Who Will Go to Hell?
"Then shall
he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
(Matt.
25:41).
"But the fearful,
and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and
sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death."
(Rev.
21:8).
"So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." (Matt: 13:49, 50).
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20:15).
A Methodist preacher wrote me that he had studied so widely in liberal theology he had learned that there is a very definite teaching of Heaven in the Bible, but that we are not definitely told about Hell and we do not know what kind of place it is. In answer, I assured him that he had been reading the wrong books. If he had read the Bible instead of the foolish guesses of a bunch of wicked unbelievers, he could have known about Hell. I reminded him that Hell is discussed in the Bible more often than Heaven, and as definitely portrayed. Oh, how we preachers have sinned in not preaching more about Hell!
And what the Bible says about Hell can be understood. The word Hell in our English translation of the Old Testament is usually a translation of the Hebrew word Sheol. Word grow in meaning down through the centuries, and usually become more definite. So the Hebrew word Sheol generally means the unseen state of the realm of departed spirits. Thus if the term is used symbolically, it might be translated grave and was sometimes so translated in our Old Testament. But usually that is misleading. The word is never used about any particular grave or sepulchre. Rather it refers to the unseen world or the realm of departed spirits.
The Greek word Hades is equivalent to the Hebrew word Sheol. The Old Testament was originally written principally in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written in Greek. So Hades originally meant the unseen world, or the realm of departed spirits. But gradually the terms began to refer not to all of the dead, but only to the unsaved dead; not those in Heaven, but only those in Hell. So when Jesus told us in Luke 16:22,23 that "the rich man also died; and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments," He used the Greek word Hades to picture a literal place of torment for he unsaved dead. It was a place of fire. It was a place without water. It was a place where the unsaved dead saw, heard, felt, remembered, were tormented, cried out to any who would listen!
In the New Testament there are other words used for Hell in the original Greek. One of these is Gehenna. Some Bible teachers have gone to great trouble in trying to make different places out of Hades and Gehenna. They have needlessly complicated the matter. To humble readers of the Bible who do not have at hand the means to study Greek and Hebrew and to search out what the scholarship of the world says about it, I can say after long years of study that the English word Hell, as generally understood, properly represents both Hades as used by the Saviour in Luke 16:19-31, and the word Gehenna as used through the rest of the New Testament, Hell, even now, before human bodies of the unsaved dead are brought out of the graves and cast into Hell, is already a place of fire, a place of torment, where poor lost sinners are hopelessly and eternally shut off from salvation and God in Heaven. The spirits of lost sinners will be called out of Hell at the last judgment of the unsaved dead, as pictured in Revelation 20:11-15, and their bodies will be raised from the sea and from the land. The, after that judgment, both souls and bodies will be cast into the lake of fire, which is beyond any reasonable doubt the same terrible kind of Hell of fire and brimstone as that where the souls of lost sinners are now confined and tormented. Probably they are the same place. The lost souls of the unsaved dead are now tormented in flame. Later, both soul and body will be cast into Hell.
The Bible plainly gives a description of who will be the inhabitants of this horrible place, this hopeless place called Hell. Oh, as we study about the inhabitants of Hell, may God make the place real for to us! May we see why Hell is an absolute necessity for the confinement of such terrible sinners who are enemies of God and who hate Jesus Christ, and may we with burning hearts set out to keep others from Hell! And I pray that some poor sinners, reading about those who will be the inhabitants of Hell, may earnestly resolve that they, by God's grace, will never inhabit that place of torment, but will repent and be saved today!
I. Satan Will Inhabit Hell Forever
Revelation 20:10 tells us
how John saw a vision of what will happen in the future: "And the
devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the
beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever
and ever."
Too many have had the opinion that Hell is ruled by Satan. That is not true. Satan does not even live in Hell now. He did not make Hell and he will never rule it. Rather, Satan will be cast into Hell as other wicked sinners are, and there he will be confined and tormented forever.
It appears that Satan was
once an archangel of Heaven, a pure and sinless being in the presence of
God. His name was Lucifer. Isaiah 14:12-17 says: "How
art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou
cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said
in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne about the
stars of God: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides
of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be
like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides
of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider
thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake
kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof;
that opened not the house of his prisoners?"
Because of his sin of ambition and self-will, Lucifer, the archangel of light, was cast out of Heaven. And that reminds us that Jesus said, when the seventy returned with joy telling Jesus how the devils, or demons, had been subject unto them, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18). So Satan is now an outcast from Heaven. He is now "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2). He is now going about like "a roaring lion ..... seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet. 5:8). Satan is now allowed to go to Heaven only to accuse Christians (Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-7). Thus Satan is called "the accuser of our brethren" (Rev. 12:10). It was Satan who caused Adam and Eve to sin, just as he had led other angels to sin in rebellion against God. He tempted the Saviour Himself. He is back of all the deceit and sin in the world. Oh, what horrible things he has to answer for!
In Revelation 12:7-10 we are told of a great war which will come in Heaven in the time of the Great Tribulation and how Satan and his fallen angels will be cast out for the last time from Heaven. And then Revelation 12:12-17 tells us how Satan will be more desperately angry, because he knows his time is short. He will be allowed to continue his horrible work for just a little while. Then he will be shut up in the bottomless pit, chained for a thousand years as told in Revelation 20:1-3. And when the thousand years are finished and Satan shall have been allowed to test others who shall have lived on the earth in the millennial reign of Christ, then at last Satan will be cast forever into Hell. And we are told, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone ...... and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever!"
Can you conceive of the horrible wickedness of Satan? Remember that he had perfect light, as an archangel in Heaven, as one accustomed to the holiness and beauty and righteousness of God, yet he rebelled against God. His self-will and ambition made him want to be as high as God and he set out to be God's rival, seeking to tear this universe out of the hands of God! When God created mankind, Satan set out to ruin the whole race. Cast forcibly out of Heaven with his angels once before, Satan will evidently attempt to invade Heaven with his wicked angels and to seize all power in the whole universe (Rev. 12:7, 8). Since there is no real righteousness but that which is of deliberate choice, God allows people for a time to be tempted by Satan. But his ultimate doom is an eternal Hell in torment!
Jesus in Matthew 25:41 plainly tells us that Hell is a place of "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Hell was first and primarily made for Satan.
Do you not see that an eternal Hell, a Hell of separation from God and of torment for sin, is an absolute necessity? You who do not believe in Hell, you who do not believe Jesus Christ and do not believe the Bible -- what would you do with Satan? He has had every opportunity to repent, has had every probation. It would be impossible to give him more light or more opportunity. For thousands of years he has hated God, has hated Christ, has set out to ruin all of God's creation. Surely no one but a fool could say that Satan ought to be received into Heaven.
Hell is a necessity as a home for Satan. And everyone who screams and pleads in Hell, like the rich man who was tormented in flames, will be in the company of Satan himself, who will be likewise tormented and for whom Hell was primarily prepared. Satan will be "Public Enemy No. 1" in God's penitentiary, Hell.
Hell is waiting for Satan! Read Isaiah 14:9-11:
II. Fallen Angels Will Inhabit Hell
In 2 Peter 2:4 we are told that "God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be
reserved unto judgment." A similar statement is found in Jude
6. "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their
own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day." Are these the
angels of Satan, which Jesus mentioned in Matthew 25:41, when He said that the
everlasting fire was "prepared for the devil and his angels"? I
think they probably are the same. And are
these fallen angels the same as the demons so often cast out by Christ and the
apostles? Dr. Scofield thinks they are not the same (notice Scofield Bible
note on "fallen angels" page 1292 and on "devils," page
1004). But I think they may be the same. Certainly all the demons,
evil spirits and fallen angels, will spend eternity in Hell.
