Coming Out of Hell
You all are going to have to bear with me on what follows, because it may take a long while to teach and to reveal all of the misconceptions in the doctrines that we have learned.
And I am just going to touch on one of them now, the subject of hell.
The biggest question in people’s minds is the question of hell and the seeming teaching in Revelation about the eternal torment of hell.
Let me just give you a little concept of what hell is.
Hell is a literal place.
Hell is a place that probably most of the world, and even probably most Christians, are going to experience at one time or another.
Let me give you an example of hell.
Do you remember a few years ago when the man heading the biggest ministry the world has ever seen confessed publicly, before the whole world, his sin?
That man went through hell.
Not only did he go through hell because he was caught and had to publicly confess, but he also suffered under the opinions of others—especially Christians.
And I want you know that when I first heard about that, God revealed to me the heart of Jimmy Swaggart.
He showed me a man who was not a hypocrite, as the world and as most Christians assumed, but he was a man caught in the web of the knowledge of good and evil.
He had the largest ministry the world had ever known, and had probably spoken to more people than any other man at the time, but his message was very judgmental and critical.
If you ever heard Jimmy preach, you know that he was a hell-fire and brimstone preacher.
Why?
Not because he was a hypocrite, but because he hated so much his carnal life style, and he struggled so desperately with that thing.
He didn’t want anybody else to ever have to suffer what he suffered; and he did not understand, nor did he know, the extent of the love of God.
There is a book I wrote called Coming Out of Condemnation.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Out-Condemnation-Gary-Sigler-ebook/dp/B00IYOAPG8/
Right after this happened to Jimmy, God revealed to me that he needed intercession.
I wept and I groaned and I travailed for that man. I felt his suffering. I felt his agony.
And God said, “It is time that My people understood that they don’t need to feel condemnation.”
(I wrote the book, and please get one—not because I wrote it, but because I can guarantee that you, too, suffer under condemnation, and you need to read that book.)
And God said, “Write that book, and send it to Jimmy Swaggart.”
And of course you know how we all think. I thought, “Well, you know, he has this big ministry, and he’s in the middle of this; how can I even give it to him?”
But I just addressed it: “Jimmy Swaggart, Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” and I sent it off.
I’ll tell you, Christian, you just haven’t been caught.
Now I realize that in Adam, in our natural character, there are some who are very strong-willed, and they are able by their self-effort to be very good people.
However, they will condemn you something fierce, because you are not able to do what they can do.
And they will preach hell-fire and brimstone to you and have your ears smoking.
Yet God has men and women positioned all over the earth today who understand what I am telling you.
Judgment IS coming, and I believe it is coming quickly.
Hell is coming to the earth.
The fiery indignation is coming to the earth in a fully righteous judgment.
The fires of God are coming, and the Word says that OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE.
I have been judged by that fire many times.
Do you think that Jimmy Swaggart didn’t go through a burning?
Can you imagine what it would be like if you had your deepest sins revealed to the world? How about even to your family?
(Now I know this is not still true for all of us. Right now I don’t have a problem like that, but years ago I did. I would have been absolutely humiliated to have the world exposed to my sin.)
Yet you know that Revelation says that there is a day coming when we shall stand before God and the books will be opened.
Do you know what that book is?
Paul says that you are living epistles, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God.
Each of us is a book.
There is coming a day for everyone when their book will be opened.
But let me tell you something: the fire of God, the judgments of God are never vindictive!
We are taught a doctrine of eternal punishment.
God’s people today need to be set free.
BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD THAT TAKES AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD!
If the religious concept is true, the victory at Calvary was a very, very small and a very, limited victory.
If the religious concept is true, when this thing all winds up, there are going to be a few on God’s side, but the devil is going to have the masses of humanity.
That is not a great victory.
Even common sense tells us that.
God knew that when He brought you forth into this life you were going to be separated and alienated in your mind from His life, and there are people who live seventy or a hundred years, and for one reason or another, they never, NEVER, hear someone preach the true Gospel to them.
Oh, they hear the religious gospel.
But they don’t want that.
They don’t want to hear, “You’ve got to change your life. If you want to be used by God, you can’t do that! Do you want the blessings of God? You can’t do that!” They don’t want to hear that, because they are just like you, they are selfish. Self wants what self wants.
But when God regenerates your spirit, then you begin to want the things of God.
If people begin to realize the extent of God’s love, they will flock to Him.
Can you imagine what it would be like for a prostitute to walk into a church where everybody knows she is a prostitute, yet they would love her, they would minister to her, and they would draw her into worship?
Can you imagine how long she would be a prostitute?
(And even if she was, that’s God’s business and not yours.)
Do you have enough conviction in your knowledge of God and in the words that you speak to believe that you could speak LIFE into her?
Because if you can’t, she doesn’t need your church.
If she only hears how she needs to change her life and clean herself up, it is useless. She can’t.
She doesn’t need to hear that.
If you will love her and minister life to her and not the letter of the law, she will begin to grow and change.
Let’s go to Romans 5:12-21.
“Therefore just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned. For before the Law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by the breaking of a commandment.
(These verses are so plain!)
As did Adam who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass, for if the many died by the trespass of one man
(and we know “the many” was the whole world)
how much more does God’s grace, and the gift that came by grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many
(Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin.)
for judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
(That doesn’t compute in our minds!)
For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
(The next is a key verse:)
Consequently just as the result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of the act of righteousness was justification that brings life for ALL men.”
How can we separate those two?
