Matthew 13:41-43, 49-50. The tragic consequences of offending God and His program, and of living a life outside the grace-inspired law of God, are outlined in these electrifying verses. A posse of angels will be sent far and wide to arrest evil men wherever they are found. This is no parable, by the way. Rather, it is the explanation of the parable of the weeds, told earlier in the chapter.

The arrested, convicted criminals will be thrown into fire, a picture consistent with all that Scripture teaches about the final destination of the wicked. Wailing. Grimacing in pain. They rejected God's payment of righteousness in Christ and now must pay the penalty themselves. And how long must one suffer to pay a penalty to an eternal God, that God Himself paid with the dearness of His own Son? Think about it... Oh we have not yet fathomed the absolute holiness of our God.

But neither have we fathomed His grace. For that other group in the parable, the guys on the white horses, because of the grace shown at Calvary, received by them, will shine forever.

Do you see a hint of a future reconciliation here? I do not.

Matthew 22:13-14. Here is the classic story of a man who came to a wedding feast improperly clothed. His punishment is to be not only ejected from the wedding, but taken to a place of outer darkness where unutterable suffering will take place. A parable it is, but the characters don't seem to behave as characters we know. It is an earthly story, but the heavenly meaning escapes some of us.

Here indeed the Universalist has a serious problem with the severity of the reaction. You wear jeans to a wedding and you must writhe in pain while being placed in solitary confinement? This is our cavalier approach to the holy character of our God. The sinfulness of sin has not sunk in. But, write it down, there is no "little" sin when a man knowingly raises his will in defiance of the Almighty's.

This is not a parable that deals with repentance and God's grace. This parable is directed to a nation upon whom the grace of God had been poured super-abundantly, yet in generation after generation was blinded to the nature of that grace and their unworthiness to receive it. Here the grace is withdrawn.

It's a fact all Gentile persons must learn to accept too. The day of grace will end, the justice of God will prevail, His enemies will be destroyed in a lake of fire. And God will owe no man an apology.

Matthew 23:13, 33. Jesus' feelings toward the Pharisees and their hypocrisy is no secret in the Scriptures. Chapter 23 is a no-holds-barred out and out condemnation from the lips of one who told us never to judge another man. But men shall be judged. By this Man.

The Pharisees actually had it in their power to admit or exclude persons from the Kingdom. Proving that there is a Kingdom. Proving that many will not be a part of it. It seems tedious to have to say things such as these, but the argument against us is that eventually we are all one big happy family.