The NXR Podcast - March 21, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - Did Jesus Descend To Hell?


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

132.64763

Word count

2,244

Sentence count

124

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What does it mean to be a Christian if you don't believe in hell? What does it really mean to go to hell? Is it even possible to be saved from hell? And what is the difference between hell and heaven?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 All right, listen, guys, I get it.
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00:00:42.320 Jesus said, man cannot live on bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of
00:00:47.420 God. You're listening to Daily Truth. Jesus told a parable of a poor beggar named Lazarus
00:00:56.460 And a rich man that Lazarus used to long to eat the crumbs that fell from this man's table.
00:01:04.720 Lazarus, furthermore, in addition to starvation, he was afflicted by many wounds and sores.
00:01:13.120 The rabbit dogs of the first century world were not domesticated cute pets like we have today.
00:01:21.280 this generation of people and culture opted for children
00:01:27.100 instead of chihuahuas and purses.
00:01:30.520 So the dogs were wild, licking his sores.
00:01:33.820 He was in misery and agony.
00:01:36.920 But eventually he died.
00:01:40.280 And Jesus says in this parable
00:01:41.940 that the angels carried him to Abraham's bosom.
00:01:46.480 And the rich man also dies.
00:01:48.580 and he is carried to hell.
00:01:53.240 Now, it's important to understand that before the cross,
00:01:56.000 in terms of chronological human history,
00:01:58.300 when people died, both the righteous and the wicked,
00:02:04.140 they both went to what the Bible describes as the place of the dead, Hades.
00:02:11.320 We use this language in our confession of faith each Lord's Day in our liturgy,
00:02:17.020 that Jesus died and was buried, he descended to Hades.
00:02:24.600 Now, there's a debate over the original language of the Apostles' Creed,
00:02:28.980 whether it says hell or Hades.
00:02:32.020 In either case, we've opted for the term Hades, realm of the dead.
00:02:38.620 We see this in Peter's epistles,
00:02:41.560 that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead and preached.
00:02:45.300 He preached to spirits held captive.
00:02:51.180 Now this is not Jesus going to hell
00:02:53.840 after his crucifixion and burial,
00:02:56.740 before his resurrection, during this three-day period.
00:03:00.680 As his body is laid in the tomb,
00:03:02.960 in his spirit, Peter says,
00:03:05.060 he goes to the realm of the dead
00:03:06.740 and preaches to spirits held captive.
00:03:09.220 This is not to say that Jesus goes and preaches the gospel
00:03:12.820 as a second opportunity for people in hell to believe
00:03:17.640 and to then go to heaven.
00:03:21.260 Now, Jesus is pronouncing his victory.
00:03:24.480 He's not going to the realm of the dead to preach an opportunity.
00:03:29.640 He's going to the realm of the dead to announce his victory
00:03:33.900 and to rub it in his enemies' faces. 0.87
00:03:37.860 Once you die, that's it, brothers and sisters. 0.99
00:03:40.380 There is no second opportunity.
00:03:44.480 And there is no end to the conscious torment of hell.
00:03:49.640 The Bible does not teach annihilationism.
00:03:54.240 Hell will never end.
00:03:56.120 The worm will not die.
00:03:59.100 It will be a conscious torment under the white-hot wrath of God forever.
00:04:04.440 And it's important that we understand that what makes hell so terrible is not because God is absent in hell.
00:04:12.900 What makes hell so terrible is that God is present.
00:04:18.460 And the torment that those who rebel against Christ and reject his offer of salvation,
00:04:25.920 the torment that they will experience is the torment of God's wrath.
00:04:30.120 What is absent in hell is not the presence of God, but the goodness of God.
00:04:37.720 What is absent in hell is the kindness of God, the grace and mercy and love of God. 0.90
00:04:47.280 For the non-elect, this world and this life is the closest they'll ever get to heaven. 0.84
00:04:53.600 And for those of us who are in Christ, this world and this life is the closest we'll ever get to hell. 0.93
00:05:02.000 If by grace through faith in Christ you have been saved,
