Is Hell a Bad Place?
It was just minutes before an important vote in the Senate, and Senator XYZ was hurrying across the street in front of the Capitol Building in order to be on time for a roll call vote. In his rush, he stepped out in front of tractor-trailer. Mashed flat, the next thing the Senator knew he was standing in front of Saint Peter. Saint Peter greeted him with a warm smile, “It’s an unexpected pleasure to meet you Senator. Let me look for your name in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” Quickly Saint Peter said, “Oh, here it is.” He appeared puzzled as he read. Then he said, “Senator, this is most unusual. Indeed, I have been at this desk for over two-thousand years and have never read this kind of judgment before.” Saint Peter rubbed his chin and said, “Excuse me for a moment; I need to check this out.” The Senator, a bit alarmed, said, “What is it Saint Peter?” Saint Peter said, “This should only take a minute, please be calm.” Peter stepped just out of earshot to a golden phone and made a call. Saint Peter hung up the phone up and returned to his desk. “Well, these most unusual directions in the Book are correct; you get to spend twenty-four hours in hell and then twenty-four hours in heaven. Then you are to return to my desk, and tell me where you want to spend eternity.” With passion, the Senator said, “I’m a leader, I’ll not need to spend twenty-four hours in hell to make my decision, I’ll take heaven!” Saint Peter said, “We have to do what the book tells us.”
Suddenly the Senator found himself falling down, down, down and landing in the middle of a stunningly picturesque golf course. He looked about at the beautiful greens, perfectly cut fairways with golden colored sand in the traps. The sky was crystal clear blue; the temperature perfect, 70 degrees with a light breeze. Out in the distance the Senator saw four golf carts headed his way. As the golf carts got closer, he saw that the carts were full of his old cronies, friends from his time in politics. They pulled up beside him. The hand shaking and the hugging went for several minutes as they welcomed the Senator to hell. His old best friend and former campaign manager said, “Senator XYZ, here are your golf shoes, the very best, and here are a set of the finest clubs. Jump in my cart. We are going to play eighteen holes. When we finish, we are going to host a grand dinner in your honor.”
They were still having the best time swapping old stories as the game ended and they pulled up at the clubhouse for the welcoming banquet. There was the best food and plenty of the most excellent Champaign. They talked and laughed well into the night with the Senator getting a little tipsy. He fell asleep on a pool table. A beautiful scantily clad woman woke him in the morning with a kiss and Bloody Mary. He was just beginning to really come around when he found himself going up, up, up.
Again found himself in front of Saint Peter who said, “Next is your twenty-four hours in heaven.” The Senator rubbing his hands together with a huge smile on his face said, “I cannot wait!” Up, up and up the Senator floating until he was welcomed at the Pearly Gates. There was singing far more beautiful than anything he had ever heard on earth; the streets were paved with gold, and there were indeed many mansions. He had a wonderful warm feeling deep inside. It was so wonderful that time flew by and suddenly Senator XYZ found himself again in front of Saint Peter.
“Well, Senator which shall it be: hell or heaven?” “Saint Peter, I never thought I would say this, heaven is truly wonderful, but all of my old friends are in hell and that’s not a bad place either. I’ll take hell.” “Are you sure?” said Saint Peter. “Yes!” the Senator responded. Suddenly he found himself falling down, down, down. He landed in the middle of a desert. The sky was dark gray and threatening. An appallingly sickening stench filled the boiling hot, sticky humid air. There was this nasty greasy trash scattered all over the desert. In the distance, the Senator saw his old buddies. They were dirty, wearing rags. They were picking up the trash and putting into bags only to see it fall out again and again. The Senator ran up to his old campaign manager and said, “Where is the golf course, that beautiful woman and the Champaign that were here day before yesterday?” His old friend wrapped his arm around the Senator and said, “Senator, you have got to understand, when you were here last time, we were campaigning.”
The Senator in my humorous tale found out that the devil campaigns up until the very last. The devil is still campaigning, making lies seem glorious. He is a trickster. The epidemic of drug use in our Country is a good example. The devil tells you, come on, drugs will make you feel good. The devil knows the pressures young people face as they deal with many of the stresses of adolescence, when they are working to define their identities. He makes sharing drugs with friends seem like a respite, a bonding experience. Of course, that is but one of the devils lies. The devil also knows that he can lure people into his trap. He tells them that recreational drugs present benefits; they put laughter on their lips, the warm glow of contentment in their minds and an escape from the world’s difficulties for a little while. That too is a lie. The devil says the idea that you may get hooks on drugs is much overplayed; do not worry about it. Why not legalize them so that we may reap tax revenues from their sale. Writer William S. Burroughs said, “Whether you sniff it, smoke it, eat it or shove it up your nose the result is the same: addiction.” Addiction means that you are no longer in charge of your life, the drug is.
