up. Everybody, look up these words in your concordance and you will see how difficult it is to try to get a handle on even one word that God uses.
For today, I thought that we could look at the word “perish.” So let us go to John 3. This is a very simple verse. This is a very easy verse…we all thought! In John 3:14-16, it says:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This is the verse that everyone knows. We see this verse on billboards and signs and bumper stickers. Everyone knows John 3:16, yet what have we learned about “believing?”
We have already learned that this is not as simple as it first appears, because the Bible states “whosoever believeth.” Many teach that it is up to you. God makes you an offer. He presents the Gospel, and now it is up to you to choose Him, to believe on Him, to come down the aisle, to accept Him, to make Him your Saviour—and this is all wrong.
And we really only learned how to explain that this is all wrong over the last 10-15 years since we have come to know that whenever the Bible talks about “saving” faith, it is always the “faith of Christ.” Every single instance in the Bible where “faith” saves, it is Christ’s faith and never our own. We are the recipients of His grace, as it says in Ephesians 2:8-9:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.
So right away, we are put on warning that John 3:16 is not that simple to understand, and that when it is talking about “believing,” we have to search the Bible to understand that word “believe.” We can not just read the word “believe” and think that we know what it means.
Then what about the word “perish?” It seems like we have forgotten the principle of comparing Scripture with Scripture, “spiritual things with spiritual.” “Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.” I know what this means. It means that you are going to be thrown into Hell and you are going to suffer eternally forever and ever and you are going to be in misery into eternity future.
Well, this is what I thought. This is what many of us, if not all of us, thought. But where did we get this definition for “perish?” Are we doing with this word exactly what others are doing with the word “believe?” They come with their own preconceived ideas of what it means to “believe on Christ.” They conclude that here it is; here is how you do it; here is how you become saved. Well, they are all wrong, are they not? They are incorrect.
Well, I think that we kind of took the bait and fell into a trap ourselves with the word “perish,” and maybe with some other words, too. So what is it to “not perish,” “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish”? The only way in which to find this out is to start looking up the word.
The word “perish” is “apollumi.” It may sound familiar because it sounds like “Apollyon.” “Apollyon” is the Greek word in Revelation 9. Remember that there is a “king over…the bottomless pit, whose name…in the Greek tongue…Apollyon.” So God is basically transliterating this word for us, and this is a related word to “apollumi” here in John 3:16, which means “perish.” You can see how they are very similar; it is only the ending that is slightly different.
By the way, “Abaddon” is also mentioned in Revelation 9:11, and this is taken from the Old Testament. It is transliterated into the Greek from the Old Testament Hebrew word, and it is very similar to “apollumi.” Let us go to Revelation 9:11, where it is speaking of the “scorpions”:
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
So this means “to destroy,” “to perish.” This is what these names mean. If you look “Abaddon” up in the Hebrew, it is Strong’s H6, which is “abad,” “Abaddon” just has a different ending, and it means “destruction.” “Abad:H6” is translated many times as “perish” in the Old Testament. Basically, they are equivalent.
Since God gave us Revelation 9:11 where He uses these two words and He says that in the Greek it means this and in the Hebrew it means that, we know that when we search the Old Testament for this one particular word, “abad,” that the New Testament equivalent is “apollumi” and that is this word that we find in John 3:16 that is translated as “perish.”
Let us go to the Old Testament first and look up some verses where this word is found. Let us start off with Job 6:17-18, and let us try to keep in mind that we are looking to define the word. What does it mean to “perish?” It is as simple as that. What does it mean to “perish?”
In Job 6:17-18, it says:
What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish.
So this is one verse. It is kind of interesting that it says, “they go to nothing.” If they go to “nothing,” then that is no existence. If you go to nothing, you are not a personality anymore. You do not have any thought life. You do not have any words that you are speaking. You have gone to “nothing.”
Now let us turn to Job 20:5-7, where it says:
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: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
This is getting right to the point of what we are trying to find out. We thought that perishing forever meant eternal damnation in Hell. But here, the word is being used in connection with “dung,” with waste that comes out of a person. It comes out and goes “into the draught.” It returns to the earth, and then it is gone. It is gone.
Where did it go? It disappeared. It went back to the earth. It has no further existence, once it comes out of a person. So the dung perishes forever because it will never be part of a person again.
So again, we are just looking at these words, and we are looking at the Hebrew word “abad,” which is equivalent to “apollumi” that we find in John 3:16.
By the way, if anyone is checking this out in the Interlinear Bible, they are going to find that in John 3:16, it does not read “apollumi” because the Greek ending can change from verse to verse depending on how God uses it. It is all based on the word “apollumi.” It is still the same word, but God has given it a different Greek ending. This is one of the problems with Strong’s Concordance, because whether it was a middle passive voice or no matter what kind of ending it had, it all is going to come under that one heading of Strong’s #622. So you really need to have a Greek text or an Interlinear Bible in order to check this out.
Now let us go to Psalm 37. Again, we find the word “perish” in Psalm 37:20, where it says:
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.
This is talking about the fire when God is going to destroy the world. He is going to destroy the earth and everything in it, “the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
We looked at this a few weeks ago. In 2 Peter 3:10, where it speaks of the “works that are therein,” this has to do with people. God is going to destroy the earth and all the works therein when everything melts with a “fervent heat.” This is the “lake of fire” that destroys all people, where every unsaved individual will be burned up, “into smoke shall they consume away.”
