I once heard a pastor preach on the topic of hell. It was called “Why the Intellectual Honest is Not Christian.” A catchy title, but it is often true. The teaching of hell, a place of torture and non-stop punishment in flames without end, doesn’t line up with the character of God. If a person thinks it through, the sacrifice of God the Father by giving His Son Jesus so that we might not perish (John 3:16) is at the extreme opposite end of God’s supposed solution and punishment for the lost. Mercy, justice, or torture with skin on fire; Which fits the character of God? John, the beloved, described the essence of God’s character this way:
“…God is love.”
1 John 4:8b
From the central concept of God is love, all other doctrines of the Bible must line up. If not, we have a massive misunderstanding about who God is. How can He be merciful and full of love for even the worse of lost sinners? Then respond to rejection by torturing them forever? If this is true, it would be the ultimate form of unsatisfied, unquenchable revenge. Can you think of anything more cruel? Maybe driving straw under the fingernail every second of the day.
Moses was allowed to see God’s “glory” and His “goodness” as He walked by.
And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.” Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.
After seeing God walk by, Moses didn’t describe God’s physical appearance, but the characteristics of God:
“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,
Exodus 34:6
This is where we must start understanding who God is and what His name represents. This goodness, this kindness, leads someone to want to follow Him. God gave us the ability to reason. Non-Stop torture for quadrillion years, then starting over makes no sense for a merciful, loving God.
Only after we understand that God is love, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness can we look at God’s plan for those who are “lost.” No, not all are saved and live forever. It is the opposite; they die forever, They would not be happy in heaven.
This question must be asked: Which is God’s method of reaching the lost: The threat of personal eternal punishment or falling in love with a sacrificial God?
Hell is taught as a place either under the earth or somewhere in the universe where the souls of those who reject Christ spend eternity in flames and torture. Hell, and mercy cannot be in the same sermon or teaching for this idea. They are mutually exclusive because the burning flames of punishment would eliminate mercy.
Before accepting Christ as an unbeliever, this idea of God’s punishment created a crisis of faith for me. How could I trust a God who held this threat over my head? Love me, or I will torture you. It made no sense. There was no logic there.
What if I had tried to win my wife by saying, “If you don’t love me, I will torture you.” Would that attract her to me? Sadly, I know someone who is caught in this type of Godless marriage. The husband has (on several occasions threatened to kill the wife and her father if she left him. What do you think her life is like? Is she free or in captivity? Is she in love or in shackles?
As an atheist, this idea of burning anyone for eternity gave me more reasons to believe that the Bible and religion were all about controlling people and scaring them into submission.
What amazed my rational, logical thought process is this fact: Many Christians, in particular, get angry if someone rejects the idea of such a place or a God that doesn’t put the sinners into a living place of flames. They think it is unchristian and unbiblical not to believe the lost stay alive in hot coals of fire, crying for relief. They insinuate it is what the sinner chooses, and it serves them right for rejecting Christ or living a life of rebellion and sin against God.
God and the bible teach justice. Is eternal torture justice? Does punishment fit the crime?
Life In Prison-Justice?
A man was driving on the freeway going 75 mph in a 55 mph speed zone. He is taken to court, where the judge sentences him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Is this justice?
Another man is caught in the same speed zone and is brought to the court. The judge hears the charges. He had been at a bar and left at 10:00 PM to head home. He drifts over the double yellow line and kills an innocent family. The dirty, smelly man is unrepentant. The judge gives him life in prison without parole. Is this justice? Likely. But here is the sad thing, some teach that God says, “No!” This is not justice! God condemns him to life in flames with no parole after He dies in prison, not because of the act of murder, but because he rejected Jesus and never repented. But here is something else to consider. The loving, hard-working husband and father also killed by the drunk is also condemned to flames because he rejected Christ and hated going to church with his wife and children. He was a good man but didn’t believe in Jesus and Christianity.
A rational person has a hard time wrapping their head around eternity, much less the idea of the unbearable stinging of flames on the skin, lips, arms, and legs kept alive FOREVER by God to “punish” the lost. These human torches cry out for actual death to escape the flames, but the merciful God says, “No!” The human torches, or as we call them, “lost,” can be anyone from Hitler to Uncle Bill who never attended church, never opened a Bible, didn’t believe in Jesus but was a good faithful husband and father. It includes all those who worship other gods or who never heard the story of Jesus. Their punishment is never satisfied by a loving, merciful God.
Let’s explore this topic. It is essential for Christians to know the truth and know their heavenly Father and His character. Would a merciful, loving God do such a thing? What method did God and Jesus employ to bring people into a loving, saving relationship with Him?
Following are the two typical modern understandings of hell. This is what a majority of protestant Christians trust to be true.
View 1: If you die and are unsaved (e.g., did not profess Christ), your immortal soul immediately (or after a quick judgment scene) goes to a place under the earth where the devil resides, and blistering hot flames torment your soul throughout eternity without end. You will scream and desire to die, but you will stay alive in flames, never finding relief. This could be called the immediate and present Hell.
