hell

If you think of American Christianity as a pendulum, we’re currently at the opposite extreme from the First Great Awakening. When Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he compared human beings with spiders, dangling by a thread over the fires of God’s just judgment, upheld only by His mercy. Accounts from the time tell of listeners who clung to the pillars of their churches, lest they fall through the floor into the Lake of Fire. Like I said, we’re no longer in this territory these days.

Controversy surrounded the Vatican and Pope Francis after an interview was released in which the Pope allegedly claimed there was no hell and people who die without knowing Christ simply “disappear.”

A new survey shows that in a number of Western nations, the population no longer believes in Heaven or Hell, even if they also claim to believe in God.

For Christians, there can be no greater comfort than knowing death is not the end. But what about those who don’t believe in the afterlife, or worse, simply don’t care?

Remember because sin is real hell is real, and because hell is real our need for a Savior is real.

Here are five ways in which a child’s fear of death and hell can be an opportunity to tell him or her about Jesus and His work on the cross.

I take no special delight in writing this article. But hell is real and people are going there. So let’s look closely at what the Bible has to say about it as well as the on-going debate over whether hell is eternal conscious punishment.

What you and I “like” is utterly and absolutely irrelevant. God doesn’t set his eternal agenda based on what we “prefer”. What we might “hope” to be true simply doesn’t matter. What does or does not make us “feel comfortable” has no bearing on the truth or falsity of this issue. The fact that we have an intuitive sense for what strikes us as “fair” or “just” plays no part whatsoever in coming to a conclusion on whether or not there is an eternal hell. The fact that we may not enjoy the thought of eternal conscious punishment doesn’t make it go away! The fact that you “feel” the existence of hell is inconsistent with your concept of God doesn’t mean there isn’t one. What we “want” or “hope” or “desire” has no relevance at all in this debate. The only important question is, “Does the Bible teach it?” And if the Bible does teach it (and Revelation 14 together with numerous other texts would indicate it does), our responsibility is to believe it and fervently and faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only hope sinners have for now and eternity.

Here are 10 truths about hell that we must understand and accept.

Actor Morgan Freeman will star in the second season of the National Geographic series The Story of God, which will explore the concepts of heaven and hell.

Popstar Justin Bieber recently said during a concert that he thinks “hell is Instagram.”

“Heaven is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark.” –Stephen Hawking

I’m afraid of the dark.

If we’re talking about the endless kind of darkness that offers no light anywhere, no hope ever, and nothing but nothingness, who among us would not panic at the thought of that?

I expect people like Mr. Hawking simply find the idea of Heaven too good to be true, and thus conclude that it must be a product of man’s delusional yearning for “pie in the sky by and by.”

And yet, there are solid reasons for reasonable people to believe in the concept of a Heavenly home after this earthly life. Here are some that mean a lot to me. By no means is this list exhaustive. It’s simply my thinking on the subject.

The God who made us created us with a longing for Himself and a satisfaction in nothing less.

When we get to Heaven, we will finally be satisfied, but not until then. “I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness when I awake” (Psalm 17:15).

“I go to prepare a place for you,” said our Lord. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3).

If it were not so, I would have told you.

Jesus said that. I believe Him.

I choose to believe.