Matthew-095

The teaching about hell is a very fearsome subject

Today, we continue into our study into the teaching of the Lord Jesus as we do from week to week, and last week we were studying from Matthew 23 to the beginning of Matthew 24. And last week too, we saw why this world must come to an end, why individuals come to an end, for judgment is an end.

But before we leave Matthew 23, there is yet one thing that I need to expound from the teaching of the Lord Jesus and that concerns the teaching about hell. Although I have touched on this subject occa­sionally in the past, I must say that I felt rather reluctant to speak on this subject. But I would not be faithful to the teaching of the Lord Jesus and to the whole counsel of the Word of God if I did not come back to this subject of hell.

The word “hell” occurs 12 times in the New Testament, and where do they occur 11 times of these 12 times? It occurs 11 times in the teaching of the Lord Jesus – 7 times in Matthew, 3 times in Mark, once in Luke. The Mark and Luke references are parallels of Matthew, as you might expect. The fullest record of the Lord Jesus’ teaching is in Matthew, supplemented by Luke. The word “hell” occurs 7 times in Matthew and always in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Therefore we cannot escape the subject. The teaching about hell is a subject that one does not like to talk about lightly; it is a heavy, very fearsome subject.

Why should God, the God of love institute hell?

First, let us ask this question: Why is there a hell at all? Why should we even have to think about the reality of hell? Isn’t this idea of hell rather barbarous, you could even say, sadist? What is sadism? Sadism is the attitude that enjoys to see people suffer. From the way maybe some preachers preach about hell, one almost gets the feeling that they rather relish the idea of seeing people roasted in the fires of hell. But for those of us who don’t enjoy this thought that anyone suffers in the fires of hell, isn’t it embarrassing that we have to speak about hell in the church when even the death penalty for murder, rape, violence can all be removed in this age of permissiveness?

There is no more death penalty in Canada, the United Kingdom and the European countries, and almost none in the United States. You can do what you like. You can murder a hundred people and get away with it with a life sentence, and become nourished by the tax payers, and watch color television in the prison cell for the rest of your life. If you can’t get a job elsewhere, maybe the best way is to ensure that you get permanent accommodation in some state prison at the expense of the tax payers. There is no more death penalty. We are a very “enlightened age,” so “enlightened” that we don’t talk about punishment. You can kill 100, 200 people and that’s all right. Sometimes, we are even too worried that our prisoners are being too badly treated. We think they are not allowed to watch television often enough, or the food is not good enough. They can even riot and burn down the place, so the tax payers can spend another 10-20 million to re-build the prison. We are very “enlightened” people today, so this whole notion of hell is very hard to take. Why should God, the God of love institute such a thing as hell?

Either there is or there isn’t justice in this universe

We must settle between either there is or there isn’t justice in this universe. You have to choose one of these two things; you can’t have it both ways. If there is no such thing as justice in this universe, then clearly, there is no need either for reward on the one hand or punish­ment on the other. If we don’t want punishment, then we don’t want justice. And if we don’t want justice, then a person can do any evil, like Hitler put a few million people in the gas chambers and gas them to death. Then the Nazis took their gold rings and gold teeth, and even used their bones for fertilizer and chemical purposes. Why should we worry about this? Who cares since there is no justice in the universe? Now you have to choose: either there is or there isn’t justice in this universe. If we don’t need justice in this universe, we don’t need punishment, we don’t worry about reward, so we don’t need hell. How would you implement justice without any kind of punishment, without hell?

Or would you say, “Let’s have punishment but not as severe as hell. In our enlightened society, will not being allowed to eat for one or two days be enough”? Exactly how do you enforce that? Perhaps you will find that one day is also rather cruel. Just rebuke the person a bit will be enough. Think of hunger gnawing in his stomach for two days! In our “civilized” society, we don’t do this kind of terrible thing! So gradually, you can just keep toning it down until we are back to no more punishment except as a token. You must grasp that where there is no justice, there will be chaos. And where there is chaos, the whole fabric of society will collapse. We must choose one of these two things. Now is hell so terrible? This is exactly what we shall expound.

