JUDGEMENT AND DOCTRINE OF LAST THINGS.

Eternal Judgement.

Introduction: I have chosen to post something of what we discuss at the Apoduterion. Check it out.

As we come to close of our discourse on The Foundation For Christian Ministry, we are now dealing with Eternal Judgement. 26 or more years ago, a country called Nicaragua was undergoing a civil war. An ABC news reporter whose last name was Stewart was in Nicaragua covering the war. The cameraman was close behind him and so the whole matter was caught on film. Stewart and his party were stopped in what looked like a remote area at an army checkpoint. He was made to lie down on his belly, on the ground, and in a little while, one of the soldiers pointed an M-16 rifle at the back of his head, took a few steps back and shot him point blank. This was captured on tape.
That news-clip was later shown all over the world on various networks and it brought down the government of Anastasio Samosa and paved way for the revolution that occurred in that country as a result.
What’s strange in that situation and in other situations elsewhere in the world is, the killer would not be brought to justice.
Where is justice? How can someone so callously murder another human being?
 Admittedly, it goes on all the time over the world and not filmed.

Thought system I: A murder may escape human judgement for the entirety of his days but he will not escape God’s judgement.

God is a better judge than all the judges of the earth put together.
 Once you get this into your system, and have it operational, your passion for justice will be slowed down if not entirely quenched.
 People, whether believers in Jesus Christ or not, have this “passion for justice”. They want to see things done properly, see crimes punished.

Case example: A Christian activist.

Dietrich Bon Hoeffer was a notable Christian who was hanged by the Nazis. He was a man of great passion. He saw how wrong the incarceration, imprisonment of, and the subsequent genocidal process that murdered 6 million Jews, and was alive when it unfolded. He saw the entire German population swept up in the war and no one was raising an outcry against this evil. This Hitler genocidal tendency crawled across Europe into North Africa, had aligned with Japan and was moving upon the Earth. In his passion for justice, Dietrich Bon Hoeffer joined a plot to murder Hitler. Obviously, it didn’t succeed. But, if it succeeded, how would it have affected the common view of Christianity? Would Christianity today give up their lives for “worthy courses”? Would Dietrich Bonhoeffer been put in the annals of Christian martyrdom?
 Can you engage in a murder to prevent more murders?
 Hitler was engaged in the systemic extermination of 6 million Jews and another 19 million or more of other kinds of people; Gypsies and other people.
 Would it be right for Dietrich Bonhoeffer to murder Hitler when scripture says “Thou shalt not murder” – Exodus 20:13?
 Closer to us now. Is it right to murder abortion doctors that murder children in abortion clinics?
 A Christian defendant is now in deathrow for killing an abortion doctor.
- An abortionist murders children, the defendant murders the abortionist, the court sentences the defendant to the noose.

The Problem: Evangelical Christian has not articulated a coherent position with respect to this question. All this can be answered by answering a question of whether or not there is such a thing as eternal judgement.

Is God in charge and does He call all things into judgement? Are we to rely on that judgement as opposed to talking matters into our own hands?
Is it possible to stop “killing people in order to prevent others from being killed”?


Thought system II: Scriptures do make a clear exception and it is the exception that relates to the execution of people convicted of the crime of murder through the due process of law.
 God has established a process of order and law and when order and law go forward, one of the consequences may be that, for wrongdoers, God has authorized that they be put to death.
 The opposite of that is chaotic. If an individual or a group of individuals attack violently with words against the existing governmental regulations and rules and takes the matter privately into their own hands, if that group feels “entitled” to some form of redress (to put right a wrong, so as to compensate for something), that has been denied them through the in the killing of others. Any society that does this will spun descently into anarchy. There would not be government or control in such a society.
 If Adolf Hitler’s self orchestrated massacre on Jews could be called a “state – sponsored” murder, then the case of abortion may also be argued as a “state – sponsored” murder.

Why eternal Judgement?
 Eternal Gr. Eon…This has multiple meanings…
a. For an age.
b. From one age to another…from age to age.
c. Age upon age…endless ages.
Eternity is recognition that there is a realm that is outside of human time; which is linear, an eternal perspective. The basis or the foundation of that perspective is the opposite of what we have in human time.

 In human time, government is formed by rational perspective.
- Rational perspective says, I only know yesterday and today.
- Knowledge of yesterday’s problems grants me the potentiality of today’s problems.
- This knowledge helps me create a system today, to try and counter tomorrow’s potential problems, before they appear, based on yesterday’s knowledge.
- All human governments are formed around this perspective.
- Governments based on rational perspective operate by urgency to arrest the conduct that appears like yesterday’s problem, to punish that conduct, so as to deter future conduct, and in that way guarantee some sense of order, peace, well being of the future.