View 2: If you die and are unsaved, your immortal soul is judged at the Great White Throne judgment at the end of time. Your soul and body are cast into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and his angels, where flames torture you throughout eternity. You will scream and desire to die, but you will stay alive in the fire, never finding relief. We will call this future Hell.
The Catholic church throws in a couple of “holding” places, such as purgatory, and some talk about a place called “Abraham’s bosom.” Those in these places can be prayed into heaven. In some cases, money can pay them into heaven.
There may be other slight variations of hell, but if you ask a Christian or a pastor about hell, this is very close to the answers given. It is often softened up to take out the idea of a Holy God torturing the unsaved by saying non-biblical things like,
“The lost choose hell.”
Is that right? Who in their right mind would choose to be tortured? The Bible teaches they choose death over eternal life not so much from a conscious choice but instead through unbelief in Jesus and rejecting the pull of the Holy Spirit to repent and turn away from the sins that lead to death.
The common idea with both basic views about hell involves non-stop burning, which is a miracle! The miracle of staying alive with a body to experience pain! It also requires an immortal soul. A term not used in the Bible. We often hear preachers say, “You will live eternally in one of two places.” Is this true? Does the lost also have eternal life? Are their souls immortal? What is tortured by the flames? The soul? The body? Both?
What does the Bible have to say about all this?
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The Bible’s Teaching on the Fate of the Lost
Some will say, “The immortal soul is being punished, not the body.“ Of course, there is no biblical proof for this. It contradicts those who support a literal interpretation of the Rich Man and Lazarus, where the rich man has a tongue and gets thirsty in flames. He has a body!
Some will say, “God is just, and this is their fate. We can’t understand it and aren’t supposed to.”
Is this true?
Indeed, our thoughts and ways are not like His, but there are things He has revealed that we can know with certainty. “
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to our children and to us forever,
Deuteronomy 29:29
Is the fate of the lost one of those things revealed to us? Yes! But we must understand it from ALL that has been shown to us!
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The Bible tells us that eternal life is based on knowing God and having a relationship with Him. We are drawn to Him as He is lifted up (Cross). Is a torturing God the One we want to get to know? Or is God like a father who loves his child? Does God use hell to scare us into coming to Him, or does he draw us in a different more divine way?
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
John 17:3
Knowing God The Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is essential in our experience and salvation from death. To have a false conception of God is dangerous, as we shall see.
We are not scared into a relationship with the Lord; He draws us with “lovingkindness.”
The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.
Jeremiah 31:3
It is the cross, not hell that draws people to Jesus.
‘”…And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.‘ This He said, signifying by what death He would die.”
John 12:32-33
That day on a lonely hill, Jesus dying on a rough wooden cross is the ultimate demonstration of the sacrifice and love God offers to all people. A clear view of the things leading up to the death of Jesus and the day He said, “It is finished,” will bring the sin weary to repentance, forgiveness, and salvation from eternal death.
His death was what all lost people would experience—an end without hope. When Jesus “became sin for us,” He felt the separation from God the Father. He felt forsaken.
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It is unbiblical to think that the soul is immortal. The soul is not eternal. Only God has immortality. The saved are not given immortality until Christ returns.
If a soul can die, it is not immortal.
“ Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die..”
Ezekiel 18:4
Only God has immortality!
I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; and this will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
1 Timothy 6:14-16
Immortality is not given to us until Jesus returns and we are changed. We “put on” immortality then and not before.
Want to know a mystery about death that has been solved? Something God has revealed to us and our children? Listen closely to the words of Paul:
“Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.””
1 Corinthians 15: 51-54
Is this not as clear as a bell? Immortality is “put on” when Jesus returns! We sleep in death, waiting for the resurrection just as the Bible describes. This waiting is like a mere micro-second. A person dies. Years if not millennia, pass, and they come forth in new immortal bodies at the return of Christ. The same is true for the “lost.” Except, they meet a different fate.
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“Death has come upon all men by the offense of one man. But, through grace and the gift of righteousness, life came by Jesus Christ.”
Romans 5:12, 17
Wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 3:23.
Wages are something due to us for our work of sin. Sin leads to death, not life. Both are mutually exclusive. You can’t have both. You must have one or the other. The gift of eternal life is reserved only for the saved.
He that has the Son has life. He that does not have the Son does not have life.
1 John 5:12
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
Here is a simple, straightforward comparison of what awaits the lost VS the saved:
Believes in Jesus = everlasting life
Not believing = perish (eternal death)
“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life….”
John 3:36
Believes in the Son = everlasting life
Does not believe in the = shall not see life.
The Lord can destroy the soul,
“And 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.”
Matthew 10:28
The body and soul are destroyed in hell. It is not kept alive to suffer throughout eternity. If there is a fear to be taught, it is the fear that both the body and the soul are forever destroyed, while the redeemed have a new immortal body and life without end.
The Power and Miracle of the Resurrection
As described before, the belief in God AND the resurrection of Jesus are both vital to receiving salvation from eternal death:
… if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9
It was Paul’s goal to be raised from the dead…Not to die and be with Him,
” if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:11
The mortal “puts on” immortality, and death is no more when Jesus returns.
