by Kristina Emmons

Created on: December 23, 2007

Though I can agree that countless religious leaders have used the notion of hell to manipulate their followers into blind obedience, and that this is abominable, I still understand hell to be a real place. But by place I mean, dimension. It's helpful to know that the earth and the dimension we find ourselves in is only one of several. Extra-terrestrial is a term to describe anything outside of this planet, and supernatural describes realms of the spiritual that exist outside our human experience or understanding. So the idea of different dimensions should be familiar to us.

Hell is a spiritual place, you can't get to it by driving down Route 66. Did God confine it to the center of the earth, as some speculate? It seems to be so. The Bible says that after Jesus died on the cross he descended into the heart of the earth before ascending. Other biblical texts repeatedly refer to hell as being below. But simply put, hell is the opposite of heaven. If heaven is the place where the fullness of God dwells, then hell is the place where there is a complete absence of God and all he is. And, since God is love, life, light, goodness, and a myriad of other things, hell is the place that is completely empty of those characteristics, and filled with all the opposite. A vacuum of blackness.

God is omnipresent, which means he has the ability to inhabit all dimensions and places (being spirit he is not limited by time or space.) Yet he has chosen to create a place called Hades, which means, "the home of the dead." It is a place he will not inhabit. Not only does pure blackness fill hell, but so it is home to those that are spiritually dead. As our bodies fade away and our spirits go on, there is such a thing as spiritual death. And hell seems to be a holding tank of the dead, a giant spiritual grave.

Hell was created for Satan and his angels because of their rebellion against God. Yet those that follow after darkness and rebellion in this life have made a choice of death. "But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death," Prov. 8:35, NIV.

What does it mean to be spiritually dead? If God is the source of all life then being dead would mean being separate from him. A lamp does not work if it is not plugged into a power source. Spiritually we are like lamps, and Jesus is the cord and plug that goes into the outlet to connect us to the source of life. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man can come unto the father but by me." John 14:6.

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