What Ever Happened to Hell?

John Blanchard

Nobody can think seriously about hell without being emotionally and psychologically affected. The idea that after a few years of life here on earth an untold number of human beings, many of whom would be thought of as decent, law-abiding citizens, will be thrown away as worthless and spend eternity in indescribable agony, exposed to God's relentless anger, is overwhelming. Nor do we need pagan lies or poetic licence to overwhelm us: the plain teaching of Scripture is quite sufficient.

Men's reactions to the paralysing prospect of hell are varied but predictable.

Firstly, there are those who put reason before revelation and reject the whole idea of hell because they reject the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of Sherlock Holmes, is a good example of this approach: ‘Hell, I may say . . . has long dropped out of the thoughts of every reasonable man.'

Secondly, there are those who take the Bible as a general starting point, but mangle its teaching to fit in with their own unbiblical ideas. This is the typical approach of false cults. Christian Science (which treats the teachings of its founder Mrs Mary Baker-Eddy as superior to the Scriptures she claimed to interpret) declares that there is no such place as hell, but that those who fail to reach perfection after death will in some way be self-annihilated. The so-called Jehovah's Witnesses teach that, 'the grave and physical death are the only hell'. Mormonism has no equivalent to the biblical doctrine of hell, though it teaches that all non-Mormons will experience some form of temporary damnation. Theosophy, a weird brew of religious ideas, says that hell is 'only a figment of the theological imagination'. Others could be quoted, but are all disqualified by their refusal to submit to the total authority of Scripture.

Thirdly, there are those who would claim to base their beliefs on Scripture, but are prepared to set it aside whenever its teaching produces any kind of theological, psychological or emotional block to their way of thinking. The doctrines of original sin and the wrath of God are two prime targets on their 'hit list' — and the doctrine of hell is another. Nor do they beat about the bush in expressing their feelings. Nels Ferré, a contemporary theologian, says that the doctrine of eternal punishment is 'subjustice and sublove' and that by believing it 'God's name is libelled beyond belief. David Edwards, the liberal Provost of Southwark, mounts the same attack from another angle: 'I would rather be an atheist than believe in a God who accepts it as inevitable that hell (however conceived) is the inescapable destiny of many, or any of his children, even when they are prepared to accept "all the blame".'

In the nineteen-sixties, John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, gave the impression that the idea of hell was already dead and buried: There are some who would like to bring back hell, as some want to bring back birching and hanging. They are usually the same types who wish to purge Britain of horror comics, sex and violence.' Elsewhere he wrote, 'In a universe of love, there can be no heaven which tolerates a chamber of horrors, no hell for any which does not at the same time make it hell for God. He cannot endure that. . . and he will not.'

But any approach to Scripture which picks and chooses which parts to believe is not only unbiblical and dishonest, it also leaves us without any assurance that God is speaking in any part of Scripture. If we are not meant to take seriously the Bible's teaching about hell, how can we accept what it says about the love of God, the offer of forgiveness or the hope of heaven?

The Bible says . . .

It should be no surprise to discover that comparatively little of what Scripture says about hell is found in the Old Testament. Biblical revelation is progressive, so that we often have a fuller picture of a subject in the New Testament than we do in the Old. As we shall soon see, this is certainly true with regard to hell. Now come several surprises. The first is that most New Testament teaching on hell comes from the lips of Jesus. It has been calculated that of the 1870 verses recording words which Jesus spoke, 13% are about judgment and hell. Jesus spoke more about these two topics than about any other (angels came second and love third). The second surprise is that of about forty parables Jesus told, over fifty per cent of them relate to God's eternal judgment of sinners. Again, of the twelve times that the word 'gehenna', the strongest biblical word for 'hell', appears in the New Testament, there is only one occasion when Jesus was not the speaker. The final surprise comes to those who try to deflect the New

Testament's teaching about hell by saying, 'My idea of Christianity is the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.' That provides no escape whatever, because it was in that sermon that Jesus did some of his straightest talking on the subject, warning people of 'the fire of hell' (Matt 5:22), the danger of being 'thrown into hell' (Matt 5:29) and the need to turn from 'the road that leads to destruction' (Matt 7:13).