00:05:07.020 then the suffering you experience in this mist of a life, this vapor of a life,
00:05:15.160 your mere 70, 80, 90 years, the suffering that you experience here is the worst it ever gets. 0.91
00:05:23.600 it's all better from here on out but for the non-elect the joy that they experience in this 0.84
00:05:34.760 life is the best they'll ever get it's the closest to the goodness of god that they'll ever 0.95
00:05:40.480 experience and so jesus descends to the realm of the dead and in the realm of the dead
00:05:48.680 some old scholars believe that it was a physical realm
00:05:52.640 actually deep within the belly of this world
00:05:56.600 in a literal sense.
00:05:59.320 And whether that's true or not,
00:06:02.380 I lean towards not,
00:06:04.660 but I really enjoy a good conspiracy.
00:06:08.940 Especially because most of them come true these days.
00:06:12.120 So, whether it's physically in the belly of the earth
00:06:16.260 or whether it was a spiritual place,
00:06:18.680 The point is this, that there are two sections of Hades,
00:06:23.840 hell and Abraham's bosom.
00:06:27.640 So Jesus, when he dies, his body physically is buried in the tomb,
00:06:32.360 and in the spirit, he descends to Hades.
00:06:38.040 And in Hades, he proclaims his victory, preaches to spirits held captive.
00:06:44.480 He is proclaiming his victory over demonic spirits and human souls, reprobates, who rejected him.
00:06:54.080 Even the days of Noah, is what Peter says.
00:06:57.380 Remember, Noah was a heralder of righteousness, is what the New Testament apostles say.
00:07:04.760 That Noah, for 120 years, preached.
00:07:09.260 He was not just an architect, a construction worker, building an ark, but he was a preacher.
00:07:18.960 Noah preached for 120 years as God waited patiently with the sins of wicked, vile people.
00:07:30.020 God waited and Noah preached.
00:07:32.660 When the Bible says elsewhere that God has numbered man's years to be 120,
00:07:41.080 we know that Moses lived to be 120. 0.77
00:07:44.980 I believe that that is a coincidence. 0.50
00:07:48.380 I believe that the numbering of man's years, 120 years,
00:07:53.400 is not to say that if you're righteous, if you trust the Lord,
00:07:57.460 if you're obedient, you will die on your 120th birthday.
00:08:01.520 The 120 years, man's years, that were set and limited by God
00:08:08.720 is referring to the days of Noah.
00:08:11.260 That there were 120 years left until they all died.
00:08:16.660 Until God flooded the world.
00:08:19.660 And for 120 years, Noah built an ark. 0.65
00:08:23.920 Which is a type of Christ.
00:08:26.760 That the righteous would be taken up into the ark.
00:08:29.360 And notice that in this narrative, this historic account,
00:08:34.560 that it's the Lord himself.
00:08:36.120 Noah builds the ark, but it is the Lord himself,
00:08:39.640 I believe, a theophany, the second member of the Trinity,
00:08:43.260 Jesus Christ, before his incarnation.
00:08:46.420 But Christ in the spirit with a physical, not incarnation,
00:08:52.020 but a physical manifestation of the spiritual Christ
00:08:55.500 who comes and physically closes the door.
00:08:58.320 seals these eight righteous persons,
00:09:02.060 Noah, his wife, three sons, and their three wives,
00:09:05.080 seals them up in the ark as a picture of the gospel.
00:09:08.540 And for 120 years, Noah imaged Christ
00:09:13.060 in the type of the ark, and he preached Christ.
00:09:18.640 And these people rejected Christ.
00:09:22.740 And when Christ dies and his body is physically buried
00:09:25.760 in the tomb in the spirit he descends to hades not hell but hades that is the realm of the dead
00:09:32.900 where there is a great chasm separating two sections of the realm of the dead abraham's bosom
00:09:39.560 for the righteous who had faith in jesus even before his earthly ministry before his incarnation
00:09:45.760 that's abraham and isaac and jacob and joseph the patriarchs all of them in abraham's bosom
00:09:52.140 and across this great chasm, all those who rejected Christ.
00:09:56.240 And Christ goes to the realm of the dead, namely Hades,
00:09:59.680 and in Abraham's bosom with the righteous,
00:10:03.180 he preaches across that chasm,
00:10:06.020 condemning all those who rejected him,
00:10:09.380 declaring his victory over them, 0.53
00:10:11.680 and that includes human reprobate souls.
00:10:16.120 It also includes certain demons that are so dangerous
00:10:20.000 that they were not permitted by God