Hell is not everlasting punishment, but ultimate justice against evil

What did the Lord Jesus teach about hell? If you say, “I know that the everlasting fires of hell will burn without being quenched. The sin­ner will go into the fire and roast forever and ever. Hell is everlasting punishment.” You will be there to roast and to roast forever. Do you call that justice?

A man may live for 50, 60 or 70 years on this earth. A few strong and fortunate people might just about crawl their way to 80, 90 or even to 100! By that time, they can hardly see or hear, but they are still around. Let’s just say like most of us, at some time or other, he didn’t go to church, he didn’t love others, he was selfish, miserly, unkind, rude, every day of his life for 100 years, and because he was not a person who lived under God’s law, he will go to hell. And he will be in hell not for one or two years, not 10 years, not for 100 years, not even for 1,000 years, indeed, not even for 1 million years! You would think, “He sinned for 100 years and he spends 1 million years in hell?” No, he doesn’t spend 1 million years in hell, he will be there forever, according to the teaching of some! “Forever” is not 1 million years, it’s not even 5 million years; it’s any number of zeros you care to add at the end because “forever” means infinity. You would say, “Isn’t that barbarism? I don’t understand this kind of justice if you sin for 100 years and spend billions and billions of years in hell!” We will see if that is Bible teaching. I am concerned that we understand justice.

We must understand that God is the God of justice, that love without justice would be sheer corruption. It is justice that prevents love from becoming fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or any other form of corrupted love that you care to talk about. Love without justice is love without a backbone. It is love which is not self-giving but selfish, corrupt, rotten. It’s always possessing the other person, sucking every last drop of benefit you can get out of that person, and when you have finished, you throw it away. Is that called love? Justice and truth must be proportionate in love so that love is strong, healthy, pure. You have to decide what kind of universe God has made. The Bible has already told us that God is the God of justice as well as of love. He will not allow evil to even go beyond a certain measure, as we saw in the last message. He has drawn a line and said, “You will not go beyond this. If you do, you will face the ultimate justice that must come against evil.”

What is hell in the Lord Jesus’ teaching?

Let us turn to the teaching of the Lord Jesus. As I have said, the word “hell” occurs 7 times in the teaching of the Lord Jesus in Matthew, and the last 2 of the 7 references are in Matthew 23; the first is in verse 15:

You are full of religious zeal, full of missionary zeal but not the kind of religion that is worthy of God, therefore, you go out and convert people and these people become twice as worthy of hell as your­selves. You make them not better but worse.

The second is in verse 33:

1. Jesus teaches about hell primarily to his disciples

I would like to simply make a few factual comments before we start studying carefully what the Lord taught about hell. The first of this that strikes me and astonishes me in a way when I carefully examine all these references in the Lord Jesus’ teaching is the fact that most of these references are addressed not to non-Christians but to his disciples. And many of these references say, “It is better for you to enter into life with one hand or one eye than to go into hell with two hands and two eyes. Therefore if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” Jesus is speaking to his disciples about hell. And when I looked at it, out of 7 references to hell in Matthew, 5 are addressed to the disciples and these 2 here in Matthew 23 are not to unbelievers but to the Pharisees, the most religious Jews.

That is a surprise because we think that the subject of hell is for scaring unbelievers into the kingdom of God. There is no doubt that it’s also addressed to unbelievers, but it’s not meant to be a stick to frighten them. It is simply a fact. It is there to warn those who think that they are on the path to life.

When a doctor tells you that you are going to die in 6 months, he is not trying to frighten you. He is simply making a statement of truth: “By examining facts, I’m afraid that you will not last much more than 6 months.” When the Lord Jesus tells us about hell, he is telling us God’s justice will come against sin, and against your sin if you don’t repent. He is not trying to frighten you. If you are not scared of it, fair enough. The majority of people are not scared of it because the truth is they don’t even believe in it, so why should they be scared? They will wake up to the reality of it. Seeing is believing. In fact, the Lord Jesus teaches us this very thing, “One day, you will see it. At that time, you will believe, but it’s too late to believe by then.” So the first point is the fact that the Lord Jesus addresses these words primarily, although not exclusively to the disciples.