We know that Satan is allowed to go among men to tempt them and test them, and
that he will be shut up in the bottomless pit for a thousand years, then
released for a little season (Rev. 20:1-3) before being sent to Hell forever to
be tormented. So millions of demons will come out of the bottomless pit,
that is, out of Hell, during the tribulation time to inhabit the soldiers of the
Beast, the Man of Sin, and to torment men (Rev. 9:1-11). And there we are
particularly told that the king of these evil spirits is Abaddon, Apollyon, that
is, Satan (vs. 11). Second Peter 2:4 says that
angels were 'cast down to Hell.' The word hell there is translated
from the Greek tartarro meaning, according to Young's Analytical
Concordance, just as translated, "to cast down to hell." That is
the only time the word is used in the Greek New Testament. I think that
word, and the term "the bottomless pit" of Revelation 20:1-3 refer to
the same place. In Revelation, chapter 9, we
are told how demons will be released, like a plague of locusts, out of "the
bottomless pit," to inhabit and torment the soldiers of the
Antichrist. So I judge that fallen angels are now sometimes confined in a
special prison house, possibly a part of Hell itself, and that there Satan will
be imprisoned during the thousand-year reign of Christ. Angels who sinned
were delivered "into chains of darkness" (2 Pet. 2:4). Those fallen
angels in "everlasting chains of darkness" are reserved "unto the
judgment of the great day" (Jude 6). But if the word translated hell
in 2 Peter 2:4 is any wise different from the eternal Hell of burning, if it is
a temporary prison for fallen angels, where they are bound and sometimes
released to inhabit and torment wicked men, still it is certain that all evil
spirits will -- like their king, Satan -- be tormented in "everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," as Jesus said in
Matthew 25:41. Evil spirits are all around
about us. In Bible times they caused insanity, dumbness, and many kinds of
suffering and sin. There is no doubt that evil spirits are back of much of
the murder and drunkenness, insanity and rages, and diseases of mankind
today. I believe that Hitler was demon-possessed. Foreign
missionaries often tell how heathen people are possessed of devils, how they
show the same symptoms as those in Bible times who were relieved by the Lord
Jesus, as recorded in the gospels. Read for example Pastor Hsi
by Mrs. Howard Taylor, published by the China Inland Mission,
Philadelphia. It is great book and thoroughly authentic. It tells
how an earnest Chinese Christian became literally "Master of Demons: by
fasting and prayer and faith. He cast out devils, cured dope addicts and
cured the insane in many cases. These horrible
and wicked demons, or devils, or evil spirits, are all around us. They
seek to curse people's bodies, to warp their minds, to enslave them. The
demons who are allowed out of Hell know that there is coming a time of eternal
torment for them in Hell. The maniac of Gadara,
possessed of a legion of devils, was made to cry out to Jesus, "What have I
to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by
God, that thou torment me not" (Mark 5:7). Those horrible unclean
spirits who had made that man insane, had given him superhuman strength to break
chains so that no man could bind him, had put it into his heart to live in the
tombs, and when they were cast out of him begged to be allowed to go into a herd
of seine that they might drown them in the sea -- these unclean spirits knew
that they were to be judged and tormented! Luke 8:31 tells us "They
besought him [Jesus] that he would not command them to go out into the
deep." I think the deep meant the bottomless pit. They
feared Jesus would sent them back to Hell. And Matthew 8:29 tells us that
these demons dried out to Jesus, "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou
Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?"
These evil spirits knew that there was coming a time of eternal torment for them
in Hell. They besought Jesus that He would not begin the punishment
"before the time"! How hideous, how
horrible, will be the company in Hell, peopled by millions of unclean spirits
who hate mankind and who have for these thousands of years been doing the
Devil's business with him and who will suffer with him, tormented in Hell!
You who do not believe in Hell, what would you do with these unclean
spirits? Hell was prepared as a home for them! III.
The Beast, of Coming World Dictator, and His False Prophet Will Be Cast Into
Hell To Be Punished Forever Please read
again Isaiah 14:9-17. You will find that while it is talking about Satan,
called Lucifer there, yet that passage implies that Satan in the last days will
incarnate himself in a man, a great ruler or usurper, a dictator, and that that
man, with all of Satan's power, will be cast into Hell.
Daniel 9:26 mentions "the prince that shall come," and verse 27 tells
us, "He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the
midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and
for the over-spreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the
consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate."
This "abomination of desolation" when the Jewish altars will be
defiled and the sacrifices stopped, is mentioned again in Daniel 11:31,
32. This evil person was typified somewhat by Antiochus Epiphanes.
But the great Man of Sin himself is yet to come as Jesus warns us in Matthew
25:15, and "then shall be great tribulation" (Matt.
24:21). Second Thessalonians 2:3-10 tells us again of this wicked
"man of sin," "son of perdition," "that wicked,"
"whose coming is after the working of Satan will all power and signs and
lying wonders." In Revelation, chapter
13, we find that the "little horn" of Daniel, chapter 7, has taken
possession of the whole beast, the resurrected Roman empire, as I believe.
