CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
Oregon's Amazing Miracle
CHAPTER II
Back To Work Saturday
CHAPTER III
A Day Never To Be Forgotten
CHAPTER IV
What I Saw During The Hour Of Death
CHAPTER 1
Oregon’s Amazing Miracle
The testimony you are
about to read is true in every detail. God alone knows why it happened to me,
and why I was chosen to be this kind of witness to the grace and love of Jesus
Christ in this 20th century. I am indebted to Jesus beyond measure for what
He did for me, and my only desire now is to be faithful and true to Him.
I find great satisfaction in living
for Christ and in being a witness to His saving and healing power. As Hebrews
13:5-8 declares: “For He hath said, I will never leave
thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may bodly say, The Lord is my helper, and
I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Jesus Christ the same yesterday,
and today, and forever.”
I was born and raised in Northern
Alberta Canada, and was the oldest of four children. My father passed away and
was buried on my eleventh birthday. Four months later my mother died and left
us orphans, to be taken care of by others. Death is very final. It takes away
from us the ones we need and separates us from the ones we love the most, and
all we have left are memories. Our home was a happy home. No matter how kind
others may be, they can never fully take the place of mother and dad, especially
when you were old enough to remember all the things about them that were different
from everyone else. I don’t remember ever hearing my parents quarrel. If they
did, it never occurred in our presence. I am sure they loved each other and
I know they loved us children.
Mother’s father, my grandfather
was a school teacher and a Lutheran minister of the old circuit rider school.
All were pioneers in a very real sense. As children, we understood what the
word obedience meant. Confirmation in the Lutheran church we accepted as an
essential part of our education.
After mother’s death I went to live
with her brother, Uncle Sam, and Aunt Julia. She was a real fine person and
treated me like her very own. I shall always be grateful to both of them for
their kindness and love to me.
As life went on many things changed.
God moves in mysterious ways. In the year of my eighteenth birthday, a very
close friend and neighbor, Fin Brocke, and his wife left Canada and moved to
Portland, Oregon. Mrs, Brocke was sick a lot of the time and no doubt they thought
a change would help her physically.
As time passed by, we heard they
had suddenly become very religious and were going to church every night, that
Mrs. Brocke had been healed by prayer, and many other things that were hard
to believe, knowing them like I did.
So when harvest had been gathered
and the threshing season was over, a friend of mine and I decided to come to
Portland and see for ourselves what this was all about. Surely at this point
in my life God was directing my steps. For various reasons I had become very
hard and critical of all religions, though I will not take the time or space
here to go into this part of the story.
The Bible says, “God
is Love.” This I know is surely true, and it is very possible that
no human intelligence will ever comprehend the magnitude of the love of God
until we are living with Him in eternity. At this point in my life my steps
were being turned toward the very thing I had been trying so hard to avoid.
My friend and I left Canada for Oregon to see for ourselves and on November
24, 1923 we arrived at the Brocke home in Portland.
We found that everything we had
heard was true. They told us they had accepted Christ as their Saviour and that
Mrs. Brocke ahd been by prayer and faith. They certainly were a changed man
and woman!
I listened to their story and was
very impressed. I went to church with them many times. I liked the minister,
the Rev. John G. Lake. He was a marvelous preacher, an ex-missionary to South
Africa and a world traveler, that preached a messge of love and power to heal
and deliver from sin, bondage and sickness all who would believe. I enjoyed
what I heard and I was glad for what had taken place in the lives of the Brockes,
but nothing in me ever responded to what I had seen or heard. I was dead inside
to the Spirit. Certain influences in my early teens had hardened my heart and
mind. I had come to some conclusions about god and the Bible, the Lutheran doctrine
on infant baptism, and so on, until I felt that if there was a God at all I
was as good as He.
The Gospel that Dr. Lake preached
was wonderful if it were true, but I never could believe it was for me. The
influences of the past were too strong to dismiss, even though I would have
liked to believe this.
