Death And Hell

Written May 2018

I seriously doubt that anybody really likes the idea of hell or even the subject for that matter. I personally can’t see a credible theology around it. Humans are spiritually eternal thus hell seems inevitable for a few reasons, moral and even scientific. If we believe that the shed blood of Jesus is really the payment for humanities sins and the only means of salvation is through Christ then the willful rejection of that offering naturally results in an eternal existence apart from God. This existence apart from God would have to be where evil itself is literally contained. i.e. Hell.

Although our salvation does not depend on our hell theology, a willful and deliberate rejection of this biblical truth does open the door for adverse and abhorrent interpretations of other biblical truths and this thread of thought has led many down the road of cult belief systems and dangerous ideologies that can ultimately cause one to reject the God of the Bible altogether.

The Apostle John believed in a literal and eternal hell when he said “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” (Revelation 20:10) And so did Jesus when He said, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire— where ‘Their worm does not die, And the fire is not quenched.’ (Mark 9:42-48). In this statement of Jesus, He even tagged His quote three times in a row with a verse from Isaiah 66:24. Jesus literally tripled down on the eternal and permanent aspect of hell.

To soften the blow of the idea and concept of eternal torment many individuals have rejected it altogether opting for an easier belief of the total annihilation of evil people. Unfortunately what happens to the dead after this life is not something that can be decided in our last will and testament and there is no box to check just below cremation or casket that says 'total annihilation' on our burial wishes.

While our bodies and souls can be destroyed our spirit goes on forever. Our physical body does not limit our spirit. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “that which is flesh is flesh and that which is spirit is spirit”. The apostle John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” when John’s spirit was invited up into the third heaven where he encountered the Revelation of Jesus Christ separated from his body.

According to Quantum Physics eternity is very real, and total annihilation is virtually impossible. “Everything in our world is encoded with quantum mechanical information. And according to the laws of quantum mechanics, this information should never entirely disappear, no matter what happens to it. Not even if it gets sucked into a black hole.”Sci-News.com August 26, 2015.

World famous Physicist Stephen Hawking took this idea to a new level when he introduced the “Black Hole Paradox”. His theory is that anything that gets sucked into the gravitational pull of a black hole isn’t exhausted-through but rather suspended in a bottomless pit/event horizon where it remains forever. This idea has turned the scientific world on its head. Sci-News.com August 26, 2015

Jesus himself is the Word (Logos) of God. And Jesus said, “every jot and tittle” of the written word of God must be fulfilled. (Matthew 5:18) This means that the data that God has released by His Spirit into the hearts and minds of men to write down carries with it the creative power of self-fulfillment and are thus eternal truths pre and post manifest. Jesus Himself is the will, intention and information of God the Father manifest in the flesh. And this Word was-and-is God, meaning pre-existent and currently exists as the eternal One. Therefore since we as His creations who are created in His image currently exist the information about us also exists now and in the future after we die. Think of it this way, the very fact that our friends and loved ones who’ve already died still exist in our memories is proof that they still exist. And this is even consistent with the laws of Quantum Physics. There is no such thing as total annihilation of a person. Our body and soul can be destroyed but our spirit lives on forever. Some, in the presence of God in body and spirit, while others, unfortunately, will have an eternal spiritual conscious existence in the place that we all are referring to as hell. I call these people the Evil Dead. (Not to be confused with the Grateful Dead, Lol :)

The previously mentioned Revelation 20:10 tell us “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The word Tormented is from the Greek Basinizo, which means to be in a state of perpetual purifying and under constant stress, duress, and unrest. God is not personally torturing people in hell. People who end up in hell are in a spiritual state of existence and consciousness confined to a torturous place where evil itself is contained and separated from the Holy presence of God.

The real question is not if there is a literal place of eternal torment called hell, because that is clearly maintained in both the Old and New Testament. The greater point of theological wrangling for me is who actually ends up there?? I believe there will be fewer people there than we think. Here is a mystery verse to consider. Rev 20:12, And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” What? Judged "according to their works"??? Didn’t the Apostle Paul say we are “saved by grace and not of works lest any man should boast”? (Ephesians 2:8-9) The question begs, who are these people in Revelation 20:12 who are judged “according to their works”?

My understanding of this is that these people are the mass of humanity who died unregenerate, not born again etc. Is there a realm of eternity for those who died in ignorance of the cross??? Does God cast a person into Hell who lived in China 200 years before Jesus even though they never heard of the God of Israel, Jesus hasn’t been born yet and they were not pagans, and they were good people ???

To be continued in my next Blog, The Salvation Of Mankind