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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 will you 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."
Jesus
talked about hell more than any other person or place... |
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Please
click on the following questions and topics...And you'll
learn that Hell is "hell" of a place. |
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Is
There a Hell? |
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52%
of adults are certain there is a hell |
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27%
think there might be |
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What
Might Hell Be Like? |
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48%
think it is a real place where people suffer eternal
fiery torment |
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46%
think it is an anguished state of existence rather than
an actual existing place |
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6%
don't know |
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The
Concept of Eternal Darkness |
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"There
is only one reason why Jesus died, and that is because
there is a literal Hell."--Bailey Smith
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!"
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...
Hell is a place of confinement, a Prison for the
incorrigibly wicked. It does not matter what the
nature of it 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.
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 God's great big
out-of-doors is forever closed to you. That no
longer can you go where you wish or come when you
please. You have lost the power of choice and of
action and that a guard--the tormentors--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...
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 and all you did was
simply not accept Jesus (even if you went to church all
your life); 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 in any danger of it.
"And
they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses 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
or 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.
Gehenna: The Greek word for the Hebrew word
hinnom or the Valley of Hinnom. A deep, narrow,
glen to the south of Jerusalem where the Jews offered
their children to Molech.
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. |
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In
the New Testament, the word Gehenna (hell) is
spoken many times from the lips of Jesus
Christ in the most awesome warning of the
consequences of sin. Why? Because
God doesn't want you there. |
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He
describes it as a place where their worm never
dies and their fire is never to be quenched. |
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Gehenna
is identical in meaning with the "lake of
fire" (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14-15) |
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Moreover,
the "second death" and the
"lake of fire" are identical terms
(Revelation 20:14) |
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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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Meaning there is no
purgatory; there is no second chance; there is pray for
a person to make it heaven. If the person never
makes the decision to accept Jesus Christ into their
lives (or even refuses to accept Christ) even unto
death, there is no pray that the person makes it heaven.
That person will be eternally separated from God, the
Great Judge.
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The
State of Mankind |
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Man
(his spirit) 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 New Earth. We have jails, state 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. And just because you do not murder
someone or steal from someone physically, or even go to
church all your life, do not think you will escape this
Judgment.
"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
"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall
enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of
My Father in Heaven. Many will say to Me in that
day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name,
cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in
Your name? And then I will declare to them, 'I
never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice
lawlessness!'"--Matthew 7:21-23 |
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A
Place of Eternal Regret |
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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.
"Then he cried
and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send
Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water
and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'
But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime
you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil
things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.
And besides all this, between us and you there is a
great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from
here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to
us.'"--Luke 16:24-26
"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;"--II
Peter 2:4
"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
Jesus gives a picture of Hell that only He could
give...THIS IS NOT A PARABLE! It is not
scripturally placed among the parables of Jesus.
He says, "A certain rich man". He is
quoting history and He gives a description of Hell and
of torment, of conscious intelligible torment that
surpasses Dante in his Inferno or Milton in his Paradise
Lost. No human literature can quite describe Hell
as Christ does in Luke 16:19-31...
"There was a certain rich man who was clothed in
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of
sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with
the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table.
Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it
was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels
to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was
buried. And being in torments in Hades, he lifted
up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his
bosom. Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham,
have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the
tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am
tormented in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Son,
remember that in your lifetime you received your good
things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is
comforted and you are tormented. And besides all
this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so
that those who went to pass from here to you cannot, nor
can those from there pass to us.' Then he said, 'I
beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my
father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may
testify to them, lest they also come to this place of
torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses
and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he
said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from
the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him,
'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be persuaded though one rise from the
dead.'"
During the Old Testament
times, the underworld was divided in two. One side
for the Righteous (Abraham's bosom) and the other side
for the wicked people (Hades). There was a great
gulf fixed between them, so that none could cross over
in either direction.
