Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Hundreds of years ago when I was a student, I used to do a lot of art. And of course, I lived in England, so there wasn't too much choice about the sort of things we would paint outside. There wasn't too much choice of when to do it. You couldn't wait until it stopped raining because you'd never paint anything.

But it was usually gray, and it was usually very dull. And I remember saying to my art teacher, "This is really tough. One of these days we're going to get the sunshine out, and then we'll get some pretty pictures. We'll get all the colors coming alive."

But I had literally been there nearly three quarters of a term, and I hadn't been out, I went out twice a week to do the sketching and things that we were assigned to do. I hadn't had one day when there was any sunshine, not one in a whole three quarters of a term.

And my art teacher simply said to me, "Jill, I wouldn't send you out if the sun is out, if the sun is shining, because the thing that brings the colors out is the gray."

And if you go to the English Lake District and you go around all the artists' galleries, you will see that most of the best art is painted in the gray. The clouds are always there, the shadows are always around. And it brings into sharp relief and focus the color.

And so today, as we look at the gray, I'm hoping that the sharp colors of heaven, and the brilliance of the Lord Jesus's salvation, will make the picture complete for us. Sometimes you have to start with the gray and paint the picture.

Now we've been applying our minds to the concept of heaven. We've thought about whether it was a place or a state or a dimension. And whatever sort of a place or a state or a dimension you've decided it is, we do believe that the scriptures teach us that it's pretty, it's a painless sort of place, populated, a place of plenty, a peaceful sort of existence, purposeful, things go on there, and of course, it's prepared by Jesus for those who love him.

We also believe that you receive eternal life now, and if you haven't received it, you are living in eternal alienation, which is eternal death, because if nothing happens to interrupt that, you'll just die and go on as you are. Of course, there are a few distractions here which there won't be later on.

Now, as we come to the subject of what is hell, we find that we have a crisis in Christendom. I've done as much reading as I possibly can when I've been traveling so much, taking some books with me on the plane. I've had some very interesting comments from the people I'm sitting next to as they've seen the titles of my books this week.

But generally, in Christendom, heaven and hell, in the words of James Bertschal, moral theologian at the University of Notre Dame, heaven and hell are no longer thought of as different locations with separate zip codes. But radically opposed states of intimacy with and alienation from God.

And I would say that the majority of evangelicals have arrived at that point. Radically opposed states of intimacy with heaven or alienation from hell. Alienation is what hell is all about. Hell is not a place created by God for getting even, but the alienation we choose for ourselves. And I think this really helps us with the character of God himself.

Heaven is prepared for whosoever will that will come. Hell was not prepared for man at all, of course, as we shall see, but we choose ourselves to be alienated from him. Eternal life doesn't begin with death, it's already underway. So, eternal death is already underway. The Bible says that you can be dead while you're living, and some of us have had that experience before our conversion. We have known what it is to be dead to God while we're living.

For the non-Christian that doesn't have Christ's life, that is a very dangerous thing or state to be in. Because you don't know when a bus is going to come around the corner or you're going to drop dead. Jesus taught the necessity of preparing for the prepared place he's prepared for us by many parables, by many sayings, and we'll be looking at some of those. Directly warning people about hell and about going there.

One of the most interesting little parables is found in Luke 12, if you turn to that with me. Luke chapter 12 and verse 16 is the parable of the rich fool. Jesus was teaching and a man came up and said, "Teacher, I'm having real problem with my brother. There is an inheritance that he should divide with me, and he won't."

So he brings this problem, this personal problem to Jesus, and Jesus replied quite sharply to this young man. "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" And he said to them, "Watch out. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for a man's life doesn't consist in the abundance of his possessions."

And he told them this parable, "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop." So he thought to himself, "What shall I do? I've no place to store my crops." And he said, "I know what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and all my goods." "And I'll say to my soul, or myself, you've plenty of good things laid up for many years." I'm not sure I'd rather have the King James here. "I will say to my soul, soul," I love this because it gives a picture of him having conversation with his soul here, and his soul sitting listening and answering. The NIV sort of loses the import of it. "Soul, you've plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry."

"But God said to him, 'You fool.'" Now when God says to a man, "You fool," the man had better listen. "You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you." Or in the King James, "This very night your soul will be required of thee." "Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." One of these sessions I'm going to be talking about the two judgments, the judgment of the unbelievers and the judgment of the believers, and we'll deal with rewards then, so I want to leave that part of the parable to later.

