IT HAS BECOME EXTREMELY TRENDY for professing Christians to claim that “hell isn’t real”, that “Jesus never spoke about hell”, that “hell has been invented as a form of religious control”, or that “people don’t get sent to hell but they get ‘annihilated’”, or that “God is love so he wouldn’t send people to hell”. I have seen this issue become a stumbling-block for so many new converts (especially those who come out of a New Age background) and even for long-established believers. There is a “God wouldn’t do that!” mentality, as they judge everything according to their own sentimental standards. They may also struggle with the embarrassment about it in front of unbelieving neighbours, friends and relatives.They struggle with the embarrassment about it in front of unbelieving neighbours, friends and relatives. I have struggled with it myself, in the sense that I have wanted to get to the absolute truth about all this and to find a way to present it to people sensitively but honestly.

Obviously, it would be out of kilter with the needs of evangelism to put a finger in an unbeliever’s face and yell, “You are going straight to hell, you sinner!” Hell, or any other name you want to give to it, should not be the first card that we play (unless an awful context calls for it). We should not shy away from it and we should be prepared to take questions on it and answer them clearly and honestly. But sensitivity and the leading of the Spirit are vital here.

So, allow me to answer the question, “Is hell real?” First this will involve revealing the identity of the “lake of fire and sulphur” and understanding the meaning of being “tormented day and night forever and ever”. So, what is this “lake of fire and sulphur”? Well, that is identified for us in the texts of Scripture. It is “the second death” (Revelation 20:14). This is reiterated in Revelation 21:8: “the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death”. Now what exactly is the ‘second death’?

Many readers may now be recoiling in horror at the mention of those two words and, for them, not only the ‘first death’ but also the ‘second death’ may be completely new and harrowing concepts. For those who are familiar with the words of the Christ, it is not a new concept at all. For example, He categorically said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body [e.g. evil humans or demons] but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One [i.e. God] who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matthew 10:28). The word ‘Gehenna’ was used by Christ a number of times as a symbol for the after-death state of complete separation from the Divine for those who refuse to follow Him and who prefer spiritual darkness to His Light. As I will develop more fully below, please do not be fooled by the word “destruction”. In the Bible, this does not mean being blotted out into non-existence but rather it is to exist in a state of ruination.

Christ also speaks about the great separation of “the sheep” (those who follow Him) and “the goats” (those who do not) at the time of the end of this age as resulting in Him saying to the latter, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:31-46). A similar warning of this ‘second death’ occurs in a number of places in the Book of Revelation, where for example we read, “And the smoke from their torture will go up forever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image will have no rest day or night, along with anyone who receives the mark of his name” (Revelation 14:11). There is no ‘annihilation’ there but conscious desolation. Most tellingly, in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verse 8, we read this:

“As for the cowardly, the unbelieving, detestable people, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic arts, idolators, and all those who speak falsehood, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. That is the second death”.

That verse is massive in terms of its implications for so much human behaviour, and I have provided an in-depth exposition of it in my commentary on the Book of Revelation. Obviously, that text refers to those who do not repent of those things and thus do not undergo the metanoia transformation through the Spirit. In those who do so, and who have bonded themselves with Christ, the penalty for those sins is wiped away through His death, resurrection and ascension (as I have also explained in that same commentary, which you can find here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2025/03/12/second-edition-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-available-as-an-e-book-in-pdf-format/ ).

It should also be said that “the lake that burns with fire and sulphur” is clearly symbolic and is not to be taken literally. But it occurs four times in the Book of Revelation to refer to the ‘second death’ — complete separation from the Divine and all the horror which that entails. I have tried to picture what that would be like in all its fullness, but I cannot. It is so much outside the realm of ordinary human experience that it is beyond the imagination. And if one does get any kind of inkling of it, that is usually the perfect incentive to become once more in relationship with the Divine.

The consequence here is that if one lives a life in which one arrogantly dismisses or rejects the Christ and His Light, scoffs at or mistreats His disciples, does what one wants without any consideration for others or of Divine or natural law, and thinks that one’s actions in this life are of no eternal consequence and behaves accordingly, then one dies as one has lived — separated from the Divine. Nothing unfair about that. It was the path which was consciously chosen and preferred.

