Let's Talk about Hell BETTER or “If You’re Wrong, a Lot of People Will Go to Hell & It's Your Fault” Brad Jersak

LET’S TALK ABOUT HELL (BETTER)

I’d like to think I’ve said and written enough about hell.

Indeed, I’ve said too much for the liking of some and not enough to be clear to others. In Her Gates Will Never Be Shut (Wipf & Stock, 2009), I attempted to address many of the questions Rob Bell would pose a year later in his career-changing work, Love Wins. I would have loved 10% of his book sales. But at least I’m not bitter. What we had most in common were critical reviews by people who didn’t bother to read either book.

I was also happy to offer my two cents on hell in Kevin Miller’s documentary movie Hellbound? My greatest contributions were surely my titillating handlebar mustache and the cemetery scene (no spoilers). Despite a decade of painstaking descriptions of the variety of biblical and patristic notions concerning hell and divine judgment, I still hear (too often) that I “don’t believe in hell.” But fear not—I do. The rumors are just slander. And you know where slanderers go, right? (Cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gal. 5:23, Rev. 22:15). Ouch, eh?

Anyway, with the firestorm release of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved (to reviews ranging from succulent to truculent), it seems the church is finally ready to have the conversation in earnest.

Namely, how should we talk about hell?

On a recent three-week tour of New Zealand and Australia, the topic of hell and the question of ultimate redemption came up at every single stop. Whether I was with Baptists, the Vineyard, Methodists, Anglicans, Brethren or YWAMers, I was grilled on two topics everywhere I went. One of those two themes was hell; the other I’ll save for another time.

“Let’s talk about hell,” they urged.

“Let’s talk about hell better,” I replied.

Previously, my conversation partners and I have described three main interpretations of the Bible’s hell texts: infernalism (eternal conscious torment), conditionalism (or annihilation) and universalism (hopeful or convinced). We’ve covered that territory ad nauseam.

This time, I want to talk about:

how the Bible talks about hell, and
how we should talk about it today.

Not so much what hell is but more about how to talk about it.

How the Bible Talks about Hell

The Bible and early Christian theologians talk about “hell” (or its synonyms) in at least four ways. This is not the time for word studies—that’s been done. Here I’ll focus on descriptions. I’ll trust readers to search the Scriptures for themselves for details.

The Bible talks about Hell as “Hell on Earth” now – “The Valley of the Sons of Hinnom” (or Gehenna for short in Greek) is literally on earth. Its history begins with Jerusalem’s repeated destruction which became a metaphor and archetype for all earthly devastation. From “War is hell!” to the Holocaust to “I’ll make your life a living hell” … if we’re to speak of a “literal hell” the way the Bible does, then we’re talking about the state of our world, our communities or our lives when it “all goes to hell in a handbasket.”

Key texts: 2 Kings 23:10, 2 Chron. 28:3, Isa. 66:24, Jer. 7:31

The Bible describes Hell as the “Kingdom of Darkness” now – The Bible treats both Gehenna or Hades as a kingdom of evil at work in this world in “this present evil age.” The kingdom of darkness is not a someday place beyond the grave but rather, any state of spiritual bondage Christ has released us from through the Cross. “This present darkness” is comprised of spiritual strongholds rather than material enemies (“Our battle is not against flesh and blood” and our weapons are not the weapons of this world”). Hell, in this sense, is a defeated spiritual kingdom whose gates cannot withstand the gospel. But elsewhere, Scripture does draw a connection between spiritual forces and human participants, ranging from worldly empires (the beasts of Daniel and Revelation) to the individual gossip whose tongue, James says, is “ignited by the flames of hell.”

Key texts: Matt. 23:15, Col. 1:13, Eph. 6:12, James 3:6

The Bible describes Hell as a Condition of the Heart or Mind now – When the tongue spews out its destructive flames, the kingdom of hell is internalized as a condition of the heart and mind. “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” says Jesus. That’s also where the kingdom of hell operates. I.e. We battle against “strongholds,” which Paul describes as thoughts in our minds that oppose the knowledge of God.

