THE JUSTICE OF HELL
“Serpents! Offspring of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” Mat 23:33
Why is there a hell? Is it just and fair?
Let’s take a glance at what hell is like first, aside from theologian’s discussions and views about it. Hell is eternal, just as eternal as is the place made and conceived to have the Life God grants. Let’s mark that all hell is and grants (or takes away), is the precise opposite of what eternal life really is within us and without; and the place is the dooming counterpart and the precise opposite of Paradise, even in degree of unhappiness and inner emptiness. “Also I will lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet”, Is.28:17. This is the Law of God: an eye for an eye. Man must have the exact measure from death and sin which fits the exact measure of what he rejected in beauty and glamour and happiness without end, simply because he chose sin and sinning above the Universe’s best Gift: Christ Himself. “Because you have said, We have made a covenant with death, and we have made a vision with hell; when the overwhelming rod shall pass through, it shall not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and we have hidden ourselves under falsehood, therefore so says the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I place in Zion a Stone for a foundation, a tried Stone, a precious Cornerstone, a sure Foundation; he who believes shall not hurry. Also I will lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet”, Is.28:15-16.
Eternal life is something within man. The word eternal means constant, without ups and downs and without end. This life within is harmed by sin, whatever preachers may need to say and state concerning it to cover up their own sins – or to have them excused or explained away from people.
In the beginning man was made a living soul and God breathed life into his nostrils. The tree of Life was in the middle of the Garden which men should be able to eat from. Nevertheless, they marked first and above all the other tree where Satan had embraced and twisted himself around. The same thing still happens with mankind today. (One finds that if a demon tells someone such is doomed, he will easily believe those words and fear since devils also use common senses in man to establish lies; when God tells that same person he is doomed, that person finds it hard to believe it from God. Men, also, make a big fuss over some devilish manifestation, yet when God does something, they easily disregard and question it).
Man, being made a living being which will never die, not after death in hell or in heaven, if doomed will be removed from that life’s breath and the breath will surely be taken away from within him as well (something which sinners have themselves and gives them a hard time because they mix it with sin, the strange factor in man as creation; we read, therefore, “There is no peace, says my God, for the evil-doers”, Is.57:21). Man will remain without the breath of life in hell, and there will be such an emptiness in him that he will not be able to bear.
I believe, the worst thing in hell is not the place, the people who might be there as neighbours embittered and screaming in one’s ears, the lack of water and of sleep eternally, but it will be the lack of life one has from within, deeply felt and yet without being able to die or rest forever. These rejected eternal rest forever, remember, and so received the opposite of rest in full measure. We read: “To whom He said, this is the rest; cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing. Yet they were not willing to hear”, Is.28:12. Since a living soul can not die ever, it having rejected living or chosen something above it (God is the only Life there is), at least it can stay dying for it cannot die away, nor stay living anymore. Man should know how he is and take it in that he will never die again wherever he goes to and that he cannot eat from the tree of Life while breeding in sin, Gen.3:24.
Sinners quite often feel empty and dry inside, here on earth already, while having the breath still within them. That loneliness feeling will only increase and be greatly multiplied since all life will then be fully withdrawn and for always abandon man and demons while these will remain fully aware beings from one eternity to another – these will be always dying ones incapable of dying (eternal death). People who commit suicide usually state they are tired around here and wish to die and then go kill themselves, little expecting that the place and new circumstances they go to is perhaps a thousand times worse off (if not more) than all that they are used to and everything they have been through put together. Bunyan said (and I agree), “If one lived in riches for fifty years on earth, with glamour and surrounded by all the earth can give, one hour in hell will take from him all pleasant memories of all he has enjoyed in his lifetime”. Here on earth they feel miserable only because sin tries to get into a God made nature and that breath of God doesn't match with it and the lack of peace within means there is a fight somewhere in the soul of man, a huge battle between a constitution and a sin which came to parasite there where it finds no place to stay and abide (unless to trouble, plunder and kill), since it is said by Jesus “And the slave does not abide in the house forever, but the Son abides forever”, John 8:35. Demon possession is bad, but sin possession is worse, even if people learned well how to live along with its consequences. The difference is that people go after sin to fulfil them, it being unfulfilling.
This non-ending emptiness which makes people crave after whatever they can never find back again is what I consider the worst part of hell. People there cannot get crazy being crazy and awful since consciousness will drive madness out of them to feel and see things clearly as they are, they cannot lie to themselves anymore being liars, they cannot smoke being smokers, they cannot ignore being ignorant; “(Also I will lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet... for we have made lies our refuge, and we have hidden ourselves under falsehood), and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place”, Is.28:17. All their previous appetites will be greatly multiplied due to the death experience from within without deliverance from them around, which then they will not desire to have since it gives them such thirsting pain, and they will surely have it in the proper counterpart of the eternal life beings in Paradise fully and freely experience without any need or reason to crave or need after those things any longer.
