Basics with Beth Jones

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Good good morning everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
For in as series as you guys know, called Liar, Liar,
Pants on Fire, I'm fourteen six, Jesus said this. Jesus said,
I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. Well,
a very familiar passage of scripture, but when you think
about every word in there, it's quite something for Jesus

(00:40):
to say, I'm the way, not a way, not a
way of many, but I'm the way. I'm the truth,
not a truth, but the truth and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me. So the
question is, okay, so if you don't believe this, if

(01:00):
somebody doesn't believe this, and so they don't go to
the Father, because the only way to go to him
is through Jesus. So if a person doesn't go to
the Father, where do they go?

Speaker 1 (01:11):
What does happen? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
And I've shared this story many times, but years ago
my family, I was the first one in my family,
like many of you, to become a Christian, first generation Christians.
How many of you you're you're the first Christian in
your family, the first one they came to Christ hold.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Your hands up.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
I just want to see because I was like seeing
you first generation Christians listen. I feel like it's such
a privileged position to be in if you were not
raised as a Christian and so you're like the first
one in your family to become a Christian. I believe
the Lord knew he could count on you. I believe
that you were selected in your family because he knew
that through you, others in your family would come to christ.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
So I feel like you should.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
You know, even though sometimes it's a hard position because
you take the most heat, I think it's a good
position and you should. If you're that first generation Christian,
you should step in it.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So that was my role in our family, and so man,
I felt such a responsibility and a passion to reach
my family, to reach all of my family. I would
always pray every night. I would pray and I write
my journal. God, I pray for every blood step and
in law relative.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
You know who they all are.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Lord, I pray for every bloodstep and in law relative.
Open up their eyes, help them to think about eternal things.
Put somebody in their path that'll teach them the Gospel.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Have them come.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Across a little Bible track to flip the television onto
some Christian station to somehow somewhere look at a Bible
in their hotel room, somehow somewhere, God open up their
eyes and draw them into Jesus. And Lord, use me
too as a messenger if they'll, if they have ears
to hear from me, use me as a messenger to
preach to them. So I'd write that my journal, I

(02:50):
would pray that, and then just look for opportunities to
share the Gospel with my family. Well, I remember my
mother and my sister were gonna come visit me. I
was out in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire the summer of
nineteen seventy nine on a summer project with Campus Crusade
for Christ which I love Crewe they call it now.

(03:10):
We were doing beach Evangelism for the whole summer on
the beach, going up to complete strangers with a pack
of four spiritual loss tracks and just striking up conversations
with people on the beach to see if they knew
for sure where they would go when they died. And
do you know, before I went on this summer project,
I thought there is no way, there is no way

(03:33):
I'm going to go up to a total stranger on
a beach in New Hampshire to share the gospel. They're
just gonna think you're a nut job. So I thought
when everybody else did that, because it was like part
of the summer project, you know, becoming a disciple of
Christ and all, I thought, when they all go out
and evangelize, I'll go play pinball. And there was an

(03:55):
arcade right on the strip, and I thought, I love pinball.
I'll go play pinball and I'll do evangelism and I'll
meet them back at the house and celebrate. I really
thought that because I just said, there's no way I'm
going to talk to a stranger. People are just not
going to be receptive. Well do you know how shocked
I was when they paired you up with somebody who
was experienced at doing this, and we went out on

(04:16):
the beach and we began to strike up conversations with families,
with a group of college kids with complete strangers, and
we always asked them two questions, Hey, do you got
a couple of minutes do you mind if we just
share some things with you. We're with a bunch of
college kids this summer on the beach, at Hampton Beach,
New Hampshire, and we're just sharing basically a four point
outline of the New Testament and we would love to

(04:37):
get your feedback. We'd love to share this with you.
Do you have a few minutes. That's how we'd open
up everybody. I'm not kidding. There was not one person
who said no, sure. You know, they're all relaxed, they're
on their blankets, you know, in the sun, they're relaxed.
Are like sure? So then we would start it off
with two questions. We say, well, before we get started,
if we were to ask you two questions, how would

(04:57):
you answer these questions? If you were to die today
God forbid? But if you were to die today and
stand before the Lord, do you know one hundred percent
for sure, without any question of a shadow of a doubt,
that you would spend eternity with God. Most people would say, well,
I'm not one hundred percent sure, man, I sure.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Hope, so I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Then we'd say a question number two, Well, if you
were to stand before the Lord and he were to
say to you, why should I let you into my heaven?

Speaker 1 (05:25):
What would you say?