00:10:22.060 to roam the earth but they were locked jude speaks of this in gloomy dungeons because they would
00:10:29.280 wreak far too much havoc these are some old school interpretations of scripture today
00:10:35.920 which i'm much more interested in christianity yesterday than christianity today i think
00:10:43.460 christianity tomorrow has a bright future for the record i don't think it's all downhill but i think
00:10:48.340 we're living in one of those moments where when I hear, you know, evangelicals say, we need a new
00:10:54.580 translation. I'm like, let's, let's let our grandkids do that. I don't think you guys are
00:10:58.160 qualified. Like this is just, this is not, this is just not the generation to do any serious 1.00
00:11:04.680 exegetical work. You're all compromised. You're all woke. You're all feminist. Just, just sit
00:11:12.720 a play out, purchase some more dogs, conservatives will have children, and then 80 years from
00:11:21.020 now our grandkids, you know, can build some new seminaries and do some serious work.
00:11:26.280 So all that being said, Jesus descends to Hades, the realm of the dead, he proclaims
00:11:31.640 his victory, and then he takes certain captives, liberates them, namely those in Abraham's
00:11:37.440 bosom the righteous Abraham Isaac Jacob Joseph he takes these individuals and brings them now
00:11:45.500 to heaven because his atoning work at Calvary is now finished and therefore can be particularly
00:11:54.720 and practically applied that's the historic teaching of Jesus descent the descent of Christ
00:12:05.240 to the realm of the dead now all that being said the point is that there are some people
00:12:13.900 who will never ever receive christ and the parable that christ tells of lazarus this poor beggar
00:12:22.660 and the rich man who is in hell hades hell category lazarus hades abraham bosom's category
00:12:32.860 this rich man he says send lazarus to dip his finger in cold water and touch my tongue
00:12:41.160 to quench my thirst for i am in agony here i'm in agony
00:12:47.720 and jesus says in this parable that there's no way to cross this great chasm so that
00:12:54.920 even if someone did wish to go from one side to the other it would be impossible impossible
00:13:02.480 and furthermore the rich man then says well if you can't ease my torment
00:13:09.900 then send lazarus back he just has this constant mindset that lazarus is still a servant
00:13:15.820 he doesn't really recognize that their hierarchical positions have been turned
00:13:21.280 he's in agony now lazarus is not his servant he's not going to quench his thirst he's not
00:13:28.120 going to do his bidding. But this man says, I have five brothers that are still living, and I don't
00:13:34.080 want them to come to this place of torment. So send Lazarus back from the dead, because they'll
00:13:40.840 believe. I didn't believe, but they'll believe if someone rises from the dead. Jesus says in this
00:13:49.360 parable Abraham speaking that they have Moses and the prophets meaning they have God's law
00:13:58.380 God's law word all of it types and shadows pointing towards the Christ the sole object
00:14:08.180 of saving faith all that is available to them and if they don't believe Moses and the prophets
00:14:15.320 They will not believe even if one should rise from the dead.
00:14:22.180 Essentially what Jesus is saying is this.
00:14:26.520 There is no degree or amount of evidence
00:14:32.080 that is capable of convincing someone of the truth of Christ.
00:14:38.660 It is a moral problem.
00:14:42.240 People who go to hell are not people who say,
00:14:45.020 just, I didn't know. Or I wasn't raised in a Christian home. Or I met some Christians
00:14:52.440 that preached the gospel, but they, God, they had, they just, they had a nasty tone. And 1.00
00:14:58.160 it turned me off. So therefore, my rejection of you because of these Christians' bad tone, 1.00
00:15:03.480 that justifies me for rejecting you, right? No. No. No, it's not a mere matter of evidence. 1.00
00:15:15.020 It's a matter of the heart.
00:15:17.360 Can I be frank with you for just a second, right here at the end?
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00:15:37.700 I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. 0.97
00:15:41.600 Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three years 0.91
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