The rich man went to Hell because he had broken the
fundamental principles of the Mosaic Law: He did not
love his neighbor as himself. The whole Law was
summed up in this 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,
with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself".
This he had broken and was paying the penalty for it.
Notice some significant facts about the man that went to
Hell. "And in Hades he lifted up his eyes,
being in torment." Notice that he has all the
faculties of the Soul. Remember, man is not a
physical being; he is primarily a Spirit that has a Soul
and lives in a body. The physical body is just the
earthly outerwear needed to survive on the earth while
you are here.
His tongue was burning in the intense heat, "For I
am in anguish in this flame. "Whether we want
to insist that this is purely figurative language or
not, is irrelevant. That fact is, Jesus declared
that this man was in torment in the flames. If the
flame was simply a figurative burning conscience, then
give me literal fire!
"Son, remember." Lazarus remembered.
Memory lives on in Hell. Two things will haunt a
person in Hell: (1) The sins that he has committed
against God and man and (2) that he had an opportunity
to escape it, but he resolutely preferred Hell to
Heaven.
Herein lies the eternal regret...We sow our lives in the
face of constant warning towards an eternal hell, but we
refuse to listen; neglect to change our attitudes and
choices, preferring Hell to Heaven. Hell is a
place of anguish, with a great gulf fixed so that there
is no passing over from one side to the other.
There is no second probation. Purgatory, as you
have probably surmised, is a lie from the Evil One to
keep man forever refusing to face his options and guide
his life accordingly. The man, who is guilty
enough to be sent to Hell, is guilty enough to stay in
Hell.
Now to the most pathetic things of all: He said
(paraphrased), "Will you not send Lazarus up to the
Earth? I have five brothers there, lest they also
come into this place of torment." What a
hopeless request! What a great preacher somebody
would make fresh from the agonies from Hell. What
a passion that preacher would have to warn of that
place, never to go there...
The Bible says that the rich man prayed to Abraham for
the warning to go to his five brothers...I ask you, how
many souls in Hell are praying for you?
Some of the most intelligent people we have on this
earth believe that they can keep the subject of heaven
and hell and the sufferings of Christ form their minds,
or stay away from places where they hear it
preached--that they will somehow escape the
responsibility of knowledge and that in itself will
prove their salvation from Hell. A dangerous way
to think, which would not possibly be more wrong!!
But the answer came, "They have Moses and the
Prophets, let them hear them". And even at
the request of a dead man telling people about how
horrible hell is, will people still listen? No!
Jesus Christ Himself died, went to hell to preach and
rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to
Heaven. Man then and even now still ridicule all
this today. |
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Who
Goes to Hell? |
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"The
wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations
that forget God."--Psalm 9:16-17
Every
person who refuses to recognize the Lordship of Jesus
Christ or confess Him as Savior will go to Hell.
There is no distinction; "Unless a person is born
from above, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God;" he
will enter the Kingdom of Satan. Simply put, those
who do not accept the Lord, Jesus Christ as their
personal Lord and Savior and stay serving Jesus Christ
from that point on, will not go to Heaven. I am
not saying the only way to Heaven is to be
perfect--because we will never be perfect and God
understands this. But if we come before Jesus
Christ and ask Him to continue to change us and help us
each and every day, hell will not be your destination.
There will be no Educational test, no financial test,
the person who is not cleansed by the sacrificial Blood
of Jesus Christ will go to Hell as surely as does the
Devil.
Man does not go to Hell to party...there will be no
parties!!
What about Children--Thank God that babies and
young children do not go to Hell, for they do not know
right from wrong--Good from evil. They are still
innocent...A baby cannot forget or ignore that which he
was never able to comprehend in the first place.
Is it too late for me--Thankfully and graciously,
there is still time for you today. The right
choice can still be made right now, but please do not
delay. Hell is Real! and you do NOT want to go
there. |
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© Copyright
2008 The Potter's House Christian Center Mesa, AZ - All Rights Reserved. |
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