05-13-24 | Daily Devotions

Getting Through Tough Times—Part 6

May 13, 2024

Putting things in perspective

By Peter Amsterdam

Audio length: 11:24

We have covered several topics in this series, including overcoming isolation and loneliness, dealing with financial stress, caring for our mental and emotional well-being, and rediscovering joy. As I close this series, let’s try to put things in perspective.

We can start by recognizing what we can and cannot change. Many things are not within our control, and we have to commit those into God’s hands and trust in Him to work as He knows best. But we can change our perspective, which will help us enter into the peace that the Lord has for us. The starting point for adjusting our perspectives is managing our thoughts and what we allow to occupy them.

David used to say, “You are what you read.” This principle is even more relevant today, as our access to information of every type is nearly limitless. Our perspectives and peace of mind and spirits are not only affected by what we read but also by what we watch, the podcasts we listen to, who we follow online, and who we spend time with.

The importance of managing our thoughts and the information we allow to enter our minds and spirits brought to mind that familiar Cherokee legend of two wolves.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

That is a good question to ask ourselves periodically: “Which wolf am I feeding?”

We need to guard our thoughts, as one version of Proverbs 4:23 says: “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.” This is a well-known biblical principle that we have been practicing for decades. But it is helpful to periodically examine your thoughts for a couple of days to assess your “thought habits” and see if there are areas that you need to shore up. This is even more important during times when you are preoccupied with overwhelming situations such as uncertainty, illness, financial needs, political unrest, fatigue, heartache, loss, and stress that have continued over an extended period of time.

At such times, it is critical that we adjust our perspective and make a deliberate effort to reflect on the Lord’s goodness, His faithfulness, and the fact that He has never failed us. In spite of trials and tests, we can give thanks for the many times we have seen the Lord fulfill His promises. He doesn’t always act according to our expectations or preferred timeframe, but we can look back and see His hand in our lives and give thanks.

While we cannot control all circumstances or events in our lives, we can control our emotions and our reactions.

If you have been battling fears and worries, if you are feeling stressed and anxious, take it to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to give you His perfect peace. Rebuke the enemy and start praising the Lord and quoting Scripture and singing songs of praise. Ask the Lord to establish your thoughts and to help you set your mind on the things that matter and will last, the “things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). Choose to use your time and energy in positive ways that promote health and peace and build your faith. Take some time to think of ways that you can nourish the “good wolf” of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith!

It is helpful to remind ourselves that God is good. God is love. God has never failed. God works in our lives to perfect that which concerns us, and it usually takes time. Anticipating God’s goodness leads us to and is the foundation of hope. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

God has your best interests at heart. He’s not in a hurry, and He will cause all things to work together for good for you, because you love Him and you are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

If you are struggling to adjust your mindset, take time with the Lord. He wants to share His perspective with you, and He will do so through the Bible and through His still small voice speaking to your heart. Time spent with Jesus helps to shift our perspective as He gives us insight into how He views things. The more time we spend with the Lord and in His Word, the more we will adopt His perspective and thoughts.

Let’s reflect on Psalm 23,¹ one of the most beloved and quoted psalms. Most of us memorized this psalm decades ago!

¹The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

Jesus is our Good Shepherd. He has always cared for us, He has always supplied all of our needs, even in difficult and trying circumstances.

²He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, …

We have been in many situations that were troubling or dangerous or unsettling over the years, but the Lord has led us and protected us, and He will continue to do so. He can give us peace in spite of the circumstances, as we keep our minds stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3).

³he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.

When we are weary, we can rest in the Lord and find renewed strength and resilience. We can know that He watches over us. As portrayed in the very well-known poem, when it seems we are alone and we don’t see His “footprints in the sand” by our side, that is when He is carrying us.

We can trust that the Lord will establish our thoughts and guide our steps and lead us in a path that will glorify Him and advance His kingdom.

⁴Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

We may feel like we’re going through the darkest valley, but we don’t need to be afraid because we can be confident that Jesus is with us, and His staff wards off the enemy’s attacks and comforts us.

⁵You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.

We have a glorious heritage of trusting the Lord to supply our needs. He prepares a table before us in spite of difficulties and attacks of the enemy. If He is with us, no one can overpower us. It’s truly amazing how in troubling situations the Holy Spirit can comfort us, causing us to overflow with the peace that transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:6–7).

⁶Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We can rest in this promise that God’s goodness and love are unchanging and will be with us all the days of our lives, and we can look forward to the day when we will be together with the Lord in heaven forever. He is preparing a glorious place for us. He will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and there will be no more death, crying, mourning, or pain (Revelation 21:4). Praise the Lord!

Originally published September 2021. Adapted and republished May 2024. Read by John Laurence.

¹ NIV quoted.

Hell’s End (part 2)

David Brandt Berg

Verses on everlasting punishment

Here are the places in the Greek New Testament of which it speaks, according to the English translation, of “everlasting punishment,” “punishment forever,” “evermore,” “ever and ever,” etc. Here, according to the Greek, is what it actually says regarding such punishment.

2 Peter 2:17: “To whom the mist of darkness is reserved for an age.” Jude 13: “To whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for an age.” Revelation 14:11: “The smoke of their torment ascendeth up to the age of ages.” This is interpreted by Charles Pridgeon, the author of “Is Hell Eternal?” as meaning “to the final golden age”—until that age.

The age of all ages, the final golden age, is the new heaven and the new earth “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13), in which the Holy City comes down to earth, the time called by most people eternity or the final everlasting life, the golden age of all ages (Psalm 145:13; Revelation 11:15).

Even the Millennium is an age. But the final reconciliation will come at the age of ages, the golden age, when “time shall be no more” (Revelation 10:6). There won’t be any more thousand-year Millennium. Time shall continue throughout the Millennium—there will be no time for the saved, in a sense; we’ll be in our new bodies—but time will continue for a thousand years for the humans left.

The new heaven—the age of all ages of the new heaven and the new earth—is genuinely forever, everlasting, eternal. The final new heaven, new earth, has no end; it is “world without end” (Isaiah 45:17).

“The smoke of her torment rose up for ever and ever.” That’s Babylon (Revelation 19:3). In other words, it may smoke throughout the Millennium. And the Devil and the False Prophet and the Antichrist are “tormented day and night,” it says, “for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). Literally it says, “until the age of the ages.” So even that won’t necessarily be everlasting.

Here are verses that use the word “everlasting”: “Shall be cast into everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8). The literal translation from the Greek is “age-lasting” fire, or fire lasting only for an age. “Depart, ye cursed, into age-lasting fire” (Matthew 25:41). “These shall go away into age-lasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46). “To be punished with age-lasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

These are the only references in the New Testament Greek to what is translated in our Bible in English as everlasting punishment, punishment forever and ever, or forever. These references either literally mean “age-lasting,” meaning “for an age,” or “unto the age of the ages,” until the age of all ages, the final age, which is the new heaven and the new earth as far as we now know.

Even though the final stage is unending, it’s considered the final age. Now you can say, “If that age doesn’t have any end, maybe the for-an-age punishment may come during that age and not have any end either.” Regarding punishment or hell or hellfire, the Greek does not say either “forever” or “forever and ever” or “everlasting.” That is not a correct translation, because in our language, that means there’s no end. But in the Greek it speaks of it as an age, only age-lasting, or unto the age of all ages. In other words, the end of all ages, the age which ends all ages. So this is clear in my opinion, that all punishment will eventually come to an end.

Then when the final age of all ages comes, that’s an age that is endless. That’s where our everlasting life and living for evermore will really mean everlasting and forever. That’s where the confusion comes; it’s the difference in the literal meaning of “forever” in our language.

Thank God hell will not last forever, despite the English translation. Fire and brimstone and all the rest will not be eternal, but will be “for an age” and “age-lasting” or until the age of ages,” when it says that then He shall have “reconciled all things to Himself” (Colossians 1:20). It would have to be an admitted failure of God that He wasn’t able to save all of His creation and all of His creatures.

Universal Reconciliation

The only people raised before the Millennium are the Christians, the righteous, the saved; they’re the only ones who are taken up in the Rapture. The unsaved are not raised until the end of the Millennium, a thousand years later, for the Great Judgment (Revelation 20:5,11–12).

Only the unsaved who manage to survive the Wrath of God at the end of this present age will survive into the Millennium and live during the Millennium. The people who are living after the Wrath of God, which occurs between the Rapture and our return in victory to rule the earth, those who live through that, whom God in His mercy spares and allows to live into the Millennium, will be the only ones living then besides the saved. All the righteous of all ages will be alive then.

Then there’s the final Great White Throne Judgment at the end of the Millennium in which everyone is given their final judgment and assigned their final place (Revelation 20:11–12). A lot of those who have been in hell or in limbo or in their place of punishment, whether light or heavy, during the Millennium, will then be judged regarding how they have reacted and how they have responded to this chastisement and this punishment and this correctional time, as to whether they have completely repented and really been sorry and received God’s laws.

Then at the Great While Throne Judgment at the end of the Millennium, they will be judged according to all their deeds, both in this life and in the afterlife, and how they reacted. They will then be assigned their final places in that age of all ages, which is a world without end, and the state they will be in for the age of all ages. That’s the general outline of the belief or theory of those of us who believe in eventual universal reconciliation of all men.