On the other hand, immediately after warning us to avoid the fires of Gehenna, Jesus surprises us with an affirmation of the inner fire: “FOR you shall ALL be salted with fire” – BUT this “salt is good” and needful for a purification that we experience within us and in this life and on purpose (“make sure you have salt in yourselves”). It’s the Refiners fire, in me, right now.

Key texts: James 3:6, 2 Cor. 10:3-6, Mark 9:43-50

The Bible talks about Hell as an Afterlife Judgment later – For many reasons (fear, control, drama, obsession, art, etc.), the most popular use of “hell” is the afterlife judgment of eternal torment. But that’s not the only way the Bible describes it. The frightening array of metaphors and images (torture, fire, darkness, exclusion, corpses, etc.) varies in its criteria (from doing evil to rejecting Christ, or simply sins of omission), the expected outcome (from complete destruction to ongoing torment to purified perfection), and even its purpose varies (from retribution to eradication to restoration and cleansing). To imagine that the Bible teaches that hell = eternal conscious torment in a Lake of Fire is to privilege one image from one vision, interpret it literally and totalize it to the exclusion of all other texts. That’s a very sloppy and, as we’ll see, dangerous reduction.

Key texts: Matt. 5:29-30, Matt. 10:28, Matt. 25:31-36, Phil. 3:18, 2 Thess. 1:9

How to Talk about Hell Today

BE HUMBLE, NOT DOGMATIC: Given the range of ways the Bible talks about hell, we should be a lot more humble about claiming to know what, where, when, why and for whom hell happens. Insist on one image of hell as “this is it, see!” and you’ll discover that your deal-killer proof-text is countered by ten other conflicting passages. I’m not saying ignore the dire warnings and frightening imagery. I’m just saying that our dogmatism is misplaced and unhelpful, especially when the church councils saw the wisdom in saying less in the great creeds.

INVITE OTHERS TO GOD’S LOVE, NOT TO FEAR OF HELL: What does 1 John 4 tell us? “God is love.” And that God’s “perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.” He warns that “the one who fears is not perfected in love.” This perspective should radically form our way of sharing the gospel. We are to draw people to Christ, not merely giving them an exit from fiery punishment. John’s implication is that a fearful person who uses fear to preach a gospel of fear has missed the mark and the point. Fearful rhetoric may have a place when confronting spiritually abusive religious leaders, blind guides and oppressive hypocrites (as Jesus did) … but notice how the apostles and evangelists in Acts always preached the gospel of Christ’s death, resurrection and lordship in our lives and did not once appeal to or even mention hellfire.

DRAW PEOPLE TO JESUS, DON’T DRIVE THEM AWAY: After decades of evangelism and a 12-year study of every judgment text in the Bible, I’m now convinced that:

hell is a real phenomenon—the real question is, “What is its nature?”
hell is not eternal conscious torment—the Scriptures envision something better;
preaching fear of hell is a terrible way to draw people to Jesus—it’s bad for the gospel.

We DO need to talk about hell but we need to talk about it better because the way we’ve talked about no longer saves people from hell—it drives them to it! The way we’ve talked about hell no longer attracts people to Christ (if it ever did)—the way we’ve preached hell actually makes them hate Christ (and us). But preach the good news of God’s love revealed in Christ and you may just see people respond to him.

The Wager

I’ve been told, “I hope you’re right. BUT if you’re wrong about hell, then a lot of people will go there and it will be your fault. I’d rather play it safe just to be sure.” This objection is worthy of a careful response.

“Wrong about hell” in what way? The implication seems to me that I don’t believe there’s a hell or that the hell I believe in is not something to worry about. Of course, I believe in hell. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it with my eyes, in my spirit and in my Bible. I preach the good news of Jesus Christ, knowing that he conquered hades (Rev. 1:18) and entered hell (Apostles Creed) to rescue us from it and came back victorious with a host of captives in his train (Mark 3:27, Eph. 4:8). I see no reason to believe that my conviction that hell is horrendous but not eternal conscious torment would endanger a single soul of going there.