The devil says, “What harm can watching a little pornography possibly do; after all it’s just people making love.” Watch it. It will help you learn about sex. Enjoy it. God is the author of physical laws as well moral as laws. If you jump off a tall building, the law of gravity will see that you fall. If you break God’s one of God’s moral laws, punishment will also follow. Leviticus 18:6-18, “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness.” 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, “18 Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” Pornography is obviously something God see as a sin.
With abortion, the devil says, “You are just too busy to be bothered with a child right now.” It is just a fetus; it has no feelings; go ahead, abort. Exodus 21:22-23, “22 If men strive together, and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the judges determine. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life.” This law protects the unborn. If violent men cause a pregnant woman to miscarry but the baby lives, the husband goes to the judges who imposed a fine commensurate with the damage done by the men. However, if the baby dies, it is a life for a life.
Proverbs 6:16-17, “16 There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood.” Is shedding the blood of an innocent child while in its mother’s womb detestable, something the LORD hates?
Biblical law permits abortion only when carrying the child endangered the mother’s life, and even then, “Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for another.” America’s attitude toward abortion is comparable to that of some ancient pagan cultures. The ancient Greeks took unwanted children to a lonely hilltop and left them exposed to the elements and death. Romans killed unwanted children. The Roman historian Tacitus deemed it a contemptible prejudice of the Jews that “it is a crime among them to kill any child!” The Jews said of each child, “This may be the Messiah [the anointed one] of humankind.” God created all people in His image and hence all have infinite worth.
Genesis, 4:5 records what God said to Cain after Cain killed his brother Able, “What have you done? Listen! your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil.” If God heard one man’s blood crying out from the ground, how loud are the cries God hears from the more than sixty-million aborted American babies. Parents, does hearing one baby cry get your compassionate attention? How loud do sixty-million babies’ cries sound to the Father? The sound must be as loud as a screaming freight train constantly passing God’s ears. Will the Father respond to the cries of His children?
The devil has swept many people into one of those junctions in history where people have discovered the almost rightness of a great that is wrong and the almost wrongness of a great deal that is right. Today, many highly educated sophisticated people have little knowledge of God or what the Bible factually says; the fact is many do not care. After all, God is too good to send anyone to eternal hell.
The Bible says repeatedly that the devil is, and has been from the beginning, a liar. 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” The weapons of the devil tempted Eve in the form of the most cunning of all God’s creatures, the serpent. The devil’s weapons were and are numerous. He easily deceives the human; those who, appearing to have wisdom and seemingly plausible arguments, often lead us down the path of self-destruction and ultimately to hell. Eve believed that she could become “as God” if she simply disobeyed His command. It was not so. After all, man is not the measure of all things.
In this chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul was addressing the false apostles that were selling evil. Paul was telling the Corinthians that he was jealous over them with a Godly jealousy. He was afraid that the same serpent that tricked Eve would trick them. Paul was jealous the way a mother is over her children, afraid that false doctrine, lies, would hurt the new believers’ spotless faith. It is the same today. The evil serpent is still selling lies.
Our Founding Fathers had grown up in a time affected by the First Great Awakening, a revival in the American Colonies. The First Great Awakening began on July 8, 1741 when a preacher by the name of Jonathan Edwards delivered a sermon to his congregations titled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." The published sermon circulated throughout the Colonies. Edwards’ scripture was Deuteronomy 32:35, “Their foot shall slide in due time.” He said that it was only God’s hope that sinners would repent that kept them from immediately sliding, “falling into the ‘bottomless gulf [the fires of hell].’” Edwards said that human attempts to avoid hell were as useless as “a spider's web” is “to stop a falling rock“.
The devil is indeed a trickster. He is still campaigning. There is a heaven and there is a hell. You have to choose whether you will spend eternity in heaven or hell. Jonathan Edwards warning is just as true today as it was then. Take the warning, come to the alter and give your life to Jesus. Enjoy the satisfaction of giving the devil the slip.
