A Bible Study by Jack Kelley

Some time ago I received several questions
concerning a book recently published by a well
known Christian author. The questions so
concerned me that I bought the book to have a
look for myself. (I’m not going to mention the
name of the book or the author to avoid giving
either any unintended publicity.)
Right off the bat I was shocked to read to very
first sentence in the foreword, which says, “I
believe that most Christians who get to
heaven will be seriously disappointed.” Well,
that got my attention. Imagine our Blessed
Assurance being the source of serious
disappointment.

The basic premise of the book is that while
salvation is enough to keep you out of Hell,
it’s not enough to get you into the Kingdom.
Only those found worthy will become the
Lord’s bride, and the rest of the Church will
spend the Millennium in “the outer darkness”
banished from the presence of God and
disqualified from reigning with Him. In the
Outer Darkness, says the author, believers will
experience unimaginable regret, remorse and
a sense of shame during the 1,000 years
they’ll spend looking back over their
unsanctified lives. They’ll remember every
detail of their failures causing much weeping
and gnashing of teeth. (According to recent
surveys, this could be the destiny of as many
as 93% of all born again Christians alive in the
US today. There are no estimates available for
previous generations, or for those from other
countries.)

This view is not new, by the way. It’s been
around for a generation or so, and is based
largely on Matthew 8:11-12, 22:13, 24:50-51,
& 25:30 , the four places where either the Outer
Darkness, or weeping and gnashing of teeth,
or both are mentioned. Toward the and of the
book the author refers to them saying,
“Always remember the ones who were not
able to inherit” and, “These passages are all
talking about Christians! And yet none of them
inherited the Kingdom. Yes, they were all in it.
But they were in some other region, some
other place -the darkness outside – and thus
separated from the light of the Lord’s
presence.”

As do the ones before it, this book makes it
clear that all true believers are still saved and
still go to Heaven, but because they did not
follow Christ faithfully on Earth they will dwell
in a part of Heaven away from Him and forfeit
any rewards of reigning with Him in His
Kingdom. It’s a middle position that was
originally developed to refute the idea that you
can lose your salvation, without giving
believers who don’t live victorious lives a “free
pass” into the Kingdom. I think of it as a kind
of “half way house”, not prison but not really
freedom either.
I’m convinced that those who hold this
position have misinterpreted all four of the
“outer darkness” passages. Here’s how I
think these four references to the Outer
Darkness should be understood.

Outer Darkness Reference 1.
Matt . 8: 5-12.

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion
came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said,
“my servant lies at home paralyzed and in
terrible suffering.”
Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to
have you come under my roof. But just say the
word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself
am a man under authority, with soldiers under
me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that
one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant,
‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and
said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I
have not found anyone in Israel with such great
faith. I say to you that many will come from the
east and the west, and will take their places at
the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the
kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the
kingdom will be thrown outside, into the
darkness, where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth.”

Here Jesus is clearly speaking to Israel, not
the Church. It was at least two years before
Pentecost and well before Israel had rejected
His offer of the Kingdom. He was criticizing
them for letting a Gentile Roman soldier
demonstrate a stronger faith in Him than they
had. He said that their lack of faith would
result in people from all over the world
(Gentiles) inheriting the Kingdom, while the
Jews, who were the subjects of the Kingdom,
would be thrown into the outer darkness.
Israel was then (and will be again) God’s
Kingdom on Earth. The Lord repeated this
warning in Matt. 21:43 when He again said to
the Jews, “Therefore I tell you that the Kingdom
of God will be taken away from you and given to
a people who will produce its fruit.” It’s obvious
that the Lord believed they were the subjects
of the Kingdom or else why would He threaten
to take it away from them?
This reference is a warning to Israel that at the
End of the Age Gentile believers, like the
Centurion, would join their patriarchs at the
Wedding Feast while they sat outside in the
darkness for failing to recognize their
Messiah.

Outer Darkness Reference 2.
Matt 22: 1- 14

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a king who
prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent
his servants to those who had been invited to the
banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to
come.
“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell
those who have been invited that I have prepared
my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have
been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to
the wedding banquet.’
“But they paid no attention and went off—one to
his field, another to his business. The rest seized
his servants, mistreated them and killed them.
The king was enraged. He sent his army and
destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding
banquet is ready, but those I invited did not
deserve to come. Go to the street corners and
invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the
servants went out into the streets and gathered
all the people they could find, both good and bad,
and the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But
when the king came in to see the guests, he
noticed a man there who was not wearing
wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you
get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man
was speechless.
“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand
and foot, and throw him outside, into the
darkness, where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth.’
“For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
This is the parable of the Wedding Banquet,
and the one ejected is a last minute wedding
guest. The Bride is not a guest and could
never be thrown out of her own wedding.
To accept the author’s view that this parable
is about the Church you have to start with the
belief that some of the Church is the Bride of
Christ and some isn’t. But the Bible never
even implies that. You can only come to that
conclusion by departing from a literal
interpretation if Scripture to make it say what
you want it to say.

