WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HELL?

John 3:16-21
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."
"Since all this is true, we ought to pay much closer attention than ever to the truths that we have heard, lest in any way we drift past [them] and slip away.
For if the message given through angels [the law spoken by them to Moses] was authentic and proved sure, and every violation and disobedience received an appropriate (just and adequate) penalty,
How shall we escape [appropriate retribution] if we neglect and refuse to pay attention to such a great salvation [as is now offered to us, letting it drift past us forever]? For it was declared at first by the Lord [Himself] and it was confirmed to us and proved to be real and genuine by those who personally heard [Him speak]." (Hebrews 2:1-3)
THERE IS A FINAL JUDGMENT!
"Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from His presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also, another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."
BEFORE WE CONSIDER THE MATTER OF ETERNAL JUDGMENT, LET US ENLARGE UPON THE CONCEPT OF "EVERLASTING LIFE", for Jesus said that if we have believed in Him, we have the gift of everlasting life, and thus will not come into condemnation. WE NEED NOT FEAR THE FINAL JUDGMENT.
The concept of EVERLASTING LIFE means much to John, the Evangelist. He gives it a great deal of emphasis before his Gospel is finished. In the Prologue he has informed us that this life is "in" the Logos, and it is much the same thought here, with the additional thought in verse 15 where he mentions "the lifting up of the Son of Man as an integral part of the process

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whereby the life is mediated to men. The word rendered "ETERNAL" (always used in this Gospel of life) basically means "pertaining to an age." The Jews divided time into the present age and the age to come, but the adjective referred to life in the coming age, not the present time.
As the age to come is never thought of as coming to an end, the adjective came to mean EVERLASTING, ETERNAL. The notion of time is there. ETERNAL LIFE WILL NEVER CEASE!
But there is something else there, too, and something significant. The important thing about eternal life is not its quantity, but its quality. It is not an endless duration of being in time, but being of which time is not a measure! ETERNAL LIFE IS LIFE IN CHRIST, THAT LIFE WHICH REMOVES A MAN FROM THE MERELY EARTHLY. ETERNAL is used not in order to add to the life the idea of perpetuity, but to express more fully the quality which belongs to LIFE itself. In John's writings "death" is an ethical condition, the condition of failure and evil in which men exist by nature, and out of which they are raised in Christ. The LIFE is the new condition--the spiritual order of being, the existence of fellowship with God into which Christ brings men; and the ETERNAL LIFE is the LIFE in its quality of the divine order of life, the life which fulfills the whole idea of life, the good of life, the perfection of life, the satisfaction of life in God.
Thus, the life which pertains to the future age, to the realm of glory, becomes the possession of the believer here and now; that is, in principle. This life is salvation and manifests itself in fellowship with God in Christ, in partaking of the love of God, of His peace and of His joy. The adjective EVERLASTING occurs seventeen times in the Gospel of John always with the noun LIFE. It indicates, as pointed out, a life that is different in quality from the life which characterizes this present age.
In order to receive this EVERLASTING LIFE, one must believe in God's only begotten Son. It is important, however, to take note of the fact that Jesus mentions the necessity of regeneration before He speaks about faith.
The work of God WITHIN the soul ever precedes the work of God in which the soul cooperates. And because faith is. accordingly, the gift of God, its fruit, everlasting life, is also God's gift. God gave His son: He gives us the faith to embrace the Son; he gives us EVERLASTING LIFE as a reward for the exercise of this faith.
So! EVERLASTING LIFE is the life lived in the presence of Jesus, both now and eternally...FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER! And that brings us to the place where EVERLASTING LIFE will be realized in all of its wonder, glory and blessedness...HEAVEN!
Paul writes to the Christians at Rome these words:
"But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation...For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Rom. 10:9-10).

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JUDGMENT...ETERNAL PUNISHMENT...HELL!
Not popular subjects to say the least, but if we are to preach the whole gospel, then these subjects must be discussed.
Deep below the surface of things, a proliferating erosion concerning the seriousness of hell, brought on by a complex web of modern ideas about hell, has stripped this weighty word of most of its awesomely solemn content. Frivolous modern notions about hell have arisen to compete with what the people of God have for centuries understood and believed about the unending punishment of the wicked. The threat of having multitudes of people deceived into taking hell lightly is greater now than it has even been in human history.
Consider the notion--HELL IS ON EARTH! The "Hell-on-earthers" agree that there must be some form of negative consequences for wrongdoing because justice demands some retribution for evil. Thus, our pain and suffering, our tragedies and disappointments...this is our hell!
Then there is the notion--IT CAN'T BE ALL THAT BAD!
Those with this view see the difference between heaven and hell as one of degrees of something basically good.
Our generation has a powerful propensity to believe that what anyone in the past believed to be true is now probably all wrong. The fallacious line of reasoning often goes like this, "In the older days folks couldn't figure out a way to keep bad people and little children in line. So they conjured up the idea of a monstrously grotesque place of gloomy darkness and frightening, everlasting torments. Armed with the threat of consignment to such a terrible place, they scarred the stubborn and the young into submission to their cultural patterns." They say: "Hell is a concept invented by the ancients that fits nicely into the ignorant life schemes of antiquity and medieval times."
One of the great problems today facing evangelical Christians is the teaching against the concept of hell being eternal in duration and have accepted the idea of ANNIHILATION. No less an esteemed evangelical than John Stott advances four arguments—related in turn to scriptural language, scriptural imagery, scriptural divine justice, and scriptural universalism—to make the case for believing in annihilation! Another present day evangelical theologian writes: "I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine, a theological and moral enormity, a bad doctrine of the tradition which needs to be changed. How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon His creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards, and by the gospel itself...Surely the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no fiend; torturing people without end is not what our God does."
The man who wrote these words is Clark H. Pinnock.
In response to the above statement, may I suggest..."If...one is going to describe sending persons to

