Hello Hermann,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The concept of hell was in the Bible from the beginning.

It’s the reason God sent Adam and Eve out of Eden after they sinned — lest they eat from the Tree of Life and live forever in their state of sinfulness and separation from God. What does it sound like to exist forever, suffering your sins, separated from God?

Isaiah expands on this, as he is ushered into the Throne Room of Heaven in Isaiah 6. What’s his response? Joy? Worship?

No. Agony.

His own sins torment him in the presence of God. Isaiah suffers unbearable agony because he is guilty of a great deal of sin, yet sees God with open eyes. His agony doesn’t go away until these sins are atoned for and cleansed.

That’s hell — suffering the agony of your sins as soon as you cross over into the next life.

Note that God wasn’t torturing Isaiah. No one touched him. His agony came entirely from the sins he himself had committed.

This is why the Bible speaks of sin as “storing up wrath against ourselves.” The fires of hell aren’t a torture chamber lit by someone else. Everyone in hell suffers the agony they created for themselves, the wrath they stored up against themselves every time they chose to rebel against God (which is what every sin is).

Daniel expands on this, emphasizing that hell is not a perishing into non-existence, but being awake to feel it all for all eternity:

“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2 ESV).

Daniel pairs everlasting life in Heaven with the everlasting shame and contempt of hell. Hell is just as everlasting as Heaven.

Sure, there are plenty of times like John 3:16 where you could read “perish” as ceasing to exist, if you wanted to. But there are also plenty of places like Daniel 12:2 that clarify hell’s eternality. In that light, words like “perish” should be understood as “perishing from life into eternal death,” rather than “perishing from life into non-existence.” That would be a motivated interpretation, not a contextually accurate interpretation.

And yes, hell is horrible. That’s the point.

That’s why God whisked Adam and Eve out of Eden, lest they solidify their separation from God for all eternity. That’s why Jesus died on the Cross, to save as many as possible from hell.

If you hate the idea of hell, do everything possible to make sure you don’t end up there. Trust in the Savior who wants to rescue you from it.