Welcome to answers to the big questions. I'm your host, Allen Sonter, and I'm glad you could join me. In the last episode, I explained something of what God says about the future.
Of course, only a short explanation was possible, and you really need to read the whole story in the Bible for yourself. Much of the information I shared with you comes from the last chapter as of the Book of Revelation, the final book in the Bible. Like any short answer to a complex question, the answer I gave in the last episode raises further questions.
The current question what and where is hell? Is one of those that might well arise from what I said about the final destruction of Satan and all his followers. As I've said before, in answering these questions, all I can do is let you know what the Bible says on the subject. Many people believe that those who do not accept the salvation offered by Christ go to hell, where they burn throughout the endless ages of eternity.
They are tortured ceaselessly in the fires of hell without ever actually dying. For those who hold this belief, the prospect of not being saved is a terrifying one indeed. In fact, it's so terrifying that many have gone to extreme lengths in their attempts to ensure that they will be saved.
But fear, such as is produced by the prospect of hell is a very unhealthy motivation to live a good life and please God. This belief in an eternally burning hell is the grossest insult to a God who has staked the future of the universe on the principle that love and love alone must be the motivation for loyalty to him. How could anyone believe that God, who loves us so much that he gave his only son to die in our place so that we need never die? The second death would then cruelly torture throughout eternity everyone who did not accept his offered gift of eternal life? That outrageous and blasphemous idea bears all the marks of the way Satan, not God, does business.
Satan, as Jesus himself says, is the father of lies. He doesn't care how he achieves his ends, just so long as he turns people away from loyalty to God. We don't have to consciously worship Satan to be on his side.
We only need to live by his principles rather than by the principles of God. Jesus said in Matthew 1230 that anyone who is not actually with him intentionally on God's side is against him. So Satan uses two opposite approaches to deceive people into disloyalty to God.
On the one hand, he says God is so loving, he will never actually destroy anyone who doesn't obey him. He only makes threats to frighten people into obedience. You can live however you please, and in the end, you'll have a chance to go to heaven.
After all, the Bible says God is love. Satan has devised several variations on this theme but they all include the idea that somewhere along the line, even after death, if need be, there will be a chance to be reconciled to God and go to heaven. On the other hand, Satan says God is going to burn you in hell forever if you don't obey him.
This approach has its variations as well. If someone has a strong will and can put on a good performance, satan encourages them to believe that they're able to earn their way to heaven by their good behaviour. He tells them that God will have to let them in because they've earned a place there.
Such people can be very hard to live with. They're usually quite self righteous and they can be very critical of other people they think aren't performing well enough. In actual fact, such people are living by Satan's principles because they're obeying God out of fear and selfishness, not from love to those who don't perform so well.
Satan says God is so hard to please that it's really no use trying. You're always doing what you know you shouldn't, and God will get you for that. These unfortunate people may feel they are doomed no matter how hard they try.
They frequently give up trying. They often resent God and hate Him for the everlasting punishment they believe he's going to inflict on them. So Satan's lies lead such unhappy people to turn away from God and find what little satisfaction they can in the here and now.
In an even unhappier situation, are those who, like Martin Luther before he came to understand the truth of salvation, keep desperately trying to please God? They might even try so hard that they drive themselves into the grave, as Luther almost did. A variation that Satan uses to deceive some into living by his principles is to lead them to believe that if they disobey God during this life but are not abandoned sinners, god will punish them by sending them to a kind of intermediate place from which they will escape to heaven when their sins have been burned away and they have endured sufficient punishment for the wrong they have done during their lives on Earth. All the variations used by Satan to mislead people into believing in eternal punishment or temporary punishment followed by eternal life, have a common thread the idea that human beings have an immortal soul so they can never die.
Do you remember the first lie Satan told Eve? He said, you will not die. In an earlier presentation, in answer to the question, what is death? I explained what the Bible says about dying. We humans don't have an immortal soul, and we do indeed die if we reject God's provision for our salvation.
If there's no immortal soul to burn throughout eternity, why does the Bible use expressions that seem to imply that the fire burns forever? The Bible uses the terms everlasting fire or eternal fire to refer to the punishment God will give to Satan and his followers. But these expressions do not imply that those who are punished burn eternally. The fire which destroys Satan and his followers is eternal fire because its results are eternal.
It does not burn for all eternity. It would be a cruel God indeed who would punish people for millions of years, indeed for all eternity for a few short years of rebellion here on earth. That is not the God I read about in the Bible or the God I serve every day now.
But some may ask, what about the words of John in the Book of Revelation, chapter 14 and verses ten and eleven, where he says that a particular group of followers of Satan are tormented with burning sulfur and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night. Or what about the statement in Revelation 20, verse ten about the devil being thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where he will be tormented day and night, forever and ever? To understand these expressions, we must look at what the apostle John would have meant by the words translated into English forever and ever. The Greek expression refers to a duration of time which is, as one scholarly authority put it, as long as the nature of the subject allows.
For example, in Jude verse seven, the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is called eternal fire, but clearly it is not still burning. Also in Jonah in chapter two and verse six, refers to his stay in the belly of the fish as being forever. But of course he was delivered after three days, so it depends on the context as to what the expression should be taken to mean.
