Thursday Thoughts - The Scariest Reality

Saturday is Halloween. It is a time when many visit haunted houses and look to horror movies and scary stories to be frightened. So, on this Thursday before Halloween for those that enjoy their heart racing and the inability to drop off to sleep, I can’t think of anything more frightening than an eternity in the furnace of fire! Jesus preached more on hell than any other subject and yet today many churches are afraid to mention this truth much less preach it for fear of offending someone. John MacArthur does a great job on a subject that too few truly understand and appreciate.

What is this furnace of fire? What is hell? Let me give you four truths about hell ... that I think will answer that question. Number one, hell is a place of unrelieved torment. It is a place of a horrible misery. And the Bible defines it as darkness, outer darkness. That is deep pit darkness, darkness that's way out from the light, impenetrable darkness. Darkness that closes in. And it is darkness without the hope of light forever. Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for the daylight? Have you ever been in the darkness and longed for someone to turn a light on? To be in that encroaching, encompassing, moving kind of darkness and know that for all the eons of eternity, you will never see light ... is how our Lord describes hell ... unrelieved darkness forever ... with no hope of the light ... no hope of the dawn. And the Bible also says it is a fire. Now it is not a fire that we would know as fire, to burn something in this world. But fire is God's way of describing it because it is a tortuous, unrelieved kind of fire ... more terrible than any fire that we would ever know. But fire describes the torment of the damned; blackness describes the torment of the damned, no light, no light ever, ever ... no relief from the suffering, the agony and the pain, forever. And there's only two times in all of Scripture that we have any insight into how people respond to hell. The one is the Lord's parable in Luke 16 where He says the man cried out in torment and said - Cool my tongue for I'm tormented in this flame. And the other is that constant statement of our Lord there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The response to hell is not fun, it is weeping, that's crying, wailing, screaming and grinding of teeth in pain. That's what the Bible says. That's hell.

Secondly, it is a place of unrelieved torment for both body and soul. Soul being the inner part. When a person dies, their soul goes out of the presence of God, into the torment of hell. It may not be the full final lake of fire that comes after the judgment in the great white throne, for that needs a transcendent body to endure it, but it is a torment just as well as illustrated by the rich man who in hell was tormented. When a person dies now, their soul descends into that torment. In the future, there will be a resurrection of the bodies of the damned; they will be given a transcendent body that will then go into a lake of fire. It will be a body not like the body we have now. It will be a very different one. They will be resurrected just like we will, as Christians. We will be resurrected because this body could never live eternally in heaven, right? We have to have a transcendent body, a glorified body, a different body, and so do the damned. And they will be raised, John 5, they will be raised in new bodies for the single purpose of being punished forever in those bodies. That's what the Bible says ... tormented forever. They have to have a body to fit that eternal torment

And that's why Jesus in Matthew 10:28 said, "Fear not them that can destroy the body, but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." You see, hell is soul and body. Some people think it's just bad memories. No, it isn't just bad memories. It isn't just the inner thinking processes; it is that body as well. Transcendent, eternal bodies, greater than anything we have on this earth, are going to be given to the damned so that they can suffer in those bodies forever. And that's the only reason that they'll have those bodies. With the present body, man couldn't endure hell. You ... the body that we have now would be consumed in a moment. So as God fits the redeemed with new bodies for heaven, He fits the damned with new bodies for hell.
We know a little about that ... from two things the Lord said. He said, first of all, the worm dieth not. Now what did He mean by that? When a body goes into the grave and to decay, worms descend into that body and they begin to consume that body and the worms will die when the food is gone. So once the body is consumed, the worms die. But in hell, the worms never die because the body, though it is continually being consumed, is never consumed. So the worm never dies. In other words, the Lord was saying the unrelieved torment of body goes on and on. And it says also, the fire is not quenched. Now a fire always goes out when the fuel is gone. But the fuel will never be gone, though the burning goes on, the fuel is never consumed. And so you have unrelieved torment of body and soul.

And that brings me to the third thought, you have in hell - a place of relieved torment of body and soul in varying degrees ... in varying degrees. In other words, for some people, hell will be worse than others. For all who are there, it will be horrible, it will be ultimate suffering, there will be no relief for that ... but there will be even more severe degrees of suffering for some. It says in Hebrews 10, "Of how much more severe punishment shall they be thought worthy who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing." People who have stepped on Jesus Christ, who have rejected his cross, will know a greater hell than those who have not. There will be degrees, just as there will be degrees of reward in Heaven.

We saw that, also, I think, in Matthew chapter 11, when it said, "It will be more tolerable for Sodom than for you." In other words, it's only relative, it isn't going to be tolerable for anyone, but it will appear to be more tolerable for them than for you because of what you have experienced. You had Jesus Christ in your city, they didn't. You rejected Him with more light; therefore hell will be more severe for you.

And then you have, of course, that incredible parable in Luke 12 where the Lord says, "To the servant who knew and didn't do right, many stripes. To the servant who didn't know and didn't do right, a few stripes." So, hell will be unrelieved torment of body in soul in varying degrees. But John Gerstner says, "Hell will have such severe degrees that a sinner, were he able, would give the whole world if his sins could be one less."

And fourthly, hell is a place of unrelieved torment for body and soul in varying degrees endlessly... endlessly. The worm never dies, the fire never goes out, the light never breaks, the sweet relief of death never comes, endlessly. The only reason or the only way in which we in this life can even make it through trials and pain and suffering and disease is because we believe there will be an end to it. But they won't have that. You can imagine the resultant insanity that will come. And you say - Are you sure it's everlasting? It's just as everlasting as heaven is because in the same verse, the Lord used the same terms ...Matthew 25:46, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, the righteous into everlasting life." Whatever everlasting life is in terms of its length, so is everlasting punishment. That's hell.

God never prepared it for people. He prepared it for the devil and his angels ... but people choose to go there. Inconceivable misery ... some people have been in this kind of torment in their souls waiting for that body for thousands of years and they're no closer to the end then they were when they began. No wonder Jesus had to teach this doctrine.

You say - Well, how do you avoid hell? You avoid hell only by the ... receiving of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you don't appropriate the kingdom, you see, if you don't take the treasure, if you don't purchase the pearl of great price, there's no way out.

"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 13:49-50