Where is this "Outer Darkness"?

[RJ]

I did not mean that God will destroy entire nations. I meant that the believers will be with Him when He returns (having been already raptured), and before them will be the nations , whom God will divide people individually into sheep and goats. The sheep and goats are not believers, they are the righteous and unrighteous unbelieving people of the nations. They are righteous in the eyes of God, based upon their works - particularly in how they treated His people during the tribulation period. Reading verse 40 and 42 carefully, those giving cups of cold water, or visiting those in prison, or visiting the sick, are not Jesus's brothers and sisters, or His followers. It is the believers who will need cold water, and will be in prison, and will be sick and homeless. Who will provide this help? The answer is the righteous unbelievers, who are declared righteous by God because they helped His people, just like Rahab the prostitute. As James 2:25 says, Rahab was a prostitute (immoral person), who was not part of God's people, but she was blessed and protected because she helped God's people.

The Bible teaches that the unbelieving people of the nations who help the believers will become the nations that live outside of the New Jerusalem in the New Earth (Rev 21:26). The believers are those justified by Christ's blood , and get to enter and dwell in the city of New Jerusalem. However there are unbelievers living outside the city on the New Earth which are those justified by their works (James 2:25). It is the cities of these "unbelieving yet justified by works" nations that the faithful Christians will rule over (Luke 19:19). The Christians will be those in resurrected and immortal, spiritual yet physical immortal bodies, like the body of Christ,. The people of the nations will be restored to their physical and mortal bodies, but will be sustained by eating of the Tree of Life:
Rev 22:2 On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.

I think you have got a little off track with a discussion of, "what is the Outer Darkness", which was described in the parable of the wedding feat.

 

[james1523]

I think you have got a little off track with a discussion of, "what is the Outer Darkness", which was described in the parable of the wedding feat.

My posts are related and aid in understanding what the outer darkness is. In my previous post I explained what the outer darkness was, and it is related to the matter of the New Jerusalem and end times events. Note that the parable of the wedding feast is a story about the Father providing a wedding feast for Jesus to marry His Bride, the church, or the New Jerusalem (see Revelation 19). So to understand the outer darkness it helps to understand the New Jerusalem and related matters.

The answer to "who is cast into outer darkness" in the wedding parable in Matt 22 (is it believers or unbelievers?) Is found in Revelation 19.

Matthew 22
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “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.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”


Revelation 19:
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

As Revelation 19 indicates, those invited to the wedding are those who have received the gospel call. They are believers, they are saved and blessed, because they have been invited. The wedding garments, is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev 19:8).

Therefore the person thrown out of the wedding into outer darkness, because he did not have wedding garment , is a Christian who has no righteous deeds.

"Many invited/called but few chosen", means many are called to salvation, but few are chosen to participate in the reward of the kingdom, the marriage feast of the Lamb, etc.
Many are saved eternally, but few of these saved people are obedient enough to receive the reward, and most will suffer in outer darkness.

Outer darkness is not eternity in hellfire but a place of temporal punishment for believers.

This is also confirmed by Matt 8:12 which says that those of the kingdom of God (i.e. believers) are thrown outside, into darkness:

Matt 8:12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Those in outer darkness are not suffering in the lake of fire. They are in a dark place far away from the presence of the Lord and the church. If the New Jerusalem is the shining light on the Earth, and that is the place of the wedding feast, then the outer darkness is some place away from this place on the Earth where it is dark.

I believe the scripture was written with precise words carefully chosen by the Holy Spirit. Therefore an idea that we can have two different words (outer darkness and hell) to mean the same thing (hell) is confusing and God is not the author of confusion. Jesus knew exactly what he meant when he said "outer darkness", and He meant the location far away from the New Jerusalem where saved people would suffer temporarily for their lack of righteous deeds and practical unrighteousness.

 

[NoHype]

I believe in Matt.8 our Lord Jesus was specifically speaking of the unbelieving Jews that rejected Him, because that's who the children of the kingdom were at that point at His first coming. The Gospel had to be offered first at Jerusalem and rejected for that to happen. Same thing in the Matt.22 example. But the example in Matt.25 is for those in His Church that fall away to do iniquity, since He was just covering the parable of the ten virgins there.

