24 Reasons Why Hell Is Real by David Shibley

Some false teachers today would like us to think that everybody will eventually get to heaven. Don't believe them. 

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army and a man who dedicated his life to lifting the poor out of sin and poverty, reportedly made this statement: "Most Christian organizations would like to send their workers to Bible college for five years. I would like to send our workers to hell for five minutes. That would prepare them for a lifetime of compassionate ministry."

Booth never suggested that the desperate people he served were "already in hell." He believed in a real, eternal hell, and it drove him to rescue people from both their current plight and future perdition.

Shortly before his death in 1912, Booth warned prophetically that he saw coming to the church "forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration ... a heaven without a hell."

In today's theological fog, his ominous caveat is unfolding. Even some who claim to believe the Bible are having second thoughts about eternal judgment, and others have rejected the notion of judgment altogether. The name usually given this teaching is Universalism.

Universalism basically is the belief that all people will be saved. Jesus' death and resurrection will automatically, or at least eventually, save the whole human race. Personal repentance and faith in Christ are not necessary for going to heaven. The Christian mission is reduced to announcing to people the "good news" that they are already saved.

But does Scripture teach that everyone will be saved? There is overwhelming biblical evidence to the contrary.

I'd like to offer 24 reasons to reject Universalism. You may be able to add a few of your own.

1. Jesus made both repentance and faith prerequisites for forgiveness. "Unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, NKJV). "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).

2. The "water of life" is offered to all, but not all receive it or even desire it. "Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17).

3. Scripture teaches that there will be a judgment after death. "And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

4. Those who have not had a true conversion will experience a judgment for sin that the Bible describes as "the second death." "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Rev. 21:8).

5. Contrary to Universalist beliefs, Jesus' teaching indicates that most of humanity is on a broad path that leads to destruction. "'Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, "Lord, Lord, open for us," and He will answer and say to you, "I do not know you, where you are from. ... Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity"'" (Luke 13:24-27).

6. Jesus spoke often of a terrible place of judgment for those outside His kingdom rule. "'The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth'" (Matt. 13:41-42).

7. The Bible teaches both the love of God and His sure judgment of sin. Trusting in Christ's payment for our sins saves us from this coming judgment. "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him" (Rom. 5:8-9).

8. In one of the most loving verses in the Bible, Jesus issues eternal options. "'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life'" (John 3:16).

9. Scripture teaches that there is unending, eternal judgment for those who do not know God and who do not respond in faith to the gospel. "The Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

10. Jesus emphatically taught that a spiritual birth is essential to entering the kingdom of heaven. "'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God'" (John 3:3).

11. In answer to a very clear question about what is necessary for salvation, Paul gave a very clear answer: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts. 16:31).

12. Jesus gave no indication that many roads lead to God. He forcefully stated that He was the only way. "'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me'" (John 14:6).

13. The early preachers of the church clearly preached that Jesus is the only way to salvation. "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12; see also 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 2:3-4; 1 Pet. 1:3-5).

14. According to Scripture, only those who receive Jesus Christ and believe in Him are children of God. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12).
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15. The gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom. 1:16; see also 10:9).

16. Rather than teaching that those without faith in Christ are already saved, the Bible teaches that they are already under judgment. Faith in Christ brings us out of condemnation and into right relationship with God. "'He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God'" (John 3:18).

17. Only those whose names are in the Lamb's Book of Life are granted access into the eternal city of God. "And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. 20:15; see also 21:27).

18. People are not automatically righteous. Only when we declare faith in Jesus Christ does God declare us righteous in His sight. "But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness" (Rom. 4:5).

19. Eternal life comes only through a relationship with God. We cannot know the Father unless we know the Son. "'And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent'" (John 17:3).

20. The cross of Christ is where payment for our sins was made. Only when we believe this are we saved. "'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up [on a cross], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life'" (John 3:14-15).

21. Only those who have the Son of God have eternal life. "And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:11-12). In addition to these verses, the story of Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11 provides hard evidence against Universalism. Cornelius was devout, prayed often, gave generously to the poor and even received an angelic visitation. Yet God went to great lengths to get the gospel to him so he could come to know Jesus and be saved.

22. Added to the avalanche of scriptural evidence, there are also practical reasons for rejecting Universalism. History teaches that acceding to Universalism sets the church on a slippery slide toward theological liberalism. Soon all confidence in Scripture is lost and the uniqueness of the Christian gospel evaporates.

23. If we embrace Universalism, there is no urgency to evangelize or imperative to do missions. In fact, evangelism and missions would have to be redefined. We need look no further than most of the mainline denominations to see what happens to evangelism when Universalism is prevalent.

24. If Universalism is finally proved right, nothing will have been lost by our continued urgency in winning people to faith in Christ. But if it is false and we embrace it, then everything will be forever lost--including people who do not know Christ.

Unbroken Hearts
It needs to be said clearly that God's character is not on trial. The judge of all the earth will do what is right (see Gen. 18:25). Our faith is on trial. Our hearts are on trial. But God is not on trial. Whatever judgment He makes regarding those who have not responded to the gospel will be executed according to His standards of equally perfect righteousness and love.

When we ponder God's mercy, this whole issue is inverted. Because God is perfectly holy, the wonder is not that some will be lost. The greater wonder is that anyone from rebellious humanity will be saved! Only Christ's work on the cross could reconcile us to God.

God has put down the most massive roadblock possible to stop humanity's mad rush toward hell. He sent His Son. God intervened personally through Christ. His sacrifice on the cross paid the penalty for our sins. This is the good news for all who will believe and receive Him.

Espousing Universalism is sad. But rejecting it with no impact on our hearts or change in our priorities is sinister. If we believe that people are lost outside of Christ (and they are), and that faith in Christ is the only way of salvation (and it is), what could possibly be a higher priority than getting the gospel as far as we can as fast as we can?

To pronounce people "saved" who are obviously enslaved by darkness, deception and the devil is surely the cruelest of jokes. We are sent to a lost world with a gospel of power. Our message gives the spiritually blind their sight and liberates those who are chained by Satan. We do not preach that people are forgiven but that they can be forgiven.

I would not want to stand before Jesus Christ as a Universalist. But neither would I want to stand before the Lord as an evangelical who was not evangelistic. What a serious accounting must await us if we believe in eternal torment for those without faith in Christ--and yet do nothing! A recovery of biblical truth and compassionate evangelism are the twin screaming needs of the American church.

The apostle Paul said he would be willing to give up his place in Christ if by such a sacrifice others would be saved (see Rom. 9:2-3). He believed all people outside Christ were lost, and it left him with a broken heart.

More than encroaching Universalism, it is our unbroken hearts that often impede evangelism. Many Christians today have never even heard of "a burden for the lost." The harvest is huge and ready to be reaped by those who are willing to sow first in tears (see Ps. 126:5-6).

Right theology will only indict us if we do not recapture the evangelistic imperative. We must believe the truth, and we must act on what we believe. Let's not just reject faulty theology; let's embrace those who need Jesus.

David Shibley is president of Global Advance, a ministry that provides training and resources for thousands of pastors in developing nations.

Ken Lay, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Billions of Dollars

by Bill Keller - Live Prayer

(John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8,9; Romans 10:8-13)

In the past week you had the death of the man who perhaps was the poster boy for corporate corruption and greed, Ken Lay, and the announcement that two of the world's richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, were merging billions of dollars in a global philanthropic effort. These two stories of ultra rich and powerful men are perfect to discuss that moment we will all face one day when our heart stops beating and this life is over and we are standing before God our Creator to be judged.

News came last week that Ken Lay, the 64-year-old former CEO of Enron had died of a heart attack. Lay was waiting to be sentenced this October to decades in prison for his role in the massive fraud that took place at Enron. Federal authorities claimed that Lay made hundreds of millions of dollars illegally in the largest business fraud case ever that not only cost thousands of people their jobs, but caused millions of shareholders to lose massive amounts of money, in many sad cases, all they had in this world.

The interesting thing about Ken Lay is that he was the son of a Baptist minister, an active member of the First United Methodist Church in Houston, and served on the Board of Trustees at his church. So the legitimate question that needs to be posed is simply this, is Ken Lay in Heaven today? The answer to that question can be answered very simply. If Ken Lay had accepted Jesus Christ into his heart and life by faith, then he is most definitely in Glory this moment and will be for all eternity according to the only Truth there is, God's Word.

Let me insure that you understand something critical. If Ken lay is in Heaven today, it is NOT because he was the son of a Baptist minister. If Ken Lay is in Heaven today, it is NOT because he was a member of the First United Methodist Church in Houston. If Ken Lay is in Heaven today, it is NOT because he was on the Board of Trustees at his church. No, if Ken Lay is in Heaven today, it is because at some point in his life he repented of his sins, asked God to forgive him, and invited Jesus Christ into his heart and life by faith. That my friend is the ONLY way you can be saved!!!

This begs the question, how could a man who knows Jesus have been involved in such fraudulent activity that destroyed the lives of many innocent people. Men sin! Even saved men sin! In the Book of 1 John, in a passage written to those who were saved, God's Word tells us that if we say we don't sin we are liars. When a saved man sins, it harms his daily relationship with the Lord, it causes him to not experience the peace or joy or abundance that Christ has promised to those who follow Him. When a saved man sins, it causes him to not fulfill God's plan and purpose for his life. When a saved man sins, it can even lead to an early death!

Many will say that it is not fair that a man like Ken Lay whose greed hurt so many people could be enjoying the splendors of Heaven. God's Word clearly teaches us that if he made a commitment of his heart and life to Christ by faith, He is without any doubt in Heaven today. Sadly however, he paid a huge price for his sins just like we all do when we sin. He saw the company he ran destroyed. He lost all of his power. He was publicly shamed and humiliated. The ripple effects of sin are far reaching and his family suffered greatly for his indiscretions. Spiritually it damaged his relationship with the Lord and caused him to forfeit the peace, joy, and abundance of this life in addition to never fulfilling all God had for him to do. In the end, it cut his life short.

Also last week it was announced that two of the worlds richest men, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffet would merge billions of dollars in a philanthropic effort to fund global heath and education needs. As commendable as this may seem on the surface, you have to understand that a portion of their global health efforts involve the funding to make it possible for millions of babies around the world to be slaughtered. A percentage of the Gates/Buffet philanthropic effort will be used to help women around the globe to be able to kill their babies.

It is no secret that as of today, both Gates and Buffet have rejected the God of the Bible, the Truth of His Word, and His Son Jesus. They are both on record over and over throughout the years clearly rejecting the Christian faith. The reality is, should they die in that state, they will stand before God and be judged for their sins and cast into hell for all eternity. Despite all the good they may have done in their lives, their souls will be lost for all eternity because they rejected Christ's love and sacrifice.

Buffet, while being such a savvy investor is clearly theologically challenged. In an interview following the announcement he would give billions to the Gates Foundation, he said, "There are many ways to get to Heaven, but this has got to be one of the best ways." First, there is only ONE WAY to get to Heaven, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ is the ONE AND ONE way to be saved. Second, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates maybe rich by the world's standards, but they, nor anyone can buy their way into Heaven. Please hear this clear. There is no amount of money, no amount of good works that will get you into Heaven. Only faith in Jesus Christ will get you into Heaven!

I love you and care about you so much. I pray that Ken Lay did make a commitment of his heart and life to Jesus and is in Heaven today. Sadly, his sins kept him from enjoying what should have been the golden years of his professional and personal life, a time that God could have used him to do great works for the Kingdom. I pray today for his wife and family and God's healing in their lives from all they have been through. I also pray today for those employees and shareholders of Enron whose lives were dramatically altered by the actions of Lay and the others responsible for the fraudulent activities at Enron. May the Lord be with them in a special way as they move forward in their lives.

I pray today for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and ask you to as well. Pray that these men will come to know Jesus as their Savior. I know many people envy them for their billions of dollars. I promise you my friend that the moment they die, you will not envy the fact they will spend eternity in punishment for their rejection of Christ. Pray that they may come to know Jesus as their Savior and that God will guide them to use their vast resources to advance His Kingdom and not the kingdoms of this temporal world that will one day be gone.

I also pray for you today. I pray that you will realize that there is nothing more important than having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As important as your day-to-day life is, the two indisputable facts of this life are that 1) we will all die one day, and 2) we are all sinners. The moment we die we will stand before God our Creator. At that moment, who you were in this life, all the things you did, how much money you had, none of that will matter. The only thing that will matter is DO YOU KNOW JESUS IN YOUR HEART BY FAITH! That, and that alone will determine whether you spend eternity with the God who loves you so much, or spend eternity forever separated from your Creator.

ARE YOU 100% CERTAIN WHERE YOU WILL SPEND ETERNITY? The fact is you will die one day. At that moment, you will either spend eternity with the Lord or be cast into everlasting darkness forever separated from God your Creator. To know for certain you will be forever with Jesus, go to: http://www.liveprayer.com/bdy_salvatn.cfm.

The Uncomfortable Reality of Hell

Francis Chan’s book Erasing Hell is a prophetic reminder that we can’t compromise the gospel.

California pastor Francis Chan is one of my heroes, partly because he has given most of his book royalites—reportedly $2 million—to charity. Another reason I admire him: He’s written a new book about hell at a time when many Christians are questioning the idea of eternal punishment. The guy has some chutzpah.

His new book Erasing Hell (David C. Cook) is a direct response to Love Wins, the controversial book by celebrity pastor Rob Bell of Michigan. While Bell’s book flirts with universalism and suggests that a loving God would never send anyone to hell, Chan’s message is blunt and biblical—yet without a hint of self-righteousness.

“Hell is not a popular doctrine. People don’t shout, dance or wave handkerchiefs when we preach about it. They don’t line up to come to conferences about it. Sermons about hell don’t make people feel good.”

Erasing Hell is an answer to prayer and a prophetic response to the spineless gospel many Americans have embraced in recent years. Chan does not wave a “TURN OR BURN” sign, nor does he dangle his readers over hot coals. Yet he forthrightly states that people who reject the merciful gift of salvation through Christ will get what all of us deserve—terrifying separation from God that lasts forever.

Chan read Bell’s book carefully and was willing to ask whether hell was, in Chan’s words, a “primitive myth left over from conservative tradition.” After much prayer (he says we must “weep, pray and fast over this issue”) he became convinced that we cannot remove hell from our message. Chan makes four arguments that poke holes in Bell’s theology:

1. Hell is real. In Love Wins, Bell discounts the biblical view of hell as eternal punishment and suggests that it might be a metaphor for the horrors of life on earth—poverty, genocide and injustice, for example. But Chan goes back to the words of Jesus, who spoke more about hell than anyone in the Bible, and clears up the confusion. He writes: “Hell is not considered to be the various ‘hells on earth’ that we face every day. It’s a horrific place of judgment where God punishes people for their sins.”

