Thread: The fires of Hell

We had a church event yesterday and I helped cook the chicken. I put too much wood in the barrel at first so it was extremely hot and just getting near to it was painful
The pain of being burnt must be the worst pain one could experience

I thought about hell and thanked the Lord I was not going there but wondered about lost souls burning for eternity....it must be a unimaginable horror

Thank you Jesus for saving us


Does anyone have any thoughts on why God would create the lake of fire as punishment for rejecting Christ?

I thought the lake of fire was for satan and his minions.. the unbelievers are there, but it wasn't specifically for them.

What are your thoughts?

(actually, I'd be more concerned about the being separated from God)

Originally Posted by Cardinal TT

Does anyone have any thoughts on why God would create the lake of fire as punishment for rejecting Christ?

Jesus said in Matthew 25:41 that hell was created for satan and his angels.

So, it was not originally created for man, but if man is in agreement with satan (walking after the flesh) then he belongs to satan therefore he gets satan's reward.

So, this is the place that all who will spend eternity separated from God... will go to.

Did it occur to anyone that the Bible says that God himself is a consuming fire ?

Heb 12:28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,
29 for our God is a consuming fire

He revealed himself as a fire in the burning bush, to Moses. He makes his servants the same :

Heb 1:7 In speaking of the angels he says, “He makes his angels spirits, and his servants flames of fire.”

He walked before the Israelites in the desert as a pillar of fire. He came down on mount Sinai in fire. This was the reaction of the sinners :

Isaiah 33:14 The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: “Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?”

God's fire came down from heaven and consumed Elijah's sacrifice even though he had deliberately poured water over it first. The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in tongues of fire. Jesus baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire. What fire ? The consuming fire that God is.

That is the consuming fire that I saw when I had one of my three strongest experiences with God back in 1993. I can only imagine the effect it would have on a sinner if that sinner had been exposed to that fire and to infinite degree. Maybe that is what the lake of fire and brimstone is about.

Gen 19:23 The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar.
24 Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens.
25 So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
26 But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

That was no ordinary fire, it was God's fire. No ordinary fire and no ordinary brimstone (they used it for purification purposes) would have turned someone into a pillar of salt from looking at it.

Isaiah 30:33 For Tophet was established of old, Yes, for the king it is prepared. He has made it deep and large; Its pyre is fire with much wood; The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, kindles it.

Rev 14:10 he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Rev 20:10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

If the lake of fire and brimstone (which is sulphur) had consisted of literal fire and literal sulphur then their bodies would have burned up within a few seconds and the sulphur would have made no difference. But these things are used as metaphors of how God shows himself in wrath towards sin. And he is a consuming fire.

I am personally extremely careful with letting people's visions of hell affect how I view these things theologically. I believe that many of those visions are not given by God. Some of the people involved are liars who make things up to get attention or to start whole ministries based on their visions. Some are crazy and their visions are merely an expression of that. Some aren't crazy but what they saw, in whatever form, was just imagination or hallucinations. Or near-death-experiences which sometimes amount to what happens in the brain when the person comes close to the brink of death. Some times such visions are given by the devil and are produced by demons inhabiting the person in question and they are given to promote a certain religious spirit or obsession about these things. There are very many categories and I'm not going to attempt to tell anyone which experience amounts to which, including the experiences of posters here. But I am and I will remain, a skeptic. But not in relation to the testimony of scripture itself.

Does Satan torment people with fire in hell somewhere in the Bible ? Nope, that is the Medieval vision of him. In the Bible he is linked to death and then to sorrow, hopelessness, corruption, sinfulness. To follow up on the question about what Jesus suffered and where. Jesus suffered being a human being who was physically dead, for three days. He was separated from his body and under the power of death (don't interpret that as anything more than just that - death) until God resurrected him from the dead. That was no walk in the park. Here is how it is described in Jonah 2 which is a Messianic metaphor :

Jonah 2:6 I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;

That is what Jesus himself said, that he would spend three days and three nights in "the heart of the Earth". We know today that the mountains actually do have roots and that they go dozens of miles down into the Earth. Further down there is lava but that is not what he is talking about. The Earth above him closed behind him forever (pending his resurrection) and as such, he was utterly lost.

There was only one power that could save him from death, a power he had prayed for fervently, even with high screams while he was still alive. According to Hebrews 5:7. And that was the power of God to conquer death itself and raise him from the dead, out of the power and dominion of Satan.

So he stayed down there and waited patiently, in unyielding faith. A faith capable of moving that mountain that was above him and had closed upon him, the strongest faith that could exist, a faith capable of moving the mountain of death itself. And that faith prevailed.

And that is the main contention of the entire gospel message :

Did Jesus or did he not conquer death itself ?

Originally Posted by GodismyJudge

Oh yeah.

He had to experience the totality of being utterly lost. - the penalty for sin.

One needs to be very careful with that kind of absolutist thinking. The distance from what you just said (taken at face value) and to "Jesus became a vile sinner, utterly lost in every possible sense" is very short.

Originally Posted by GodismyJudge

You're right about that.

The key difference is the absolute purity and intent of His heart. His love and obedience to the Father was absolute, and He gave all that He had, as Son of God/ Son of Man.

He remained the innocent suffering the experience of being utterly cut off and lost.

He didn't "just" get cut off from the Father, but He had to experience and endure the Wrath of God due to us.

That's the Key.

He remained innocent of heart, though He was made to be sin.

What does that have to do with the subject. We are talking about HELL!

Originally Posted by Nikos

What does that have to do with the subject. We are talking about HELL!

1) Hell was designed originally for Satan and his demons (Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10).

(2) Hell will also punish the sin of those who reject Christ (Matthew 13:41,50; Revelation 20:11-15; 21:8).

(3) Hell is conscious torment.

Matthew 13:50 “furnace of fire…weeping and gnashing of teeth”
Mark 9:48 “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”
Revelation 14:10 “he will be tormented with fire and brimstone”

(4) Hell is eternal.

Revelation 14:11 “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night”
Revelation 20:14 “This is the second death, the lake of fire”
Revelation 20:15 “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire”