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Heaven, Hell & Afterlife
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Add to FavoritesHell is real? Prove it. I can't prove that it isn't real, but then again I also can't prove that Narnia isn't real. To quote the arrogant but witty Christopher Hitchens, "What can be asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence."
If you think Hell is real, you might claim that your proof is simple: it says so in the Bible. But, that's not a logical proof. Here's why. This common version of circular reasoning is often referred to as "begging the question." In order for it to be true, the skeptic must hold the same previously conceived notions on the topic as the believer does. If you say "Hell is real because it says so in the Bible," you assume that I must also believe the Bible to be unarguably true. I don't.
If you think Hell is real, you also might claim that you have seen it yourself! Perhaps you choked on a chicken bone and were declared legally dead for forty-two seconds, and while dead you saw not a glorious white light but an immense red demon sitting on a pillar of fire and brimstone. To that I'd say that you were probably having what many people who suffer from near-death experiences have: a hallucination.
If you think Hell is real, you might say "Hell is other people," to quote Sartre, or "This is Hell because men are cruel," or some other equally pseudo-deep existentialist saying. To that I'd say, if this IS Hell, due to all of its murder and crime, deeply evil men and women, poverty, hunger, death and destruction, could not it also be Heaven? Could it not also, conversely, be Heaven, either to some evil person who loves raping and pillaging, or to someone who sees the benevolence, the kindness, the hope and the love? In other words, you cannot claim that this is Hell, because Earth definitely does not align with the biblical depiction of Hell, so you must be speaking figuratively, and if you are, then Hell is different things to different people, is it not? As Emerson once said, "To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven."
Hell is obviously a man-made concept constructed as a means to keep all of humanity from venturing too far from that which was considered good and decent. Your children misbehaving? Threaten them with hell! Husband have a wandering eye? Remind him of that commandment about adultery and how he could spend eternity in Hell! Hell is the unavoidable unjust punishment. Even if you hold unshakable belief in the Bible, wouldn't you agree that the Jesus depicted in the Bible is a stark contrast from the incongruent description of "Hell"? Jesus opted for justice; remember "turn the other cheek" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? And isn't the definition of justice that the punishment fit the crime? What crime could warrant an eternity of fire and brimstone at the hands of some fierce demon? No, hell is not even a biblical creation; it is a biblical concoction, and most definitely a metaphor.
Learn more about this author, Andrea Nostramo.
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Real
Some say God is love, so they maintain there cannot be a hell for this reason. Some say hell is here on earth and that people are the ones who create it. Yet others say hell is simply separation from God and that this in itself will be torment enough for those who end up there. Whatever the rationalization, people over the centuries have continued to do this because the sting of death is very real and deep inside everyone intuitively knows a day of reckoning awaits.
The Bible describes hell as a Lake of fire and brimstone. In Revelation 20 it says that the devil who deceived the nations will be thrown into this lake and will be tormented day and night forever and ever. It also says that anyone whose name is not found written in the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire.
There are three words within the Bible commonly associated with hell. These are Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna. Sheol's definition is rooted in a deep hollow, suggestive in cosmology of a "black hole". Gehenna describes a seething smelly garbage dump. Meanwhile, Hades, from the classical perception of death, is mentioned in Revelation as a place that will eventually be cast into the lake of fire along with death.
All references in the Bible point to a hell that is real and eternal. It is a place most people want to banish to the farthest corner of their mind and euphemize with humor or rationalize as nonexistent. But we all know that it is real and needs to be. If it were not, mankind would lose their fear of God and that would be tragic, not for His sake but for ours.
Think about it. We all know that evil is very real and ultimately needs to be dealt with. We also know that God is just and that justice will ultimately prevail. But how can there be justice if there is no punishment for evil? There is no way of getting around it. God is love and provides a means of escape from death and judgment through His Son Christ, but justice will prevail and hell will follow.
The Bible says that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The fact that much of the world has lost its fear of God is indeed tragic because people are setting themselves up for the worst imaginable fate: Judgment and Hell. We need to fear God and we need to fear hell. We cannot avoid either one forever.
Let's be real. People do not fear death because of the unknown. They fear it because they know they are rejecting God's one lifeline that enables them to pass from death into life. Despite the rationalizing, posturing and protestations no one will outwit God on Judgment Day.
Thank God for Jesus who paid the price and died on a cross in our place so that we do not have to. He did this to restore our original relationship with Him, which is what we can have when we believe and put our trust in Him. This is what Christianity is all about. For those who have taken up the call to follow Jesus, they have discovered that there is a wonderful joy that comes in being released from sin and its accompanying fear of hell. The peace it brings is also beyond comprehension.
Learn more about this author, Bohdan Rewko (Bo of T.O.).
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