Are we saved by belief in Christ or by belief in hell? I assume that objectors believe that the material cause of our salvation is Jesus Christ and the efficient cause of our salvation is faith in his name. Nowhere do the Scriptures demand belief in a particular doctrine of hell as a requirement for saving faith. It is not even a dogma that entered New Testament evangelism or our confession of faith at baptism. Again, check the sermons in Acts to verify this.

The ‘Safe’ Wager: The charge seems to be rooted in a fear-based wager that actually bites itself in the behind. The idea is that if eternal conscious torment is even a possibility, then we’d better warn people about it or they will not come to Jesus and will end up in hell. Makes sense, right? Well… that might have worked in Jonathan Edwards time. I say might because can we really say that those who repent out of fear of being roasted alive forever actually respond in willing faith to Jesus Christ, loving him because they’d seen a vision of God’s love in the revelation of the Cross? Or was it more a case that Edwards convinced them to convert with an eternal conscious gun to their heads? Is that saving faith?

But let’s say it was. Let’s say that gospel worked. And let’s say Edwards was completely right: that hell is eternal conscious torment and salvation is Jesus’ way out from the white-hot wrath of God. Let’s say that hell is the real risk right now. Then we need to determine which gospel will BEST save people from that fate. Here’s the troubling news: preaching eternal hellfire no longer scares people into Jesus arms. Statistically, it creates atheists by the millions. If you’re really worried about people going to hell, then you had better NOT mention it, because such preaching is among the top reasons why people now reject Christ.

This is a fact in the 21^st century: people today reject the good news of Jesus Christ when we import hellfire preaching into our gospel. They do this because:

It sounds more like medieval mythology than gospel truth.
It looks more like any run-of-the-mill horror movie than something anchored to reality.
It sabotages the evangelist’s credibility because it doesn’t sound like the foolishness of the gospel (Christ and him crucified). It sounds more like the silliness of radical fundamentalism.
It enables the listener to defer judgment to an imagined “later” rather than facing all the ways they are already perishing and in bondage to the kingdom of hell today.

So, if you are truly afraid that people will go to hell, don’t tell them about it. My suspicion is that the greater fear is that we ourselves might go to hell if we don’t get it right, regardless of how many others we cause to reject Christ through bad practices of hell-talk.

Best Biblical Practices: the Johannine Option

So, my question is, how do we best talk about hell in the 21^st century? Is there an appropriate way to share the gospel and talk about hell that is faithful to the Scriptures? I would propose that, given the vast selection of biblical images we can draw from, we choose one that is both central to the teaching of Christ and relevant for our current culture. In other words, if we must speak of judgment, we can choose … will it be Jeremiah 7? Or Matthew 25? Or Revelation 20? If we can choose the version that maximizes God as love, Jesus as savior and also privileges love over fear as the motivator, I propose we retreat to John chapter 3.

Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus provides a beautiful gospel of God’s love, one not based on the afterlife rewards of heaven or punishments of hell. Nothing is deferred. Instead, for the Jesus of John’s tradition, “eternal life” is experienced now, in this life: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent”(John 17:3). This “eternal life” or “life more abundant” (John 10:10) is not a someday reward for believing the right things about Jesus. It is the “fullness of life” of knowing the Father and the Son by the Spirit in the here and now.

Similarly, Jesus doesn’t come to threaten us with a forthcoming punishment for not believing the right thing about him. Rather than using the word “hell,” he opts for the terminology of “perishing” or “condemnation” that we are already suffering in our alienation. As the conversation climaxes, watch how Jesus addresses the human condition as an “already” problem, not imposed by an angry God as punishment but as the very real and present consequences of turning from the Light of Love:

¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

When we speak of hell today, John 3 can guide us to see how the darkness of our turning from the Light of God’s Love creates the shadow in which we strive for self-will and generate our own hell, personally or collectively. In that condition, we experience condemnation, not from God but as the wages of sin. In that condition, we experience “perishing.” Jesus tells us the great news: in God’s great love for us, he’s sent his Son to rescue us from whatever condemnation, perishing or “hell” we find ourselves in. Then through knowing him, we experience fullness of joy (“eternal life”).