This said, one should nurture thoughts concerning this issue, since man sacrifices few years to prepare at college and some other places even, just so they can work for few years more and fill a house they will soon need to leave behind. One should use time to think and regard whatever is eternal too, to find out about its truthfulness and most especially how to get fully acquainted with a Living God beforehand – right now and straight away. This should be the most important factor in the whole of our living and struggling. I think there is very little more to add unto this. One should give all, place all effort, thought and truthfulness into living and get fully familiar with God right now.
If this seems unjust we may consider that God said it will be so and none can ever change it. Reasoning the justice of it to ignore it will never change God’s mind concerning any of it ever. Take it from God and prepare instead of discussing it away loosing precious time that way about something one must know is righteous and fully measured out to be just. None can change it at all by reasoning against it and not even belief or disbelief will be able to change it in any way whatsoever. Ones looses time to prepare for an exam, gets anxious about it even and there is a greater invisible issue to be concerned about right now.
I believe this is but a little picture of what is going to be like over there. Being so, just how much justice is in this dreadful measure God has taken upon Himself to impose upon sinners everywhere? We know from experience, from Scripture and from conscience that God is faithful and righteous. I believe because He is righteous He has taken such measures as these. Hell is a chosen reward, either conscientiously or not; if not chosen it is at least a taken one. So, there must be something fully righteous to move God into something like this after all. Besides, he is not hiding it from people and even before there were written Scriptures (in Job’s time for example) it is spoken about hell clearly and most assuredly. God has never left people in the dark concerning the truthfulness of it. It must be fully righteous. It is what sinners get by lodging sin and rejecting a great salvation from its power, an outcome from bondage around them. They chose not to be taught to stop loving whatever they love and cherish dearly now, it being evil, they having their knowledge asserting to them of it being so too. Amen.
Thoughts on John Bunyan’s death bed:
OF DEATH AND JUDGMENT.
As the devil labours by all means to keep out other things that are good,
so to keep out of the heart as much as in him lies, the thoughts of
passing from this life into another world; for he knows if he can but
keep them from the serious thoughts of death, he shall the more easily
keep them in their sins.
Nothing will make us more earnest in working out the work of our
salvation, than a frequent meditation of mortality; nothing hath greater
influence for the taking off our hearts from vanities, and for the
begetting in us desires after holiness.
O sinner, what a condition wilt thou fall into when thou departest this
world; if thou depart unconverted, thou hadst better have been
smothered the first hour thou wast born; thou hadst better have been
plucked one limb from another; thou hadst better have been made a
dog, a toad, a serpent, than to die unconverted, and this thou wilt find
true if thou repent not.
A man would be counted a fool to slight a judge, before whom he is to
have a trial of his whole estate.[25] The trial we have before God is of
otherguise importance,[26] it concerns our eternal happiness or misery;
and yet dare we affront him?
The only way for us to escape that terrible judgment, is to be often
passing a sentence of condemnation upon ourselves here. When the
sound of the trumpet shall be heard, which shall summon the dead to
appear before the tribunal of God, the righteous shall hasten out of their
graves with joy to meet their Redeemer in the clouds; others shall call
to the hills and mountains to fall upon them, to cover them from the
sight of their Judge; let us therefore in time be posing[27] ourselves
which of the two we shall be.
OF THE TORMENTS OF HELL.
Heaven and salvation is not surely more promised to the godly than hell and damnation is threatened to, and shall be executed on the wicked.
When once a man is damned, he may bid adieu to all pleasures.
Oh! who knows the power of God’s wrath? none but damned ones.
Sinners’ company are the devil and his angels, tormented in everlasting fire with a curse.
Hell would be a kind of paradise if it were not worse than the worst of this world.
As different as grief is from joy, as torment from rest, as terror from peace; so different is the state of sinners from that of saints in the world to come.
OF THE LOVE OF THE WORLD.
Nothing more hinders a soul from coming to Christ, than a vain love of the world; and till a soul is freed from it, it can never have a true love for God.
What are the honours and riches of this world, when compared to the glories of a crown of life?
Love not the world; for it [the love of the world] is a moth in a Christian’s life.
To despise the world is the way to enjoy heaven; and blessed are they who delight to converse with God by prayer.
What folly can be greater than to labour for the meat that perisheth, and neglect the food of eternal life?
God or the world must be neglected at parting time, for then is the time of trial.
To seek yourself in this world is to be lost; and to be humble is to be exalted.
The epicure that delighteth in the dainties of this world, little thinketh that those very creatures will one day witness against him.
José Mateus
zemateus@msn.com