I stayed on through the winter with
the Brockes. He was the chief engineer at the Bridl Veil Lumber Company on Larch
Mountain, thirty miles east of Portland. That was a large steam-operated sawmill
and logging company, which employed over 150 men in the combined operations.
The Brockes had a home in Portland and also a place at the mill.
The 1st of July, 1924 I got a job
as engineer’s helper with Mrs. Brocke. Now, what I am about to tell happened
on Monday, the day I started working at the mill, at one-thirty in the afternoon.
We were sawing “Jap squares,” which in turn were flumed down the mountain in
a trough filled with running water to the planer on the Columbia River, in the
town of Bridal Veil. The stream that supplied the mill with water had a dam
across it to provide water for the boilers, the log pond, and the flume to carry
the lumber to Bridal Veil, a distance of four miles down the mountain.
The trestle over this dam was 55
feet above the water. I went out on the trestle to straighten out some timbers
which were crossed and not moving on a conveyor. Suddenly I fell off the trestle
and tumbled down between the timbers and into the pond, which was 10 feet deep.
An engineer sitting in the cab of his locomotive unloading logs into the pond
saw me fall. I landed on my head on the first beam 30 feet down, and then tumbled
from one beam to another until I fell into the water and disappeared from his
view.
There were 70 men working in and
around the mill at that time. The mill was shut down then and every available
man was called to search for my body, according to the testimonies of these
men. The search went on for forty-five minutes to one hour before I was finally
found by M.J.H. Gunderson, who has written his own account of this to verify
the facts of this testimony.
Here is related my experience with
death, the things I saw nd heard and did during this hour the men were searching
the waters of the pond for my body:
I was dead as far as this world
is concerned. But I was alive in another world. There was no lost time. I learned
more in that hour out of my body than I could ever learn while in this body.
All I remember is falling over the edge of the trestle. The locomotive engineer
watched me go all the way down into the water.
The next thing I knew I was standing
near a shoreline of a great ocean of fire. It appeared to be what the Bible
says it is in Revelation 21:8: “the lake which bureth
with fire and brimestone.” This is the most awesome sight one could
ever see this side of the final judgment.
I remember more clearly than any
other thing that has ever happened to me in my lifetime every detail of every
moment, what I saw and what happened during that hour I was gone from this world.
I was standing some distance from this buring, turbulent, rolling mass of blue
fire. As far as my eyes could see it was just the same. A lake of fire and brimstone.
There was nobody in it. I was not in it. I saw other people whom I had known
that had died when I was thirteen years old. One was an uncle of mine who died
of consumption when I was thirteen. Another was a boy I had gone to school with
who had died from cancer of the jaw that had started with an infected tooth
while he was just a young lad. He was two years older than I. We recognized
each other, even though we did not speak. They too, were looking and seemed
to be perplexed and in deep thought, as though they could not believe what they
saw. Their expressions were those of bewilderment and confusion.
The scene was so awesome that words
simply fail. There is no way to describe it except to say we were eyewitnesses
now to the final judgment. There is no way to escape, no way out. You don’t
even try to look for one. This is the prison out of which no one can escape
except by Divine intervention. I said to myself in an audible voice, “If I had
known about this I would have done anything that was required of me to escape
coming to a place like this.” But I had not known.
As these thoughts were racing through
my mind, I saw another man coming by in front of us. I knew immediately who
He was. He had a strong, kind, compassionate face, composed and unafraid, Master
of all He saw. It was Jesus Himself.
A great hope took hold of me and
I knew the answer to my problem was this great and wonderful Person who was
moving by me there in this prison of lost confused judgment-bound souls. I did
not do anything to attract His attention. I said again to myself, “If He would
only look my way and see me, He could rescue me from this place because He would
know I never understood it was like this. He would know what to do.” He passed
on by and it seemed as though He would not look my way, but just before He passed
out of sight He turned His head and looked directly at me. That is all it took.
His look was enough.
In seconds I was back and entering
into my body again. It was like coming in through the door of a house. I could
hear the Brockes praying minutes before I could open my eyes or say anything.
I could hear and I understood what was going on. Then suddenly life came into
my body and I opened my eyes and spoke to them.
It’s easy to talk about and describe
something you have seen. I know there is a lake of fire because I have seen
it. I know Jesus Christ is alive in eternity. I have seen Him. The Bible states
in Revelation 1:9-11: “I, John…was in the Spirit on
the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying,
I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and, what thou seest, write in
a book.”
Among the many things John saw was
the judgment, and he describes it in Revelation 20 as he saw it. In verse 10
he says: “And the devil that deceived them was cast
into the lake of fire.” Again in Revelation 21:8, John says he saw
the “lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.”
This is the lake I saw, and I am certain of this one thing, that in the end
of this age at the final judgment every corrupt thing in this universe will
ultimately be cast into this lake and be forever destroyed.
I thank God for people who can pray.
It was Mrs. Brocke I heard praying for me. She said, “Oh God, don’t take Tom;
he is not saved.” Presently I opened my eyes and said to them, “What happened?”
I had not lost any time; I had been gone somewhere and now I was back. Soon
after this an ambulance arrived and I was taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital
in Portland.
I arrived there just before six
o’clock in the evening, was taken into surgery and my scalp was sewn with many
stitches. I was put in the intensive care ward. There was really not much the
doctors could do. It was simply a matter of wait and see. I had no pain and
my mind was very clear. A special nurse was assigned to stay with me. Here is
where I lay until Friday at 11:30 a.m.
During these four days and nights,
I seemed to be in constant communication with the Holy Spirit. I relived the
events of my past life and the things I had seen, such as the lake of fire,
Jesus coming to me there, seeing my uncle and the boy I had been in school with,
and the coming back to life again. The presenceof God’s Spirit was with me continually,
and many times I spoke out loud to the Lord. The Holy Spirit helped me untangle
my twisted philosophy until I understood what was really happening to me now.
He showed me what had been wrong in the past, and he helped me to piece it all
together until it made sense why this had happened to me. Then I began to ask
God what He wanted in my life, what His will for me was.
By Friday morning my broken body
was so stiff and sore I could hardly move at all. Then some time around nine
o’clock the call of God came. The voice of the Spirit can be very real. He said
to me, “I want you to tell the world what you saw, and how you came back to
life.” This was a hard decision for me to make. I knew nothing about this. How
could I do it? Here I lay in the hospital bed barely able to move my right arm.
The supreme moment in my life had
come. I will never forget this time of decision. At 11:30 a.m. I had made up
my mind. I had no doubts. I asked the nurse to leave me alone. This she did
very reluctantly, of course, because she knew I was helpless. But she went out.
Then I spoke out to the Presence
of God that was there and said, “Lord, if this is what you want me to do, I’ll
do my best, but I cannot do it lying here. You will have to get me out of this
place.”
This doesn’t sound much like a prayer,
but I was talking to God now and making a very solemn commitment. Instantly
a warm, wonderful feeling like a gently breeze hit the top of my head where
I was hurt the worst and went on down through my body and out through my feet.
I was instantly healed from head to foot. A suitcase with some clothing in it
had been left by my bed earlier in the week. I dressed and left the room and
hurried down three flights of stairs and was out on the street in possibly less
than six minutes. The nurse never did come back in time to sound an alarm.
By this time I was afraid someone
would see me and try to force me back into the hospital, because my head was
all bandaged and I was a sight fit to scare anyone, but God was with me. A close
friend of mine, Pete Burness, had a printing shop near the hospital. I had been
there before and knew where it was, so I rushed to his place and safety. Pete
did not seem too surprised when I went into his printing shop. Pete had been
a soldier in World War I. He had learned to pray in the trenches. He had served
with the Canadian Army under the British, and holds some of the highest medals
for bravery they have to give. All he said to me was, “Well, I see you are out.”