2. Hell is final. Universalists who blend Christianity with other religions teach that all sinners will get an extra chance to come clean with God after death. But Chan says that’s not what the Bible teaches: “There’s no single passage in the Bible that describes, hints at, hopes for, or suggests that someone who dies without following Jesus in this life will have an opportunity to do so after death,” he writes.

3. Hell is fair. People who question the doctrine of hell often ask, “How can a loving God send anyone to perish in eternal fire?” Chan says that’s a prideful, self-centered question. We can’t define God, or His perfect love, from a merely human perspective. We are the clay, and He is the potter. We must humble ourselves and view life from the perspective of God’s rightousness, justice and holiness. Chan also writes that the apostle Paul made reference to the fate of wicked people more times in his epistles than he mentioned God’s forgiveness, mercy and heaven combined. If hell doesn’t seem fair to us, we aren’t seeing it from God’s viewpoint.

4. Hell is escapable. Rob Bell’s flawed premise is that God will end up saving everyone regardless of how they acted or what they believed. Chan argues that the gospel is not good news unless there is a hell that sinners can escape from. He writes: “While hell can be a paralyzing doctrine, it can also be an energizing one, for it magnifies the beauty of the cross.”

Hell is not a popular doctrine. People don’t shout, dance or wave handkerchiefs when we preach about it. They don’t line up to come to conferences about it. Sermons about hell don’t make people feel good. But every revivalist in church history has kept the doctrine of hell at the core of his message, and we will see revival only if we reclaim it.

Charles Spurgeon advised aspiring ministers in the 1800s to constantly meditate on the sobering reality of hell in order to stay fervent in their faith. He wrote: “Meditate with deep solemnity upon the fate of the lost sinner, and, like Abraham, when you get up early to go to the place where you commune with God, cast an eye toward Sodom and see the smoke going up like the smoke of a furnace. Shun all views of future punishment that would make it appear less terrible.”

Do you see the smoke of Sodom? Are you constantly aware that people around you are going to hell? Or have you bought into the trendy philosophies of backslidden preachers who question hell and have no power to free people from it? I’m grateful that Francis Chan had the grace—and the guts—to point us back to this biblical truth.

J. Lee Grady is contributing editor of Charisma. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His most recent book is 10 Lies Men Believe (Charisma House).


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Heaven and Hell in the Face of Evil

by Sara Lowe

When a pastor changes his mind about the inclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ and chooses to embrace universalism, the belief that everyone will go to heaven because of “God’s love,” that’s tragedy.

Rob Bell, author (“Velvet Elvis”) and pastor, (Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids, Mich.) has been in the media, from Christian to secular, the last couple of weeks. He has a book coming out March 15, “Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who has Ever Lived.”

Since the book is not out yet, the controversy stems from the title, the book description released by the publisher HarperOne and a video by Rob Bell, easily Googled. These hint at universalism. Rob Bell has been a provocateur before.

One Christian blogger/author/book reviewer has written a review of the book (there are probably many more, but his is the one that I found.) He had to have received an advance review copy.

Blogger Tim Challies writes in his review, including quotes from Bell in the book: A God who would allow people to go to hell is not a great God, according to Bell, and the traditional belief that He would is “devastating … psychologically crushing … terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable” (pp. 136-7).

God is at best sort of great, a little great—great for saving some, but evil for allowing others to perish. Dangerous words, those. It is a fearful thing to ascribe evil to God. His review is available here: http://www.challies.com

I would like to add my 2 cents worth, (and with more esteemed, scholarly people writing about it, my opinion is probably worth about 2 cents.) But it’s important.

Evil has touched many lives. More than touched, it has attempted to disintegrate and in some cases, it has disintegrated. While evil can be aggressive, ugly, predatory, there is one aspect of evil that relates back to universalism.

The Bible delineates evil throughout both the New and the Old Testament. We can increase our knowledge of evil by reading the Bible. Both Erich From (“The Heart of Man”) and Dr. Scott Peck (“The People of the Lie”) have written wisely about evil human beings for those who are interested in reading secular authors.

Evil at its center possesses inertia, a complete complacency, against wrongdoing. Evil people feel no desire, compulsion, or conscience, to stop evil, even when it is their own, and they are acting on it. There is Nothing there. A void, a hole exists at their center in regards to any uprising against wrongdoing.

I believe this is one of the reasons that evil horrifies us. When we hear about some terrible act done against someone, we think, “How could they do this?” They can do this because they have inertia about/against debasement.

For God to give everyone a ticket into eternal life spent with Him in heaven based on inclusiveness, rather than on the atonement of Jesus Christ, is inertia in the face of evil.

It is complacency. It is passivity. It is the attitude that all the evil actions didn’t really matter. As one of my family members put it, “I don’t want to spend eternity with the man who killed Adam Walsh.”
God has made a way for man’s wrongdoing to be swept away, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, through the repentance of coming to the Lord Jesus and asking for His forgiveness, cleansing and help in living a new life following Him. The repentant man chooses to break from a past lived under the dominion of sin.

God has not made a way for ugly, base behavior to be swept away by ignoring it.

God is not passive when it comes to evil and injustice. Universalism says that He is.

The Use of the Law

LivingWaters.com

God be thanked when the Law so works as to take off the sinner from all confidence in himself! To make the leper confess that he is incurable is going a great way toward compelling him to go to that divine Savior, who alone is able to heal him. This is the whole end of the Law toward men whom God will save - Charles Spurgeon

Is God a Monster?

Nearly fifty years ago, the British agnostic Bertrand Russell penned these words: “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment” (Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian).

Philosopher John Hick echoed those sentiments when he called hell “a perversion of the Christian gospel.” He believed the doctrine of hell attributed to God “an unappeasable vindictiveness and insatiable cruelty.”

We expect statements like that from fallen, unregenerate minds. But what do we do when we hear similar things from prominent, professing evangelical writers? “How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God...” (Clark H. Pinnock, “The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent”).

It’s become popular today for professing evangelicals to join the ranks of Pinnock, atheists, and agnostics in protesting the doctrine of hell. They are preaching sermons, writing articles, and publishing books, and some are wandering into the comment threads of Christian blogs. Here’s a small sampling from Grace To You’s blog in our recent series on hell:

• “What kind of God torments people for all eternity?”
• “…Satan loves the false doctrine of eternal torment”
• “[eternal torment is] cruel and unusual punishment”
• “[eternal torment] makes God out to be a cruel tyrant,” “absolutely cruel and malevolent”
• “How can you in your right minds even consider this to be justice?”

If the doctrine of hell as eternal, conscious torment hadn’t been the position of the Christian church for two millennia, it might be easy to think we’re seriously out of step—a bunch of mindless minions who worship a monster-god! But when you examine the biblical evidence, without an agenda, you’ll find we sound a lot like Jesus and the apostles.

So, how could someone who claims to be faithful to Scripture ridicule the idea of eternal punishment? What is at the heart of their rejection of a never-ending hell? It’s simple, really—they minimize the seriousness of human sin and guilt, and they distort the perfection of divine justice. That’s the crime of Protestant Liberalism and every false religion.

Minimizing the Sinfulness of Sin

To one degree or another, we’re all guilty of minimizing sin. I remember the first time I read the account of Lot’s wife. God turned her into a pillar of salt as she was leaving Sodom. Her crime? A backward glance (Gen. 19:26). Reading that story as an unbeliever provoked me to ask the question: “Was that really an offense worthy of death—turning your neck to take one final look at your home?” As I explored more of the Bible, other accounts of God’s judgment appeared equally capricious and severe to me.

