Hell is Forever

RV189-02

A third angel appears in John's vision to pronounce God's judgment on tribulation humanity who have accepted the mark of the beast, the antichrist. These unbelievers choose to worship the antichrist as their God, and thereby to reject the Creator God. The worship of the beast will be via his statue, set up as an idol God in the Jews' temple in Jerusalem. This is at the midpoint of the seven-year tribulation period. The mark of the beast will be externally visible on people because it will be placed either on the forehead or on the right hand. This mark will probably be the seal which will be necessary for a person to engage in buying and selling activities for his personal survival. As the Bible points out, without this mark, you cannot do business, and therefore you will be under great personal hazard in every way.

The Wrath of God

Hell

The Lord Jesus Christ referred to hell in the New Testament more than anyone else, and He spoke of it as a real literal place. We as human beings recoil from the thought of somebody spending eternity in the place of that kind of suffering. Unbelievers have tried to mitigate the reality of the lake of fire and brimstone. You cannot do that if you read the Bible, and you let God speak in a literal way. Of course, that's the only way you can treat the Bible. It is a literal book, and you must read it as you read your morning newspaper. Words have meanings, and meanings are what we would ordinarily attach to those words.

A lot of the Bible sometimes uses poetic language and symbols, but those symbols and poetry always have literal meanings. You cannot make the biblical teaching of hell to be merely a symbol of some kind of suffering. Such a place of eternal suffering for the rejecters of Jesus Christ as Savior is, of course, demanded by the very justice of God. God's justice and fairness demands that sin be punished.

So, we now come to Revelation 14:10: "He also will drink the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full-strength in the cup of His anger. And he will be tormented with fire and brimstone." Then he has an awesome addition: "In the presence of." This is the Greek word "enopion." This word "enopion" means something which is opposite a person. It is something which is before you, and something to which your eye turns. It denotes, therefore, something which can be observed.

We can illustrate the use of this word, for example, in Acts 4:10: "Let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name, this man stands here before you ('enopion') in good health." Peter is addressing the Sanhedrin, and they're discussing with him the fact that they have healed this sick man. And Peter says, "Right in front of your nose, right in front of your eye, you know the case of this man, and you know what this terrible condition was, and here he has been healed. He has been healed by Jesus whom you crucified."

This is also illustrated for us in the gospel of Luke 24:43, where Jesus meets the disciples after His resurrection, and they give Him a piece of fish. It says, "And He took it and ate it before them." There the Greek word "enopion" again, which means "before their very eyes."

So, what we're talking about here is something that is visibly seen. And his is visibly seen, we're told, by, "The holy." The word "holy" means possessing the righteousness of God. The word "holy" means to be compatible with the integrity of God, because one is subject to His laws. This refers to a holiness here which is the actual condition of the individual. The Bible speaks about two other kinds of holinesses. One is experiential, our day-by-day godly living. It also speaks about our ultimate holiness when we are in God's presence. But it also speaks about positional holiness. Because a Christian is in Christ (the believer is in Christ), he's as holy as Jesus Christ. That's his position. His conduct, with the sin nature with him, does not enable him to live up to what he is, so that's experiential holiness. But here, this word "holy" is the ultimate holiness that all of us will experience. The Bible says, "When we see Him (Christ), we shall be like Him."

The Holy Angels

So, here we're told that the lake of fire and brimstone, and the decision of God to send people into this place, is done under the observation of these holy angels, and in the presence of (the word is repeated again for emphasis) the Lamb, referring to Jesus Christ. So, here is the Lamb of God, Christ, sacrificed for the sins of the world. He also observes the Father's judgment of hell upon tribulation unbelievers who chose to worship the antichrist.

The point of all this is that God the Father, the Creator, is the judge of the universe. That is what people in our day don't like to hear. They do not like to hear that there's a Creator God, who, by dint of His creation is the sovereign authority in the universe, who sets the rules for human conduct, and who enforces those rules. Man is not his own god. There is a God above man, and this God is the supreme judge of the universe which He has created. He exercises His authority, and He exercises judgments as a judge, but His courts are open. Tyrants have courts, but they're secret. One of the key features of American freedom is that a person has to be tried in open court, so that justice is dispensed before the eyes of all the citizens, and cannot be distorted by secret actions.

So, here, even the perfect, sinless, absolutely holy, sovereign God says, "I will conduct this as an open court, and I will pass judgment upon the unbelievers who have taken the mark of the beast, and who have worshiped the beast as their god. And I will exercise my judicial role openly before all the world, specifically before the holy angels and Jesus Christ, as God passes judgment upon these people.

The observation by Jesus Christ and the holy angels of the judgment of God the Father on the unbelievers will be a painful reminder to those unbelievers of how foolish they were to reject the authority of Scripture, and to reject Jesus Christ. Can you imagine what it is going to be like for John Lennon to look up there, in his agonies in the lake of fire, and see Jesus Christ and the holy angels observing this final decision by God the Father, as Lennon and all unbelievers are transferred from Hades into the lake of fire? And to realize that John Lennon (three hours before his death) talked about, "Whatever is out there that runs things?" How those words must be ringing in his mind repeatedly – the words of his declaration that he and the Beatles have become more famous and more powerful than Jesus Christ. How must those words be reverberating in his mind?

On the occasion of the death of Elvis Presley, Billy Graham said that he was sure that Elvis would be in heaven, because Elvis was very religious. It might be of interest to you to know that Elvis was into the occult, and the occult world is a world that is highly successful. In the world of rock-n-roll, it's not just the music; it's not the rhythm; and, it's not the beat, but it is the context that says, "God, shove off." It is the rebellion against God.

I was down at Brook Mays yesterday. I had to go in and, of course, at Brook Mays, everybody is hip and cool, and I see all these clerks walking around with their long hair. One blond guy came in. In fact, I was very curious when he walked in. I looked around easily because I wasn't sure whether it was a girl or a man. But there he was. And all of these guys were walking around with their hair, and their little earrings. Of course, I put my earring on when I walk in because they treat me so nice in there, and I don't want to seem like an oddball. So, I go in there and I mean, here they are, walking around, and I thought to myself, "If you guys only knew what a shame there is upon you." The Bible is right, because God has declared it. It's a shame for a man to walk around looking like a woman – with the hairstyle of a woman. It's a shameful thing. But they were proud of it – just as proud as they could be. That's the world of rock-n-roll. It's the world of thumbing their nose at God.

So, don't make any mistake about that. There is a right, and there is a wrong, and there is a God who calls the plays. And you may suspect a great deal of Elvis's success was more than just natural talent, and that he was into something more than just being religious. Yes, Elvis would gather all those girls in his mansion at Graceland in Nashville, and they'd sit around, and he would teach them the Bible. What does that mean? Yeah, he was religious. But heaven is not filled with religious people. Hell is filled with religious people and with moral people. Heaven is filled with people who were born again by trusting in Christ the Savior, and nothing more.

The unsaved will look up, and they'll see these holy angels, and they'll see Jesus Christ, who could have saved them from all of this. As a matter of fact, Christ already drank the cup of the wrath of God in their behalf. He drank it to the bitter dregs. There's no reason for them to be there. The sin question has already been resolved. Sin is no longer a problem with God. The only problem is: have you trusted in Christ as personal Savior, or are you some kind of a religious character who's trying to make it on your own efforts? God the Father, through Jesus Christ, has provided the means of escape, and they have rejected it. Those who trust in Christ for salvation will escape drinking the cup of God's wrath. How terrible to be in hell, and to see the Christ, who has already paid at all, observing them in their plight.

The lost cannot escape the observation of the Lamb. You cannot hide yourself, and I'm sure they will try to make themselves look as small as possible to hide themselves from His holy gaze. But Psalm 139:8 says, "If I ascend to heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Sheol (the New Testament 'Hades' – the holding pen of the unsaved before they're cast into the lake of fire), behold, You are there." The lost who finally realize the truth of the gospel of the grace of God do not get a second chance at salvation. They will see the Christ who made that salvation possible. They will realize how wrong they were in their decision, but I suspect that they will not be very happy about it. They will hate God for the state that they're in. They will still hate God, being the rebels that they were when they were still alive on this earth.

The book of the Revelation makes it very clear that near the end, people are shaking their fists of God in heaven because of the environmental disaster. Talk about environmental disaster! There is going to be an environmental disaster. It's during the tribulation, when God brings it, and God triggers it. And they're shaking their hands at God because they know He is doing this, and they blaspheme Him. No, because you find out that you're wrong, and that God is right – that does not make you change your mind and turn to Him in subjection.

So, instead of rejoicing in the presence of Jesus Christ and the holy angels, the lost are going to be in great suffering and great sorrow. But I must stress that this not the desire of our Heavenly Father. It is not the desire of God for people to be in hell. He does not want any of them to suffer, and He takes no pleasure in their suffering. It is His justice that demands that He exercise the judgment upon those who have violated His moral laws. And only a character like Donahue will suggest to you that God, being a God of love, could not possibly have a place like hell to which He sends people.

2 Peter 3:9 makes it clear that this is not God's wish, but it is the choice that men make relative to His offer of escape: "The Lord is not slow about His promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance." Have you ever asked: why doesn't God strike down some miserable character out there? Some horrible creature? Well, the reason is that He keeps giving us a chance to change our minds, and to get on track with reality.

Ezekiel 33:11 also stresses that God is not eager to see people go into the lake of fire: "Say to them, 'As I live,' declares the Lord God, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back. Turn back from your evil ways. Why will you die, O house of Israel?" The saddest thing about that message of Ezekiel is that the Jews didn't listen. They didn't give a flip. They continued in their evil ways, and finally, the whole nation was destroyed and taken into Babylonian captivity.

We may add to this 1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also, between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time."

So, these few passages of Scripture make it very clear that God does not take pleasure in sending people into hell, and that His desire is for everyone to accept the covering for their sin which He has provided.

God has a continuing delight, however, in righteousness, as well as a continuing hatred for sin. The believer has no hell to face in this world nor in the next; whereas, the unbeliever has no heaven in this world nor in the world to come. Those who spend eternity in hell will, of course, continually hate God because of His justice, as those who enter heaven will continually love God for His justice. It is the justice of God that sends you to heaven, and it is a justice of God that sends you to hell. He is fair. Take His covering – accept His Son, and you go to heaven. Reject His Son, and you go to the lake of fire.

The reality and the awfulness of hell should certainly motivate a spiritual Christian to introduce the lost sinner to the gospel of the grace of God.

Smoke

Forever and Ever

This word is also used three times in the book in the book of the Revelation, referring to the duration of the punishment in hell that will be experienced by the devil and his two human agents: the antichrist; and, the false prophets. If the reign and the glory of God are forever, then when this same phrase is used relative of the devil and his two agents in hell, that means that they're going to be there forever. Then it is used one time here in Revelation 14:11 for the punishment of unbelievers in general in the lake of fire.

So, the Bible really is a literal book, and when it uses this term "forever," it is using it in a way to even stress the eternality – that there's never a time when this is going to be over. This phrases is never used in the Bible for a limited period of time. What it means is "absolute endlessness." Can you conceive of absolute endlessness?

Eternal Fatigue

Day and Night

Isaiah 57:21 says, "There is no peace for the wicked." You and I can enter into that, certainly, to some degree. Are you in a situation in life where you're under constant pressure and under constant demand? Anybody who is in the Berean ministry knows that.

Do you know what I caught myself thinking the other day? I thought, "Next Thursday will be the first day in months and months and months when I won't have to set the alarm clock. There will be any school to worry about. There won't be any faculty meeting to report to. And I'm going to go to bed Wednesday night, and I'm not going to pull the button on the alarm clock." I don't know when you'll see me Thursday, because I'm going to rest. I'm going to cease all the activity. I'm going to quit listening to all these teachers; and worse, all these parents. I'm going to have an "anapausis." That's the Greek word for it: "rest" – cessation from all the pressures. And all of you have experienced that you like to have a break. You like to come to the time when you can stop the normal routines, and you're not under the gun. Well, around here, that never last very long, but when it happens, we're very much aware that suddenly we've walked into a day when we're not under the gun.

That's the condition here. For the people who are in hell, there'll be no rest whatsoever. It's going to be a condition of eternal fatigue. One day this week, I had so many late hours for a couple of days in a row. And I got up one morning, and I had to go in high gear, and I stopped to reach up to start taking the vitamins out, and I was so tired that I couldn't even take the vitamins out. I said, "Ah, I'll do that tomorrow." Now that's tired. That's tired when you can't even take the vitamins that are going to charge you up. But I really thought: I pulled the bottle out and looked at it, and said, "Oh, I'm too tired to do this," and I put it back.

Now, we're talking about rest, peace, and cessation from the pressures and demands. But the people in hell are going to be so tired that they won't even bother taking their vitamins. It is going to be excruciating.

So, while we believers on earth may suffer a lot of pressure, and while unbelievers may enjoy a lot of ease – after death, there is a reversal of roles, and it's important for us to remember that. The apostle Paul pointed this out very effectively in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-7: "For after all, it is only just (fair) for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted, and to us as well, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire." What a statement that is! It's only fair. It's essential to the justice of God that you people who carry the load, and the brunt of the pressures, and the offense of the world are going to come to a time where God is going to repay those who have afflicted you with affliction themselves. And, you, in turn, are going to enjoy rest. And it's all going to come together when Christ returns with those angels in flaming fire.

