Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
When the lost at last "perish" in what the Bible calls "the Lake of Fire," will God still love them? Or will His once-present love have changed to hatred or indifference? This may seem like a silly question, but your answer may well mean the difference in your attitude toward God, whether you are happy in His love, or uncertain of it.
There is a profound statement in Revelation that indicates that great sorrow will grip Heaven when the lost perish at last. Introducing the passage about final judgment is this statement: "When He [the Lamb] opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven ..." (8:1). We read that "God is love" (agape; 1 John 4:8), and that "agapenever fails" (1 Cor. 13:8). We read that when wicked men crucified the Savior, He prayed, "Father, forgive them." We read that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze. 18:32; 33:11). That means He takes severe pain in their death!
God's love is different than ours; it never fails. When at last the wicked realize, like Esau, how they have sold their "birthright" to eternal life, they can find no place of repentance, though they seek it with tears (see Heb. 12:16, 17) because they have burned all bridges behind themselves and rendered their own souls incapable of repentance. Their anguish will be indescribable, for at last they will be fully conscious.
Most severe will be the pain of those who at one time rejoiced in "the knowledge of the truth" but who like Judas Iscariot betrayed their sacred trusts (see Heb. 10:26-29). But does God love them to the bitter end? Yes! Will He share their sorrow? Yes. Will the "righteous" inside the New Jerusalem gloat over their anguish? No; there will be "silence in heaven ..." We can see how God will feel when we look at how He cried about ancient Israel going down to destruction. Hear Him weeping: "How can I give you up?" (Hos. 11:8).
And we see Jesus (who revealed the Father to us) as He is convulsed with sobbing anguish as He looks on the temple one evening for the last time: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ... how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37). What's the point? Think seriously about that divine love for you. Beware lest you slip into that position of "you were not willing!” Be gathered under those "wings."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 22, 2000.
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