What is HELL like?
FAQs (032)
There are three words translated Hell in the Bible:
- Gehenna (Greek): 'A place or state of torment or suffering.
The abode of condemned souls; Hell' (from Dictionary.com)
(occurs in Matthew 5 v 22,29; 10 v 28; and
James 3 v 6)
- Hades (Greek): 'that which is out of sight, a Greek word used to
denote the state or place of the dead' (from Dictionary.com)
(occurs in Matthew 11 v 23; 16 v 18;
Luke 16 v 23; and
Acts 2 v 27)
- Sheol (Hebrew): 'The abode of the dead in the Bible' (from Dictionary.com) (occurs in Psalm 9 v 17; 16 v 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 does not even know that he is being punished.
However, the Bible paints a very different story. The rich man who found himself in Hell (Luke 16 v 19-31) was conscious. He was able to feel pain, to thirst, and to experience remorse. He wasn't asleep in the grave; he was in a place of 'torment'
If Hell is a place of knowing nothing or just a reference to the grave into which we go at death, Jesus' 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 never dies, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9 v 43-48).
The Bible refers to the fate of the unsaved with such fearful words as the following:
- 'shame and everlasting contempt' (Daniel 12 v 2)
- 'eternal punishment' (Matthew 25 v 46)
- 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matthew 24 v 51)
- 'unquenchable fire' (Luke 3 v 17)
- 'wrath and anger ... trouble and distress' (Romans 2 v 8-9)
- 'punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord' (2 Thessalonians 1 v 9)
- 'the punishment of eternal fire ... blackest darkness has been reserved forever' (Jude 7,13)
Revelation 14 v 10-11 tells us the final, eternal destiny of the sinner:
'will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur ... their torment rises for ever and ever.'
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