His “calm” really helped me then. After some conversation he gave me the keys
to his car and said, “Go down to the house in the car. I’ll ride the streetcar
home today. You can’t imagine what you look like.”
I drove down to his house. I caused
quite a commotion at Pete’s home when I went in. There were several people there
and of course they could not believe what they saw when I came in. However,
things quited down pretty soon and I went to a dresser in Pete’s room to see
what I looked like. My hair had been cut off on top, and there were stitches
everywhere. I got all the bandages off and tried to comb what hair was left.
The comb caught in a stitch and it began to bleed. I heard some voice say these
words, “You are not healed.” My faith was being challenged. I stood there for
several minutes looking at myself, and then I noticed pete’s safety razor was
lying there. I took the blade out and with a tweezers to hold the end of the
stitches, I cut and pulled out every stitch. There was no more bleeding. I was
really healed and this proved it to me.
I have learned since that time that
you have to be very positive in your stand against all the negative suggestions
that come to discourage your faith in a time like this. Our natural mind many
times robs us of a supernatural victory. Believe God and act whether you understand
it all or not.
After some time of cleaning up,
I went downtown to see the doctor that had been coming to my hospital room,
a Dr. Brewer. When I walked into his office and he saw me, he very quickly stood
up. He looked so surprised and said, “Man what in the world are you doing here?”
I did not answer that because I was not sure either. Then he asked, “Are you
all right? How did you get out of the hospital?” I replied, “Doctor, I ran out.
Maybe they don’t know yet that I am gone.” He said, “Tell me what happened.”
I said, “Doctor, the lord has healed
me and I am all right now.” He came close to me and pushed on my ribs that were
broken and asked me, “Didn’t that hurt?” I replied, “No.” It was true; there
was no pain. “Well,” he replied, “the Lord must have healed you. I am sure we
did not. This is only four days and it takes from six weeks to two months for
broken bones to heal when everything goes well.” Then he asked, “Who removed
the stitches from your head?” I said, “I did that myself,” and told him about
how I had done it.
Then I told him of how the Lord
had dealt with me, how God had called me to go and tell this to the world. Among
other things, I knew may would ask who my doctor was and this worried me because
I was beginning to wonder what he would say. So I asked him, “What are you going
to tell people who come to ask you about me?” He very simply said, “Well, if
you say God healed you, then it must have been God that healed you because I
know we did not. It has been only four days.” I never have known who or how
many did go see Dr. Brewer about me. Not once has anyone ever said he denied
my testimony.
CHAPTER II
Back to Work Saturday
Friday was surely a red-letter day
for me. Saturday morning I was back at the Palmer Mill and on the job. Nobody
seemed to want to work that day. They were watching me work. After some hours
of this I got disturbed myself, and told them that if they wanted to hear all
about my healing, we could meet at the schoolhouse on Sunday evening and I would
tell them what I had seen and how I was healed. This was satisfactory with all
these men. So the word went out that we would meet Sunday night at eight o’clock.
Sunday night as I approached the
little schoolhouse, not far from where I had fallen, I saw a large crowd. It
was getting dark. I almost panicked and ran, but again the Lord strengthened
me and I went on in. Most of the people did not recognize me as I crowded my
way to the front. Mr. Brocke sang a song and had prayer. My zero hour had arrived.
I was nervous and not sure of what
I should do next. As I stood there, God helped me and for the first time in
my life I felt the annointing of the holy Spirit to witness. It enveloped me
like a cloud. This was the same Presence that had enabled me to walk out of
the Good Samaritan Hospital. The same Presence had helped me to understand God’s
will for me to go and tell whoever would listen about what I had seen, and warn
them of the judgment to come and tell them of the love of God for man that he
might escape it.