- From eternal perspective, there is no concept of past, present or future. All matter is known. The end is known before the beginning.

Case Example: A Movie Director.

If you are a movie director and you have done the final cut, you’ve rolled up the movie into one of those rolls, its going to be shown at the premiere. Being the director of the movie at the premiere, you know the end from the beginning. The audience however, is not so privileged, so the audience has to wait for the film to unfold in order to know what the end will be. So if you are the audience, you have one goal. If you are the director, you have another much different goal.
 If you are the audience, your goal is to get to the end of the story.
 If you are the director, you begin knowing the end of the story before it starts, so your goal is not to get to the end of he story, your goal is to see how the audience responds.
If you have the chance to see the movie to the end, then it means that you may understand what the director understands. You will have the same perspective.

God is the Director. We are the audience.
 If we take on the role of God, or in a way extent our own sense of judgement beyond what God has told us to do, then we are entitled to the frustration of not knowing the end from the beginning.

 This element of not knowing the end from the beginning is the frustration, which is the foundation of activitism; secular or Christian, mass riot, which is moved by the urgency to change the present policy, so that the future ensures a form of order consistent with their belief.
 This is a failure by itself.
- Failure to acknowledge that God is sovereign and that He knows the end of a matter before it begins.
- He lets the matter go on, not because He likes or dislikes it, but because His point of view is different from the linear point of view that commonly characterizes the human point of view, or the rational point of view.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LINEAR, HUMAN, RATIONAL POINT OF VIEW AND ETERNAL POINT OF VIEW.

Images From Jesus’ Coming To The Earth To Die.
1. If you were to view the story of Jesus from a rational humanistic point of view, you’d see a man who is unfairly accused, judged, condemned and executed.
a. Peter would be right. He would be right in pulling out his sword and trying to defend Jesus, in anticipation of the unfolding events, because, at least, it could be said that Peter was impressed with the innocence of Jesus with respect to the things wit the things He was being charged. Rather than being rebuked by Jesus, John 18:10.11, Jesus ought to have commended him for stopping the potential execution of the Lord.
b. Why did the Almighty God, all powerful, stop such an atrocious, wicked cruel and shocking execution of the genuinely innocent man?
c. Why did Jesus, who claimed that He could call down legions of angels in His own defense, choose not to do so and therefore allow a murder to continue, creating enormous guilt and equally enormous, eternal consequences to His murderers? – Matthew 26:53.AV.
d. If He had come to save the world, why did He not save Himself and the ones who were associated with His murder and His trial? –Luke 23:39.AV.



2. If you were to view the story from an eternal point of view:-
a. Peter would be wrong. He would be getting in between Jesus and the plan of God for Him. - John 18:11.AV. He would therefore rebuke Peter.
b. The murder of Jesus had such an importance that went well beyond the span of time and ability of humans to think it through.

Purpose Of Jesus’ Murder From Eternal Point Of View.

1. His death would be substitutionary and would free all humans.
2. God knew that God would resurrect Him from the dead.
 His murder would therefore be cured by the resurrection from the dead.
 Having died, He would be able to save all those who murdered Him.

From Eternal point of view, all actions, be they human or angelic are brought into judgement. – Romans 14:10-12. AV.

Every thought will be brought into judgement. – John 17:1-5.AV.

 There is a purpose for all things that happens under heavens. - Ecclesiastes 3:1-17. AV.
Was there an eternal purpose for the black man to be under slavery, for the boys to die in Jerusalem, for the Jewish Holocaust, for the Rwandan Genocide? Of course yes. Clearly there was. It’s greater than we understand now. But that does not mean that the murderers are righteous. But there is an eternal purpose.

Failure to see God’s purpose in all these things will create an untamed passion that may even justify, in our own minds, the commission of murder. You may be reduced to doing the very thing you despise, because you had no other alternatives.

Many Christians are not seeing God’s eternal purpose, so they are trying to bring about justice, trying to bring about righteousness through legal process, trying to bring right conduct through social action.
 The end of the matter is not what we can do to make right a wrong, but rather, nothing escapes the scrutiny of the Most High.
- We are therefore authorized to do such things as the Living God himself authorizes us to do.
 God has given a delegation to government to act, even to the point of taking life. But, if the government falsely takes someone’s life, then the ones responsible will also be brought into judgement. An entire nation might be brought into such kind of a judgement.
 Eternal judgement says, “GOD IS IN CONTROL.”