The nature of God and the opposing nature of man demand it: God is holy, holy, holy, whereas man is unholy and arrogant in his defilement (Isaiah 6.3-5). The sin that man thinks he has been getting away with for years will be paid for in the presence of the Holiest of All.

The nature of the crime suggests it: If you slap a common man in the mouth, at worst you can expect the same in return, at best a minor lawsuit with probation. If you slap the President of the United States, you will see extensive jail time and possibly stand charges for treason. If you smack a King, you may lose all your earthly wealth as well as your life. As the importance of the offended person increases, so does the severity of the punishment. If you smack eternal God in the face by rejecting Him as Savior, the punishment is eternal, not temporal.

The blaspheme of the Holy Spirit demands it: Jesus warned that blaspheme of the Holy Spirit was the unpardonable sin (Matthew 12.31). If the sin is unpardonable, then death would only be a release from punishment. Eternal damnation is the only option.

Conscience demands it: Who shot and killed President Kennedy? This controversy rages years after the act, but the only thing we know for sure is that the killer got away with it. Or did he? God as Judge will bring the guilty party to justice, and the punishment will fit the eternality of the crime.

People portray Jesus as a kind and loving man, and He was. But Jesus had more to say about hell than any other writer of the scripture. He made it plain that just as Eternal Life is everlasting, so is the eternality of damnation.

Mark 9.43-48..”And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched..”

When a teacher of Jesus’ caliber repeats something once, then you need to pay attention to it: but when something is repeated numerous times, you need to carefully absorb its meaning into your soul. Repeatedly Jesus tells us that the fire of eternal punishment is never quenched. God is, if anything, a practical God. If the fire is not quenched, then its because someone is still there in its chains of suffering. Jesus further emphasized that “their worm dieth not”. The cults make much of the fact that He uses the word worm rather than soul, and therefore Jesus wasn't talking about the eternal punishment of the unbelievers but of the fire itself. Hogwash! You can take scripture and twist it any way you want. Jesus refers to the souls of the damned as the ‘worm’ because only something so twisted would have refused the bliss of eternal life in favor of eternal torment.

2 Thessalonians 1.6-9 “ Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.....”

Again, the cults lock in on the word destruction and use it as a proof that God annihilates the unrepentant, not casts them into a lake of eternal suffering. God's vengeful judgment against the unrepentant is not annihilation, but the Greek olethros, which primarily means to ruin. And though the word can be translated ‘death’, this is still in keeping with God’s concept of the fool that rejects Him. They are cast into the Lake of Fire, a place of the Second Death, where these spiritually dead creatures are eternally separated from the One who loved and did so much for them.

Revelation 14.9-11 “ And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."

There is no rest from the punishment of their torment, but it rises up before God eternally in silent tribute to the last rejection of Christ. God is equally fair with all: if you have accepted Christ as Savior, regardless as to your degree of commitment after salvation you are equally saved with all the saints. But if you reject Christ, no matter how good a man or woman you were in this life, you are damned equally with all others who rejected His Grace.

Revelation 20.11-15 “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. 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. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

Hell was originally created for the Devil and his angels, but those who follow him into perdition shall equally suffer eternal separation from God in the lake of Fire. The Great White Throne Judgment is the great equalizer: it doesn't matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, kind or mean, Jew or Gentile, man or woman. The lost all meet at this final Judgment to have their works publicly judged by the Almighty. All those who rejected Christ in lieu of good works will stand shoulder to shoulder with the rapists, the thieves, the murderers, the unrepentant. Hitler will be your equal, as will Stalin. And your works will stand before Him who is Holy, Holy, Holy, and be seen as totally lacking for salvation (Isaiah 6.3). The open trial before the Great White Throne serves two major purposes:

1. It shows God to be a holy, just Being, who did not overlook anyone or any action before committing the unsaved to the Lake. No one will be able (as many in our prison systems do today) to say, “I was unjustly accused. I don't deserve to be here.”. All heaven, as well as all the inhabitants of hell will know that the Judgment was fair, righteous, just.

