Background: Ill: Most awful of deaths is to be burned up or to find someone who has died this way. There is no peace found on a corpse that has been found burned.
• Read Revelation 20:11-15. The difficulty of the subject of hell is trying to harmonize the concept of a loving gracious God with a
God who is righteous, yet seems heartless to cast boys and girls, men and women into a pit of molten lava, forever to suffer and
never to burn up.
• Most Americans do not believe in a literal hell. Most Christians say they do not believe in an eternal lake of fire. (Christians – 84%
believed in heaven and 42% believed in hell) (Barna 2003 – ½ % of Americans believe they will go to hell, 64% they will go to
heaven and 5% believe they will be reincarnated.)
• The voice of Jesus Himself: All references to hell/gehenna (except 1 ) comes from the lips of Jesus. Why do you think Jesus
speaks more about this eternal place of suffering? Jesus made this place for the devil and his fallen angels (Matt. 25:41). But
because of sin, man now goes to this place because they reject Jesus (Luke 16:19-ff). Could it be that since Jesus knows how
awful this place is that He came to warn mankind? Men could not conceive of a place so awful on their own. Since death, we do
not have perspective of eternity.
• Outside the view found in Scripture, men have proposed three alternative:
1. Metaphorical hell: Hell is a symbol of God’s judgment. God may judge threaten hell, but His love will keep Him from keeping
them in hell forever.
2. Purgatory hell: Hell is a place of divine cleansing for those who may not have accepted Christ; serve their sentence and then
redeemed.
3. Conditional hell: Hell is a temporal place – either restored or annihilated.
• Warren Wirsbee speaking about the “Great White Throne Judgment”: “You will have a judge but no jury, a prosecution
but no defense, a sentence but not appeal”
I. The Lost Will Stand Before The Righteous Judge With No Jury. (20:11)
1. The Judge: The great white throne speaks of purity and righteousness. There is only one judge worthy to sit on this throne
(Rev. 4-5). In His presence, the whole world melts and all that are left before Him are all the souls of the lost.
• Jesus states He will sit on “His glorious throne” Matt. 19:28. Paul preaches that Jesus will “judge the world in
righteousness …the one who rose from the dead. Acts 17:31
2. The Jury: None of your peers to acquit you. No one to buy or pay. No one to find you not guilty. No hung jury.
II. The Lost Will Hear the Evidence and Have No Defense. (20:12-13)
1. The evidence will come from three sources:
• The Bible: John 12:48 – “…”the word I spoke is what will judge man at the last day”
• Your Blog: Ecc. 3:17 – “your works/what you did in this life will be brought into evidence. What God gave us and we
used for our own glory.
• Book of Life: Rev. 20:15 & Exodus32:32 “blot me out of the book that you have written…”
• All the evidence presented will be so damning that you will not be able to open your mouth in defense. Nothing you can
bring up will give you mercy.
III. The Lost Will Receive an Eternal Sentence With No Appeals. (20:13-15)
1. No one will escape their sentence & conviction. Sea & death are two pictures of get bodies that swallowing their victims in
which we cannot retrieve, until God calls.
2. Those whose names are not recorded as choosing to truly follow Christ and forsake their sin will be thrown into the eternal
lake of fire (20:10).
3. Hell is eternal just as Heaven is eternal. (Same language used in Scripture for both)
• Attributes: Darkness (Matt. 8:12); eternal fire (Mark 9:44) Could it be a river of lava? This flame, absence of light (God
is light) will be dark; sounds (Lk. 16:24) - gnashing of teeth, screams, cursing – there will not be one good word uttered
in hell; Eternal suffering (Rev. 20:10) To be annihilated means rest, and the bible says there is no rest for the wicked.
Godless – A place in which God has forgotten about you. Hell is that which is absent of god. All hope, mercy, grace,
love, forgiveness, joy, and peace is all taken away only the evil remain. You will not find one good thing from your
eternal stay in Hell!
• Associates: Hell does not and will not discriminate. There will be no class/social ranking in hell; all will be lost. The
demons of hell will be your neighbors, tormenting and being tormented. There will be no friends or family in hell, all will
be bitter enemies towards one another.
• Activities: There will be no parties in hell. All joy, fun, happiness is in heaven!
• Suffering: all though the Bible speaks of degrees of suffering (Matt. 11:22), it will never stop, no time outs, no breaks;
the worse suffering man has ever experienced. We will have a restored body that will have all the senses. Every type of
pain (physical, spiritual, mental) will never end. Life absent God!
• Remembering: Luke 16:25 – “remember” You will remember everything the way it was. You will remember all the
opportunities you had to accept Christ and yet you will never repent. You will review your life over and over, never able
to hold on to the good memories, because in hell there is no such thing as good. You will remember all the wasted
opportunities to accept Christ, but you will never once in hell cry out for salvation. You will always blame God!
• Attitude: : (Your attitude will be hopeless mixed with hate) You will think only negative thoughts, longing for death and
yet cannot die. Your mind and words will only produce evil thoughts and words. You will experience the greatest of all
loneness, no one wants to have anything to do with you. Hate will be your fuel 100% of the time. Forever thinking of all
the times you would have done things differently, but never coming to a place of repentance!
Conclusion: Going to hell will never be God’s fault. The low view of hell or the choice to ignore its existence all together is a result of
having a low view of sin and a low view of God’s righteousness.
• No one here has a problem singing about an eternal heaven, what makes hell any different? Hell/lake of fire are places
that God has arranged that answer men’s heart’s desire to live their live on their own terms and worship a God made of
their own understanding. The Lake of Fire is a place given to men for how they treated the message of the Gospel!
• Hell is a witness to the righteous character of God. He must judge sin. No sin can enter into heaven. Only the blood of
Christ cleanses a boy, girl, women, or man of their sins. You must have the character of God within you (Holy Spirit)
before you can enter heaven.
