Another View of the Final Judgement

Before explaining this other view of final judgement, let’s look back into the book of Jeremiah to see something first.

In chapter 5, God instructs Jeremiah to roam throughout the streets of Jerusalem to investigate and seek out just one person or anyone who acts justly and pursues faithfulness. If Jeremiah found someone with that description, then God would forgive Jerusalem of her sins and would not bring judgement to her gates. Jeremiah came across many people with hard hearts who “felt no pain” in God’s discipline. Though God had crushed them, their faces were as stern and emotionless as rocks as they continued in their rebellion. Jeremiah then thought that these people that he spoke to were just poor people who are foolish and ignorant and so that’s why they don’t understand the way of the Lord and the justice of their God. So Jeremiah went to the powerful people in society and spoke to them, surely they were well educated and informed about the ways of the Lord. But even they had thrown off God’s yoke and broken their connection (chain) to God. So since Jeremiah couldn’t find one righteous person in the city, God’s judgement would come to Jerusalem. Israel and Judah were not faithful to God. Though God had abundantly blessed them with all things, they took the blessings for granted, became complacent, pursued all their pleasures, and trusted in their own wealth and fortified walls to protect them. So God declared judgement on them that the sword would come to destroy their fortified cities in which they trust (5:17).

Because the false prophets had spoken falsely, God said to Jeremiah “I am going to make my words become fire in your mouth. These people are the wood, and the fire will consume them” (5:14). In this, God was alluding to the physical judgement that He would bring to Israel as well as the words themselves which were judgement. The words themselves when spoken from a true prophet who has been called by God will have a deep penetrating power to thrust through the soul of those who listen. The words of fire are a purging fire—a refiner’s fire to those who let the fire refine them. To those who don’t, the fire is a consuming fire—a fire of judgement where those who listen will become undone. Unless, of course, their hearts have been hardened beyond remedy. In that case, the physical judgement that will come will serve to undo them completely.

Jeremiah 6:10 (NLT)

To whom can I give warning?
Who will listen when I speak?
Their ears are closed,
and they cannot hear.
They scorn the word of the Lord.
They don’t want to listen at all.

Despite the constant warnings from God through the mouth of Jeremiah, Israel would not listen. God then asks Jeremiah to be an assayer—a tester and refiner of metals, to see if there is anyone left who can be purified and refined.

Jeremiah 7:27-30 (CSB)

I have appointed you to be an assayer among my people—
a refiner—
so you may know and assay their way of life.
28 All are stubborn rebels
spreading slander.
They are bronze and iron;
all of them are corrupt.
29 The bellows blow,
blasting the lead with fire.
The refining is completely in vain;
the evil ones are not separated out.
30 They are called rejected silver,
for the Lord has rejected them.

At this point, God had already determined and figured these people out. He knew that there was nothing good in them. He knew that they could no longer be refined and purified. They had strayed too far from God to come back. Yet despite this, God was still gracious and continued giving warning after warning and motivation after motivation for His people to return to Him. How insane could their sin be that not even the perfect words of knowledge and wisdom from God’s omniscience could lead Israel back to Him? So when we preach the gospel and people don’t listen, let us not be discouraged. Even perfect words directly from God may at many times not move people to action. Yet even as God was patient and gracious, so should we be also. Even as God displayed longsuffering, so should we.

But here Israel was at this point where God called them “rejected silver” because the Lord had rejected them. The reason for their rejection was that they could not be refined anymore. They could not be refined because they resisted the refining fire. They resisted the sufferings that were supposed to turn them to the Lord and they resisted the prophetic words of fire through Jeremiah that came from the Lord. Therefore, instead of the fire refining them, it consumed them. The Lord speaks through Ezekiel about Israel this way:

Ezekiel 24:9-14 (CSB)

Therefore, this is what the Lord God says:

Woe to the city of bloodshed!
I myself will make the pile of kindling large.
10 Pile on the logs and kindle the fire!
Cook the meat well
and mix in the spices!
Let the bones be burned!
11 Set the empty pot on its coals
so that it becomes hot and its copper glows.
Then its impurity will melt inside it;
its corrosion will be consumed.
12 It has frustrated every effort;
its thick corrosion will not come off.
Into the fire with its corrosion!
13 Because of the depravity of your uncleanness—
since I tried to purify you,
but you would not be purified from your uncleanness—
you will not be pure again
until I have satisfied my wrath on you.
14 I, the Lord, have spoken.
It is coming, and I will do it!
I will not refrain, I will not show pity,
and I will not relent.
I will judge you
according to your ways and deeds.

This is the declaration of the Lord God.’”

This is a sad day for Jerusalem and for all of Israel. The time has finally arrived after all the years that this event has been prophesied. Judgement is here. Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem. God gives a parable about a boiling pot. Inside the pot is the choicest meats which represent Jerusalem and all who live in it. The boiling pot is God’s purging and refining. The intention was to make a delicious stew once it was thoroughly cooked but it never came out. There was corrosion in it. Blood and human bone were in there and ruined the whole dish. This was representative of all their sin. So then the fire was kindled larger and everything became thoroughly cooked. But no matter how much it was dressed it up, it still would not come out and it was still unclean. So then, what do you do next? Let everything be burned within the pot and melt away. Maybe then all the impurities will be expelled. But no. Even with the pot glowing red from the flames, the corruption remained. And then God explains to this rebellious people, “Into the fire with its corrosion! Because of the depravity of your uncleanness—since I tried to purify you, but you would not be purified from your uncleanness—you will not be pure again until I have satisfied my wrath on you” (v. 12-13). God had to cleanse away all of the impurity of sin within Israel by using Babylon to purge away all their evil corruption so that all of Israel would not be lost to their evildoing. Only a remnant came out of this fire of purging. The rest were consumed in death. God had turned up the heat of this fire of purging but many were burned in the fire and were consumed through death.

