Hell or Liberty – Which Will it Be?

Hell, other than being used as an obscenity, is hardly a topic of daily conversation for most of us. I know Hollywood has created motorcycle riders from hell and other entertainments of that kind, but still, hell is not something we discuss around the water cooler. The guys rarely sit on their lunch buckets and discuss the pros and cons of going there. Although, when they do, there seems to be a whole lot of confusion and hoping for the best. Things, after all, usually turn out for the best. Or so we want to believe.

Men do coin phrases. War is hell, hell bent, the circles of hell (from Dante), hotter than hell, and doing something for the hell of it, which means I believe, that the deed done has no merits in grace and hence its merits are rightly found in hell. Peculiar how the human spirit self-identifies its own direction sometimes. Hell is our normal destination and our rightful expectation except by grace we climb a higher road.

I noticed that in the Old Testament references to Hades or hell typically circle around the idea of a pit, an inescapable pit. Isaiah 14 speaks of being brought “down to hell, to the sides of the pit” and Ezekiel 31:16 talks of the nation of Assyria being cast, “down to hell with them that descend into the pit” In the case of Assyria the word picture reminds me of the circling of a drain. It is a nation so far removed from righteousness that its people are circling the drain into the bottomless pit.

Along with the inescapable pit description comes the concept of being entirely surrounded by the wasteland of hell. David, after being delivered from his enemies and Saul wrote a song. He writes of having been on the cliff edge of destruction, (Samuel 22:5-6) “For the waves of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me.” Speaking of the same events in Psalm 18, David again wrote, “The cords of Sheol surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me.” This then, is the actual condition of the damned. They are not in a high place or in an open plain. They do not dwell in any lovely or desirable hostel. There are no gardens, no pleasant paths to walk or tumbling waters to enjoy. Rather, the very literal place of hell is a pit. It surrounds you and compasses you about. The walls are high and the only emotion for those in that pit is despair. It is despair for eternity upon eternity as the rolling ages suck them down and snuff the tiniest flicker of hope. The damned will not be partying with their friends. Rather, they will be abandoned, alone, in a pit from which there is no escape.

When the Lord rescued David he speaks of how, “He brought me forth into a broad place…” (Psalm18:19), obviously contrasting the wide landscape inhabited by the redeemed with the confining pit endured by the damned. It is a function of salvation that we should be rescued from the pit and lavished in a broad land given to us by our God. This is not because the redeemed are naturally deserving of anything good. Rather, it is because God, in His grace, chooses to pull some from the pit and set them in that broad place. There is no need for us to be snotty about our condition, those whom He has saved. We also deserved the pit but now are free. We are commanded to raise holy hands, pray, and give thanks, for His salvation in Christ.

If the confining pit were our only threat and destination we might believe we could endure such a pit. After all, our minds are mad half the time, and we may convince ourselves of anything. However, as the New Testament opens, we find Jesus vividly and often warning about the pains of hell and judgments to come. In His description of the formerly rich man and the poor man Lazarus, Jesus gives details of the rich mans’ punishment in hell. There, we are told (Luke 16) that, “In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment…” and asked that Lazarus might dip his finger-tip in water to cool the rich man’s tongue, “for I am in agony in this flame.”  And, once again (verse 26) there is the explanation about the place that, “between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.” So, the pit description holds, but added to this are the torments of searing flames of agony with no hope for release for time served.

Jesus, when He admonished the unbelieving scoffers of His day warned (Mark 9), against entering hell where, “The worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Just in case His point was being missed Jesus repeated that line three times, “Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” “Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” I believed until today that Jesus had invented this phrase for that particular speech. However, what He was doing was to recall those very words from the book of Isaiah, chapter 66. There, the author explains how God will be, “indignant toward His enemies.” He promises eternal blessing for the redeemed “…So your offspring and your name will endure…All mankind [meaning all redeemed mankind] will come to bow down before Me.” The book closes with these words, “Then they shall go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

It seems that the concept of the worm not dying refers to maggots eating the corpses there mentioned. It is a word picture that communicates the filthy ugliness of the fate of the damned. They become as gross as maggot infested bodies forever. They are unendingly in a stench, in a flame, in a pit. They shall be an abhorrence to all mankind. Hell then, is not a destination to play in the fields of rebellion. It is not a party away from God and His law. It is not the gathering of happy rebels who rejoice in their success.

At the end of the age, true Christians, are promised new, incorruptible bodies, with the heavenly city as their glorious destination. The unredeemed are also promised eternal bodies (Matthew10:28), ‘Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell…” thus, helping us understand that the lost do receive bodies. This is their screaming fear at the end of the age. For then, they will not be mere disembodied spirits awaiting final judgment. Rather, they will be forced to enter hell in bodies that suffer its torments but never the death for which they will long. Finally, at the end of the book of Revelation (Revelation20:14) the sentence of the damned is finalized and, “death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.” Thus, the curse of the lost brings them to this final fate. They are cast into the lake of fire, there to remain prisoners in torment.

When Jesus began His public ministry He stood in the synagogue and read from the book of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord” and then proclaimed “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

His words were an earthquake. They were a promise to free those prisoners in their pits whether it was the dungeon of the lost or the chains of the oppressed in this earth. Either way, He had come to free enslaved men, the captives. His promises and word are still the promises and words of truth. For those who believe, He has come to give eternal life, true freedom, and every promise God gives for His own. He is the payment, the propitiation, for our many offenses. We come to preach His gospel of good news to the elect that they might believe and be saved. And to the unbelieving, we give warning of the wrath to come.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach 3-23-12