Death and the Afterlife:
Eternity Decided in Time --- Part Two
by Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon

Hell may be ridiculed and outdated in the minds of many people, but that does not eliminate its reality. Given the infinite holiness of God, one thing is certain: the strongest arguments against hell will be silenced forever on the other side. (Polls since 1944 indicate that although 50 to 60 percent of people believe in hell, only 3 to 4 percent think their chances are good of going there.¹)  Many people think they will never go to hell because they don’t "deserve" it. But popular views of Universalism (all will be saved), variations on conditional immortality (the unsaved will be annihilated), and ideas of the opportunity for salvation after death are impossible to defend scripturally.²  Because of God’s infinite righteousness, hell cannot logically be considered immoral. But it could actually be immoral for God to save everyone irrespective of their will, or to annihilate those having intrinsic value, those created in His image.³

The most predominant feature of hell will be the eternal absence of an infinitely loving God and the never-ending presence of just punishments for individual sins (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Daniel 12:2; Matthew 10:28). Hell apparently involves degrees of punishment according to the works done in this life (Matthew 11:21-24; 23:23; Luke 12:47-48).  In contrast to what most people think, those who are condemned to hell will recognize, and accept, the perfect justice of their presence there. Hell is a subject that all people should contemplate for many reasons. Among them⁴ are the following.

1) God Himself does not desire that anyone perish, and He has done all He can, this side of death, within the limits of His character and the human condition, to save people (2 Peter 3:9; Acts 17:26-31). It is entirely possible that, given God’s infinite knowledge of what every possible created being would do under every possible circumstance, God has so structured human existence so as to save the greatest number. Further, it is equally credible that "of all the possible persons God could have created, the vast majority of those who would have rejected Christ never get created in the first place. The number of people who reject Christ may be an act of mercy on God’s part."⁵  It is even possible that, given God’s holy character and human responsibility, there is no world God could have created in which all created persons would have freely accepted Christ. Apparently, "God prefers a world in which some persons freely reject Christ but the number of saved is maximized over a world in which a few trust Christ and none are lost." Thus, "The actual world contains an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and those who are unsaved would never have received Christ under any circumstances."⁶

2) It is obviously in our own best interest to escape going to hell. Apart from Christ, hell is assured, but this fate can easily be avoided in this life by trust in Jesus for forgiveness of sin (John 1:12; 3:16-18; 5:24; 6:47).

3) Hell is not unjust. The one true God who has revealed Himself as infinitely loving and merciful has also spoken of the reality of eternal separation from Him; therefore the doctrine of hell cannot be inconsistent with His love, justice or mercy. Few people balk at the devil going to hell because they assume the devil is bad enough and God just enough to warrant it. Only when it comes to us do we question its justness. But if it is just for the devil, can we assume it is never just for those of us who are "like" the devil in attitudes and actions, especially as they are directed toward God? (See John 8:44; 1 John 3:8.) Indeed, apart from hell, justice itself becomes a myth. All creation will one day understand this (Romans 3:4-6). Even if someone like Adolph Hitler were punished for billions of years and then brought into eternal heaven or annihilated, his time of punishment, compared to eternity, would be essentially meaningless.

4) Hell is not a place where God actively tortures people endlessly as if He were the director of some kind of torture chamber. Hell was made for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41), not men and women. But people who continue their rebellion against God must suffer the just judgment of their sins. Since God will not permit unrighteousness or anything unholy to enter heaven (Revelation 21:27; Habakkuk 1:13), there must be some other place for the unrighteous to inhabit eternity. And if the unrighteous are not permanently quarantined from the righteous, all we have is an instant and eternal replay of life on earth, and this is surely not heaven! There will be psychological and physical anguish and torment in hell, but this will result primarily from the conditions of hell and people’s own choices and realizations, not from God Himself actively inflicting their torment. A judge and jury who justly send a man to prison do not torment him; his own choices and the conditions of prison do.

5) Sin committed against God is not like sin committed against others. Sinning against an infinite being requires an infinite punishment which, for finite creatures, can only be experienced as eternal punishment. Further, the amount of time it takes to commit a sin has no direct relationship to the punishment it deserves. A bank teller may plan a robbery for months, while his accomplice may murder someone in a moment. The evil of a crime is related more to the nature of the crime and the one against whom it is committed than the time it takes to commit it. No one can accurately gauge how an infinite God, whose holiness is immeasurable, responds to even the smallest human sin. One would think that for a literally infinitely holy Being, even the most minute human sin would be fully heinous and worthy of eternal separation. Also, because the unredeemed are unredeemed, they continue to sin after death and apparently will continue to sin inwardly forever (Matthew 8:12).  But the only just punishment for eternal sin is eternal punishment. The bottom line is that a good God cannot be unjust in punishing people eternally. What hell means is that there is final justice and that hell is no more or less than perfect justice (Romans 3:4-6). If, in this life, few things are as satisfying as justice, this must also be true in the next life. And hell must also be in full harmony with the love of God. "God loves justice, holiness, and righteousness so much that He created hell. The love of God for His own nature, His law, His universe, and His people, makes hell a product of love as well as justice.⁷

6) Our choice for God is important to Him (Luke 13:34). People who refuse Christ in this life would be quite unlikely to accept Him in the next life, in hell, because their basic nature is not altered. If Scripture declares that the unredeemed are God’s enemies who want nothing to do with Him (Acts 4:25-27; Romans 1:18-32; 5:6-10), why would anything change just because someone died? Even if they somehow did decide for Christ, it would only be to escape the punishments of hell rather than to love and obey God. They would not be choosing God and Jesus on their own merits, and thus they would not be suited for eternal life with God and Jesus in heaven. No one wants to live forever with someone the person dislikes. The more we understand the nature of heaven as being infused with the nature of God, the more credible is the idea that the unredeemed would not enjoy heaven either.

Of course, the longer we refuse God’s gift of mercy now, the harder it becomes to accept it later. Every day, in almost every way, we are either moving closer to God or further from Him. At the end of an unrepentant life, God simply grants our wishes. C. S. Lewis emphasized, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ "⁸  In another book, Lewis writes:

If a game is played it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully "all will be saved."  But my reason retorts, "without their will, or with it?" If I say, "without their will" I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary?  If I say "with their will," my reason replies "how if they will not give in?"⁹

7) The punishment in hell is apparently tempered for some. God can only do what is just in this life and the next. Hebrews 11:6 says that God rewards those who seek Him. Acts 10:35 says, "In every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right, is welcome to Him." Abraham asked, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25) The psalmist said, "He will judge the world with justice and the peoples with unfaltering fairness"  (Psalm 98:9). Thus, not everyone experiences the same degree of pain in hell, since there are apparently degrees of punishment. The person who did not know God’s will and did not do it will receive "but few" stripes (Luke 12:35-48; Matthew 10:15). It makes sense to believe that those who were less evil in this life are not punished to the same degree as those who were more evil, because God is unable to violate His holy character and give any person more punishment than he or she deserves. This means that God, who is infinite in knowledge, knows the perfectly deserved and righteous punishment for every person who has ever lived. In the end, although hell is not what the unrighteous want, it will be seen to be what the unrighteous deserve.

7 Robert A. Morey, Introduction to Defending the Faith (Southbridge, MA: Crowne Publications,

9 C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: MacMillan, 1971), p. 8.