GOD'S GREAT PENITENTIARY

GOD'S GREAT PENITENTIARY

 

Hell is an awful contemplation and a fearful reality from which men are vainly seeking to escape by means of self-delusion and subtle reasoning. Yet hell is no less a reality and the danger of falling in is no less sure. It is not strange that men should desire to escape from bitter torment. But it is strange that men who boast the scientific spirit should so utterly ignore the necessity for a hell. The reason is obvious; namely, the Devil's first lie now more than 6,000 years old: "Thou shalt not surely die." With these words Satan induced Adam and Eve to forsake holiness for crime. Those same words are enticing men to sin today. If Satan, the god of this world, can persuade men that sin does not end in death and that there is no need of a Savior, then he is winning in the great battle against the Son of God.

It is not the purpose of the writer to rely upon instinct or reason to determine the actuality, the description, or the duration of hell, although all of these are valid avenues of approach and supply indisputable evidence. Revelation alone can speak with authority upon the states of life and death beyond the grave. And the Word of God has spoken. So we rely wholly upon the Bible for our information.

IS THERE A HELL?

Instinct anticipates a place of punishment beyond the grave. It is an inborn trait of men to know that there is something wrong with themselves, and that there must be a reckoning sometime, somewhere. Every heathen temple, every heathen altar, every heathen sacrifice, every heathen prayer is unimpeachable testimony that punishment awaits the man who does not appease the wrath of God. Upon one occasion John the Baptist addressed the Pharisees: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" He was appealing to something innate and self-evident in every man.

But reason certainly goes a step further, for it demands that there be a place of punishment. The paradox of the centuries has been, why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? And they do here and now. The answer to this problem comes only through revelation. And while the wicked do prosper now, they shall suffer in the hereafter, while the righteous who suffer now shall be duly rewarded in the hereafter. And while reason cannot give the answer as revelation can, reason knows the answer and what it must be if this world is really a moral world, and men have minds that are able to think.

It is left to the Bible, however, to declare authoritatively that there is a place of punishment. All we know about hell is recorded in the Word of God, just as we must rely upon the Word of God for our information about heaven. The Bible often speaks of them in the same breath. And strange as it may seem, the One whom we trust as our Savior spoke more about hell than any other prophet among men. His words were with finality, from which there is no appeal. Those same words are the groundwork upon which the doctrine of hell rests. It was Jesus who said: "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28). So there is a hell.

WHY IS THERE A HELL?

There is a hell because God must punish the criminals of the universe. Hell may be called God's great penitentiary. No country, state, or city could operate long without maintaining laws, promoting justice, and providing protection. For those who break the laws, defy justice, and endanger others, there must be a place of confinement and punishment. Why is there a hell? It is God's great penitentiary for the criminals of the universe. In Matthew 25:41 Christ declares that hell was prepared for the Devil and his angels.

But why for the Devil? Because the Devil was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. He attacked and still does attack the two most precious things in all the universe; namely, truth and life. Every man who has bowed down to His Satanic Majesty, has refused to accept the life that is in Christ Jesus, has been murdered, and his murderer is the Devil himself. And the reason he is the murderer is because he corrupted the truth of God in the beginning.

The very basis for life in Christ is the truth of God as it is revealed in Christ Jesus. But this truth has been distorted by the Devil's lie, so that the unsaved man is led away from eternal life in Christ. This makes Satan the greatest criminal in the entire universe. It was for him and his brood that God's great penitentiary was prepared.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF HELL?

It may be asserted on the authority of the Scriptures that hell is a place not on earth. Though many have consoled themselves with the thought that all the hell there is, is upon the earth, they are actually prophesying out of their own hearts. The Word of God declares that it is (Prov. 15:24), and that there are those who shall someday be cast into hell (Psa. 55:15; Matt. 11:23). Apparently hell is so deep and large that it will provide ample room for all the wicked, and solitary confinement for the most wicked (Prov. 9:18; Isa. 5:14).

Not only is hell a place of confinement for the wicked, but it is also a place of eternal confinement. Every reference to the punishment to come upon the wicked marks it as eternal punishment. Since the sin which finally brings the wicked down to hell is eternal in character (Mark 3:29 ASV), the punishment upon the wicked will never come to an end. To release incorrigible souls from this penitentiary would be to endanger the entire universe and catapult it back into the danger from which it has been rescued.

Moreover, this hell will be conscious torment for the wicked. In every reference to the state of those confined in this prison, the Bible depicts them as consciously suffering the punishment inflicted upon them. There will be no blotting out of existence. Destruction simply means that there will be a marring of body and soul. "And the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night" (Rev. 14:11).

The most terrifying thing of all about hell is the fact that it consists in destruction which is separation from the Lord. Those final words to the wicked, "Depart from me" (Matt. 7:23; 25:41), will strike awful terror to the hearts of the lost, for they "shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (2 Thess. 1:9). They shall go out into the night of eternal separation to wander in loneliness, despair, doom, and death. Is this not reason enough to ask the question: "Who shall go to hell'?"

 WHO WILL GO TO HELL?

We have discussed the reason for a hell. It is for the punishment of all those who have broken the laws of God and have become criminals in His universe. But we must remember that it is not sin or sins merely that send a man to hell. If it were, then not one man in the whole universe would escape, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Then what will send a man to hell, and who is it that finally will be cast into hell?

A great cry has gone up in the modernized age to the effect that God will never send a man to hell because He is too loving. And in some sense of the word this idea is exactly correct. God will never send a man to hell. In fact, He never prepared hell for men in the first place. But men will go to hell just the same. God will not send them, for He is too loving, so loving in fact that "He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish" (John 3:16). But men will go to hell. For in spite of all that God has done to turn men away from the path which leads to hell, they deliberately persist in following that path which will eventually reach the brink of the abyss.

The sins of men will not send them to hell either, for their sins were covered at the Place of the Skull. But one thing will send them to that place of everlasting torment. That one thing is unbelief in the Son of God, the refusal to take Him for a Savior and Lord. "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 . . . and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:18, 36).

If any person now reading this goes to hell, he will be like the young man whose godless dissipation and sin broke his mother's heart and sent her to her grave. The first night after the funeral the old father sat brokenhearted and numb with grief by the fireside. The home was so empty. Its light had gone out with the mother. The vicious son came downstairs, picked up his hat and prepared to leave. The father inquired: "Where are you going, son?" "I am going downtown," was the answer. The father remonstrated: "Son, don't go. This is the first night Mother has been out of the house, and I'm so lonesome; sit there where Mother used to sit and stay with me tonight." But the son objected: "No; I've got an engagement." And as the old man continued to plead with him, he said: "Step aside, for I am going out." The old man threw himself on the floor and said: "Son, if you pass out tonight, you will go over my body." With a curse the boy trampled him under his feet and opened the door and went out into the night.