It has to be said that separation from the Divine is considerably more tolerable during this life than it is after it. One can be separated from the Divine in this life and enjoy all manner of physical comforts and wonderful experiences, for God “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” alike (Matthew 5:45), though this counts for nothing in spiritual terms. Therefore, as long as one is alive, one has the opportunity to live it unrighteously or choose otherwise. But after that, if there has been no spiritual change in this present life, the ‘second death’ will seal one’s fate.

When one loves God and is filled with the Light of Christ, then the ‘first death’ (being “dead in one’s trespasses and sins”) is nullified. One still has to undergo physical death, but that has simply become a way to morph into a heavenly inheritance rather than slide helter-skelter into the ‘second death’. That ‘second death’ is something else altogether and cannot be escaped from if there is no transformation, metanoia, in a human soul. To get an idea of what that entails, this ‘second death’ is astonishingly a little part of what Christ experienced for a time on the cross when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, verse 1). In His vicarious experience, that ‘forsakenness’ necessarily had to happen. Thus, Jesus experienced all the pangs of hell on the cross in the place of all those who believe in Him and follow Him so that they would not have to. Are you understanding the implications of this? His atonement was a hellish experience. If you do not believe in hell, you are not only denying the Bible’s teaching on the experience of the afterlife for unbelievers but you are essentially negating the atonement of Christ! For He underwent all that hellish experience of Divine forsakenness on the cross in our place, as we will discover if we genuinely become His disciples.

I know these are starkly sombre thoughts, but they are nevertheless true, and one ignores them at one’s peril. You might want to say at this point that the exercise of ‘priestcraft’ in churches has involved using these ideas as a way of controlling their ‘flocks’ with ‘the threat of hell-fire’, therefore you refuse to take them onboard. But such abuses of power in churches through playing on the fears of people in order to control them and exercise what is really a false authority does not negate the reality of the ‘second death’. Just because something is being used wrongly does not mean that the ‘something’ in itself is wrong. Cults use ‘love-bombing’ to lure insecure people into their clutches; but that does not negate the goodness of showing great love to others. This understanding of the ‘second death’ may be unpopular in some sections of the visible church and would certainly be rejected by those who are not disciples of Christ, but it is, in fact, the elephant in the room in terms of any discussion on the human condition.

As I said above, I have tried to imagine that separation on an eternal level, but I can’t even begin to get my head around it; just as I can’t get my head around the idea that a situation can exist which is devoid of God’s presence when He is omnipresent. One has to conclude that the second death does not involve a geophysical location but is a state of soul in which God’s presence can never be experienced by those whose chosen fate is the eternal fire of judgement in eternal destruction — the most barren wilderness imaginable.

I say “chosen fate” because that is what it is, humanly speaking. One has a choice in this life. Eternal life through union with Christ or eternal separation from God forever. This life is where the choice has to be made. It could not be clearer. If a person repeatedly and finally scoffs at that idea, with no end to the scoffing, then they will have brought their future destiny on themselves. When I have spoken to people about all this, most have scoffed at me or looked pityingly at me, and a few have reacted as if this was music to their ears. The choice was made. Obviously, so long as they remain alive, they can continue to make a choice. But, from a human standpoint, it is a chosen fate rather than something unfairly imposed on a desperately reluctant soul. There will be nobody in hell who would rather be in heaven, as that would be even more excruciating for them! If they couldn’t tolerate the suburbs of heaven (the body of Christ) in this life, they will not desire the fullness of heaven over hell in the life to come!

The symbolic “lake of fire” known as the “second death” also has a number of other parallel names which all amount to the same thing. For example, one of those parallel names is “eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). But that does not mean being vaporised into nothingness or completely obliterated, annihilated. For the eternal destruction is qualified there as pertaining to being (and I quote) “separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might”. That is a form of destruction. It does not mean obliteration, as many claim, but, rather, a state of permanent devastation, ruination, desolation — the very opposite of what life should mean. It is a state of eternal death, separated from God, lived consciously and fully experienced to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how life on earth has been lived. (I will explain what I mean by those “degrees” further below). To those who stubbornly say that “eternal destruction” really means that one is simply annihilated, then how can it be explained when Christ says:

“It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Gehenna, ‘where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched’” (Mark 9:47-48).

That is not annihilation or vaporization. I take no pleasure in saying this, but it is some kind of neverending desolation or distress because of separation from God. Other parallel images are used to describe the post-death state of those who have refused to submit to the authority of Christ and become His disciple. One notable image is when Christ says that those who are not His true disciples will be “thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). The implication is surely that of being eternally lost in “outer darkness”, the equivalent of “destruction” and desolation, where there is a consciousness of that alienation which causes “wailing and gnashing of teeth”. This “gnashing of teeth” or teeth-grinding carries an image of extreme defiance and rage — an expression of contempt for the Divine, the same contempt which has been bubbling beneath the surface throughout the lives of those who despise the idea of a higher being to whom they are answerable.

That “gnashing of teeth” is the outraged and furious wordless articulation of the words: “No one has the right to rule over me!” Ah, but they do. Your Creator does have that right; and this whole theatre of life on earth down through the ages has been a demonstration of that right of God to rule and of its rejection. What about the wailing? The Greek word translated here as “wailing” actually means:

“A bitter grief that springs from feeling utterly hopeless. This ‘wailing’ is usually accompanied by shrieks, brought on by uncontainable emotional (psychological) pain”. [From “Helps Word Studies” in Strong’s Concordance on the word κλαυθμός, klauthmós, translated here as “wailing”].

This is serious stuff, my friends. People for centuries have tried to waffle this all away, dilute it, melt it down and make it into something more acceptable to the lily-livered liberal “woke” mindset. I have wrestled with it over the years. Many have. But I cannot pour cold water on that fire and I cannot put ‘eternal destruction’ in a time machine to make it go away or mean something else. John the Baptist said of Christ: “His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12).

To me, it seems as plain as a pikestaff. It is “inextinguishable fire” in “outer darkness” in which one undergoes “eternal destruction”, ruination, desolation, Divine forsakenness, which is as “lost” as one can be. As I said earlier, ‘destruction’ does not mean utterly obliterated as if there is nothing left. If you are told that your house has been destroyed in a gas explosion, that house still exists but in a state of ruination, which is there for all to see. So it is with eternal destruction. What that actually involves one can only imagine but never really capture its full significance and awful reality. One can have an inkling of it because Christ underwent that desolation on the cross, as can be seen in His terrible exclamation, “My God, why have you forsaken me!” (Matthew 27:46). This He did as part of His vicarious experience for all those He would gather to Himself in His Ekklesia, so that they would not be subject to that forsakenness if they unite with Him in His victory over death and Satan.

So many want to water down everything connected with the afterlife in order to make it palatable to the masses and to themselves; but there is nothing palatable about this subject, and in fact there is not supposed to be. In regard to the outer darkness which seems to confuse so many, we read in context a parable about a wedding party crasher, which finishes like this:

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he spotted a man who was not dressed in wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But the man was speechless. Then the king told the servants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’. For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:11-14).

Now, this is a parable in which the wedding feast refers symbolically to the event of the return of Christ for His people. There are those who claim that the “outer darkness” referred to by Christ three times in Matthew’s gospel is simply about the shame and inconvenience of being refused entry to the banquet and having to stand outside the wedding hall at night in the dark. I have never heard such claptrap in my life! Does that honestly sound like the kind of situation being referred to in this parable? Impenitent rebels against God are, as the apostle Peter said, “springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them” (2 Peter 2:17). This is serious stuff! In another parable plainly designed to picture His return to judge the world, Christ said that the master of the evil servant,

“will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not anticipate. Then he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:50-51).

This is the same weeping and grinding of teeth which Christ mentioned in relation to the “outer darkness”. Does this really sound like someone who is somewhat miffed to be put out of the wedding feast having to stand outside at night? The idea is ridiculous! But it is indicative of the lengths to which faithless people will go in order to twist the Scriptures. In another parable, it is said:

“So will it be at the end of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous, and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:49-50).

