Does God Send People to Hell?

Hell is uncomfortable. But what if avoiding the conversation is actually more dangerous than having it? In this episode we talk about what hell is, why God allows it, and what someone in hell might say to us.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, you have questions. But they're questions that you haven't asked. Because either they're uncomfortable or complicated or even just a little bit risky. Questions that most people don't ask because they just don't want to go there. But in this podcast, we do want to go there because we believe that our commodities is ready to find a lot of questions. We believe that our comedy has a lot of answers that are more for us than over it. So in this podcast, we want you to put your questions. Let's look at them together. Let's leave it. Let's go there. What's going on, Land of Podcasting, and welcome to another episode of Let's Go There. I'm your host, Ben Pugas. Joined as always in the podcast studio with my man, the myth, the legend, Russ the Bus Williams. We also, if you guys don't know this, uh, this is episode 25. We're at a quarter of a century. They thought we wouldn't make it, Russ, but we did it. Our own parents didn't believe in us, but here we are, Frags the Rich. Really is rags to rags. But it to celebrate with us in the podcast studio is a legend at Fellowship Bible Church. A legend. He's laughing. You hear him. If you hear him laugh, you know who it is. He has a very distinct laugh. We have my mentor, man who's made a big impact in my life, big impact in a lot of people's lives. He's an elder here at the church, uh, and he's a father figure to so many. Andrew Abraham's joining us in the house. Yeah. He's talking. I don't know. I we don't know if you can even hear him. We might slide the mic.

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Hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

We don't know. We're winging it as we go along. Uh, but we're super excited. We made it to episode 25. That means there's 25 episodes where we will we were able to answer questions that you had because we believe in this podcast that honest questions deserve honest answers. And so we've talked about really big things. And so we could give a little bit of a highlight coming up. We've talked about LGBTQ issues, which so often in podcasts and in churches we avoid, but we don't because LGBTQ people, whatever your sexual orientation may be, you're made in the image of God and they deserve to be loved by the people of God because they are so infinitely loved by the God of the universe. We've talked about can you lose your salvation? We've talked about baptism, we've talked about really hard things. And today is another topic that is so difficult for us to understand because it makes us really uncomfortable. But before we get into that, we have a small question that we want to answer first because we want to be able to answer more than one question at a time to make sure that we're giving out the good content and answering the questions that people have. And it's it's actually a lot of questions that you guys have, but Andrew got to bring it because Andrew gets to meet with people all the time as an elder, as a business leader, as a mentor. Uh, but the question that we're gonna be answering really quickly is does it matter how I pray? You know, we're talking about at Fellowship Bible Church. So if we're gonna be known by anything, we're gonna be known as a house of prayer. Not because we made it up, but because God said that my house will be known as a house of prayer. It's not something that we do, it's who we are as a people. And so so often the devil likes to confuse us, the devil likes to distort what is true and makes us feel like we are incapable and we're not quote unquote good at praying, so therefore we should just not pray at all. So it doesn't matter. And I think so often we see the Lord's prayer when Jesus gave it to his disciples, because his disciples are like, Jesus, how do we pray? It's a question that people have had, not just in 21st century America, they had since the very beginning of time. And Jesus gave them a model. And we need to understand that it's a model. It's not you need to ritualistically do this. Our Father, who art in heaven, you know, all those football teams that do that, and they're not even a Christian football team, they just rehearse it. I don't think God is ever glorified just because we do something out of rehearsal, just because we do something out of discipline. But I think where God is most glorified is actually what he tells us to do and to inherit the kingdom of God. He says, Not if you're a religious leader, you can inherit the kingdom of God. Not if you know all of the answers, you can inherit the kingdom of God, not if you do the best prayers with the best sounding words that make people in awe of the way that you talk, you can inherit the kingdom of God. He says, No, unless you are like one of these children, you can't inherit the kingdom of God. Uh, we have a wall out here. There's 1,663 names on it now. Eight five people have gotten saved, which praise