There are a related set of words in the Lord Jesus’ teaching and we shall see the relationship of this with hell as well. “Weeping and gnashing of teeth” occurs 7 times again in the Lord Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels, 6 times in Matthew, once in Luke. What is “weeping and gnashing of teeth”? It is the expression of total despair where you are weeping and grinding your teeth.

I wonder if you have ever seen people who are taken away to be executed? I have seen it many times in China. After the Communists came, we all know about the people who were just taken out to be executed. And many, many times, I have watched them taken away to be shot. You should see what they look like when they know they are going to be shot in about 10 minutes’ time. Some of them were kept in a sort of cage. They huddled on the floor of the cage weeping and gnashing their teeth. It is the sense of utter despair in the ter­rible predicament that they have found themselves in! So “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is time and again addressed as a warning in his teaching to the disciples as well as to the crowds. Again, it is not exclusively, not even primarily to the unbelievers. We should observe this.

2. Hell is connected with “fire”; it’s God’s “incinerator” of wickedness

The second factual observation is that the word “hell” is connected with the word “fire” several times. For example, it is connected with the hell of fire in Matthew 5:22, 18:8-9, or fiery furnace in Matthew 13:42. You will find again, the connection of hell to fire in the refer­ences in Mark which are parallels to Matthew, for example, Mark 9:43, 47, 48. Sometimes, the word “hell” does not occur with the word “fire.”

Let us try to understand the Lord Jesus’ teaching about hell. Clearly, it was a very important subject for the Lord Jesus, and he repeated it many, many times in his teaching. He was trying to warn us that we must choose between life and death. You only have two roads to take, and right now, you are going down one of them. Are you going down the road to life? Or are you going down the road to death? The broad road is easy, but ends in destruction. The word “destruction” is connected with the whole idea of hell and it occurs many, many times too. For example, in Matthew 10:28, the Lord Jesus says that God can destroy body and soul in hell. Hell has to do with destruc­tion. Imprint that deeply in your mind if you want to understand the nature of hell.

Why does it have to do with destruction at all? There are certain things which you cannot do anything else with except to destroy it, and if you don’t destroy it, it will destroy you. Let us take for exam­ple, garbage. Garbage that is not destroyed by burning will breed infection. The garbage men in England went on strike, and soon, there was garbage everywhere! There are plastic bags that can seal in the garbage, but can you imagine the viruses inside? What would happen if the dog or the cat tears the bag open? Immediately, there was an emergency in England because all this garbage lying around that is not destroyed soon became a dangerous threat to human health. They had to spray the bags of garbage with antiseptic and chemicals to prevent the spread of disease! There are certain things which must be destroyed.

The word gehenna which is translated as “hell” in English, comes from a word called hinnom, and many people think it comes from the Valley of Hinnom, which was the place where they burned garbage in Jerusalem. Garbage has to be burned, destroyed, especially in the hot weather of the Middle East. In England, they could survive for some time, especially when it was in winter. But in the hot weather, garbage becomes very, very dangerous, breeding all kinds of germs, bacteria, diseases.

These days, there is also the problem of toxic wastes. They don’t even know how to dispose of atomic wastes, which are exceedingly toxic and dangerous to mankind. What do they do? They put them in steel containers and sink these into concrete. Gradually, there will be more and more toxic waste around, and we are told that if any of the steel containers should ever be punctured, even a very small quantity of these atomic wastes could be lethal to mankind! The great problem is that they don’t know how to destroy the wastes. Until they can find a way to destroy it, they seal it in stainless steel cylinders and sink it into the concrete and hope that nothing will happen to it. If a bomb hits one of those, the toxic wastes will be far more dangerous than the bomb itself!

