Satan Wants You To Laugh About Hell, But He Doesn’t
Denying Hell is an Insult to Calvary! Our God so loved His beautiful world and His created family that had fallen into sin that He sent His only Begotten Son to be His sacrifice for their sins. Why would the Sovereign God of this universe offer His Son on a cruel cross if there was no eternal penalty for sin? Such thinking is insanity. The Son of God is eternal and has inhabited eternity forever. Yet, He stepped out of that realm to become the Son of Man. He is the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8). He left eternity and descended into time and space for a short season. Hell had been created for the devil and his angels, but now God’s human family was in danger. Justice demanded that sinful men be given the same punishment as sinful angels. The Holy God is perfectly just and the penalty of sin had to be paid.
Man was created below the angels and the higher order. Since man was created on a human level and the angel Lucifer had wrought this terrible fall of men, God provided mankind a sacrifice. Calvary is God’s wonderful plan to save the human family from sin and Hell fire. To speak of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ on any other level is to insult, even blaspheme, the greatest love story of this universe. How could God create us in His own image if we are not eternal for good or bad
But, Calvary was not just a picture of love, although love was at its very heart. The angels do not fly around His throne declaring love, love, love; they declare holy, holy, holy. Calvary was certainly the ultimate picture of love, but what it really proved was holiness. God is holy and His Son hanging on a cruel cross is God’s greatest example of His holiness. His Son had to become sin for us. He, who knew no sin and existed in the divine without even the possibility of sin, had now taken sin upon His own soul as a human substitute. That substitute is now man’s escape from a burning Hell. Every soul that clings in faith to His shed blood is washed from sin and all its power to damn. You cannot deny Hell as long as you stand in the shadow of Calvary. The person that denies Hell fire has forgotten or never knew the heavenly joy of being washed from all their sins. The hope of Calvary demands the hopelessness of Hell to justify its cost to God and His Son.
Calvary was a living hell! Calvary was the closest thing to Hell any man had ever experienced without going there. The Son of God had an equivalent experience of being totally forsaken by God as a person cast into Hell experiences. That’s the meaning of His heartrending words, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). For three hours He hung writhing on His cross with a total sense of separation from His Father. It’s impossible for us to understand or know the union with the Heavenly Father that the Son of God knew. They were one from eternity, inseparable, until the Father smote Him in death and let Him hang there as a sin sacrifice for three dark hours. It was Hell for the Son of Man to be so utterly forsaken. Maybe He will explain to us in eternity the price He paid for our salvation.
But, it doesn’t end there. While the Son of God was on the cross, He uttered “seven statements” that actually define the depth of His death. The first three reveal His undying love for humankind. The second two reveal the Hellish experience of His suffering and the last two reveal His glorious triumph. One of the two that reveals His horrible death experience is the quote regarding being forsaken. The other is more revealing than I ever before imagined. He uttered a breathtaking expression which appeared to arrest those individuals that were beneath His cross. These individuals were the ones that had nailed Him to the tree and were waiting to finish their dark deeds. It appeared that He suddenly proclaimed, “I thirst.” Those words have intrigued many readers and writers, but we have missed their utter significance. Jesus told of a rich man that went to Hell and begged for Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue. There is no question, but that the cry of Hell is, “Water, water, water.” Up and down the corridors of that horrible place, men are begging and screaming for water.
When the Son of Man was experiencing the throbs of His horrible excruciating death and was forsaken by His God of which He was One, He cried out, “I thirst.” Hell is indeed a real place, but it is more than just a place, it is a state of existence where all things beautiful and satisfying are lost. The Son of God so experienced the penalty of sin for us that He suffered the pains of being completely emptied of all that makes life bearable. He experienced the utter emptiness of a man lost and desperate for the most basic need of water. It was as though His cry, “I thirst,” was an echo of the rich man’s cry for “water.” He was on that cross for us that we might be “forever saved.” I believe His Words, “I thirst,” can be called, “Sounds from Hell.”
The Rich Man and Sounds Out of Hell! Jesus told this vivid story that was mentioned above of the rich man that died and went to Hell. Jesus gave him no name because his name had already rotted, but the poor beggar in the story was named Lazarus. Jesus said, “… the rich man also died, and was buried; And in Hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (Luke 16:23-24). This story is above all an effort by the Son of God to give us a clear picture of eternal torments for the wicked. When, at the beginning of this article, I said,“Hell is a hot subject,”it was meanst to be literal. It is not imaginary or some unconcious state. Hell is full of misery and torments so breathtaking as to cause a constant chorus of miserable sounds. Nothing describes misery more than the sounds which misery creates.
