Perdition and the bottomless pit
“But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” (2Pet. 3:7).
Hezekiah had had an illustrious reign in his first ten years as king. “Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that He might know all that was in his heart.” (2Chron. 32:31).
Hezekiah had witnessed the attack of Assyria against Jerusalem with 185,000 troops and their miraculous overnight destruction. Then he escaped a sure death by a slow, torturous cancer when God’s prophet had spoken God’s work and then applied an unlikely cure.
Yet, he still grew lukewarm. Success and prestige did to him what it has done to the whole world before that day and since. He fed on himself, on his accomplishments, his righteousness. This resulted in the painful cancer. Yet, even his miraculous healing by the grace of God toward the king’s repentance did not fully eradicate pride from his heart. So, after he recuperated he continued to depart from his relationship and communion with Jehovah. He fell prey to his own first great prayer at the cleansing of the sanctuary, “For our fathers have trespassed, and done that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God, and have forsaken Him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs.” (2Chron. 29:6).
One sinful desire, persistently cherished, will eventually neutralize all the power of the gospel. Every sinful indulgence strengthens the soul’s aversion to God. The man who manifests an infidel hardihood, or a stolid indifference to divine truth, is but reaping the harvest of that which he has himself sown. In all the Bible there is not a more fearful warning against trifling with evil than the words of the wise man that the sinner “shall be holden with the cords of his sins.” Proverbs 5:22. Steps to Christ, p. 34.
Elohim must act; a test must come to Hezekiah. He must be forced to express his inner intents and real character; he must voice his loyalty for heaven or hell. So, God left him; the Holy Spirit stopped establishing Hezekiah with His grace, and that’s when Hezekiah was driven to speaking foolishly and to God’s expressed curse of certain desolation upon Hezekiah’s kingdom. “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.” (Isa. 39:6). “And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.
And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” (Isa. 8:21,22).
After all that the Lord had done for king Hezekiah; after all that he had seen God do for him, he never returned to God’s ideal for him. And this failure manifested itself in his son, Manasseh, the most sadistic and bloodiest king of David’s lineage. In similar fashion, God had delivered the church from Jewish and Roman oppression and their pagan philosophies―subtle trees of knowledge of good and evil. Satan had set up his spirit armies of occult wisdom and had brought ruin to God’s people, as the Lord had prophesied to Hezekiah. But out of that furnace of affliction He brought forth His church.
Christianity had seen an amazing deliverance through the Messiah Son of God and through His apostles. But, the apostolic church still let its original ardor cool. Christ’s warning threat to the apostolic church was: “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” (Rev. 2:4,5).
But, the church would not bow their pride of apostolic accomplishments, and descended into Satan’s occultic apostasy until it reached its predicted curse. “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” (Dan. 7:8). “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Dan. 7:25).
Thus, 200 years passed, and they were led further and further from the Holy Spirit. So Christ must act. If His people have been distracted and remain so throughout God’s long-suffering grace, then they must finally be put to the test. Then, having failed the threat, they must be cut off, and given to Satan just as God had done the Jews and the ten northern tribes prior to the Jews. (Dan. 9:24;Rom. 1:18,28-32;Rom. 11:22).
The church was driven to darkness as we see in Revelation. “When He had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” (Rev. 6:5-8).
God providentially permitted Satan to have his way with them to the end of his prescribed “time, times and a half”, and no further. Thus, He was able to deliver again His people from the papal furnace of affliction, and Protestantism was born.
But the Great Controversy was coming to an end and within 350 years the Reformation would find even itself apostatized and rejecting the word of God. Faith had fallen in love with this world and their service to the only true God was a sham. Now He must take their candle out of its place, as He had done the ailing apostolic church, and give them the way they had chosen. So a providentially ordained test came to them—the very last days’ message of judgment day and Christ’s personal, literal, visible, audible return in power.
God had left them because they had left Him. Their own scriptures in which they boasted convicted them. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.” (Isa. 59:1,2). The test of the three angels proved their departure from Christ as they rejected the angels’plain Bible truth. God brought them to the test; and they failed. (Rev. 6:12-17;8:7-12).
Now, another separation took place and would continue to do so until Jesus would return. The time had come to judge the whole world. The final test would be given the world as Satan would be loosed to perpetrate his last and greatest of delusion of all time. “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.” (Rev. 9:1-3).
Now, one final test is being given the world as the Holy Spirit of God recedes from the consciences of mankind. The truths of God’s word and a true knowledge of God’s character in the lackadaisical religious world are falling easily before Satan’s unbridled forces of deception. “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming:
Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Thess. 2:8-12).
9/11, its Patriot Act and War on Terror, is quickly closing up Satan’s last moves to unify the world’s religions and governments behind the Vatican and her right-hand man, Protestant America. This secular arm of the Church is becoming increasingly imbued with the voice of the dragon and in its repudiation of its forefathers’ Constitution and separation of church and state.
They have left God and He has left them to their devices and let them go in the direction of their own will—a Satan-possessed will. The Lord will permit this to continue until He has manifested to His enemies, to the on-looking universe, and to His saints, all that is in their heart, and has brought out His elect from the four corners of the world, and condemned everyone else who follows the beast. “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:3,4). “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” (Rev. 13:11,12).
All who will not come out of her will be driven to a darkness worse than that experienced by Hitler’s SS troops. It will be a full demonic possession—perdition. When the 7th trumpet sounds this world’s probation will be closed, and “the beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. … And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” (Rev. 17:8,11).
“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” (Heb. 10:35-39).
