Clear Explanation for Why Hell is Fire & Torment:
Because Hell has Sin, Sinful Places are Fallen, and Fallen Places are Misery (Just Like the World)
Jeffrey Grupp, March 29, 2018, www.praiseandlove.net
This article will discuss how by pure logic the conclusion is reached that reality can only contain a place called Hell for the souls of those who have rejected God, and that this place can only be as it is described in the Bible. I will spell-out this argument in nine steps below.
So many Christians and non-Christians are astonished as to why God created Hell, but the Bible does not state that God created Hell, and it appears that human free-will created it. I say this because there are no verses in the Bible that state that God created Hell, how Hell was created, and so forth. We only find this verse:
Matthew 25:41 New King James Version (NKJV)
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels...
The word “prepared” is not identical to the word “created”. There is overlap from their dictionary definitions, but it appears “created” means is more like an origination, and bringing about an entity that did not previously exist, whereas “prepared” is modifying some existing entity or set of circumstances. The word “prepared” appears quite consistently across translations, as follows:
Matthew 25:41 Amplified Bible (AMP)
41 “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Leave Me, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (demons);
Matthew 25:41 English Standard Version (ESV)
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:41 Darby Translation (DARBY)
41 Then shall he say also to those on the left, Go from me, cursed, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
Matthew 25:41 English Standard Version (ESV)
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:41 1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
41 Then shall he say to them on the left hand, Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:41 International Standard Version (ISV)
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who are accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the Devil and his angels!
Matthew 25:41 King James Version (KJV)
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
Matthew 25:41 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
41 “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
Matthew 25:41 New Living Translation (NLT)
41 “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.[a]
Matthew 25:41 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
Matthew 25:41 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
In my perusing of translations, the following three did not contain the word "prepared", but also do not contain "create", and are consistent with the "prepared" theme:
Matthew 25:41 Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
41 Then the king shall say also to them, that shall be on his left half, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, that is made ready to the devil and his angels [which is made ready to the devil and his angels].
Matthew 25:41 The Voice (VOICE)
41 At that He will turn to those on His left hand. King: Get away from Me, you despised people whom My Father has cursed. Claim your inheritance—the pits of flaming hell where the devil and his minions suffer.
Matthew 25:41 New Life Version (NLV)
41 “Then the King will say to those on His left side, ‘Go away from Me! You are guilty! Go into the fire that lasts forever. It has been made ready for the devil and his angels.
More specifically, the argument below reveals that the existence of Hell is a spontaneous outcome of human free-willed sin distorting God’s Creation. In the same way that sin caused, for example, thorns to appear on bushes, and animals to turn non-vegetarian, it also led to the opening up of a place called Hell, to house the unrighteous who, sadly, have chosen to reject God. It’s as if the spiritual laws of reality operated like a law of nature where A-led-to-B, analogous to how, for example, the temperature falling below freezing-level will lead water to change its structure and become a solid: one set of circumstances (temperature falling) led to conditions where an entity changed from being something different than what it was (liquid changed to solid). So, in simpler terms,
Water temperature lowering, by the laws of nature/reality, automatically, lawfully, and spontaneously led to (caused) water changing to ice.
And likewise,
Sin altering and contaminating Creation, by the laws of nature/reality, automatically, lawfully, and spontaneously led to (caused) Creation having an altered structure and form.
And in different, simpler words: the existence of Hell is a natural product of that sin-distortion process. With sin entering the world via the Fall, Creation was changed, from pure to fallen, and thus Creation’s properties and entities were distorted accordingly.
(A) Due to the fall, and (B) due to the fact that there will be humans who reject God in the fallen reality, the argument below shows that there has to be a place to "house" souls that reject God with finality, who reject God to the point of no turning back, choosing to be separated from Him (that is, they reject Christ up to the point of their physical body death). Just like the way the world is fallen (painful, hateful, violent, etc.) due to its being contaminated with the disease of sin, so also this place the rejecters of God must end-up at (Hell) must likewise be fallen, but in the case of Hell, fallen to a maximum degree (Hell would have more fallenness, more separateness, from Trinity than the world does). That's why Hell can only be how it is described in the Bible: it's a spontaneous product of the disease of sin distorting Creation involving the maximum separation from God, and thus the maximum fallen-misery.
With those points in mind, the following logical argument shows spells out the ironclad logic that verifies the existence of Hell, not as being caused by God, but rather by human sin—it simply follows automatically from the apple event (sin entering the world).
- There are no Bible verses that show that God created Hell. Only one in Matthew that shows God prepared Hell, as if it was preexisting.
- Adam ate the apple, and Creation was altered, like a virus spreading out from the apple-event.
- More specifically, Creation was distorted, for the simple reason that it no longer was the same entity: at one moment (pre-apple) it was not contaminated by sin, and the next moment (apple willfully being eaten) it was with sin. At the pre-apple moment Creation had the qualities of being uncontaminated by sin, then at the apple-eaten moment it had the qualities of being contaminated—so it can’t be the same entity, the same Creation, from one moment to the next: from one moment to the other Creation had different qualities, different attributes and entities, as the contamination of sin spread and diseased everything. From one moment to the next it had no thorns on bushes to having bushes that will produce thorns. From one moment to the next, the lion went from laying with the lamb to wanting to savagely devour the lamb. So, an amazing deformation of all of Creation occurred from one moment to the next, where the two worlds became, in many ways, opposite of each other, pre-apple to eaten-apple.
- So, Creation became a place contaminated by sin, and such a place naturally involves the sort of existence for humans that goes with sin: confusion, shame, hate, violence, lies, and all the rest--which are really types of torment. Creation became a place of misery and torment, since that's the sort of place a sin-contaminated place is.
- More specifically, due to the distortion of the post-apple world, the apple event leads directly to contaminated Creation needing a storage area (Hell) for those who hate God. In different words, there has to be a place in the post-apple world to "house" all the beings who reject God after they die (bodily death).
- But Hell is precisely that sort of place: a place of sinners, for sinners, who have chosen maximum separation from God, and, ipso facto, it is a place of greatest misery and torment (a maximum level of misery and torment, since it involves the maximum separation from God).
- It’s really as if human free will (Adam eating the apple) is responsible for Hell, and as if Hell spontaneously formed in the same way that thorns formed on bushes, and the appetite of the lion to eat the lamb formed in its body and mind—because of human free-will, not because of God. This makes a lot of sense, since God cannot create sin (and hence why Karl Barth calls sin “nothingness”).
- And for these reasons, Hell must exist if sin exists, and it can only be just like what is described in the Bible: a place of misery and torment, since, like the world (which is also a place of misery and torment that we are to hate, John 12:25), Hell is a place of sin and misery.
I made a video about this, here it is:
