HELL! What the Bible says about it… Dr. John R. Rice PT 3 Hell a place of unutterable suffering The torment in Hell is evidently the principal point in this Scripture in Luke 16. Notice the words “being in torments” (v. 23), “I am tormented in this flame” (v. 24), and “thou art tormented” (v. 25). There is torment in Hell! This is the only glance that God has ever given us into Hell and of the suffering there. How terrible it is! Here is a man, formerly rich, now poor. Before, he had all that his heart could desire; now he has nothing but torment. The beggar who lay at his gate full of sores on earth is now happy in Heaven. The rich man is tormented in Hell. Conscious pain in Hell This man in Hell is the same person that he was on earth. He has the same kind of mind. He recognized Lazarus. He remembers his brothers. He remembers that he did not repent. He has the same bodily desires that he had on earth and longs for one drop of water to cool his tongue! He did not yet have his body in Hell, but he certainly retained bodily senses. When the kind voice of Abraham answered from Heaven and said, “Son, remember,” we can see that remembering will be one of the torments of Hell. Supposing that the rich man died and went to Hell during the lifetime of Jesus; then he has been “remembering” in Hell nearly 2000 years. He may remember every sin he committed. He may remember his base ingratitude to God. He may remember every opportunity he had to be saved and would not take. He may remember every sweet song, every mother’s prayer, every wife’s tear that urged him to seek the Lord. He may remember, now, one by one, the sins he was too busy to think of while he was clothed with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day on this earth. Hell is a place where men are conscious, in possession of their faculties of mind, memory, and conscience. There is no indication that this rich man in Hell loved God or wanted to do right any more now than when he died. He loved his brothers as he did on earth. His nature was not changed when he died. His soul did not sleep. There is conscious suffering in Hell. Body and soul destroyed in Hell The Hell where men are now is a Hell of lost souls where people are conscious and suffer while their bodies remain in the graves on earth. But at the final judgment of all the unsaved who ever lived in the world, we are told that “the sea gave up the dead who were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead who were in them” (Rev. 20:13). The bodies come from death to life so that men stand before God. Hell gives up the spirit dead while the earth gives up the physical dead, and the bodies and souls of lost men come together again. This is the time of which God speaks when He says: “…that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those in earth, and those under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). Literal knees will bow and literal tongues will confess their sins, will be compelled to do so, before Christ and the assembled multitude. Then these people in literal bodies will be cast into the lake of fire. They will be tormented in body as well as mind. Jesus spoke of physical bodies in Hell when He said: “And fear not those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt. 10:28; emphasis added). The devil has deceived people who do not know God’s Word into believing that Hell is some indefinite, ghostly place where there might be discomfort but no actual personality, no conscious suffering, no physical torment. May God help us to see that these tortures await the doomed and damned and ruined souls who reject Christ and go to Hell! Is there a literal fire in Hell? We have already seen that Hell is a literal, physical place, where physical bodies will dwell. The question arises, is there literal fire in Hell? The answer of the rich man in Hell is, “I am tormented in this flame.” Again and again in the Bible we are told of the fire of Hell. Jesus often spoke of “hell fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” In Revelation 20:14-15, Hell is called “the lake of fire,” and there it is said that Hell (Hades, the spirit Hell) is to be “cast into the lake of fire,” the second death. If we believe the Word of God, then we must believe that when physical bodies leave the great white throne judgment, they must go into a place of fire. 3. Hell is eternal punishment If a condemned soul after rejecting Christ on earth were to die and then be blotted out forever, simply cease to be, that would be a terrible punishment. When a sinner dies without Christ, it means that he misses all the glories of Heaven, the reign of Christ on earth, and eternal happiness in the presence of God. If Hell meant only to pass out of existence and miss the joy that God has prepared for those that love Him that would be an eternal loss that no sinner could afford to risk. Or if a sinner might stay in Hell for a little while, stay until his suffering passed beyond endurance, and then mercifully cease to be, cease to know, cease to feel, cease to suffer, and be no more, that would be a terrible Hell. Ten minutes of Hell would be so horrible that any man with any sense would dread it and want to miss it at any cost. But the awful fact is that the Hell spoken of in the Bible