QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS ON DEATH AND HELL

From the Evidence Bible, Compiled by Ray Comfort

(Comments by Harold M. Lind)

Below are a number of questions, statements, and objections. Some of them are from non-believers that pose questions to prove in their mind that the Bible is not true. They think that by “stumping” a Christian, they somehow have disproved the Bible. What they don’t understand is that the Bible stands by itself. It doesn’t need to be proved true. It is the inspired Word of God. If someone chooses to not believe in it, he will find out later, when it is probably too late, that it is true. And God will have to judge his sins because he hasn’t been washed clean in the blood of Jesus. There are other questions about what the Bible says, and other topics such as how to tell others about Jesus Christ, why we can’t just lead a “good” life to go to heaven, and why God must judge sin.

When you’re dead, you’re dead.

What if you are wrong? What if God, Jesus, the prophets, the Jews, and Christians are right and you are wrong? If there is no afterlife, no Judgment Day, no heaven, and no hell, then God is unjust and each of the above is guilty of being a false witness. It means that Almighty God couldn’t care less about the fact that a man rapes a women, then cuts her throat and us never brought to justice. If you are right, and there is no ultimate justice, you won’t even have the joy of saying, “I told you so.” However, if you are wrong, you will lose your soul and end up eternally damned. You are playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed one for man to die; and after this, the Judgment.”

Could you be wrong in your claims about Judgment Day and the existence of hell?

The existence of hell and the surety of the judgment are not the claims of fallible man. The Bible is the source of the claim, and it is utterly infallible.

When someone becomes a Christian, he is admitting that he was in the wrong, and that God is justified in His declarations that we have sinned against Him. However, let’s surmise for a moment that there is no Judgment Day and no hell. That would mean that the Bible is a huge hoax, in which more than forty authors collaborated (over a period of 3,000 years) produce a document revealing God’s character as “just.” They portrayed Him as a just judge, who warned that He would eventually punish murderers, rapists, liars, thieves, adulterers, etc. Each of those writers (who professed to be godly) therefore bore false witness, transgressing the very commandments they claimed to be true. It would mean that Jesus Christ was a liar, and that all the claims He made about the reality of judgment were therefore false. It would also mean that He gave His life in vain, as did multitudes of martyrs who have given their lives for the cause of Christ. Add to that the thought that if there is no ultimate justice, it means that the Creator of all things is unjust – that He sees murder and rape and couldn’t care less, making Him worse than a corrupt human judge who refuses to bring criminals to justice.

Here’s the good newd, though, if there is no hell: You won’t know a thing after you die. It will be the end. No heaven, no hell. Just nothing. You won’t even realize that it’s good news. Here’s the bad news if the Bible is right and that there is eternal justice: You will find yourself standing before the judgment throne of a holy God, who has seen every sin you have ever committed. Think of it. A hold and perfect Creator has seen your thought-life and every secret sin you have ever committed. You have a multitude of sins, and God must by nature carry out justice. Ask Him to remind you of the sins of your youth. Ask Him to bring to remembrance your secret sexual sins, the lies, the gossip, and other idle words. You may have forgotten your past sins, but God hasn’t. Hell will be our just desert (exactly what you deserve), and you will have no one to blame but yourself. This is the claim of the Bible. If you don’t believe it, it is still true. It will still happen.

Yet, there is good news – incredibly good news. We deserve judgment, but God offers us mercy through the cross. He paid our fine so that we could leave the courtroom. He destroyed the power of the grave for all who obey Him. Simply obey the gospel, and live. By doing that you will find out for yourself that the gospel is indeed the “gospel truth.” Jesus said that if you obey Him, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (see John 8:3-32). Get on your knees today, confess and forsake your sins. Tell God you are truly sorry, then trust the Savior as you would trust yourself to a parachute. Then you will find yourself in a terrible dilemma. You will know for certain that hell is a reality. When you get up the courage to warn people you care about, they will smile passively, and say, “Could you be wrong in your claims about Judgment Day and the existence of hell?”

Hell isn’t a place. This life is hell.

Skeptics who say this are trying to dismiss the reality of hell. They might like to think that life as we know it couldn’t get any worse, but the sufferings in this life will be heaven compared to the suffering in the next life – for those who die in their sins. This life is the closest thing to hell that Christians will ever know, and the closest thing to heaven that sinners will ever know.

You are using scare tactics by talking about hell and Judgment Day

In the late 1980’s, TV commercials in the U.S. asked, “What foes through the mind of a driver who is not wearing a seat belt in a head-on collision?” Then they showed a crash dummy having its head crushed by a steering wheel in a collision, and said, “The steering wheel!” Those were scare tactics, but no one complained because they were legitimate scare tactics. That’s what happens in a head-on collision if you are foolish enough to not put on a seat belt.

To warn of hell is fearful, but it is actually absolutely legitimate because the Bible says that it is a fearful thing for a sinner to fall into the hands of the living God.

Hell is just a metaphor for the grave

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 expirence 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’s 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:

Shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2)

Everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46)

Weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 24:51)

Fire unquenchable (Luke 3:17)

Indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish (Romans 2:8-9)

Everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 1:9)

Eternal Fire…the blackness of darkness for ever (Jude 7,13)

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.”

How can people be happy in heaven, knowing that their unsaved loved ones are suffering in hell?

Those who ask such questions fall into the category of those who asked Jesus a similar question. The Pharisees said that a certain woman had seven consecutive husbands, so whose wife will she be in heaven (Mark 12:23)? Jesus answered by saying that they neither knew the Scriptures nor the power of God. The unregenerate mind has no concept of God’s mind or His infinite power. If God can speak the sun into existence; if He can see every thought of every human heart at the same time; if He can create the human eye with its 137,000,000 light-sensitive cells, then He can handle the minor details of our eternal salvation.

John writes that in heaven we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2), so perhaps we will be fully satisfied that God is perfectly just and merciful, and that He gave every individual the opportunity to accept or reject Him. However He works it out, God promises that there will not be sorrow or crying in heaven. Our focus in heaven won’t be on our loss, but on our gain.