ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY - PART 42

                                          ONE HEARTBEAT               AWAY

       PART 42


"No Hell Below"

The other choice is a place called hell.
John Lennon's song asks us to imagine there
 is "no hell below."   Hell is out of fashion 
today! But it is not out of business!  Just 
because we don't like the idea of hell doesn't 
mean that it does not exist. 

Many people say they don't believe in hell, 
so hell can't exist. But remember, it does not matter what we believe ; it matters what is 
true. Unbelief does not change reality. We 
may believe that poison won't kill us, but it 
will. We may believe that the earth is flat, 
but it is not. Be sure you search for truth, 
and not just for something you would like to believe in.

Many people have told me that they wouldn't 
mind going to hell because all their friends 
would be there. But hell is not a place of 
rehab or enjoyment. It is a place  of 
punishment. Only one -third of adults think 
that hell is an actual place of torment, 
according to Bana Group Research, while 
4 in 10 regard it simply  as eternal separation from God's presence. Regardless of what we 
think , though, how does God's Word describe 
it?

According to the Bible,
hell is a very real place. 
We know of thirty-three  times that Jesus spoke of it, describing it's horrors in graphic detail. It is a place of eternal, conscious torment, where there is 
terrible suffering and "unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12)

The Bible says that those who do not obey 
God will be "punished  with everlasting destruction"  (2nd Thessalonians 1:9) , and 
will be cast  "into the furnace of fire, in that 
place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:41-42) 
It is called "hell fire" (Matthew 5:22) 
Where its inhabitants will face  "everlasting punishment."  (Matthew 25:46) and 
"indignation and wrath, tribulation and 
anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth
 evil." (Romans 2:8-9)

Jesus tells us to avoid hell at all costs: 

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: 
it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, 
than having two hands to go into hell, into 
the fire that never shall be quenched: where
their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. 

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: It
is better for thee to enter halt into life than having two feet to be cast into hell into the 
fire that never shall be quenched: where 
their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out: 
it is better for thee to enter the kingdom 
of God with one eye, than having two eyes 
to be cast into hell fire. Where their worm 
dieth not and the fire is not quenched. 
( Mark 9:43-48)

We are told that when angels in heaven 
rebelled against Him, God "cast them down 
to hell, and delivered them into chains of 
darkness, to be reserved unto judgment" 
(2nd Peter 2:4) Try to imagine how dark 
such a place will be. Have you ever been 
on a tour of a cave?  Usually the tour guide 
will shut off all the lights to give people a 
sense of the total blackness. With complete absence of light  it is so utterly black you 
could stick your finger in your eye and not 
see it coming. The darkness is so oppressive 
that people sometimes start to panic After 
only a minute, imagine how many minutes 
there are in an unending eternity. The 
darkness alone would be torment enough. 

The Bible refers to hell as the "kingdom of darkness,"   and declares that "the children 
of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness : there shall be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:12) . 
It says that people who reject God do so 
because they love the deeds of darkness 
rather than the light . Since darkness is 
what these people want, it is what they get 
for all of eternity. And there is no escape 
from this place because there is only an 
entrance  -  no exit?


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