is an eternal Hell. I mean not only that the place itself is eternal but that men will be there forever, tormented forever. There is no other honest construction to be put upon the many, many Scriptures that talk about Hell. The rich man is still in Hell, just as Lazarus is still in Heaven. Abraham said to the rich man, “Now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” The time element in the two cases is the same. Clearly the rich man is still in Hell. Judgment before eternal damnation God pledged Himself that every sinner shall come to judgment. He promised that dead bodies shall rise again: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). Notice that lost people will be resurrected just as surely as the saved. The same thing is taught in John:“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all who are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation” (Jn. 5:28-29). Lost people who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth to the resurrection of damnation! The rich man was buried, and in Hell he lifts up his eyes, being in torments. As long as his body is in the grave, the rich man will stay in Hell. The millions in Hell cannot be brought out, cannot cease to be, for God has promised to bring them back to their bodies when the lost people who are in the graves hear the voice of Jesus and come forth! Revelation 20 tells us when the resurrection of lost people from the grave will take place. Read these verses carefully and see that after the thousand years’ reign of Christ on earth is over, sinners shall come out of Hell; their bodies will be gathered from the sea and from the land; and in their bodies men shall stand before Christ to receive their eternal condemnation! “And I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead who were in them: and they were judged each one according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15). The rich man, then, with all the other millions in Hell, must stay there, tormented in flames, remembering, remembering, until he faces Jesus on the great white judgment throne. As long as you can find a skull in a museum, a skeleton in a doctor’s office; as long as human bodies are yet decaying in the cemeteries; so long the souls of lost men are tormented in Hell, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies in the last great judgment day! Then the rich man’s ashes will reassemble, and his soul will come out of Hell to face Jesus so that his knee can bow before Christ and his tongue can confess that Christ is Lord! At the very least, sinners cannot cease to suffer in Hell until that day. Physical torment continues forever If every sinner would have to suffer in Hell a few score years or hundreds of years or thousands of years until the great white throne judgment, that would be terrible enough, God knows! Every sinner could then come out of Hell, get his resurrection body, and appear before that awful court for sentence. If then he could drop into the lake of fire and his poor wicked personality be snuffed out in a moment’s flame, that would be bad enough. But the Bible carefully teaches, with many scriptural statements, that sinners must live on in torment forever beyond the judgement in the lake of fire. The terms used in the Bible about Hell and about the condemnation of lost people are not words of temporary meaning. They are words that indicate an eternity of suffering and shame. Daniel says that some shall awake “to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). Everlasting contempt! Jesus warned against the “danger of eternal damnation” (Mk. 3:29). The future blessedness of a Christian and the doom of a lost man are often contrasted in the Bible, and the inference everywhere is that the one lasts as long as the other. To the one is promised everlasting life, and to the other everlasting contempt. In Revelation 14, God gives us a vivid and fearful picture of the torment of the lost. These verses prove that people will remain in an eternal Hell of torment: “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:10-11; emphasis added). The smoke of their torment continues to rise day after day, forever and ever. If that were all, one might hope that after a sinner had been consumed with the fires of Hell and had ceased to be, the smoke should go on up and up and higher up forever. But the rest of the verse makes clear that sinners continue to suffer there forever, for it says: “And they have no rest day nor night.” This is the kind of Hell Jesus talked about when He said, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” I do not know all that this Scripture means. I know that in this present world all the aches and pains of the body are caused by sin. The infections of germs, the plagues of parasites which infest the human body, the decay of cancer – al these are the result of sin. They could not have happened to a perfect Adam in the garden of Eden. It may well be that a thousand such unspeakable horrors of bodily suffering await the sinner in Hell beyond the resurrection of the unsaved dead and the last judgement day. Their suffering in the place of torment will be continuous.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 10:38:27 +0000
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