There are certain things you have to destroy or they will destroy you, and wickedness is one. The God of justice cannot allow wickedness to go around. It has to be eliminated. But wickedness is not an abstract thing. You cannot say, “Here is a piece of wickedness.” Wickedness exists in people. It does not exist in the air, in a piece of wood, or in a piece of steel. It is in people. Therefore, God has no alternative but to destroy those people who make themselves the repository, the storage place of evil, who welcome evil in their lives, or let it breed in their lives. As you know, if you put one rotten apple into a box of good apples, the entire box will rot away in a few days. If God allows evil, then evil will breed itself. It must be destroyed, although right now, he has taken no destructive action.

That is why there has to be a hell. Hell is God’s “incinerator”—not a very nice term, but I cannot think of something else at the moment—to remove evil from his universe. It is to destroy evil. It is a place in which you cleanse away evil in order that this whole universe will not be polluted. So if you choose to cling to evil, if you choose to make yourself the repository of sin, you give God no choice but to destroy you. You cannot carry on like this. He is giving you the time—maybe for the next one or two years, or maybe you have another 10 years—to repent of sin, and to let him remove this sin from you. If you don’t want to let God remove it, he cannot tear it away from you because good and evil is a matter of free choice. If you choose evil, then you choose destruction. So you see that hell becomes a necessary thing in the universe where justice is to be maintained. There is no other way to destroy evil except to purify evil from the face of the earth. You have to have a hell because there will be nowhere to destroy evil.

God pleads with man not to choose the way of destruction

Evil can be removed in two ways. God can cleanse away this evil by sending Jesus to die for us, or we die. You must take your choice. Let me also say this: God does not want to see one person go to hell. If you and I don’t want to see it, much less does God want to see anyone go to hell. He pleads, if possible through us, that you don’t go that way. God sent Jesus into this world to tell us not to go the way of destruction, and I am pleading with you not to go that way. I care. God cares even more. He said explicitly in the Old Testament that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He does not want to destroy anyone. That is why Peter says in his second letter that God is exercising patience and is waiting, giving us every chance to repent. And the apostle says, “Count God’s forbearance as salvation.” (2 Pet. 3:15) He is restraining himself to the maximum, possible limit. But if up to this point it is evident that you have not the slight­est intention of making a decisive rejection of sin, you give him no choice. He will destroy with grief, but he will have to put evil away.

So I beg of you to understand. In the last part of Matthew 23:37, notice how Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. “How often would I have gathered you under my wings but you don’t want to come to me. You don’t want to be gathered under my wings.” You think you’re fine, or maybe you don’t think there’s a hell. You’ll discover for yourself if there is or not. You will discover whether or not God is the God of justice. But I beg of you, don’t discover it that way.” That is Jesus’ message. So if Jesus spoke often about hell, it was simply out of love, pleading that we understand the danger that is ahead, that we don’t go down that way.

3. “Weeping and gnashing of teeth”: Despair to be sentenced to hell

Let us consider the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. What is the connection between weeping and gnashing of teeth and his teaching on hell? Is this something different or is it the same? It is the same thing put in a different way. The “weeping and gnashing of teeth” will be man’s sense of despair when he comes to realize the way he has behaved has brought him to this desperate end, to the judgment of hell; that what he did not believe becomes a reality now. It is to suddenly realize that it was an illusion not to believe in hell, not to believe in justice. Now they are going to be disillusioned. They are going to discover that there is such a thing as hell, that God is going to wipe out evil from his universe. That is disillusionment in the worst form. To be disillusioned is always a painful experience, but to be disillusioned so as to realize that you are going to be destroyed, you will be sentenced to ultimate death is something fearful. That is the “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Why did I say that the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the hell of fire or the judgment of hell is the same thing? Because the Lord Jesus said so quite explicitly. He connected these things together. For example, in Matthew 13:(41-) 42:

Where will people “weep and gnash their teeth” if they reject God’s salvation? It will be there in “the fiery furnace.”

You will find it repeated a little further on in Matthew 13(49-)50:

Let us draw a conclusion from this term. There will not be instant destruction or annihilation, but there will be a time in that fire during which the evildoer will realize what has befallen him, and weep and gnash his teeth.

