What will happen in hell

Why would a loving God punish a single lifetime of sin with endless lifetimes of torture? And, among sinners, does an adulterer merit the same punishment as a murderer? And what about the billions of people whose only sin was to follow a different faith? Revelation , which implies that the penalty inflicted will be commensurate with the evil done. But, across the centuries, defenders of ECT have emphasized that sin is not something that can be measured by how it affects others.

If they do these things against God, do they deserve capital punishment? The Bible's consistent answer is yes. Mark Galli , the editor of Christianity Today , points to Psalm 51 , where David expresses remorse for adultery and his complicity in murder. We realize there's something else we've violated here. That something else is a moral code that transcends us. And that moral code, of course, is written by God. Preston Sprinkle recalls, with embarrassment, his younger days in seminary, when he first heard that the evangelical leader John Stott was an annihilationist.

But, back six years ago, when I truly revisited the question of hell, I was kind of shocked at how little biblical support there was for the traditional view. Nor do they claim to advocate for a version of hell that represents a soft view on sin or a low view of God.

We fight tooth and nail to preserve our lives at all costs. But traditionalists remain steadfast in their belief that ECT is a pillar of evangelical faith, and some worry that weakening it threatens to bring down the entire edifice. A traditionalist view of hell, however, does not necessarily mean fire and brimstone. But Jesus does talk about it as a reality and he doesn't seem to have any doubts about it. How can you have a place that's bereft of God and yet it exists for eternity?

That's kind of a theological impossibility. So, where do most evangelicals stand on the issue of hell? Sprinkle and Date suggest that it is difficult to know, since people are reluctant to publicly challenge traditional views. Still, the debate over hell shows no sign of dissipating among evangelical scholars. If anything, the scope of the discussion appears to be expanding. Sprinkle, who recently co-edited a book, Four Views on Hell , raised theological eyebrows when he included an essay by theologian Robin Parry defending universalism—the view that all people will eventually be saved.

Our punishment there would be proportionate to our sins just as our rewards in heaven would be proportionate to our virtues. This sense of proportionality led around the year CE to the invention of another place between heaven and hell — a place of purification of our sins.

It arose from the recognition that while most of us were not sufficiently meritorious to deserve heaven instantly after death, most of us were also not sufficiently wicked to deserve eternal punishment. Purgatory was the place where those who were judged worthy of heaven eventually were purged, purified and punished for their sins before going on to their heavenly reward.

Purgatory thus became the default destination after death. Divine justice and mercy were better served by a place where souls, who, like most of us, were not really all that good at being really bad, could be both punished and perfected.

Hell then was reserved only for the most incorrigible. Even so, Purgatory was no holiday resort. The inhabitants were purified by fire. The Protestant reformers of the 16th century hated the idea of Purgatory and threw it out. They saw it as the root cause of corruption within the Church as people paid money on earth to the Church to try to lessen their time there. Humanity was again classified into only two classes — the saved and the damned. Some Protestants from the 17th to 19th centuries attempted to mitigate this harsh idea of hell.

Some argued that, after a period of time in hell, all souls would eventually be saved. Others suggested that souls would be annihilated after having done their time of punishment in hell. You wear what you were last wearing on earth. The bad part is, people are always asking you who you are, even in Hell. Come on! The food here turns out to be surprisingly good.

The trouble is, just about all of it is poisoned. That anything gets done down here is a miracle. For no apparent reason! You try to ask a demon a question, but he just looks at you. To relieve the boredom, you can throw rocks at other people in line. They just think it was a demon. They all seem caught up in their own little worlds, running to and fro, wailing and tearing at their hair.

A malaise set in within a couple hours of my arriving. I thought getting a job might help.