Speaker 2 (05:27):
We heard everything, Well, I'm a good person, I've been
a good person. I mean, not perfect, but I've been
a good person. I'm not as bad as Charlie Manson.
I'm not as bad as Adolf Hitler. We heard these things,
I go to church when the Lord really shouldn't let
me in. We heard that one, but I hope he does.
People were pretty honest, and with that introduction, then we

(05:49):
would lead them through this for spiritual laws little Booklet
just take them through page by page and led many
hundreds and we actually thousands of people that summer, led
thousands of people to the Lord on the beach.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
It was awesome.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Okay, so it turns out that ended up being my
favorite thing to do. Miss little pinball player here decided
I love this. I'd get a pack of four spiritual
loss and just go to the beach by myself and
talk to people. It was just fun cause the fields
are ripe for harvest.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
They were so ripe.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well, my mother and my sisters are going to come visit.
My mother thinks I'm in a cult, and so mooneyes
were big at the time. She thought I was a
mooney and so they're gonna come out and rescue me.
So they come out to rescue me. But God's on
a saving mission for them. We're driving in the car
one day and talking about things, and just I was

(06:36):
praying for it to come up in the conversation, and
lo and behold, somehow or another, it did come up.
And I said to Mom something, and then I quoted
John fourteen six. I said, Mom, you know Jesus said
in the Bible, I am the Way and the Truth
and the Life. No one goes to the Father except
through me. My mom paused for a minute. She looked
at me. She goes, you mean to tell me if

(06:58):
I don't accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior,
I could spend eternity in hell. Well, I didn't even
say the word hell. I didn't even say all that,
but she connected the dots. I said, Mom, I didn't
say it. Jesus said it. Jesus said I am the
Way and the Truth and the life. No one goes
to the Father except through him, including you, including me.

(07:20):
Second time, she said, you mean to tell me if
I don't accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I
could spend eternity in hell. Mom, I didn't say it.
Jesus said it. Jesus said, I am the Way and
the Truth and the life. No one goes to the
Father except through me. Third time, you mean to tell

(07:41):
me if I don't accept Jesus as my personal Lord
and savior, I could spend eternity in hell. Yes, Mom,
I didn't say it, Jesus said it. Now. I was
expecting her then to say something like this, to say, well,
I don't believe a loving God would send anyone to hell.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
I'd heard that many times on the beach.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I thought she would say, well, what about the people
who haven't heard, because we had an answer for that
one too. I thought she'd say any number of things.
But what she said wasn't what I was prepared for.
She said, if that is true, if you believe that
I could spend eternity in hell without Jesus Christ being
my personal Lord and savior, why did it take you

(08:24):
a year and a half to tell your family. Yeah,
that's what I thought. I thought, Whoo, that's a zinger.
That's a good singer. Now I've been trying to tell
my family.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
But the got it. She got it that day.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Of course, my sisters are listening to this whole thing.
They all got it. She got the importance of what
we're talking about today, That there's a heaven to gain,
a hell to shun, That there are two distinct places.
We'll get into one of them today, and then next
week we're going to talk about lies. The devil tells
us about heaven. You do not want to miss Heaven.
You do not want anybody you know to miss Heaven.
Holy smokes, he makes it sound so boring. You just

(09:04):
wait till we find out what the Bible has to
say about a planet called heaven.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
That's next week, all right.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
So my mom and my sisters heard the rest of
the gospel. Both are all of them, all three sisters
and my mother, and eventually, but my mother particularly that time,
came to the Lord. Heard her husband, Jerry, came to
the Lord. My dad and his wife Nancy came to
the Lord. All of my sisters and eventually their husbands
came to the Lord.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
The whole family. Woo whoop.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Within two years, a whole family had a each one
a personal, profound encounter with the Lord that is still
current to this day, all of them walking with the Lord.
And now the kids and the grandkids and everybody else.
Many called the ministry and so on But here's the thing.
I've told that story many times, but this is the
first time I've told the story today. This is the
first time I've told the story because every other time

(09:56):
I told the story about my mother, she was here
on earth. So today was the first time to tell
the story that she's in heaven. So it's like for me,
it's super cool because it's like, Lord, that's what.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
It's all about, you know.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I mean, there's a lot of things when my mom
was in her later years, she struggled to bed, and
there's a lot of things I look back, I'm like, oh, man,
I should have done this for her. I should have
done that for her. I should have maybe I could
have done more. And you know, my sisters and I
have talked about this many times, like you know, of
courseways wish you could do more for your parents. But
the thing I'm most happy about is I got to
lead them both to the Lord Ain't number one and

(10:33):
they're in heaven. I know they safely made it to
heaven and one day there will be a grand reunion.
And when I think about that, and I know many
of you have the same story. You've led your loved ones,
your family parents, and people to the Lord. But I'll
tell you what, There's nothing, y'all. There's nothing more important

(10:55):
that she could ever share with anyone. This life is
a vapor. We are here today, gone tomorrow. But eternity
is eternity, and the fact that you're going to get
to see your loved ones again, and the fact that
this life is just a blink, and to know you
had a part in it, and you can have a
part in it. Many of you, you do have a