It is impossible to read the New Testament in general, and the words of Jesus in particular, without facing the fact that hell is not a figment of religious imagination but a horrific reality. What, then, does the Bible tell us about it?

What and where?

The Bible gives many different descriptions of hell, and it is important to notice that all of them refer to it as a specific place. At one point it is called a 'place of torment' (Luke 16:28). On the Day of Pentecost, Peter told his fellow disciples that Judas Iscariot (who committed suicide after betraying Jesus) had gone 'to his own place' (Acts 1:25, NSB).

The rubbish dump

The Valley of Hinnom, just outside of Jerusalem, had become notorious in Jewish history as the place where idolatrous kings had offered human sacrifices to pagan gods. In New Testament times it was so despised that it had become the city's permanent rubbish dump. Every kind of garbage imaginable was thrown there, along with the corpses of criminals. Worms bred and fed in the filth, and smoke from the fires kept burning there added to the stench created by rotting rubbish. The Jewish name for this place was 'ge hinnom'; the Greek form of which is 'gehenna'. The English translation is 'hell', and it is this word that Jesus used no fewer than eleven times when speaking about the eternal destiny of the wicked.

In the Sermon on the Mount he spoke of those whose behaviour put them 'in danger of the fire of hell' (Matt 5:22). He told his hearers that it would be better to lose a part of the body 'than for your whole body to be thrown into hell'(Matt 5:29), said almost the same thing a moment later, and placed such importance on this one principle that he underlined the same truth on no fewer than four other occasions. He used even stronger language when speaking to Pharisees and other religious leaders who made a great pretence of their religion, but were self-righteous hypocrites: 'You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?' (Matt 23:33). Warning his disciples of the opposition they would face, he gave them this encouragement: 'Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (Matt 10:28). In this statement, Jesus is obviously not referring to corpses being thrown on Jerusalem's rubbish dump, but to the terrible truth that there are those whose eternal fate will be to have God toss them aside, body and soul.

From time to time I take a load of unwanted material to a council rubbish dump. Although the dump is well maintained I always find being there a strange, unconnected experience. Everything I see is an item no longer considered by its owner to be of any value. There is paper, metal, wood, pottery and glass; refuse from people's gardens and rubbish from their homes; everything from chromium to cardboard, plastic to polystyrene - and all of it thrown away. The dump is literally a wasteland. Even when full it has a feeling of emptiness. It is a no-place. Whenever I am there, I never take a deep breath or stop to admire the scenery. Instead, I unload and leave as quickly as I can, glad to turn my back on it.

The prison

One of the clearest pictures Jesus gave of hell was that of a prison. He once told a parable of a king's servant who was sent to jail for cruel and unforgiving behaviour, then added this warning: This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart' (Matt 18:35). On another occasion, in urging people to get right with God while they still had opportunity, he likened this to settling a law-suit out of court, warning his hearers that if they failed to do so, they would be dragged before the judge who would 'turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison' (Luke 12:58).

Sometimes, Jesus used other related pictures. He spoke of the wicked as weeds, and said that the day was coming when God would order his angels to 'tie them in bundles to be burned' (Matt 13:30). In the story of the wedding reception for the king's son, the king told his attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside . . .' (Matt 22:13).

Elsewhere in the New Testament other writers also spoke of the lost being imprisoned. Peter said that 'God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment'

(2 Pet 2:4). Jude said much the same thing: 'And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home - these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day' (Jude 6). These two references are to angels, not humans, and to imprisonment before the day of judgment rather than after it, but there are three reasons why there is no comfort from either of those facts. Firstly, Peter added that 'the Lord knows how to... hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment' (2 Pet 2:9) — which means that during the intermediate state they share the fallen angels' punishment in Hades. Secondly towards the end of the Bible we are told that after the final judgment all of those in Hades will be 'thrown into the lake of fire' (Rev 20:14); and thirdly, Jesus made it clear that the wicked will be condemned to 'the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matt 25:41).