Visit a hospital where desperate men and women are patients. Their appearance may be extremely sad and even depressing but their cries and screams can be utterly terrifying. There is no question but that the screams of suffering individuals are more overwhelming than other aspects of their pitiful state. The screams of Hell are enough to make this eternal destination of the wicked the most horrible place in God’s universe.
The rich man was in torments, and his cries and requests reveal just how real the place really was. Look at this list of words which Jesus stated that came from His lips. Jesus said, “He cried.”.” Abraham responded to him by saying, “Son, remember…” The rich man said, “I pray thee,” and then showed “compassion” towards his lost family. He was clearly a different man than the one that refused to even provide the crumbs from his table for the beggar. Hell had stripped him of his arrogance and rebellion. The sounds of his words make unprepared men with an honest conscious tremble. What our world needs is for the church and the praying saints to get a fresh vision of the horrors of Hell until we are terrified by these words from the lips of a damned man.
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Ed Wood
The realization of hell as an actual place is lost on the secular world and this is really no surprise. That it has been similarly lost in what passes for the church these days is inexcusable.
Along these lines since hell is considered to be merely symbolic, so is the one doomed to become its chief resident – Satan Himself.
There is no enemy more dangerous than one that goes unrecognized – and today this ignorancee is perhaps the devil’s greatest ally.
James Lishman
Dear Brother Joseph,
Yes but even now a huge chunk of humanity (learned professors and philanthropists and financial advisors and the likes) are ridiculing the Rapture, asking if any person of sound mind can concieve of such a ridiculous theory (A learned person placed an in depth article in the New York Times the past week)
He and his minions will experience the heat of hell for the thousands that they pull down by their arguments.
Yes hell is ever so real, but man cannot concieve that they will live forever tormented in such a place, because they rejected the free grace of JESUS CHRIST.
Keep the faith, shortly the trumpet will sound and the Bride be taken to eternity at our Saviour’s side.
Love in the Coming MESSIAH JESUS CHRIST
Dave
Dear Bro Joseph, what a study this one is, “hell and the lake of fire” very little, if any at all is taught in our churches today. The reality of hell is so real, just as it takes air that we breath and food and water to stay alive, the lake if fire is that real. Down through the years I have preached and taught the reality of hell in open air evangelism in the towns in our county, most people do not even bat an eye, some pour contempt and scorn on such teachings. There is no such place as hell, they shout, a loveing God would not put us in hell, he loves us to much for that to happen. satan is having a great time and the body of Christ is incapable of turning this situation around in God’s favour. The body of Christ is living with an attude of “I am alright”, I’m safe, I’m going to heaven, if the sinner wants to go to hell, then let them. Joseph, we have forgotten what we have been saved and forgiven from. It is our bound and duty to tell all, what we have received. Personnaly, in our churches, I have never seen such an appathic attutide of believers in any field of requirment of God. what makes me so angry (rightously) and is also so laughable, we all think we are going up in the Rapture of the Lord’s return. I think we are all in for a very eye opening surprise. I will not take this any further, enough has been said for consideration. David.
Ed Wood
A CORRECTION:
In my post here I made a typo and gave the devil a capital “H” in the pronoun referring to him. He certainly doesn’t merit it by any means!
A THANK YOU:
To Donna Byrd who kindly cleared up the identity of the witch in the “Converted Witch” article. Much appreciated!
jaimie
Dear Pastor,
Our Heavenly Father created Hell. The fool says in his heart that there is no God. The demons sought a watery place in the swine. There was no place for them in the death of the swine. The demons know Hell they know the Heavenly Father, they want water. They hope people won’t believe (in Jesus) because they need to find a way out of there(hell) and want to live in anybody (watery place)that is vulnerable, just like an unbeliever, or those pigs or the man with legion. They even asked Jesus not to send them there.
Almost every culture on this planet believes in some kind of hell.
God Bless
jaimie
Donna Byrd
Anne,
To me the drop of water is a desperate cry for mercy, but there is none. Also, it represents, by his own words he is condemned. The rich mans dogs were kinder to Lazarus than he was. It shows the difference between good and evil. Lazarus did not lay outside the rich mans gate complaining, crying and raising a ruckus, but quietly and modestly asking for crumbs. It shows how hard-hearted the rich man was. He was rich and worldly and thought he “have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor; and blind, and naked:” Rev. 4:17 Just like the Bible says you reap what you sow.
You are very welcome Ed Wood.