A Burning Lake

Reading the Word of God from Revelation chapter 20, verses 11 to 15. Revelation chapter 20, verses 11 to 15. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it. And death and Hades delivered up the dead that were in them.

And they were judged every man according to their works. And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. There is no more solemn scene anywhere in the Bible or anywhere in human history than this that is recorded in Revelation chapter 20. John is giving to us the record of that last judgment, when the secrets of all men's hearts shall be revealed, and when the just and holy God shall finally completely deal with sin.

The judge on the throne is our Lord Jesus Christ. He said all judgment is committed unto the Son. The throne is a great throne because it's God's.

It's a white throne because of his holiness and his justice. There have been judges to sit upon their benches and deliver wrong sentences, twisting the law. There have been unjust judgments passed down, but never from this great white throne will there be an unjust judgment passed down.

This is that last judgment. And I say it again, no more solemn scene could ever be imagined or recorded. It's difficult to preach on this subject because if you mention hell, one of two things happens.

Either people don't take it seriously. It's a cuss word. Or people become very emotional and they say something like this.

My father was a good man. He didn't believe in Jesus Christ. Do you mean to tell me that my father goes to hell? Or there are many moral and upstanding people in the nations of the world that have never heard of Jesus Christ.

Do you mean that they go to hell? It was R. W. Dale, the great British congregational preacher, who said that the only man he ever heard preach on hell that he felt had the right to preach on hell was D. L. Moody. He said other men preach on hell as though they are happy people are going there. He said when Mr. Moody preached about hell, he always preached with a tear and a sob.

It's a difficult thing to preach on the subject of the lake of fire, but if we're going to preach the whole counsel of God, we have to do it. And we preach this not unemotionally, for it's impossible to think of a lake of fire without having your emotions stirred. Now, there are those who tell us that there is no such place as hell.

Hell was invented by religious leaders to have a club over the heads of innocent or stupid people. And if once we do away with the concept of hell, we are doing the world a great service. I'm sorry that people think like this, because it's neither a scriptural approach nor a rational approach to the subject.

If for some reason the word hell offends you, if for some reason the concept of a lake of fire offends you, substitute tonight the word final judgment. Let's talk tonight about the final judgment. John calls it a lake of fire.

Jesus called it a furnace of fire. Jesus called it outer darkness. Paul called it the wrath of God.

Paul called it being separated from the presence of the Lord. Regardless of what title you may give to it or what picture you may paint of it, there has to be a final judgment. And this is what we're talking about tonight.

There are five great facts that bear witness to the necessity and the reality of a final judgment. And I want to discuss those facts with you tonight. First, there is the fact of the character of God.

Now, if you read your Bible carefully, you'll find that there are three great statements that define the character of God. God is spirit. John 4, verse 24.

This means that God is not, as I am, a human being with blood and bones and body. God is spirit. As such, he is eternal.

He always was, he always is, and he always will be. God is spirit. John 4, 24.

1 John 4, verse 8. God is love. And 1 John 1, verse 5. God is light. God is spirit.

We have no problem with that. God is love. We have no problem with that.

And God is light. We should have no problem with that. This means that our God is a holy God, a righteous God.

Now, it's unfortunate that we live in an age that discusses God as the man upstairs. If ever there was a time when people take the concept of God and the name of God and the person of God and degrade it, it's today. I think even a few years ago, people would have hesitated to call God the man upstairs.

Or as some people have said, somebody up there likes me. There is today a very supercilious, a very shallow attitude toward the person of God. Someone says, but God is love, and because God is love, he certainly could not allow people to go to hell.

And the answer to that is quite simply, yes, God is love, but God is also light. God's love is a holy love. If you can conceive of love without holiness, you'll have the depth of lust.

God's love is a holy love, and God's character is a holy character. And because God is the kind of a God he is, he has to do something about sin. The book has been out for many years, and I should probably apologize for not having read it sooner, but I'm just now reading John Gunther's book, Death, Be Not Proud.

You all know John Gunther is the author of the great series of inside books, inside South America, inside Europe, inside USA. One of our leading news commentators, his son, Johnny, had a brain tumor. And this is the story of the discovery, the operations, and the final death of this brilliant young man.

