What is hell?
Simply put, hell is eternity without God.
Fire and torment are things we often associate with the concept of eternal damnation, and they are indeed Biblical descriptions – Jesus Christ says, “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Luke 12:38), and the apostle John writes of his vision of the Judgment before the Great White Throne, “anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). But what makes hell truly hell is the complete and irrevocable absence of the love, mercy, and Spirit of God.
In that respect, hell is an extension of how one lived his or her life on Earth. So too is eternal life in heaven. If a person gives their life to Christ and lives and abides in Him in their temporary, mortal life, they will share that same fellowship with Him, in His eternal presence, in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). On the flip side of this coin, one who lived their mortal life on Earth in an unrepentant state of disbelief and rejection of the salvation offered to them by Jesus Christ, accomplished through His blood on the cross, will continue to live without Him and the light and love for which He once suffered to attain for them. This absence of God's love is manifested in the form of everlasting agony. The non-believer continues to have it their way – an existence without God.
The phrase “hell was not made for humans” is often used. This refers to Jesus’ words about those who will be turned away from entering heaven. He describes a place “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). It’s not necessarily as if God has said, “let there be a place of torment for people who don’t believe in Me.” But even so, there remains a hideous place of everlasting anguish to which the wicked and unbelieving will go.
Where is hell?
The caricature often painted of hell is a pit at the center of the earth. In fact, many Christians who lived during the first century and the years following believed that Sodom and Gomorrah were still burning far below the earth's surface.
But if we look at this from the eternal viewpoint, we see that this cannot be the case. Eternity for those who accepted Jesus Christ involves, again, “a new heaven and a new earth” in the eternal city of New Jerusalem. Being that the currently existing planets, galaxies, and their elements will be no more when Jesus returns to judge all souls, hell cannot exist under the earth's surface, not even in its very molten core. So we must think of hell as another realm, so to speak, not unlike the concepts of “Hades” or “the Netherworld.”
A notable difference between the Biblical concept of hell and those of pagan religions is that hell is not simply a “land of the dead” – not only will the dead rise for the Judgment, but so too will those who are alive at the unknown hour when Jesus Christ returns: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Concerning the Lord's second advent, the apostle Paul comforts believers who despaired at the thought of their fellow believers who had died: “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).
This makes it clear that Jesus' return will not be seen only by the dead, but by the living as well.
A place of spiritual torment exists while we on Earth still live. Jesus says just as much in a harrowing tale He tells found in Luke, chapter 16, wherein He describes what happens after the deaths of a sinful rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. (This passage is often incorrectly thought of as a parable, but unlike other parables, the text never indicates that Jesus means this story as a fable or a metaphor, as the New Testament so often does with His actual parables; it does not conclude with Jesus Himself speaking a coda or summary of the parable or its meaning, as that is found in the words of the people involved in the story themselves – including one Jesus refers to by his specific name rather than strictly “a certain beggar.”)
In this story, the merciless rich man finds himself in fiery damnation. The rich man, realizing he has no hope of escape, begs Abraham, to whom he speaks from his agony, to send Lazarus to warn his brothers of this danger: “'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'”
(It is also worth noting that Abraham tells the condemned rich man, “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us”).
Who goes to hell?
The answer to this question is not: gays, addicts, suicide victims, or saved people who backslide or make mistakes.
It has often been erroneously said that suicide in the “unpardonable sin.” This is not true. The Biblical “unpardonable sin” cannot be committed today, as it applied to the Pharisees in Jesus' generation who attributed His power to demons rather than to God. Jesus proclaims, and Mark commentates, in Mark 3:28-30: “'Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation' – because they said, 'He has an unclean spirit.'”
As that sin cannot be committed today, as the Pharisees of that day are all dead, the “unpardonable sin” is more of an unpardonable state – the state of disbelief, the denial of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only way to salvation. This rejection come by atheistic means, by the denial of Jesus through the worship of other, false gods, or empty-hearted or heretical use of His name (those who unrepentantly blaspheme God by teaching false doctrines that are not found in Scripture, those who twist and distort God's word and teach lies. Revelation 22:15 mentions “whoever loves and practices a lie” as among those who are “outside” New Jerusalem).
It should be noted that when “sinners” are mentioned as those condemned to hell, this refers to unrepentant sinners: those whose flagrant disregard for God's warning attempts to make a mockery of His commands; those who have been rebuked and taught many times, but deny that God is against their doings and continue in them with abandon and delight.
Those who use the name of Jesus in an empty and insincere manner for personal gain, but whose hearts are far from Him, will find themselves in hell. Jesus declared, “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (Matthew 15:7-8).
