Eternity in Biblical Perspective:
Heaven & Hell –
The Final State—If I Should Die?

Hebrews 9:27-28

By Dr. Harry Reeder III

This is our series on The Final State, Heaven and Hell, the two destinations of all humanity and we will be looking at some passages of Scripture to better understand it and to deal with what we have been saved from, to what we have been saved to. We will look at why is hell, hell and why is heaven, heaven? What does the Bible say about it? There is no way we can look at this matter of the final state until we can look at what brings us to that final state and that is what the Bible says about death. We will be looking at a number of passages. For this study and next study our foundational passage will be in Hebrews 9. This glorious passage of the redemption of Jesus Christ, our High Priest, who is not only the Priest who brings the sacrifice for our sins but He is the Lamb and has brought the final sacrifice. He is the Great Priest, the High Priest, after the order of Melchizedek and has brought the Lamb which is Himself. Why did He do that?

Let's look at Hebrews 9:26b-28;

26b But as it is, he (Jesus Christ) has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (So He has come as the Priest to give Himself, to put away sin.) 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

He has come to put away sin. He is coming again after the victory of His wonderful, glorious atonement for our sins and His resurrection and He is coming for us, a people whom He has saved, who all of us will face two appointments – death and the judgment.

What does the Bible say about those things? This study will cover death and the next study will cover the judgment. So what does the Bible say about death? We live in a society that wants to say as little as possible about it. Every Sunday morning worship service we have a pastoral, shepherding prayer on behalf of our elders in which we pray for those who are infirm, with spiritual issues and then those who have died and gone to be with the Lord and not a week goes by that there isn't someone who has died that touches this congregation every single week. It doesn't touch your personal life or family life every single week but it does and it will and it will you. One preacher said on a sermon like this, "Life is a wonderful thing but you're not going to get out of it alive. It is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

We of course attempt to set all this aside where we have our funeral homes where we mitigate and modify our contact with this. Very seldom do people die in their homes unless it's an immediate death. It's almost always sanitized in a hospital and then after the death the funerals are sanitized. We used to have the home wakes and things like that but we have continued to do that and it's not my purpose to analyze that either positively or negatively. It's just something to point out and it was always something we would push away from and we even want to put euphemisms to it.

My granddaddy like my daddy both made their living in baseball and you only work about half the year when you do that so they would have to have an off season job. One of the jobs my granddaddy had when he was teenager in minor league baseball was he worked in a funeral home in Augusta, Georgia. I was glad for that because in his later years when he retired he became the resident manager of that funeral home where he had worked as a teenager. A resident manager meant that he lived in the funeral home. My family would go there and spend a couple of day's vacation with them in a funeral home. I used to tell him, "People are dying to see you and me granddaddy when I'm here." Every night he would have to make his rounds to do the little things to the bodies that were going to be there for the night and I used to ask him "Granddaddy do you lock the door when you come back upstairs." He'd say, "No son, you don't need to lock the door here, if they open that door you've done gone to be with Jesus anyway so don't worry about it." We would help him do all the little things he'd say to do and he might say "Would you go over to that slumber room?" I'd say "You mean where the dead person is?" That was the room he was talking about.

It's really interesting how we're always putting these euphemisms to it and we're denying it. I remember when I was five years old and I went to my first funeral. I remember just looking at everybody trying to process it. I can still remember seeing a kid sitting out on the corner on Crawford Ave in Augusta, Georgia where my great, great aunt had died. Then I went to another funeral when I was eight and I can remember a very clear moment in my life on this matter of death. I was pretty active as a teenager so it wasn't something I would think about that much but for some reason one night, I don't know why, at 1342 Tarrington Ave in Charlotte, North Carolina I was 14 years old. I was laying in my bed and I always read before I went to bed. I put the book aside and as I was laying there it just struck me that I was going to die. It's not if you die but it's when you die. I had been raised in a Christian Missionary Alliance Church and they talked about the second coming all the time so I knew that I might not die in that case if I was still alive when the second coming happened but other than that I realized I was going to die. I didn't know when. God knows but you don't, but you are going to be on a death bed one day. You can put it off. You can dismiss it, deny it and avoid it but you will die.