4. “Outer darkness”

Another point in this connection is that sometimes, the expression, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is connected to another expression, “outer darkness.” What does “outer darkness” mean? Is this some­thing different from hell? The expression “outer darkness” con­nected with “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is found in Matthew 8:12. Let us read from verse 11:

This is addressed to the sons of the kingdom, to those who profess some kind of religion. This expression “outer darkness” also occurs in Matthew 22:13 and 25:30.

What does “outer darkness” mean? If we compare Matthew 8:12 with the parallel passage, Luke 13:28, the meaning becomes very clear. A slight change of phrasing helps us to understand what “outer darkness” means. We will read what the Lord Jesus says in Luke 13:27-28.

From where are the workers of evil cast out? From the kingdom! So “outer darkness” is the darkness outside the kingdom of God. The meaning is very plain. In the Scriptural teaching, light represents life; darkness represents death. That is why in John you have the expression “the light of life” because light represents life. Therefore, where there is no light, there is also no life; it is darkness, and darkness is death. The meaning is very plain. The “outer darkness” is the darkness outside the kingdom because only inside the kingdom is there light and life. It is very important to grasp this point. Only inside the kingdom of God is God’s life available to you.

That is why in the Bible, and in the Lord Jesus’ teaching, the kingdom of God and life are synonymous expressions. To enter into the kingdom of God is to enter into life. To enter into life is to enter into the kingdom of God. It means exactly the same thing. Light is in the kingdom of God. Life is in the kingdom of God. That is why Revelation 21:10, 23 say that the whole of New Jerusalem is filled with God’s light – God’s light is everywhere in the New Jerusalem. But outside is darkness. Outside is death. Therefore, when sons of the kingdom are thrown into “the outer darkness,” it means they are cut off from God’s life; they perish. They have gone down the broad road to destruction.

You can see therefore, that “weeping and gnashing of teeth” ties up the expressions the “fiery furnace” and the “outer darkness.” The “outer darkness” and the “fiery furnace” are the same thing but a different imagery. What happens to something in the fire? It is des­troyed, it dies, it is completely removed from existence. In the same way, what happens outside in darkness? It is darkness of death.

Hell is the place of destruction, not of suffering

This brings us back to the expression concerning destruction and death. Let me read to you Matthew 10:28. The Lord Jesus is speaking to his disciples again, not to unbelievers:

The word “destroy” is crucial to understand here. What happens in hell? Hell is the place of destruction. The word “destroy” here translates the Greek word apollumi in its verbal form, apoleia in its noun form. Apollumi is used to mean kill, destroy, especially in relation to persons. You can speak of losing a thing, which just means that something is lost. But to lose one’s life is to die. That is a common expression. “He lost his life” means he got killed. And this is exactly the idea when the word apollumi is used in connection with persons. For example, Matthew 2:13, 12:14, 21:41 and many other references, in each of these, the same word apollumi means to kill. “Don’t be afraid,” the Lord Jesus says, “of those who can just kill the body. But be afraid rather of him who because of justice, can if necessary—he hates to do it but he must—destroy both body and soul in hell. This is crucial for correctly understanding the meaning of hell. Hell is the place of destruction.

You will inflict remorseful suffering on yourself in hell

Why am I emphasizing this? It’s because if you don’t understand this correctly, you will misunderstand hell. Most people have the notion that hell is the place of suffering. That “slight error,” if it is slight, is disastrous. Hell is not a place primarily of suffering; it is a place of destruction. It is not the place where God inflicts suffering upon you, but it is the place where you will inflict suffering upon yourself when you realize what a fool you have been. There will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” God doesn’t have to inflict suffering on you. It will be enough suffering for you just to realize that you have lost what God gave you. God opened to you the gates of God’s kingdom, life forevermore through the blood of his Son, and you have lost this life. You will sit there and say, “What a fool I am! What have I ever done to myself? I sat in church and listened to God’s Word. Life was presented to me and here I am in hell, the place of destruction!”