This, of course, is future and will occur after the rapture of the saints.
In that thirteenth chapter of Revelation. Satan, the dragon, is said to
give his power to the beast. This evil beast, or dictator, will continue
forty-two months, of three and a half years, or 1260 days. And we are told
that "power was given him over all kindred's, and tongues, and
nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names
are not written in the book of life." In that same chapter another
beast is mentioned, a false prophet who will work miracles and cause
people to worship this Antichrist, the first Beast, or Man of Sin, of son
of perdition. But this world ruler is to be
utterly destroyed! In Revelation 19:11-12 we are told how the Lord Jesus
will return from Heaven, crowned with many crowns and with all the angels of
Heaven following Him, and how He will, in the great battle of Armageddon, defeat
"the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together
to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army."
And then we are told how this terrible, Devil-possessed man, this world
dictator, this Beast in human form, will be cast into Hell with his wicked false
prophet. Revelation 19:20 says: Surely, the very lowest depth of human wickedness will be
attained by this beast, this man of sin, this son of perdition, and by his
demon-possessed false prophet who will have power to work miracles for the
Devil. And these two will be "cast alive into a lake of fire burning
with brimstone." Eternal Hell will be their portion. Revelation
uses the past tense, since it tells of a vision John saw, but the clearly
intended meaning is future. A thousand years later, at the end of the millennial reign
of Christ, Satan will, after causing the rebellion, be cast into Hell. The
Beast and the false prophet will still be there and still be tormented! For Revelation 20:10 says: And the devil that deceived them was cast into
the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and
shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." The Man of Sin and his false prophet will be inhabitants
of Hell. Where else could they go? They have never-ending
souls. They cannot cease to be. And after they will have been cast
into Hell alive, a thousand years later they will still be there. Oh, what
horrible company will be in Hell! IV. All Who Take the Mark of the Beast Must Inhabit
Hell That coming time when the wicked Man
of Sin, the Beast of the book of Revelation, shall have his world-wide rule is
sometimes called in the Bible the "Great Tribulation" (Matt.24:21,
Rev. 7:14). The horrible plagues of an angry God on sinful men, with war,
oppression, famine and disease; along with earthquakes, will make it the most
terrible period of all human history. Soon after the saints of God are
caught up to meet Jesus in the air, that Great Tribulation will begin.
Then the Beast will set out to make everybody on earth worship him. Those
who worship him will take on their foreheads or in their hands some mark or
seal. What it is we are not told. Guessing is useless. Those
who do not take the mark of the Beast and worship him will not be allowed to buy
nor sell. Without ration cards, doubtless millions will starve as many did
in Russia a few years back. Others will be hunted down and
slaughtered. Jews converted during that period will be specially hated and
the wicked ruler will set out to kill them. All who do not take the mark
of the Beast will seem to be in deadly danger. But those who do take the mark of the Beast,
take his brand, take his seal, and agree to worship him, will thereby seal their
doom forever! They commit an unpardonable sin and make certain that they
will inhabit Hell! For Revelation 14:9-11 tells us this terrible
proclamation given by an angel of God: Every person who takes the mark of the Beast
will be tormented in Hell with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy
angels and in the presence of Christ, and the smoke of their torment will ascend
forever and they will have no rest day nor night! Hell will be inhabited
by everyone who takes the mark of the Beast. During the Great Tribulation time the
churches may all be closed, Gospel preachers will be persecuted and put to
death; but God will be demanding decision. Everybody alive then, we
suppose, will know how God has caught out all His saints. The bodies of
all the Christians who have died through all the ages will have been
resurrected, and that could not be a secret. The instantaneous
disappearance of every living Christian in the world could not be kept a
secret. The marvelous manifestations of God's wrath during the tribulation
time could not be ignored. And God will demand that men choose.