Just seven days had gone by since
all this had happened. This was my first time to face an audience. I stood there
behind the teacher'’ desk in a little schoolhouse. The very air seemed to be
electrified, and as I opened my mouth to speak again the Presence of God settled
over me and the Holy Ghost came in and filled me with His message.
I told the people what God had done,
what I had seen during the time these same men were looking for my body in the
pond. I knew nothing about the Bible, but the Holy Spirit speaking through me
quoted much of the second and third chapters of the Prophecy of Nahum. Later
that night, with the aid of a Bible concordance we were able to find what the
Spirit had said concerning the day of His preparation, “The chariots shall justle
one against another in the broad ways…” At that time I had no idea that what
I was saying was in the Bible. It was not until Mr. Brocke searched it out that
I later learned that it was. That of course was a sign to me of things to come
concerning my own ministry.
I wish to emphasize here that the
Baptism of the holy Spirit is the most essential part of any person’s preparation
for the ministry. Without Him we can do nothing. With Him, we can do all things.
It is the Holy Ghost that convinces the world of:
1st, sin; then of righteousness
and of judgment.
St. John 16:9-11: “…Of
sin because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father,
and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.”
To be effective in bringing the
message of salvation and deliverance to a lost world, one must be filled with
the Holy Spirit.
Some have asked from time to time
if I have ever had headaches or any of the aftereffects that usually follow
this kind of injury. I never have had a headache in my life; my eyes and ears
are almost perfect. I am still healed today.
The people who had played the most
important role in this, of course, were Fin and Mabel Brocke. They had the faith
and the courage to believe God for a miracle at a time and in a place of great
need. They acted on instant notice and were rewarded by instant results.
Then there was Julius H. Gunderson,
who found my body in ten feet of water when everyone else was giving up the
search. He searched until he found me. God rewarded him, too, for his faith.
Mr. Gunderson and fin and Mabel Brocke have written their testimonies of what
happened that day and these testimonies are given here in their own words. Nothing
has changed.
CHAPTER III
A Day Never to be Forgotten
(by Fin & Mabel Brocke)
I had gone over the
hillside to pick some berries, but the rain had chased me in. I was within a
few yards of our house when I saw my husband coming, walking fast, and he called
to me and said, “Mamma, Tommy fell and he is dead.”
It is just as fresh in my memory
now as then, what I said and how I felt. I asked, “Why Tommy?” and I heard a
voice say, “For the Glory of God.” Then my husband said, “I came to get you
to pray.”
I went with him back to the mill
office. We didn’t talk but we did pray all the way. When we got back to the
office the room was filled with men and there lay Tommy wrapped in a blanket
on a table. His face and head were covered with blood; there was no pulse, no
life. Surely we were in the presence of death. You could feel it, as well as
see it.
Those men that were packed in there
knew my husband. They knew he was a man of prayer, and that he had gone to get
me to help him pray. They were expecting to see something happen. I went to
one side of the table and my husband went to the other side. The Bible says
in James 5:14-15: “Is any sick among you? Let him
call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick
and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be
forgiven him.”
My husband annointed him with oil
according to the Scripture, and then he said, “Mabel, you pray.” I placed on
hand on his head and the other on his heart. A young man standing near took
my hand off Tommy’s head and said, “Can’t you see that is where he is hurt?”
It wasn’t a long prayer. We just asked God to be merciful and raise him up.
First we saw his eyelids move just a little; then the tears began to come and
he tried to talk. He said, “What happened?” The words were far apart, as though
they were coming from a far country. Then he said, “I can’t help it now.” More
life came into him and the men standing around were all amazed and happy. They
had seen a miracle. The boss had called Portland for an ambulance soon after
Tommy fell, and we knew it would be coming soon.
When they got him to the hospital,
he was taken into surgery and they cleaned the wounds in his head and put a
lot of stitches inhis scalp. Seven ribs on his left side were broken; they bandaged
him up for that. It took a long time to do all this and we waited until they
brought him out of surgery. He didn’t say anything so we asked him if he had
any pain. He said, “No.” They took him to the intensive care ward, and then
he asked the nurse if he could have something to eat. They did give him something
to eat before we left him to go back to the mill. My husband was the chief engineer
so we had to go back that night.
I returned to the hospital the next
morning. The doctors asked me not to stay long; they did not hold out much hope
that he would live. It was hard for Tommy to talk and his words came very slowly.
He said, “I have something to tell you. You know I was dead for a while, but
I found myself way off in a wilderness. It was as if a huge magnet were drawing
me into it, and a lot of other people too, and there was no way to get out.
I saw my uncle and a boy I went to school with. There was a great big lake of
fire and I felt as if I were being drawn into it. I was afraid. Then I saw Jesus
coming from a way off. He came closer and was going on by, and I said, ‘If He
would only turn and look at me He would save me.’ Then Jesus looked at me and
I heard you praying. I opened my eyes as soon as I could and I saw you.”
I had to leave then, but later on
he told us about all the things he had seen. He talked a lot about the lake
of fire and the ones there. He said there was not anybody in the fire, but they
were in a prison waiting and there was no way to escape.
The next time we saw Tommy was on
a Friday night, after work. We did not know about what had taken place in the
hospital that morning. When we got to my sister’s home in Portland, we found
that he was no longer in the hospital and that he had been instantly healed
and had left the hospital about eleven o’clock that morning. He was in the hospital
just four days. He went back to the mill with us that night and was back to
work on Saturday.
Sunday night he told his experience
at the little schoolhouse near the mill. The entire mill crew and their families
were there. Many could not get inside the building; it was too small. They had
seen a miracle. Now they wanted to hear about it. Needless to say, we were very
grateful to God for letting us have a part in this great thing that He had done.
Tommy has kept his word and has been telling his story and preaching faith and
deliverance ever since. Have faith in God. He never fails when we believe.
Thorfin Brocke
Mabel E. Brocke
This is the endorsed statement of
Mr. J.H. Gunderson, 1703 S.E. 16th Avenue, Portland, Oregon:
I, J.H. Gunderson, was at the Palmer Mill looking for a job and visiting Fin
Brocke on July 1, 1924, when at about one-thirty in the afternoon Tom fell and
I witnessed this miracle of faith.
A locomotive engineer sitting in
his cab saw Tom fall. He ran from his locomotive down into the main engine room
to tell Mr. Brocke what had happened.
The mill was shut down and Mr. Brocke
and I and others went to recover Tom, but he had fallen into the water, which
was ten feet deep at this point. We had a hard time finding him because the
water was dirty and we were fishing for him with pike poles with long handles.
After some time, another man gave me the pole he was using and I began probing
the water deep down because I felt that he must be on the bottom. This was right
because after some time of this kind of searching I hooked onto his clothes
and pulled his body near enough for us to get our hands on him, and we pulled
him out. He was dead. There was no life in him at all. His head was smashed
in on top and blood was everywhere.
Mrs. Brocke got word and came down
to the mill. When she saw Tom lying there still and dead, she knelt down and
put her hand on his head. The blood oozed out between her fingers as she cried
out to God to spare his life and save his soul because Tom was not a Christian.
As she cried out and prayed, I saw life come back into Tom and he moved for
the first time since we had recovered him from the water. Then he opened his
eyes and asked, “What happened?”
Over these years I have thanked
God many times for the privilege I had of seeing a dead man come back to life
in answer to prayer. I stood on the bank of that pond for at least thirty minutes
while other men were fishing for his body. I was watching for air bubbles or
some sign of where he was. I never did see any air bubbles. There was no water
in his lungs. He never had breathed in all that time he was under the water.
One of the men who had been trying to find Tom had given up and handed me his
pike pole. I pushed it down deep and it hooked onto his clothing. He must have
been near the bottom. It must have been all of forty-five minutes to one hour
from the time he fell until Mrs. Brocke prayed for him in the mill office.
