Thru the Bible

Host: Welcome to Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. As you hop aboard the Bible bus, our lesson is in the small but powerhouse New Testament book of Jude. It only has one chapter, but it's full of encouragement and warning.

In addition to our study in Jude, we've also begun a series of special introductions from Dr. McGee on the judgments of the Bible. We'll look at eight judgments in all, one of them past and the rest of them future. Now, we remember the past judgment every Good Friday when we honor what Jesus did for you and me on the cross. He bore God's judgment for our sin, so everyone who believes in Him can have eternal life. Dr. McGee continues now, speaking about the death of Christ.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Last time, we mentioned the one judgment that is past. Eight judgments in all: one past, two present, five are future. And we have seen the divine judgment through the cross of Christ, that if there had been any other way to save man other than the death of Christ, God would have given a law. God would have enabled man to jump over the hurdle, but man wasn't able to make it. Man came short of the glory of God.

Now, you would say that that put God in a very bad place, that in other words, God has painted Himself into a corner where now there's nothing left for Him to do but send His Son. But you must remember that He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. I think before God brought any of this physical creation into existence, He had this plan that He's working on today, as well as multitudes, infinite number of other plans, but this is the one that God is working on. And therefore, we saw last time He died a judgment death, a substitutionary death, and He died for the sin of the world.

Now, He also died as a judgment of the believer's sin nature. And we find that over in Romans, the 6th chapter, and I can't take all of these ten verses here, but verse six sums it up. "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." The Lord Jesus died on the cross to put this old nature we have got in the position of death.

And that's the reason we should count it that way. Most of us, we have an old nature that's very much alive. But we are today to recognize that the death of Christ put that old nature. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and not glory in the things of this world. And this verse sets that forth. You see, the Holy Spirit would never be able to take up His tabernacle in us if Christ hadn't done that for that old nature. The Holy Spirit could never have dwelt in a believer.

And then, the Lord Jesus died as a judgment upon Satan. That was through the cross. And we find that made very clear also in the Word of God. We find over in the 12th chapter, at verse 31, "Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out." There, upon the cross of Christ, Satan was judged also.

Host: Jesus in my place. That's the gospel in a nutshell, isn't it? If you ever hear someone talk about salvation apart from Jesus' sacrificial death, His payment for our sins, know this, that's not the truth. Here's what you can believe. Jesus died in your place, and that changes everything.

You know, grateful people all around the world are hearing that truth with Thru the Bible. Will you join us in praying for those who are listening and learning alongside us? Like Mamadou in West Africa, who writes this: "I'm a faithful Muslim man. A while ago, my friend changed radically. He seemed more peaceful and happier. I was curious and asked why. Eventually, he confided that he had listened to your program and that you spoke about Jesus and His message of love and peace. At first, I was scandalized. I feared this would pull me away from my faith, but one day, curiosity won, and I listened in secret. I was surprised by the sincerity of the message and the fact that they were in my language. Stories of healing and transformation touched me deeply. Though I still practice my Muslim faith, I've started to apply Jesus' teaching on love, forgiveness, and compassion in my daily life. I haven't yet shared this with my family, but I'm grateful for the peace I've found. Through this program, I've learned that it's possible to find wisdom and beauty in different beliefs, and I want to continue my spiritual journey with openness and humility."

Isn't that amazing? God is at work through His Word. So, let's continue to pray that Mamadou and others like him will ultimately surrender their lives to Jesus and walk away from anything that keeps them from fully following in His footsteps. If you'd like to pray regularly for listeners like him and millions of others, why don't you join our World Prayer Team at TTB.org/pray or in our app?

Let's give this time to the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank You for the power of the gospel, and thank You for how Your Word reaches hearts like Mamadou's in West Africa and so many others around the world. Open our ears, Lord, soften our hearts and then draw people to Yourself. Use this program to shine the light of Jesus into every dark place. In His name we pray. Amen.

Now we're off to Jude 13 on Thru the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now as we come back here to the little epistle, and I'd hesitate to use the word little because it's a pretty big epistle in my book. It has a tremendous message as we've seen. We saw last time that Jude gives us three examples of individuals that were apostates in the Old Testament and that God judged them. He mentioned first Cain, the religious man. He believed in God, but he was in rebellion against God because he ignored the specific command of God to bring a sacrifice. He did not recognize he was a sinner. He would not acknowledge it or admit it at all. And he came bringing the fruit of the ground. And the difference was stated by the writer to the Hebrews, "By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." Because Abel recognized he was a sinner, and he brought the little lamb, and he was justified, not because he was better than Cain. I have a notion he was, but that had nothing in the world to do with it. It was his sacrifice. And friends, today, that sacrifice is Christ.