Jesus describes those who emptily use His name but do not heed His commandments, and what awaits them at the final Judgment: ““Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked” and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”” (Matthew 25:41-46).
How can a spirit feel physical agony?
This question comes from our limited perception of spiritual things. We cannot help this limitation as we are in our current condition, spiritual but bound by flesh and elements, though we look forward to a day when we will be free of our earthly limitations and understand wonders and mysteries of God. As Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Paul later writes, concerning this dichotomy and rigor of living spiritual lives in physical bodies, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 4:1-5).
We, being so used to thinking of things physically and materially, are often baffled by the idea of a spirit – in theory not limited to physical things – experiencing pain. Pain, which we only know in physical and psychological ways. But we forget that torment is not limited to the physical. Think of the worst emotional times of your life. Did it not feel as though something deeper than just a psychological, chemical reaction was happening? Did it not feel as though your very being was held in the grip of pain? Did you find yourself thinking a physical ailment would be a relief compared to your sorrows, regrets, fears, and anxieties?
Think of this and multiply it by eternity.
As previously mentioned, what makes hell truly hell is the permanent absence of God. And that would truly render any soul in a state of eternal agony.
If there are already people in hell,
why will they be judged again?
Much like the heaven that exists now, the hell that exists now is not the “ultimate version.” Jesus tells the believing thief who was crucified with Him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In the aforementioned story of the rich man and Lazarus, He describes in beautiful terms what happened to Lazarus upon his death: “So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). This is a "temporary heaven," so to speak, that will be immensely overshadowed by the final residence of those saved by Jesus Christ, that is, New Jerusalem: “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 21:22 – 22:1-5).
The afterlife for believers that exists now is no doubt a beautiful place, but it surely pales in comparison to the one where all believers will ultimately live forever. This New Jerusalem comes after the Judgment at the Great White Throne.
But those souls for whom a true Christian should weep are likewise in a temporary place: a horrible form of torment indeed, but their current place of agony will be outdone by the “lake of fire,” the ultimate and everlasting punishment, as mentioned earlier. This fate too comes after the Great White Throne.
It must be stressed that the “temporary hell” is not purgatory. The false doctrines of purgatory and other similar ideas imply that these lost souls can be refined or purified after death, or prayed for and saved after death, and that their spiritual state is more of intermediacy than agony. However, there is absolutely nothing in Scripture to suggest such a state after death for the atheist, agnostic, or unrepentant sinner. Death is permanent, as are one's choices and beliefs they held at the time their soul departed. These cannot be atoned for in the afterlife. One must accept Christ while they live on Earth.
What happens between death and final Judgment?
The notion of purgatory brings us to a question often asked and debated among Christians and non-believers alike: when we die, are we in a state of “spiritual sleep,” a kind of unconsciousness in which our souls are reserved for the Day of Judgment? Or are we, as described, sent to bliss or banishment?
Ecclesiastes 12:7, after describing the difficult final days of a human being and their approaching death, states, “the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Paul, as we have already seen, refers to the dead who lived in Christ as being “asleep.” Chapter 12 of the book of the prophet Daniel tells us, while describing an end and a rising of the dead, uses similar language: “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
These verses certainly suggest that bliss or damnation are not found immediately after death, but rather that the soul is kept in a sort of rest or reserve until Judgment. Other verses however, support the notion that one's soul tastes their ultimate eternal fate right away. Jesus' account of Lazarus and the rich man, which the author has already asserted to be a true story and not a parable, describes a complete consciousness and torment while those who still live on Earth continue to do so - the rich man mentions his brothers who have not yet died.
This debate could go on for days between two Christians, or between a Christian and a non-believer, but debating and arguing never led a soul to Jesus. Whichever scenario is correct, the bottom line is made clear by Scripture: there is an eternal paradise and an eternal damnation that exist for the believer and the non-believer respectively. Whether the soul is taken to the bosom of Abraham or to the bosom of fire as soon as its body ceases to live, both are permanent, one is amazing, the other is abhorrent.
What this author believes on the debate is clear, but there are things in Scripture that even a believer cannot be absolutely dogmatic about. However, this does not apply to issues of salvation – that God's Word is inerrant and Divinely Authored, and that repentance from sin and acceptance of His Son Jesus is the only way to eternal life. Christians can disagree on non-salvational points in Scripture without having to accuse one another of heresy: “is the soul conscious after death?”, “did Jesus die only for 'the elect'?” “is the 'behemoth' described in Job an elephant or a dinosaur?” These are not core issues of the doctrine of Christ.
Is the soul simply destroyed in hell?