God, hallelujah. And there's a little girl, uh, I'm not gonna say her name because I don't have permission. I have a picture of it on my phone, and I want permission to share it at some point. She's five, and she goes to this church, and every day she leaves class, right before she leaves with her grandparents, she says, Can we pray over the wall? And she will walk around the entire wall and she will find a name. She can't read yet, and she'll ask her grandmother, she says, What's that person's name right there? And she'll tell her the name, and then she will get on her knees and she will pray for 30 to 45 seconds in her sweet little four or five-year-old little way. And I will tell you, I saw that picture and I got tears in my eyes because I'm like, we think that we're so big and we're so mighty. Like Andrew's, you know, is a is a business leader and he's got girls that are in college, and Russ is an awesome dad that has two sweet little kids, and like we think that we've made it. But I think no matter where we are or where we end up in life, I think God always sees us as that little, sweet little girl, as his child. And I think as we get older, we try to make all of these big words and we try to overcomplicate it. And God's like, no, I just desire to hear from you. I desire to hear your voice. And so actually, Jesus warns against praying like the Pharisees do, with big words and like God doesn't have a word count. God's not like, I'll start listening at 250 words. Like God's like, I desire to hear from you. And I will say, there are some times I believe that I don't have time to pray. I'm going into a big meeting and I'm like, God, I'm scared. God, I'm nervous. Would you just please give me wisdom and give me power? Would you work through me? And that was what, five seconds? I think sometimes God's more glorified in our five-second cryouts than he is in our 30-minute performances. God doesn't long for a performance, he longs for us. And so, can I pray wrong? Yeah, you can. If it's performative. If we think that we can pray in a way that can stir God up to answer our prayer because it sounded good, that's wrong. Because God just desires to hear us. God desires for us to hear the desires of our heart, but then most importantly, at the very end, God desires for us to be like, but God, at the end of the day, not my will, but your will be done. It's a trust, it's a childlike thing. And so if you're like, I don't know how to pray, then like, good, welcome to how everyone else has felt since the beginning of time. Even the people that founded the church, they didn't know either. And so I would say if you don't know how to pray, just start. Start with your five seconds, start with five minutes, start with 15 seconds of just crying out to God and saying, God, I don't know what to do. Will you just help me? Uh and I believe God is glorified, not in the performative prayers, but in the honest, childlike ones. And so if you have more questions about prayer, uh, we're still in the in a series about the gospel, and as we get out of that, we're gonna be starting to answer more questions outside of the gospel. But the question that we're gonna be diving into for the next 19 to 21 minutes uh is a question that a lot of people have, and it's a question that we have mentioned in the last two episodes, and it's does God actually send people to hell? We talked about two weeks ago that if we really did believe in the theology of hell, that it would change the way that we view people and it would change the urgency that we have with the gospel. Because we talked about millennials, like the millennial generation, my generation, so many people went away from the church. We're now seeing that curve kind of go back up with Gen Z. Gen Z starting to get back into the church, which is awesome. But the Gen Y, the millennial generation went away from the church completely. And it was because in this research that they did, these millennials grew up in the church. They went to Iwana, they were in church on Wednesday night and on Sunday morning, and they were in community groups, and they were in Bible studies, and they saw their parents talk to them about Jesus. They saw their parents sit in in sermons talking about heaven and hell, and that there is a heaven, and every everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord is saved from hell and going to heaven, but everyone who does not spend an eternity away from God forever, and and we hear these things like fire and and suffering and darkness, and then we watch as a millennial generation, watch this. We watch then our parents do nothing with that information. There is a heaven and there is a hell, and we know people who therefore are going to hell, and we watched our parents not share the gospel with them. And so the millennials came to one of two conclusions. Either one, uh, my parents hate people and they desire to see people go to hell, but they know their parents. Like my parents love people, my parents were involved in charity, my my parents loved me. So it can't be that. So it must be the last option, which is my parents actually don't believe that heaven and hell are real, and maybe this whole thing is a sham. And so millennials were like, I went away from the church because discipleship at home wasn't happening. And so this generation, like my generation, really struggles with this topic. And I don't think we like talking about hell. We don't like talking about hell because it's it's it's hard for us to wrap our minds around. We don't believe that God is just, it makes us incredibly uncomfortable. Like thinking about that God would send somebody to a place where there is fire and eternal suffering for the rest of their lives. And I had a guy that I actually met with him at Tropical Smoothie the other day. And he said, Man, I want to believe in God so bad. But the thought of an eternal loving God, like you say that God is full of grace and full of mercy and full of love, that I have such a hard time with that God that loves those people so much, sending them to a place that's so awful. And he's like, I'm not a good guy, I'm a terrible person. Like, I don't love people the way that I'm supposed to. I'm definitely not a perfect eternal God, like you say, your God is. And he goes, I would not send my worst enemy to hell. So then, why does God send people to hell if he is so loving? How is that even possible? And it's a hard concept for us to understand. And so the question isn't, do I believe that God is real or do I believe that hell is real? The question is, how can I believe that a loving God can actually do that? Because again, if we believe that there is a hell, it would change every single aspect of our lives. And so the question is, how could God send someone to hell? But before we listen to me, before we accuse God of injustice, we first have to think about what hell really is. You know, I had a teacher I went to a Christian school growing up, and God bless this teacher. I mean, they tried their hardest, but would just talk all the time about how hot hell is. And like, man, it's like it's like you sit in an oven. I remember she's like, it's like you sit in an oven for the rest of your life. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I at one point that that it was in third grade that I learned this. Miss Pickles. We love Miss Pickles. And that that year, I was helping my mom take cookies out of the oven. I'm like at that age where I wanted to help and do stuff, and and I the top of my arm hit the top of the oven as I went to take it out. And it was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my eight years of life. And I thought to myself, when my teacher said that, I was like, wow, I don't want to experience that. And so then this fear came in me, and I was like, I just want to not experience that. So the way that I don't experience sitting in an oven for the rest of my life is I just trust in Jesus, I guess. And can I tell you, that's not the gospel. We don't trust in Jesus to be our get out of hell free card because I want to talk about hell for a second. Like, like when we talk about the idea of hell, like that there, the the Bible uses metaphors all the time. And we do see in the Bible, we go, we don't just make this up, like we do see that there is a lake of fire and that the devil is sort of the lake of fire, and there's a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. But when we actually look at the theology of hell that Jesus talks about, like one of the Greek words is the term gehenna, and gehenna is a place of fire. So we're like, okay, so hell is fire because Jesus says it's a place of fire, but hold on a second. Like, Gehenna is not just fire, gehenna is a place. And so when Jesus was talking about hell, he was saying the fact that that it's like Gehenna, and Gehenna was a place where they would burn trash. In fact, there's a long history of it in the Old Testament. It's found, I think, in Genesis 32 and in 2 Kings. And in Genesis 32, when they were starting to construct this tower, that they they were sacrificing their children to Molech. And so it's a really horrible, I'm not going to go into full detail about it, but in Gehenna, which is this valley right outside of Jerusalem, they would have this god uh that was made out of bronze. And they would, there was a skewer that came from the stomach of this god called Molech, is what they believed. And there was a giant bronze skewer that would stick out of it and they would light it bright red. And then what they would do is they would get newborn children, and in order to sacrifice to their God, it's really horrible. They would basically skewer this child into it, and that little newborn baby would be burned alive. And it was a horrible place, and that continued throughout the history of Israel. Like this is a place where people would conduct sacrifices to Molech and to false gods. Well, Josiah comes on the scene, King Josiah, and if you know Josiah, he does all these reforms in the Old Testament, and it says that I no one really knows what Josiah does, but what we do know is it says that Josiah defiled this place. Defiled it. We don't know what that means. He could have scattered human bones, he could have uh done, he did something that made Jews uncomfortable going there, something worse than sacrificing children to Satan. And so he defiled it, and literally to this day, like if you go to Jerusalem, if you go to Israel, right outside, it's in between Mount Moriah and Mount and the Mount of Olives, and right in this valley right here, in the valley of Gehenna, there is still nothing built there because the Jews will not go to that place. It is a place where they they believe that that after Josiah did that, they burned trash. And this is what I'm trying to say here. This is how Jesus was describing hell. It's horrible. It's terrible. You think about sacrificing children to Satan, what a horrible place. Hell is like that. But here's the thing about metaphors. Metaphors are just describing something, and then the reality of that something is actually worse than the metaphor. What Jesus was trying to say is it's a terrible place because it whether it's fire or whether it's darkness, we just know that hell is eternal separation away from God forever. So you think about that on this earth today, like we think that earth, like someone says that we think that earth is hell, it's not hell because there is the presence of God here. And where there is God, where the presence of God is, there is freedom and there is life and there is grace. And so you even see in David, when David was on the run, like David is confused with God. He's like, God, why do my enemies prosper? And the answer to that is because God's like, because I'm here, there's something that's known as common grace. So even if there's people that don't know me and that don't want to know me, whether they go to church every single Sunday or they sacrifice their children to Satan, all of us, because there is the presence of God here on earth, we experience good things. We experience rain, we experience promotions, we experience good feelings, we experience relationship. But hell is a place where none of those things actually exist. It's the absence of the presence of God. And because there's the absence of the presence of God, there is no hope, there is no freedom, there is no fulfillment. And so, whatever hell is, I I don't think we need to focus on its fire. We need to focus on the idea that hell is absolutely horrible because where hell is, there is no God. And we're gonna get into that here in a second. But this is what I also want to mention. So, like, hell makes us uncomfortable, right? Like, we we don't want to talk about it. We make it it it feels like God is injust, it feels like God doesn't love people because of this. But this is what I want to mention. I wanna I want to pause for a second as we start talking about people. Like, we believe that there is a heaven and there is a hell. The Bible is very clear in it. You cannot read scripture, you have to cut out massive sections of scripture to believe there is no hell, and we get uncomfortable talking about this, and I think there may be some people that at this point you maybe even turned off the podcast. Like, we're not even reaching you anymore because you're so uncomfortable. But my question is what would somebody in hell say about how we talk about hell? Like that there's a parable, it's the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus gives. And uh Lazarus is this beggar, uh, and so that says that the dogs would lick his wounds, and there was this rich man, and this rich man would do nothing with Lazarus, and this rich man dies and is taken to hell, and it is a horrible place. And he sees from across this wide chasm, which it's just a parable. Like again, this is not to be like, oh, this is what heaven and hell is like. It's just a metaphor to talk about the reality of what it's like. And this rich man sees Lazarus, this beggar. He no longer has sores, he's no longer a beggar, he's now in heaven, essentially. We'll get that's another theology for another day. And he asks, can Lazarus just come over here and could he dip his finger in water and would he put it on my tongue because I'm suffering so bad? And then the angel's like, No, I can't do that. And he goes, Well, at least go to my family, go to my friends, and tell them about this place. And the angel says, I can't do that. Because if they're not gonna listen to Moses and they're not gonna listen to the prophets, they're not gonna listen to me. The reason I share that, and that's a whole other theology, and I'm not getting into that theology, is to say this that person in hell is not like, dang, I really wish you didn't talk about hell so much. Like, I'm gonna guess that the millions, if not billions, of people that end up in eternal separation away from God forever, they're like, Why is the why did you know about this place and why did you know about that place? And why didn't you shut up about this? Like, this place is real. There is suffering. There, that like at the end of the day, whether it's gonna be on this side of eternity, on the other side of eternity, it says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, and hell should not make us hell should make us uncomfortable, first of all, but it shouldn't make us uncomfortable. So that we look at the injustice