Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
May 15, 1983
Why I Believe in Hell
2 Thessalonians 1:6-10, NIV
No subject in the world is as repugnant to the human mind as this one, yet no subject is of greater importance. Some people think that Christians, especially Baptists, love the concept of hell - Baptists are the ones who preach nothing but hellfire and brimstone. They relish the thought of sinners being shoved into the fiery pit. If this is the attitude of Baptists, then of course Baptists are wrong. God himself says in Ezekiel 33:11:
"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?"
Again, as it says in 2 Peter 3:9:
"[God] is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
No Christian can find enjoyment in thinking about the final state of those who do not repent. However, it is our duty as faithful ministers of Jesus Christ to proclaim the whole counsel of God. I believe you would be a false friend to any non-Christian if you do not warn them, as the Scriptures repeatedly do, of the danger of their condition.
Some people seem to be under the delusion that hell has evaporated or at least that all intelligent people have stopped believing in it. Nevertheless, there are some valid reasons to believe in hell. First, our sense of moral justice demands it. All people feel there is a difference between right and wrong, between virtue and vice. We want to approve of what's right and condemn things that are wrong. Every nation on earth, whether democratic or authoritarian, has laws concerning right and wrong. We do not want to let evil go unpunished.
Immediately after World War II the Allied nations discovered that the German Nazis had murdered millions of people. Death camps like Auschwitz and Dachau were piled high with corpses. To bring about justice for these crimes the allies set up the Nuremburg War Trials. Many Nazis were convicted of atrocities and punished - but not all of them. Some Nazis escaped and were never brought to trial. Many went to South America. A few even ended up in the United States. Justice demands that their crimes be punished but in this life we can never catch all the evil doers. Some always slip away. If there is justice in eternity, these people will one day be brought to trial before God. Heaven cannot be the only option. If there is true justice there must also be the option of hell.
Another reason why we should believe in hell is because the nature of God demands it. Many people say, "But God is love! God will never punish anyone in hell." The problem here is that they are basing their belief on an inaccurate premise. The Bible does teach us that God is love - infinitely compassionate love. But the same Bible teaches us that the same God is holy and just and righteous. The Bible teaches us that God is too pure to look upon sin and that he will punish our sin and will by no means clear the guilty.
Long before the love of God was fully shown in the Old Testament, the one great belief that was emphasized above al others by the Hebrew people was, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts." In the Old Testament the very foundation of God's throne was holiness. No sin would ever come into his presence without being consumed by his wrath. There can be no sin in heaven. It is reserved for hell.
The greatest arguments for the existence of hell are not so much rational as they are Biblical. I personally believe in hell because it is so clearly taught in the Bible, especially by Jesus. The Old Testament does not give too much information about what happens to people after they die. It does say that the souls of all the dead, both righteous and wicked, go to sheol, which many versions of the Bible translate as "grave," "hell" or "pit." Sheol is a place of sorrow. In 2 Samuel 22:6 David literally says:
"The sorrows of hell (sheol) surrounded me."
The Old Testament also shows that there are two destinies for people. Daniel 12:2 is an important passage:
"Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt."
The New Testament has much more to say about hell. Two main terms are used - Hades and Gehenna. Hades usually means the same thing as sheol and is often synonymous with death and the grave. Gehenna means a fiery hell where sinners are punished. Except for one place in the book of James, only Jesus uses the word Gehenna in the Bible. As a matter of fact, most of the Bible's teaching on hell comes from the lips of Jesus.
The soul of the non-believer goes to hell immediately after death. The idea of purgatory, a sort of temporary hell that burns sin out of you so you can be fit for heaven, is nowhere taught in the Bible. As it says in Hebrew 9:27:
"Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment."
A person dies either as one who has been redeemed or as one who is under judgment. After death there is no passing over from one condition to the other. One illustration of this is found in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Turn to Luke 16:22-26 where Jesus says:
"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
"So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'"
When you die, you go one place or the other. While you cannot press every detail in a parable like this, the story seems to show that the unrighteous dead are conscious and experience suffering and punishment which cannot be relieved.