What does the Bible say about death? Why is it here and how is it here? The Bible doesn't tell us and certainly not in one sermon, I can't even cover what the Bible does tell us but even if I could, the Bible doesn't tell us everything there is to know about death. The Bible doesn't really tell us everything we want to know about death but the Bible does tell us everything that God wants us to know about death. I want us in this study to wrap our thoughts around two thoughts concerning death – it's the origin of death and the future of death. I want you to be patient with me because I don't want to do this just by quoting. We're going to look at some passages of Scripture together around those two things. We will look at three or four passages on the origin of death or what I'm calling it is the birth of death and then when we're finished with that we'll talk about the death of death. Then we will close with come takeaways that will build for us as we move into this series.

First I want to look at James 1. This is a very interesting text and we'll actually look at James a couple of times. Look at what it says about our Christian life in James 1:12-14;

12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Think of sin like a child. So what are the parents of the child? The parents of the child are my lust, my sin nature and the temptation. So if I flee temptation and kill the old man then there are no parents to produce sin. That is what he is saying here in James, but if I don't then there's temptation that calls out my sin nature and when the two get together they conceive and bring forth sin. So sin is directly related to the presence of death according to James 1:15.

Now I want to look at Romans 6 which is a very familiar text for those of you who have been through our Bridge to Life classes. The Apostle Paul has already declared that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God which is all of us so now look at what is said in Romans 6:23; For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. With these two passages (James and Romans) and many others, it is pretty clear that there would be no death if there was no sin but that still hasn't answered our question. What is it about sin that gives birth to death? What is it about sin that causes the wages of sin to be death? Why is that there?

Why is sin and death in place here? I want to look at Genesis 1. You are fully aware of the creation account. I heard the other day one evangelical comparing the creation account to the Babylonian myths and believe me this is not like the Babylonian myths. The Babylonian myths may take off on the creation account but they are not like them. There are some very distinct things about them and not the least of which of what we're talking about now. Genesis 1:26-31 says

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

So God has made all of this and He has put it into place and put it there for man but now look in Genesis 2:15-17 says 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." The day that you disobey Me and eat of that tree, you will die. You sin by taking this fruit that I say 'don't take' and I've given you this garden to sustain you, when you take that fruit that day you will die.

Let's look now in Genesis 3:1-10 which says,

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the flesh), and that it was a delight to the eyes (lust of the eyes), and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise (the boastful pride of life), she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" 10 And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."

Do you want to know what sin brings? It brings fear, shame, and guilt. There it is with Adam. He goes on to say in Genesis 3:11-19,

11 He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12 The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." 16 To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." 17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Here is this account of the origin of sin. What have we learned? Death is here as the wage or the child or the result of sin. Why is death the result of sin? It is because God has declared that when you sin you will die. In fact, He said you will die that day. Did Adam and Eve die that day? Don't answer too quickly. You can't miss this one. Did they die that day? No. Did they die that day? Yes. We'll get to this to understand it better in just a moment. Adam you came from dust and you'll return to dust, so what does that death refer to? It refers to a physical death. Did he die physically that day? No. The word death of course means separation. The Greek word for 'death' is thanatos and means to separate or radically tear something apart. It's not here is the dotted line so tear it apart but it means to tear apart something that was not meant to be torn apart. It's like taking a cloth and rending it in two pieces when it's been woven together as one cloth.

God said, "The day you eat of it, the day you sin, you shall die" so there will be a separation. So did death come that day? It sure did. Look at Eve and Adam. They are separated. Look at God and Adam and Eve. They are separated. Look at Adam with his task to be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth, now the curse of sin has separated his joy from it. Then out here is a physical separation of death where God made you from the ground and I breathed into that body so that the two were put together, body and soul, into one cloth. There will be a day in which something very unnatural will take place where the body and soul will be disengaged and that body that came from the ground will return to the ground. So Adam did die that day and he would die all of his days until his last day physically.

