By R. W. McAlister
In Heb. 9:27 the Bible says, “…it
is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the
judgment:” In Rom. 14:11-12, the Lord says, “… every
knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess
to God. 12So then every one of us shall give account
of himself to God.” That’s a reference to final
judgment. In II Cor. 5:10, the Bible says, “For we
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ;
that every one may receive the things done in his
body, according to that he hath done, whether it be
good or bad.” The Bible is very clear about the
reality of a final judgment. I think the real question
is, “What happens to us before Judgment?” II Peter 2:9
addresses this, and it reads, “The Lord knoweth how to
deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve
the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:”
The Greek text suggests the idea of keeping the
unrighteous “under punishment (present tense—
continual punishment) unto (looking towards) the day
of judgment.” The phrase “under punishment” reveals
that the penalty was already being inflicted at the
time the apostle is writing.
The punishment begins at the point
of death, in somewhat the same way an individual
apprehended in the commission of a crime is jailed
until his trial. In that case, he is being punished
before actual judgment has been passed.
In Luke 16, we find the story of
the rich man and Lazarus, who begged at the rich man’s
gate. We don’t have time to read all of it, but
beginning in v. 22, the Bible says,
"And it came
to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by
the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also
died, and was buried; 23And in hell he
lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 24And
he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on
me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of
his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am
tormented in this flame. 25But Abraham
said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art
tormented."
It’s important to understand that both Lazarus and the
rich man are in a place called,
“Hades.” The Hadean realm is divided into two parts,
separated by a great gulf (Luke 16:26): “Abraham’s
Bosom” (also called Paradise – Luke 23:43), and
“torment” or, “Tartarus.” Hades, consisting of
Paradise and Torment, could be viewed as “Eternity’s
Waiting Room,” where all departed souls await final
judgment, which is guaranteed to come, as we’ve
already noted from Heb. 9:27, Rom. 14:12, and II Cor.
5:10. It is on the Day of Judgment that souls who are
in Paradise will be ushered into Heaven, and those
souls found in Torment will be consigned to Gehenna
Hell, the final and eternal abode of those who die
apart from God.
In short, if I die as a
faithful Christian, my soul will await final Judgment
in the Paradise half of Hades, but if I die outside
the body of Christ, or as a once-faithful Christian
who has turned his back on God and never repented, I
will, upon my death, await final Judgment with the
rich man of Luke 16, in Tartarus, being tormented in
fire. None of us wants that to be our ultimate fate,
so I urge us all to seek out God’s plan of salvation
in the Scriptures and obey it.
- R. W. McAlister preaches for the Anna Church of
Christ in Anna, IL.He may be contacted through the
congregation's website: http://www.annachurchofchrist.com/
