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 Sermon > Sunday Morning Service |
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Title |
Hell(11) - Hell (11) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
Luke 16: 22 -26 |
Date |
2009-08-16 |
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Passage
[Luke 16: 22 -26]
"Now it came about that the poor man died and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. [23] "And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and *saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom. [24] "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame.' [25] "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. [26] 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and [that] none may cross over from there to us.'』
Introduction
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
This is the 11th session of the Hell sermon series.
You have already listened to ten sermons about Hell.
You will be listening to the 11th session today.
How do you feel when you hear about the realities of Hell?
Most of you should be grateful and rejoicing. Still, is there anyone who finds it difficult having to listen and hear about Hell again?
If you feel like this, I hope that you will change your mind about it.
For the past several weeks you have heard about the punishments in the Lower Grave, and you have heard what kind of place the Lower Grave is.
It is a place where cruel punishments are given continuously.
Those who have fallen into the Lower Grave, unlike you, did not hear about the punishments in the Lower Grave.
Their bodies are receiving gruesome punishments.
They have received such punishments over-and-over again repeatedly and endlessly to the extent the number of times is uncountable.
God is making us aware of the realities of Hell again and again so that we will never fall into Hell, where such punishments go on without stopping.
But when we preach about Hell today, how do people react to it?
Most people don't even want to hear about it.
When the people of the Kingdom of Judah were taken as captives to Babylon, God sent Ezekiel telling him the following:
Ezekiel 3:11 says, "And go to the exiles, to the sons of your people, and speak to them and tell them, whether they listen or not, Thus says the LORD God.'"
In the same way today, whether people listen or not, God is speaking about Heaven and Hell to numerous souls around the world.
It is the grace of God that you are listening to this message in this age.
It is also a proof that you are beloved children of God.
You are truly blessed because you do not only listen to the Word but also try to live by the Word of God.
Many of you must be feeling that you came to exercise greater self control and discipline as a result of these messages about Hell.
Even those who have weak faith, if they try to live by the Word of God from a fear of Hell, then they can have life and peace in their hearts.
Actually, many people say that they are happy and grateful now that they try to live by the Word of God as in the lyrics of the praise songs given by God.
If any of you have fear of Hell or if you feel it is difficult to live by the word, then I would like you to have a change of heart and mind at this time.
I hope you will be even more assured of the love of God and try to practice the truth even more.
I pray in the name of the Lord that all of you may be able to profess that you are happy.
Main
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, continuing from the last session we will be talking about the punishments of the third level in the Lower Grave.
Before I give you specific examples of the punishments of the third level, let us briefly review the punishments from the first level to the third level.
The first level punishments in the Lower Grave are given by nonliving things such as heated-up rocks and sand, boiling water, or ice.
The second level punishments in the Lower Grave are given by living creatures that are like animals or insects.
The third level punishments are the tortures directly given by the messengers of Hell.
There are many kinds of punishments in the third level. In this session I will talk about slicing the flesh with various kinds of sharp objects.
To slice means to cut something into many thin layers.
You can probably understand it easily if you think about shaving slices of ham.
When I describe the scene of this torture, I want you to be able to imagine such a wretched scene.
One soul is tied to a tree.
He cannot move at all as his whole body is bound.
Beside him is a messenger of Hell. This messenger has a fat body and is wearing the mask of a pig. He is preparing various kinds of implements of torture.
This soul that is tied to the tree has to clearly watch what this messenger of Hell is doing.
The messenger of Hell sharpens various kinds of torturing tools from small and sharp daggers to a big axe.
In the Lower Grave, which is a spiritual realm, the knives will not become dull like in this physical world just because it's used and not sharpened.
But the reason why the messenger of Hell sharpens the tools of torture is to create more terror before it actually begins the torturing.
It's the same reason that the messenger slowly prepares for the torture.
When the torturing tools ring out as they strike each other, and when the messenger of Hell grimaces evilly at the soul, the fear the soul experiences continually mounts.
He will suffocate in his fear thinking, "This messenger is going to hack my flesh with that axe. He will slice my flesh with that knife, and what can I do? How can I bear that kind of pain?"
At this moment, he will automatically begin scream and struggle to get free of the tree.
But the ropes that are binding him will only make cuts in his body as he tries to get away, and there is no escape.
Still as he tries desperately to escape it becomes clearly evident that there is no way out.
Finally, the messenger of Hell who has finished the preparation, approaches this soul slowly holding the sharpened tools in his hands.