The dead in Christ are resurrected.
“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. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words”
1 Thessalonians 4: 15-18
Note: Those who died in Christ and those alive when He returns start to “be with the Lord forever” when He returns. So, the resurrection is our hope…Our eternity with the Lord does not begin until He returns.
Jesus will raise the saved from the grave on the last day.
“This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.”
John 6:39
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
John 6:44
“Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
John 6:54
“Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
John 11:24
The teaching of resurrection as our hope is an ancient truth. Example: Job said,
“my redeemer lives and I will see God in the flesh in the latter day upon the earth.”
Job 19:25, 26
The resurrection is crucial because we are lost if it doesn’t happen.
Our faith is futile without the resurrection. Our hope is in the return of Christ and the Resurrection, not in dying and floating off to heaven.
“And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”
1 Corinthians 15:14-19
The Rich Man and Lazarus story does not include the resurrection in its story. It is clearly a parable directed at the snooty self-righteous Pharisees. To say it is literal brings many contradictions to other clear verses that are not parables. This parable comes near the end of a long series of parables spoken by Jesus. There was a resurrection of another Lazarus that clearly describes the state of those who die. The event is described in John 11. Here Jesus compares Lazarus’ death with sleep:
“Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep…Then said Jesus, unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.”
John 11:14
Notice something else; When Jesus brought Lazarus back to life after being dead for four days, he did not say to him to come down but rather come forth (v. 43). If Lazarus had been in heaven, he would have had many things to share, don’t you think? Why is he silent? It is because he was unconscious until Jesus called for him to “come forth.”
The unjust have a resurrection, too (after the millennium):
“I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.”
Act 24:15
The “rest of the dead” come up long after the first resurrection:
“And they (the saved) lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished.”
Revelation 20: 4, 5
The second death is the fate of the lost who are not part of the first resurrection but rise in the 2nd resurrection. Revelation 20:6
“Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power….”
Revelation 20:6
At the end of all things, the saved may have died once, but they will never have to die again because they have been given immortality. But the lost who died once will die again, fully aware that their death will be forever. This knowledge is their quick punishment. They acknowledge they were wrong and dismissive of Jesus:
As I live, says the Lord, Every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall confess to God.”
Romans 4:11
At the end of time, fire destroys the earth, Satan, and sinners:
Jesus comes as a thief in the night in which the heavens, earth, elements, and all the works are burned up.
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.”
2 Peter 3:10
“The Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”
2 Thessalonians 1:8, 9
What is everlasting? The destruction. This is the punishment, never existing again.
The wicked are destroyed forever (Psalm 92:7, Psalm 9:5)
“When the wicked spring up like grass,
And when all the workers of iniquity flourish,
It is that they may be destroyed forever.”
Psalm 92:7
Death and hell (grave) are destroyed!
“Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”
Revelation 20:14
Fire comes down from God when the resurrected lost try to surround the beloved city. This fire devours them. When something is consumed or devoured, there is nothing left.
“They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.”
Revelation 20:9
“For our God is a consuming fire.”
Hebrews 12:29
The Anti-Christ (lawless one) is destroyed when Christ returns by the brightness of the Lord’s coming.
“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.”
2 Thessalonians 2:8
Wicked is burned up, reducing them to nothing
“For behold, the day is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,
Says the Lord of hosts,
“That will leave them neither root nor branch.”
Malachi 4:1
Satan is burned to ashes and shall never be anymore
“You defiled your sanctuaries
By the multitude of your iniquities,
By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst;
It devoured you,
And I turned you to ashes upon the earth.
In the sight of all who saw you.”
All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you;
You have become a horror,
And shall be no more forever”
Ezekiel 28:18, 19
So, Scripture is clear: sin’s wages are death, not eternal life in burning flames. There is a hell of fire, but it is a work of eternal destruction. Even Satan’s fate is total destruction. God’s end-time plan will wipe the universe clean of sin and its results. There won’t be some special corner of the universe for people to suffer forever.
Eternal life is given only to those who turn to Jesus and trust Him. Life eternal is given to those who know Him and not just about Him. It is all about Jesus. He holds the keys to the grave and death:
I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold; I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
Revelation 1:18
Because we believe He can resurrect us and give us immortality, we have passed from death to life. I want to be part of the first resurrection, don’t you?
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.
John 5:24
I often wondered why God wipes away all tears. The passage in Revelation 21: 4, Revelation 7:17, and Isaiah 25:8 are in the context of the end of time when all of God’s people arrive in heaven at the same time after the resurrection, as described in 1 Thess. 4:15-18
The saints will spend their first day in heaven wondering about a loved one who didn’t make it. Then they will understand from the Lord Himself that they were lost and will never be anymore. There will be tears in heaven, but Jesus will literally and symbolically wipe away the tears. He will explain and show them the many opportunities given to them to receive eternal life as a free gift, but they refused it.
Then all the saints will bow, throw their crowns, and proclaim
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure, they are and were created.
Revelation 4:11
God is just! God is worthy! For this, he receives glory, honor, and power!
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