When Abel brought that little lamb, he knew a little lamb didn't take away his sins. After all, he wasn't a cave man. He was an intelligent man. I think he could have mixed with the PhDs today, and I think he would have been comfortable, but I don't know whether they would have been comfortable or not, because I think he knew a great deal more. But this man looked forward to the coming of Christ, and he came by faith, therefore. Now, we look back in faith.

Now, he mentions also the error of Balaam. He's mentioned in II Peter, here in Jude, and in the Book of Revelation. Now, the problem, as we've seen with this man Balaam here, is that he thought God would have to punish Israel. Therefore, he'd be able to curse them, and he wasn't able to do it. And a little later on in Revelation, we'll find out that the thing he did was to teach Israel to compromise, break God's law, and make marriages with the Moabites and the others that were in that land. And Balaam is a hireling prophet. He's the paid preacher who says nice things because people want to hear nice things. He's a good psychologist. And chances are he knows more psychology than he does Bible. He's a picture of that today.

Actually, God on the way out rebuked the prophet, and I think He did it with biting sarcasm. He had that little donkey who was riding on, that jackass that Balaam was riding on, he had him speak to this man Balaam. And to me, that is humorous. Someone has said that in Balaam's day, it was a miracle for an ass to speak. And today it's a miracle when one keeps quiet. Well, Balaam got the message, but he didn't heed it at all. Again, he's in rebellion against God. He's an example of an apostate that turns from God.

And then we have Korah. Korah did not recognize that this man Moses was a God-appointed man. And he was in rebellion against God when he rebelled against Moses and led a protest meeting against him. Now, we also saw that as he attempts to describe these apostates in the most vivid and dramatic terms, he speaks to the fact in verse 13, "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."

Now, I'm going to talk about hell when we get to it over in the book of Revelation. We're not there yet, and I'm glad for that. But a great deal is put upon fire as far as hell is concerned. I believe hell is literal, but to say it is a literal fire isn't quite adequate for this reason. There will be spiritual creatures and there will be man, and the worst sins of man are actually spiritual sins. Unbelief is an awful sin. Therefore, physical punishment wouldn't quite be adequate. I think that fire is a very faint symbol of the reality. In other words, I think many in hell will wish that it was a literal fire because it's going to be so much worse.

And another figure that we see here, "the blackness of darkness forever." And to me, that's far more frightening than the other. And I believe that they carry the darkness with them. It's not only physical darkness, but spiritual darkness. John Milton, who had an insight into many spiritual truths, he had this in one of his poems: "He that has light within his own clear breast, may sit in the center and enjoy bright day. But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, denighted walks under the midday sun, himself is his own dungeon."

I think that is tremendous. My feeling today is that the thing that makes hell are those that go there. There's a place here on earth been called hell's kitchen. Well, is it a different kind of real estate there than some other place? No, it was the people that were there. And it's man in his spiritual darkness and the physical darkness. That to me is frightful beyond words. May I say to you, this may give a little different conception of this place.

Now we come to another remarkable passage of Scripture, and it's the only place it occurs in the Word of God. It's here in Jude. And it reads now, and I'm reading verse 14. "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints." And verse 15, "to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." And that is the Lord Jesus Christ. I think every time that men blaspheme by taking the name of Christ, they're going to give an answer for that someday. You don't speak lightly of Him by any means, because that is a sin. He's the Son of God. And today this generation will have a great deal to answer to.

But now the thing that is remarkable here, here is the prophecy of Enoch. Now you will not find that prophecy in the Old Testament because it's not there. You have the record of Enoch of a man in that antediluvian period before Noah, who walked with God, and God took him. He removed him from this earthly scene. The record is there, but the fact that he prophesied, we are told nothing about that at all. Now, Enoch here is the one that is mentioned in that antediluvian period before Noah. And he is the man that walked with God because Enoch is not a too familiar name.

