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A Correction About Hell
Most of us have been raised to believe that there is a place called hell into which the unsaved will be cast at the end of the world and be tormented for eternity. We are living in a day when God has really removed the seal from the Bible so that we are able to gain a much clearer understanding of truth, especially in relation to the end of the world (see God Is Revealing The End). Consequently, we are now learning that some of what we have believed for so long was not accurate.
Given that we are all so familiar with the concept of an eternal place of torment, it might be better to first summarize what we can now know about hell. Then we will examine it all more closely in the studies that follow as listed in the menu to the left.
On the day of the Rapture the believers who had previously died will be resurrected and go to be with Christ. Then the believers who are still alive will immediately follow. As a result, all of the elect will have been removed from this world and taken to Heaven. During this event, based on what we currently know, it seems to be true that the remains of those who had previously died unsaved will be exposed in their graves (possibly as the result of a massive worldwide earthquake). God will then pour out His wrath on this world for a period of time before completely destroying it. Nothing will be left. The earth, the stars, all of the people who are still alive, all of the bones of the dead, even hell itself: all of it will be burned up and cease to exist. This means that the unsaved do not get cast into an eternal place of torment. Instead, their entire existence comes to a complete and utter end.
Admittedly, this is hard to grasp because it is such a foreign concept to those of us who grew up in the churches. However, we have to stay faithful to the Bible and sometimes that means correcting what we previously believed to be true.
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16)
We know that this teaching will be rejected, even hated, by most professing Christians. Because of that, it’s tempting to not want to share this with others but we have to stay faithful to teaching God’s Word, no matter what it says.
Why Was This Hidden?
Before we work through the Scriptures on this topic, we might ask ourselves, “Why would God have hidden this information?” Sure, there are a couple denominations that believe in what they call “annihilation,” but we will see that even that doctrine isn’t entirely accurate.
As far as I’m aware, the Bible doesn’t explain to us why God hid this from us for so long. Perhaps if we were aware of this fact, it would have negatively impacted the spreading of the Gospel. God certainly placed sufficient statements in the Bible that seem to imply there will be a literal place of eternal torment. God crafted every word of the Bible so He did that intentionally, with the intent to reveal the truth in the end. We can only wonder why?
Perhaps it was to establish a testing program. We know that God does test those who claim to be His followers to determine if their hearts are in the right place:
"And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou would keepest my commandments, or no." (Deuteronomy 8:2)
God tested Abraham when He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. He even tested Christ through Satan (Matthew 4:1-11).
False doctrines are also testing programs God has established. The point of these tests is to determine if we are going to listen to the Bible alone or are we going to listen to our pastor or our family or our logic or our feelings and experiences? The tongues doctrine is one example. God could have clearly said in the Bible that He would no longer distribute the gift of tongues after the Bible was completed, but He did not do that in order to accommodate those who wanted to build for themselves a doctrine that satisfies their own desires. (see Study on Tongues)
In a way, the ultimate false doctrine is the free-will salvation doctrine. It has been around longer than any other popular false doctrine that we find in the churches of our day. God has allowed this false doctrine to spread in the churches. Isn’t it interesting that a crucial part of the free-will doctrine is the idea that if we don’t get ourselves saved we will spend eternity being tormented in a place called hell? Ultimately, those who hold this doctrine place some stock in their own ability to impact whether or not another person becomes saved as they witness to them. To that end, as they witness they need to have a threat they can use to scare people into listening. I, too, remember using hell as a reason to pray for salvation. If we were to just say, “You will cease to exist after death unless you become saved,” the majority of people would respond with, “So? That’s not so bad.” The free-will doctrine needs the threat of hell and God has accommodated it by not granting understanding of what happens to the unsaved after they die.
Of course, this is just speculation. We don't really know why God has kept this information hidden until today.
Now that we are close to the end of the world God’s testing period is also coming to an end. In our day God is removing the seal from the mysteries of His Word (see God Is Revealing The End) so that new things can be learned, things that were once hidden:
“Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.” (Isaiah 48:6)
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