“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee,” Matthew 11:23-24.
“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire,” 2 Peter 2:20-22.
It is hard to conceive of anyone being made worse off by hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ but it is undoubtedly so, for those who hear but reject or those who hear and make a sham profession of faith, are like unto the seed sown on the ‘stony ground’ in the Saviour’s parable of “The Sower”, in Mathew 13.
“Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away,” verses 5-6.
Explanation
The Lord Jesus explains to His disciples what He means by this analogy.
“But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended,” verses 20-21.
There is terrible judgment awaiting those who reject the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and perhaps worse still for those who make a pretence of obeying the gospel only to cast it aside later.
Sodomites
The judgment that awaits the sodomite is explicitly spelt out by Jude.
“Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,” Jude 1:7.
They suffered the “vengeance of eternal fire”! It is true that “The LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire . . . out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt,” Genesis 19:24-26.
Destroyed
However, that fire only destroyed “Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them” in a physical sense. The inhabitants of these cities DIED under that judgment.
But further fire awaited those poor benighted and rebellious souls! They were thus killed and then their eternal souls were cast into hell fire! That fire is one of which the rich man in hell complained: “I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:19-31).
And even from there, they will one day be cast into even greater burnings!
The Final Judgment
“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire,” Revelation 20:11-15.
This is what awaits the gospel-rejecter and the person who relies upon a false and empty profession of faith in Christ to get them to heaven.
Sorrow
I referred to the citizens of Sodom and the other cities of the plain, as ‘poor benighted and rebellious souls’. It is not that I feel any sympathy with them in their perversion, for I most certainly do not. It is just that no believer, who has the least comprehension of what dreadful wrath awaits sinners, cannot but shudder at the thought of gospel-rejectors entering that place of torment.
I recall once saying in a Free Presbyterian church where I was preaching, that if we did have at least some understanding of what damned sinners would face through all eternity, we would weep for the worst of them.
I even mentioned two leading IRA men, and I heard later that there were those, even the minister in whose church I was preaching, that thought that I had taken leave of my senses by saying that!
Luke 19
Had any come to me and questioned me 0n the matter, I would have simply turned them to Luke’s gospel, chapter 19.
“And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen . . . And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and WEPT over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation,” verses 37, 41-44.
Had the Saviour ’taken leave of His senses’?
After all, He was weeping over the fate of the greatest criminals of all time — those who would deny the Holy One and the Just, and desire a murderer to be granted unto them, and kill the Prince of life! (Acts 3:14-15).
I am referring, of course, to those Jews who would but in a short time after this touching scene took place, cry out repeatedly and fervently in rejection of their Messiah. They did this even when Pilate, the Roman governor, found nothing worthy of death in Christ, and wanted to release Him.
“But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he (said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will,” Luke 23:21-25.
Tears
If Christ was moved to tears over those who would so wickedly reject Him in a very short time, mere days later, how right it is for us to have, at least to some degree, pity for lost sinners, no matter who they are!
He Who had wrought untold miracles during His three year ministry, healing every known disease that had afflicted thousands in Israel, even raising the dead and pardoning the sins of an innumerable host, wept aloud and publicly for His murderers. Is there not a pattern here for us to observe?
The Greek word translated “wept” in verse 41, literally means “to mourn, weep, lament”. The Saviour’s weepings would have been most pitiful to witness.
I cannot think of Capernaum and its privileges, as outlined by Christ, without thinking of the generations of gospel privileges enjoyed by Ulster!
Within the last one hundred years there has been revival blessing poured out upon this corner of Ireland.
In the 1920s, God raised up William Patteson Nicholson, better known as W P Nicholson, who was used of God, over quite a few years. Then from the early 1950s until well into the 1980s, Dr Ian Paisley was God’s instrument in seeing many saved and new, separatist congregations formed.
Some yet alive can recall those blessed times in tents and halls and in the open-air, when the ‘Big Man’, as he was affectionately called, was mightily used of God to the extension of Christ’s kingdom! My own father and mother, both now in glory, were restored to fellowship with the Lord, and my siblings and their spouses, all experienced God’s saving mercy under Ian Paisley’s preaching
“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee,” Matthew 11:23-24.
During the Saviour’s ministry in Capernaum there was a lifting of it up to heaven! They were enabled to see something of its blessings, its glories, its desirability!
And yet they rejected that privilege and became liable for greater punishment than wicked Sodom!
The hand that exalted Capernaum unto heaven will be the same hand that shall cast Capernaum down to everlasting damnation!
Is it to be the same with Ulster? What a dreadful consideration!
This is my perception of the blessings bestowed within living memory upon Ulster. There has been a lifting of us up to heaven and tasting “of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, (Hebrews 6:4-5). Now, the flame of that blessing has almost died out and there are those who seek to light ‘fires of their own making’, drafting in the ways and methods of the world to stir an interest in heavenly matters.
(Listen to — “Preparation for worship”
Of course, that will not work! A rejection of God’s way of promoting His kingdom, is something out of the same stable as the ‘false profession’ of a make-believe Christian.
It is only man-made and fake!
Are there not many in Ulster today who come under the title of this article?
Those for whom it would be better had they never heard the gospel!
Hearing and rejecting makes them worthy of greater judgement than those who have never heard God’s Word.
To any reading this article, who have heard the gospel — at their mother’s knee, in the Sabbath school, on the Lord’s Day in God’s house, by loving admonition from a friend, by a gospel tract, aye, and any who have spent years in a Christian school — to YOU I say: “Flee from the wrath to come”!
The wrath that awaits you in eternity is worse than that which awaits the damned sinners of Sodom.
That is what the Lord Jesus has said!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Monday, 8th September 2025