The World and the Word

                                                        The Wheat and the Chaff

Matthew 25:41 informs readers that God created the lake of fire only for the cursed. In Genesis 3:14 and 17, God cursed only the Devil and the ground which contains Hell. God did not curse the living souls and spirits of Adam and Eve or any of their descendants because He creates them. Genesis 3:20. When Adam and Eve sinned, Satan injected spiritual death, which is totally evil and cursed, into the inner beings of Adam and Eve and all of their descendants, but this curse is foreign to the beings of all humans. When any human not saved by grace physically dies, God must temporarily consign his living soul and spirit, which is conjoined with his spiritual death, to one of the three regions of death as recorded in Revelation 20:13. God cannot accept the filthiness of sin and evil into His immaculate kingdom. The Devil holds an eternal claim on all humans consigned to the regions of the dead because of spiritual death. Satan hopes to ruin forever their living souls and spirits that God created, and thereby prove that God's Love can fail. But Jesus took the power of spiritual death away from the Devil when He descended into Hell. Revelation 1:18.

God consigns humans who deliberately practice evil to Hell, but even these humans retain a diminished, living soul and spirit that God created and can never lose to the Devil. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Romans 11:29; Romans 11:36. In the end of the world, God will use His consuming fire to separate all living souls and spirits from their spiritual deaths because they will have returned to faith in Christ as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. God will resurrect even these diminished souls and spirits from Hell and recreate them with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth, but they will not be the same persons that they were when they lived on earth. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; I Corinthians 3:11-15; John 12:25.

Although God is One Being, the manner in which He exercises His power happens to be different in different ages. Deuteronomy 6:4. The power of the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in creation. Genesis 1:2. The new birth of a human saved by grace is a type of spiritual recreation. John 5:24. The power of the Father's wrath against evil manifests Himself in the Old Testament as a consuming fire. Exodus 19:9-25. The Father will use His consuming fire to separate all of His living humans from their spiritual deaths who are confined to the regions of death. I Corinthians 3:11-15. The power of the Son's Love for all humanity manifested Himself in the New Testament in His cross and resurrection. John 3:16; II Corinthians 5:21; John 12:47-48; John 11:25; Hebrews 2:9; I Timothy 1:10.

The Holy Spirit created the world and humanity to test God's Love to prove that it can never fail. I Corinthians 13:8. God's wrath against evil and His Love for all humanity were both expressed in His power to create. The Father manifests His wrath against evil in order to purge all evil from the lives of all humanity through His Love and creative powers. God manifested His Love by becoming a perfect human who sacrificed Himself in the place of all humanity by taking all of their sins and spiritual deaths upon Himself on a cruel cross to purge it from all humanity, and who gained all power over sin and spiritual death by His resurrection from the dead. I John 3:8; Revelation 1:18; John 1:29; I Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:22; John 11:25.

Jesus' parable in Matthew 25:31-46 prophesies about the Great White Throne Judgment in the end of the world. Christ will not "sit upon the throne of His glory" until this final Judgment. According to Revelation 20:4, the Tribulation saints will be the only judges in the beginning of the millennial reign of Christ. Although Christ and the Holy Spirit forever draw their power from the Father, in the end, only the Love of God will rule forever. I Corinthians 15:25-28. Colossians 1:18 relates that in the end Christ will possess "preeminence." This word can only mean that in the end God's Love, who is Christ, will rule forever because God's burning wrath will have already finished His work by purging all sins and evil from all of His creations including all humans. Colossians 1:15-20; Revelation 21:1-5; Romans 8:18-23; John 5:28-29.

Christ will gather all nations for His final Judgment. The sheep and the goats, like the chaff and the wheat and the good tree and the bad tree, represent the inner being of every human with its living soul and spirit and its evil spiritual death which causes sin. Christ will dissolve the individual beings of every human confined within the regions of the dead and set their individual sheep on His right hand and their individual goats on His left hand. Christ will reward the sheep for their good works and will recreate them to live forever in that part of God's kingdom which will be His recreated earth. These sheep cannot be saints saved by grace because God never saves His saints by good works but solely by His grace. Titus 3:5-7. Christ will cast only the separated goats, which represent the dead and evil nature of all humans, into the eternal lake of fire. According to Matthew 25:41, only the cursed are cast into the lake of fire, not living humans whom God creates and loves. Revelation 20:15; Revelation 22:11-12.

Isaiah 5:24 and Isaiah 47:14 both prophecy that one day God will use the wrath of His consuming fire to burn the "stubble," which represents the useless dead and evil natures of every human confined within the regions of the dead, forever in the lake of fire. Isaiah 6:6-7 also proves that God can use His consuming fire to purge sin and evil and forgive repentant sinners. Genesis 8:20-21 prophesies that God will use His burnt offerings to symbolize the fact that He will preserve all living humans forever. Psalm 36:6. All living humans confined within the regions of the dead will repent and believe in Christ as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. In the end of the world, God will use His consuming fire to purge the dead and evil natures of every one of them for Him to cast into the lake of fire, and He will recover their good and living souls and spirits for Him to recreate with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; I Corinthians 3:11-15; John 11:25; John 5:28-29.