To understand hell we need to go back to
the beginning and first understand where we come from. As Bible believers we
know that Genesis teaches that God formed human beings from the dust of the
earth, He then breathed the breath of life into the form “and man became a
living soul” (Genesis 2:7). From this we learn that there is no separate entity
called a soul or spirit. The life giving breath of God makes us a conscious,
living being. His breath brings us to life and sustains us, without it we would
be well-formed particles of dust (Acts 17:28; Psalms 103:14). In science we see
that the same elements found in the soil can be found in the human body. We
breathe oxygen from the air but the source of actual life has never been
identified in a laboratory – that is the prerogative of God alone.
How did man live originally following his
creation? As we continue reading in Genesis we learn that God planted a garden
for man to live in and for which he should care (we thrive better living closer
to nature). God gave man dominion over every thing He created (Genesis 1:26-28).
He was to care for and make positive use of everything God had made. While in
the garden man had direct interactions with God (Genesis 2:19). God planted
many trees in the garden for man’s food and sustenance (we thrive better on a
plant based diet) and among those trees God planted two trees the Tree of Life
and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:8-9). The Tree of
Life as the name suggests conveys life to those who eat from it. From this we
learn that our lives are not self-sustaining we need to eat the fruit this life
giving plant to gain sustained life. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good an Evil
was placed in the garden as a test of loyalty.
Now we know where we come from – dust – we
know how life was expected to be – peaceful and active – so how is it that we
are in our current state? God gave man instructions to care for the garden and
to eat freely of all the fruits in the garden except the fruit of the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil, because in the day that they ate they would die
(Genesis 2:15-17). Unfortunately, our first parents did eat of this tree. The
test was simple – don’t eat – but the enemy is cunning. The adversary of our
souls questioned God’s instructions – “Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden?” and modified the explicit word of God saying: “ye
shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4); subsequently,
the man and woman God placed in the garden disobeyed and ate. Following their
disobedience God came looking for them, and hearing their explanations passed out
sentences for their sin but also gave them hope of redemption (Genesis 3:8-19).
Because of their disobedience they were barred from the garden, because if they
in their sinful state ate of the Tree of Life sin would become immortalized
(Genesis 3:22, 23). By sinning man forfeited his God-given dominion over the
earth. Now the enemy is in control of the earth (Romans 6:16). The once
pleasant work, man had to do became tedious, and the peace of the past was gone
because they were now subject to a tyrant. They were also unable to engage in
direct contact with God in His full glory (Exodus 33:18-23). On this earth we
are in quarantine because we are infected with sin (1 Corinthians 4:9). Only Heavenly
beings have interacted directly with us, and those that do interact with us
regularly are specially ‘clothed’ for our protection (Exodus 3:2-6; 33:20; Joshua
5:13-15; Daniel 3:19-25; Luke 2:8-14; Philippians 2:7).
Very early in life we come to understand
what it means ‘to die’, whether through the loss of a grandparent, a pet or
even the death of a plant. The dictionary defines it simply as “to stop
living”. We learned earlier that man became living when God breathe the breath
of life into him. Therefore, we can logically reason that death would be the
removal of this life giving breath and a return to dust (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
This was the declaration of God to the man after they sinned (Genesis 3:19).
Again scientifically we see this, when a person dies they stop breathing, their
body decomposes and they become one with the soil.
So what does this have to do with hell?
There are many people in this life that believe this is the end of us. We’re
born, we live, and we go back to the soil. This is a sad outlook on life, given
the state of life as we know it. But in scripture we learn that there is hope
for redemption from sin and its ultimate consequence. Meaning, we will have a
second chance to choose whether to live forever with our Creator or to die
forever in hell. God promised to defeat the enemy, who lied and tricked the
woman into sin (Genesis 3:15), giving us an opportunity to choose lives of
obedience to God and live (Deuteronomy 30:19; Joshua 24:15; Ezekiel 18:32). The
promise of a Saviour was reiterated for 4,000 years to every generation of the
man’s descendants, until the Saviour was born in the form of the man Christ
Jesus (Genesis 22:18; Psalms 77:13; Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; Daniel 9:26; Luke 2:11).
He lived a life of perfect obedience to the will of God and therefore was able
to offer His life as payment for the ultimate penalty of sin in behalf of all
the descendants of the original man (John 15:10; Romans 5:12-19).
Does this mean the job is done and there is
nothing left to do since Jesus already paid the price? NO! One of the most
popular verses of the bible is John 3:16 which states “For God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should
not perish but have everlasting life.” This is a loaded passage of scripture.