People in hell have no prospect of rest and relief from their suffering. In heaven, there is eternal rest and happiness (Hebrews 4:9). And Matthew 11:28 makes it clear that there is no rest for anyone without Jesus Christ. So, all the denominations, and all the cults, and all the religious groups which reject Jesus Christ, but who are very religious, are all going to end up in this terrible place – the lake of fire. It is a place without rest, and a place without ease. Whatever one may suffer in life as a Christian, no matter how tired and pressured one may be, I assure you that it cannot compare to the suffering and the eternal fatigue of the unsaved in hell after death.

Worship

I point this word out to you because the Greek tense is present. So, what does that tell you? Any time you have a present in the Greek, it means that it goes on all the time. These people didn't just worship once in a while. They didn't just pretend and put on. They chose to worship the antichrist continually. And it's active voice. They did it by their personal choice. The one they were worshiping was the beast, the antichrist. And they, furthermore, were bowing down before his image – his idol image of himself that he had placed in the temple. As a result: "They who worship the beast and his image, and furthermore, whoever receives." And this word again tells us how determined these people were. This is "lambano." "Lambano" means to accept something. It is in the present tense. They continually accepted the mark (the seal) on the forehead and the right hand of the name of the beast. They were ready and willing to accept this mark of allegiance and of subjection to the beast as their God.

The love of God is never free to rescue from hell those who reject Jesus Christ as Savior. 1 John 2:2 indicates that God has provided the base for doing that: "And He Himself (the Lord Jesus Christ) is the propitiation (the satisfaction) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." This is why we tell you that sin is not an issue with God. So, don't talk about sin.

Someone put out a tract on one of our tables here in the library, and I had to pick them all up, because the first thing they have in this tract is how you have to quit your sinning. No, no, no. That only digresses you from the issue of eternal life, and that is trusting in Christ as personal Savior. Then you will have the capacity to clean up your life, and to stop the sinning. These people in hell have had their sins paid for. That's not the issue. Jesus is the satisfaction to the justice of God, not only for the sins of us who have accepted, but for all the world.

So, what I'm telling you is that it is dangerous to contradict the truth of the Bible, which is the written Word of God. It is a dangerous thing to reject the Scriptures because that dishonors the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ.

Johnny Carson is no longer with us. He had 30 years of wealth and fame and fortune. He brought it to an end the other night. I watched it. Years ago, I was up at Schroon Lake, New York, with Jack Wyrtzen's group, The Word of Life ministry. Jack Wyrtzen used to refer to Johnny Carson as the evil man of late night television. Unless you watched closely, that wouldn't come through to you – that you are listening to an evil man: a man who was justifying violation of God's moral laws; and, a man who was justifying violations of biblical principles, and joking about it, and passing it off. Johnny Carson, over his 30 years, often approved of conduct which violated God's moral laws, and he joked about it. He talked about raising your children so that they understood that when they began to be sexually active, they must answer the question: "Are you ready to do this?" He didn't say: "Are you married? Are you within the context and the parameters of God's control and His principles that govern this kind of conduct?" No, he just said, "Are you ready?" Whatever that meant. I suppose he meant: "Have you decided you'd like to do that?" Well, that doesn't take too much getting ready for then.

However, he was simply, in an off-hand way, passing off all the moral code of the Word of God. Over the years, I've seen him do this many times in many ways. He opened his final monologue, as you may remember, if you watched it, by ridiculing Vice President Quayle, because Vice President Quayle had made a remark about the Murphy Brown TV program, which dignified and glamorized an illegitimate birth – having a child outside of the marriage context. And as Rush Limbaugh pointed out during the week, the programs which preceded this particular episode repeatedly stressed other factors that are important to consider in this final scene. They didn't necessarily know who the father was. They took no precautions to avoid this. And all of the worst responsible things in this kind of a relationship were all glamorized before it came to the final: "Here I am. I have a baby and no husband."

Vice President Quayle rightly said, "This is a threat to our republic, and to our freedoms, because the cornerstone of any civilized society is the family unit; and, the family unit is disoriented and disordered if there is not a father and mother committed to one another in marriage for life to rear the children who are the product of that marriage." His point was that single parent homes are not the best environment in which to rear child. It's a great disadvantage not to have a father and a mother while you're growing up.