Then an amazing thing takes place in the book Genesis. We have those chapters that we start skipping over after Genesis 4 that gives genealogies. When we skip these we miss one of the pieces of that message. You'll notice that basically each son lives not as long as the next one and there's a refrain like in a song where you keep coming back to the chorus. Those chapters that follow this Genesis 4 keep coming back to a chorus saying "and he died" after each one. Then God just gives us a little window of grace where every once in a while you get to an Enoch. He walked with God and he didn't die. God reached into his life and brought him up to be with Him. So here is this message of sin where the result of sin is death and the reason that death accompanies sin is because God has appointed it from Genesis.

Now why had it come to me, why didn't it stop with Adam? Let's look at one more passage in Romans 5. Again there are a number of text that we could go to such as 1 Corinthians where the Scriptures tell us of the same message in Romans 5 but I chose to look at this one. Romans 5:12 says 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin (Why did death come through sin? It was because God decreed it in justice with this sin. Adam sinned therefore death came.), and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So what have we learned? Where did sin come from? It came from Adam. Then we who are born of Adam, who are partakers of him, who come from his line, are born with a sin record and a sin nature. When Adam sinned, we sinned. When Adam sinned and the curse came upon him, then we sinned and the curse came upon us. That's what we call the headship of Adam, the federal headship of Adam.

I want to try and give you an example. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this and for some of you it's a footnote in your history book but there was a time we landed a man on the moon a number of years ago. His name was Neil Armstrong. When Neil came down onto that lunar surface he made a comment. You may have read about it in your history books but I heard it personally. He said, "This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." As himself there it was a small step from that ladder to that lunar surface but representing humanity back on the earth it was a giant leap for mankind. Then he took a few more steps in which they were kind of big ones with no gravity and he put down a flag. When Neil Armstrong, a commissioned officer of the United States of America, landed and put down that flag, all of us landed and put that flag. He represented us. So here is Adam and his headship and what he did, we did. So we are born with a sin nature and a sin record out of his sin and then we sin and therefore we have death also.

So what is the birth of death and how does it get here? It is very simple. Death is birthed by God as Divine Judgment. It wasn't birthed by Adam. It wasn't birthed directly by sin. It was birthed by God as Divine Judgment upon the original sin of Adam and then spreads to all men because all men sin and fall short of the glory of God, therefore it is appointed unto all men once to die. God has birthed death just like He birthed life. He did it as a direct consequence of sin. When Adam sinned, we sinned. When we're born we bring actual sin from his original sin and we now become partakers of death.

Where does death go to? We're going to look at a few more passages. I've got great news. The bad news is there's death because of sin. We're all sinners and we all die. I have some other great news and that's the death of death. Death will die. There are many texts we could look at here but I'm only going to read a couple of them. Revelation 20:6 says "Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection (those who have been saved)! Over such the second death (the eternal death) has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years." If we have been raised in Christ, then the second death of an eternal death has no power over us for we reign with Christ. Revelation 20:11-15 says

11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades (Hades is another term for the grave, the intermediate state of those who have died) gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire (that is Gehenna, everlasting punishment). 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Death itself will be cast into the second death. Revelation 21:8 says "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." This is the death of eternity that never ever ends. That's what theirs will be.

You are probably all familiar with the passages from the Apostle John where he directly tells us on two occasions in the book of Revelation that as he looks into the glories of the new heavens and the new earth that there will be no more death or pain or sickness or any of its consequences. It will be the death of death. God birthed death as the just payment for the sin of Adam that spreads to all of Adam's seed. God also gave the victory over death because God in Christ has brought the death of death so I may live without the fear of death because the one who has the power of death has been defeated and my sin has been forgiven.

There is a marvelous passage on the glories of the Gospel found in I Corinthians 15. Here the Apostle Paul for a theological reason will use a euphemism whenever he talks about a believer's death. He calls a believer's death sleep. He is not teaching soul sleep and that's very clear in the Bible and we'll deal with that. He is teaching us about thanatos, separation. When you are in Christ that death word is removed and another word is put there. A different word is put there and that is sleep in order to communicate the terrors of death has been removed in the life of a believer. He not only does it with a euphemism but he does it with a declaration of truth. I Corinthians 15:50-57 says

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." 55 "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ has won the victory over sin. He has defeated Satan, Hades, the grave and hell. He has defeated everything that would separate me from him. Now that He has won that victory the sting of death has been removed. The fear of death has been rejected. It's all been removed because of the victory of Christ who has brought about the death of death through His atoning death and His glorious victory. So what is the death of death? Death will be put to death by God through Christ because of His victory over all our enemies which declares that our Savior has the keys of death and hell.

