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Objection: "Hell Can't Be That Bad!"

Published since 03. Mar. 2025
Bible passages:
Mark 9:43; Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 14:11; 19:20; 20:15
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Mark 9:43: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched."

Matthew 8:12: "But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Matthew 22:13: "Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"

2 Thessalonians 1:9: "These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power."

Revelation 14:11: "And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."

Revelation 19:20: "These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone."

Revelation 20:15: "And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire."

Have you noticed that “hell breaks loose” in the department store just before Christmas? Did you “go through hell” with your last illness? Have you ever wanted to “give someone hell’? Many idioms that play down hell's seriousness have crept into our language. A few people have said, “Oh, in hell, I can play cards with my friends; that’ll be great!” But is that really going to be the case? Is hell a place where the devil reigns over with a trident, where sinners are in good company and smoke, drink, and enjoy themselves? A kind of casino, a permanent state of fun? This is the exciting adventure the band AC/DC celebrates in their song “Highway to Hell?” But it’s not true.

 

How Jesus” words are twisted

It’s really astonishing that the clear warnings of Jesus today are completely trivialized or watered down. The Catholic theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann actually says: “There is no hell. Jesus was an anti-hell preacher.” The Protestant New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann adds, “The words of hell were put into Jesus” mouth. Hell is an invention of the Christian Church to make people afraid and to be able to control them better.” The Benedictine Father, Anselm Grün, thinks, “We may hope that hell is empty.” Another clergyman, Gordon Kaufmann of Harvard Divinity School, even suggests that our ideas about eternity are now completely different: “I do not believe that heaven and hell have a future.”

In fact, Jesus” own words are being twisted. The truth is that He says more about hell than anyone else in the Bible. No wonder — almost every person he met here on earth was on their way there. 13% of the 1,870 Bible verses that contain a statement that Jesus Himself made deal with the subject of hell. He says less, even about subjects like love, faith, and heaven.

Of course, indeed, the message of hell is not an attractive one. No one wants to hear it. But also, no one in his right mind consciously ignores warning signs like “Beware of the current — danger to life” or “Don't swim here — sharks’. Warnings are not there to annoy us but to prevent us from getting into real danger. Jesus certainly did not want to be a spoilsport in what He said but to warn us. It’s a pity we no longer take His warnings seriously.

 

Is hell really that harmless?

The reality of hell is terrible: Jesus describes it as “the fire that shall never be quenched – where “their [i.e., the people who are there] worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:43–44). Have you ever burnt yourself? Now imagine you’re ablaze, which will cause you horrible pain — but you do not die. Your immortal soul will be tortured by a fire that can never be put out.

In the Old Testament, various passages compare the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. This is designed to help people understand the terror of hell. In former times, this valley at the south-eastern side of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was the place where heathen human sacrifices were offered by burning children (see 2 Kings 16:3; Jeremiah 7:31). It was a terrible place where the fire was never put. The Bible uses such comparisons to show us how we should think about hell.

The only person who can give us reliable information about the afterlife and, therefore, about hell is Jesus Christ. Of course, His purpose in coming here was to reveal God to us and to make the way to heaven possible through his death. And yet it is remarkable that He said a lot more about hell than about heaven — not to scaremonger but to warn us. Nowadays, giving warnings is erroneously equated with restricting freedom or even threatening people. But in reality, warnings save lives. A road sign can only be good if it warns drivers of a danger around the next bend. It was one of Jesus” most important concerns to warn people like you and me of Hell.

 

This is how Jesus described hell

He used different terms to describe it in the four gospels:

  • 15 times “fire” (Matthew 7:19; 13:40,42,50; 18:8,9: 25:41; Mark 9:43-48; John 15:6; Luke 13:28)
  • Seven times “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12; 13:42,50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28)
  • Three times “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30)
  • 17 times “judgment” (Matthew 5:22; 10:15; 11:22; 12:36,41,42; 23:33; Mark 12:40; Luke 10:14; 11:31,32; 12:58; 20:47; John 5:24,27,29; 12:48)
  • Four times a place without forgiveness from God (Matthew 6:15; 12:31; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10)
  • Three times a state in which God rejects people (Matthew 7:23; 25:41; Luke 13:27)
  • "destruction” (Matthew 7:13)
  • "everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46)
  • "condemnation” (Mark 16:16)
  • "torments” (Luke 16:23–28). Even though it deals with the description of Hades (the place where dead unbelievers are now), this passage makes the awfulness of hell clear, too.
  • Three times “perish” (John 3:15,16; Matthew 18:14)

John the Baptist also used the terms “wrath of God” (John 3:36) and “wrath to come” (see Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7).

This list shows the unbelievable awfulness of hell. Let’s take a closer look at four of these descriptions of this place:

  • "The fire that shall never be quenched” (Mark 9:43)

The solar corona, an area in the solar atmosphere, reaches several million degrees centigrade — bathing in 50°C hot water is already very painful for us humans. Given this, can you imagine every millimeter of a body being exposed to scorching heat? While a person who is burning on earth dies after a few minutes, the fire in hell will be eternal. The bodies there will never burn to ashes but will be exposed to the heat without interruption. And the worst: the fire will never be put out! Many people say it’s nicely warm in hell. The description Jesus gave shows that this is a massive understatement! To make this physically clear, the Bible says that hell “burns with brimstone” (Revelation 19:20). Sulphur burns in the air from 250°C, but at 445°C becomes gaseous. A terrible, unbearable heat and a horrible smell. The products of combustion are poisons that make it difficult to breathe. “Nice and warm”?

