The Reality Of
Eternal  Punishment
                    By Pastor F. M. Riley
                    July 24, 2020
     "And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire," Revelation 20:15
INTRODUCTION
  In this study I want to skip the introduction and just share a testimony of God's Amazing Grace.  Read on.....
A PRECIOUS MEMORY
     I have preached the message you are about to read many times in churches I have pastored, and in revival efforts in other churches all over this nation.  The Lord  graciously gave me this message, and blessed it  by saving souls, and causing many of God's people to become  zealous in their efforts to witness to the lost.
     Now the testimony.....  
     For some 45 years in the Lord's ministry, I mailed  out a monthly newsletter to churches of like faith and order, and to individuals who had requested it. Every newsletter not only contained news which might be of interest to the readers, but I always printed in each newsletter a Bible study from God's precious Word.
     Sadly, I had to give up the newsletter ministry several years ago after my loving wife, sweetheart, companion, and helper was taken "home" to be with the Lord Jesus.  I just could no longer handle the work load without her help.  
     But during that newsletter ministry, some fifty years  or more ago I first printed the study you are about to read, as the Bible study in one of my monthly newsletters.   I never knew what response I would receive when I mailed out a newsletter, but the response I received from that newsletter, I cherish even today as one of the greatest blessings I ever received in my newsletter ministry.  Here is why.....
     Two or three weeks after mailing out that newsletter, I received a phone call from a Pastor of a church located in southern Arkansas.  I didn't know him, as we had never met, and I had never been to the church he was pastoring.  Yet, he called to ask if I would consider coming  to preach a revival effort for the church he was pastoring?.  He told me that his entire congregation had voted unanimously to call me as their evangelist for their Spring revival effort.  Pardon the expression, but I was "flabbergasted." I had never met the pastor, and had never visited that church, but I was the evangelist the church wanted for their meeting.  
      I prayed about the request, and went at the selected time to preach a one week revival effort.  That is when I learned why that church had called me.  
     One of the very first church members I met on my arrival was a middle aged sister in Christ.  She threw her arems around my neck, kissed me on the cheek, and praised the Lord that I had come.  Why all  the emotion?
    When I mailed that newsletter with the Bible study in it, she had read every word, then made a copy, and continued to read it.  She told me that after reading the study, under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit,  she didn't sleep for three days and nights.  In the middle of the night the third day she jumped out of bed screaming and begging the Lord to have mercy on her soul, and save her.  And of course the Lord heard her prayers and gloriously saved her.  
     No one was more shocked than her Christian husband, who had thought for years that she was a true believer.  Dear readers, that dear woman had been teaching Sunday School for 17 years.  Now don't ask me what she taught her class all those  years, for I don't know.  But she had been a lost unbeliever all of those years.  
     That dear sister in Christ is a classic example of the many lost "professing" Christians in churches today, who have never been truly saved.  
     Any reader of this testimony who does not have assurance of their salvation, or who has doubts, needs to read 2 Peter 1:10-11, then go to the Lord in earnest, sincere, prayer, and act upon this inspired Scripture, until the Spirit of our Living God gives salvation or assurance.  Don't delay.....do it NOW!  
     And now the study.......   
      
 
                                                           having done so.  But because they were God's chosen covenanted people, the Lord God always brought them back to Himself.  This is why a modern nation of Israel exists today.  God's inspired Word prophesied that He would regather them   back to their ancient homeland, and so He has.  And the Lord God is by no means through gathering the Jewish people back to their ancient homeland yet.  The greatest regathering of Israel is yet to come.
THE GENTILE NATIONS
      But what about the Gentile nations and peoples of the world?   Does God's inspired Word have anything to say about their future?  Ho boy!  It sure does!  
     The Lord God, in admonishing Israel about their sins, also spoke about the  Gentile nations and peoples, as explicitly stated in Jeremiah 30:11,
     "For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee: though I make a full end of all the nations  whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not  make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished."  
     Here the Lord God plainly stated to His Jewish people that He will "make a full end of all the nations" into which the Jewish people were scattered after being driven out of their land by the Roman armies in 70 A.D.  
     In our Scripture text for this study, Psalm 9:17, the Lord God explicitly stated that "all the nations" which have forgotten Him will be turned "into hell."  All of them!  No exceptions!  
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE AMERICA?
     In my past Bible studies I have  warned time after time about the consequences of the path America has been following, almost since the end of the Second World War.  
     I was born in America, grew up in America, and have lived in America all 86 years of my life.  So I have been an eye witness to a lot of changes in this nation of America.   
     As a child my Christian parents took me and my siblings to church faithfully.  As an infant, I can remember my mother placing me on a pallett beneath the pew, so I could nap during the morning service, and so I wouldn't get to fretting and disturb the service.  This practice continued until I was about four years old.  
     I well remember being awakened from my nap under the pew one Sunday morning, by hearing people crying and shouting and leaving their pews to go to the front of the sanctuary.  I crawled out from under the pew a little frightened and ask my mother what was happening.  She told me people were going foward to receive Christ as their Savior; to be saved.  Dear readers, our church was in a revival effort at that time.  I was too little to remember who was preaching, or what the sermon was about, but to this day I do remember my Momma telling me that 80 people had come forward to receive Christ as their Savior that morning.  That revival effected our whole little town for years to come.  "Precious memories, oh how sweet."     
      Dear readers, I was six years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  On our old radio, I heard President Roosevelt announce to America that our nation that we had declared war on Japan, and an immediate draft was being set in place.  
     For the next five years husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers went off to foreign battlefield to fight the enemy.  THE CHURCHES WERE FILLED every service with praying people; wives, mothers, daughters, and sweethearts of the men who were on the battlefield.  As a young boy I remember seeing the churches so packed with people praying and worshiping the Lord God, that people were standing up around the walls and sitting on the floor in the church aisles.  Oh yes, I do!  I am not exagerrating the least bit.  
     But then the war ended with the dropping of the Atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.  "Johnny came marching home."  At least those who had survived.  Many, many, bodies had been shipped home in caskets.  Our entire little town turned out for their funerals, still packing the churches with people.  
     But then PROSPERITY came to America unlike anything the American people had seen since the economic CRASH of 1929.
      And the American people in the 1950's, 60's, 70's  and since have showed their appreciation for God's mercies by abandoning the churches, so they could engage in sports, TV, new cars, drunkenness, drugs, and fornication with their neighbor's wife or daughter.  Homosexuality, which was a violation of law, and had been hidden throughout the history of America, was in 1973 "legalized" as a personal choice.  A few years later, homosexual marriage was also "legalized."  Sic!
     I am old enough to remember married couples, and single women, being sent to prison for aborting a baby they didn't want.  But in Roe vs Wade our "godly" Supreme Court "legalized" the coldblooded, premeditated MURDER of the innocent unborn.  Some people hate me for calling this practice "MURDER."  Look up the definition for MURDER in your dictionary.  While you are doing so, remember