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endless punishment as "cruelty and vindictiveness," and a God who would do so as "more nearly like Satan than God," and "a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz," he had better be very certain he is correct. For if he is wrong, he is guilty of blasphemy. A wiser course of action would be restraint in one's statements, just in case he might be wrong.
One statement by John Stott suggests: "The eternal existence of the impenitent in hell would be hard to reconcile with the promise of God's final victory over evil, or with the apparently universalistic texts which speak of Christ's drawing all men to Himself (John 12:32), and of God uniting all things under Christ's headship (Ephesians 1:10), reconciling all things to Himself through Christ (Colossians 1:20), and bringing every knee to bow to Christ and every tongue to confess His Lordship." This statement is outright UNIVERSALISM which simply stated means that everybody will end up in heaven!
My heart pains within me when I read statements like the above and realize that this is the trend in evangelical theology! May God have mercy upon us!
ANNIHILATION teaches that...Hell is not eternal torment, but the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and absolutely that the only end is total non-being.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is not an attractive doctrine and the desire to substitute for it the view that, at the judgment, the souls of the wicked will cease to exist, is understandable. But, the Bible, which after all, is our only rule of faith for the doctrine of hell, will not endorse such a substitution.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE TEACH US CONCERNING HELL?
Hell is a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked. Scripture teaches in several passages that there is such a place. At the end of the parable of the talents, the Master says, "Cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth" (Matthew 25:30). This is one among several passages that indicate there will be consciousness of punishment after the final judgment. When Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus, he states that the rich man went to Hell, and was heard saying:
"Then 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."
In Matthew 25:41, at the judgment, the king will say to some, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the ETERNAL FIRE prepared for the devil and his angels." And Jesus says that those thus condemned "will go away into ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, but the righteous into eternal life."
In this text, the parallel between "eternal life" and "eternal punishment" indicates that BOTH STATES WILL BE WITHOUT END.
HOW LONG IS FOREVER?
Two words, FOREVER and ETERNAL, answer the question with out doubt! FOREVER! The Greek word used in the New Testament does not have single adverbs with the meaning

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the same as the English word FOREVER. Instead, several similar phrases are used that incorporate the Greek word AION and that literally mean..."into the ages." The word AION is used some ninety-five times in the New Testament and with a variety of meanings. However, the plain hard facts are that WHENEVER THE WORD IS USED TO DESIGNATE A FUTURE PERIOD OF TIME, IT SPEAKS OF INDEFINITE AND UNLIMITED TIME...TIME WITHOUT LIMITATIONS, FOREVER, TIME WITHOUT END, ETERNITY.
The Greek adjective, AIONIOS, or ETERNAL, is made a battleground by those who resist the everlastingness of God's judgment on the evil. This common Greek word appears more than sixty-six times in the New Testament. In every single instance where it refers to a future time, AIONIOS designates an endless period, a completely unlimited duration. There are six Scriptures where this word for ETERNAL is used with respect to the retribution of the unrighteous. They are:
(1) "...it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than having two hands or feet, to be cast into the eternal fire" (Matt. 18:8).
(2) "...Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels? (Matt. 25:41).
(3) "And these go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46).
(4) "but whosoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 3:29).
(5) "And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (2 Thess. 1:9).
(6) ..."Let us proceed on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings, and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment" (Hebrews 6:1,2).
In regard to all the cases which have a relation to future time, it is quite plain and certain that they designate an endless period, an unlimited duration...if they have not the meaning which has just been stated, then the Scriptures do not decide that God is eternal, nor that the happiness of the righteous is without end, nor that His covenant of grace will always remain; a conclusion which would forever blast the hopes of Christians and shroud in more than midnight darkness all the glories of the gospel!
When we turn to Revelation, the descriptions of this eternal punishment are quite explicit: (Rev. 14:9—11). "If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead, or on his hand, he also shall drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
This passage very clearly affirms the idea of eternal conscious punishment of unbelievers.

