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Hell has fallen on “hard times.” It is rarely mentioned except in a context of cursing, swearing, or deprecation. Some claim to believe it exists but profess to know no one sufficiently evil to deserve it.
Widespread, outright denial of and/or loss of belief in Hell is a relatively recent phenomenon. Predictably, man-centered Humanism, ever-ascendant since the Renaissance (greatly boosted by Darwin), has largely cast sin, The Judgment, Heaven, and Hell on the philosophical garbage heap of history. The masses, including millions of professed “believers” (and not a few clerics), have joined the no-hell parade.
True believers have one standard of Truth and error, reality and fantasy, in religion—Jesus Christ and His New Testament. The ultimate question for all who claim to believe in Him as the One through Whom the Father speaks since Calvary (Mat. 17:5; John 14:6; Heb. 1:1–2; et al.) is this: “What did Jesus say about Hell?”
If He believed in it and spoke of it in terms of reality, the crucial issue concerning Hell becomes the larger issue of belief in or denial of the Christ Himself. In the face of all of the denials, the stubborn, indisputable fact remains that Jesus said much about the existence and attributes of Hell—more than He said about Heaven, in fact. Consider:
- “Hell” is real. Sinners will be cast into it at last (Mat. 5:22; 29–30; 10:28; 18:9; et al.). The Son of God referred to Hell eleven times as the final abode of the wicked.
- Hell is dreadful beyond imagination. Jesus described it as the “Hell of fire” (Mat. 5:22; 18:9), the “furnace of fire” (13:42, 50), and a place of “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43). It is a place where the “worm dieth not” (47–48). Those cast therein will be “destroyed” (Mat. 10:28), but not annihilated, as some would have it. This term refers rather to utter, hopeless, irreclaimable loss, not cessation of existence. It is a place of punishment and torment (25:46; Luke 16:23, 28; cf. Rev. 14:10–11). It is a place of separation from God (Mat. 7:23; 25:41; cf. 2 The. 1:9) and confinement with Satan and the wicked of all time (Mat. 25:41; Cf. Rev. 20: 10, 15; 21:8; 22:15).
- Hell is eternal. It lasts as long as Heaven and eternal life (Mat. 25:46). Hell’s fire is “eternal,” “unquenchable” (18:8–9; Mark 9:43, 48; cf. 2 The. 1:8–9; Rev. 20:10).
Men must choose between the voice of Jesus Christ and the voices of the Universalists, Humanists, liberal theologians, annihilationists, New Agers, and all other deniers of Hell. Whom do you trust?
[Note: This article was written for and published in the Denton Record-Chronicle, Denton, TX, April 10, 2009.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator
