"I'd rather laugh with the sinners that cry with the saints
the sinners are much more fun...."
That Billy Joel lyric is a thought prevading those who refuse to take Hell seriously. What I hope I have done over these last two posts is convince you to take Hell- its reasons and requirements- seriously. But now I ask the question- what is Hell to be like?
I know one problem in conceiving Hell is "How can these things happen forever? A fire that never goes out? C'mon?" And here, I can dip into the wisdom of comic books! A long time ago, Marvel ran a series where the loosely-based-on-Satan character Mephisto was playing a trading game to capture the soul of the cursed hero Thor, who was an Asgardian "god". In capturing a mortal of good character with which to "trade up", he told his attendant demons, "Subject her to some of the lesser tortures, but have a care! She is of flesh, and more fragile than a naked spirit." Spirits are indeed more durable than flesh; they last forever, whatever condition they find themselves in. Thus, you can rest assured that if you go, you WILL go through this forever.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there is punishment BEFORE the final Hell. The final Hell is the Lake of Fire, into which all the evil will finally be cast, after the Great White Throne judgment when all is remade. But death in the here and now merits you Hades, which Jesus described in His telling of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 13. But before we get there... There are a handfull of beings that will experience punishment in the flesh. Here I reference the Book of Enoch, which while not properly Bible cannon, was quoted by the Apostles, notably Jude and 2 Peter. Before Noah, the world was ruined spiritually and physically by the Watchers (referenced in Genesis 6), angels who left Heaven to take on flesh and breed with human women. The physical damage was caused from the offspring of these matches, whom Genesis politely calls, "the Mighty men of old, the heroes of reknown", but Enoch better names monsters. The spiritual was from the Watchers themselves, led by a being called Azazel, who taught men war, weapon-making, sorcery, horoscopes, and other dark arts.
While the Watchers were made to watch, Enoch says, the flood killed the mortal bodies of these offspring; they become the demons we know of (and, as I have noted before, explains why Jesus said that a cast-out demon will "seek out arid places", in Matthew 12:43). Azazel and the others are bound and taken to a "place" like Hell Enoch called Dudael. The others are bound to seven dark stars on the edges of existence; Azazel gets a darker fate. He is bound hand and foot, buried "under jagged rocks", with absolutely no light reaching his eyes, until the last judgment when he also gets the Lake of Fire with the others. The only other beings to reach the Lake Of Fire wearing flesh will be the Antichrist and the False Prophet, right after the Armageddon War (Revelation 19:20).
With just what I've typed so far, you get the main features of Hell: fire and darkness. But I want to dig a little more. Both Enoch and Jesus tell us that, at least in Hades, the damned will be seeing the blessed in Heaven, at a great and uncrossable distance. They will have as a punishment the ability to see what they threw away.
They will also have the accusations against them played before them. Jesus taught this in Matthew 12; the Men of Nineveh, who repented at the preaching of Jonah, will condemn those who reject Jesus at the judgment, as will the Queen of Sheba, who fainted at the wisdom of Solomon, but recognizes the greater wisdom of Jesus. This meshes well with Enoch, also. He tells us that Abel will continue to accuse the damned until the judgment comes.
And I asked Raphael the angel who was 6 with me, and I said unto him: 'This spirit which maketh suit, whose is it, whose voice goeth forth and maketh suit to heaven ?' 7 And he answered me saying: 'This is the spirit which went forth from Abel, whom his brother Cain slew, and he makes his suit against him till his seed is destroyed from the face of the earth, and his seed is annihilated from amongst the seed of men.'
Jesus often mentioned it as a place, "where the worm dies not, and the fire is never quenched". This He takes not only from experience, but from Isaiah 66:
Isa 66:24 “As they go forth, they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched, and they will be a horror to all mankind.”
"Worm" means voracious maggots. Where the maggots die off (or turn to flies) as the flesh of a body is consumed, these are maggots that will eat at the spirit- and as a spirit cannot die (as we know death), the consuming by worm and fire will go on. Another feature of Hell is brought up in the next words of Enoch: That the souls of the damned will be seperated from each other- no companionship. And further: They will be seperated by sin-class: those who never received any judgment in life "shall be set apart in this great pain till the great day of judgement and punishment and torment of those who curse for ever and retribution for their spirits." Others will get lesser punishments, which goes along with what Jesus told the cities he lived in:
Mat 10:14 And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.
Mat 10:15 Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.
So three classes of judgment PRIOR to the Lake of Fire: Those who "got away with it", those who were never taught the Gospel, and those who heard it and rejected it- and if you haven't accepted it, this is now your category.
But finally, in the end, the sinners will be assembled before the Judge at the Great White Throne; every misdeed, every careless word, will be weighed; and then...
Rev 20:12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
Rev 20:13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.
Rev 20:14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
