Has Modern Day Christianity Scared The “Hell” Out Of Us?
Posted by truthtalklive on 5 November, 2009
When’s the last time you heard a sermon about hell? Has the modern church abandoned the subject in order to attract and keep members? Is it enough to preach the love of God?
As Christians we know that hell is real and the bible is full of references to the lake of fire, the eventual abode of those who reject Jesus Christ as savior. In fact, Jesus spoke as much about hell as he did about heaven.
So what do you do when you’re presenting the gospel? Do you ignore the subject of hell or do you “scare” people toward the kingdom.
Watch Stu Live ..click the TV icon below
To watch and post right click your mouse and click open in new tab/window!
Stay connected!
29 Comments on “Has Modern Day Christianity Scared The “Hell” Out Of Us?”
We should preach about hell but not in a vacuum. In the same way we should not put God’s love in a vacuum. God’s love and righteous judgement should both be preached in balance to help drive us into God’s loving arms. John (the “love” apostle) emhasizes God’s love for the world but also warns the Jews in his gospel that “if they don’t believe that (Jesus) is “the One” they will die in their sins” thus go to hell. And in his first letter John says that “if we don’t walk in the light as He is in the light then the truth is not in us” which also seems to put “hypocritical walkers” in danger of hell. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; wisdom towards salvation.
This is a difficult subject and I sympathize with the caller Tim, but we must let the Word of God drive our theology and not our own thoughts or desires. It is clear from the Word that God is holy and must punish sin. But it is also true that He is gracious and merciful and will save everyone who puts their faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. An innumerable multitude will be with the Lord forever because of the Lord Jesus Christ’s perfect life and sacrificial death and resurrection on our behalf.
Revelation 7:9-12 9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Don’t pass this article by. At least give it a read, even if you disagree.
How Willingly Do People Go to Hell? (by John Piper)
C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them. His stress is relentlessly that people are not “sent” to hell but become their own hell. His emphasis is that we should think of “a bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” (For all the relevant quotes, see Martindale and Root, The Quotable Lewis, 288-295.)
This inclines him to say, “All that are in hell choose it.” And this leads some who follow Lewis in this emphasis to say things like, “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”
I come from the words of Jesus to this way of talking and find myself in a different world of discourse and sentiment. I think it is misleading to say that hell is giving people what they most want. I’m not saying you can’t find a meaning for that statement that’s true, perhaps in Romans 1:24-28. I’m saying that it’s not a meaning that most people would give to it in light of what hell really is. I’m saying that the way Lewis deals with hell and the way Jesus deals with it are very different. And we would do well to follow Jesus.
The misery of hell will be so great that no one will want to be there. They will be weeping and gnashing their teeth (Matthew 8:12). Between their sobs, they will not speak the words, “I want this.” They will not be able to say amid the flames of the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), “I want this.” “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). No one wants this.
When there are only two choices, and you choose against one, it does not mean that you want the other, if you are ignorant of the outcome of both. Unbelieving people know neither God nor hell. This ignorance is not innocent. Apart from regenerating grace, all people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).
The person who rejects God does not know the real horrors of hell. This may be because he does not believe hell exists, or it may be because he convinces himself that it would be tolerably preferable to heaven.
But whatever he believes or does not believe, when he chooses against God, he is wrong about God and about hell. He is not, at that point, preferring the real hell over the real God. He is blind to both. He does not perceive the true glories of God, and he does not perceive the true horrors of hell.
So when a person chooses against God and, therefore, de facto chooses hell—or when he jokes about preferring hell with his friends over heaven with boring religious people—he does not know what he is doing. What he rejects is not the real heaven (nobody will be boring in heaven), and what he “wants” is not the real hell, but the tolerable hell of his imagination.
When he dies, he will be shocked beyond words. The miseries are so great he would do anything in his power to escape. That it is not in his power to repent does not mean he wants to be there. Esau wept bitterly that he could not repent (Hebrew 12:17). The hell he was entering into he found to be totally miserable, and he wanted out. The meaning of hell is the scream: “I hate this, and I want out.”
What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.
Beneath this misleading emphasis on hell being what people “most want” is the notion that God does not “send” people to hell. But this is simply unbiblical. God certainly does send people to hell. He does pass sentence, and he executes it. Indeed, worse than that. God does not just “send,” he “throws.” “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown (Greek eblethe) into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15; cf. Mark 9:47; Matthew 13:42; 25:30).
The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.
When someone says that no one is in hell who doesn’t want to be there, they give the false impression that hell is within the limits of what humans can tolerate. It inevitably gives the impression that hell is less horrible than Jesus says it is.
We should ask: How did Jesus expect his audience to think and feel about the way he spoke of hell? The words he chose were not chosen to soften the horror by being accommodating to cultural sensibilities. He spoke of a “fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42), and “weeping and gnashing teeth” (Luke 13:28), and “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), and “their worm [that] does not die” (Mark 9:48), and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and being “cut in pieces” (Matthew 24:51).
These words are chosen to portray hell as an eternal, conscious experience that no one would or could ever “want” if they knew what they were choosing. Therefore, if someone is going to emphasize that people freely “choose” hell, or that no one is there who doesn’t “want” to be there, surely he should make every effort to clarify that, when they get there, they will not want this.
Surely the pattern of Jesus—who used blazing words to blast the hell-bent blindness out of everyone— should be followed. Surely, we will grope for words that show no one, no one, no one will want to be in hell when they experience what it really is. Surely everyone who desires to save people from hell will not mainly stress that it is “wantable” or “chooseable,” but that it is horrible beyond description—weeping, gnashing teeth, darkness, worm-eaten, fiery, furnace-like, dismembering, eternal, punishment, “an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24).
I thank God, as a hell-deserving sinner, for Jesus Christ my Savior, who became a curse for me and suffered hellish pain that he might deliver me from the wrath to come. While there is time, he will do that for anyone who turns from sin and treasures him and his work above all.
Trembling before such realities, and trusting Jesus,
Pastor John
JD42 — an excellent post. Really thought-provoking. Thank you.
I have had an unusual spiritual journey that has led me to looking at the Bible somewhat differently than what the church teaches. It doesn’t take much study of the early church to see things were different than the orthodox Christianity we hear about today. We should be concentrating more on what Jesus said instead of trying to interpret what others said about him.
In the introduction to The Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-28) Jesus tells us what we must do to have eternal life.
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Jesus did not tell the Jew that he had to change religions. Jesus did not tell the Jew he had to believe a certain way, but then our actions always speak our true beliefs.
I believe Jesus parable of The Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-31) also tells us what we do is more important than what we say.
Jesus asked “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ” ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.”
John Wesley said that John Calvin’s view of predestination “made God out to be worse than the Devil himself.” I believe this phrase could be applied to much of what is being taught as Christianity today.
Butch: Jesus did not tell the Jew he had to believe a certain way, but then our actions always speak our true beliefs.
I’m asking out of curiosity, Butch: How do you understand John 14:6? Or Acts 4:12? Or Acts 16:31? Or Romans 10:5-13? Or John 3:18, 36?
I believe that our actions will reveal whether or not our beliefs are the the right sort, but isn’t there a necessary foundation of belief supporting these actions? How do you understand this?
To understand what hell is one must understand what the soul is. If the soul is immortal then it must go somewhere when a person dies, right? If the soul is not permitted into heaven then where else can it go? Hell! Makes sense, right?
However, what if the soul is NOT immortal? What does the bible teach? Let’s look and see.
Consider how the first man, Adam, came to have life. The Bible states: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living SOUL.” (Genesis 2:7) Though breathing sustained his life, putting “the breath of life” into his nostrils involved much more than simply blowing air into his lungs. It meant that God put into Adam’s lifeless body the spark of life—”the force of life,” which is active in all earthly creatures. (Genesis 6:17; 7:22) The Bible refers to this animating force as “spirit.” (James 2:26) That spirit can be compared to the electric current that activates a machine or an appliance and enables it to perform its function. It has no personality and no thinking ability.
When a person dies what happens? Psalm 146:4 says: “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” When a person dies, his impersonal spirit does not go on existing in another realm as a spirit creature. It “returns to the true God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7) Ah! you say! That shows it is a spirit creature that goes to heaven! No no no, it simply means that any hope of future life for that person now rests entirely with God.
The ancient Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato taught that every person had an invisible soul inside them that survived death and never died. This directly contradicts what the bible clearly teaches. Adam “came to be a living soul,” says Genesis 2:7. He did not receive a soul; he WAS a soul—a whole living person. The Scriptures speak of a soul’s doing work, craving food, being kidnapped, experiencing sleeplessness, and so forth. (Leviticus 23:30; Deuteronomy 12:20; 24:7; Psalm 119:28) Man himself is a soul. When a person dies, that soul dies. “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:4)
Again, what happens when a person dies? When pronouncing sentence upon Adam, God himself stated: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return..” (Genesis 3:19)
Where was Adam before God formed him from the dust of the ground and gave him life?
He simply did not exist!
When he died where did he go?
He simply returned to that state of complete absence of life.
Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, states it very clearly: “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten…..Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” Scripturally, death is a state of nonexistence. The dead have no awareness, no feelings, no thoughts.
So since the dead have no conscious existence, hell cannot be a fiery place where God tortures the wicked after death.
So what IS hell?
Well, what happeded to Jesus after he died? “He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”* (Acts 2:31) Where was the hell to which even Jesus went? The apostle Paul wrote: “I handed on to you . . . that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, yes, that he has been raised up the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3, 4) So Jesus was in hell, the grave, but he was not left and forgotten there. He was was raised up, or resurrected.
We also have the bible’s true account of the righteous man Job who while experiencing great suffering (caused by the way NOT from God but from God’s enemy Satan who was allowed to for good reason by God) Wished to escape his suffering. Job pleaded: “O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave (sheol - the hebrew word that is commonly translated Hell), that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!” (Job 14:13) Did Job want to go to a fiery-hot place for protection? Obviously Job understood the condition of those dead in hell. He knew it to be just what it is, simply the grave, where his suffering would end. The Bible hell is the common grave of mankind where good people as well as bad ones go. They are in God’s memory awaiting a resurrection to life either as a spirit creature in heaven, or back to life as the same flesh and blood human they once were on earth.
Revelation 20:13 states: “And the sea (millions have died at sea and were not buried in a grave) 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.”
Hell will be emptied!
Jesus promised, “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and come forth.” (John 5:28)
Donny is obviously a Jehovah’s Witness, I recognize the almost verbatim defense found in the Watchtower.
Donny: Just out of curiosity, what was Jesus talking about when He referred to or answered questions about “eternal life” (Matthew 19:16-26, 29, 25:46; Mark 10:30; Luke 16:9; John 3:15-16, 36, 4:36, 5:24, 6:27, 40, 47, 10:28, 12:25, and many others) or “eternal fire” (Matthew 18:8, 25:41, 46, and others) if death means annihilation?
I like the idea of Donny being a Jehovah’s Witness. Makes this website more…well rounded[smile].
Oh yeah, he should stick around for sure. And let’s hope Gurgus can keep his atheism civil.
Yeah.
I know that some people are wondering if Gurgus is actually Bernie/Barnie/Dudley/etc.etc. reborn, but as Theists, it’s not really that bad of a thing to have such a character visiting occasionally. Such a character challenges the faith, makes people think of new ideas and ways to express and defend faith, improves skill in debate, critical thinking, and anger management, and provides fresh opportunities to share the faith.
What is that supposed to mean? Since when are atheists and atheism not civil? Oh that’s right. Atheists murdered millions of people last century and atheism was directly responsible for this. I was reading your other post addressed to me and then I saw this. I don’t have anything against the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They irritate other Christians more than they do anyone else. I point to some of the passages in the Bible Donny mentioned when Christians try to tell me I’m hell bound unless I convert.
No, Gurgus, but atheists on this site have a history of getting booted because they become aggressive and vitirolic towards the faithful, seeming less interested in engaging in debate and more interested in trying to prove anyone who believes in anything except their definition of observable reality is a moron. Its a shame, because they often serve and important role in the debate about what our faith is based upon.
In other words, it was meant kindly.
“They irritate other Christians more than they do anyone else.” Donny’s post didn’t irritate me, I just wanted to make sure to point out where it came from in the interest of full disclosure. If one is “cutting and pasting” from another site, instead of expressing themselves in their own words, one should give the citation.
“I point to some of the passages in the Bible Donny mentioned when Christians try to tell me I’m hell bound unless I convert.” This would be one of those instances where I think it is profitable to have other points of view on this blog. Many evangelicals don’t understand that the Hebrew concept of sheol in the Old Testament is a far cry from the fundamentalist vision of Hell teased out and then expanded from a few verses in the New Testament that may or may not be literal descriptions of the afterlife. Honestly, the mainstream vision of Hell seems to be pulled more from Dante than anything actually in the Bible. Not that most have read either in their entirety…
I have it[Dante's Divine Comedy], and it’s a great read.
Yeah, yeah, but what about my other question, the important one: can John Cusack pull of the action hero schtick?
In the movie 2012?
Ehhhh, kinda. You’ll just have to watch the movie and decide for yourself[smile].
It is a fact that hell will be emptied. That is the truth of the bible, and not Jehovah’s Witnesses, falsely so-called, who lie and tell not the truth. Death and Hell are condemned. Jesus asked, “How shall ye escape the condemnation of hell?” Hell is not the condemnation. The condemnation of hell is the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels. It is the condemnation of the adversaries. Death is an enemy and an adversary of God. Death and hell shall give up the dead that are in them, and death and hell shall be condemned to the lake of fire. Jesus never spoke of hell as the eternal destiny of the condemned. He spoke of “ghenna” which is translated hell FIRE. It is a fire, not a hell. The condemned will be in the fire WITH hell, not in hell.
The confusion of hell with the lake of fire, second death, and everlasting destruction (notice that it is everlasting and not a one-time annihilation) is just as common as the confusion of heaven with everlasting life. Eternal life is Jesus Christ and not heaven which shall pass away.
A popular form of Christianity, even so-called orthodoxy, presents a dilemma of heaven or hell destinies whereby death, the enemy of God, is glorified as the channel by which man attains heaven. They say, “Are you going to heaven when you die?” But Jesus said, “He who believes in me will never die.” John 3:16 utterly defies those who would say we die and go to heaven. They are liars who have changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the corruptible creation which God has said he will change like a dirty shirt. They do so to peddle a paradise of the imagination of men’s hearts to their proselytes, but God is not mocked.
ben Maulis: Death is an enemy and an adversary of God. [...] A popular form of Christianity, even so-called orthodoxy, presents a dilemma of heaven or hell destinies whereby death, the enemy of God, is glorified as the channel by which man attains heaven.
Um, what? Are you asserting that death is the enemy of God?
The why is God Himself implicated as the agent of death [e.g., Genesis 3:21; Genesis 7; Exodus 23:18; Job 38:39, 41; Pslam 10:4:21, 25, 27; Luke 12:24]? Why is it mentioned as a good thing in Scripture [e.g., Psalm 116:15; Romans 14:8; Philippians 1:21, 23; Revelation 14:13]?
Death is certainly used as the judgment of sin in mankind, and as a way to limit his wickedness. One must not confuse the means whereby God judges evil as an evil in itself, or consider it inimical to God.
The last enemy [that] shall be destroyed [is] death. 1 Cor. 15:26
ben Maulis: The last enemy [that] shall be destroyed [is] death. 1 Cor. 15:26
Excellent response.
So how, then, do you propose that we understand these passages in the greater context of all of Scripture? If death is the enemy of God, then why is He shown to be its agent more than anyone else in the Bible? Why is it sometimes mentioned as a positive thing?
The adversary (1 Peter 5:8), Satan, who is the devil (Rev. 12:9, 20:2), had the power of death (Hebrews 2:15). Christ came to destroy him (Hebrews 2:15) and his works (1 John 3:8). The sting or power of death is sin (1 Cor. 15:56) because the wages of sin is death and indeed, “thou shalt surely die.” Sin is transgression of the law (1 John 3:4) and the strength of sin is the law (1 Cor. 15:56). When the scripture says that death is an enemy, it does not mean that death succeeds in resisting God’s will. All of the scriptures you cited show that God succeeds in spite of the adversaries that transgress him. They do not show that death is a good thing, but that God is good in spite of death. Death is manifested in Genesis 3:19 and corrupted man barred from the Tree of Life in 3:22 so that he would not live corrupted forever but death would put an end or limit to his corruption (Gen 6:3). God is not willing that any perish (2 Pet. 3:9) but before he can put down death, he must subdue all things (1 Cor 15:28), reconcile all things (Col 1:20), and turn away all ungodliness from Jacob (Romans 11:26). “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
Therefore to say that death is an enemy of God does not mean that death defeats the purposes of God, but rather that God will overcome his adversaries. In the end, death receives the same treatment as all the adversaries of God. Death and Hell are cast into the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Death will be there with all the other adversaries whose names are not written in the Lamb’s book of LIFE.
I forgot to mention the second part of God’s will that not any perish… but rather that all come to repentance… that repentance (which is not the godly sorrow that leads to repentance) but which is the turning toward Christ by the reconciliation afforded by his act on the cross, that repentance is also part of the fulfillment of things concerning which I mentioned his subduing (1 Cor 15:28), reconciliation (Col 1:20) and turning away of ungodliness (Romans 11:26). God wills that all come to repentance.
In light of this, we have to separate the putting off of this body of death, the temporary state the saints endure while we await the resurrection, from the sore punishment that awaits the adversaries. When the time appointed by God comes for each of us to put off this body of death, it is indeed a good riddance. Remember that Christ said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life.” God responds to the putting off of the flesh with victory by giving us a incorruptible spritual body in exchange for the corrupted flesh. That’s the Resurrection!
So when Jesus says we will never die (John 11:26), and that we shall not perish (John 3:16) it does not mean we won’t put off our “tabernacles” (2 Pet 1:14) and these bodies of death (Romans 7:24), but that in the repentance he calls for from all men everywhere (Acts 17:30), all that the Father has given him will come to him and the one who comes to him he will in no wise cast out, but of all that he has given him he will lose nothing and he will raise them up at the last day. “This is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6)
Now the curious part is that Jesus revealed that he is the last day. When Martha expected Lazarus to be raised later, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In the first creation, God rested on the 7th day. The last day is the day of rest. Yet there remaineth a rest that we must enter into (Hebrews 4:9). That rest is Christ. He is the beginning of the new creation and the end. He is not just the way, but also the truth and the life. There was none before him, there will be none after him, and besides him there is no other. He is the rest and the Sabbath of the people of God, but many would make a “paradise” of mammon into our rest and our end. Our destination is none other than what Christ called his Father’s house (John 14:2 and 14:6). This is not heaven. God is in heaven. He is also on the earth but neither contain him. Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27, 2 Ch 2:6). So what is the Father’s house? Christ said, “the Father [is] in me, and I in him.” (John 10:38, 14:10-11, 20, John 17:21). “For of him, and through him, and to him, [are] all things: to whom [be] glory for ever. Amen.” Romans 11:36
Ben Maulis: All of the scriptures you cited show that God succeeds in spite of the adversaries that transgress him. They do not show that death is a good thing, but that God is good in spite of death.
Sure. I don’t disagree with what you say; this just seems a bit more subtle than I had first surmised. It’s not often that one of God’s enemies is described as precious in God’s sight, as the Psalmist describes death. But then, God’s picture of the actions of things, even the actions of His enemies, is much deeper and more subtle than our own.