One of the big problems in getting people to realize their need to be saved is convincing them of the reality of Heaven and Hell. Most people think that Christianity is a set of rituals that you do to be a nice person fitting in with a group of nice people who do the same things. If that was true, any system of beliefs where people were striving to better themselves and the world around them would be interchangeable. That's why so many people say that there are many roads to "Heaven", whatever your concept of an afterlife is, and that Christianity is just one of them.

The problem with that is that the afterlife you anticipate will take place in some sort of space and time. Unless you are truly convinced that you will simply physically and spiritually die and turn into nothing when your physical body dies, you have some notion, however hazy, that the real you that lives in your body will be living somewhere after your body perishes. The question you must settle for eternity, then, is where are you going to live?

A lot of religions have their ideas of what the afterlife is going to be like and where it will take place. Their believers tell you that their belief in these places is just as valid as the Christian belief that you will end up either in Heaven or Hell. However, only the Lord Jesus Christ not only told His followers about the afterlife, He actually came back from the dead to prove that there was life after death. You can't say that about the "prophets" who founded the other religions.

Just as the Resurrection was real, Heaven and Hell are real. Heaven is the physical headquarters of the kingdom of the God who created the universe, including the planet Earth. He clearly tells us that the Earth was meant to be inhabited by the human race as our home world in God's eternal kingdom.

However, there was a rebellion among His angels, led by the highest angel Lucifer. Lucifer, now known as Satan, decided that he should overthrow God and become the god of the universe in His place. Since they didn't heed God's warnings to repent of their rebellion, and show no evidence that they ever will, God prepared a place of eternal punishment and confinement for them called Hell.

Hell is the eternal prison system for beings that just won't stop hurtful, lawless behavior, which is called sin. It was originally prepared only for the rebellious angels warring against the inhabitants of Heaven who chose to stay loyal to God and His ways of love and peace. However, because our first parents Adam and Eve joined in the rebellion so that the Earth is currently part of Satan's kingdom, Hell is also the final home for people who follow Satan's sinful ways, too.

Why do people go to Hell instead of Heaven if they aren't saved? Someone born on this planet is born into a culture that has been developed by Satan to mold them to think like he does as much as possible. If you are born to Christian parents or know a Christian who tells you the gospel of Christ and His kingdom, they will try to teach you God's ways so that you will voluntarily accept God's ways of love and peace. That is what being born again means, that you have asked to join God's family by agreeing to give up any sinful ways you learned from Satan's world system and submitting to God. God then sends the Holy Spirit to live within you to guide you as you grow up spiritually as one of His children. When you die, you go to join the rest of God's family in Heaven until the kingdom of God is established on Earth again with King Jesus as its ruler.

What about the people who don't join God's family? They stay part of Satan's kingdom and live their lives by his ways, then after death go to Hell, the final home of anyone in the kingdom of darkness. Most people can understand why murderers and world dictators would go there, in fact cheer that they do if they are unsaved at the time of death. The problem they have with people going there is with someone like Aunt Minnie, unsaved but not convicted of any criminal offense in a human court. But remember, Aunt Minnie must be saved so that her offenses against God are blotted out, or she will have to stand before a Heavenly court where the standards of right and wrong are much stricter than they are here.

God wants absolute love and absolute peace among His family members. He hates sin because living beings are hurt when one of them commits a lawless act against the others. God created us to be happy with Him and each other. He doesn't want anybody deliberately hurting anyone else, not even by name-calling or spiteful attitudes. It is one thing to accidentally hurt someone, and repent of the sin and make things right with them. It is quite another to hold an attitude that you have the right to do hurtful things to them to get your way, and refuse to change that attitude to a loving, reasonable, cooperative one instead.

That's the sticking point to the matter. God knows what is in your heart, and He judges attitudes as well as behavior. He and his loyal angels have already been through the emotional pain of a civil war in Heaven. The humans on Earth have been through nearly 6000 years of suffering under Satan's rule with all the horrors of war and bloodshed that brought to us. God is responsible for caring for the children that he created, and that means that He is going to stop the beings who won't stop warring against the others by sending the rebellious ones to an eternal confinement in Hell. It is for the protection of His loving children as well as the punishment of the sinful beings.

That's why people who are not willing to join His family and let the Holy Spirit guide them and remold them to think like God are going to be sent to Hell. Anyone who chooses to follow Satan's ways might start another war in Heaven. God does not want to simply crush any opposition to Himself. He wants everyone to see why His ways are best so that they will voluntarily follow them. If you choose not to, He chooses not to let you live with Him and His family in the Heavenly kingdom.

The lost are lost precisely because they won't repent of their attitudes, defiantly maintaining that they are right to believe as they do no matter how many people they hurt in the process. God will not be in Hell as an eternal referee or warden to torment them. God will not be there at all. There will be no merciful God to rescue them from each other's actions, because they will never repent of them. Their punishment will be to live eternally with others who will treat them as they choose to treat others.

Hell has degrees of punishment. Aunt Minnie probably won't go to the Lake of Fire, one of the worst places for the unrepentant murderers and like criminals. She may simply go to a place of outer darkness with the other people who were "nice" by human standards but not loving by God's standards. Since they chose to live in spiritual darkness in this life, they will live in spiritual darkness forever. God fits the punishment to the sin by His Heavenly standards.

People who cause extreme harm to others go to the places of the worst torment in proportion to what they did to hurt others that was not repented of before their deaths. That is one of the reasons wicked people seem to live so long despite their sins. God gives them plenty of chances to repent of their evil ways before death and judgment comes to them. He really doesn't want anyone to go to Hell, but He doesn't want eternal war in Heaven hurting Him and His children, either. He wouldn't be a loving God if He let the horrors Satan loosed upon us all go on forever.

It is your choice as to where you will spend eternity. Will you spend it with God in His Heavenly kingdom, or will you spend it with Satan in some part of Hell? Please choose life and love with God! Pray this prayer:

Dear God, I'm sorry for my sins. I want to join your Heavenly family and I submit to King Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I renounce anything to do with Satan, his kingdom, and his ways. Please save me and adopt me as one of Your children. In Jesus' Name, Amen

If you prayed that prayer so that you are born again, welcome into the family of God! If you didn't, please reconsider and join the family of God. Just as Earth is a real place with real governments, Heaven and Hell are real places with real governments. You must be born again to be part of the kingdom of love and life and light and live in eternal bliss in a family that really loves and cares for you. God loves you and wants to adopt you into His family, but He has to take care of His children and shield them from harm. The time of trial allowing Satan to show the evil of his ways is coming to a close. You have very little time left to join God's family before all choices will be declared final. Please join us now!