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If our hearts are never moved with deep sorrow when we contemplate this doctrine, then there is a serious deficiency in our spiritual and emotional sensibilities.
When Paul thinks of the lostness of his kinsmen, the Jews, he says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart" (Romans 9:2). As long as we see and think about others who need to hear the gospel and trust in Christ for salvation, it should cause us great distress and agony of spirit to think about eternal punishment. Yet we must also realize that whatever God in His wisdom has ordained and taught in Scripture is right.
Therefore we must be careful that we do not hate this doctrine or rebel against it, or seek to rationalize or explain it away, but rather we should seek, insofar as we are able, to come to the point where we acknowledge that eternal punishment is good and right, because in God there is no unrighteousness at all.
AT THE VERY ROOT OF DISBELIEF IN THE ETERNAL PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED IS A QUESTIONING OF THE TRUTHFULNESS OF GOD.
The Bible says: "Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thess. 1:6-8)
Although the Old Testament case for eternal punishment is conclusive enough, the New Testament teaching on it is even more definitive. So lucidly clear is it that no man or woman of right mind who hears or reads the facts in Scripture could possibly be justified in doubting the overwhelming seriousness of hell. As Paul once said: "...let God be found true, though every man be found a liar..."(Romans 3:4).
That same type of exhortation was offered by Martin Luther in a letter he wrote in 1522: "...one must separate widely our way of thinking from God's truth, and take care that we do not make God a liar, but far rather allow that all men, angels and devils will be damned than that God should not be truthful to His words."
After every Scripture has been examined, every orthodox creed considered well, and the opinions of orthodox theologians taken into account, one issue stands as far more basic than all others combined: WHAT DID JESUS SAY?
All else in the Bible about eternal punishment must be understood and interpreted in the light of what Jesus said. He is, after all, the final authority!
Nothing any human could write to explain Jesus' words could be as clear and powerful as His own words. Therefore, let me bring to our attention the great majority of the words of Jesus that bear unequivocally and directly on the subject of eternal punishment.
Matthew 25:31—33, 41, 46.
"But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on His left...

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Then He will also say to those on His left, "Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels...And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Mark 9:43—48
"And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, it is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than having two feet, to be cast into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell where their worm does not die, and fire is not quenched."
Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body, but are able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
Matthew 13:41,42
"The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire, in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 7:22—
"Many will say to Me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me you who practice lawlessness."
Matthew 23:33
"You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?"
Matthew 13:49,50
"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
John 5:28—29
"Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those who did the good deeds, to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment."
JESUS HAD MORE TO SAY ABOUT ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND HELL THAN ANY OTHER SPEAKER OR WRITER IN THE BIBLE. If He was mistaken in what He said, then the Almighty, Eternal, Everlasting God was mistaken!
There is no other Christianity than that which Jesus Christ established. And His Christianity clearly, distinctly, emphatically and even threateningly speaks of a very real hell of conscious punishment eternally!
A CLEAR MEANING OF JESUS' WORDS ABOUT HELL CAN BE GAINED FROM AN EXAMINATION OF FIVE PERTINENT WORDS USED IN RELATION TO IT.
These words are: Hades, Tarturus, Gehenna, forever, and eternal.
(1) Hades

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For the Greeks and Romans, Hades was the world of all the dead, both good and evil. Located in the very bowels of the earth, it was a happy place for no one...it was sullen and dark. It was this Greek word Hades that those who translated the Hebrew Old Testament word SHEOL chose to use in almost every case. It happened to be the most convenient and closest word available in the Greek language. In the New Testament HADES is never used to mean simply a sod grave; its only use is to describe the place of retribution for the wicked.
Earlier, I have referred to the passage in Luke 16 in which Jesus talks about Lazarus and the rich man. Let me quote the entire text.
"Now it came about that the poor man died and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. And in HADES he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame." But Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. And besides all this, 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." (Luke 16:22-26)
These are not the words of some ill-informed, unlearned child of his time. They came from One who is fully God and fully man. Jesus gave us here a cutaway view of what exists beyond the grave.
(2) TARTURUS is another word used for hell. The Apostle Peter used this word for hell, and it is used only once in the New Testament. (2 Peter 2: 1,3,4,9,10) "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into Hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment...then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority."
(3) GEHENNA. It is the ultimate in terms of severity. The word appears twelve times in the New Testament. Used in its primary, literal sense, GEHENNA is the Valley of Hinnon, located just south of Jerusalem. It means THE VALLEY OF BURNING. It was here that little children were placed on the idol MOLOCH, and their bodies were burned in sacrifice to the idol! Jesus used this term to describe the place of everlasting torment.
Hell has come under popular ridicule in recent times because of the idea of unquenchable fire, yet Jesus, the Son of God is the One who so describes the place of eternal punishment. In conclusion, just because we may not believe in a literal HELL does not, in any degree, lessen the truth of this terrible place where the ungodly and unbelievers will spend eternity!
Just as there is a heaven to gain. there is a Hell to shun! May God grant that our goal is to spend eternity with our Savior and Lord in heaven!