“THE CORE OF OUR NATION is ETCHED INSIDE THESE PLASTIC SMILES AND ENDLESS ROWS OF nowhere HOUSES. THIS IS HOW WE LIVE, ITS ALSO HOW WE DIE”.
This pledge is a lie, it’s called the “The American Dream.”
WHAT IS A PLEDGE OF A GOOD CONSCIENCE?
1 Peter 3:18-22 NIV
[18] For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. [19] After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— [20] to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, [21] and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, [22] who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
FOR 100 years Noah preached the truth to the ancient world to repent. But they didn’t.
2 Peter 2:4-5 NIV
[4] For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; [5] if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
WHAT IS the definition of a PLEDGE?
- A solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something: a pledge of aid; a pledge not to wage war.
- Something delivered as security for the payment of a debt or fulfillment of a promise, and subject to forfeiture on failure to pay or fulfill the promise.
- The state of being given or held as security: to put a thing in pledge.
You are being saved because you agree with the contract that God has explained to you in scripture and vow to die to keep it.
Acts 2:36-41 NIV
[36] “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” [37] When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” [38] Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [39] The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” [40] With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” [41] Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
God’s covenant offer to us is to submit to Jesus as Lord and savior
The Mafia evens makes their men vow a pledge to the mafia before their own mother
SOME TRUTHS ABOUT HELL
So many today enter into a contract because of their emotional attachment. Buy a car they can’t afford. They don’t really understand what their agreeing to. Concerning hell, There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. . No one, Christians included, should like the idea of hell. Those of us who believe in hell aren’t sadists who enjoy the idea of eternal suffering. In fact, the thought of people I know who are outside of Christ spending eternity in hell is heartbreaking. As a young Christian, when I began to learn about hell and its implications, I almost lost my faith. It made me face my sentimentality head on. Do I believe the Bible is God’s Word and I will be judged by its standard? Or do I believe the popular opinion and my own emotions of what I think about God?
Sentimentality can be the kiss of death.
Proverbs 14:12 NIV
[12] There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
Hebrews 4:12-13 NIV
[12] For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. [13] Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
John 12:48-50 NIV
[48] There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. [49] For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. [50] I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
Hell is a difficult reality, but it is something that the Bible teaches, and we can’t fully
understand God and his world unless we grapple with it.
These seven truths should frame our discussion of hell.
Hell is what hell is because God is who God is. People speak casually about “seeing God,” as if seeing God face-to-face would be a warm and fuzzy experience. But the Bible explains that God’s holiness and perfections are so complete that if anyone were to see him, he would die.
Exodus 33: [18] Then
Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” [19] And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. [20] But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. Isaiah 6:5 “When Isaiah, the prophet of God, saw God upon his throne, he fell upon his face, terrified and sure that he was about to die“
The doctrine of hell has fallen out of favor among many. But it’s there for a reason. God tells us about hell to demonstrate to us the magnitude of his holiness.
Hell is what hell is because the holiness of God is what it is.
Jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else in Scripture. Some people try to avoid the idea of hell by saying, “That was the Old Testament God, back when he was in his junior high years and all cranky. But when God matured in the New Testament with Jesus—meek and mild Jesus—he was all about love and compassion.” The problem with this view is that when you start reading the Gospels, you find that Jesus speaks about hell more than anyone else. In fact, if you count up the verses, Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven. One of the most famous skeptics in history, Bertrand Russell, said in his book Why I’m Not a Christian that Jesus’s teaching on hell is “the one profound defect in Christ’s character.” If we want to avoid the idea of hell, we can’t ignore the problem by just focusing on “meek and mild Jesus.”
Hell shows us the extent of God’s love in saving us.
Why did Jesus speak about hell more than anyone else in the Bible? Because he wanted us to see what he was going to endure on the cross on our behalf. On the cross, Jesus’s punishment was scarcely describable: this bloodied, disfigured remnant of a man was given a cross that was perhaps recycled, likely covered in the blood, feces, and urine of other men who had used it previously. Hanging there in immense pain, he slowly suffocated to death.
The worst part was the separation from the Father that Jesus felt, a separation that was hell itself. “My God, my God,” he cried out, “Why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46. In all of this, Jesus was taking the hell of our sin into his body. People often feel that hell is some great blemish on God’s love. The Bible presents it as the opposite. Hell magnifies for us the love of God by showing us how far God went, and how much he went through, to save us.
People are eternal. HELL is a necessary conclusion from the Christian belief that human beings were created to live forever. As someone put it: Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only 70 years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in 70 years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.
Hell . . . begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. . . . You can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer.
I remember a Christian brother who continued to commit sexual sin again and again. One day he said he was on his knees praying and he felt like his prayers were hitting the ceiling and bouncing back at him. He believed His deliberate sinning left no more sacrifice for sins left.
Hebrews 10:26-27 NIV
[26] If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, [27] but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
He eventually drifted away from his faith and deeper into sexual sin. It was very sad
In one sense, God doesn’t send anyone to hell; we send ourselves.
Hell is the culmination of telling God to “get out.” You keep telling God to leave you alone, and finally God says, “Okay.” That’s why the Bible describes it as darkness: God is light; his absence is darkness. On earth we experience light and things like love, friendship, and the beauty of creation. These are all remnants of the light of God’s presence. But when you tell God you don’t want him as the Lord and center of your life, eventually you get your wish, and with God go all of his gifts.
We have two options: live with God, or live without God. If you say, “I don’t want God’s author and I would rather live for myself,” that’s hell. Someone put it this way: In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” . . . To leave you alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does. . . . In the end, there are only two kinds of people—those who say to God “thy will be done” and those to whom God says in the end “thy will be done.”
In another sense, God does send people to hell, and all his ways are true and righteous altogether.
We may be tempted to rage at God and to correct him. But how can we find fault with God? As Paul says in Romans:
Romans 9:19-21 NIV
[19] One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” [20] But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” [21] Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
We are not more merciful than God. Isaiah reminds us that all who are currently “incensed against God” will come before him in the last day and be ashamed, not vindicated because they will then realize just how perfect God’s ways are.
Isaiah 45:24 NIV
[24] They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are deliverance and strength. ‘ ” All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.
Every time God is compared with a human in Scripture, God is the more merciful of the.pair. When we look back on our lives from eternity, we’ll stand amazed not by the severity of his justice, but by the magnanimity of his mercy.
It’s not enough for God to take us out of hell; he must take hell out of us.
Some people see a problem in using hell as a way of coercing people to submit to Christianity. It’s as if God is saying, “Serve me or else!” And that seems manipulative. It may surprise you, but God agrees. If people are converted to God simply because they are scared, or because God has done some great, miraculous sign might submit, but it wouldn’t change their heart attitude toward God
Luke 16:31 NIV
[31] “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’
If you become a disciple of Jesus just to “get out of hell,” then you’d hate being in heaven, because only those who love and trust God will enjoy heaven.
If you don’t love the Father, then living in the Father’s house feels like slavery. It would be like forcing you to marry someone you didn’t want to marry. The only way you’ll enjoy heaven is when you learn to love and trust God and others. Only an experience of the love of God can rearrange the fundamental structure of your heart to create a love and trust of God. It’s not enough for God to take us out of hell; he must take hell out of us.
2 Peter 3:10-13 MSG
[10] But when the Day of God’s Judgment does come, it will be unannounced, like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a huge conflagration, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of Judgment. [11-13] Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day— but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness. …