When you study the Bible closely you find that Hades does not last forever. While in Hades a person is a soul without a body but after Christ reigns on the earth for one thousand years, which is the millennium, all this will change. After the millennium they will be given bodies and brought to judgment. Turn with me to Revelation 20:11-15. The apostle John is having a vision on the End Times which he describes as follows:
"Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."
The Lake of Fire is Gehenna, the eternal hell that Jesus spoke so much about. There are various descriptions of hell. According to Mark 9:45 it is a place or state of unquenchable and everlasting fire. Revelation 20:10 speaks of it as a lake of fire and brimstone which is burning sulfur. Hell is also described as an outer darkness in Matthew 8:12. Revelation 14:10 says it is a place of eternal torment and punishment.
If figurative language is involved in these descriptions, it is obviously symbolic of something so awful no one in his right mind could be indifferent about it. At this point I would like to turn back to 2 Thessalonians 1, where many different aspects of hell are described. First of all, in verse 6 it says:
"God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you."
We should notice that in verse 5 it is a righteous thing with God to bring believers to salvation and blessing in heaven. Throughout the Bible, salvation and damnation are interwoven like this. Verse 9 describes their fate further. It says:
"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power."
Some people, such as Jehovah Witnesses, say that verses like this teach annihilation - once you are sent to hell you cease to exist. However, the word "destruction" does not carry this meaning here. In 1 Corinthians 5:5 Paul uses the same word. There Paul speaks about handing a person over to Satan so their body can be destroyed but their spirit saved. In Corinthians Paul clearly does not view destruction as annihilation because he never teaches you can be saved after you are only a spirit. Destruction does not signify so much annihilation as the loss of all that is worthwhile - utter ruin.
Neither is there evidence in the Bible for a second chance to be saved after death, or that everyone will end up being saved (called Universalism). Perhaps the clearest proof against these views, as well as against annihilation, is the fact that the same word for eternity is used to describe both punishment and life. Matthew 25:46 says:
"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Even if you try to define eternal as age-long (which is the literal Greek) instead of ever-lasting, you still have to apply it equally to heaven and hell. We cannot consistently deny eternal punishment without also denying eternal life.
Some people say they don't care if hell is eternal because they'll be having lots of parties with their drinking buddies there. This flippant notion is Satan's lie. The Bible says hell is the "blackness of darkness forever." 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says those in hell are "punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord." To be in hell is to be separated from God and totally alone. C.S. Lewis once spoke of hell as "nothing but yourself for all eternity." This is not the whole truth about hell but it describes one of its most hideous aspects.
God, in his love, has done everything possible to deliver us from eternal punishment. His justice requires that he punish sin but his love provides salvation freely for all who will accept it. The greatest sin you can commit is to reject Jesus Christ. Jesus gives us an invitation to believe the gospel and identify ourselves with him: "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven." But he also gives us this warning: "Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:32-33)
Jesus Christ experienced hell. The old creeds of the Church say this happened literally, based on interpretations of Ephesians 4:9 and 1 Peter 3:19. Most modern commentators disagree and say these verses describe something else. But there is total agreement that Jesus tasted hell on the cross. We read in the Bible that on the cross Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world; our guilt and the curse of our sin was laid on him (see Galatians 3:13). God's wrath against sin was poured out on Christ. That is why he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" On that day Jesus suffered an infinite penalty in our place. At the end he said, "It is finished. It is paid."
Those who place their trust in him have his word that they will never perish. The truth of the Bible is that the anger and wrath of God will one day fall upon our sin. The only question is: will God's wrath also fall upon us in hell forever? Or will it fall upon Jesus Christ upon the cross?
That choice is ours to make. We will live forever - somewhere!
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Typed on March 14, 2006, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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