The picture I have tried to give in sermons before is that when Jesus came into this world the power of death and hell resided with Satan and that's what Hebrews 2 tells us. That doesn't mean Satan was out from under the sovereign hand of God but death was apart of his kingdom of darkness. When Jesus goes to the cross He takes on all the demonic forces. He takes our sin, He faces down Satan and hell and He goes right through the gates of Hades. He opens the door and He tears it down. He reaches inside and He takes the keys. Now He has the keys and I am free. It is the death of death.

I want to stop here and tell you death is real. It is here because of sin and because God is holy and so declared it. But this same God has loved you and given His Son who has won the victory for you and you can either surrender to Him and have life or you can surrender to sin and have death. There are no other options. Some say "I'm not going to surrender." Oh yes you will surrender, either to sin or to Christ. If you surrender to sin that's death. If you surrender to Christ that's life because He has brought the death of death with His glorious atonement for our sins and His victory proclaimed in the resurrection of the cross.

Here are some takeaways. We also build on this in the next study. The first takeaway is what is death? Death is separation. Remember that. It means to tear something apart. The very word in Hebrew and Greek for the word death means to separate.

Secondly, death is birthed by God as a Divine Judgment upon man's sin.

The third takeaway death is universal, inevitable and humbles everyone. I have been beside some very powerful people at their death bed and it's amazing what they look like while they are dying. It's amazing how intimidating and awesome they were in life. Death humbles everybody. All that stuff we live for you don't take with you. All that fame and applause is gone. It humbles everybody and is inevitable. Everyone who lives will die. Of course there are two exceptions, the prophet Elijah being lifted up into the presence of God and Enoch walked with God and he was no more. Other than those two who are little pictures of our resurrection for us in the Bible, everyone dies. The only people who won't die are those who are here when Christ comes back and then we shall meet those who are resurrected from the grave. We will all inevitably face death if Christ does not return. Death is universal for every single one of us and it humbles everyone.

The fourth takeaway is death is threefold in the Bible. The wages of sin is death. There are three kinds of death we face because of our sin. Number one is physical death. Death means separation. The physical death is the separation of the soul from the body. Please quit thinking like Greeks. Most of us were educated with a Greek concept of life where the body and spirit are in inside of us. Do you remember the heaven's gate cult? This was where every body came and found the people dead and they wrote notes saying 'don't feel sorry for us because what you're looking at is our containers.' Your body is not a container for your spirit. The physical and the spiritual are intertwined. For instance we are supposed to worship God in spirit and truth. Here is my favorite illustration for this. You stay up Saturday night to watch Saturday Night Live, you will not worship in spirit Sunday morning. Saturday Night live will be Sunday morning dead.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. It affects your appetites – how we are doing spiritually in our life. In other words, the two are not made to be separated. Death is this taking apart of the spirit from the body which God had put together to last forever so He had made us to be immortal but now we have this death because of sin. I want to look back at the book of James. I want you to have something on this. There are many things you could turn to but I'm just going to give you one. James 2:26 says "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." James is talking about how faith and works are united to each other but what does he use as an illustration? He uses death. Death is the separation of the spirit from the body that's what physical death is.

The second fold is spiritual death. What is spiritual death? The Bible says that because we're sons of Adam we are born dead in our sins. This is found in Ephesians 2. You were dead in your sins and God being rich in mercy caused you to be born again to a living hope. So those of you who are Christians are a walking resurrection. You were dead and now you're alive. You were in a spiritual bone yard and God raised you. That's why He said to Nicodemus "You can't see or enter the Kingdom of God until you're born again." The new birth is not a reward of your believing, the new birth is the act of God that allows you to believe because up until then you're dead. We are separated from God spiritually. We are spiritually impotent. That's why I love the Gospel, it's the power of God, not the power of man. I need the power of God to get me from death to life. We get that spiritual resurrection when we're converted.

