The Gospel of Eternity
And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people;
That’s (Rev 14L6), the gospel of eternity
Now an angel “in midheaven” – there are those who speculate where “angel” could mean “messenger” it could via satellite and things like that; people have talked about that. We won’t go into that now, but the word there is “aionios”. “Aionos – “for eternity”, “age to ages”, Greek equivalent of Hebrew “olame olamim”. The reason is this: In verse 11 of that chapter…
“And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever…
…”aionos tou aionos”, the same word. If hell is not eternal and conscious, how can you be sure heaven is the same term? You understand? The good news of our salvation is eternal. If you’re annihilated, if you’re into the Roger Forrester/John Stockton concept, if hell is not eternal and conscious, how can you be sure heaven is? You can’t be; but they both are. In fact you can make an argument – I wouldn't be dogmatic about it – but you can make an argument that everybody will go to heaven – not in the universal sense of salvation, but remember the Parable of the Wedding Garment? (Mat 22: 1-14) He didn’t have it and put him out? You could say, you could make the argument, that one of the things that’s going to make hell so terrible is they’re going to get into heaven and see what they missed. Remember how they’re bound and put into outermost darkness? One of the things that will make hell what it is is they got in for a minute and then got booted out. That doesn’t mean everyone is going to go to heaven as such, but it does mean you could make the argument. I wouldn’t be 100% dogmatic about it, but is does seem to imply that, doesn’t it? One of the things that’s going to make hell so bad is they’re going to see what they missed; not only what they got, but what they could have had, forever and ever. This is important.
The Gospel is being eroded. Remember the hymn, “It was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved”. “Oh no, there’s no hell.” When you remove that element of fear you remove the impetus of fallen people to repent. God uses fear of judgment to scare people into repentance, make no mistake about it. Great comfort, etc.