 

[will]

Thank you brothers for chiming in.

It is interesting to me that the 3 times the "outer darkness" is mentioned in Matthew, the context is always "unfaithful servants."

Are there any instances where The Lord use the term "servant" to address unbelievers?
If not, then the outer darkness may not the same as "fiery furnace" (Matthew 13:42 for example).

 

[NoHype]

Thank you brothers for chiming in.

It is interesting to me that the 3 times the "outer darkness" is mentioned in Matthew, the context is always "unfaithful servants."

Are there any instances where The Lord use the term "servant" to address unbelievers?
If not, then the outer darkness may not the same as "fiery furnace" (Matthew 13:42 for example).

If you study Ezekiel 44-47 in relation to that holy city and its gates and those outside it per Rev.20 and Rev.22:14-15, then you will begin to understand the structure of that future time per God's Word.

The "lake of fire" at the end of Rev.20 is a one-time event of destruction. We are shown that even the abode of the wicked called 'hell' will go into that "lake of fire". Many confuse the abode of the wicked called 'hell' because there's different manuscript words used for "hell" in the KJV Bible which the translators did not clarify. Sometimes when our Lord Jesus is quoted speaking about the "lake of fire" event the KJV translators just put the word "hell".

In the NT there's 3 words in the manuscripts translated to "hell" in the KJV; geena, haides, and tartaroo.

geena or gehenna translated to Greek = from Hebrew, the Valley of Hinnom:
The valley of Hinnom was a place south outside the gates of Jerusalem where a perpetual fire and smoke smoldered to burn garbage. It also had high places where Baal human sacrifices were done in which some of the Israelites were guilty of which eventually king Josiah destroyed (2 Kings 23; Jeremiah 7; 19). God said one day it will be called 'the valley of slaughter' when He recompenses in full. The valley was also called "Tophet" per Isaiah which points directly to the future "lake of fire" of Rev.20 and the destruction of Satan in it...

Isa 30:33
33 For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.
(KJV)

So when the NT has 'geena' or 'gehenna' put for "hell", it is about the future "lake of fire" event of Rev.20 that will occur only at the end of Christ's future "thousand years" reign over the wicked.

haides = from Greek idea of Hades, the underworld of the dead the pagan Greeks believed in:
This was a place the ancient Greeks believed the soul went to after death. It was used by the New Testament writers to describe the place in the heavenly where the wicked go to, like the "rich man" in Christ's story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. Per the Greek word for "torment" in Luke 16:28, it is 'basanos' which means a touchstone. A touchstone was a type of rock you'd strike a piece of gold ore over, and it would reveal the amount of gold content in the ore. Thus it was a tool of measure. The rich man's torment in "hell" was how he did not measure up in God's eyes, pointing to the greatest emotional torment imaginable.

tartaroo = the deepest abyss of the underworld of the Greeks:
This word was used only once in the NT by Peter in 2 Pet.2 describing where God imprisoned the angels that sinned. Isaiah 42:7 is about when Christ preached to the "spirits in prison" of 1 Pet.3, showing a heavenly type prison and a place of darkness outside it. So the way I interpret 'tartaroo' from 2 Pet.2 is like a solitary confinement in a dungeon-like part of the prison house in the heavenly. Christ uses this idea of a prison in Rev.20 also about Satan's pit where he is to be locked in chains during the future "thousand years". So just as how we have prisons for the wicked here on earth, likewise I believe the parallel to be the same in the heavenly.

Thus the "outer darkness" description follows more along the idea of haides and the prison house of Isaiah 42:7 than the "lake of fire".

Now a good question to ponder about the abode of the wicked called hell (haides), is where will it be once the events of Rev.12:7 forward happen with Satan and his angels being cast down to this earth for the future tribulation? Rev.6 on the 4th Seal does say that Hell follows with the rider on the pale horse which is Death, another title for Satan.