But here, Jesus is underlining some basic facts. It's God that gives us power to get wealth as the scriptures teach us, or the power to be rich. It's God who holds us accountable for how we handle it. It's God that gives us an eternal soul that is of far more worth than anything we can accumulate here, and it's God that requires that soul when he wills. When he says, "This night." Now this man seems to be in perfectly good health. How is it that he's just planning to call in his advisers and pull down his barns and build a bigger barn? And he can't wait to enjoy it all and he thinks he's going to have many years ahead of him. Eat, drink, and be merry. He's got an idea that he's got forever to live, that nothing can happen to him, it can't happen to me sort of thing.

Now then, when God says this night, who is going to argue with him? You're not going to say, "Well, wait till tomorrow, Lord, I'm not coming yet." My mother-in-law was a wonderful old lady, and she was a very strong character, maybe you're surprised at that knowing Stuart. But she really was, and if you know Bernard Stuart's brother, you'll understand how strong Mother Briscoe was. Mother Briscoe was a force to be reckoned with. She was incredibly strong physically. She had her first cancer operation 27 years before she died, after 13 or 14 other cancer problems. She also had a major heart attack and three small strokes in between all of that. And at the age of 76 was dying, or so everybody told her. She was with us at the time and the doctor suggested that it would only be a matter of a few months. Well, one night she got up in typical Mother Briscoe fashion, came into our room in the middle of the night and said, "I'm going home." So we got up, made a cup of tea and sat down and tried to figure out what she was talking about, and it wasn't heaven she was talking about, it was England. She wanted to go home and die in England. She didn't want to die in a country that wasn't her birth country. And so she did. She upped and went. After deciding she'd never go home and she'd die with us, she decided to die in England. And she said, "It won't be long, just a week or two, the doctor says," and off she went.

We were going on a Holy Land trip and she said, "I feel rather sorry for you. You're going to the earthly Jerusalem. I'm going to the heavenly one." And she was a wonderful woman of faith. 18 months later, she was still alive. Bernard was nursing her. Taking his mother in his arms like a baby and being nurse to the mother that bore him. The cycle was complete. And he said to us when it was all over, "She was so incredibly strong. That heart would not stop beating." And he said, "I swear the angel of death sat in the corner of her room for 18 months and she said, 'I'm not coming yet.'"

Now we laughed about that. And I want to tell you something, you can't say that to the angel of death. That was just us having a little bit of fun at poor our mom's expense. You can't say that. When God says "this night," he means "this night." That's it. Who is going to argue? It's God who counts the man a fool who doesn't reckon with this knowledge.

We publish in England the things people leave when they die, their will, and so it's a part of the paper everybody reads with morbid curiosity every night, because when somebody dies, they want to know what they left. And I remember one night somebody saying, "Oh, Mrs. So-and-so's died." So everyone was immediately very interested and in unison we all said, "What did she leave?" And the answer was, "Everything," because of course, she did. And you do.

I love Emily Dickinson's poem: "Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality." "Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality." One day he will kindly stop for thee. Whether you take kindly to that thought or not, I would nicely tell you is quite irrelevant. If the carriage stops, and you're alienated here, you'll be alienated there.

And yet we know the reconciliation is possible because of the cross. Christ made it possible and he bought us a home in heaven. He prepared a place, so we do not need to go to Satan's home. It's a choice between God's home or the devil's home, and what person in their right mind, having the facts before them, would make the wrong choice? It's a sober thought that our eternal home is purchased while we live in this earthly one, and our temporal one down here.

And you can't buy a heavenly home. People think they can, but of course, they can't. We live out on Lake Cunamock, and we were able to buy and purchase that home because my father died and left me an inheritance. When I first looked at a home, I wouldn't have even looked at one, except I had that inheritance in my hand. But if I hadn't had the inheritance in my hand, I would have known I could never ever buy it while we lived on this earth. It was out of our reach. And of course, our heavenly home, as we've mentioned many times already, was purchased by the blood of Christ, by the death of our Savior. And we can never buy our way there. We can never do that. "What does it profit a man?" Mark 8:36. "If he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"

I heard a story years and years ago that really caught my attention. Let me read it to you. He was the richest man in the valley. There was no disputing it. Secure and confident, he was escorting his houseguests to their expensive cars, when John, his gardener, cap in hand, approached him to give him a message. The man was poor and shabbily dressed, and he looked embarrassed to be talking to the richest man in the valley. He shuffled from one foot to the other. "Out with it, man," his employer snapped impatiently, his eyes on his departing guests. "Sir," John stuttered. He was obviously very nervous. "Sir, I know this sounds mighty strange, but I had a dream last night that really upset me. I dreamt that the richest man in the valley would die tonight at midnight." "You all right, sir?" He finished lamely, feeling exceptionally stupid. His boss stared at him. John was all right as gardeners go. He worked hard and was honest and trustworthy, but the richest man in the valley was aware he attended a little evangelical church in the village and was one of those born-again Christians. He'd never had much time for religion himself, always felt too much church made you a little weird. John's words confirmed his suspicions. "You don't need to worry about me, John," the richest man in the valley said impatiently and cheerfully, turning on his heel.