The Bible definitely teaches that nations that obey will be blessed, and nations that disobey will be cursed! If they’re blessed, it’s some kind of a salvation, some kind of a blessing. It may not be our kind of salvation, which allows us a free ticket to the Eternal City, admission to the Eternal City; they may still not be allowed to enter there, but they will go through another stage.

Then at the end of the Millennium, all the unsaved who ever lived will be raised, millions of them, and then they will be judged at the Great White Judgment Throne of God, at which time each will be assigned to his particular place in the hereafter. Then they will be released and assigned their particular position and condition on the new earth, outside the Heavenly City where we dwell.

It’s really quite a plan, a tremendous drama, and it’s thrilling that we are going to be a part of it as the inner circle who live within the City, living charmed lives as eternal beings, with supernatural bodies designed for that purpose.

These people who are raised from the dead at the end of the Millennium in the Great White Throne Judgment will be in a new immortal body of some kind. It may not be similar to ours, but it will at least be immortal, and they will live forever, but outside the City. So that all men everywhere, all the billions that have ever lived, will finally be restored and reconciled and in a sense saved and live.—Either the elect, within the City, the saved in this life, or outside the City in varying stages and conditions and levels of either forgiveness or shame and contempt.

God’s people will apparently still be ministering to them and rehabilitating them, and that’s probably going to take quite a while, getting everybody situated and everybody straightened out and everybody living happily ever after. It sounds like an almost monumental, unimaginably gigantic task, that God is finally going to in a sense save everybody, or at least reconcile everybody and restore everybody to some form of bearable existence on the earth, at which time we’ll continue to minister to them the leaves of healing, whatever they may be.

All men everywhere will worship Him. All men everywhere will know Him. All the nations shall worship Him, fall down before Him and serve the Lord, everywhere, and the whole earth will be restored. There will be no more sea; it’ll all be land, so there’ll be plenty of room for everybody (Revelation 21:1). Things will be as God originally intended them to be: completely restored paradise.

Even outside the Heavenly City it’s going to be like the Garden of Eden, like man in his original state before he fell! Not in a saved state, but like the original state, like the Garden of Eden, which is paradise enough. In a sense, compared to the punishment some of these people have been going through, this will be heaven on earth, paradise found, and they’ll be very glad to be there at all.

Everybody will know he got just what he deserved as his punishment. And his final end, his position, place, condition on earth will be just exactly what he deserved or earned or merited according to his works and his words (Matthew 16:27; Galatians 6:7,8; Revelation 22:12). That will all have to be earned by their own punishment and their own death, and in a sense, their own degree of repentance and obedience, but they will live strictly outside the City on the surface of the earth. Only their kings will bring their glory and honor into the City. God’s people will rule over them all, we who live in the City.

The Bible doesn’t make it clear whether there will still be any suffering outside. But whatever it is, it will be paradise by comparison with hell and its prisons and its Lake of Fire and its torments, so that they will come in a sense to their final reward, depending on the degree of their sin, the degree of their punishment, repentance, reformation, or regeneration, reconciliation—but not within the Holy City, only outside.

The City is reserved for God’s people, who will in love and compassion, healing and ministration, help them all get rehabilitated for as long as necessary, until there’s universal reconciliation. And when that’s all done, who knows what God has in store for us? Maybe then there are other worlds we are going to have to salvage and save and restore and regenerate, reconcile and teach and heal. Maybe God didn’t tells us that far ahead because we didn’t have to know. He went far enough even to tell us that we’re going to live for a thousand years after Jesus comes, here on the earth ruling the survivors, and then we’re going to live forever in the Heavenly City—or as far as we know, forever.

Even those who are living outside the City are going to be thankful to be there, thankful that they’re even in that world at all and restored, finally forgiven, and eventually universally reconciled, finally completely rehabilitated, reformed, regenerated in some way, and in a sense new creatures! They may not be in Christ as we are; they will not be in the Heavenly City the way we are, but they will be there outside for us to supervise, administer, and minister reconciliation to.

He’s the Savior of all men, especially those that believe (1 Timothy 4:10). We have a very special kind of salvation. We accepted the grace of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross as the payment for our sins and our punishment, and we are completely relieved of all punishment, either here or hereafter. And what we suffer now on this earth, we suffer not as much for our sins—although we still suffer some for our sins too right now if we disobey or have disobeyed—but we suffer for Jesus and for others.

We are partakers of His sufferings for others that we may lead them to Christ and get them saved, so that they will be a part of the saved in the Holy City, ruling over the rest of the world who were lost and were punished, but are now fully restored to whatever condition and position God shall choose for them according to their works and according to their rewards—universal reconciliation.