'Ain't nothin' I'd rather do' (AC/DC)

Speaking to fifth-graders at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, the other week, the Dalai Lama, according to the New York Times, “said that a decade or two from now ‘I may be in hell,’ and that he would come back to check whether the younger generation had created a more compassionate world. If not, he continued, ‘I will be able to report that hell will expand, that 21^st century people are ready to come to hell.’ ”

Isn’t he adorable? Today, hell is just the cutest thing going. Just ask funeral directors who'll tell you AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” (which includes the lyric, ‘Hey, mamma, Look at me, I’m on the way to the promised land’) is one of the most popularly requested tunes people want played at their “homegoing.”

New Agers love to think of hell the way German theologian Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) did. He’s famous for assuring, "The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul. If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth."

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Once again, I heard another big-time celebrity referred to on the TV network evening news as a “devout Christian,” this time Prince, who was raised Seventh-Day Adventist (like Dr. Ben Carson) and then converted to the Jehovah Witnesses.

Seventh-Day Adventists deny a literal hell and Jehovah Witnesses, like a variety of Jesus-touting cults, believe eternal death, not hell, awaits a person’s physical demise.

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King James Bible authority Gail Riplinger writes in her 1993 expose book, New Age Bible Versions, “New Agers cling to the ‘new version’ of hades as a second chance: ‘Through the soul in Hades, having awakened to its unfortunate state, desires a change, it can attain such a change through reincarnation.’

“New Agers join ranks with the NIV, NASB, NKJV and Jehovah Witnesses in replacing the ‘torments of hell’ with, as (Grandmother of the New Age Movement, Madame H.P. Blavatsky) called them, the ‘seven mansions of Hades.’ ”

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Riplinger continues, “A ‘Revised’ and ‘Amplified’ version of hell has been ‘Standard’ and quite ‘International’ since the Assyrio-Chaldean culture. The new ‘Version’ of the facts is not so ‘New’, but represents a historically heathen picture of the afterlife.

“The Assyrian culture introduced the idea of hades as an intermediate state. They called it the Elysian or Happy Fields and described it as having ‘silver skies’, ‘resplendent courts’—‘an abode of blessedness’. Their female goddess Ishtar descended into Hades seeking Tammuz and found it a place of gates and shadows.

“Such ‘cunningly devised fables’ abound in world literature. The Egyptian Hades was called ‘Amenti’, a place of dreamless sleep. Inhabitants did not remain long in this ‘Land of Bliss’, but moved quickly to Amk, the exit gate.

“Scandinavian mythology tells of Frigga’s son, Bal-dur, who found himself upon death, in hades, seated on a stone, reading. In Greek mythology’s Prometheus, Hercules, the Sun god descends into Hades’ cave of Initiation. Aeschylus wrote that this ‘Meadow of Hades’ was the place where both good and evil people were purified by doing good works.”

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Most people don’t grasp the reality that it’s your soul that goes to hell and there’s a spiritual fire in the spiritual realm to torment the soul the same as a fire in the physical realm torments the flesh.

Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org) explains, “When the Bible talks about fire in hell, it’s not talking about a campfire out there burning up sausages or spareribs. It’s talking about fire burning up people’s souls. And it’s a fire in the spiritual realm. It’s illustrated by the fire in the physical realm. By the way, it torments, but it doesn’t consume.

“We know that from Exodus 3 when Moses turned aside to see the bush burned but not consumed. There’s a spiritual presence burning in that bush.

“The great passage in Luke 16 about the rich man who went to hell and was tormented by the flame is a doctrinal statement on the intermediate state and eternal judgment. Mark 9:42-50 is the dispensational viewpoint about it:

“ ‘And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
[43] And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
[44] Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
[45] And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
[46] Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
[47] And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
[48] Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

[49] For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.
[50] Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.’

“Now that’s an interesting way to describe a place, isn’t it? ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ Notice there is obviously conscious torment in this?

“Salt is designed to preserve things. Notice what these people in hell are salted with? The fire they experience doesn’t burn them up; it preserves them. It’s not like a fire in the physical realm.”  

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In times past, both saints and lost people went to hell because it had two compartments—a paradise side and a torment side. Later, the paradise side was moved into the third heaven, leaving only the torment side still in the heart of the earth. Hence, only lost people go to hell today.

“The geographical location of the torment side hasn’t changed but there aren’t any saints down there anymore because paradise isn’t in the heart of the earth anymore—it’s now in the third heaven,” explains Jordan. “So, you see dispensationally that this has changed, and if  you don’t study this doctrine ‘rightly divided,’ you’re going to wind up confused and that’s how you get all these people trying to do away with the doctrine of eternal judgment.

“Invariably, what they do is they start taking verses from back there (in the Old Testament and the Four Gospels) and making out like there’s no dispensational change in at all and that it’s only been one way all through the Bible when it hasn’t been.”

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People who want to tell you hell was only a figure of speech used by Jesus Christ, refer to hell’s usage in the New Testament simply being another name for “gehenna,” which was a Greek word used to describe a garbage dump outside of the city of Jerusalem that had a continual fire burning.