I think he was 18 years old when he died, Johnny Gunther. As I was reading this book, I thought to myself, now here is a man whose son had a brain tumor. And when he discovered that Johnny had a brain tumor, the first thing they did was call a doctor, realizing that doctors hate disease, realizing that the doctor could only do one thing, operate.

And they wanted him to operate. Why? Because they wanted to get that tumor out of his body. Now, my friends, if our doctors isolate disease, and if our doctors operate on disease, is it wrong that a holy God who looks upon sin as the worst of diseases should want to isolate it and deal with it? I visited the isolation ward at one of the hospitals this week, and I had to put on gloves and a gown and a mask.

I felt like an evangelical Lone Ranger going in there. And having come out, I had to wash carefully, which I forgot to do and had to do right away when I got home. Why? Because isolation is important.

Here is something that must be isolated. We don't want this to spread. We have to deal with it.

Now, if this is true in the medical profession, how much more true would it be of a holy, righteous God? You see, God has to judge sin. Now, let me tell you why. Please learn this.

God does not judge sin to make people better. God, at this final judgment, is not issuing his sentence to make anybody better. Punishment does not change people that much.

God issues his decree of judgment to vindicate his law and to defend his own character. Would you want to worship a God who was careless with sin? When a judge in a court says to a man, I sentence you to 50 years in the penitentiary, he's not thinking about reform. Now, most of our judges do.

But the purpose of a judicial sentence is not to reform a man. It is to vindicate the law. And it is to maintain the character of the law.

Let me give you a very recent illustration, which I trust will not create any political problems. Many of you will not forget the hour when the television came on and President Ford was looking into the camera. He gave a little speech and he said, by the authority vested in me as the President of the United States, I do now pardon Richard Nixon.

And across the country there came a wave of protest. I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking about law. Why? Number one, nobody had proved him guilty.

How do you pardon somebody who hadn't been proved guilty? But number two, who's going to pay the rap? Instantly, people were saying, people who don't believe in hell, people who wouldn't hold to our evangelical position, they were saying, well, this is being easy on crime. This is being easy with the law. Oh, but if you talk to these very same people about hell, they'd say, well, I can't believe in a God who would do that.

Do you see my point? God, having the kind of character that he has, must vindicate his law. He must defend his own righteousness. And this is the purpose for a final judgment.

Now, some people have the idea that God's wrath is like your temper tantrums. You go walking through Marshall Field's toy department, here's some little kid on the floor polishing the floor, kicking his heels and screaming and saying, I want that, I want that. And his very doting mother is saying, now, darling, you see, a child like that needs to be dealt with.

He's having a temper tantrum. God's wrath is not a temper tantrum. Hear me.

The judgment of God is not impulsive. Hell does not mean that God is having a fit of anger. In fact, the scriptures over and over again say he is long suffering toward those who have resisted him.

He is slow to anger. Even Jonah admitted that, and he was quick to get angry. Oh, I know you, that you're a God who is slow to anger, and he is slow to anger.

God's judgment is not impulsive, and God's judgment is not impartial. It is not partial in the sense of showing favors to one and not showing favors to another. God is not impulsive, and God does not show favors, and God is not irrational.

He's wise. He knows what he's doing. My dear friends, the judgment of God is necessary.

There must be a final judgment because of the character of God. I do not want to worship and praise a God who is easy on sin, including my own sin. If he is a holy God and a righteous God, then he has to deal with sin.

And so I say it very simply but very boldly. The existence of hell is an evidence of the holy character of God. Now let me go one step further.

There's a second fact, and that's the dignity of man. I don't think people who oppose the doctrine of judgment know what they're talking about. When I used to do street meeting work a few years ago, we'd have people come up who were agnostics and atheists and unbelievers of one kind or another, and they'd almost shake their fist in your face and say, Do you believe in a God who sends people to hell? Well, of course, I don't believe in a God who sends people to hell.

People send themselves to hell. But do you want to believe in a man who is such a robot he's not responsible? Now just think that through. You appreciate choice.

You appreciate the fact that when God made you, he made you in his own image. He gave you a mind to think with. He gave you a heart, emotions to feel with.

He gave you a will to decide with. Would you want to be any other kind of a person? I wouldn't. I wouldn't want God to make me into some kind of a clay robot where he pushes the buttons and I just go around and do what he wants me to do.