Hezekiah had had an illustrious reign in his first ten years as king. “Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that He might know all that was in his heart.” (2Chron. 32:31).
Hezekiah had witnessed the attack of Assyria against Jerusalem with 185,000 troops and their miraculous overnight destruction. Then he escaped a sure death by a slow, torturous cancer when God’s prophet had spoken God’s work and then applied an unlikely cure.
Yet, he still grew lukewarm. Success and prestige did to him what it has done to the whole world before that day and since. He fed on himself, on his accomplishments, his righteousness. This resulted in the painful cancer. Yet, even his miraculous healing by the grace of God toward the king’s repentance did not fully eradicate pride from his heart. So, after he recuperated he continued to depart from his relationship and communion with Jehovah. He fell prey to his own first great prayer at the cleansing of the sanctuary, “For our fathers have trespassed, and done that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God, and have forsaken Him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs.” (2Chron. 29:6).
One sinful desire, persistently cherished, will eventually neutralize all the power of the gospel. Every sinful indulgence strengthens the soul’s aversion to God. The man who manifests an infidel hardihood, or a stolid indifference to divine truth, is but reaping the harvest of that which he has himself sown. In all the Bible there is not a more fearful warning against trifling with evil than the words of the wise man that the sinner “shall be holden with the cords of his sins.” Proverbs 5:22. Steps to Christ, p. 34.
Elohim must act; a test must come to Hezekiah. He must be forced to express his inner intents and real character; he must voice his loyalty for heaven or hell. So, God left him; the Holy Spirit stopped establishing Hezekiah with His grace, and that’s when Hezekiah was driven to speaking foolishly and to God’s expressed curse of certain desolation upon Hezekiah’s kingdom. “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.” (Isa. 39:6). “And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.
And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” (Isa. 8:21,22).
After all that the Lord had done for king Hezekiah; after all that he had seen God do for him, he never returned to God’s ideal for him. And this failure manifested itself in his son, Manasseh, the most sadistic and bloodiest king of David’s lineage. In similar fashion, God had delivered the church from Jewish and Roman oppression and their pagan philosophies―subtle trees of knowledge of good and evil. Satan had set up his spirit armies of occult wisdom and had brought ruin to God’s people, as the Lord had prophesied to Hezekiah. But out of that furnace of affliction He brought forth His church.
Christianity had seen an amazing deliverance through the Messiah Son of God and through His apostles. But, the apostolic church still let its original ardor cool. Christ’s warning threat to the apostolic church was: “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” (Rev. 2:4,5).
But, the church would not bow their pride of apostolic accomplishments, and descended into Satan’s occultic apostasy until it reached its predicted curse. “I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” (Dan. 7:8). “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Dan. 7:25).
Thus, 200 years passed, and they were led further and further from the Holy Spirit. So Christ must act. If His people have been distracted and remain so throughout God’s long-suffering grace, then they must finally be put to the test. Then, having failed the threat, they must be cut off, and given to Satan just as God had done the Jews and the ten northern tribes prior to the Jews. (Dan. 9:24;Rom. 1:18,28-32;Rom. 11:22).
The church was driven to darkness as we see in Revelation. “When He had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” (Rev. 6:5-8).
God providentially permitted Satan to have his way with them to the end of his prescribed “time, times and a half”, and no further. Thus, He was able to deliver again His people from the papal furnace of affliction, and Protestantism was born.
But the Great Controversy was coming to an end and within 350 years the Reformation would find even itself apostatized and rejecting the word of God. Faith had fallen in love with this world and their service to the only true God was a sham. Now He must take their candle out of its place, as He had done the ailing apostolic church, and give them the way they had chosen. So a providentially ordained test came to them—the very last days’ message of judgment day and Christ’s personal, literal, visible, audible return in power.
God had left them because they had left Him. Their own scriptures in which they boasted convicted them. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.” (Isa. 59:1,2). The test of the three angels proved their departure from Christ as they rejected the angels’plain Bible truth. God brought them to the test; and they failed. (Rev. 6:12-17;8:7-12).
Now, another separation took place and would continue to do so until Jesus would return. The time had come to judge the whole world. The final test would be given the world as Satan would be loosed to perpetrate his last and greatest of delusion of all time. “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.” (Rev. 9:1-3).
Now, one final test is being given the world as the Holy Spirit of God recedes from the consciences of mankind. The truths of God’s word and a true knowledge of God’s character in the lackadaisical religious world are falling easily before Satan’s unbridled forces of deception. “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming:
Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2Thess. 2:8-12).
9/11, its Patriot Act and War on Terror, is quickly closing up Satan’s last moves to unify the world’s religions and governments behind the Vatican and her right-hand man, Protestant America. This secular arm of the Church is becoming increasingly imbued with the voice of the dragon and in its repudiation of its forefathers’ Constitution and separation of church and state.
They have left God and He has left them to their devices and let them go in the direction of their own will—a Satan-possessed will. The Lord will permit this to continue until He has manifested to His enemies, to the on-looking universe, and to His saints, all that is in their heart, and has brought out His elect from the four corners of the world, and condemned everyone else who follows the beast. “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev. 13:3,4). “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” (Rev. 13:11,12).
All who will not come out of her will be driven to a darkness worse than that experienced by Hitler’s SS troops. It will be a full demonic possession—perdition. When the 7th trumpet sounds this world’s probation will be closed, and “the beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. … And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” (Rev. 17:8,11).
“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.
For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” (Heb. 10:35-39).
posted by David | 10:16 AM
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