Jordan argues, “When Christ says it’s better for you to cut your hand off or pluck your eye out than go to hell you know He’s not talking about them going to a figure of speech. Why would it be better to cut your hand off than to be cast into a figure of speech? Wherever they’re going to be cast into, it’s going to be real. And it’s not going to be the city dump, because you’d have thrown your hand into the city dump. They’re worried not about him who will destroy your body, but him who will destroy your soul.

“When Christ talks of ‘the fire that never shall be quenched,’ He calls it ‘hell’ three times, and six  times He says it’s a fire that shall never be quenched—‘where their worm dieth not.’ Some part of them is never going to die so I know it’s not the city dump, because the city dump outside the city of Jerusalem isn’t there anymore, is it? It’s gone!”

The corrupt new bible versions deliberately substitute the word “hell” for the words “sheol”, “hades”, “death”, “grave”, and “the depths”, in order to water down the gospel of hell and eliminate its literal reality.

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“The Lord Jesus Christ talked about hell a lot, but Paul never uses the term hell. And people say because Paul never used the term hell he must not have believed in it. And I think, well what do you think verse 9 is talking about?

“If you want to argue and say, ‘Well, that is that ultimate end out there—the lake of fire—then that’s not technically a reference to hell.’ But death and hell are cast into the lake of fire. Hell is the place where the souls of lost people are held in prison as it were, until the Great White Throne Judgment.

“And I’ve tried to use the illustration to you already about lost people. The prognosis is ‘he that believes not is condemned already’ (John 3:18). You don’t need to stand before God to find out whether you’re lost or not.

“Hell is like the jail in which the condemned are held; you’re already guilty but you haven’t been sentenced yet. The Great White Throne Judgment is the sentencing and after it death and hell are going to be cast into the lake of fire. That’s the Big House! So when we talk about hell, technically you’re talking about that confinement place up until the great white throne judgment. And then after that it’s the lake of fire. That’s that ultimate end.

“What Paul does talk about is everlasting destruction. He talks about the wrath of God. Ephesians 2:3.

“Ephesians 5:6. So why does the wrath of God fall on lost people? He says because of these sinful activities that people participate in they earn the wrath of God. Well, he didn’t say hell, but hell’s just the place where the wrath of God is executed.

“The idea that Paul didn’t believe in eternal judgment simply because he didn’t use the term that describes a temporary place where that wrath and judgment is executed doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in eternal judgment.

“Romans 2:3. That’s what you get when you deal with God based on your own works. Now where does that take place? When Jesus Christ comes back ‘in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God’ and destroys them with everlasting destruction that separates them eternally from God.

“Romans 5:9. That’s a comforting verse when you think about the everlasting destruction that the wages of sin brings about.

“People say, ‘Well, when he talks there about everlasting destruction, that word ‘everlasting’ doesn’t mean that it lasts forever. You say, ‘Well, where do you get that?’

“The way people do that is they go to the Greek word ‘eon’ and the Greek term is ‘eon of the eons and age of the age.’ And the ages of the ages. And then they say, ‘See, when he describes eternity as the age of the ages, well, sooner or later, the ages are going to come to an end.’

“No matter how many there are, it’s a finite idea and they use the Greek terms like that, and what happens when people start doing that is what you find out is people don’t know enough about the Greek language to tell you what the Greek words mean, and you don’t know enough about it to find out about it either, so you wind up everybody being confused and led into error.

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“Now when he says they’re going to be punished with everlasting destruction, come with me one verse that will settle the thing. Luke 1:33: 'And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.'

“What does forever mean? It means no end. Well in the verse eons of eons means ‘no end!’ Eph. 3:21. How long do all ages last? World without end. When he said all ages, he’s not talking about all of them until they end. He’s talking about the fact they’re not going to end. It’s going to be world without end.

“If you come back to Isaiah 45 it’s a concept that comes out of the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 45:17. So how long is everlasting? It’s without end. Isaiah 23, just in case you have a problem with that word ‘world,’ there’s more than one way that term world can be used.

“We can talk about the world and sometimes be talking about the earth, but most of the time we’re not. We’re talking about the activity of life on the earth during a period of time, which would be an age.

“You talk about the world of sports. Is there a planet called sports? No, you know that. The world of politics, economics, we’re talking about the cosmos, the system of sports. The system of economics.

“Isaiah 23:17. There the term world is obviously not a reference to the planet. It’s a reference to something taking place on the planet. The planet is the face of the earth. So when you see the word ‘world’ in your Bible, don’t just immediately assume it’s talking about the planet. It can be also be talking about the world on the face of the planet. In other words, the organization of the kingdoms of the world; the organized affairs of the governmental systems that are on the earth.

“So when he talks about world without end, being without end is ‘it doesn’t ever stop.’ There will always be the organized universe and it’s going to last forever. And the ‘without end’ the ‘eon of the eon,’ the forever means it never stops. It means it’s going to go on forever; it’s going to be an everlasting salvation.

“Another way people try to take eternal and say that it’s not forever is to say that when you die ‘the everlasting destruction’ is that they don’t exist anymore.

“In Matthew 25:41, Jesus is talking about people who are judged out of the tribulation. How long does that fire last? Forever, because it’s everlasting! It’s not going to be annihilation. Verse 46: annihilation means the punishment is over. It’s gone because you’re gone."