The messenger of Hell will first take one of the fingers and begin to slice the flesh.
As if he was sharpening a pencil, he holds the finger tightly and begins to cut the flesh off the finger tip.
A bloody mass of flesh falls to the ground.
When he slices the fingernail off, the pieces will fly here and there.
Soon, the ten fingers will be just the bared bones.
Now, he will pick up a bigger tool to slice the wrists, arms, and shoulders.
Soon, the whole arms will have only the bones.
Next, he will slice the flesh from the feet, calves, and thighs piece by piece.
He will then slice the abdomen. As he slices the flesh off the abdomen, the intestines will be exposed.
Then, he will pick them up one by one and throw them away.
As if the intestines are hindrances, he will roughly pick up the intestines and cast them aside.
As a cook might handle fish, without any hesitation the messenger will slowly slice pieces of flesh.
He will laugh as if it is funny seeing the souls that are screaming due to fear and pain.
Soon, they begin to slice the flesh thinking of the ways to slice it in a more elaborately evil way.
Until this moment, the soul that is being tortured has had to watch his own flesh being sliced and intestines being cast aside.
Can you even begin to imagine such a horrible scene?
If one's skin is torn, or if a finger, arm, or leg is amputated in an accident, it may be possible to surgically reattach them.
According to the magnitude of the injury, a person might have to get the whole body anesthetized, or he might also get just local anesthesia.
Then, he would have to watch the doctor cut some parts of his body or stitch his flesh and skin with a needle.
He doesn't feel the pain because of the anesthesia, but as he watches such a scene hearing the sound of cutting and stitching, it is something very horrible.
But in the Lower Grave, one's flesh is sliced without any anesthesia, and the pain is just unimaginable.
Also, as he has to watch the blood gushing out from the sliced part and the pieces of flesh falling to the ground, how painful it is for him!
But this is not the end of the torture.
After the messenger of Hell slices the whole body, he puts down the knife and picks up a sharp awl.
What is he going to do with it?
This soul already knows what is going to happen.
It is because he has suffered the same torture thousands- upon-thousands of times since he fell into the Lower Grave. He knows exactly what comes next.
That is why he is ever-more fearful.
The messenger of Hell would hold an awl and bring it close to the eyes of the soul and finally pierce his eyes.
The messenger will stick the awl deep into the eyes.
Leaving the awl in the eye, the messenger then begins to slice the face.
Because the whole body has been sliced, this soul has only the skeleton covered with blood and the face.
The messenger of Hell now slices the cheeks, the nose, and forehead, and finally the ears and the lips.
He will slice the neck as well, until the neck bones are exposed.
When the neck is finally sliced clean, a single cycle of the torture is done.
But this is not the end of the torture in the Lower Grave.
It is only the beginning of a whole new cycle of slicing.
Soon after this, the flesh that has been sliced will be recovered anew. The body and the limbs will have their original shape.
The whole body will be renewed.
Then, the soul has to prepare to receive another round of torture.
A whole new cycle of torture will begin even before the pain of the previous torture goes away.
The soul will see the messenger of hell that has the shape of detestable pig, and hear the grinding and ringing sounds of sharpening the tools.
The whole body will be sliced piece by piece, and the awls will pierce the eyes.
Until this soul is thrown in the lake of sulfur after the Great Judgment, he cannot get away from this continuum of tortures.
When a part of a person's body is damaged in an accident, it is said that he cannot completely wash away the mental image of the damage.
And this soul, who has to suffer this pain not just once or twice but countless times, cannot plead or have any hope to be rescued from the torment.
At first he might try to scream, fight back, or bear with the pain, but he will soon give up everything being overcome by the pain and terror.
Is there anybody who cannot feel what this would be like?
Then, let me introduce to you an event in history similar to this.
During the World War 2, some countries actually conducted experiments on humans, on the bodies of their POWs or people of the occupied country.
Namely, they used living people as subjects of experiments just like they were lab mice or rabbits.
These experiments were carried out in order to develop bio-chemical weapons, such as germs or viruses that can kill many people in a short period of time.
They did them in a secret but these things were made known by the victims' witnesses and other means.
Let me give you some examples of those experiments. They inject cancer cells or some viruses into healthy persons and watch what kinds of symptoms they would show.
When they did the vivisection they didn't do it with a dead body but with a living person in order to get more accurate data.
Of course, there was no anesthesia.
It is said that in many cases they didn't do the experiments with a detailed plan, but out of impulse, as they felt like it.