Those who choose to take the mark of the Beast and worship him are doomed
forever. Let no one say that the unpardonable sin can
be committed no more. That is a mistake. Millions will pass over the
deadline and commit the unpardonable sin, making certain that they will spend
eternity in Hell. Fore everyone who takes the mark of the Beast is to be
tormented in fire and brimstone, says the Scripture in Revelation 14:9-11. But these people are men, women and children
who will simply reject Christ and decide for evil. If they go to
Hell forever, then what of others who heard the Gospel, who know they are
guilty; many who do not repent, and do not turn to Christ for mercy? V. Judas Iscariot Will Be in Hell Forever Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve
apostles chosen to walk with Jesus in His earthly ministry, to hear Jesus preach
and teach. He was evidently, at the start, a good moral man. It
seems that even to the very last it was not suspected by any of the other eleven
that he was a thief, that he was a devil, that he had not been saved. He
was the treasurer, and his integrity was never doubted by any but Jesus who know
his wicked, unregenerate heart. But Judas was never converted. He never
trusted in Christ. He was never born again. In John 6:64 Jesus said,
"But there are some of you that believe not." Then we are told,
"For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who
should betray him." Again in the same chapter, John 6:70, 71, we are
told, "Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is
a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was
that should betray him, being one of the twelve." Judas was one of
those that believed not! Jesus knew that from the beginning, we are
told. Judas was a devil, which means, I think, that a demon had entered
into him. So Judas betrayed the Saviour for thirty pieces of silver, led
the mob and officers of the high priest to the Garden of Gethsemane where He
was; there he kissed Jesus on the cheek, a traitor's kiss, to identify Him. Before Jesus was crucified we are told:
"Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned,
repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief
priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood." But the heartless chief priests and elders said, "What
is that to us? see thou to that." We are told next that,
"he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went
and hanged himself" (Matt. 27:3-5). Judas was condemned by his own conscience,
his own moral sense. He was sorry that he took the money. He
repented toward the chief priests, but not toward God. He did not look to
Christ for mercy and forgiveness, but in despair went and hanged himself. There is every evidence that Judas went to
Hell, for Peter, speaking, we believe, by divine inspiration, said, as quoted in
Acts 1:25, that from his ministry and apostleship (not from salvation)
"Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own
place." Judas went to his own place, and no doubt that place was
Hell. Remember that Jesus said, "But woe unto that man by whom the
Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been
born" (Matt. 26:24). That terrible woe could only be pronounced upon
a man who was to spend eternity in Hell. If Judas could ever get to Heaven
to spend eternity there, it could not be said of him that "it had been good
for that man if he had not been born." So Judas Iscariot, the
betrayer of the Lord Jesus Christ; the apostle, the preacher, the one who saw
Jesus work His miracles and heard Him preach His sermons and sat beside Him at
the table and slept near Him in the night for three and a half long years --
Judas Iscariot will be forever in Hell! VI. The Unconverted Gentiles Who Remain Alive for
Judgment When Jesus Returns to Reign on the Earth, Will Be Sent to Inhabit
Hell Above we said that those who take the mark of
the Beast in the Great Tribulation time must go to the place of torment in fire
and brimstone. We suppose those will include the armies of the Man of Sin
who will be destroyed in the great battle of Armageddon as described in
Revelation 19:19-21. But some of the civilian population, too, will take
the mark of the Beast, no doubt. Some of these will still be alive on the
earth after the battle of Armageddon, when Jesus sets up His throne at Jerusalem
and judges the living Gentiles, or "nations," as described in Matthew
25:31-46. Others, who it may be will have avoided publicly taking the mark of
the Beast, will there be brought to judgment. The dividing point will be whether they were
for the brethren of Christ, the Jews, of whether they were for the Man of Sin,
the Beast. At the close of that judgment in Matthew 25:41, Jesus tells us,
"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
And verse 46 says, "And these shall go away into everlasting
punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." How many
millions will there at once go into Hell! That judgment is pictured by the reaping of
the wheat and tares in the Saviour's parable in Matthew 13. Jesus
explained that parable in these words: That "end of the world" is
literally "the consummation" or "end of this age." And
these unconverted Gentiles who hate the Jews will inhabit Hell following that
judgment of the nations. VII. Murderers, Whoremongers, Sorcerers, Idolaters,
As Well As Unbelievers, Shall Have Their Part in the Lake of Fire The wicked of all ages will inhabit
Hell. That is made clear by the description in Revelation 21:8: The murderers? They will be in
Hell. The whoremongers? They will inhabit the place of
torment. So will the idolaters. So will the abominable. So
will the liars. And so, too, will all the unbelieving! Unbelief is
counted along with murder. And unbelievers as well as murderers and
whoremongers will spend their eternity in Hell where the fire is not quenched
and the worm dieth not. Revelation 22:14 tells us how happy are they
who have a right to the tree of life and enter in through the gates into the
city. But the following verse, Revelation 22:15 says, "For without
are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." What a horrible list of the
sinners who go to Hell! All the wicked will be in Hell. Where
else would they be? Unregenerate, godless men surely cannot inhabit
Heaven! No, Jesus said in Matthew 13:49, 50: There has to be a separation of the wicked
and the just. Every good man would it so. Every chaste and virtuous
woman would want it so. All who want to do right would want it so.