For those who resisted the fire, they will ultimately perish through fire. For those who resisted the sufferings meant to bring them to repentance and those who resisted the words of fire spoken through the prophets, they will ultimately not escape the final judgement. This final judgement may also be a judgement of fire that comes through the mouth. We are told in the book of Revelation that out of the mouth of Jesus comes “a sharp two-edged sword” (1:16). What could this sword be except judgement by fire? What could condemnation be except the words spoken to condemn from the sword of fire? This Jesus who is the greater Prophet and the greater Jeremiah, will speak out of His mouth words of fire and words that are as a hammer to smash rock and words that pierce through to divide both soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). In Jeremiah 23:29 God says, “Is not My word like fire? … and like a hammer which shatters a rock?”

It is with the word of the mouth that Jesus is said to make war against His enemies (Rev 2:16). Revelation 19:15 says, “From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.” And Revelation 19:21 says, “And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.”

For those who repent, it will be a sword to convict, purge, and transform them but to those who resist, the fire will consume and turn God’s enemies into ashes under the feet of the righteous. This will happen in the eschatological age on earth but what about at the final judgement where the souls of those who died will be judged from the throne of God?

I imagine that this scenario could be a possibility. This about this:

No one will not at last escape the fire that comes from the mouth. When those who are in Hades and in the grave become resurrected from the dead to face God on judgement day, they will hear the words coming from the mouth of God as a double-edged sword and that sword of fire will cut them to pieces and they will be humiliated and become utterly undone from the words of fire from the mouth of the Lord. They will die from the heaviness of the words of fire in which their body and soul cannot stand in the presence of Almighty God. They will become overwhelmed and will combust from the inside out. For Christians, when they are convicted from the Holy Spirit, it is painful enough as it is when God reveals to us just one thing that we have done wrong and need to get right with God over. But can you imagine how it will be like for those who don’t believe God when they face Him at the final judgement? Imagine a hundred or a million cuts all at once with no relief and no restraint. That fire will be hell. No one will be able to stand in that fire. Every knee will bow. This fire is God’s love and every person will be faced with and informed of all the evil deeds they have ever done and they shall be informed of and will see the goodness of God throughout all of it and this recognition and exposing of the darkness within them will be so great and so intense that they will cease to be. The darkness and corruption which they were, will be annihilated since for their whole lives, they resisted God and they never repented from their evil deeds. The holy love of God which are as rays of sun with no atmosphere to protect them, they will become totally undone and scorched by the intense heat of God’s love which is His holiness and very presence because light expels all darkness. Since their hearts will be closed and shielded off from this light from entering in, and the light is stronger than their hearts, it will break through the barrier and their entire being will be torn to pieces.

At the final judgement, I believe God’s wrath and justice will display itself as
(1) retributive justice, since the fire of judgement will come out from God’s mouth,
(2) consequential justice, since all darkness will be expelled by the light, and
(3) governmental justice, since no sin will be allowed into heaven in order to keep heaven pure and for God’s kingdom to reign forever and ever.

You may be wondering, how on earth did I come up with this conclusion about the sword of fire? Well, I had a vision or strong imagination when I was in a heightened spiritual state of the mind and what I saw was that there was fire coming out of God’s mouth as people were being judged and they were overwhelmed and undone by the great holiness of God’s fiery love. They sensed a great burning within their being of the conviction of their sin being too much for them to handle and the purity of God’s love being too good for them to take and as a result, they died from this. Then I saw other people who did not die from fire but they died from wind. That is, some people were chosen by God to be consumed by the blowing out of fire from God’s mouth and others who were chosen to be judged by the inhaling of God’s mouth which sucked the life out of them. But the inhaling was not just sucking the life out of them, it was a removing of God’s love, peace, and joy so that the experience these individuals had was total dread and horror and torment. It was like a panic attack but so much worse because without God’s sustaining peace, there is a hell of torment within us left to ourselves. Depending on people’s deeds and how they had treated others in this life, some experienced this torment for longer and some for shorter, whatever God’s standard of justice measured out deemed to be right. And then there were other people who, since God was so good and so merciful, and so pure of love—that their death was instant—and they did not suffer at all. This measure of justice and mercy may have been granted to those who had severely battled with emotional and mental illness on the earth and God took pity on them but yet because they had not believed Him within their lifetime and were morally aware enough to do so, they weren’t granted eternal life either. At the Great Throne Judgement, the Father and the Son were judging together. The Father judged with fire and the Son judged with wind. Being the Prince of Peace, He took away peace to those who were not worthy of His peace because of their evil in taking away peace from others. Both the Father and the Prince of Peace were both in agreement with each other and wholly entrusted themselves to one another in the measure in which they judged. The Father judged out of His infinite knowledge and wisdom from the heavens of eternity and through His knowledge of the law and the Son of David judged out of His experiential knowledge and wisdom from the earth and the life that He had lived there. The Father represented the scale of retributive justice and the Son of David represented the other side of the scale which was mercy. With both justice and mercy, their judgement together was wholly just and right. The scale of justice was perfectly balanced and, in this way, they judged the earth.

When I saw this vision and believed it and replayed the vision in my head for several days, God’s love was painful to me and I was continually overwhelmed by His holiness as I let the light of His love and goodness into my heart to cleanse me. Those were the things that I saw. Test all things by the Word and by the Spirit.