This is my testimony as I saw it
happen. I pulled Tom to the surface myself, and witnessed the miracle of life
restored in him. I thank God for what I saw that day, and I thank God for the
privilege of telling it here. It changed my life. It is the truth.
Julius H. Gunderson
CHAPTER IV
What I Saw During the Hour of Death
Many people today,
especially the teenages and young adults in their early twenties, who come to
special meetings and hear this testimony, ask me for Bible references on the
lake of fire. Just recently a group of young thirty-five young adults asked
me to write down the Scripture references for them because they did not know
how to search them out. They also said they had never heard any evangelist or
pastor preach on this subject, and most of them seemed to be surprised to find
that there really is such a place spoken of in the Bible. They were very familiar
with the term hell, but knew nothing about the lake of fire.
Due to the fact that I saw the lake
of fire and that I promised the Lord I would tell what I had seen, I feel that
those who read this testimony should also read what the Bible says about the
lake of fire and its ultimate purpose, and have therefore prepared this Bible
reference:
Romans 6:23 – “For
the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord.”
In Revelation 1:19 John received
an instruction from Jesus Christ, “Write the things
which thou has seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be
hereafter.” This is past, present and future.
The important thing here is that
John was told to write the things which he had seen. It’s easy to describe something
you have seen. Revelation 1:2 says John “bare record…of
the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.” A
recordis information that is preserved in writing so it will not be forgotten.
Revelation 1:11 says, “What thou seest, write in a
book, and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia.”
We must bear in mind here that John
is talking about the things at which he had been looking, and leaving a record
of them for all future generations.
In Revelation 19:19-20, John says:
“And I saw the beast…And the beast was taken, and
with him the false prophet…these both were cast alive into a lake of fire buring
with brimstone.” This will be the final curtain for these two; they
will never get out. They are mentioned again after a one-thousand year period.
Revelation 20:10, “And the devil…was cast into the
lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are.”
Revelation 20:3 clearly indicates that Satan will be held captive in the “bottomless
pit” for a thousand years, and then he will be turned loose again
to deceive. Verses 7 and 8: “And when the thousand
years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out
to deceive the nations…” Verse 9 shows that judgment will come as
it did on Sodom in the days of Lot, “…a fire came
down from God out of heaven.”
Verse 10 then says, “And
the devil…was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and
the false prophet are.” These two had been cast alive into the lake
of fire a thousand years previous to this and they are still here. And the last
of verse 10 declares, “…and they shall be tormented
day and night forever and ever.”
Then in Revelation 20:11-13 we see
the great white throne judgment. Verses 12 and 13 state that all the small and
the great that had ever lived were called to stand before God and they were
judged, “every man according to his works.”
Then verses 14 and 15 declare, “Death and hell were
cast into the lake of fire and whosoever was not found written in the book of
life was cast into the lake of fire.”
Also in Revelation 21:6-8, John
wrote these words: “And He said unto me, It is done.”
These words of a great hope are real for some, and words of dreadful
finality for others. It is done – He has done all He can do. In verses 6 and
7: “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain
of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shallinherit all things, and
I will be his God, and he shall be My son.” But verse 8, “But
the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers,
and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
There will be no appeal from this final sentence. Romans 6:23: “The
wages of sin is death.”
2 Thessalonians 1:7-9: “And
to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed
from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them
that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who
shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord,
and from the glory of his power.” Phillips’ translation quotes it
this way: “Their punishment will be eternal exclusion
from the radiance of the face of the Lord and the glorious majesty of his power.”
St. John did see the lake of fire.
I saw the lake of fire. There most certainly is such a place in existence now,
and the Bible very clearly tells us why it is in existence. Perhaps the most
eloquent illustration is in Matthew 13:40-43, “As
therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the
end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity;
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing
of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
Published by CHRIST FOR THE NATIONS
P.O. Box 24910
Dallas, TX 75224