(11:15):
part in what we do as a church here, but
you in your own personal life, you can have a
part in giving people the best news of all and
warning them in the most loving way about some bad news,
which is partly what we're going to talk about today,
helping people not miss heaven, helping them to avoid hell
in Jesus name. And all the people said, amen, let

(11:37):
me show you this. In Ecclesiastes seven, verse two, it
tells us this. It says, for death is the destiny
of everyone. The living should take this to heart. The
Bible tells us, if we're the living, which all of
us here are, we really should take this to heart
because death is the destiny. And once you die and

(11:57):
leave planet Earth, you do go somewhere. Sometimes people think, oh,
when you die, you know, you just cease to exist.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
That's it, overdone, boom.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
But the Bible, and we'll see it today, has a
lot to say about the fact that when you leave earth,
you do go somewhere. Death is the destiny for eaching.
Every one of us the living should take this to heart.
So three lies about hell. Number One, there's no such
thing as a place called hell. Ah, don't believe all

(12:26):
that fire and brimstone stuff. It's just a scare tactic.
No such thing, sheesh as.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
A place called hell.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Number two, I'll just go to Hell and party with
all my friends. I wouldn't want to go to heaven anyways,
with all those boring Christians. I'd rather just go to
Hell and party it up with all my friends. Number three,
How could a loving God send anyone to hell? What
about those lies? What about answers to those questions? Let's

(12:55):
look at the first one. There is no such thing
as a place called Hell. There was a cardiologist named
Maurice Rawlings. He didn't believe there was a place called hell.
For many, many, many years. He was an emergency room
cardiologist and dealt with a lot of people, of course,
in those critical moments, and people that came to see
him in his office and so on. He tells a

(13:17):
story about something that radically changed his thinking. He talked
about having a patient, a forty year old white male patient.
He was a rural male carrier, of medium build, dark hair,
and had a personality that would please anyone. Here's what
doctor Rawlings wrote. Unfortunately, he represented one of those rare

(13:39):
instances where the EKG not only went haywire, but his
heart stopped altogether. He had a cardiac arrest and dropped
dead right at my office. Rawlings described what they began
to try to do when he wrote, I started to
external heart massage by pushing on his chest. One nurse
initiated mouth to mouth breathing, and another nurse found a
breathing mask. Still another nurse brought in the pacemaker equipment. Unfortunately,

(14:03):
the heart would not maintain its own beat. I had
to insert a pacemaker wire and the patient began coming too.
Each time he regained heartbeat and respiration, he screamed, I
am in hell. He was terrified and pleaded with me
to help him. I was scared to death, said the doctor.
He then issued a very strange plea. The patient said
not to stop on the external heart massage. He said,

(14:26):
don't stop. I noticed a genuinely alarmed look on his face.
He had a terrified look, worse than the expression seen
in death. This patient had a grotesque grimace expressing sheer horror.
His pupils were dilated, and he was perspiring and trembling.
He looked as if his hair was on end. Doctor
Rawlings said to the patient. Doctor Rowling said, the patient said,

(14:49):
don't you understand I am in hell?

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Every time you quit, I go back to hell. Don't
let me go back to hell.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Being accustomed to patients under this kind of stress, I
dismissed his complaint. I said, don't don't bother me about
your hell until I finished getting this pacemaker in place.
But the man was serious, and it finally occurred to
me that he was indeed in trouble. By this time,
the patient had experienced three or four episodes of complete
unconsciousness and clinical death, both from cessation of heartbeat and breathing.

(15:17):
After several death episodes, the man said, how do I
stay out of hell? I told him, I guessed it
was the same principle I'd learned in Sunday School. I
guess through Jesus Christ. The patient said, I don't know
how to receive him.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Pray for me?

Speaker 2 (15:37):
What nerve the doctor said. I told him I was
a doctor, not a preacher. Pray for me, he repeated.
I knew I had no choice. It was a dyings
man's request, so I had him repeat these words after me.
It was very simple, I told him. It went something
like this, Lord Jesus, I asked you to keep me
out of hell. If I die, I want to go
to Heaven. If I live, I'll be on the hook forever,

(15:59):
meaning for the Lord, you know, on the hook for
the Lord. The patient's condition stabilized, and he was later
transported to another hospital, and today this man is a
strong Christian doctor. Rawlings goes on to say, I went home,
dusted off my Bible and started reading it. This episode
literally scared the hell out of me. It terrified me

(16:20):
enough to write this book. He wrote a book called
Beyond Death's Door and told of numerous experiences.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Let me give you one other. Here's another one.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
He talks about a woman who was struck by lightning
on a camping trip. In the moment that I was hit.
The woman says, I knew exactly what had happened to me.
My mind was crystal clear. I've never been so totally
alive as in the act of dying. At this point,
I had what I call the answer to a question
I'd never verbalized to anyone or even faced. The question

(16:49):
was is there really a God? I can't describe it,
but the totality and reality of the living God exploded
within my being. He filled every atom of my Bible
with his glory in the very same.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Moment.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
To my horror, I found that I wasn't going toward God.
I was going away from him. It was like seeing
what might have been, but going away from it. In
my panic, I tried to start communicating with God, with
the God that I knew was there. She goes on
to say she begged for her life and offered it
to God should he spirit. She recovered in three months

(17:26):
and it radically changed the rest of her life.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
What are we talking about?

