Truth Wins! On Rob Bell and Hell.

Tophet was a small valley south to southwest of Jerusalem which belonged to the sons of Hinnom. Tophet and Gehenna came to be designations of hell because of the terrible things which occurred there.

The wicked, unbelieving Jews of old would come to Tophet to sacrifice their children to the god Molech (Jer. 7:31). At Tophet the idolatrous Jews placed a large, bronze statue of Molech, shaped like a man with outstretched arms and hands. A fire would be built within the statue. When the statue was red hot, the idol-worshipers would place their baby sons and daughters onto the outstretched, red-hot arms and hands. Their little infants would die the most painful, excruciating death imaginable: their skin would be seared off their bodies, their flesh would be roasted; they were burned alive.

The screams, cries and screeches of their own children’s agony was unbearable, even to these wicked, debauched parents. Therefore, drums were played to drown out the hideous screams of the tortured infants. Hence Tophet, in the Hebrew, signifies the beating of drums. Therefore Tophet is a perfect symbol of hell where “God takes His rebellious children, casts them into the fire, [and] puts them into the arms of destruction” forever away from Christ and His saving blood. Will there be drums to drown out your screams when you sink into the flames of hell—you who reject Christ and His gospel? (Brian Schwertly, The Biblical Doctrine of Hell Examined)

Jesus taught that "...as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Mt. 13:40-42)

And again, "They are to 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 goes up forever and ever” (Rev. 14:10)

Most people would agree that one of most horrible pains a human can experience is being burned alive. But if a person would be burned alive, and never feel the relief of death, it would be a fate worse than we can imagine.

Spiritual Torment

People who will have an eternal existence in hell will realize a few things very quickly. One of the first is that they have been deemed worthless. They are garbage, refuse and without an positive attribute for all eternity. Even the way they will be put into hell tells us of their worth. The greek word we discussed before, βάλλω, gives the connotation that the things being cast or flung, are done so without care as to where they land. It is a flippant, "away with you", and the first spiritual torment will be the realization that there is no hope and there will never again be any hope. "Cast out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 13:40-42

It will also be a place of intense loneliness. No communication. The only sound will be the raging of the fire and the competing screams of agony. There will be no shoulders to lean on. No support groups. Imagine a darkness so dark and so thick that “it may be felt” (Ex. 10:21). Hell is utter darkness. The Bible says it is “black darkness” (Jude 13). The wicked suffer torment in the flames of hell, yet they do so in total, black, terrifying darkness. “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness, in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt. 22:13). In the outer darkness you will be alone with your thoughts. You will have eternity to dwell upon a life wasted serving your own foolish lusts and vanities rather than Jesus Christ.

3. Hell is Eternal

Some heretical teachers are sneaking old false teachings, long known as anti biblical into the Church body that teach that hell is not eternal. They teach it is a place of punishment, and then God will remove the people in it from existence. Rob Bell is in the limelight right now, but there are a few guys who have been teaching these things. Here is an an article that brings this argument: http://www.lamblion.com/articles/articles_eternity3.php

I respond to this article with the following:

Initially we must get out of the way that I do not hold the platonic view that man’s soul is immortal and cannot be annihilated. I believe it cannot be destroyed by secondary causes such as man or disease, but could in theory be annihilated by God. Now it is up to us to determine if it is the intention of God to annihilate the soul of wicked mankind.
First, we look at the true nature of Hell:
We observe from Matthew 25:41, 46 that wicked men will befall the same fate as the Devil and the wicked angels. Hell was created for them, and they will eventually be thrown into it. Wicked mankind, who has not repented of their sins, will meet the same fate because they are children of the Devil.

Since this article does not argue the reality of the torture of Hell, I will not comment on the reality of God’s wrath being poured out on the wicked in Hell. It is clear that he does believe that Hell will be both physically and spiritually painful.

To deal with the erroneous view of conditional immortality, I will issue a response from a few angles.

1. Eternal Punishment (αἰώνιος κόλασις) vs. 46. William Shedd made a good point about this. I will tweak it slightly to shed light on this particular point.
a. Punishment must always include suffering.
b. If suffering is lacking, so is punishment.
c. Ergo, punishment requires consciousness.
d. If consciousness is extinguished, so does the punishment.
e. It is a very curious description that God chooses to inspire- would He be describing annihilation.

“If God by a positive act extinguishes, at death, the remorse of a hardened villain, by extinguishing his self-consciousness, it is a strange use of language to denominate this a punishment.”

2. Either one is annihilated, or one is not. There are no degrees of annihilation. The Bible clearly teaches that there will be degrees of punishment (Matt. 10:15; 11:21-24; 16:27; Luke 12:47-48; John 15:22; Heb. 10:29; Rev. 20:11-15; 22:12)
Rev. 9:6 describes the wicked experiencing the conscious wrath of God and begging the mountains to fall on them, but in vain. As Shedd goes on to say, “The guilty and remorseful have, in all ages, deemed the extinction of consciousness after death to be a blessing; but the advocate of conditional immortality explains it to be a curse...."
The basic idea is that annihilation is not a punishment, it is a blessing. It is a welcome end to the punishment of God haters in Hell. It is possible for one to exist and not be punished, it is not possible to be punished, but not exist. The stance of conditional immortality cannot be reconciled with the scriptures describing punishment.

3. Is αἰώνιος eternal, or just a period of time? What convinces me is that it describes both the end of the righteous and the wicked in Matt. 25. It is impossible to cut short the punishment of the wicked without cutting short the eternal life of the righteous. John Broadus’ commentary on Matthew states it this way: “It will at once be granted, by any unprejudiced and docile mind, that the punishment of the wicked will last as long as the life of the righteous; it is to the last degree improbable that the Great Teacher would have used an expression so inevitably suggesting a great doctrine he did not mean to teach....”

4. This article also confirms that the Bible unquestionably teaches that the Devil and His angels will receive an eternal conscious punishment. If one would read Matt. 25:41-46, you will inevitably come away with the conclusion that the wicked and the Devil will share the same fate--An eternal conscious punishment.

5. A temporary hell is not justice when compared to sinning against an infinitely Holy God. God sees our sin as an infinite transgression against an infinitely perfect and holy law, and the only justice is an eternal punishment suffering under His eternal wrath. So either hell is eternal, or God is not just.

Now a little about what hell is not.

Hell is not eternal separation from God.

The Bible is clear on this issue. Jesus "...is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col. 1:17) There is nothing outside of God. Existence, time and space do not exist outside of Him. Even hell is within him. But where heaven will be a place where He pours out His eternal grace and mercy, hell will be a place where he continually pours out His wrath and justice.

Hell will not be cruel.

I will let R.C. Sproul speak to this:

No matter how we analyze the concept of hell it often sounds to us as a place of cruel and unusual punishment. If, however, we can take any comfort in the concept of hell, we can take it in the full assurance that there will be no cruelty there. It is impossible for God to be cruel. Cruelty involves inflicting a punishment that is more severe or harsh than the crime. Cruelty in this sense is unjust. God is incapable of inflicting an unjust punishment. The Judge of all the earth will surely do what is right. No innocent person will ever suffer at His hand. (R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith)