A Living Hell
Dan Kunz
Unless you’ve been visiting the Arctic or the moon for the past two weeks, you’ve certainly seen the horrific scenes of destruction in the Los Angeles fires. It’s almost impossible to wrap your mind around the enormity of the tragedy. Just the loss of life alone is terrible, but when you see block after block of the ashes of what used to be homes, schools, and businesses, it’s even more heartbreaking. As bad as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes are, probably at least some of people’s possessions can be salvaged. Fire utterly destroys whatever it touches. Only scraps, if anything, are left. It’s not surprising that time and time again, the residents which survived the fire and evacuation described the experience as a “living hell”. Words such as apocalypse, Armageddon, and conflagration were also frequently used.
Over the past several years, the word “denier” (one who denies something) has become popular. We hear or read about “climate deniers”, “election deniers”, and all sorts of other deniers. Unfortunately, we can add “hell deniers” to that list. Obviously, someone who doesn’t accept the concept of any higher power isn’t going to accept the idea of heaven or hell, but those aren’t the only ones. Even people who claim to be spiritual sometimes will talk themselves out of a place of eternal torment. “A kind and loving God wouldn’t punish someone that way,” is their logic. If you only look at one aspect of the person of God, such thinking makes sense, but the person of God is not just one aspect. Yes, God is kind and loving. God is also just. God’s sense of justice demands sin must be punished. If that were not the case, God would not be just. His perfection requires his justice. If that was the end of the story, of course, we’d all be in trouble. His love for us, however, reached out with a plan to meet the need for justice. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to bear the burden of sin for us. Anyone who believes in and accepts Christ’s payment for sin is saved. It’s literally as simple as that. An unbeliever is still under the burden of God’s justice. Hell is a very real place and will be that person’s destination for eternity!
We’ve probably all heard the expression, “Scare the hell out of somebody”. Hell isn’t just scary, it’s terrifying! The California fires are a stark image of hell, or at least a glimpse of what hell might be like. We can’t totally grasp what heaven is like, but we also can’t totally grasp what hell is like, either. What we do know is that eternal separation from God is the worst aspect of hell. We also know it’s a place of eternal torment. Mark 9:47-48 47 If your eye causes you to fall into sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ That last verse should strike sheer terror into the heart of anyone who does not rely on the grace of God through Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior! It is a quote from Isaiah 66:24, which describes maggots and unending fire. A dump outside the city of Jerusalem called “Gehenna” was such a place. It was a place where garbage, including dead animals and, sometimes, human bodies, were burned. Between the fire and the work of maggots, it was the most disgusting, revolting place you could imagine. The smell alone must have been overwhelming. Such is hell.
Please keep Los Angeles in your prayers, but even more important, pray for those who don’t accept Jesus as their Savior, so they don’t experience for eternity, the worm that does not die and the fire that is not quenched!