God doesn’t have to torture you. He doesn’t want to torture you. It will be enough for you to torture yourself! And the torture of self is more than anyone can ever do to you. If you have ever suffered inside your soul, you will know what suffering that is! Suffering physically is nothing compared to that. Why would he want to put a match there to burn you? That is barbarism. He doesn’t need to do that. You will torture yourself so long as you survive in hell. That is what “weeping and gnashing of teeth” means. There in the furnace of fire will be the weeping of gnashing of teeth because you will come to your senses, and that realization of the truth and your whole foolishness in throwing away life, will make you suffer no end. God doesn’t have to put any flames under you.

“Eternal destruction” can only mean permanent destruction

When you study the Scriptural language, you will realize that fire is a symbol of destruction. It is not a symbol of torture. Fire destroys things so quickly that you don’t even have enough time to suffer. Of course, there is suffering the instant the fire touches you, but fire kills so fast that there would not be that much suffering. You will suffer if you survive the fire. If you don’t survive the fire, you will be dead in a moment. That is why you can express hell as parallel to “outer darkness,” or “being outside the kingdom of God, or “fire,” the place that consumes and destroys.

It is crucial for us to understand destruction by fire correctly when we face the term, “eternal destruction.” A doctrine that does not belong to the Bible has crept into the church, and it teaches that man somehow will exist in hell for ever and ever. Many people, even preachers, don’t seem to realize the logical contradiction of the words “eternal destruction.” That is a contradictory phrase. Yet, Christians are not very good at thinking logically. You cannot des­troy something eternally because these two words “eternal” and “destroy” are self-contradictory. A thing which is eternal cannot be destroyed. What can be destroyed cannot be eternal. It’s as simple as that. And sometimes, we talk nonsense without realizing it when we talk about “eternal destruction.”

The term “eternal destruction,” if it has any sense at all, can only mean that something is destroyed in a permanent sense; it will never exist again. If I burn up this piece of paper, I can say I have eternally destroyed this paper. It has suffered eternal destruction because this paper will never exist again in all eternity.

That is what the Bible means, that once it is destroyed, it is forever. That is eternal destruction in the sense that it will never exist. But somehow, some people have made it to mean that you will be there roasting and roasting and roasting forever, sort of being destroyed yet never being destroyed. That is logically absolutely contradictory. It is nonsense! Either you are destroyed so you will at some point cease to exist, or you are not destroyed and so you will exist forever. If you exist forever, you are not destroyed. You cannot talk about an eternal destruction. It’s like saying a “black white” or “white black.” What are we talking about? Black cannot be white and white cannot be black at the same time, in the same place.

That is why I have constantly stressed this word “destroy.” If you want to understand accurately, you must understand that hell has to do with destruction, not with suffering. God is not sending you to hell so that you can sit there for ever and ever and ever and suffer for eternity. If you sin for 100 years, and you suffer for billions of years is not justice; I agree that it’s not. How can that be justice? If you sin for 100 years and you suffer for 100 years, one can say, “Okay, one can accept that.” Or if you sin for 20 years and you suffer for 20 years, one can also accept that. That is about fair. But to say that a person sins for 100 years or maybe only 5 years and he will suffer for billions of years is not justice, and it’s not Scripture because you have thought of hell as suffering. Hell is not primarily a place for suffering, but for destruction.

That is why the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14,

The word “destruction” simply means hell, to put it plainly. Notice, hell and destruction are not suffering. It is the opposite of life and that is why in the next verse,

I beg of you to understand that the Lord Jesus is telling us: “You’ve got two roads. One is going to end up in hell, in destruction, the other in life. Choose life. The broad road is where most people go down, sometimes because of being muddle-headed, sometimes of being ignorant, sometimes of being careless. You cannot afford to be care­less on such issues. Do you want to spend considerable time in weeping and gnashing of teeth? To be eternally destroyed? That is the issue that is at stake, I beg of you to grasp it clearly!