2. God shows, before condemning the unsaved, that the judgment truly fits the crime. Each person before this Throne spent a lifetime working for Satan. As Jesus Said: (Matthew 12.30) “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” By rejecting Christ these people rejected God’s only provision for salvation, and must suffer God’s only provision for eternal punishment. God opens the book of Life, and shows each and every one how their works were nothing compared to the payment Christ made.

(Matthew 27.45-54) “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.”

God tore the veil of the Holy of Holies, in the temple of Israel, in half. This was to signify to all that the works of sacrifice and goodness were no longer an acceptable means of attempting salvation. Christ, when He yielded up His life for us, became the perfect sacrifice, the finished work of God. What the lost have rejected is this finished work. They still think that their works are enough, that the veil of the Temple is still whole. But God, by the Great White Throne, makes it known to all that their entire lives were but lies told in disobedience to the truth of the Cross.

(Isaiah 64.6) “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away..”

I got in trouble by making this remark before, but it's a literal translation from the Bible. My reference is in the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Hebrew Lexicon Numbers 5708 and 899: the literal Hebrew for filthy rags is ‘ed beged, meaning “menstrual stained clothing”. One preacher, behind my back, began to say that I was teaching false doctrine, that God never said something so vulgar in the Bible. This is only a show of your ignorance. God so despises our feeble attempts at self righteousness that He described it in the worst way we could imagine: menstrually stained clothing. (You can also find this statement in the scholarly work, Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, copyright 1979, Baker Book House, page 608). Works such as these will not stand up in the Court of God, but will be justification for entry into the Lake of Fire.
 

Alexander decided that if he was to conquer the world, he had to conquer this communications problem. So he devised a language he called Koine, or Common, Greek. He demanded that his army, and then all the people he conquered, learn this language. As Alexander conquered, the language spread, so that it was the language of the common man at the writing of the New Testament. This big explanation was necessary so that you might understand that ‘hell’ as translated in our King James text may actually be one of several geographically located places where God is holding someone. It is not necessarily the Lake of Fire of Revelation 20. So as we continue this study, we will look at all the Bible has to say about God’s holding places, whether they be for punishment of man (Gehennah), of angel (Tartarus), or just a temporary place of holding until Christ came. We'll start by looking at the lighter side of Hades, called Paradise.

(2 Corinthians 12.2-4) “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. “

(Revelation 2.7) “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

In the New Testament there are only three references to Paradise, as we see listed above. In order to understand Paradise and its relationship to Hades, we need to turn to Jewish Theology. In Jewish Theology Paradise was considered the place where the Saints went to abide after death to wait for the promised Messiah. Paradise was also referred to as “Abraham's Bosom”, a place located in the geographic vicinity of hell but void of any torment:

(Luke 16.19-31) “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

It was this “Abraham's Bosom” that Jesus taught His disciples about, one in which Lazarus (the downtrodden but saved beggar) rested in after death whereas the rich man (a portrait of the unsaved) was immediately in flames of torment. Both Paradise and Hell were in proximity to one another, but God fixed a great guilt in between them. On one side there was great suffering, the other side great rest. The righteous could not, even if they wanted to, pass over onto the side of torment. This alone was reserved for the unsaved. The Old Testament Saints (it was believed) could see across the gulf the sinners on the other side, but were sheltered from any suffering. This place, Abraham's Bosom, was only a temporary holding facility while the Saints waited for the promised Messiah to come. God’s Justice is absolute, and had to be fully satisfied by the Cross of Christ before man entered into Heaven.