The Scripturally unsound “annihilationist” view of hell contends that, after a punishment equal to one’s degree of wickedness, the soul simply “dies” and ceases to exist, or that the afterlife for unbelievers is simply the annihilation of the soul. Proponents of this view will note that the lake of fire described in Revelation is referred to as “the second death,” or will twist the meaning of Romans 6:23 to make a summary of their view of the contrast of hell and heaven – “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But what the annihilationist fails to understand is that this verse, with the rest of the fifth and sixth chapters of Romans (and Bible verses must be understood in context, as with any other document), is not telling us a life lived in unrepentant sin leads to merely the end of one’s soul after physical death. It is actually describing the result of sin on Earth; that the reason death reigns in our world is because of the transgression of Adam and Eve (Romans 5:12-21). These passages tell us that sin and death go hand in hand; it was a result of sin in the Garden of Eden that death came into the world – “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” This did not mean Adam and Even would instantly drop dead, but rather that they would surely become subject to decay and death, contrary to the life God had given them in His Garden.
But as Romans 6:23 tells us, it was as a result of sin that Christ died to atone for our wrongs, to offer us the free gift of everlasting life.
The death described in this verse does not refer to a simple snuffing out of the soul. Jesus Himself refers to eternity for the unrepentant as “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46).
In fairness, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jesus' words in Matthew 10:28. Though I don't believe it describes the soul's end, the text is as follows (NKJV) - "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
Are there “levels” of hell?
Concerning a question many people ask, “is hell the same for everyone who goes there?”, I’d have to say no. There are different rewards in heaven, and I believe there are different degrees, so to speak, of hell. Jesus tells the village of Capernaum, because of their unbelief even after the miracles He performed, that it will be “more tolerable” for Sodom and Gomorrah than for Capernaum on the Day of Judgment.
I don’t believe the average agnostic or atheist will experience the same kind of torment as people like Nero or Stalin. Some people, like Osama bin Laden or Hitler, might find themselves cast into a much more agonizing form of eternal damnation.
This is another non-salvational issue that does not affect the doctrine of Christ or His Scripture. I could very well be wrong about different “degrees” of suffering in hell.
But, again, the bottom line is that hell is eternal, unbearable anguish for anyone who goes there, be they the passive one who never found time or reason to repent, or the tyrant who suppressed the name of Jesus and killed their own citizens. And the reason, again, is the absence of God and His rich mercy.
Is Satan in charge of hell?
No. Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and be subject to eternal torment: “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).
He will not reign in hell. The Bible says that Satan's dominion is actually our world. Paul mentions the devil's spiritual activity in this world: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience...” (Ephesians 2:1-2). “The prince of the power of the air” refers to Satan and his demonic influence and battles against those in Christ.
Paul also calls Satan “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4). John says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).
Addressing the church in Pergamos, Jesus refers to the evil spiritual dominion Satan has established: “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. And you hold fast to My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells” (Revelation 2:13).
It must be remembered that God is not the “good God” and Satan “the bad god.” Satan is a created being, and is subject to the will of God, who is sovereign. The devil can only go so far as God allows, and is only given what God allows. See the beginning chapters of the story of Job for an example.
Did Jesus mention hell?
Jesus talks about hell more than other figure in the Bible. A term often translated “hell” when spoken by Jesus in the New Testament is “Gehenna.” Gehenna was once the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and became a synonym for abomination and wickedness. It was there that two of Judah’s most wicked kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, sacrificed their children to the false god Molech. Gehenna became a place for burning refuse, a landfill, and in Jewish apocalyptic literature, a synonym for hell itself. In the ninth chapter of Mark’s account, Jesus, speaking to Jews who would be familiar with the connotation of the name of the valley, says that the fire of hell (“Gehenna”) “shall never be quenched.” Also in this chapter, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 66:24, describing a worm that does not die, and a fire that is not quenched.
Jesus also describes eternal torment in His condemnation of those who proclaimed Him but did not love Him: “And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
Perhaps most stirringly, He says in John 5:28-29: "for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."
How should a Christian feel about hell?
Unrelenting sorrow. Not delight or glee at the thought of anyone spending their eternity there. To get to hell, one must deny and never know Jesus. And why would a Christian want that for anyone?
How should a Christian tell others about hell?
They shouldn't. A Christian's focus should be sharing the good news – that is, the Gospel – of Jesus Christ. Our focus should not be the damnation that awaits those who reject this Gospel. Undoubtedly, in conversations about Jesus and the Bible, the subject of hell can arise, and a Christian should not be hesitant to be honest about the reality of hell. But no one will listen to those who only rave about fire and brimstone.
The center of Christian evangelism must be centered on Jesus and the light and life He offers, both on Earth and in eternity.
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| "Conscience: Judas" by Nikolai Ge |