I know that some people say that there will be remaining smoke, but the idea is that someone was a whole personality and that the fire has burnt them to a crisp and turned them into ashes where there is only smoke remaining. What is left of a personality after they have been thrown into a fire? If it has been a very bad fire, they are completely destroyed; they perish.
Let us also go to Psalm 146:3-4:
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.
This is an important verse because this helps us to understand that when a man dies, he is not going to be re-formed later; he is not going to be reconstituted. He is not going to get his body and soul back again to stand for judgment. This would mean that he would have to have a mind; he would have to have thoughts to understand what he had done in this life, as God is revealing to him that he has been a sinner and that he is under God’s wrath. This can not be because in the day that he dies, his thoughts, his mind perished. It perished and he will never have the mind that he had prior to this. He is gone forever. As Psalm 49:12 says, “He is like the beasts that perish,” even though this word for “perish” is a different word and that is why we did no go there. For now, we are looking at this one particular word for perish, “apollumi,” and we have our hands full with just this because it is not easy to see how God has written all of these things.
Let us go to Jonah 4. We will read one verse in this chapter. I think that we are all familiar with the true historical account of Jonah. It says in Jonah 4:10:
Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
You see, it did not perish forever. The gourd grew, “God prepared a worm…and it smote the gourd,” and the gourd “perished” and it took “a night.” The Lord is giving us a time reference in this instance to go along with this word perish, and it “perished in a night.” This is the Old Testament equivalent to this word that God is using, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.” So we are trying to understand and define what it means to “perish.” We see that in this verse, it does not take an eternity to “perish.” This is the point: the gourd perished in one night.
Now let us go to the New Testament and look at the word “apollumi.” We read in Matthew 5:29:
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
What does it mean for one of your members to “perish?” Again, we have an earthly understanding of what it is to lose an arm or a leg or an eye or a hand or a foot. Once they are gone, that person will be without an arm or a leg, or so forth; it is gone forever from them. There is modern technology today that can re-attach limbs and hands and things, in certain instances. But looking over the majority of earth’s history, if someone had lost a hand or a foot, etc., it was gone. It was gone; they no longer had that limb. So this is what God is saying and He is using this word “perish.”
Let us also go in Matthew to Matthew 9:16-17:
No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
Again, this is an earthly picture, and this is a parable that God is giving. We are not going to get into the spiritual meaning of it. We just want to know about this word. We have a bottle. We break the bottle. The wine runs out and what happens to the bottle? It is good for nothing. It perishes; it goes back to the earth, over time.
Now let us turn to John 6:27. This is how we have to study. A lot of times when you study and you are going to teach, what you do is you just take one or two of these verses. You lay them out and then you move on to the next point. But I think with this, we have to go slow and read a lot of verses so everyone can see that we are not trying to hide any verses. Actually, I did not find one verse where God associates this word “perishing” with suffering consciously in Hell, where someone is aware and suffering body and soul, eternally in Hell. I could not find one word, but we find many references that have to do with the common things of life, and we understand what it means when they perish, and this is how God is using this word.
In John 6:27, it says:
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life…
This is a good verse because God is contrasting the two. “The meat which perisheth” is temporal and finite; it lasts for a little while and then it is gone forever. And this is contrasted with “everlasting life,” life that continues into eternity. So, again this is helping us to understand the Greek word “apollumi,” the word that has been translated into English as “perish.”
Let us also go to James 1:11, where it says:
For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
God is likening man to grass and He has done this in several places in the Bible. One place is in 1 Peter where it says, “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass,” and yet the grass perishes; it is gone from us.
I think that this is what we can see when we look at the definition of the word “perish,” and I am open to any other definition that anyone can come up with. Look up all of the places of the Hebrew word for “perish” and the Greek word for “perish” and see if you can define it other than what we seem to be finding, which is that “perishing” has to do with someone or something that comes to its end and then ceases to exist. There is meat. I did not read these, but there are verses that speak of chariots. There are verses that speak of dung. There are verses where we have read about the flower or the gourd or man’s thoughts, and so forth. It is everything that existed for a time and then “perished” and no longer exists.
So, I do not know. As we are looking at this and we are hearing these things that are strange to our ears about annihilation and about ceasing to exist and that this is the judgment of God, well, I think that when we do a word study on “perishing,” it supports this idea. It does support the idea of annihilation.
Let us just read one last verse. John read this earlier in his study. In 2 Peter 3:9, it says:
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Again, this is another one of those verses where we have to look at every word. Do we not? God is “not willing that any should perish.” Well, if we do not dig deeper into this verse, then this means that He is referring to every human being, every single person on the earth, “that all should come to repentance.”
So we have to look up the word “any.” We have to look up the word “all.” And we have to look up the word “perish.” And when we do, we realize that this verse is referring to God’s elect. When we check out all of these words, God is not willing that any one of them be destroyed by the fires of Hell, but that each and every one of His chosen people will be given the gift of repentance. And here is “repentance,” another one of the doctrines that was “sealed up till the time of the end.”
It is not an easy thing to study the Bible. It is really not, as we are, I am sure, learning more and more. I mean, we have been kind of hit with these revelations, as God is opening up the Scripture that has always been there, and, wow! It is a shock to our pride that we do not even understand John 3:16. We did not even understand John 3:16 correctly, so God has to teach us. He has to teach us. He is the One who is the teacher. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us into truth, and we just need to turn to Him and really pray before we open up this Book, pray for His leading and guidance and wisdom, that He will shine the light on our next spiritual step.
This is all that we will get into today.