of God, like how dare you! Hell should make us so uncomfortable that it gives us an urgency to say, I can't shut up about this. Like Andrew was just here in the lobby before this, and in the lobby or in the hallway, we have the hall of names, and there's over a thousand names, six, hundred names. If you haven't seen it, it's a really cool spectacle. But I think it's not cool in the sense of like, ooh, ah, it's in the sense of a complete depravity, of this feeling of hopelessness and helplessness of these people are dying and going to hell. And Andrew got emotional with it because he's just like, What am I doing? Like, if there is, he didn't even know we were talking about hell today, which is interesting. But if it is true that these people are dying and spending an eternity away from Jesus, then what am I doing, not using every single moment of my resources and of my life to not share with these people? Now, again, like we are not the people that are going to open the eyes of their heart, and we can share the gospel every day of our lives and no one will get saved. And that's not because we weren't faithful, it's because that just wasn't the will of God. But again, as we talk about hell, hell should be something that makes us uncomfortable, but it should move us to action. Like it, I think the way that we should view hell is like that guy did in Hacksaw Ridge. If you guys have seen that movie, if you haven't seen it, you need to see it. It's amazing. There's this guy that's on top of this ridge, and people are being murdered, and and he's just running around on this ridge by himself. His whole platoon jumped off the mountain, he's by himself, and what he would do is he would find people who were wounded, he'd take them to the edge of the cliff and would pulley them down. He did it all in a night, and all he kept saying is just one more. I saved one person. Let me go find somebody else. And then he would grab them and drag them, like potentially could die for what he's doing. Just one more. He ended up saving over 70 people's lives. Like, I think that's the way we need to view hell. Because, like, is the qu the question is, is God actually unjust? And I think we allow this question and this wrestle to keep us from being faithful. And if I'm honest with you, like this is a side note, I think we blame God for our own fear. I don't think it's actually the fact that we don't do it because we don't think God is just, but I think there's this innate, like God has written eternity into our hearts. I think we know that there is hell. I think we just want to blame God for our lack of faithfulness, for our faithlessness, because of the fear that we have of sharing the gospel with people. The fear of rejection, which is a huge fear, the fear of not being welcomed anymore. But the question is, is God actually unjust? And when you think about this, Billy Graham actually, uh, who's like the dude. If you don't know who Billy Graham is, I don't know where you've been. Most non-believers know who this man is. But if you don't know who he is, look him up. He's really an awesome guy. Got to lead a ton of revival in the, in the in the 60s, all the way until you know the early 2000s. But he has this, he talks about hell like this. He's like, why could God ever create a place like that? Well, well, God did create hell because everything that's created is from God. But God did not create hell for his image bearers. Like, I need us to think about this. Like, God, like when God created everything, he said at the end of it, right before he rested, he said that it was very good. Like everything was in order. He brought peace into the chaos, including his image bearers. God did create hell, but God created hell not for his image bearers, but for the angels that were up in heaven that rebelled against him. So anybody that rebels against God needs to be in a place where God is not, because rebellion can't be in the presence of God. He cast those demons and he casts Satan out of the thrones of heaven and into a place where he is not. And that place is called hell. He did not create his image bearers to be a part of that. The thing that we need to understand is that God doesn't send people to hell, we send ourselves there. We make the choices. Like the question is like, why does the punishment of sin is death? The reason that the punishment of sin is death is because sin is death. Like it's a natural consequence. Like, like it is the natural thing. Like when you sin, when you do things outside of the design of God, when you do things that are not of the character of God, God God is life and God is good and God is full of grace and mercy. When we do things outside of Him, then what happens is we get surrounded by things that are not of Him, which is death and destruction. We I've talked about this before in the podcast. I I my theology of sin is God's like, Hey, there's BB caps right there. It's a really it's a really busy road. Don't run across that road because people are constantly going back and forth and they're going super fast. And we're like, okay. And then we run across the road. And we somehow get lucky and don't