IS THERE A REAL HELL?

Many people believe in heaven, but not hell.

Many folks don’t want to believe the alternative to God's glorious Heaven is a place called hell. Many refuse to accept the Bible fact that people will actually end up in an eternal lake of fire.

Athiests say we’re born, we live, we die, and rot. End of story. Agnostics aren’t all that sure; "prove it" they say. Different religions believe in hell but have sure ways in which to escape it after death takes place. Some say you can “baptize a proxy”, to get them out. Others think you can pray them out. Still others believe when you die, God will put your sins on a scale and if your good deeds weigh more than your sins, then you get to come on into the place with no more sorrow, no more pain, no more night. You get to live eternally with the Most High and Holy God.

We must be honest, the urgency with which most Christians share the Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card, you’d think they believe that, too. However, the Bible speaks emphatically about a real place, an eternal fire, an eternal punishment. Like you, I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea that someone can live life doing so much good for others, and because they refuse to accept the gift of God’s grace through Jesus, that they will end up separated from God forever. I don’t like the idea that Satan took all the beauty, glory, and God-created brilliance he possessed and decided to elevate himself above God, either.
With his God given free will, satan misused everything God gave him to reject God and lead others to do the same.

Few people, I have found, have no problem with Satan ending up chained in the burning pit, unable to bring harm on God's creation anymore. Many can see the justice in Satan going to hell for his rebellion against God…for his rejection of The Great I AM, Jehovah God Himself. They even accept that all his demons belong right there next to him for causing such problems and chaos in our world.

But it’s beyond comprehension, for some, even impossible, to wrap their minds around the idea that a human, created in God’s image, could possibly end up in Satan’s lap for all eternity.
Yet, Jesus says that is exactly what is going to happen when He returns and separates the goats from the sheep; The tares from the wheat; The unrighteous from the righteous; The ones with lights in their oil lamps from those without light.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:41

You don’t have to believe it; but it doesn’t change anything. It is what it is, and will be what God says, anyway. The Lord desires all mankind to come to His saving grace. He wants that so much He came to earth to show us Himself, to live among us and show us how to talk to Him, how to live as He lived, and how to get into Christ. He came to die and become the perfect and holy sacrifice for our sins. He took our sin on Himself (2 Cor. 5:21f) so we wouldn’t have to spend an eternity with Satan. God doesn’t want a single soul to spend eternity away from Him. He loved us first before we loved Him. He wants us to come to Him by His plan in His Word.

I would encourage each one who reads this devotional, get into The Holy Word of God. Learn what it means to be saved and the joy of knowing heaven is your home. Begin in the book of Acts just following Christ's Resurrection into heaven.
The happiness we get, the comfort, the joy on this earth is nothing–nothing compared to what He has prepared for those of us who trust Him and believe every word He has spoken.
God bless...