The “fiery furnace” here is another parallel idiom along with outer darkness, eternal fire, the lake of fire, eternal destruction, and so on. One cannot escape the fact that a refusal to submit to the Creator of the cosmos and a refusal to unite yourself with Christ and instead being in alignment with the satanic world-system (thereby having the ‘mark of the beast’, as I showed in my commentary on the Book of Revelation) will lead after physical death to an everlasting experience that is unthinkably terrible in all respects. I can only tell it like it is. I am only interested in truth. I would far rather have uncomfortable and unpalatable truth than agreeable and seemingly pleasant lies, though many who listen to the diluters of Scripture seem to disagree. When Jesus says, in His parable of the sheep and goats, “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41), those “many” who disagree say that the Greek word translated as “eternal”, αἰώνιος, aiónios, really only means ‘for the length of an age’ because it is derived from αἰών, aión, meaning age, therefore they say it cannot mean everlasting and is just temporary, until they have learned their lesson. But that brings a huge difficulty with it, because of this verse at the end of that parable, which states: “And they [the goats] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). For if the punishment is not eternal, then neither is the “eternal life” for the righteous, as the same Greek word pertains to each. If “eternal life” is not eternal for God’s people, then what happens after it? Do we go back to having an untransformed nature? That whole whitewash is ridiculous. Obviously, from our limited, three-dimensional perspective, we cannot properly perceive what ‘eternal’ really means. But if the same adjective pertains to both sides of the final judgement scenario, then that shows us what we are dealing with: Everlastingness.

The word translated as ‘punishment’ there is κόλασις, kόlasis, which can also be translated as “torment”, as in the text: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment” (1 John 4:18). It is surely no coincidence that the translation of kόlasis in modern Greek is, in fact, “hell”! It is so obvious that we are dealing with something that is both consciously devastating and eternal.

You may say that the whole of eternity doesn’t leave room for learning the lesson. But the lesson was supposed to be learned now, in this dimension. That is what this life and earth are for! If the only thing which makes you want to “learn the lesson” (i.e., “Okay, God, I give in”) is discovering first-hand after death how bad the ‘second death’ is, then that is the wrong motivation altogether! The time for choice is now, and not based on fear but on realising the power and glory of God. Once death strikes, the die (pun intended) has been cast and the choice has been made. I am mindful of that fateful saying in Ecclesiastes, “In the place where the tree falls, there it will lie” (Ecclesiastes 11:3).

To try and mitigate these uncomfortable truths is the wrong approach. Instead, we should find a way of penetrating their mysteries and accepting them. In any case, even if the “outer darkness” was only ‘age-long’ (i.e. lasting for some thousands of millennia), it would still be a serious matter! But really, the afterlife will be outside of time as we know it. So even using a word like aiónios doesn’t really carry the full reality. Suffice it to say that it is something utterly dreadful and unthinkable. Yet, there is another purpose:

“What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath who are fitted for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory?” (Romans 9:22-23).

All those who are “fitted for destruction” are here shown to be an example to the world that God gives salvation only to those who submit to Him. In fact, God shows immense patience with those who reject Him, considering that His fingerprints are smeared all over the whole creation. That patience alone demonstrates the glory of God. This is also why making it possible to ‘change your mind’ once the hammer of judgement has fallen on you would be so pointless. This present world and allotted lifespan is the time for the choice to be made. [NB: I make no inference here about those who sadly die before they have even grown or who may have some debilitating intellectual impairment. I leave all that in God’s hands, who is just and righteous and perfect, regarding His elect. There are many mysteries in this whole complex subject area. My in-text observations are primarily about those who either consciously reject or willingly receive God’s warnings and promises]. For those who reject God, there is only outer darkness, eternal destruction, eternal fire, unquenchable fire, the lake of fire, which all signify tormentuous separation from the presence of God forever. The miracle is that in this life, even if one rejects God, one is still privy to His mercy and presence in so many ways!

I cannot tell you the precise mechanics of that “destruction” or “separation”. Such knowledge is way above my current pay-grade. But I do know that I just cannot soften the blow. One cannot start thinking to oneself, “Well that’s not the way that I would do it!” Personally-speaking, I am just a fool who hardly has a clue. If God is infinitely wise and is the Creator of this whole show, and righteous and just and is love, and sees the end from the beginning, then I am very happy to leave all that judgement stuff up to Him! He knows best, and I trust Him completely. Trusting God leads to startlingly wonderful consequences in one’s life. Thinking one knows better than Him provokes a terrible fallout leading to a concatenation of deepening delusion and apostasy, such as is laid out by Paul when he elaborates on the judgement which befalls those who align themselves with the Antichrist rather than the true Christ:

“… they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie, in order that judgment may come upon all who have disbelieved the truth and delighted in wickedness” (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).