Because where there is no freedom, there is no responsibility. Where there are no privileges, there's no responsibility. And when there's no responsibility, there's no accountability.

For example, we have no place in the Bible where God judges animals. I know a few animals I wish God would judge. But you couldn't conceive of Almighty God calling animals into judgment.

He couldn't do it. Because animals are not responsible. They operate by instinct.

And sometimes the emphasis on the last syllable was some of them. You can't conceive of God calling all the dogs or all the fish to judgment. Why does God call men to judgment? Because men are special.

You see, you appreciate the privilege of thinking, so God gives you a Bible to help you think. You appreciate the privilege of loving and having emotion, and so God sends his Son for you to love. You appreciate the privilege of making decisions, of having a will that is not operated by a robot control board.

God made you this way. Now, if you want these privileges, along with these privileges go responsibilities. And with responsibility comes accountability.

And God says, I have a choice. I can make man a robot, but then I can't call him into judgment, and he's not free to grow and free to become. Therefore, I will take a risk, and I will so make man that he can choose.

And I will bring to bear upon him every force to make him choose what is right. I will send the Holy Spirit to convict him. I will give him my word.

I will guide in circumstances. But my message will be, whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. My friend, if you want the privilege of choice, you've got to have the responsibility of judgment.

There is no middle ground. And so the existence of hell, the necessity of hell, is based on the fact of the character of God and the dignity of man. Man made in the image of God.

Man able to think after God. Man able to respond to God. And if man does not respond to God, he's made his choice.

We'll not go into detail on this, but every once in a while someone explodes over the biblical picture of judgment. You see, the passage we read in Revelation 20 does not take us into a courtroom. It takes us into a throne room.

There's a difference. Forty-five times in the book of Revelation, you find the word throne. My friend, my unsaved friend, hear me.

If one person is here in this service tonight who's never trusted Christ, you have never been born again. Now you hear me. One day, if you persist as you are, you will stand in a throne room, not a courtroom.

There's a judge, but no jury. There is a prosecution, but no defense. The Bible says every mouth shall be stopped.

There's a sentence, but no appeal. It's not a courtroom. If you have the idea you're going to stand before God, he's going to weigh your good deeds against your bad deeds, and your mother-in-law is going to come along and plead for your case, you better change your mind.

It's not a courtroom. It's a throne room. The purpose of this judgment is not to see whether or not the unsaved go to hell.

The purpose of this judgment is to see how much punishment they will have when they are there. Our God is a righteous God, and he weighs the works of the unsaved. But their names are not found written in the book of life, and so they're cast into the lake of fire.

My friend, if you do away with hell, you've got to do away with the dignity of man. There's a third fact, and that's the awfulness of sin. Now, let's face it.

You and I do not begin to comprehend how awful sin is. Sin is to us a word in the vocabulary. Even though the New Testament and the Old Testament use a half a dozen different words for sin to try to show us how awful it is, we don't really realize how awful it is.

I think one of the evidences of spiritual growth in our lives is a growing comprehension of the horror of sin. Not just big sins, if there be such things, but even little sins. You see, we look upon sin as an act.

Well, I told a lie. Well, I was mean to my sister. Well, I was unkind to my neighbor.

We see an act. God sees a process. God sees that process where you plant the seeds of sin, and they take root, and they grow, and they bear fruit, and they in turn plant other seeds of sin.

This, my friend, is why God waits until the very end of time to judge. Some of the seeds that were planted by Mr. Stalin are still bearing bitter fruit. God waits until the very end of time when every man's life has fulfilled its influence and his character has done its work, whether good or evil.

The work of Mr. Moody is still going on, and it will still go on until Jesus comes. It will go on until the end of time, and God at the end of time will look down that record, and he'll see all that was done that was holy and righteous and good. No saved person stands at this white throne judgment.

We shall have our judgment before the judgment seat of Christ for our rewards. But here's the unsaved man who stands before God's great white throne, somewhere out there in space with no place to hide. And God looks upon his life, and he sees what he has done.

We look upon sin as an act. God sees a process. We look upon sin as a deed, but God sees the results of this.