• Nadab and Abihu deviated from the priestly procedures. God consumed them with fire (Lev. 10:1-2).
• One man gathered wood on the Sabbath. God commanded Moses to stone him (Num. 15:35).
• Achan took a few forbidden items from the spoils of Jericho. God commanded Joshua to stone and then burn Achan along with his entire family (Josh. 7:24-25).
• Uzzah kept the ark of God from falling into the mud by reaching out his hand and taking hold of it. God immediately struck him dead (2 Sam. 6:6-7).
• Ananias and Sapphira lied to the apostles. God killed them both in front of the entire church. (Acts 5:1-10).

We often struggle to understand how something seemingly so trivial could enact such a severe judgment. Our flesh wants to cry out in protest, “That’s not fair!” But responses like that reveal our failure to grasp the depth of sin. We see only actions—a devoted father gathering firewood to keep his family warm; a zealous Israelite anxious to keep the Ark of God off the ground—but God sees things differently, more clearly, than we do. He sees our sin as insurrection, rebellion against His holiness (Ex. 31:14; Num. 4:15). What’s more, He sees the hidden motives and intentions at the core of our actions (Mt. 5:28; Heb. 4:12).

One of the most basic tenets of justice is that the punishment must fit the crime. So, if the ultimate punishment for those who die without Christ is hell, then what is the crime? What do men do to merit the eternal sentence of hell? Put plainly, they sin.

You may think that’s a small thing, but the way John MacArthur explains sin, it puts it in its proper perspective. Essentially, sin is “an act of treason against the Sovereign lawgiver and judge of the universe.” The Bible describes our sin as “rebellion,” “ungodliness,” “lawlessness,” “wickedness,” and an “abomination” (Lev. 26:27; Is. 32:6; 1 Jn. 3:4; Ezek. 18:27; Pr. 15:9). Sinners then, are traitors, refusing to love, thank, serve, and obey the God who gave them life, breath, and every good thing.

Sinners spurn God’s love, despise His sovereignty, mock His justice, and view His commands with contempt. They are thieves and murderers, stealing God’s glory and assaulting His holiness. In fact, as Martin Luther once remarked, if sinners had their way, they would dethrone and murder God, which is exactly what they did at Calvary (Acts 2:23). Viewed through the lens of Scripture, sin appears exceedingly sinful (Rom. 7:13).

I find it ironic that those who protest the idea of eternal, conscious torment deride the doctrine with words like, “cruel,” “morally revolting,” “monstrous,” and “repugnant.” Why don’t they employ the same terms of outrage to describe sin? Simple: they fail to see as God sees. God finds our sin “cruel,” “morally revolting,” “monstrous,” and “repugnant,” and He’s absolutely right. If we can’t see our sin as God sees it, it stands to reason that we don’t see the just judgment of hell like He sees it either. We’re just going to have to trust Him.

Divine Justice

People who reject the doctrine of eternal hell also stumble over the justice of God. It seems unjust of God to cast someone into a lake of eternal fire for thirty years of sin. Is sin really that bad?

Yes, it is. In fact, you readily accept that there are escalating levels in the seriousness of offenses. For example, if you punch your neighbor, he may punch you back, slash your tires, or even report you to the police. If you assault your boss, he’ll fire you. If you strike a policeman, you’re in danger of getting tased, pepper-sprayed (or worse), and you’re definitely going to jail. Take it up a notch: if you even attempt to assault the President of the United States, you’re going to prison for a long, long time. And if you try those shenanigans with any other head of state, you’ll probably be executed.

Clearly, we live by an established principle—the seriousness of a crime is measured not only by its inherent nature, but also by the one offended. Furthermore, we readily accept the escalation of punishment, based on the status and position of the one offended. If that makes sense on a human level, why are we tempted to ignore the status and position of God? If we live by that principle on a horizontal level, why not on a vertical level?

Our sins have offended an infinitely glorious and holy Being, and punishment must correspond to that offense. God will by no means acquit the wicked (Ex. 34:6-7). He will give the unbeliever exactly what he deserves. Isaiah said “Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, for what he deserves will be done to him” (Is. 3:11). God warned the children of Israel: “If you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins” (Lev. 26:27-28).

The righteous Judge of all the earth will one day rise up and call every creature into account (Gen. 18:25; Heb. 9:27; 1 Pet. 4:5). He will open the books and mete out a just sentence for every sinful thought, word, and deed (Rom. 2:5; Rev. 20:13).

We’ve all assaulted God (Rom. 3:23), and we all deserve hell. Reject Christ, and hell is exactly what you’ll get. God will rise up in judgment and cast all unbelievers into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14), and all creation will praise His justice. To accuse God of injustice for sentencing sinners to hell is the height of arrogance and audacity.

Yes, God’s judgment is unbearable, but it is never unjust (Gen. 4:13). And that is why “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

Tommy Clayton
Content Developer and Broadcast Editor (GTY Blog)

Why Hell Is Integral to the Gospel

Greg Gilbert | Christianity.com

For some, the horror of the Christian doctrine of hell—that it is a place of eternal, conscious torment where God's enemies are punished—has led them not just to avert their eyes and minds, but to deny it entirely. "Surely," they say, "hell is a fictional construct used to oppress people with fear; a God of love would never allow such a place to really exist." There's an emotional power to this argument, to be sure. No one, certainly no Christian, likes the idea of hell.

At the same time, this doctrine isn't just drapery on the side of the Christian worldview, something with no relevance to the structure of the faith itself. Nor is the doctrine of hell an embarrassing, unnecessary, primitive wart that we believe just because we're told we have to.

On the contrary, the doctrine and reality of hell actually throws the glory of the gospel into sharp relief for us. It helps us to understand just how great God really is, how sinfully wretched we really are, and how unutterably amazing it is that he would show us grace at all. Moreover, the reality of hell—if we don't push it out of our minds—will focus us, above all, on the task of proclaiming the gospel to those who are in danger of spending eternity there.

With that in mind, here are five biblical statements about hell which, taken as a whole, demonstrate why hell is integral to the gospel.

WHY HELL IS INTEGRAL TO THE GOSPEL

1. Scripture teaches that there is a real place called hell.

I won't belabor this point. Others have made this case with crystal clarity. Suffice it to say that medieval bishops didn't invent the doctrine of hell as a way to scare the serfs; they got it from the apostles. And the apostles didn't invent it to scare the pagans; they got it from Jesus. And Jesus didn't borrow it from the Zoroastrians to scare the Pharisees; he was God, so he knew it to be real, and said so. And besides, hell's reality had already been revealed in the Old Testament.

At the most basic level, therefore, if we claim to be Christians and to believe that the Bible is the word of God, we have to recognize that the Bible teaches the reality of hell. But there's more.

2. Hell shows us how heinous our sin really is.

Have you ever heard someone make the argument that no human sin could possibly deserve eternal torment in hell? It's an interesting argument, one that reveals a lot about the human heart. Why is it that when people think about hell, they always conclude that God must be at fault and not themselves? You can see how the doctrine reveals our hearts: when we consider our own sin, our first inclination is always to minimize it, to protest that it's not that bad and that God is wrong to say it deserves punishment.

The reality of hell stands as a massive refutation of that self-justification. Non-Christians will always see the horrors of hell as an indictment of God, but as Christians who know God to be perfectly just and righteous, we must understand that the horrors of hell are actually an indictment of us. We may want to minimize our sin, or excuse it, or try to argue our consciences down. But the fact that God has declared that we deserve eternal torment for those sins should remind us that they are not small at all. They are enormously evil.