You can see here that this whole judgement thing is not about some capricious or arbitrary God bringing torment on people without good reason. For it will be the people themselves who will have wilfully “refused the love of the truth that would have saved them”. The more you reject God and His Truth, the deeper God allows you to fall into hopeless delusion, wallowing in deception and being entrenched in ‘The Lie’. Similarly, the more one rejects essential teachings such as the ‘second death’ and what it entails, the more one will find oneself on an exponential trajactory away from the truths of God’s word into ever-deepening apostasy. Whatever happens in the afterlife is purely the result of personal choices in this life. From a purely human standpoint, the ball is in your court.

[NB: If you want to say, “But what if I am not one of the elect? Then I have no choice”. Oh yes, you do. Not being one of the elect means that you consciously chose to reject Christ and you rejoiced in it. Don’t worry, you will not be sitting around cursing that you are not one of the elect! All are dead in their trespasses and sins and no one can come to Christ unless the Father draws them (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 1; Letter to the Colossians, chapter 2, verse 13; Gospel of John, chapter 6, verse 44). And if you still want to get on your hind legs and object, and say, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?” the voice of God will reply to you, “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why did You make me like this?’ Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?” (Letter to the Romans, chapter 9, verses 19-21). Oh the depths of these matters!].

Ultimately, it matters not one bit what we think about being “tormented day and night forever and ever”. It is all going to happen anyway. I find that so many want to do God’s thinking for Him. Personally, I do not believe He could have made it any clearer. But all these fancy-pants pastors, do-it-yourself theologians, and wannabe newbies with lily-livers want to try and explain away anything which offends their wishy-washy sensitivities to make it all more palatable and congenial. The fact that they have written so many books which influence the gullible and ignorant is something for which they will have to pay a great price later down the line.

Now, before you take up your torches and pitchforks to hunt me down and burn me at the stake, let me say that I do not make the rules, fortunately. I am just an itsy-bitsy little messenger-boy who is under oath, with a hand on the Bible, to report the truth as it is and nothing but the truth. So, do not shoot the messenger — just deal with the message! I cannot alter what the Scriptures say. I see symbolism where there plainly is symbolism. But what right do I have to waffle away the reality of being separated from the presence of the Lord “forever and ever”? Why would that be a symbol? How can “forever and ever” be a symbol? Now, you may want to say to me, “Read the book by so-and-so. He’ll soon put you right”. Dear friend, I’ve read ’em all and I’m not impressed. It all feels like desperation to me when people want to soften things up to make them more palatable to those who these days are rightly called “snowflakes”, those who melt away at a bit of heat. The same sort of desperation pervades the language of those who want to take things in the other direction and make them more rigid than they are. Those who take away or add to these scriptures are under the sword of a curse which should make them halt in their tracks before they play cavalier with plain meanings (Revelation 22:18-19).

Whatever we say to try and explain it all away, or not, it will be what it is and that is that. At its most basic, it involves separation from the presence of God. This is a state of soul. Hell is not a location in the manner in which we understand location. Outside of this present cosmos of limited dimensionality, there must exist a whole different space-time continuum. The fact is that we cannot imagine in any deep and realistic way whatsoever what the afterlife entails. We can guess. We can surmise. We can speculate. But that is all. For here we only have symbols, images, and suggestions.

Well that concludes my brief analysis about the ramifications of the final judgement and its implications.

One final thought: We read how John “saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne… and the dead were judged” (Revelation 20:12). That is all the dead, whether disciples of Christ and followers of God or not. If you are thinking how unfair it is to have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ scenario, you need to know that this is not the case and there will be varying degrees of condemnation for the unbelieving, and varying degrees of rewards for the faithful in the final judgement. Many do not realise this, which is why they try to smooth over the facts about the afterlife. But it should come as no surprise, as God is righteous and just. However, I have dealt with the degrees of varying condemnation for the unbelieving and varying rewards for the faithful in another article, so I will stop this exploration here.

Coming Soon: The second common question to answer in today’s largely apostate church will be this… QUESTION 2: “Is ‘Doctrine’ Necessary?”

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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