Is there really a Hell?

Jesus talked about hell more than any other Bible personality...  Is there a Hell?

• ​52% of adults are certain there is a hell.

• 27% think there might be.
   

What might Hell be like?

• 48% think it is a real place where people suffer eternal fiery torment.

• 46% think it is an anguished state of existence rather than an actual existing place.

• 6% don't know.

​"There is only one reason why Jesus died, and that is because there is a literal Hell."

—Bailey Smith—

 

On an American troopship, the soldiers crowded around their Chaplain asking,"Do you believe in hell?" "I do not." replied the Chaplain frankly. "Well, then, please resign, because if there is no hell, we do not need you, and if there is a hell, we do not wish to be led astray."

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THE CONCEPT OF ETERNAL DARKNESS...

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Some years ago a family visited a cave in the state of Kentucky. The guide led us through many beautiful and winding subterranean passageways. Suddenly he turned off all the lights and said, "I'm the only one who knows how to get back to the entrance. If I left you here, you'd probably never find your way out. Anyone lost in this cave would no doubt become insane within a week from the oppressive loneliness. Be quiet for a moment and feel the darkness!"

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The youngster instantly clutched his father's arm. After about 30 seconds, someone in the party could endure it no longer and cried out, "Turn on the lights! I'm going crazy now!" The guide laughed, but they didn't soon forget that frightening experience. It reminded them of the 'outer darkness' of Hell and made them shudder!

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HELL IS A PLACE OF ETERNAL CONFINEMENT...

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If Jesus came to set the captive free, then hell is where the unrepentant dwell in their captivity...

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Hell is a place of confinement, a Prison for the incorrigibly wicked. It does not matter what the nature of it is, the fact is—it is a place of torment. Even in the most humane conditions, a Prison is still a Prison, and it is horrible even to contemplate. Hell is the Jail where the wicked are locked up when under indictment until the court sits and their sentences are passed on them; a pre-trial facility...Later, they go into what is called in the "Book of Revelation" in the Bible as the "Lake of Fire", the "Gehenna" of the New Testament. The Lake of Fire is the Federal Prison of Eternity; Hell is just the county Jail. No one has yet been put into the Lake of Fire.

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We may choose to believe in a literal Lake of Fire and Brimstone, which Jesus Christ describes often, or you may think that the term is only used to illustrate the torture and misery of confinement and separation from God. Either way, the Fact is, to even be locked up in a Federal Prison away from your loved ones with loss of freedom and a consciousness that all your mortal days will be spent behind walls, knowing that Gods Great big out-of-doors is forever closed to you—That no longer can you go where you wish or come when you please—that you have lost the power of choice and of action and that a guard with a gun walks up and down the concrete corridor before your steel barred doors in a uniform that becomes hateful to you...this is Hell enough for any man. If this is to last throughout eternity, then God help me, I want no part of it. I don't need the fumes of sulfur, nor the creeping, biting, burning worms of hell described in the scriptures on top of that...

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To be shut up with the wicked throughout eternity; to be eternally associated with blasphemers and murderers, with the whoremongers, homosexuals, the liars, the thief and prostitutes of all ages; never to see a pure face again, never to hear a baby's prattle, never to hear hymn of praise or folk songs, or songs of Love; to hear nothing but bitter, hideous, blasphemy, the gnawing of the tongue, the gnashing of teeth; the biting agony of the eternal confinement is all that is necessary to make it Hell for me. As for me, at any cost, let me escape it; never let me be in any danger of it.

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"And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." -Isaiah 66:24

 

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HISTORY and ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD FOR HELL...

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Hell is the Jail where the wicked are locked up when under indictment until the court sits and their sentences are passed on them; a pre-trial facility...Later, they go into what is called in the "Book of Revelation" in the Bible as the "Lake of Fire", the "Gehenna" of the New Testament. The Lake of Fire is the Federal Prison of Eternity; Hell is just the county Jail. No one has yet been put into the Lake of Fire.

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GEHENNA: ge-hen'a; The Greek word for the Hebrew word, hinnom, the "Valley of Hinnom". A deep, narrow glen to the South of Jerusalem where the Jews offered their children to Molech.

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In later times it served as a dump for all sorts of putrefying matter and all that defiled the holy city, and so became the representative or image of the place of everlasting punishment, especially on account of its ever-burning fires; and to this fact the words of Christ refer when He mentions "the unquenchable fire."

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• The passages of the New Testament show plainly that the word 'gehenna' was a popular expression for 'hell' of which Jesus and his apostles made use.

• In the NT the word gehenna ("hell") is spoken many times from the lips of Jesus Christ in the most awesome warning of the consequences of sin.

• He describes it as a place where their worm never dies and their fire is never to be quenched.

• Gehenna is identical in meaning with the "lake of fire" (Rev. 19:20; 20:10,14-15).

• Moreover, the "second death" and "the lake of fire" are identical terms (Rev 20:14).

• These latter scriptural expressions describe the eternal state of the wicked as forever separated from God and consigned to the special abode of unrepentant angels and people in the eternal state.

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THE STATE OF MANKIND...

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Man is an Eternal Being. In this way, he belongs to the same class as God. If he dies a criminal, then he enters eternity as an eternal criminal. Logically, as it is on earth there is an eternal prison—the criminals must be segregated. If they were permitted to roam indiscriminately throughout eternity, they would demoralize the New Heaven and the New Earth. We have Jails, State Prisons, and Federal Prisons for the criminals who break the laws of man. Who can raise a protest against God if he has a prison in which are incarcerated the men who have violated the Laws of Heaven, and who are eternal criminals.

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"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." Matthew 25:41,46

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Now it has become the Jail and the Home for the wicked human; it is called the place of eternal punishment or constraint; a place out of which no pardon has yet gone or ever can go; no pardon can reach them, horrible as it may seem.

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"For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;" 2 Peter 2:4

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"And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." Revelation 9:1-2