Please notice that the vice president did not say what the liberals are saying that he said. I heard one the other day who was misrepresenting what the vice president was saying as condemning single-parent families. The liberals are saying, "Can you imagine anybody who would be so unkind? Here is this poor woman whose husband abandoned her, and he's condemning her. Here is this poor woman who has been divorced, and he's condemning her."

No, the vice president was talking about illegitimate births. And you're not supposed to call that "illegitimate" anymore, because all the feminazis now believe that this is all right. This is the thing to do. The feminazis are men-haters and husband-haters, and they don't want to think that they need a man. And as soon as they can figure out how to have children without men, they'll have it made.

Liberals are such ignorant intellectuals. Are they dumb? No. But, why would they distort and misrepresent him like that? Because they don't like the fact that when he said that, he was saying that there was somebody above the 51% majority agreement over a society who makes the rules for what is right and wrong, and it's the God who is up there, who is the Creator, who sets the rules, and lays out the ground rules, and you can't say, "No" to His rules. That's what the liberals hate. They hate the suggestion that there's someone above man's fallen intellect. How evil can one be to attack a man who honors God, and who honors God's Word, and the policies of God enunciated in that Word? The political realm today is filled with men who are disoriented to God's moral laws as much as they are disoriented to the constitutional roles that government is supposed to play. And certainly, they are disoriented to the divine institutions of marriage and family.

Yet these so-called paragons of wisdom reign over us. I look into the eyes of these men as I see their pictures, and I see them on TV, and I realize that behind those eyes are these brains disoriented by Satan who are making decisions for all of us – we, who are the enlightened ones, because we take the Bible seriously.

The liberal, socialist, big-government proponents attack Quayle with a vengeance because his remarks suggest that God is in charge: He makes the rules; and, worst of all, that he has the audacity to say that God has made Himself clear." That's the worst thing they hate about Vice President Quayle – that he has the audacity to say, "We can tell you what God thinks." The Bible is very clear, because if that's true, then there's no escape from the truth of God.

So, Johnny Carson thought he was pretty cute. He's going to be the surrogate father of the Murphy Brown episode. And he ridiculed this man, one of the few men in the American government who has a background in biblical Christianity. Do you realize that Vice President Quayle's wife came from a church very much like this, down in Houston (including an overhead projector)? And that church is called a cult, and it's led by a cultist. And anybody who listens to him hates his innards because he can demonstrate what fools the liberals are.

Johnny Carson had his cheap joke. Then he showed 20 years of clips from his programs (his shows). The first then years, thank God, are gone. But they preserved the last 20 years. This was after he hit his stride. This wasn't just his first ten years when he started out as a 36-years-old man. This was when he hit his stride. And he had one section where he had an extended presentation of a discussion with Jane Fonda. It was vulgar, and it was crude, as only Jane Fonda can be, because she is a trivial, low-life person by nature. The discussion that he carried on with her was something that you would want to have disappear off the face of the earth. But what did Carson do? This was one of the things he selected as the memorial to look back and to remember what he had contributed to American society with that powerful position of being an opinion-maker that he held every night.

The world lauds Carson, a rich man with four wives. But he was indeed, as Jack Wyrtzen said, "The evil man on nighttime television." And in the process of his reminiscing, Carson observed that his family and friends and everybody was there in the audience, but he regretted that his son Rick, who had been killed in an accident, was not there. It was such an obvious, poignant moment, and a lack of hope. He said, "Well, life does what it is supposed to do, and we just go on."

Does that sound like a man with hope in a future reunion in Christ, or does that sound like what the Bible says, "Without hope and without God?" It was quite obvious that there was no comfort for this man. And where was God in all of it?

The wrath of God in hell is a terrifying reality. And you must decide whether you are going to believe the Bible about this subject, or whether you're going to believe Phil Donahue, who says, "It doesn't exist." Make your choice. But on the basis of the Word of God, I can assure you that every human being ever conceived in the womb will exist in a conscious state forever, either in hell or heaven. It is obligatory upon us as Christians to reach out and snatch people from the burning. It is not something that you can pass by indifferently. We have supplied you with a superior quality introductory tape on the subject of salvation. It's only 30 minutes long. Use it.

Hell is a real place, and the suffering there is forever, and it is horrible. Thank God that you and I have been preserved just by His grace, because He chose to call us into His family. We are the voices who have a true message – not Carson; not Donahue; and, not the liberal politicians who run our nation, but we simple, fundamentalist, biblical Christians have the good sense, because God gave it to us, to take the Word of God seriously: the written Word of Scripture; and, the living word, Christ Jesus.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1992

Back to the Revelation index