I think I've mentioned more than once from this pulpit, you sow an act, and you reap a habit, and you sow a habit, and you reap a character, and you sow a character, and you reap a destiny. We're living in a world that's very soft on sin. Very soft on sin.

Parents don't discipline their children. Courts have a way of excusing the criminal and punishing the innocent. Not all of them, but some of them.

We're very easy on sin. We've done away with the concept of sin, so much so that people today are told, you shouldn't feel guilty about these things. It is the job of more than one psychiatrist not to remove the cause of guilt, but just to remove the guilt.

And to say to a person, you shouldn't feel guilty about doing this. Everybody does it. I'm glad that Mr. Menninger, Dr. Menninger, has written his book, Whatever Happened to Sin? Our psychiatrists are discovering that there is such a thing as sin, and that guilt cannot be done away with so easily by saying, oh, forget about it.

Everybody does it. My dear friend, if you're soft on sin, you'll do away with hell. We like to be soft on sin because it's easier on us, but it isn't easier on us.

It's harder on us. Jesus picked up an Old Testament picture when he talked about hell. The word that's used in the New Testament in the Gospels is Gehenna.

Gehenna. There's a difference between Hades and hell. The unsaved man who dies today does not go to hell.

Nobody is in hell today. The first persons to be cast into hell will be Satan, the beast, and the false prophet. Hades is that temporary place of punishment.

Hades is that place out there where God temporarily keeps those who have rejected his son. Hades is the jail. Hell is the penitentiary.

And for one brief moment, Hades will give up the soul. Death will give up the body. And at that last resurrection, when the watery graves give up the bodies, and the earth gives up the bodies, and Hades gives up the soul, and for that one brief moment when there is no pain, body and soul join together to stand before God.

And then, that sentence of judgment. Jesus used this word Gehenna. You know why? Outside the city of Jerusalem is a valley.

It used to be a very beautiful valley, but it was used by Manasseh for idolatry. He set up the idols there to Moloch. They used to burn babies in the fire to the idol.

When good, godly King Josiah came along, he said, No more of this. I'm going to defile that valley. It was the valley of the son of Hinnom, or Gehenna.

And so, you know what Josiah did? Made a garbage dump out of it. He said, Bring all your garbage, throw it in this valley, and Gehenna became the city dump, where the fire was always burning, and the worms were always eating. And Jesus picked that figure up, and he said, You know what hell is like? Hell is like a city dump.

It's where you throw the waste. That is the tragedy of rejecting Christ. Waste.

A waste of life. A wasted opportunity. And all because of sin.

And the fact of sin, the awfulness of sin, says to me there has to be a final judgment. I certainly wouldn't want to worship a god who would be soft on sin. There's a fourth fact.

It's the fact of the meaning of the universe. Now, follow our reasoning very carefully. Either this universe has meaning, or it doesn't.

Interestingly enough, we use the word universe. Uni means one. Not a multiverse.

Universe. There is one system. There is one creation.

There is one harmony to all of it. And scientists tell us this. If they look through the microscope, they see that there's order.

There's planning. They are able to put the animals and the plants in various systems and orders. They look out there with the telescope, and out there is order.

The only disorder out there is the junk we've been sending up. It's a universe. Now, in this universe, my friends, we have good and we have evil.

We have righteousness and we have unrighteousness. If you do away with God, where did the good come from? If you believe in God, where does the evil come from? The Bible tells us the evil comes from sin, from the rebellion of Satan and the rebellion of man. But follow me.

If this is a universe, there's a purpose to it. If it takes a mind to understand this universe, then a mind had to create it. Even the computers that we depend upon have to be handled by men and women with minds.

Now, I've got a problem then. What about the evil in this world? Do you not get the impression as you live and as you watch TV news and as you read your newspapers and magazines that evil is triumphing and good is being kicked around? Don't you get that impression? I do. Wasn't it Lowell who said, truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne? But I want you to know it's not going to be that way forever.

If this is a universe, if there is a person behind this universe who made it, who keeps it together, and who runs it, he has a purpose behind it. And at the ultimate of that purpose is going to be judgment. God has to do something about the evil in this world.

There are multitudes of people who have gone through life and gotten away literally with murder. There are murderers walking the streets of Chicago right now. There are thieves in high places.

And nothing's been done about it. Did you ever notice that very few rich people are sent to prison? Very few. They've got the means to keep themselves out.

