Hell: Grades 5-8 Ask…(5)

What is hell like?

Just as with heaven, there is much we don't know about hell. I will just mention three things which we know for certain about the nature of hell:

With the enemies of God

First, hell will be a place spent with the enemies of God in terrible loneliness. None of these enemies will ever be true friends in hell. In hell, Satan will mock sinners for listening to him. How terrible it will be to hear him say: "You have heard and known that I was a murderer and liar from the beginning, but you believed me anyhow. Now I have you inside the gates of hell forever." Other devils and sinners in hell will give no comfort. Hell will be a place of too much pain and enmity against God to have any true friendship.

Hell is a place of total loneliness. This was deeply impressed upon me once when I stood between two beds in a hospital room where both persons were dying at the same time. The church member I was visiting was groaning: "Let me die. Let me die." But the woman in the other bed could not even hear her because she too was groaning with pain. I thought back in those moments to high school days where a girl once said this awful statement: "If I come into hell, at least I will have the comfort of knowing that there will be others there with me." (I never forgot her mockery because less than a year later she died unrepentant from a brain tumor.) I realized as never before that this girl was terribly wrong. These women felt no comfort from each other. They felt completely alone. The room could have been filled with other people, but it would have made no difference. "Oh," I thought, "this is a little bit of what hell will be like—always dying, but never dead; always surrounded by others, yet fully alone."

Under the wrath of God

Secondly, hell will be a place of being under the wrath of an Almighty, All-knowing God. In this life, the Lord mixes His punishments upon the ungodly with common grace. This often makes suffering bearable. But in hell there will be no common grace. God will pour out the vial of His wrath without mixture (Rev. 14:11).

In hell there will be no relief from God's wrath. No drop of water will be given to cool the tongues of sinners in hell (Lk. 16). Maybe you have heard of an old form of Chinese torture where prisoners would have their bodies strapped down in a fixed position so that their foreheads would always be under a faucet of dripping water. The first hundred or even a thousand drops were not so bad. The torture came with the unending dripping. Many such prisoners eventually lost their minds because there was no relief.

After millions of years, hell will be no closer to being completed than when the sinner entered it. The drippings of the vial of God's wrath shall never run dry. Indeed, hell is timeless.

No relief! No intermission! No end! This in itself will be a good part of the hell of hell.

Boys and girls, eternity is forever. Ask the Lord to impress this word upon your heart: Eternity! Eternity! Truly, "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God" (Heb. 10:31).

Total separation from God

Finally, and above all, hell will be a place of total separation from God. Never again shall a sinner in hell have an opportunity to seek the Lord. Prayer will no longer be possible. The door of grace will be forever closed. The market of free grace will be shut down. There will be a great gulf fixed between heaven and hell which no one shall cross (Lk. 16:26).

Oh, how terrible this will be to have no place to go to with all our pain! To have nothing left but bitter enmity against a God whom we will have to confess placed us justly in hell! To experience eternal separation from a well-doing, holy God—this will be the center of hell, especially for those who have heard the gospel and refused to flee to Christ with all their sins!

The terribleness of hell cannot be put into words. A godly Puritan, John Flavel once wrote: "Those who end in hell shall curse the day they were born, curse the first time they heard the gospel, curse the Lord for all the opportunities He had given them — both those opportunities used and those unused."

The answer for hell

Dear children, we have all deserved hell. We have all sinned. God is so holy that He must punish all unforgiven sin with everlasting hell. This will take place on the Judgment Day when each of us must meet God personally, unless we are born again by the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps you will ask: "But where is hope?"

Happily, I may answer you: "In the LORD Jesus Christ, who experienced in His soul all the hellish pains that God's people deserve on their behalf."

Yes, Jesus experienced hell in His soul. Did He not experience the hellishness of being with the enemies of God? Oh, the battles He had with Satan who was always trying to get Christ's sacred humanity to falter! Did He not experience the wrath of God in Gethsemane, at Gabbatha, and on Golgotha when the cup of His Father's wrath against the sins of His people was poured upon Him in all its terribleness? Must He not even experience the center of hell when He felt separation from His Father as judge, and had to cry out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Dear boys and girls, can you understand now why the day of Jesus' death is called Good Friday? This great Savior, Jesus Christ, has experienced hell for people who deserve hell so that they will never have to come in hell. These are people who feel they deserve hell and learn to flee with all their sins to the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit makes room in their hearts for this precious Savior who takes the place of unworthy sinners. Oh, may you too be led by this Spirit in your elementary school years to bring all your sins to Him! He alone can save you.

Outside of Jesus Christ there is no salvation. Outside of Christ, God can only be a consuming fire and an everlasting burning. Outside of Christ, there is nothing left but hell in the end.

But in Christ is everything a sinner needs. Jesus has come to seek and to save lost sinners. My dear young friends, ask Him to give you a new heart, to teach you your sin, and to drive you to the only and perfect Savior who was willing to suffer hell for hell-worthy sinners. (Please read Joel 2:11b-14a).

Forward questions intended for this department to:

Rev. J.R. Beeke, 2115 Romence St. N.E., Grand Rapids, Ml 49503.

Questions will be published anonymously.

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