Replies

Jesus talked about hell more than any other person in the Bible. He warned those listening, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

The reality of hell should frighten us, because not one word in the Bible about hell would ever make you want to go there — not if you take it seriously. The Bible speaks of hell as a place of absolute loneliness and despair and hopelessness. It calls it a place of “darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:13).

But Jesus didn’t talk about hell just to scare us. He talked about it instead because He wanted us to know that God has provided a way of escape! God doesn’t want us to be separated from Him forever. He loves us, and He wants us to spend eternity with Him in heaven. Unlike hell, we all know about heaven as a place of joy, peace, freedom from all the fears and pains of this world.

I agree with the fact that Hell is a terrible place and people should be afraid to go there, but the idea that Hell is the Lake of Fire or that existence in Hell is eternal is not in accordance with Scripture.

I don’t have a lot of time to go into detail, but if you really want to dig there are many great sites to do so. Let me begin by saying that I used to argue an “eternal suffering” with people like SDA, but after doing a thorough Bible study on Hell and eternity, I now know that the Bible doesn’t teach that. Here were a few key verses for me...

John 3:16 as well as others pose the future as one of either eternal life or death. Death is the ending of life.

Revelation 20: 14,15 talk about the “second death” which upon study is the death of the soul. This is the end of the soul.

We are not born with an immortal soul, like some have told us or else 1 Cor. 15:53 is false. We only “put on” immortality (in our soul) when we accept Jesus because it is His immortality that we are taking on.

The only clear verse of entities being in torment forever is Revelation 20:10, but those being tormented are the Devil, the anti-Christ and the false prophet. My guess is that is because the greatness of their evil and/or because they were either made of different stuff or they ate of the tree of life.

Here are a few sites I found informative:
http://www.jeremyandchristine.com/articles/eternal.php
http://www.jeremyandchristine.com/articles/lazarus.html