God is going to separate the wicked from the just, and the wicked shall be cast
into Hell. That is the teaching of Psalm 9:17, "The
wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget
God." The wicked shall inhabit Hell. VIII. All Who Have Not Definitely Had Their Names
Written in the Book of Life Must Inhabit Hell When we talk about the wicked, in some sense
that means the whole human race. Surely no one would deny that there are
wicked men. Does anyone who reads this deny that Hitler was wicked?
And yet millions thought he was noble and followed him. And no doubt he
himself had the highest opinion of himself, even as you have of yourself.
And Romans 3:22, 23 says: "For there is no difference: For all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:9-10 says,
"What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for
we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it
is written There is none righteous, no, not one." A 1 John 1:10 says, "If we say that we
have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." So
since all of us are sinners, there must be a definite transaction before any man
can escape Hell. That is the meaning of Revelation 20:15,
which says about the future great white throne judgment: "And
whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of
fire." Everyone who does not have a definite
transaction by which his name is written in the book of life, by which he
becomes a child of God, a born-again one, will go to Hell. Everyone who
has not personally accepted Christ as his own Saviour and so come out from under
condemnation, must go to Hell. For Jesus promised in John 3:16, "God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Those who put
their trust in Christ definitely, depending on Him for forgiveness and
salvation, "shall not perish," that is, they shall not go to
Hell. But in the same chapter, Jesus continues in
verse 18, "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of
the only begotten Son of God." Dear reader, if you have not definitely
trusted in Jesus Christ for forgiveness, then you are already condemned to Hell! Remember that Jesus said to Nicodemus,
"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). If you have not been born
again, you cannot see, you cannot enter, the kingdom of God and Heaven.
And that means all who do not get the new birth, do not get a change of heart,
must go to Hell. Have you been born again? If not, I warn you
as urgently and earnestly as I know how, that you are on the road to Hell.
Oh, turn and flee to the Saviour! Remember that Jesus said, "Except you be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven" (Matt. 18:3). Have you been converted? Has there been a
definite time when you committed your soul to Jesus, depended upon Him, received
Him as you own Saviour? Did God change your heart and give you peace and
assurance of forgiveness? If you have had such a blessed transaction, then
you are not on the road to Hell. But if you have not, oh, I humbly beseech
you, beware lest you be among the inhabitants of that awful place! Most of the world is going to Hell.
That is made clear boy the words of the Saviour in Matthew 7:13, 14: If you have not entered in through the narrow
gate, even through Jesus Himself who is the Door, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
then you are on the broad road to destruction and "many there be which go
in thereat." Oh, get your name written down in the book of life today
and escape Hell! Preachers, I beg you, preach more about
Hell! Christians, set out to win people before they become inhabitants of
the place of torment! Lost sinner, I plead with you, repent today and run
to Christ for mercy, have your name written down in God's book of life, be saved
today and escape Hell! "Hell from beneath
is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for
thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their
thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto
thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto
us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy
viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee."
"And
the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before
him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and
them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of
fire burning with brimstone."
"And the third angel followed them,
saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and
receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of
his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the
smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no
rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image and whosoever receiveth
the mark of his name."
"When the Son of man shall come in
his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne
of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he
shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats." (Matt. 25:31, 32).
"As therefore the tares are gathered
and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son
of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all
things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a
furnace of fire."
"But the fearful, and unbelieving,
and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and
idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with
fire and brimstone: which is the second death."
"So shall it be at the end of the
world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the
just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth."
"Enter ye in at the strait
gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it."