3. Hell shows us how immovably and unimpeachably just God really is.

People have been tempted throughout history to think of God as a corrupt judge, one who sets aside the demands of justice simply because he likes the defendant. "We are all God's children," the argument goes. "How could God hand down such a horrible sentence on some of his children?" The answer to that question is simple: God is not a corrupt judge. He is an absolutely just and righteous one.

Over and over the Bible makes this point. When God reveals himself to Moses, he declares himself to be compassionate and loving, but he also says, "Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished." The Psalms declare that "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne." What an amazing statement! If God is to continue being God, he cannot simply set justice aside and sweep sin under the rug. He must deal with it—decisively and with exacting justice. When God finally judges, not one sin will receive more punishment than it deserves. And not one will receive less than it deserves, either.

The Bible tells us that on that day, when God sentences his enemies to hell, the whole universe will recognize and acknowledge that what he has decided is unimpeachably just and right. Isaiah 5 makes this point with bracing clarity: "Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opens its mouth without measure." It's a grotesque image, the grave widening its mouth to swallow the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And yet by this means, Isaiah declares, "The Lord of Hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness." Similarly, Romans 9:22 tells us that by the torments of hell, God will "show his wrath and make his power known," so that he might "make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy."

We may not understand it fully now, but one day hell itself will declare God's glory. It will—even in its horror—testify together with the psalmist, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne."

4. Hell shows us how horrific the cross really was, and how great God's grace really is.

Romans 3 tells us that God put forth Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement "to demonstrate his justice." He did this "because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished."

Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? It was because that was the only way God could righteously not send every one of us to hell. Jesus had to take what was due to us, and that means he had to endure the equivalent of hell as he hung on the cross. That doesn't mean that Jesus actually went to hell. But it does mean that the nails and the thorns were only the beginning of Jesus' suffering. The true height of his suffering came when God poured out his wrath on Jesus. When the darkness fell, that wasn't just God covering the suffering of his Son, as some have said. That was the darkness of the curse, of God's wrath. It was the darkness of hell, and in that moment Jesus was enduring its full fury—the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

When you understand the cross in that light, you begin to understand better just how magnificent God's grace to you is, if you are a Christian. The mission of redemption that Jesus undertook involved a commitment to endure God's wrath in your place, to take the hell that you deserve. What an amazing display of love and mercy that is! Yet you will only see and understand this display of love clearly when you understand, accept, and shudder at the horror of hell.

5. Hell focuses our minds on the task of proclaiming the gospel.

If hell is real, and if people are truly in danger of spending eternity there, then there is no more urgent and important task than doing precisely what Jesus told his apostles to do before he ascended to heaven—proclaim to the world the good news that forgiveness of sins is offered through Jesus Christ!

I think John Piper got it exactly right in a Gospel Coalition interview: "It's very hard to give up on the gospel if you believe there is hell, that after this life, there is an endless suffering for those who did not believe in the gospel." There are all kinds of good things that Christians can do—and in fact should do! But if hell is real, it is worth keeping in mind—no, it is imperative that we keep in mind—that the one thing that Christians can do that no one else in the world is ever going to do is to tell people how they can be forgiven of their sin, how they can avoid spending an eternity in hell.

CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that the doctrine of hell is horrible. The doctrine is horrible because the reality is horrible. But that's not a reason to avert our eyes and ignore it, much less to reject it.

There are those who think that, by rejecting or at least ignoring the doctrine in their preaching, they are making God more glorious and more loving. Far from it! What they are really doing is unwittingly stealing glory from the Savior Jesus Christ, as if what he saved us from was…well, not so bad after all.
In fact, the horrific nature of what we have been saved from only intensifies the glory of what we have been saved to. Not only so, but as we see ever more clearly the horror of hell, we look with ever more love, ever more gratitude, and ever greater worship to the One who endured that hell for us and saved us.

Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of What is the Gospel? (Crossway, 2010).

Francis Chan Tackles 'Love Wins'

In response to Rob Bell's controversial Love Wins, David C. Cook is rushing out former pastor and best-selling author Francis Chan's third book.

Scheduled for release July 5, Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity and the Things We Make Up "promises to be both controversial and confessional, directly addressing a variety of views on hell, the Bible and God," Cook said.

Co-written by Bible college professor Preston Sprinkle, the book will offer a comprehensive and thorough study on God's character, Chan said. Erasing Hell "is not a book that tells you 'here's what you ought to believe,'" Chan said in a video trailer for the book. "It's a book that helps you think through all the evidence out there—all of what Scripture teaches—and come to your own conclusions. ... We can't afford to be wrong about this issue."

Retailing for $14.99, Erasing Hell will be simultaneously released by Oasis Audio on audiobook, with the four-CD set will retailing for $19.99. Chan's first book, Crazy Love, has sold more than a million copies since it was released by Cook in May 2008. Chan's second book with Cook—Forgotten God—has been a fixture on the Christian market best-seller charts since it was published in 2009.

Erasing Hell is the latest title designed to counter Love Wins (HarperOne), which critics say promotes universalism—the belief that all humans end up in heaven, and hell is not a physical place.

Next month, Multnomah Books will publish the e-book Hell, Rob Bell and What Happens When People Die by Bobby Conway, lead pastor of Life Fellowship Church in Charlotte, N.C., and the founder and host of the online program One Minute Apologist. In the e-book, Conway offers "a succinct, biblical and orthodox evangelical response to Love Wins."

God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News Is Better than Love Wins by Christianity Today Senior Managing Editor Mark Galli is scheduled for release in July by Tyndale House Publishers.

Last month, Edenridge Press published Christ Alone: An Evangelical Response to Rob Bell's Love Wins by seminary professor Michael E. Wittmer, whose books include Heaven is a Place on Earth (Zondervan, 2004) and Don't Stop Believing (Zondervan, 2008).

Is There Anything Wrong With Rob Bell’s Gospel?

J. Lee Grady

The popular author’s controversial book Love Wins celebrates God's love but drifts dangerously into Universalism.

I'm usually quick to speak my mind. But in the case of Rob Bell's controversial book Love Wins, I've withheld comment until now because (1) I don't think Christians should judge books before reading them; (2) the theological issues addressed require careful analysis; and (3) I have many young friends who are fans of Bell's books, and they may write me off if I don't treat him fairly.

So I'll begin with a compliment. Bell is a masterful writer whose prose is poetic. As pastor of the 7,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, Bell has gained a following because of his casual style, his ultra-cool Nooma videos and the previous books he's released with Christian publisher Zondervan (especially Velvet Elvis).

“Bell's core theme is that Christians have been too narrow in their view of God and His mercy. He argues that God loves people too much to banish them to hell. In the end, he says, after this life is over, everybody will find ultimate reconciliation in Christ.”

With Love Wins, he's taking his message mainstream. HarperCollins published it, and Time magazine featured a cover story in April about the firestorm Bell has triggered among conservative Christian leaders who have accused him of heresy. So what's all the fuss about?

Bell's core theme is that Christians have been too narrow in their view of God and His mercy. He argues that God loves people too much to banish them to hell. In the end, he says, after this life is over, everybody will find ultimate reconciliation in Christ. Bell claims this is what the Bible teaches, and he suggests that Christian theologians have promoted the idea for centuries.

He writes: "At the center of the Christian tradition ... have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God."

That sounds a lot like Universalism, the idea that all spiritual paths ultimately lead to heaven. But pinning the Universalist label on Bell isn't easy because he doesn't write authoritatively. He muses, hints, speculates and suggests his views, so not to offend. Rather than preach with conviction, he invites his readers to a "conversation." It feels friendly and non-confrontational.