(1 Peter 3.18-20) “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

Many theologians (as well as myself) believe that while Christ was “three days in the grave” that He went and preached to the Old Testament Saints being held in Paradise. He presented Himself as the long awaited Messiah, and they accepted Him as Savior. He then moved both saints and Paradise into the Third Heaven. We some evidence of this action in Ephesians 4.7-10, where we read:

“But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)”

Christ did not lose even one of the Old Testament Saints. He knew that His Father sent Him for the lost sheep of Israel first (Matthew 15.24-28), and that these Saints were a priority. Before Christ presented His resurrected self before the Father He led captivity captive, taking these Saints with Him to be with the Eternal God in Heaven. The Third Heaven, Paradise, is no longer a holding place, but can be regarded as home for all believers upon their earthly death.
 

Matthew 5.21-22 “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell (Hades) fire.”

God uses fire in Hades to trap the unbeliever so he cannot escape. I am certain that this fire is nothing like we've ever experienced, because this fire is spiritual, and has the power to hurt the ethereal soul of those it comes in contact with. Hades is not the permanent prison of the unbeliever, because Hades will eventually be moved (just as Paradise was moved by the power of Jesus):

(Revelation 20.14) “And death and hell (Hades) were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”

Hades will be moved at the time of the Great White Throne Judgment, and will be swallowed up by the Lake of Fire (Gehennah), the final judgment. One thing to note about God’s Judgments, though, is that there's no waiting. When he died the rich man immediately lifted up his eyes in Hades, and was immediately in torment. Don't believe even for one minute that you'll sleep peacefully in the grave until the time of the Great White Throne. God is holy, holy, holy. If you're unsaved, you will be chained and bound by fire until the final Judgment, where you are cast into a literal Lake of Fire.

(2 Peter 2.4) “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell (Tartarus) , and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment...”

How many angels are in Tartarus, the Pit, right now? I really don't know, as the scripture is silent on this. We do know that the Bible teaches that demons are on the earth now, and the Gospels are full of accounts where Jesus cast demons out of people. We do know that many fallen angels are in this Pit today, and that God allowed many to remain free as it suited His all controlling Plan of Salvation. In order for a choice to be a free choice, God had to allow both sides equal representation. The fallen angels and Satan represent evil, whereas God, the holy Angels, and the Christian Church represent good. Man must freely choose either for or against the Cross of Christ, and that choice is still up to the individual until the point of death. Satan and his freed demons also help us exercise our spiritual muscles. By attacking the Plan of God (and His children) we who are the beneficiaries of His Plan grow in Grace and in spiritual strength. We are given reward in the next life based on how we stood up to the tests of this life, tests often unwittingly engineered by Satan.

(1 Corinthians 3.8-15) “Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

You see, Christians will also be judged, but not before the Great White Throne. Our judgment will be that for reward, not condemnation; and if we resisted the temptations of life and of Satan's minions, we will receive reward for our efforts. The fire we face is the fire of the Holy Spirit, and this fire will never touch us, just our works. Praise God for His eternal Plan of Salvation!

(Revelation 20.2-3) “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit (Tartarus), and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.”

These “freed” demons (along with Satan) will not be freed forever, but will be captured and cast into Tartarus for 1000 years at the start of the Millennial Reign of Christ on earth. Following the 1000 years, Satan will escape, be recaptured at Armageddon, and be cast into the final Judgment, the Lake of Fire.

(Matthew 8.11-12) “And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

It doesn’t matter what your status in life. If you have rejected Christ as Savior, you will be cast out into eternal suffering:

(Matthew 13.41-42) “ The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

(Matthew 25.30) “And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

(Matthew 25.46) “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

This isn't a doctrine created by Christian extremists, nor “Holy Rollers”, Legalists, or Pharisees. The eternal damnation of the lost was taught by Jesus frequently throughout His ministry on earth. Christ was and is eternal God, the Son of God, and the sacrifice God provided to pay our way out of this Judgment.

(Acts 4.10-12) “Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

You may argue with me about hell from now until you die, but I beg you, don't wait until after death to see if the Scripture was right. Accept Jesus as your Savior today, and what you know about hell will be only academic, not experiential. Jesus has paid the penalty if you only receive the free gift. Don't wait!

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