Christ spoke about Hell eleven times in the scriptures. He did not say, “And the unrighteous will enter the house of God and be happy forever,” or “the impenitent will be destroyed and exist no longer.”
Rather, He said explicitly that there is a place called Hell (Gehenna); that people go there, and that it’s forever. In speaking about the suffering in Hell, he described it as: “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46); “everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41); “the fire that will never be quenched” (Mark 9:43-46); “the worm that never dies” (Mark 9:44). Of course, many of the things Jesus said during his earthly ministry can be construed in different ways. But not all of them. Certain statements he made simply preclude misinterpretation. Those having to do with Hell are in that category.
C.S. Lewis famously said: “In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.”
The problem with Christians who teach that Hell exists in theory but that in practice no one ever goes there (universalism), or that anyone who might go there is destroyed by God and isn’t alive anymore (annihilationism)—is that they flatly contradict the teaching of Jesus Christ. They attempt to whitewash the Gospels.
That’s why the apostles echoed Christ’s teaching perfectly, by characterizing Hell as: “a flaming fire” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10); “everlasting chains” (Jude 6); “eternal fire” (Jude 7), “the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13); “the smoke of…torment” ascending “forever and ever” (Revelation 14:11); “the lake of fire and brimstone, in which the devil, the beast, and the false prophet ‘shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever’” (Revelation 20:10).
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, rightly called the prince of preachers, said this, “Do not tell me that hell is metaphorical fire,” he thundered. “Who cares for that? If a man were to threaten to give me a metaphorical blow on the head, I should care very little about it; he would be welcome to give me as many as he pleased.” Spurgeon went on to contend that there was “real fire in hell, as truly as you now have a real body — a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this — that it will not consume, though it will torture you.”
And there are even more passages in the Old and New Testament which presuppose the eternal nature of Hell. There’s just no getting away from this fact. You can try to invent your own religion and omit the notion of everlasting Hell, but you can’t very well claim Christ as the founder of your faith and then change the meaning of one of Christ’s central teachings.
The truth is that Christ couldn’t have been more clear when it came to either the existence of Hell or its eternal duration. He discussed the creation of Hell, (which was originally for the angels who had rebelled against God in Heaven), He also taught that Hell is the only acceptable desistination for everyone who rejected God on earth as their Lord and Savior. In God's eternal mercy He grants their requests to live seperate from Him forever and ever. In fact, it is not a far leap to determine that Hell for unbelievers would be having to endure fellowship with the One that they rejected for all time. They receive their last wishes, life apart from the Creator and will live with their choices for eternity.
So I urge you to consider soberly the choice between Heaven and Hell. Both are real, both exist in physical dimension, and both will provide an eternal home for ever and ever to those who choose their infinity destinations while living here on earth. This is the most important question you will ever answer while living on this planet, but rest assured, you will make a decision, and that decision is eternal.