Do you mean to tell me that all of this evil, men who have abandoned wives and children, men who have led children and young people into sin and shame and debauchery, do you mean there's not going to come a day when all of this is dealt with? I can't live in that kind of a universe. If this is the kind of a world we are in, where there is no purpose and no ultimate judgment, when the books are balanced, then the smartest thing anybody could do, forgive me, would be to commit suicide. If there is no God who judges sin, then our existential friends are correct.

We live in an irrational world, and the only thing to do in an irrational world, the only rational thing you can do is commit suicide. Now, we as Christians don't believe that. We believe we live in a rational world, a world that has a God behind it and a purpose behind it, and the meaning of the universe demands that there be a judgment.

But the fifth and the greatest fact that supports the necessity and the reality of hell is this, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Now, you may disagree with me about the character of God. You may disagree with me about the dignity of man, the awfulness of sin.

You may disagree with me about the meaning of the universe, but come with me to Calvary and watch the Holy Son of God be crucified. If there is no hell, Jesus Christ suffered and died in vain. Now, someone says, but Pastor Wiersbe, what kind of a God would ordain a place like hell? And my answer to you is a God who was willing to go through hell himself.

Do you have the idea that God rejoices at the existence of hell? I read over and over again in my Bible, I have no pleasure, saith the Lord, in the death of the wicked. My Lord Jesus stood outside of Jerusalem and he wept. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you together, and ye would not.

Do you think that Jesus, when he contemplated the reality of hell, rejoiced? Did you ever notice that there are no songs in our hymn books about hell? Could you ever get a congregation to sing about hell? Judgment. There are references to final judgment in our hymns, but not hell. Somehow you can't put music to that concept.

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Now, some of you may not be Bible students, you may not even be Christians. I trust you'll listen very carefully to these next five or six minutes before we close.

Have you ever said to somebody, I don't believe in hell, I believe in the religion of Jesus? And of course we come right back and say, my friend, you better get your Bible out and you'll find that Jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven. Oh, I believe in the religion of the Sermon on the Mount. You'll find hell in the Sermon on the Mount.

Our Lord talks about the tree being cast into the fire several times in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about hell and about judgment. In fact, over and over again in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, our Lord Jesus talks about hell.

Not Isaiah the prophet, not Moses the lawgiver, not John the Baptist, although he did, but Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus, the great beloved one.

He preached about hell. You know why? Because he loved people and didn't want to see them go there. If there is no hell, Jesus preached in vain.

Now, it was our Lord Jesus, not some angry Baptist preacher who said where the worm never dies and the fire never goes out. Jesus said that. It was Jesus who called hell a furnace of fire.

It was Jesus who used the word condemnation. And this is the condemnation that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Jesus said that.

How can we get it across to you that a loving, holy God in the person of Jesus Christ preached about hell? Not only that, he went through hell. That's what Calvary was all about. When my Lord was on the cross, darkness came.

He called hell outer darkness. Do you have the idea that hell is a great big New Year's Eve party where the gamblers are playing poker over here and the drunkards are getting drunk over here and the prostitutes are prostituting their bodies over there? That's not what hell is. Hell is not a party.

There's no fellowship there. It's outer darkness, outer, away from God, darkness. God is light.

And Jesus is the one who said hell is outer darkness. Now, when he was on the cross, he was made sin for you. God treated Jesus the way sinners have to be treated.

That's an awesome thought. And darkness came because hell is darkness. And isolation came.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? My friend, God doesn't forsake anybody. If God forsook you for one second, you would die. In him we live and move and have our being.

He forsook his son. When Jesus Christ was made sin, God the Father, at that moment, forsook him. You know what hell is? It's isolation.

There's no fellowship in hell. There's no friendship in hell. There's no loving embrace in hell.

There's no handshake in hell. There's no word of encouragement in hell. It's darkness and isolation.

And then Jesus said, I thirst. Now, of course, it was physical thirst, but it goes much deeper than that because our Lord intimates that this is the condition in hell, thirst. Hell is eternal craving with no satisfaction.

The man whose life was lived for alcohol will crave it eternally and not be satisfied. One theologian has put it this way. I think it's true.

