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

Erwin Lutzer observed, “Hell, more than any doctrine of the Bible, seems to be out of step with our times.”¹

Though some have “cut hell out of their Bibles” (cf. Jehoiakim, Jeremiah 36:23), it will still meet them in judgment. C. S. Lewis said, “There is no doctrine I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this (hell), if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture, and especially, of our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom, and has the support of reason.”

If I don’t preach on hell, then I will go there! Preachers have a responsibility to preach all of God’s Word. If they don’t, then sinners’ blood will be on their heads. God told Ezekiel, “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul” (Ezekiel 3:17-19).

David understood this principle, “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness” (Psalm 51:14). Paul lived by it: “I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men for I have not shunned to declare unto all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27). James cautioned Christians from desiring too soon to be teachers, knowing that they will receive “greater condemnation” (James 3:1). God even held Himself to this standard: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil way, for why will ye die?” (Ezekiel 33:11).

On one occasion Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, the agnostic lecturer of the nineteen century, was announced to give an address on hell. He declared he would prove conclusively that hell was a wild dream of scheming theologians who invented it to terrify credulous people. As he launched into his subject, calling hell the “scarecrow of religion,” he told his audience how unscientific it was, and how all intelligent people had decided there was no such place. A half-drunken man arose in the audience and exclaimed, “Make it strong, Bob. There’s a lot of us poor fellows depending on you. If you are wrong, we are all lost. So be sure you prove it clear and plain.”² So it is with preachers—we must acquit our consciences by making it “clear and plain.” If sinners insist on going before the judgment seat unpardoned, then there is nothing we can do to force them to prepare. Their blood will be upon their own heads. But they cannot go without having been warned of the consequences of that decision.

If I don’t preach on hell, you may go there! “The safest road to hell,” wrote C. S. Lewis is, “is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” A sermon on hell is a “signpost.” It is an opportunity to consider where one is going, and to change paths if necessary.
All of us need these warnings from time to time. Peter Cartwright, a nineteenth-century, circuit riding preacher, was an uncompromising man. One Sunday morning when he was to preach, he was told that President Andrew Jackson was in the congregation, and was warned not to say anything out of line. When Cartwright stood to preach, he said, “I understand that Andrew Jackson is here. I have been requested to be guarded in my remarks. Andrew Jackson will go to hell if he doesn’t repent.” The congregation was shocked and wondered how the President would respond. After the service, President Jackson shook hands with Peter Cartwright and said, “Sir, if I had a regiment of men like you, I could whip the world.”³

Jonathan Edwards preached the doctrine of hell with such force and power that on one occasion, when he ended his strong sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God,” the people held to the pillars of the church building for fear they would there and then slip off into hell. Consider some excerpts from this sermon that has been called the “most famous sermon ever preached on American soil” (with some adaptations and additional Scripture references). After announcing and reading his text: “Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:35), he said,

As he that walks in slippery places cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning. . .

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere longsuffering of God (2 Peter 3:9). It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were allowed to awake again in this world after you closed your eyes to sleep. . . . O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in . . . You hang by a slender thread. God is restrained by no obligation to sinners, nor is He hindered by any difficulty in carrying it out. He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but He can easily do it. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; thus easy is it for God, when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell. What are we that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles and before whom the rocks are thrown down? The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy and God’s mere will that holds it back. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, the arrow made ready and the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow.

Sinners are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. Jesus said, “He that believeth not is condemned already” (John 3:18). Every unconverted man belongs to hell. The reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God is not angry with them. It is not because God in unmindful of their wickedness and does not resent it.

The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own as soon as God permits him. The devils watch them like greedy, hungry lions that see their prey and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back. If God should withdraw His hand by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. For the present, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea, say, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further” (Job 38:11).

That God will execute the fierceness of His anger implies that He will inflict wrath without any pity. How awful are the words of Isaiah 63:3: “I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.” God hath had it on His heart to show angels and men both how excellent His love is and also how terrible His wrath is. When you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty.

It would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, even before this year is out.

Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open and stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. You now have an extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you as with those persons who spent all the precious days of youth in sin and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness. Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed” (cf. Genesis 19:17).

Footnotes:

¹Lutzer, One Minute After Death, p. 97
²Illustrations of Bible Truth, H.A. Ironside, Moody Press, 1945, p. 40
³Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching From Leadership Journal