Speaker 2 (17:30):
We're talking about is there really such a place called Hell?
I want to read his story in Luke sixteen. This
is a story Jesus told Luke sixteen. Jesus told a story.
I'm They're gonna put the whole story up. I want
to read it, and then we'll take it apart here,
just bit by bit. But I want you to see
the whole story. And the thing about it is, this

(17:50):
was not a parable. Many times Jesus would say, the
Kingdom of Heaven is like unto and tell a parable,
a metaphor this is not that. This is a certain story.
And whenever Jesus used the phrase a certain woman, a
certain person, a certain somebody, he was telling an actual
account of something that happened that either he'd been a
part of or seen in the spirit. So he tells

(18:11):
us his story. In Luke sixteen, Jesus said, there was
a certain rich man, So this is a real man,
a real story. There was a certain rich man who
was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously
every day. But there was also a certain beggar named Lazarus,
full of sores, who was laid it at his gate,
desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from

(18:33):
the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked
up his sores verse twenty two. So it was that
the beggar died and was carried by the angels to
Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried,
and being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his
eyes and saw Abraham, afar Off and Lazarus in his bosom.
Then he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me,

(18:55):
and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool my tongue, for tormented
in this flame. But Abraham said, son, remember that in
your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things. But now he is comforted and you are tormented.
And besides all this, between us and you, there is
a great gulf fix so that those who want to

(19:16):
pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from
there pass to us. Then he said, I beg you, therefore, father,
that you would send him to my father's house, where
I have five brothers, then he may testify to them,
lest they also come to this place of torment. Abraham
said to him, they have Moses and the prophets. Let
them hear them. And he said, no, Father Abraham, for

(19:37):
if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.
But he said to him if they do not hear
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though
one rise from the dead. So it was a certain man,
a certain beggar, certain rich man. But interestingly, we see
a couple of things here. We see that the rich
man when he died, he was buried, no angels to

(20:01):
carry him, no escorts. When he died, buried goes down.
When the beggar Lazarus died, he was carried by angels
to a place of comfort. And throughout scripture we see
that same pattern that as a believer, when a believer dies,
that you are escorted by angels to heaven. But the

(20:24):
rich man was not so. Now look at verses twenty
three through twenty five. What did he experience? And being
in torments in hades, it's a place of torment. He
was conscious, he was aware of things. He was able
to see, seeing Abraham afar Off.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
He had sight.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
He's able to speak, Father Abraham, He's able to feel.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Able to taste.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
He said, get me some cold water that I can
put it on my tongue. Have Lazarus bring me some
cold water. There was a sense of taste, but in
essence we would say our five physical senses. He was not.
He didn't just cease to exist. He still existed and
was very much.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Quote unquote alive. And yet not.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Lazarus was comforted. This man was tormented. Then we see
the last verse here is just interesting and it fits
even for our day. He said, Lazarus, father, Abraham, send
Lazarus and go tell all of my family. He was
conscious of his family. He knew he had five brothers,

(21:32):
Go tell my family. And Abraham said, no, they've got them.
They've got the writings of Moses and the prophets, they've
got the Bible. Let him just read the Bible. No, no, no,
they don't believe in the Bible. Just send him somebody
that's risen from the dead and then they'll believe. And
Abraham said, no, let them just believe the writings of
Moses and the prophets, because even if somebody were to

(21:53):
rise from the dead, they wouldn't believe. Of course, Jesus
is forecasting his own resurrection. So the point of that
is what God wants us to take him at his word.
It's a faith proposition to believe the Bible, to believe
the writings, to believe what he has given us. There's
a lot we don't know, but there's a lot we
do know. Go with what we do know, and we

(22:16):
know that Hell is a real place. Well, I don't
believe that Hell is a real place. According to the Bible,
there was a certain man and a certain beggar and
they went to a real place.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Thanks for watching today's show.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
We hope this message helped you to get the basics,
live the life, and do the stuff. Be sure to
set your DVR so that you never miss an episode.
For more of the Basics with Beth Jones, or to
watch programs on demand, visit The Basics withtheth dot TV