Jesus spoke of hell as a real place, a place of burning and torment which will never end. Why would God be so cruel? Why would He think up such a horrible way to punish people just because they don’t believe in Him? Does the punishment really fit the crime?

First, we must understand that God created humans for Himself. He owns every soul born on planet earth. He made them for a purpose, to be a mirror of His glory to the whole world, reflecting Him by the way they lived.

Psalms 24:1 NIV
[1] “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it… “

He created them for a purpose, and He paid for them when they chose to disconnect from Him and connect with His arch enemy. He had every right to pull the plug…but He didn’t.

1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV
[20] “… you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

He blew His own breath into the first man, giving him a part of Himself, His divine life. He created humans in His image, a shadow of Himself so that He could communicate with them. He opened the circle of His Godhead to allow humans access and fellowship with Him…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Privilege on steroids!

He prepared an entire universe, and a planet for humankind, the universe functioning in perfect harmony and unity, and the earth equipped with everything humans needed for a perfect life. He gave humans the power to multiply through the pleasure of physical union, and the mandate to manage the earth and its creatures in partnership with Himself. Honour, privilege!

On top of all this, His plan was to prepare His human family for an eternal existence with Him by serving their apprenticeship on earth. Righteous living on earth would qualify them for eternal life in glory. Why would God do all this? He wanted to love and be loved!

One of the gifts God gave to all humanity was the gift of choice, free will, self-deternination, which echoed a part of His own nature. This gift was the core of the human being, a risky attribute that God intended to guide humans towards obedience and love freely given to their Creator. Freedom to choose meant that the ball was in their court. They could decide whether to stay connected to God or not.

Together with the gift came the possibility and the warning. Choice means that there are at least two alternatives from which to choose…good or evil. Good and evil are not tangible things, they are the motives and outcomes of choices based on the disposition of the chooser.

God created the first pair with His own disposion towards good, simply meaning living by the choices that work… functional living. He wanted them to have good lives, full of His favour and blessing with no obstacles.

They had the option to follow that disposition or to be enticed to choose the opposite way, the way of disconnection from God which would result in dysfunctional lives.

We know the outcome!

By lies and deception, the devil hoodwinked the first pair into believing that they didn’t need God. They could be free to make their own rules, come and go as they liked, do as they pleased, without the restrictions of righteousness and truth to guide them. He told them what they could be… their own authority… without revealing the small print. He told them how to walk away from God…just disobey His one instruction.

It’s the small print that revealed the consequences. God had been honest with them. “You will die!” He told them, “if you trespass outside the boundaries of everything my love has provided.” The devil not only contradicted God’s warning, but also sowed doubt in their minds about God’s love by insinuating that God was lying to them.

The choice was… “Who do we believe?” This choice was more than a simple decision to eat some “forbidden fruit”. The implication was far deeper.

Satan had always desired to be the supreme authority, Lord, in God’s place. He tried to replace God in heaven and was summarlity evicted from God’s realm. His only option was to win over to his side God’s highest creation, the human race, so that he could be Lord over them.

So, by deceiving Eve and, through her, Adam, into believing that God was shortchanging them, the whole human race was implicated. Their disobedience spelt rebellion, and rebellion brought on them the death penalty God had warned them would happen if they disobeyed Him.

This seemingly small act of defiance had huge implications. Through Adam, the human race inherited his nature. They are dead to God. Now humans can no longer choose righteousness. They can only choose between the various options of sin, rebellion, and disobedience. It would take a mighty intervention from God to restore our ability to do the right thing.

Now, hell was not designed to punish humans. It was the fitting place reserved for God’s arch enemy and his followers. The trouble is that those who side with him must share his guilt and his punishment. This means that the human race has chosen its destiny by default. It also means that man, not God, chooses hell for his eternal destiny…and God says, “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!”

So, what is hell really like? Does the Bible tell us anything about hell, enough to warn us of its terrors?, Let’s look at some Scriptures.

To be continued…