Secrets from Beyond The Grave

is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

--Matthew 10:28

Are There Levels of Punishment?

In heaven there will be some individuals who will not receive a reward, as their earthly works will be destroyed by fire at the judgment seat of Christ (1 Cor. 3:13-15). Christ warned, "Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown" (Rev. 3:11). Those who are "overcomers" are promised seven distinct blessings. (See Revelation 2-3.) Those who have been faithful to the covenant and who are workers in the Lord's harvest will be generously rewarded with crowns and assigned as rulers on the new earth (Luke 19:15-19). Over the years I have been asked if I believe that those who were morally good but never received Christ will be punished in hell on the same level of those who were extremely wicked, such as the 9-11 hijackers, who willfully and joyfully took the lives of thousands of innocent people. A statement by Christ may indicate levels of punishment in hell. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. --Matthew 23:14, KJV In the Old Testament there were two types of sins: those sins done with knowledge and those sins committed in ignorance (Lev. 4). There is a sin against knowledge, as it is written: "Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). To resist obeying the truth or to willfully sin against knowledge is a higher level of sin, as Christ stated: "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). Those who knew the truth but did not walk in the light of the truth will be judged more severely than those who knew nothing of the truth. Those who sin in ignorance are judged less severely. The word damnation in the Greek is krima and alludes to a judgment against a crime. The " greater damnation" alludes to a more severe punishment against a person. This warning from Christ in Matthew 23:14 was addressed to the Pharisees, who taught their followers one thing but themselves lived another. They fasted and prayed to be seen of men (Matt. 6:5). They enlarged the borders of their garments (perhaps their prayer shawls) and made their phylacteries (a small black box containing Scriptures attached with leather straps and pressed upon the forehead) larger as outward signs of their spirituality (Matt. 23:5). The hypocrisy of this religious group was so vile that Christ warned them: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (v. 33, KJV). There is a spiritual danger to having been spiritually illumined by the Scriptures and quickened by the Holy Spirit to experience the power of the world to come, then subsequently to turn back from a straight and narrow path. The writer to the Hebrews penned this warning: For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. --Hebrews 6:4-6