When I was a teenager, living in my parents' flat on the Channel Island of Guernsey, our house was only a few hundred yards from the island's prison. Whenever I walked past those grim, grey walls I experienced a strange emotion, even though I had done nothing that made me liable to be imprisoned. Several years later, as Secretary to the States of Guernsey Prison Board, I used to go into the prison regularly in the course of my duties, and my emotions were always heightened at the sight of men whose behaviour had locked them out from society and into that miserable place.

The pit

A similar picture of hell is given when several times in the Old Testament it is described as a pit. David says, 'He who is pregnant with evil and conceives troubles gives birth to disillusionment. He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made' (Ps 7:15). The picture is worse than it seems at first glance: David sees the ungodly person's whole life as a process of 'scooping out' the pit into which he will eventually fall. In that sense, hell is self-made, and the more sin a person commits the deeper that person's pit becomes. Yet God is also involved in the sinner's doom; in a later psalm David says, 'But you, 0 God, will bring down the wicked into the pit of corruption' (Ps 55:23), a phrase with all the vile connotations of gehenna (one Greek translation of the Old Testament actually uses gehenna to translate David's phrase). The prophet Isaiah, in a passage which clearly forecasts God's final and terrible judgment on the wicked, makes their fate clear: 'Terror and pit and snare await you, 0 people of the earth' (Is 24:17). It would be difficult for Isaiah to compress greater horror into fewer words, and his warning is a sobering reminder to all who read them that, as John Calvin put it, 'God has an endless variety of scourges for punishing the wicked.'

Darkness

Another aspect of hell's environment is that of darkness. One of the fullest expressions is in the Old Testament, where Job speaks of 'the land of gloom and deep shadow ... the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness'(Job 10:21-22). Early in his ministry, Jesus warned of the fate awaiting certain 'subjects of the kingdom' (Jews who rejected him in spite of their special privileges) and said that they would be 'thrown outside, into the darkness' (Matt 8:12). In the parable we noted earlier, the king's attendants were told to take the improperly dressed wedding guest and 'throw him outside, into the darkness' (Matt 22:13). In another parable, the owner of a worthless slave gave similar instructions — 'And throw that servant outside, into the darkness' (Matt 25:30).

In one of his letters, the Apostle Peter writes of those who 'follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority', who have 'eyes full of adultery' and are 'experts in greed' and then pronounced their doom: 'Blackest darkness is reserved for them' (2 Pet 2:10, 14, 17). Another New Testament writer uses a similar expression in condemning those whose sinful lifestyles included the rejection of authority, and says they were those 'for whom blackest darkness has been reserved for ever' (Jude 13).

The Bible gives us no explanation of what this 'darkness' means, but as 'God is light'(1 Jn 1:5) and darkness is the opposite of light, the description could not be more negative. What is significant is that Jesus did not describe hell as 'darkness' but as 'the darkness', as if emphasising that hell will be darkness to end all darkness, infinitely worse than any physical, moral, mental or spiritual darkness ever experienced here on earth. There will be no dawns in hell, no mornings, no ray of sunshine, no clear sky. Every day in hell is night.

Conclusion

Most of the references to hell describe it as a place of fire. To do justice to those passages and the message they convey requires exposition of similar length. This truth is awesome. How do we respond to it'⁷ That too requires exposition. Yet these passages spell out their own warning. Jesus urged that there is a right kind of fear. 'Fear him who is able to throw you into hell' (Luke 12:5). Sinners should be urged by us to save themselves by repenting and trusting in God's full provision for salvation in the person of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ.

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