Allen Webster

Topic(s): Eternity, Pain & Suffering, Sin

Links to this entire series:

• If I Don't Preach on Hell: Part 1
• If I Don't Preach on Hell: Part 2
• If I Don't Preach on Hell: Part 3
• If I Don't Preach on Hell: Part 4

If I don’t preach on hell, I’m not following the example of Bible preachers. Some think that speaking about hell is not preaching the Good News (“Gospel”). Others think that anyone who preaches eternal punishment for the unsaved is “cruel and narrow.” It would be better to be called cruel, when we were really kind, than to be flattered and told we were kind when we were really being cruel. Is the doctor cruel when he tells his patient that he has a heart problem? Is the surgeon cruel when He tells a man he has appendicitis, and then hurries him away for an operation to save his life?

A preacher should desire to never be any broader or narrower in preaching than Jesus and the inspired preachers were in theirs. We should not be as afraid of being called out of date by our contemporaries, as we are of being found out of harmony with God’s Word. Epictetus drew a contrast between a false philosopher, who was out for popularity, and the real philosopher, whose one aim was the good of his hearers. The false philosopher dealt in flattery and pandered to self-esteem. The real philosopher said: “Come and be told that you are in a bad way.” “The philosopher’s lecture,” he said, “is a surgery; when you go away you ought to have felt not pleasure, but pain.” Alcibiades, the brilliant but spoiled darling of Athens, used to say to Socrates, “Socrates, I hate you, because every time I meet you, you make me see what I am.” The first essential to getting one to change it is to compel him to see himself as he is.

Whatever you think of the propriety of speaking about hell, preaching on hell puts one in good company.

Moses, the greatest preacher of the Old Testament, spoke of hell (Deuteronomy 32:22).

Job, a “perfect and upright man,” spoke of hell (Job 26:6).

David, “a man after God's own heart” (Acts 13:22), spoke of hell (2 Samuel 22:6).David sang about hell: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17). “The sorrows of hell compassed me about” (Psalm 18:5). Again, “The sorrows of death compassed me about, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me” (Psalm 11:6; cf. 55:15; 86:13; 116:3).

Paul, a preacher filled with Christ’s love, preached on hell. Paul loved his enemies (Acts 26:29), cared enough to “spend and be spent” for others (2 Corinthians 12:15) and was willing to be accursed that others be saved (Romans 9:3). Yet he preached on God’s wrath and sinner’s destruction: ¹“. . . God willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction” (Romans 9:22; Philippians 3:18-19; 1 Thessalonians 5:3). He wrote per-haps the strongest passage ever written about hell by someone other than Jesus: “Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

John, the apostle of love, spoke about hell. He had leaned on Jesus’ bosom at the Last Supper, and been called the “disciple whom Jesus loved” four times (John 19:26; 20:2, 7; 21:20). John seems to have been the most affectionate of all the apostles. His epistles are filled with phrases like “beloved of God,” “my little children,” and “love one another.” Yet John spoke of hell. He called it a “bottomless pit” no less than seven times (Revelation 9:1-2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3). He called it the great winepress of the wrath of God (Revelation 14:19). He even came up with the word picture more people have of hell than any other—a name that no one else had ever used for it—“the lake of fire” (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14-15).

Jesus, the greatest preacher of all time, spoke often of hell. Never man spake as Jesus (John 7:46)—yet He spoke of hell (Matthew 5:22; 23:33; 25:41; 13:49-50). Jesus used the word in his first sermon (as recorded by Matthew). In fact, the first time the word is used in the New Testament it was Jesus who said it (Matthew 5:21-22). The same lips that spoke the tender words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not” (Matthew 19:14) also said to the worldly-wise, self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of Hell?” (Matthew 23:33). The most solemn utterances about the eternal woe of the lost came from the lips of Him who died that men might not perish. He taught the doctrine of hell in more terrible language than they had ever heard it stated in the Old Testament. He spoke of:

• “The broad way that leadeth to destruction” (Matthew 7:13).
• “Lose his own soul” (Matthew 16:26; see 19:23).
• “Eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46).
• “Outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30).
• “Unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43-44).
• “Wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42, 50).
• “Thy whole body cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29-30).
• “Everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41, 46).
• “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:46-48).
• “Eternal sin” (Mark 3:29).

Jesus warned, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28; cf. 23:33, 25:41, 46). In the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16) Jesus depicted the intermediate state of the wicked, between death and the resurrection. We learn that the wicked:

• Do not cease to exist (“he lifted up his eyes and saw,” 16:23).
• Are aware of where they are, and what is going on around them (“I am tormented in this flame,” 16:24b).
• Recognize others (“Father Abraham . . . Lazarus . . .,” 16:24a).
• Remember those still living (“I have five brothers,” 16:28a).

Could anything be plainer than the words in Mark 16:16: “He that believeth not shall be damned.”

Footnotes:

¹ Paul never mentions the actual word hell, but he often spoke of the concept.