For example the Lord has imputed our
righteousness to us by faith, and not works
( Romans 4:5 ) Isaiah described man’s
righteousness as filthy rags ( Isa 64:6 ) and the
Lord’s as “garments of salvation” and “robes
of righteousness” (Isa 61:10 ) where the
acquisition of these qualities is likened to
clothing given us at a wedding. But the author
wants us to believe that there’s a difference
between Salvation Righteousness, which
comes from belief, and Kingdom
Righteousness that comes from the works we
do on Earth. Therefore the guest was a born
again believer who was not only excluded
from being the bride but was thrown out of the
banquet into the outer darkness because he
had no Kingdom Righteousness.

Here’s how I see it. In Rev. 16:15 , just after
the 6th Bowl judgment and long after the
church has departed, the Lord said, “Behold, I
come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake
and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may
not go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
He was alluding to the fact that the Doctrine of
Eternal Security expires with the Rapture, a
fact that Jesus taught in the Parable of the 10
Virgins. Tribulation believers will be
responsible for keeping themselves saved.
Still, their righteousness is symbolized by
clothing.

The man ejected from the banquet was a last
minute guest, a tribulation believer not part of
the Church. He was trying to receive the
blessing of those invited to the wedding feast
( Rev. 19:9 ) at least 7 years after the Rapture.
He hadn’t kept himself pure and had lost his
salvation. When the Lord returned, he tried to
gain entrance into the Kingdom in his own
clothing (on the strength of his own
righteousness) without the righteousness
imputed to him by faith (the wedding clothes).
He was discovered and ejected.
Notice that the Bride is never mentioned in
this parable. It’s not about us. It’s about the
guests at the end of the age.

Outer Darkness References

3- 4. Matt . 24: 50- 51 And Matt .
25: 30
Matt. 24:50-51 concludes the parable of the
wise and wicked servants, and Matt. 25:30
does the same for the Parable of the Talents.
I’ll mention them together because they both
contain judgments, but they don’t take place in
Heaven at the Bema Seat where the Church
will be judged. Along with the Parable of the
10 Virgins which they bracket, the location and
timing of the judgment is identified as being
on Earth after the Lord’s return. This was
established as early as Matt. 24:29-30
making every thing that follows pertain to
believers on Earth at the 2nd Coming. In other
words, these parables describe the destinies
of Tribulation Survivors who didn’t keep the
faith. Again, they don’t involve the Church.
You can easily confirm this by looking at Matt.
24:36-37, Matt. 25:1, & Matt. 25:14. As I said
before, the Doctrine of Eternal Security expires
at the Rapture, and so Tribulation believers are
in danger of falling away and losing their
salvation. (Rev. 14:12 & 16:15 ) These
passages in Matthew demonstrate that fact in
no uncertain terms. The Lord’s final Olivet
Discourse teaching, the Sheep and Goat
Judgment, which also takes place on Earth
after the 2nd Coming, closes His case on the
disposition of Tribulation Survivors. (Matt.
25:31-36 )

To apply any of these teachings to the Church,
one would have to believe that the Rapture and
Bema Seat judgment take place after the 2nd
Coming, but a detailed color chart in the book
clearly shows that the author believes in a pre-
Tribulation Rapture which is followed
immediately by the Bema Seat judgment.
All that said, I think the biggest problems with
this “half way house” view concern certainty
and motivation. To accept this position you
have to be willing to believe that the Lord is
not going to give you any assurance about
how you’ll spend the next 1000 years until
after it’s too late for you to do anything about
it. For example, in the author’s take on the
Parable of the Wedding Banquet, the guest
thought he belonged there and was speechless
when told that he didn’t.

And 1 Cor. 4:5 says the Lord will judge the
Church according to the motives of our hearts.
How could our motives ever be pure if we
know that our works here will determine our
participation in the Kingdom? Our hearts are
incurably wicked and will always go to self
interest. Greed would replace gratitude in
every believer’s heart and make it even less
likely that anyone would survive the judgment
intact.

In Ephesians 1:13-14 and 2 Cor 1:21-22 Paul
said that our inheritance was guaranteed the
moment we first believed. Was the inheritance
he spoke of 1000 years of unimaginable
regret, remorse and a sense of shame unless
we work to improve it? Is that what we’re
assured of?

I have no problem with there being a certain
amount of inequality in the Kingdom. Not
every one can live next door to Jesus, or be
the king of some country or even the leader of
a small group. And although the Bible clearly
admonishes us to go beyond salvation to
achieve victory over this world, there’ll be
many who won’t win the crowns that are
promised to believers for doing so. But to say
that most of us won’t even participate in the
Kingdom Age, but will be consigned to 1000
years of abject misery defies reason. How
does that equate with the promise that
whoever believes in Him will not perish but
have everlasting life? (John 3:16 ) Who would
want such a life, even if it only lasted 1000
years?

Through out the history of the Church scholars
have held that there are two possible destinies
for humanity, Heaven or Hell. To introduce a
third one, where we’re saved from the worst
but kept from the best, after the fate of all but
one generation of believers has been sealed, is
remarkable to say the least. And I must
confess I’d give a lot more credence to this
view if there wasn’t such a complete
disregard for context and timing in providing
supporting verses. That tells me that there
aren’t any that really fit. And that makes it bad
theology. Selah 08-02-08

https://gracethrufaith.com/topical-studies/thy-kingdom-come/saved-from-the-worst-but-kept-from-the-best/#more-3948

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