The third kind of death is eternal death. You will find this in many passages but we won't go there in this study because we'll get there in our Sermon on the Mount where He says "I'll say to many in that Day, (separation) depart from Me for eternity." It's inevitable and inescapable. Death forever is eternal death. Jesus has won the victory so that the physical death becomes the doorway to me being with the Lord. Spiritual death has been overcome. I've been born again and eternal death holds no fear because my Savior has freed me from it and therefore He will cast all of that into the lake of fire. I have that victory in Him if I know Christ as my Savior.

The fifth takeaway is death an enemy. It is an enemy that Christ has defeated. Death is unnatural but it is also necessary. What do I mean by that? Because of sin, death is now necessary. What do I mean by that? First of all death is an enemy. Jesus has defeated death. Secondly, death is not natural. A guy said to me one time, "Pastor would you pray that I have a natural death?" I said, "No." He said, "What kind of pastor are you?" I said, "I'm a Presbyterian pastor and that means I'm supposed to be a Biblical pastor and when I read the Bible there's nothing natural about death so I can't pray for you to have a natural death. I can pray for you to have a victorious death or an easy death or a peaceful death and as your days are so shall your strength be. I can pray for all that but I can't pray for you to have a natural death because there's nothing natural about death. It doesn't show up in Genesis 1 and 2 but it shows up in Genesis 3." There is nothing natural about it but you can have victory in it and through it.

Now it's necessary. God has programmed death into His plan for you to put off the mortal to put on immortality, for you to put off the physical for you to put on the spiritual, for you to gain a new body that will be ready for the new heavens and the new earth forever. That's why He is now won that victory over death and it becomes the blessing of God to bring us into His presence. Then when He resurrects us we have a new body for the new heavens and the new earth. This mortal shall put on immortality and this corruption shall put on the incorruptible.

The sixth takeaway is death is temporal and will be put to death. Death is not forever. It's temporal. Jesus has already won the victory. When Jesus comes back He'll throw death into the lake of fire. It's done away with. He's won the victory over it and it's temporal and it will be put to death. There will be no death in the new heavens and the new earth.

Finally, the seventh takeaway is death is separation but death is not the end. I have stood beside a lot of death beds as my brothers and sisters have gone to glory. I've also been beside death beds of those who have rejected Christ, pleading that they would come to Christ and they would not. I've watched them in the death pangs of death and I've watched them stubbornly hold on to their rejection. I always tell people this. The Bible only has one death bed conversion and that's the thief on the cross. There is one so that there is hope but there is only one so that there is no presumption. Read Hebrews 11 and basically you will die the way you live. You live by faith, you will die in faith. You live in rejection then can God intervene? Absolutely, and has God intervened? Yes, I've been there, praise the Lord. I have also been there when they have rejected Him even to the last breath and the last breath is taken in agony and despair. Many times a family member will turn to me and say "That was so overwhelming. I'm glad it's over and they are out of their misery." How my heart breaks for the misery that yet waits before them. It's far surpassing to that which they just went through.

It is appointed unto men once to die, no reincarnation, then the judgment. There is no Gospel but then the judgment. Now, what will that be like? We'll talk about that in the next study. Let's pray.

Prayer:

Father, thank You for the time we have been able to be together in this study. Thank You for the opportunity to begin to walk our way through this subject and thank You for Your Word and while it is not exhaustive on this subject, it does give us everything You want us to know about it. I want to thank You to know most of all that Christ has won the victory and has the keys of death and hell and therefore in Him I have life. Father, I pray that everyone reading this is in Him. If you are not yet, would you please just take a moment and make that commitment to Christ now? There is no ritual you have to go through, it's just a simple prayer. "I know I'm a sinner. I know Your judgment is rightly upon me. I know I can't save myself. I put my trust in Your Son, the Victor, Heaven's Champion." There is no fear in death and no guilt in life. Jesus has my destiny. Father, for those who know Him, may we be those who don't need to walk around this subject for we walk in the triumph of Christ. I pray that You would guide us so that the fear of death is now eradicated and the glories in life now and forever fill our soul, in Jesus' Name, Amen.