God has not instituted hell to be a place to burn people forever

Therefore let us clearly understand what hell is. Let me repeat because many of you may still have this notion that hell is a place God has instituted to burn people for ever and ever and ever. That is not Scriptural teaching. I have searched through Scripture and I don’t find that kind of teaching.

It is true that there are expressions in the Bible which says that “the fire of hell is forever” Yes, hell will always exist because God will always need some place to destroy evil. Hell is an eternal place because God’s justice is eternal. If God’s justice is eternal, then hell must be eternal just as life is also eternal. But that does not mean that suffering is eternal, that God puts you in hell to suffer forever. What happens when the Lord Jesus says that God can destroy body and soul? Your body is destroyed means it is killed. Your soul is destroyed means it is killed. The Scriptural teaching explicitly says this to make it so clear.

“The lake of fire” is the place of death for the soul, not suffering

In the book of Revelation, John does not use the word “hell” but he uses the expression, “the lake of fire” 5 times. Let us look at one or two of these references which occur in the last few pages of this last book of the Bible. Take for example, Revelation 19:20.

Now they are thrown in alive. What does the lake of fire symbolize? John does not leave us in doubt. Let us look at Revelation 21:8

“The lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.” It is the opposite of life. Death and suffering are certainly not the same thing. If you suffer, you don’t die. When you die, you cease to suffer. It is essential to understand that you cannot make these two things mean the same thing. Gehenna, the lake of fire is the place of the second death.

What does the second death mean? Second death is the final death. The first death is the death of the body. The second death is the death of the soul. That is exactly what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, that God can destroy body and soul in hell. Destruction means to cease to exist. Death does not mean life in some other form. Death is the cessation of life. When you die, you cease to suffer. You suffer before you die but not after you die.

That is why I say that this notion, sometimes conveyed by house­wives to scare their children, and by preachers, that you roast in hellfire forever, causes people to misunderstand God and ask, what kind of God is this? This fellow sinned a few years, but why is he going to roast in hell for billions of years? Not at all! The destruction in hell is proportionate to the sin that one commits. That is justice. But hell is the place of the second death. You die; your soul dies.

“The second death” is the cessation of the soul

Someone is going to tell me, “But death is simply separation from God.” There is no Biblical foundation for that kind of statement. That is why with this kind of notion, one is deceived into thinking nonsense: “One can suffer forever and still be counted dead.” I put it very bluntly, it is nonsense! Death does not equal separation from God. Death comes as the result of separation from God. It is when you are separated from God that you cease to have life; you cease in fact, to survive.

Sometimes, Christians are very good at confusing themselves. They invent a phrase and I search in vain in Scripture for such definitions. I don’t know where they come from. Death is the cessation of life. It is the cessation of activity. It is the end of existence as such. The death of the body means the body ceases to function; it is no more. And after a time, it disintegrates. The same thing happens with the soul. This is the Scriptural teaching as I try to put it as simply and as briefly as possible.

Fire is both literal and a spiritual emblem of destruction

When we speak of the fire here, we are talking about literal fire, and we are also talking in spiritual terms as to the significance of fire. That is another point that is not easily understood. In Revelation 20:14 we are told:

Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire, but they are not physical things that can be burned with fire. Fire can neither hurt Death nor Hades for they are spiritual things. Fire is simply a spirit­ual emblem of destruction, purification, of the removal of Death and Hades, the removal of the beast representing the Antichrist, and all the evil persons. They will all be removed, destroyed.

As we close for today, let us ponder carefully the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Let us realize clearly in our hearts and in our minds that God takes no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked, but he must do it if he is the God of justice. I cannot repeat this often enough.

Don’t put God in the position where he has to destroy you because you refuse to repent of sin and to receive his life. Understand therefore, that God is deeply pained if he has to do such a thing as this. Just as Christ Jesus, in whom he fully dwells, wept over Jerusalem, Yahweh God weeps over every sinner that he has to destroy.

However, even as Christ wept over Jerusalem, God still had to allow Jerusalem to be destroyed because of its stiff-necked religious leaders. Therefore, even as God weeps over us, he will still have to let us be destroyed if we cling to evil. Choose life!