The Bible
Describes Hell
There are three words translated “Hell”
in Scripture:
Gehenna (Greek): The place of punishment (Matthew
5:22,29; 10:28; and James
3:6)
Hades (Greek): The abode of the dead (Matthew
11:23; 16:18; Luke
16:23; Acts
2:27)
Sheol (Hebrew): The grave (Psalm
9:17; 16:10)
There are those who accept that Hell is a place of
punishment, but believe that the punishment is to be
annihilated—to cease conscious existence. They
can’t conceive that the punishment of the wicked
will be conscious and eternal. If they are correct,
then a man like Adolph Hitler, who was responsible for
the deaths of millions, is being “punished”
merely with eternal sleep. His fate is simply to return
to the non-existent state he was in before he was born,
where he doesn’t even know that he is being punished.
However, Scripture paints a different story. The rich
man who found himself in Hell (Luke
16:19-31) was conscious. He was able to feel pain,
to thirst, and to experience remorse. He wasn’t
asleep in the grave; he was in a place of “torment.”
If Hell is a place of knowing nothing or a reference
to the grave into which we go at death, Jesus’
statements about Hell make no sense. He said that if
your hand, foot, or eye causes you to sin, it would
be better to remove it than to “go into Hell,
into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their
worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark
9:43-48).
The Bible refers to the fate of the unsaved with such
fearful words as the following:
Revelation
14:10,11 tells us the final, eternal destiny of
the sinner: “He shall be tormented with fire and
brimstone...the smoke of their torment ascended up for
ever and ever: and they have no rest day or night."
We do not enjoy speaking in detail about the torments
of Hell. It is, however, a real place and God in his
love and mercy does not want you to go there.
Do you know
what God did so that you wouldn't have to spend eternity
in Hell?
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