get smoked by a car. And God's like, that was dumb. Don't do that. You're like, but God, I didn't get hit. And then we do it again. And God, in his grace, because he's full of it, is keeping us from being hit. But eventually, what God's going to do is he's going to give us up to our own ways. He's going to say, Okay, you can go across the street, but I warned you. Like the parent that says, kid, don't touch the stove. Not because I hate you, but I'm trying to protect you from hurting yourself. God's like, fine. And then there's a time where we're going to run across the road, we're going to get smoked by a semi. And we're like, God, what the heck? Like, why'd you hit me with a car? God's like, I didn't hit you with a car. You ran into the road, and the natural consequence that you're suffering now is that you got hit by a car. Like, that's the theology of sin. Like, sin is death. Sin isn't merely breaking arbitrary rules. Sin is rebellion and it's against the source of life, which is God Himself. And so when we look at hell, it's not something that should make us think that God is unjust. Actually, hell is the most just thing that God can do. The way we then look at hell, knowing the cross is there, is that God did everything in his power other than force us to believe God did everything in his power to make sure that we don't spend an eternity in hell. He left the thrones of heaven. He lived the life that we were supposed to live. He never sinned and therefore he never deserved death. But he took all of your sin and he took all of my sin. He took all of Andrew's sin, he took all of Russ's sin, and he put it on his shoulders as if he was the one that committed it. He took the rebellion against himself on himself and paid the bill that we were due. Like we owed a bill that we could not pay. We are finite human beings and we sinned against an eternal God. And so therefore, in order to pay that off, we have to pay for it for an eternity. We owed an eternal amount of money that we did not have, and the only way that we could ever be forgiven is if an eternal God paid the debt for us, and that's exactly what he did. And we know that three days after he died on that cross, he left that tomb empty. Like God did everything he could possibly do to keep us from it. Hell should not be something that causes us to be frustrated at God. Hell should be something that should make us realize that his grace really is unbelievable. Hell is real and hell is what we deserved. And if there is anybody listening to this podcast and you are saved, listen to me. You are not saved because of yourself. You're not saved because God loved you and your sin and he didn't love other people. You're not saved because you were special and different than other people. The only reason that you are saved is because of God's grace. And the thing that we deserve is eternal damnation in hell. And so whether there's fire, like C.S. Lewis's theology of hell is that it's actually we get everything we could ever want in life. Because it goes from us saying, God, your will be done, to God going, your will be done, Ben. What a terrifying reality that is. And like his theology is that you just get everything you want with no hope, no fulfillment, no satisfaction, just ever-increasing hopelessness. And so for us, we're saved not because of works done by us in righteousness, we're saved because of him. And now what we get to do is now we get to go tell people about this rescue plan of God. We get to go tell people, guys, you're not going to believe this, but God loves you in your sin and he wants to save you. And it's our job, whether we are equipped or not, it's our job to go tell people about how we have been rescued and we have been redeemed. And so, hell, how can God send people to hell? I don't think God sends people to hell. I think we send ourselves to hell. We run down that road and then God does everything that he possibly could other than force us to believe in him to save us. Like we don't preach hell instead of grace, we preach hell because grace is so astonishing. Astonishing. Sorry. So maybe the question isn't why would God send people to hell? Maybe the question is if we really believe that hell is real, why don't we talk about it more? And so, man, we hope we it answered your question. Hell is a real place, but our God is a God that is full of grace and full of mercy. And it's not a place that he sends people that he hates. It's a place that people send themselves because of the sin that they commit. So we hope that answers your question. We're gonna continue on with this series. Andrew's not gonna be with us all the time. He's a huge fanboy of this podcast. Uh he's really a fan of Russ, so he wanted to come check it out. So we uh we're excited to keep doing this with you guys. We we're a quarter of the century in, so we hope to get to the century mark with you guys one day. But we love you guys if you have questions, please, please, please ask away. Subscribe, like, share, because we believe honest questions deserve honest answers. We love you guys. We'll see you next week. But until then, Pookis, Andrew, and Russ the Bus. Out