To be consistent with other comments in the Bible, such as in Matthew 312 and Malachi four, one about the wicked being destroyed, the statements I've just quoted should be translated to mean that Satan and his followers will be burnt until they are completely consumed. In the case of Satan, at least, it appears that the process could take longer than an instant. So what is hell and where is it? In the Old Testament, the word Hell in English is translated from the Hebrew word Shiol and means simply the unseen state.
It is the same word that Jonah used when speaking of his being in the stomach of the big fish. The Hebrew word Shiol is often translated as grave. The righteous man Job says in Job 1713 that he would go to Shiol the grave.
The Israelite King David, who wrote many of the psalms in the Bible, says that the wicked go to Shiol translated Hell in the best known English version of Psalm Nine, verse 17. So as far as the Old Testament is concerned, hell is the grave. In the New Testament, three Greek words are translated into English as hell.
The first is Tataros, which means a dark abyss, and is the place where according to the apostle Peter in Two Peter Two, four Satan's angels were sent when they were thrown out of heaven. Peter says that they are kept there waiting for future judgment. There is no idea of fire or burning here at all.
The apostle John in Revelation Twelve Nine says that Satan and his angels were thrown down to this earth. So the hell where Satan's angels were sent must be wherever Satan is on this earth. The second Greek word translated Hell is Hades and means the same as the Greek word Shiol, so it means grave.
The best English translations of the Bible actually is the word grave in many cases. When translating Hades, the imminent Presbyterian Bible authority Albert Barnes says the Greek word Hades means literally a place devoid of light, a dark, obscure abode. The third Greek word translated Hell is gehenna, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew term Hinum, a valley near Jerusalem used as a place to burn the carcasses of animals and even the bodies of criminals.
The fire was always kept burning. So it was like the city incinerator. Bible references to unquenchable fire allude to the fact that the fire was continually kept fueled.
But it should not be thought that a particular object in the fire would never stop burning. Jesus in Luke Twelve Five referred to a person being thrown into gehenna or Hell, but indicates that would happen sometime in the future. It's clear that where we find the word Hell, translated from the Greek word gehenna, that Hell is the lake of fire that will destroy Satan and his evil angels as well as his human followers.
When God finally puts an end to Satan's rebellion that Hell is the only one where there is a fire and it will burn only until Satan and his followers are consumed and it will be found here on the earth outside the city called the New Jerusalem that God brings down from heaven. My friend, you don't need to fear either the grave or the lake of fire if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. So you need not fear Hell.
Even if you choose not to accept Jesus, you'll not burn in Hell forever. But you'll miss out on being able to spend eternity with a loving God once you choose Jesus. Today you've been listening to answers to the big questions.
I'm Allen Sonter and I hope you can join me next time.
if you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program, you can call 3ABN Australia Radio within Australia on 024-97-3456 or from outside of Australia on country code 6124-973-3456.
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In the language of Canaan I could tell a little of the glory of a better world where there is no night and the land is the light where no teardrops fall o heaven, it's not like here at all no, hold that.
I could talk in the language of canaan I could tell a little of the glory of a better world the wonderful things the Lord showed me of heaven I cannot describe I saw there tables of stone in which the names of the multitude of the redeemed were engraved in letters of gold. After we beheld the glory of the temple we went out and Jesus left us and went into the city. Soon we heard his lovely voice again saying come, my people.
You have come out of great tribulation and done my will suffered for me. Come into supper for I myself will serve you. We shouted alleluia glory.
And entered into the city. And I saw a table of pure silver. It was many miles in length yet our eyes could extend over it.
I saw the fruit of the tree of life the manna, almonds, figs, pomegranates, grapes and many other kinds of fruit. Then Jesus said you must go back to earth again and relate to others what I have revealed to you. Then an angel bore me gently down to this dark world.
Sometimes I think I can stay here no longer. All things of earth look so dreary. I feel very lonely here for I have seen a better land so that I could fly away I sail across the river Jordan to a better place where there's sweet rebo and the living water flow and I'll thirst no more.
O heaven, I long to reach your shore. Oh, that I could talk in the language of K I could tell a little of the glory of a better word of a better word close world of a better world. I'm going home, I'm going home I'm going home close to Dino today no more I go in to die.
O pain your death us can enter there it shine that every night in shall I'm just passing through my treasures are laid off somewhere beyond the blue beckon me from heaven open door. And I can't be like home in this world anymore. And I can't be like home in this world anymore.
Oh, I have a friend like you if I hold it no one like you from and I can't feel you. I hope it never I know you in the land of day like a city or square it shall never hide away. And there is no night god shall wipe away I know that no time, for there is no night.
There close heaven when we all victory us to the beauty will be home in our early days will open. We shall try to speak the gold when we all can't, when we all be out victory victor you may ask me where I'm bound, where I'm going to a country, cross the sea. Cross the sea.
And I know I'll have a mansion and I know I'll have a crown. Yes, I'm bound for the kingdom of the free. The kingdom of the free.
Yes, I'm bound yes, I'm bound all the blessed and the blessed and the free and my Jesus there is nothing to compare with the glory over there. Yes, I'm by king or the kingdom or the kingdom of the free, of the free. Well, I'm going to a country to a country where they never die will be endless.
Yes, I know I live forever forever I live forever in the city, in the city in the sky for the kingdom of the free. Yes, I'm yes, and by all the blessed and the free and my Jesus there is nothing to compare with the glory over there over there. Yes, I'm bound for the kingdom for the kingdom of the free.
Oh, yes, I'm bound for the kingdom of the freedom you have been listening to a production of three ABN Australia radio.