Near the end of the book Bell sounds solidly evangelical when he emphasizes that people must receive the grace God has offered to us. But he sounds more like Oprah when he asks: "Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and claim to be a loving God?"

I can appreciate Bell's desire to distance himself from the mean-spirited side of American fundamentalism. Young people today are horrified (so am I) by self-righteous, Bible-toting believers who burn Qurans or spew hatred toward immigrants or homosexuals. Bell despises the "turn or burn" attitude that has made Christians look judgmental. He also believes we've trivialized salvation by turning conversion into a formulaic prayer, and by focusing the Christian life on the idea of "getting into heaven." I agree with him on those points.

But Bell is also guilty of trivializing salvation. He writes about an ooey-gooey God of love but leaves out God's justice and holiness. His gospel, at times, sounds squishy and spineless. You can't correct the abuses of fundamentalism by disregarding the severe side of God's nature. You can't bring balance by swinging the pendulum too far the other way.

Because of Bell's popularity, Love Wins could steer the American church into dangerous waters. You can ignore the book if you want, but you can't ignore the fact that younger Christians are turned off by certain attitudes in the church, and they need solid answers. We must address the key doctrinal issues that Bell raises:

1. The reality of hell. Bell downplays Scriptural support for the existence of hell while admitting that Jesus talked about it more than anyone in the New Testament. At times he suggests that hell is just a state of mind, or maybe a manifestation of evil on earth. He also questions whether God would send anyone to hell since He's so forgiving.

Yet when the apostle Paul preached the gospel he warned of "the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25, NASB). The essence of the gospel is that Jesus came to save us from eternal separation from God. Don't we still believe this?

2. The exclusivity of Christianity. Bell makes a strong case that Jesus died to reconcile all people to God, but then he suggests that not everyone will realize it was Jesus they were praying to. The inference is that Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists will show up in heaven since they were responding to a divine impulse they didn't understand.

If that's true, why did Jesus Himself say the road to salvation was exclusively narrow and the road to destruction was wide? (see Matt. 7:13-14). Why did He command us to take the message of salvation to the nations? Why did the early apostles preach that salvation was only in His name? Were they narrow-minded fundamentalists too?

3. The necessity of evangelism. Bell comes close to ridiculing Christians who share their faith, and he wonders if it's really necessary for missionaries to share the gospel abroad. He asks: "If our salvation ... is dependent on others bringing the message to us--teaching us, showing us -what happens if they don't do their part? What if the missionary gets a flat tire?"

I'm sure Bell gets laughs when he repeats that line in a sermon. But it's really not funny. He's suggesting that there's no urgency about preaching the gospel, and that lives aren't at stake when we ignore our responsibility to evangelize. Tell that to the apostle Paul, who wasn't laughing when he said he felt an overwhelming obligation to preach so he could save sinners (see Rom. 1:14).

Bell says he asked Jesus into his heart when he was a child, so I'm treating him as a brother in Christ. I'm not picking a fight with him. But I can't endorse Love Wins. The doctrines of heaven, hell, salvation and damnation are too serious to be treated haphazardly. May the Lord help us to reclaim a truly New Testament gospel in an hour of spiritual compromise.

J. Lee Grady is contributing editor of Charisma. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His most recent book is 10 Lies Men Believe (Charisma House).

Counterfeit Gospels Author: Rob Bell Threw Grenade at Evangelicals

By Michelle A. Vu | Christian Post Reporter

Rob Bell wasn’t misquoted or attacked as he claims. Rather, the Michigan megachurch pastor was the one who threw the “grenade” at evangelicals, said the author of the new book Counterfeit Gospels.

“For a very popular, charismatic, evangelical pastor to come out and call the traditional view of hell as toxic, misguided, and for him to mock the view of his grandmother – which he admits in the book – he has really thrown a grenade at the evangelical count,” said Trevin Wax in an interview with The Christian Post on Thursday.

Wax, who is also the editor of a small group curriculum developed by the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources, said it is “disingenuous” of Bell to portray himself as “under attack, being misquoted, and being maligned” when his book “is very much an assault on the traditional understanding of heaven and hell.”

Since February, evangelical leaders have been in an uproar over Bell’s latest book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. The book wasn’t even released when several prominent evangelical leaders pronounced Bell, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., a heretic and universalist based on a promotional video for the book.

Due to the controversy, the book debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list after its March 15 release.

Despite dissension among evangelicals, a positive result from the book is that it has caused not only Christians but also the secular media to examine what the Bible says about hell, God’s judgment, and salvation. Time magazine did a cover story on Bell for its Easter special and The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC have all covered the author and his views on hell.

Wax’s book, which was endorsed by many prominent evangelical leaders including Matt Chandler, Tullian Tchividjian, and J.I. Packer, came out in April and examines six counterfeit gospels, one of which – the judgmentless gospel – would probably include Bell's teachings. The Southern Baptist, who has served in pastoral roles in Romania and the United States, hopes his book will tackle the crisis within the church – lack of confidence and clarity in the Gospel.

“[T]he greatest threat to Christianity may not be modern culture, blatant heresies, or the rise of Islam. If the seeds of destruction can come from the counterfeit, could it be such seeds are slowly being planted through the counterfeit gospels within the church?” posed Wax in his book.

“Could it be that we are unwittingly participating in ‘printing’ the counterfeit gospel?”

Although Wax only mentions Bell once in his book regarding his Nooma video “You,” the chapter on the judgmentless gospel contains many charges used against Love Wins. Wax writes about the idea of universalism, the belief that every human in the end will be saved, and that the judgmentless gospel teaches that people should focus on the “life here and now” and not overemphasize heaven and hell in the future.

But the editor of LifeWay’s small-group resource titled “TGM – Theology, Gospel, Mission” wrote: “It puzzles me that so many people seem to be angry with God for allowing evil and suffering to exist in the world, and yet they are also angry with the idea of God as Judge. You can’t have it both ways. If you expect God to do something about the evil in this world, then you want God to judge.”

For each counterfeit gospel, the seminary graduate offered insight on where that version of the gospel went wrong. For the therapeutic gospel, Wax said it treats the Gospel like a McDonald’s Happy Meal in that pursuing happiness is the central goal of life. Problems in marriage, self-esteem, and relationships are not seen through the proper lens of deep sin inside, but only as superficial, individual problems. It would be like a doctor treating symptoms individually but not treating the root cause, said Wax.

“If our biggest need is to feel good about ourselves, God could have sent Oprah. If our big need is to get along with our family, God could have sent Dr. Phil,” wrote Wax. “But if God sent his Son to die a brutal, horrifying death as a payment for human sin, then surely our sin must be more heinous than ‘feeling empty inside.’”

The other counterfeits are the moralistic gospel, which Wax admits traditional evangelicals often struggle with; the quietest gospel, or seeing the gospel as only personal salvation and only for the spiritual realm of life instead of for all of society; the activist gospel, or turning the gospel message into activism and works based while diluting the message of salvation through Jesus Christ; and the churchless gospel, where salvation is only seen as for the individual and not for the whole community of Christ so the local church is optional.

“In order to spot a counterfeit we need to know the real thing,” said Wax to CP. “I use the analogy of the three-legged stool (the gospel story, the gospel announcement, and the gospel community) as a way of helping people to find hooks to hang these things so we keep the cross and resurrection at the center of what it means to proclaim the Gospel.”

“I want us to know the Gospel well, intellectually but also to know it in our hearts – having experienced the Gospel – so we will live a life of continual repentance and continual faith in a way that makes the counterfeit gospels less attractive.”

Rob Bell: "You're Amending The Gospel So That It's Palatable!"

HELL IN THE BIBLE (Strong Dictionary)

HELL: Hebrew SHEOL: Hades or the world of the dead (as if a subterranean retreat), including its accessories and inmates: - grave, hell, pit.
Deu 32:22 for a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

2Sam 22:6-7 The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me; In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears.

Psalm 9:17 the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

Psalm 16:8-11 I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiced: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

Psa 55:15-16 let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them. As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.

Pro 9:13-18 A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knowest nothing. For she sit at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city, To call passengers who go right on their ways: Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him that wanted understanding, she said to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knowest not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

Pro 15:9-11 the way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD: but he loved him that followed after righteousness. Correction is grievous unto him that forsakes the way: and he that hated reproof shall die. Hell and destruction are before the LORD: how much more then the hearts of the children of men? Destruction in Hebrew abaddon: abstractly a perishing; concretely Hades: - destruction.

Pro 23:13-14 Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beat him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

Isa 5:11-14 Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiced, shall descend into it.

HELL in Greek GEENNA: Of Hebrew origin ([H1516] and [H2011]); valley of (the son of) Hinnom; gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem, used (figuratively) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment: - hell.

The scriptures that used the word Geenna:

Mat 5:22 But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Mat 5:30 and if thy right hand offends thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Mat 10:28 and fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Mat 23:33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

HELL G86 HADES: From G1 (as a negative particle) and G1492; properly unseen, that is, “Hades” or the place (state) of departed souls: - grave, hell.

Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Act 2:27 because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. v28 Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. v31 He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. v32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

Rev 1:18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

Rev 6:8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Rev 20:13-15 and the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

HELL: TARTAROO (the deepest abyss of Hades); to incarcerate in eternal torment: - cast down to hell.

2 Peter 2:3 these false teachers only want your money. So they will use you by telling you things that are not true. But the judgment against these false teachers has been ready for a long time. And they will not escape God who will destroy them. v4 when angels sinned, God did not let them go free without punishment. He sent them to hell. He put those angels in caves of darkness, where they are being held until the time when God will judge them. v5 And God punished the evil people who lived long ago. He brought a flood to the world that was full of people who were against God. But he saved Noah and seven other people with him. Noah was a man who told people about living right. v6 God also punished the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He burned them until there was nothing left but ashes. He used those cities as an example of what will happen to people who are against God. v7 But he saved Lot, a good man who lived there. Lot was greatly troubled by the morally bad lives of those evil people. v8 this good man lived with those evil people every day, and his good heart was hurt by the evil things he saw and heard.

2 Pe 2:9 so you see that the Lord God knows how to save those who are devoted to him. He will save them when troubles come. And the Lord will hold evil people to punish them on the Day of Judgment. v10 that punishment is for those who are always doing the evil that their sinful selves want to do. It is for those who hate the Lord's authority. These false teachers do whatever they want, and they are so proud of themselves. They are not afraid even to say bad things against the glorious ones. v11 the angels are much stronger and more powerful than these beings. But even the angels don't accuse them and say bad things about them to the Lord. v12 But these false teachers speak evil against what they don't understand. They are like animals that do things without really thinking -like wild animals that are born to be caught and killed. And, like wild animals, they will be destroyed. v13 they have made many people suffer. So they themselves will suffer. That is their pay for what they have done. They think it is fun to do evil where everyone can see them. They enjoy the evil things that please them. So they are like dirty spots and stains among you-they bring shame to you in the meals you eat together. v14 Every time they look at a woman, they want her. They are always sinning this way. And they lead weaker people into the trap of sin. They have taught themselves well to be greedy. They are under a curse. v15 these false teachers left the right way and went the wrong way. They followed the same way that the prophet Balaam went. He was the son of Beor, who loved being paid for doing wrong. v16 But a donkey told him that he was doing wrong. A donkey cannot talk, of course, but that donkey spoke with a man's voice and stopped the prophet from acting so crazy. v17 these false teachers are like springs that have no water. They are like clouds that are blown by a storm. A place in the deepest darkness has been kept for them. v18 they boast with words that mean nothing. They lead people into the trap of sin. They find people who have just escaped from a wrong way of life and lead them back into sin. They do this by using the evil things people want to do in their human weakness. v19 these false teachers promise those people freedom, but they themselves are not free. They are slaves to a mind that has been ruined by sin. Yes, people are slaves to anything that controls them. v20 People can be made free from the evil in the world. They can be made free by knowing our Lord and Savoir Jesus Christ. But if they go back into those evil things and are controlled by them, then it is worse for them than it was before. v21 Yes, it would be better for them to have never known the right way. That would be better than to know the right way and then to turn away from the holy teaching that was given to them. v22 what they did is like these true sayings: "A dog vomits and goes back to what it threw up." And, "After a pig is washed, it goes back and rolls in the mud again."

GRAVE IN THE BIBLE

1Cor 15:55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The word grave here is translated in Greek as hades.

John 11:17 Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

The word grave translated in Greek as mnemeion: remembrance, that is, cenotaph (place of interment): - grave, sepulchre, tomb. It uses the same word (in English) but different meaning in Greek in describing the word grave.

IF HELL DOESN'T EXIST OR MEAN WHAT IT MEANT WHY BOTHER ABOUT SIN? WHY NEED JESUS? ISN'T YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT?

Related: "Do What You Want"..? (Exposing Satanism in Society) [1of3]

Endtime Apostasy: Is Hell Dead?

By Jon Meacham (Time Magazine)

As part of a series on peacemaking, in late 2007, Pastor Rob Bell's Mars Hill Bible Church put on an art exhibit about the search for peace in a broken world. It was just the kind of avant-garde project that had helped power Mars Hill's growth (the Michigan church attracts 7,000 people each Sunday) as a nontraditional congregation that emphasizes discussion rather than dogmatic teaching. An artist in the show had included a quotation from Mohandas Gandhi. Hardly a controversial touch, one would have thought. But one would have been wrong.

A visitor to the exhibit had stuck a note next to the Gandhi quotation: "Reality check: He's in hell." Bell was struck. (Vote on Rob Bell's influence in the 2011 TIME 100 poll.)

Really? he recalls thinking.

Gandhi's in hell?

He is?

We have confirmation of this?

Somebody knows this?

Without a doubt?

And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?

So begins Bell's controversial new best seller, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Works by Evangelical Christian pastors tend to be pious or at least on theological message. The standard Christian view of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is summed up in the Gospel of John, which promises "eternal life" to "whosoever believeth in Him." Traditionally, the key is the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in the words of the ancient creed, "for us and for our salvation came down from heaven.. and was made man." In the Evangelical ethos, one either accepts this and goes to heaven or refuses and goes to hell.
(See 10 surprising facts about the world's oldest Bible.)

Bell, a tall, 40-year-old son of a Michigan federal judge, begs to differ. He suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book's subtitle puts it, "every person who ever lived" could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be. Such a simple premise, but with Easter at hand, this slim, lively book has ignited a new holy war in Christian circles and beyond. When word of Love Wins reached the Internet, one conservative Evangelical pastor, John Piper, tweeted,
"Farewell Rob Bell," unilaterally attempting to evict Bell from the Evangelical community. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says Bell's book is "theologically disastrous. Any of us should be concerned when a matter of theological importance is played with in a subversive way." In North Carolina, a young pastor was fired by his church for endorsing the book.
(See TIME's photo essay "A Brief History of Hell.")