What is hell? Hell is just the kind of environment that matches the internal condition of the lost. Maybe you've heard Jack Watson tell this story. It's rather interesting.

He was talking to his barber. His barber's wife and daughter had just recently been saved, and the barber said to Jack Watson, they sing these songs and they quote these verses and they're praising them. He said, I can't stand it.

He said, Jack, do you think that God would send me to hell? If God loves me, do you think he'd send me to hell? In his own inimitable way, Jack said, yes, I think he would. The barber said, what do you mean by that? He said, you can't stand living at home with your wife and your daughter who sing and praise God. He said, what would you do in heaven? You'd be miserable.

So I think if God loved you, he'd put you someplace where it would match what you really are. Makes a man think. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a fact that necessitates the existence of hell because on the cross he performed an eternal act.

Now don't ask me how. I don't know. But he performed an eternal act.

And by that eternal act, he purchased eternal life. He suffered eternal judgment. A lot of people want to detour around hell.

They say, well, everybody's eventually going to be saved. Universalism. Bible says no.

He'll separate them, the sheep from the goats. Well, there's a probation. You know, after you die, God will prepare you and then he'll take you to heaven.

No, it's appointed unto men once to die after this, the judgment. Some of the cultists believe in annihilation. After you die, you're just like a mosquito.

You're squished out. No, no. No, there is eternal existence.

I don't enjoy this kind of preaching. Maybe you don't enjoy listening to it. But we have to be true to the word of God.

There is a place called hell. If I could find one verse in the scripture that would give me any hope that people weren't going there, I'd give it to you, but I haven't found it. The fact that there is a place called hell, the fact that our God is a God of holiness who must judge sin, the fact that he's made us the kind of people we are, therefore we're responsible, the fact that he's put us in a universe that has purpose behind it, the fact that sin is such an awful thing, and the fact that God himself went through hell to save us from hell leads us to two applications.

Number one, if you are a Christian, do everything you can to win people to Christ. Oh, but you say the fear of hell is not a good motive for salvation. Jesus thought it was.

Paul did. Paul said, Some of our evangelism today is nothing but soft soap. Some of our evangelism today is nothing but evangelical salesmanship.

We don't tell people anymore there's such a thing as sin. We don't tell people there's such a place as hell. This doesn't mean we have to come on strong and hit people with a baseball bat.

But I tell you, folks, there is a place called hell, a place so real that Jesus died to save us from it. Therefore, you and I as Christians, whatever we're doing, we ought to do everything we can to try to win people. Secondly, if you're not a Christian tonight, you're taking an awful chance.

I'm glad that Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 25 that God didn't prepare hell for people. He prepared hell for the devil and his angels. Nowhere in the Bible do I read that God has predestined anybody to go to hell.

Mr. Moody used to say that the elect are the whosoever wills and the non-elect are the whosoever wants. Whether or not that's theologically sound, I don't know, but it's practical. Jesus said to the people of Israel, Ye would not.

What is it that keeps you from trusting Christ tonight? I dream that the great judgment morning had dawned and the trumpet had blown. I dream that the sinners had gathered for judgment before the white throne. And oh, what weeping and wailing as the lost were told of their fate.

They cried for the rocks and the mountains. They prayed, but their prayers were too late. The soul that had put off salvation.

Not tonight, I'll get saved by and by. No time now to think of religion. At last he had found time to die.

And I saw a great white throne. My friend, I hope you never see that great white throne. I hope that tonight you'll put your faith in Jesus Christ and be saved from judgment because he says, He that believeth on him is not condemned.

But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation that light has come into the world. But men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

The invitation is still open for people to flee from the wrath to come and trust Christ. And my dear unconverted friend, I hope you'll do that tonight. Let's pray.

Gracious Father, our minds and our hearts are just not keen enough and perceptive enough to contemplate or understand the awfulness of sin and the tragedy and the wasteness of hell. Oh Lord, speak to our own hearts tonight, to us who are saved. Shake us out of our complacency and our indifference to realize that there is a world around us destined for judgment apart from Jesus Christ.

Help us to be faithful to pray and to give and to witness. I pray for those here tonight without the Savior. Oh Father, by your Spirit, convict them.

May they realize they must come to Christ before it's too late. Speak to their hearts and help them to respond for Jesus' sake. Amen.