Because God is Love (1 John 4:8) He manifests love to all His creation. Love as
we learned in previous posts is an equal mix of Justice and Mercy. God’s
principle of justice must be satisfied; the debt of sin must be paid. His
principle of mercy must also be satisfied he had to give us hope. Therefore, He
sent His Son, Jesus to live the life that man is expected to live and then pay
the debt man owed. Does this mean there is nothing for us to do? The text says:
“whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” So
what does it mean to believe?
The dictionary defines ‘to believe’ simply
as “to accept or regard (something) as true”. Therefore, if we accept God’s
love and His sacrifice as true this should have some effect on the way we live
– after all we believe the law of gravity to be true so we avoid walking
off roofs. Consequently, if we genuinely believe in Jesus’ sacrifice, what in
our lives should change? There reasonably should be a sense of gratitude for
the gift given (1 John 4:19). This gratitude is expressed in reciprocating the
love God has for us and, as we previously learnt, we love when we keep God’s
law (John 14: 23; 2 John 1:6). This means if man wants to be saved we need to
keep the commandments of God as a demonstration of our belief and acceptance of
Jesus’ sacrifice. But how do we keep these commandments when our very form is
pervaded with sin inherited from our first parents (Psalms 51:5)? This is the
purpose of God’s grace. The grace of God grants us the strength to resist
temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13); therefore, our sole task is to yield our will
to His.
When the man and the woman sinned they hid
from God, because that’s what sin does; it causes us to separate ourselves from
God because of our sense of unworthiness (Genesis 3:8). Hiding from God can be
manifested by choosing to not have anything to do with Him and His word,
because of our sense of guilt, or trying to work in our own strength to obey
God’s laws, to make ourselves good enough to come to Him. Neither of these will
work for us; in the first scenario, the guilt will only go away when we have
completely seared our consciences (Matthew 12:31) in the second, in our own
strength we can do nothing good (Isaiah 64:6; John 15:5). However, there is
hope to cure the guilt, when we read John 3:17 we see that Jesus did not come
into this world to condemn us but to give us an opportunity to be saved (Romans
8:1). Thus, we can come boldly to God’s throne to find grace to help us in our
time of need (Hebrews 4:16). Many of us miss this and get bogged down in the
mire of our actions. We need to fall to our knees and fight this natural
instinct to flee from God’s presence because He is our only source of help and
hope to fight sin in this life (Matthew 19:26).
Knowing all this, how does hell fit into
the picture? The bible tells us that hell is prepared for the Devil and his
angels (Matthew 25:41). However if we reject God’s grace and mercy by living in
wilful disobedience to Him we will join that fire as well. The death experienced
in hell is called in scripture “the second death” (Revelation 20:14). Many
people read the previous verse in Matthew 25 and hold on to the idea that hell
is a place that will be burning forever. This is a vicious falsehood! Why would
a loving God who offered mercy at such a price burn someone for all eternity
who sinned for ~70 years? When we study scripture we are admonished to place
line upon line, precept upon precept (Isaiah 28:10-13). This verse refers to
hell as an “everlasting fire”; in Jude the scripture refers to the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah as an “eternal fire” (Jude 7). We have an idea where, in
the Middle East, those sister cities were. There is active sulphur there but
the burning has ended, because the fuel is burnt up. In Malachi 4:3 we learn
that the wicked will be ashes. We know that “to die” means “to stop living”, so
why is it that the vast majority of mankind holds the belief that sinners will
live forever in a burning flame? The answer – the original lie, “ye shall not surely die”. The devil is nothing if
not consistent. He has the vast majority of the world convinced that when we
die we don’t really die.
When we die the first death we go back to
the soil (Genesis 3:19). But God has promised to return and those that are in
the grave will live again, to gain the reward of the lives they lived (1
Thessalonians 4:16, Daniel 12:2, Revelation 20:6). Some will be raised to
everlasting life, and some to everlasting death – never more to live again. This
too is a mercy, because those of us who choose the sinful, selfish life will
always be subject to the consequences of our sinful actions and could never be
happy in God’s kingdom of peace and benevolence. Hell is real, but as I heard a
pastor say it recently, “it is an event not a place”. It will come down from
heaven consume the devil, his angels, sin, sinners, death and itself forever (Matthew
25:41; 1 Corinthians 15:54, 55; Revelation 20:7-15).
Let us take the Scripture as it reads, it
is consistent and God is Love, all His
actions are governed by pure love. He is not arbitrary and takes no “pleasure
in the death of the wicked” but sin and its perpetuators cannot continue to
exist; they cause too much hurt and pain (Ezekiel 33:11; Nahum 1:9).
Take Heart
A Reason to Believe: What happens at death
A Reason to Believe: Hell
Hand In Hand
Come Search With Me: Theism & Atheism, Reason & Faith
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