The traditionalist reaction is understandable, for Bell's arguments about heaven and hell raise doubts about the core of the Evangelical worldview, changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation. "When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world," says Mohler, "then you don't need the church, and you don't need Christ, and you don't need the cross. This is the tragedy of nonjudgmental mainline liberalism, and it's Rob Bell's tragedy in this book too."

Particularly galling to conservative Christian critics is that Love Wins is not an attack from outside the walls of the Evangelical city but a mutiny from within — a rebellion led by a charismatic, popular and savvy pastor with a following. Is Bell's Christianity — less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions — on an inexorable rise? "I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian," Bell says. "Something new is in the air."

Which is what has many traditional Evangelicals worried. Bell's book sheds light not only on enduring questions of theology and fate but also on a shift within American Christianity. More indie rock than "Rock of Ages," with its videos and comfort with irony (Bell sometimes seems an odd combination of Billy Graham and Conan O'Brien), his style of doctrine and worship is clearly playing a larger role in religious life, and the ferocity of the reaction suggests that he is a force to be reckoned with.

Otherwise, why reckon with him at all? A similar work by a pastor from one of the declining mainline Protestant denominations might have merited a hostile blog post or two — bloggers, like preachers, always need material — but it is difficult to imagine that an Episcopal priest's eschatological musings would have provoked the volume of criticism directed at Bell, whose reach threatens prevailing Evangelical theology. (From TIME's archives: "Is God Dead?")

Bell insists he is only raising the possibility that theological rigidity — and thus a faith of exclusion — is a dangerous thing. He believes in Jesus' atonement; he says he is just unclear on whether the redemption promised in Christian tradition is limited to those who meet the tests of the church. It is a case for living with mystery rather than demanding certitude.

From a traditionalist perspective, though, to take away hell is to leave the church without its most powerful sanction. If heaven, however defined, is everyone's ultimate destination in any event, then what's the incentive to confess Jesus as Lord in this life? If, in other words, Gandhi is in heaven, then why bother with accepting Christ? If you say the Bible doesn't really say what a lot of people have said it says, then where does that stop? If the verses about hell and judgment aren't literal, what about the ones on adultery, say, or homosexuality? Taken to their logical conclusions, such questions could undermine much of conservative Christianity. (From TIME's archives: "Does Heaven Exist?")

What the Hell?

From the Apostle Paul to John Paul II, from Augustine to Calvin, Christians have debated atonement and judgment for nearly 2,000 years. Early in the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick came to represent theological liberalism, arguing against the literal truth of the Bible and the existence of hell. It was time, progressives argued, for the faith to surrender its supernatural claims.
(See pictures of Pope Benedict XVI visiting America.)

Bell is more at home with this expansive liberal tradition than he is with the old-time believers of Inherit the Wind. He believes that Jesus, the Son of God, was sacrificed for the sins of humanity and that the prospect of a place of eternal torment seems irreconcilable with the God of love. Belief in Jesus, he says, should lead human beings to work for the good of this world. What comes next has to wait. "When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage," says Bell. "So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are." He is quick to note, though, that his own speculation, while unconventional, is not unprecedented. "At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church," Bell writes, "have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God."

It is also true that the Christian tradition since the first church has insisted that history is tragic for those who do not believe in Jesus; that hell is, for them, forever; and that love, in the end, will envelop those who profess Jesus as Lord, and they — and they alone — will be reconciled to God. Such views cannot be dismissed because they are inconvenient or uncomfortable: they are based on the same Bible that liberals use to make the opposite case. This is one reason religious debate can seem a wilderness of mirrors, an old CIA phrase describing the bewildering world of counterintelligence.

Still, the dominant view of the righteous in heaven and the damned in hell owes more to the artistic legacy of the West, from Michelangelo to Dante to Blake, than it does to history or to unambiguous biblical teaching. Neither pagan nor Jewish tradition offered a truly equivalent vision of a place of eternal torment; the Greek and Roman underworlds tended to be morally neutral, as did much of the Hebraic tradition concerning Sheol, the realm of the dead.

Read more: here

How can a loving God send people to hell?

Source: http://www.everystudent.com/my

Q: "I'm trying to understand how God who is love can send people to hell."

A: Here are some things to consider:

(1) God has given all people enough evidence to know that he exists.

"...What may be known about God is plain to them [people], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:19-20)

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalms 19:1)

(2) Nonetheless, people choose not to know him.

"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshippedand served created things rather than the Creator." (Romans 1:25)

"The fool has said in his heart, 'there is no God.'" (Psalms 14:1)

"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." (Isaiah 53:6)

"God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Psalms 53:2-3)

"There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." (2Timothy 3:1-4)

(3) Therefore, God is giving people what they want.

God wants all people to be saved and know His truth (1Timothy 2:3-4), and all to repent and come to Him (2Peter 3:9). However, the Bible also reveals God as one who does not force Himself on people. He allows people to reject Him even though He doesn't like it. God is love (1John 4:16), but God allows people to reject His love.

There will be a judgement of all people, where all people will be presented before God's throne (Rev. 20:11-13). Anyone whose name is not found in the "book of life" is thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15).

God told the Israelites, "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19). In a way, that's the choice before all of us: the blessing or the curse, life or death, God's love or God's wrath.

It seems illogical to us that God could be loving and wrathful at the same time. However, much of who God is, is likely beyond our comprehension. We might assume that His wrath is a contradiction to His loving character, but our assumptions might be very wrong. God's wrath and His love might be very compatible, in a way that we do not currently comprehend.

Even though we don't fully understand things, the decision is still before us. God says that all of us are rightfully under His wrath and under His judgement. But He welcomes everyone to turn to Him for forgiveness, now while we live, so that instead of being condemned by Him, we can be forgiven and reconciled to Him. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). And, "...unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins" (John 8:27).

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Visitation to Heaven and Hell: Michael Jackson is there!

Prepare to Meet Thy Maker:
The Kingdoms of Heaven and Hell, and the Return of CHRIST
by Angelica Zambrano

For a period of 23 hours, a young Ecuadorian girl named Angelica was shown the Kingdoms of Heaven and Hell, and the Return of Christ. She witnessed Jesus weeping as He overlooked multitudes of souls lost forever, a world that has rejected Him, a Church that is mostly unprepared for Him, a people that have stopped witnessing to the lost, and an entertainment industry that even lures children to satan. She witnessed many of our esteemed cultural icons suffering in the Pit; singers, entertainers, and even a pope. Angelica was also shown how the Kingdom of Heaven is all wonderfully prepared and ready, an unimaginable glorious place, where no evil exists. Though Jesus is ONLY coming back for a Holy People, and many of God's children will NOT be ready on that day, and will be left behind in a world that will fall apart.

Excerpt: Jesus told me that many famous people were walking to that place, famous and important people. Take for example, Michael Jackson. This man was famous all over the world but he was a satanist. Although many people may not see it that way, but it is the truth. This man had satanic covenants: He came to agreement with the devil in order to achieve fame and attract many fans.

Those steps that he performed, that's the way I saw demons walk while tormenting people in hell. They would slide backward and not move forward, while they shout; enjoying the anguish they impose upon the people. Let me tell you that Michael Jackson is in hell. The Lord showed him to me after Michael died. He let me see Michael Jackson tormented in flames. I cried to Jesus, "Why?" It wasn't easy to see how this man was being tormented and how he would scream. Anyone who listens to Michael Jackson's songs or sings them or who is a fan of Michael Jackson, I warn you that satan is trapping you in his web so that you will end up in hell. Right now, renounce it in the name of Jesus! Jesus wants to set you free, so that you will not be lost.