by Diana Howard

Created on: July 02, 2008   Last Updated: May 04, 2011

The idea that God sends people to hell,  illustrates how completely corrupted our view of God and His plans for mankind really are. God's greatest desire is to restore unity between Himself and His creation.  This unity was broken by man and not God.  YetGod does not condemn men to hell...rather He devised a Redemption plan that cost him dearly.  Men choose hell for themselves.. Mankind has the free will to accept God's provision for him or reject it, therefore, if he ends up in hell, it is by his own choice.

Hell, simply put, is the absence of the presence of God.  The antithisis of this is a close intimate relationship with God through His Holy Spirit.   The Bible is quite descriptive of the fact that men will be tortured, but we really  cannot know what the place is like, because no one has ever come back to tell us.   However, we do have some glimpses of both heaven and hell  in this world." The damned," says CS Lewis, " will only find the earth, in retropsect ,to have been part of hell, while heaven will work backwards into the life of the believer so that he will say "We have always lived here."".   You can see hell right here on earth.  When the presence and support of God is missing, the human' emotional  and mental health suffers.  An earthly existance without God is just as much hell, as an eternity without Him.   Those who trust in, rely on and adhere to Christ will find joy even in the most trying circumstance on earth...a little slice of heaven.

Perhaps it is time to be truthful with ourselves, and with one another. Mankind is totally helpless in the face of most natural disasters, death, illness, and  monetary loss..  We have trouble contolling our emotions and relationships, much less the outside physical forces, that prey upon us.  We simply have to admit from the very start that we are not "gods" as so many of us suppose.  We are finite created beings that experience a beginning and an end. I will not debate the how of this here and now, suffice to say that man did not create himself, nor is there any evidence that he will be able to sustain himself indefinately.

The Bible states in Genesis 1-3 that we are made in God's image and that God himself breathed the His breath of life into us. It also states that God physically walked in close fellowship with our human parents,

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