How can we say “in Adam they all die, but in Christ they are not all going to be made alive”?
We would rather read it that “condemnation was for all men, so the result of the one act of righteousness was justification to those who receive Jesus and begin to walk in obedience to His commands.”
It doesn’t say that.
And I know that sounds right.
What am I saying?
Do I have the liberty to live any way I want to live?
Are you telling me that I can do anything that I want to do, and that eventually I’m still going to be OK?
If your attitude is, “If what you are telling me is true, then I am going to go live it up,” then my answer to you is this: you do not know God, and you desperately need to be saved.
But I will tell you this, YOU DO NOT HAVE A FREE WILL.
Adam took care of that for you, and he bound up the human race into the will of the flesh. You do not have a free will.
We can obtain freedom in our will only by learning how to contact and fellowship with God in our spirit. By spending time in God’s presence, and learning to live there, His Spirit will flow into our natural will and transform it into His will.
The Pentecostals love to say, “We are filled with the Holy Ghost.”
Well, let me tell you something: If you are really filled with the Holy Ghost, you will be a holy person.
But you cannot be that way by trying to be that way.
TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING DOESN’T WORK.
If you are full of the Holy Spirit, you will be controlled, moved and motivated by that Holy Spirit.
But you can’t work for it.
You can’t “live right” for it.
You can’t try to choose the good over the evil for it, because that puts you into the works of the flesh.
Trying with your carnality to choose the good over the evil puts you in that category of being alienated in your mind from that life that is in your spirit. You can’t make it that way.
“As the result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men, so the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life to all men.”
So, can you live any way you want to?
Yes. But here is the problem.
You’re going to go through hell one way or another.
God had a plan in the very beginning for every human being that was ever born, and that is why I have shared so often that the scripture says we have been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
That is God’s design; that is His plan, and that is His purpose, and your little will cannot stop God’s purpose for your life.
Absolutely impossible!
I have done everything in my life but curse God. I have told Him, “Leave me alone! I can’t do it anymore. I can’t make it any more.” God would just say, “Too bad, it’s too late for you. You consecrated yourself to me and there is no turning back.”
You see, the teaching of religion has gotten confused between the “will” and the “choice.”
Your will is bound up in carnality, and you are not a free moral agent.
But you can choose to do what is right.
Now again, this sounds like the man in Romans 7, which it is.
He chooses to do that which is right, but he finds in his members another law, warring and bringing him into the bondage of the flesh.
We will go through that struggle.
That is what happens when you choose to live by the knowledge of good and evil.
Another way to look at this is through the law of sowing and reaping.
God’s magnitude at Calvary took away the sin of the world, so you have no problems with God, but if you sow to the flesh, you will of the flesh reap corruption.
If you are in the flesh, and you have been reaping the flesh, the answer for you is not to try to change and to choose the good over the evil; the answer for you is to LEARN HOW TO FEED UPON SPIRITUAL FOOD.
Again as Jesus said, “If you will learn to eat of Me, you will live by Me.”
He was even so bold as to make a further statement that very few have been able to understand.
He said, “If you will eat the food that I give you, you will never die,” and He wasn’t talking about spiritual death.
He said, “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died,” and He obviously was talking about physical death.
But he said, “If you will eat the Bread of Life, YOU WILL NEVER DIE.”
You may say, “I haven’t seen any examples of that.”
I’ll tell you, there are men and women all over this earth—and you probably never met any of them—who have learned to eat the Bread of Life and have never died.
God has people on the earth who have learned how, and are learning how, to eat the Bread of Life.
THEY SHALL NEVER DIE!
They are about to be loosed to all of creation, and they are about to begin to bring reconciliation and restoration to all of God’s creation.
And the sad, sad, thing is that all of Christianity is going to be in an uproar over a group of people manifesting the loveliness of God and the attributes of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Do you know what the Church is looking for?
It is looking for the restoration of the Apostolic Church, saying, “You better be careful, saints, because the days of Ananias and Saphira are coming back to the Church.”
How many times have you heard that?
If you are motivated to serve God out of fear, you will find yourself in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I have questioned God so much, and I wish God’s people would learn to do this.
(Don’t be afraid to question God. Don’t be afraid to question scriptures. We are taught in Christianity, “Oh, don’t question! Just take what the man of God says. Don’t question God.” Please, I beg of you, you need to challenge God! He loves to reveal to you His secrets.)
But all of us need our concept of God drastically changed.
Our country, America, has not rejected God; they have rejected a Christianity which has given them such a low concept of Who God is. That is what they are rejecting.
I rejected that God many years ago. I have not had the “Christian” concept of God in many years. I am a Christian, but that concept will kill you.
How could you be a reconciler if you feel that people have to choose the good over the evil? How can you help someone who is constantly choosing evil? You can’t help them unless you understand the heart of God, and can be a reconciler.
God’s reconcilers are all over the earth.
He is soon going to loose them, and they will go into churches, they will go into bushes, they will go everywhere, bringing reconciliation and revealing to God’s people the heart of God.
That day will come and hopefully soon!
But whether it is this Fall or next year, I do know it is coming very quickly. It has to be happening soon, because there is so much revelation, and there is so much coming to the Church that is revealing much of God’s heart.
All that has been written above can be summarized very simply:
God truly does love humanity, and He does not expect you to choose the good over the evil, because He knows that you cannot.
What you need is to discover the treasure of His life that is within, and to learn to live by that life.
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Cor. 4:6-7).
Stay Tuned…