John watched him disappear inside the huge carved door of the mansion and felt relieved. It had taken him all his courage to talk to the man. But the dream had been so sharp. He'd never experienced anything like it. And God sent him a message in his dream. He knew it. But now he wondered. Was he mistaken? He worried about the richest man in the valley. He had no idea where he stood with God. The richest man in the valley closed the door of his beautiful home and looked around. "Silly to let the poor man's words bother him." "Why, things had never been better." It wouldn't do any harm though, he mused, to invite his doctor around for a drink late in the evening.

So late that night, the richest man in the valley and his doctor enjoyed a game of cards and talked at length about world affairs and the stock market. The clock on the expensive wooden paneling ticked on. Five minutes to midnight, four minutes, three minutes, two minutes, one minute, midnight. Irritated with himself that he felt so relieved, the richest man in the valley bade the doctor goodnight and retired. He no sooner climbed into bed than the doorbell rang urgently. Hurriedly wrapping his robe around him, the richest man in the valley ran downstairs to answer the frantic knocking. A young girl stood on the doorstep, her eyes red with weeping. Her clothes were old and she carried what looked like her mother's purse. "What's the matter?" the richest man in the valley inquired, not unkindly. "Sir," she gulped. "I just came to tell you that tonight at midnight, my father died." "Your father? Who's your father?" asked the puzzled man. "John," the little girl replied, tears coursing down her face. "John, the gardener." The richest man in the valley.

Because to know Christ is to be rich beyond measure. Wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. For after all, Jesus is the jewel of heaven. So if we're rich, we can be poor in the world's eyes and have heaven ahead of us. Truly rich, spiritually rich. We're poor when we have everything in the world, and yet find ourselves alienated from God throughout all eternity.

Now, we have the same problem when we start and think about hell that we had when we started to think about heaven. We have a lot of people speculating about it. The Christian world has been in a little bit of a theological turmoil about it all, too. Martin Marty, a church historian, has said, "Hell disappeared and no one noticed." "Hell disappeared and no one noticed." Liberal Protestants believe it is no more. Today they say hell is theology's H-word. Or a subject too trite for serious scholarship. When Marty prepared a lecture on the disappearance of hell, he consulted several scholarly journals, including one dating back to 1889, and he failed to find one single entry on the subject. So you have to understand, there has been an immense amount of teaching minus the subject of hell and eternal retribution. Even many evangelicals are tempering their images of hell.

Meanwhile, other major religions haven't tempered theirs at all. You remember we looked at what the Hindus thought about things and the Buddhists thought about heaven when we first began this series. Let's have a little look and see what they believe about hell. From the same Newsweek article, it came out conveniently just a week or two before we began this. I quote, "What does the Hindu think of hell?" "Hindus have a variety of spectacular hells." "Each with its own exquisite torture." "If you failed to feel a hungry while you were living, you might be chained to a rock where birds come to eat your stomach." "As a punishment for adultery, a sinner may be forced to embrace a beautiful woman whose temperature is white hot." They've got a good imagination going here.

The Jews, do they believe in hell? They say, "Hell is no longer a part of the Jewish afterlife." "Sin in the Jewish perspective is atoned for in this life through repentance and the experience of death itself." "Jews have been through the Holocaust," adds the rabbi. "There's just no need to talk about hell." Now, I am quoting Newsweek here, and I want you to understand that. Islam is much closer to Christianity in its conception of the afterlife. "After death, each individual, they say, will be questioned by two angels, Monkar and Nakir, about his faith. The dead remain in their graves until the end of the world, when everyone will assemble before Allah for the final judgment." "Each person must then walk the path, the bridge that stretches over hell. The faithful will complete the journey into paradise, while the damned will fall off into the fiery pits of hell." "Both heaven and hell have seven grades of pleasure and torment, and both are eternal." "According to the Quran, the damned will be roasted, boiled, and afflicted with pus."

So we've got our major religions very much believing in almost medieval imagery concerning the subject of hell. Of course, as I mentioned, where heaven is concerned, out of some of these major religions have come mystical religions that don't believe in hell at all, that have no place for it in their theology today. The problem we have so often is the whole concept of it. And there are many objections that should rise to our minds as soon as we