Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10156. Satan’s final defeat is described in Scripture with a clarity that leaves nothing to the imagination and no room for appeal. He is not an eternal rival to God, he is a creature, and Satan’s final defeat was written into the story long before it began. What surprises people is that the ending…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10155. The role of angels in the end times is far larger than most Christians realise, and Revelation is where it becomes impossible to miss. The role of angels is visible on almost every page of that book, sounding trumpets, pouring bowls, restraining winds, announcing judgements and gathering the harvest. They are not decorative….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10151. Every human being who has ever lived will be raised from the dead, the just and unjust alike, and that is one of the least disputed teachings in the New Testament and one of the least discussed. Death is not the end of anyone’s story, whichever side of the line they are on….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10150. The final judgement in Revelation 20 is described with a terrible economy of words. A great white throne, earth and sky fleeing away, the dead standing before it, and books being opened. Then a second and separate book, the book of life, is opened as well. The plural and the singular are doing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10149. The book of life appears from the Pentateuch to the final chapters of Revelation, and it stands for something of enormous comfort and enormous seriousness at the same time. It is God’s register of those who belong to Him, and at the last judgement it is the book that decides everything. People often…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10122. The prison of Tartarus is named exactly once in the whole Bible, in a single verb tucked into 2 Peter 2:4, and it refers to the place where God has confined a particular group of fallen angels until judgement. One verb, one verse, and a good deal of careful thinking required. Most English…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10121. The fire of Gehenna is the image Jesus reached for whenever He spoke about final judgement, and it comes from a real valley on the southern edge of Jerusalem with a very ugly history. Understanding that valley is the shortest route into understanding the warning. Eleven of the twelve New Testament uses of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10110. The Bema seat is the judgement seat of Christ, where believers will stand to have their service assessed and rewarded. It is not a trial to determine whether we are saved. That question was settled at the cross and received by faith, and no Christian will ever face it again. What happens at…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10100. The lake of fire is the final and permanent place of judgement for Satan, for the beast and the false prophet, and for every person whose name is not written in the book of life. I want to say that plainly at the start, because this is one of those subjects where people…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 10099. The second death is Revelation’s name for the final state of everyone who dies without saving faith in Jesus. The phrase appears four times, all in that one book, and John defines it for us so that we are not left guessing. The lake of fire is the second death. That is the…