Vs. 5-7. Examples of three former seductions and the outcomes of all.

Jude interrupts his listing to remind his readers that this is not the first time that unbelievers have had to pay with their lives for ignoring the ways of God.

Example 1: Unbelievers in Israel, verse 5. With a mighty hand God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. Such power! Such devastation! A nation liberated in a day! The Israelites were such a happy people, the joy was real. Jehovah was their God.

But it wasn’t long before unbelief slowly and very surely eroded the joy and faith of these pilgrims. All but two of the originals died in the wilderness, never to see God’s Promised Land. Don’t assume, church, that God has changed His mind about sin and judgment. Those who sow unbelief and perverted teachings, and those who believe those doctrines, will be judged just as surely as the millions of Israel.

We hear stories in our own day of “entire villages” being saved. Yes, people are happy when the Gospel comes. It usually means a better standard of living, medicine, prosperity. But we must not assume that everyone in that village has been or will be born again. Eventually, when the hard times come, many fall away, showing they were not a part of the faith to begin with. Look among your own group. Exhort those that assemble to be sure their sins have been taken away!

Example 2: Fallen angels, verse 6. Jude steps back from humanity altogether and looks at the broader picture of the judgment of God. Even angels are not shielded from His wrath, says Jude! False teachers take notice! Nothing escapes His eye!

Jude seems to have in mind here the story that has given rise to many myths through the millennia of time. This is the original. This really happened. The story took place in Genesis 6. Recall that Satan has fallen, from Genesis 3. The counter-attack has begun, and at least a part of the agenda is exposed here in the 6^th chapter.

Satan commissions a number of his agents to go to Earth and actually form relationships, personal ones, with whatever females they desired. Their own domain had been in the regions where God is. But when they were removed from God, His glory, His beauty, they desired other things.

It is true with men also, isn’t it? The less desire for God, the more desire for “other things.”

How human desire actually formed in angelic beings is not totally explained, but the enemy of our soul was able to wrest permission from God to make it happen. The “giants” that were born to these relationships were meant to wage war against the people of God and God Himself. It was this wickedness that precipitated the flood.

Jude gives us another insight on angelic beings. The disobedient ones are in some spiritual way bound in chains. They are in a dark place. Their judgment will be made public on the “great day” that is coming.

Oh what a day that will be. All men should tremble, even those who know the Judge. It will be an unparalleled catastrophe when the rejected Creator and Savior of the world metes out the final manifestations of His justified wrath.

In a similar way, as an aside here, we understand how human spirits can be “bound” in the “Pit” mentioned in Revelation. The antichrist waits there even now for the angel to come and release him to do his dastardly work.

Example 3. Sodom and Gomorrah, verse 7. Sexual immorality is the reason given for the downfall, the utter destruction, of the cities destroyed in spite of Abraham’s prayers. Ten righteous people could not be found there. And the symbol, the clearest manifestation, of their unrighteousness, was in the area of sexual sin. They were unfaithful to their marriage partners. Probably there was child sexual abuse. Name all of America’s present sexual evils and you will get a picture of it.

But there was more then, and more now. These men were not just craving other women, and little girls. Jude is very specific here. Not your run-of-the-mill sexual cravings, but cravings for strange flesh. We could wish that the translators had just left the Greek word alone here, and translated it as it is translated in most of the rest of the New Testament. The word heteros simply means “other.” Other flesh. Not the “normal” sins of the flesh, if any sins can be labeled normal, but “other” flesh. We know from reading the Sodom story exactly what Jude was referencing.

There’s a pattern here. Israel not satisfied with God’s miracles and guidance, and beginning to crave for more until God has had enough of their dissatisfaction. Angels not satisfied with their lot in the very heavens, beginning to lust for things they see on earth. The residents of Sodom and surroundings, not satisfied with the gifts of intimacy God has ordained, go after “other” flesh, and bring judgment.

A question comes at the end of the verse, as it seems Jude is saying here that the vengeance they suffered, fire and brimstone from heaven, is somehow still burning, and will do so eternally. Those who want to deny an eternal hell will call out this verse and tell us that “eternal” is not really eternal. Eventually even hell fire will end, they say, just as Sodom and Gomorrah’s fire has ended.

Not so fast. Reaching this conclusion over the serious words of other Scriptures will mislead you.

First possibility: is the Lake of Fire, invisible to us now, not still burning? Is it not possible that the fire that only began to judge these evil ones on Earth, continues to judge them under the Earth? What torments the unsaved suffer now is without their bodies, to be sure, but one must deal with the rich man of Jesus’ story who was tormented in the flames of Hell immediately after his death. The soul does not sleep. God’s people go immediately to Jesus. The others immediately to their punishment. Bodies of saved and unsaved will be resurrected one day. Unsaved bodies will be eternally equipped to bear the punishment God has for those who disobey. But there is a form of fire that has already begun.

Second possibility: Translators who have seen a difficulty in this verse have corrected the text to read, essentially, that the punished souls of Sodom are set forth as an example of those who will suffer eternal fire (in hell). The Greek will bear such a translation. Several translations bring forth this idea.