My experience is that this news does not place hearers under an ultimatum that triggers their flight impulse. It is a loving invitation to know the God whose Son offers what our hearts truly desire. We’ve sought those desires at tables that gave us food poisoning but now we’re invited to a banquet of divine goodness (Psalm 23, Matt. 22).

In practice, I will sometimes need to add a deconstructive preface: “Look, God is not the angry judge who threatens you with the flames of hell after you die. That’s a horrible way to talk about ‘good news.’ No, he’s the loving Father who sees the hell you’ve already been through and wants so much better for you. He’s offering a hand into freedom. Does that interest you?” When someone is interested, I teach them how to turn to the Light, to have that conversation with Jesus and to experience the one who lifts burdens, break chains and restores life.

All that to say, YES, I do talk about hell and I’ve chosen to talk about it with a Gospel-based, Jesus-composed model that draws people rather that scares them away from him. My wager is that the fruit will be much better.

Comments

The “GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST” can best be summed up in the words of JESUS when He made the “GREATEST PROMISE EVER,” which is that He will draw ALL people unto Himself. (John 12:32)

My name is Alan Finch. JESUS became my Lord and Saviour in April of 1976.

I spent several years diligently searching the Scriptures to uncover what really made Biblical sense in regards to God's true message to us of what really is “The Good News of the Gospel of Christ” which I did not properly understand for most of my many years as a Christian.

My 1st 38 years as a Christian, I believed the unscriptural teaching about that there is going to be eternal torment for multitudes and multitudes of people. I then began to seriously question that teaching.

I then decided to do an in-depth study of the Bible concerning this issue, and the Scriptures revealed to me that I had believed a horrible lie for all those years.

The Lake of Fire is not a physical Lake of Fire, but is a metaphor for a Spiritual Lake of Fire from God’s Spirit for the purpose of “RESTORATION.” God is a God of “ETERNAL RESTORATION,” not a God of “eternal destruction.”

In Acts 3:21 God promises that there shall be a “RESTORATION” of ALL things! What is there not to understand about this wonderful promise that God has made to us?

The overall theme of the Bible is that God’s ultimate plan for ALL mankind is to restore, not destroy in an eternal Lake of Fire or eternal annihilation!

In John 12:32 JESUS clearly states that He is going to draw ALL people to Himself! Not a portion of mankind, but ALL of mankind.

In John 6:44 JESUS clearly states that nobody can come to Him except the Father draws that person to Him. For those who are true Christians, WE MUST NOT KID OURSELVES IN THE FACT THAT WE ONLY CAME TO JESUS BECAUSE GOD’S SPIRIT DREW US TO JESUS!

In the present time, and in the future, God has His own timing when He will draw each individual to Himself.

Addressing the issue of the belief in eternal annihilation, the Lord clearly tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that He has planted eternity in our hearts. God has made us living Spirits. It is impossible for our Spirit to be destroyed.

GOD HAS NOT FAILED IN HIS ORIGINAL PLAN FOR ALL OF MANKIND WHICH DOES NOT INCLUDE ETERNAL TORMENT OR ETERNAL ANNIHILATION. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD TO FAIL IN ANYTHING!

God worked out His plan in past Ages, God is working out His plan in the present Age that we are now living in, and God will work out His plan in future Ages to come.

I have spent the last several years in Biblically expounding in a 32 page document that I have put together on the truth of there being no eternal suffering in a Lake of Fire for anyone. I have just explained the real LOVE of God that today’s Church just simply does not seem to grasp.

After spending several years of diving deep into the Scriptures to uncover the Biblical truth on this subject, I would like to share these Biblical truths with others so that they can experience the same joy that I experienced which set me free from what I had previously believed for most of my life.

If anyone would be interested in a copy of my document, email me at: ([email protected]), and I will email you a copy.

Posted by: Alan Finch | December 21, 2022 at 06:35 AM