  • "Outer darkness” (Matthew 22:13) or “Blackness of darkness” (Jude 13)

Hell is a place where everything is dark. Here are a few examples of why this is bad: “Light is decisive for our mood,” explains Prof. Kneginja Richter, head of the sleep clinic at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Nuremberg Hospital. It ensures the release of various hormones that determine our emotional state. Many people feel tired and listless; their mood is basically depressed.  In fact, especially in winter, when the days get shorter and the hours of sunshine less, many people struggle with the winter blues, a serious illness whose symptoms remind us of depression. Doctors call it Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). In the study “Dark Contrasts: The Paradox of High Rates of Suicide in Happy Places,” it was found that suicide rates in Scandinavian countries are very high despite extremely high levels of satisfaction with life compared with other countries — the long winters are also cited as a reason for the suicide rates. In 1979, the Canadian Donald Hebb conducted an experiment in which every stimulus was removed from the subjects. They could hear nothing, lay idle — and could not see anything either. The result was astonishing: after only a few hours, they heard strange voices and hallucinated. Every single one of the test subjects stopped the experiment early; none of them lasted even one week. An absolute finality, far away from any light source — what a horrible idea! And for eternity! Man needs light. Without light, there is no life or hope. The Lord Jesus uses here the image of an eternal night without daybreak, without any glimmer of hope, without seeing anything beautiful.

  • "Weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12)

Many people hope their soul will not exist after death or that they won’t feel and sense anything anymore (the so-called “sleep of the soul’). The Lord Jesus shows us clearly that people in hell will feel the torment with every fiber of their bodies and will not be able to do anything about it but cry out heartbreakingly and bitterly. These tears can both be a consequence of the pain and suffering felt, as well as tears of anger and disappointment over the missed chances to repent during their lives (see Luke 16:27–28). The term Jesus uses for “weeping” in the original Greek means to howl in a way that goes through marrow and bone. Not a soft whimper but a cry of extreme pain. To imagine such a thing, I would like to quote Franz Marc, who fought in the terrible battle of Verdun in the First World War and wrote the following to his wife: “These splinters, hissing through the air at hundreds of kilometers an hour, tear the soldiers” bodies open or even their arms, legs or jaws. Among the thunder of the explosions, the cries of the mutilated are constantly mingled — of those men lying in a funnel somewhere and bleeding to death. During the day, no soldier can dare go to a wounded man, even if he is only a few meters away in the next ditch. Helplessly, one has to listen to the cry of pain for hours”.  In a life of about 80 years, a person cries an average of 80 to 100 liters. How much will that add up to if you think of an eternity in hell?

While the weeping people in hell will not receive consolation, support, or help, it will be different in heaven: God himself will “wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

  • A Place without God

Hell is a place without God, as the Bible clearly states: “These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). If you do not believe in God yet, you may wonder to what extent this is punishment at all. After all, you have no interest in being with Him. But despite this, there is an objective — a logical reason why God’s absence is terrible for human beings. We read in the Bible: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). So a place without God means a place without love. This is unimaginable! Man cannot survive without love. In the 13th century, Frederick II reigned as emperor over thepire. His desire for knowledge led him to conduct a brutal experiment in which he attempted to find out what language babies would speak without human contact. He isolated some, and they were fed by nurses who were forbidden to touch or speak to them or to give them any other kind of care. What language would they speak: Hebrew, Greek, Latin? Well, none. The babies died without exception. A chronicler of the time wrote: “They cannot live without clapping and waving hands, without smiling cheerfully and without words of affection.”  Babies die without love; people die without love.

 

Hell Actually Exists…

We have seen clearly that hell has nothing to do with having fun, playing cards, and having sex. It’s absurd to hope this place is not so bad after all. The reality the Bible presents is entirely different: “And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night” (Revelation 14:11). Why would you consider hell a worthwhile alternative to a perfect future in heaven?

How terrible it would be if you went to hell because you ignored these warnings and preferred rather to imagine how nice a place it might be. This will not be the case just because you hope or imagine it. You could, for example, talk yourself into thinking a prison in the United Kingdom is like a theme park, but in reality, the bars will not become one with fewer prisoners. It is the same with hell — the description Jesus gave of it is absolutely reliable!

What a disaster to banish hell from people’s minds. I’ve heard people say, “We don’t live in the Middle Ages anymore: there’s no such thing as hell.” But since we can’t change reality, it’s disastrous to deny that it exists. It won’t go away just because we don’t want it to be true! God’s warnings about it need to be taken seriously!

 

… But God wants to have you in heaven!

God offers you the prospect of not going to hell. He does not want you to perish. The proof that He loves you is the cross of Calvary, where He punished Jesus Christ, who was perfect, in our place. Right now, you can still turn to God, confess to Him your sins, and put your faith in the fact Jesus Christ paid for your guilt in His sufferings and death on the cross. If you do this, God promises that you will receive “eternal life” and not “perish” (see John 3:16).

We do not deserve the opportunity God has given us to escape hell. However, we can go free without being punished for the sins we’ve committed. Why? Because Jesus Christ endured the “sufferings of hell” Himself when he hung on the cross during the three hours of darkness and was judged by God there. He experienced what the wrath of God involves in all its reality. His heart-breaking cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  (Mark 15:34, J N Darby’s translation) shows how terrible this punishment must have been and how much the perfect Son of God suffered then. Accept His great offer of eternal life today!

 

"And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
Revelation 20:15

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
John 5:24

 

 

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