The Stark Remembrances of Eternal Damnation
For just as the new heavens and the new earth which I make will endure before Me, declares the Lord, So your offspring and your name will endure. And it shall be from new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down before Me, says the Lord. Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind. (Isaiah 66.22-24, NASB)
Recently, I was flipping channels on the television and made a stop on one of the local Christian networks. Amid a lot of applause, the host said, “We are here to lift people up. We don’t talk about hell and sin. People won’t tune in to hear that.”
In the vast majority of charismatic and Word churches today, there is rarely, if ever, any mention of hades or gehenna (gehenna was a dump just outside of Jerusalem’s where the refuse forever burned). Hades and the second death, however, are part and parcel of the Gospel. Jesus certainly wasn’t shy about the lake of fire:
I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell [gehenna]; yes, I tell you, fear Him! (Luke 12.4, 5, NASB)
In the passage in Isaiah, the prophet not only speaks of God’s new heaven and new earth at the end of the age, but also of the second death. While we like to think that all those damned souls are pretty much out of sight and out of mind, the prophet shows us that that is not the case. We, as the body of Christ, will be able to look upon those men and women who did not receive the Lord who must endure the eternal unquenchable fire of the second death.
In Luke 16, Jesus gives us the story of the rich man who died and found himself in Hades and quotes Abraham as saying to him:
But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. (Luke 16.25, NASB)
In this account, Jesus demonstrates that all of us, saved or unsaved, will remember our life here on earth.
Looking upon the lake of fire, we’ll remember that golfing buddy that would knock his drives over 300 yards, but also the fact that we never shared our faith with him. We’ll remember those girls’ nights out, but the fact that we spoke a lot about shoes and purses, but never about the Lord.
And then there’s the other side of remembrance - that golfing buddy might remember his long drives, but his mind would probably be more set on our failure to share the Gospel with him over the years. He has forever to think about that.