The following is one such case.
They cause a person to stand for a dozen of hours at around 30 degrees Celsius below zero.
They would pour cold water on his bear arms.
When his arms were completely frozen, they'd bring him to the lab and pour hot water on them.
Then, the loosened skin and muscles would virtually melt away leaving only the bones.
After they conducted experiments as some varied ideas came to mind, they would leave those people to die in pain for they could no longer serve as material for experimentation.
As human beings, how could they do such horrible things without feeling any pangs of conscience?
For them, those people were not human beings who had personality.
They were just material for experiments that were even less valuable than rabbits or mice. They considered them to be less than human.
They didn't care about the pain or value of life of those who were used in the experiments.
Some of the data from these experiments is still available in various places. Can we begin to sense the cruelty of those who did such experiments?
Those people were tied to the experiment table and had to watch their abdomens cut open, intestines being pulled out, and their blood gushing out.
They couldn't even avoid watching their bodies being decayed by germs. How terrible this is!
But in the Lower Grave of Hell, there are messengers of hell and punishments that are so horrid that these experiments cannot even begin to be compared with them.
As I explained before, these messengers make the souls of children into balls and kick them and play with them.
They would pick any of the souls and blow air into that soul.
When the body inflates, they enjoy themselves as if they are playing soccer with it.
What do you think will happen if a person inflates like a balloon or a ball?
His intestines and lungs will swell, and the rib cage and the spine that cover the intestines will break.
The skin will expand until just before it bursts, and the person will feel the pain of his skin being torn.
After the messengers of hell enjoy kicking such inflated souls, they will pierce the stomach with a spear to burst them.
If you burst a balloon with water in it, the pieces of rubber and the water will fly everywhere.
In the same way, when the inflated soul bursts, his whole body will be torn into pieces, with his flesh and blood flying everywhere.
But soon, the soul's body regenerates like new and he has to receive the torture all over again from the beginning.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we can see the cruelty of the messengers of hell even from the people who are living in this world.
Some people say men are even more fearful beings than demons.
For example, there are some people who are called 'psychopaths'.
They do such evil things that sometimes it seems that their evilness is limitless.
Psychopaths have a personality disorder. They lack empathy and remorse; they cannot feel anything even when they see the unhappiness or pain of other people.
They feel anger, but they cannot feel other feelings such as joy, sorrow, or pity.
And so, they cannot feel anything when others have pain.
They rob, beat up, or kill others, but have no pangs of conscience at all.
They may even feel some kind of pleasure by hurting others, so they habitually commit such crimes whenever they have the impulse.
To our surprise, recently in Korea a person who killed more than 20 innocent people was arrested.
He killed the people in a very terrible ways, and discarded the dead body after cutting them into pieces.
He didn't have any particular reason for killing, but he said he just 'wanted to kill people'.
Even though it is not realized as this kind of extreme crime, there are many psychopaths in society.
Some of them have some very professional jobs, too, and they elude law enforcement.
They swindle people out of their money or use other people for their pleasure in a very tactful way, getting away with it within the law of the country.
A famous doctor in this field said in his book that one out of 100 people today are psychopaths.
It is something very shocking.
There is a horror movie about this kind of psychopath, and a criminal psychologist says the reality is more horrible than the movie.
In the movie the hero will somehow destroy the psychopath but in reality, even the law enforcement or psychologist cannot do anything about them.
It is also the grace of God that we are living in safety in this kind of dangerous world.
In Psalm 121, we see the praise that the people of Israel offered to God when they went up to the Temple.
Verses 5-7 says, "The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade on your right hand. [6] The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. [7] The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul."
I believe all Manmin members would make the same profession of belief. But you have to keep one thing in mind.
In order for you to always be guarded by God, you also have to dwell in God, in the light.
Brothers and sisters, just as such terrible evil exists in this world in which we are living, Hell is also a real place.
It's not just fiction, a story or a screenplay.
Therefore, thinking about this Hell, I urge you to cast away all forms of evil.
But I don't mean you have to live in fear of Hell all the time.
You have to cast away evil by feeling the heart of God the Father.
But sometimes, you have to think about this actual and horrible Hell and firmly drive away the temptations of sins.
Through these messages on Hell, I hope you will come forth as messengers of light and shine in this dark world.
In doing so, I pray in the name of the Lord that you will become the citizens of New Jerusalem where the good Father God dwells.
[AMEN!] |
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