Now, the quotation here is a quotation from the apocryphal book of Enoch. And this is a book that was known to the early church fathers of the second century. And then it was lost for centuries. Of course, there were a few fragments of it about, and then it was found by Bruce in the Ethiopic Bible that is in Ethiopia in 1773. And it consists of revelations purporting to have been given to Enoch and to Noah. Now, the object of the book is to vindicate the ways of God in His providential dealings with man. And it sets forth the retribution reserved for sinners and to show that the world is under the immediate government of God.

Now, Enoch prophesied with respect to these false teachers of these last days, and that's a remarkable thing. Now, God apparently did not want that book in the canon of Scripture, or it would have been in the canon of Scripture, you may be sure. And godly men recognized that it was an apocryphal book. But here is one prophecy that Jude gives that God wanted to put into the record, into His holy Word. And it is a prophecy concerning the coming of Christ with His saints. Now, Enoch was translated, and he was removed without dying. And the church is to be removed from the earth one day, and those that are in the church at that time will be removed without dying. Most of the church has already passed through the doorway of death. They're to be caught up to meet together with the living to meet the Lord in the air.

Now, that's not a teaching of the Old Testament at all. Though Enoch is a representative of that. This is what happened to him before the judgment of the Flood came, he was removed from the earthly scene. Now, before the Great Tribulation comes, why the church that's on the earth, the true church, that is, believers, they will be removed from this earth. And they will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

Now, after the Great Tribulation, the Lord Jesus comes to the earth then. You see, at the rapture, He does not come to the earth. Believers are caught up to meet Him. When we say that is the second coming of Christ, it's not quite that if you mean He's coming to the earth. No, the rapture is the removal of the church. In fact, that is exactly what Paul calls it in II Thessalonians, as we've seen in the second chapter. *Apesteme* means departure, and the departure must come first, he says. That's the next thing on the agenda of God. Now, that departure is translated apostasy. Well, the apostasy is a departure from the faith. Well, when the true church leaves and those that are left in the organization that are not believers, you will have the total departure of the visible church here on earth from the faith, but the true church has departed from the earth. That makes this, let me say, friends, a remarkable prophecy of Scripture.

And I would like very much to give you the translation that again, Dr. Wuest has, because he's given so many penetrating truths in his translation. He says here in verse 14 and 15, "And there prophesied also with respect to these, the seventh from Adam, Enoch, saying, Behold there comes the Lord with His holy myriads." And here, it's quite interesting. It has to do with the numbers. And the saints here can be supernatural or natural, which would mean the church that will come back with Him. Well, if the church is going to come back with Him to reign on earth, sometime before it had to leave the earth to be able to come back to the earth. You just have to have a rapture if you believe Christ is coming to the earth with the saints someday.

Now, will you notice the emphasis is upon numbers. To execute judgment. Now it's the return of Christ in judgment. He gave that in the Olivet Discourse Himself, and it's mentioned again and again in the Word of God. We've seen it in the Old Testament, to execute judgment against all and to convict all those who are destitute of reverential awe towards God. And the thing is that they are ungodly. And they are ungodly in the sense that they leave God out. That is the emphasis that we've called attention to before. They just do not have a reverential awe of God. And that is something that's quite popular today.

Now, concerning all their works, they're to be judged concerning all their works of impiety. Works which are not godly works, but actually would be anti-God, which they impiously performed, and concerning all the harsh things which impious sinners spoke against Him. And here we have that tremendous judgment that is coming upon the earth.

Now, having given here this prophecy of Enoch, and it's a great prophecy, the organized church that will be in total apostasy at that time, will go into the Great Tribulation after the rapture. And at the rapture, this apostate church is ruptured. The true believers leave and the make-believers remain here on earth. And they are here when He comes to judge men in that day.

Now, in verse 16, he says, "These are murmurers." Now, he's talking about these apostates, and he gives us further identification of them. Actually, you just can't miss it, friends. The picture that you have here is a picture that I think is tremendous. I want to read to you verse 16, and then we're going to come back to this next time to dwell on it because here is another great truth that we have in this section. "These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts." And that means their desires. Actually, their desires do not have to be base. They could be lovers of good music. That could be the thing. The point is, anything spiritual, anything that relates to God is entirely left out. "And their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage."

Now, five things are mentioned here concerning them: one, they're murmurers; two, they're complainers; three, they walk after their own desires; four, their mouth speaketh great swelling words; and then five, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. This is the picture that is given to them here. Now, let's look at this. Murmurers means they mutter complaints.