“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1).
Years ago, when I first started studying the cults of Christianity and how they managed to spin the Bible to deny its most basic teachings—the Trinity, Jesus’ deity, God’s sovereignty, the depravity of man, salvation by grace through faith alone, etc.—one thing I began to realize was how often old lies or heresies never seem to die.
They simply get regurgitated with new names or reordered with seemingly more sophistication, and all or most of it under the rubric of sound Bible exegesis and exposition.
Such is the case with the doctrine of hell.
Back then it was commonly understood by most people, including many non-Christians, that hell was not a nice place.
Dark, hot, lonely, and a place of eternal suffering, it was accepted that no one wanted to go there, because once a person entered the place created for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:41), that person was stuck there forever and ever and ever, without reprieve.
Roll ahead 40 years, or at least from my initial entrance into biblical study and apologetics (polemics) and the religious landscape among many so-called “Christians” has changed.
Oh, it’s not that hell has changed—although I expect that it will, given the stupendous amount of biblical illiteracy that grips the average Evangelical church—it’s that the stay in hell has.
More and more people are arguing that those who go to hell do not necessarily suffer forever, but will be either annihilated out of existence or go through a purification by fire whereby they will be redeemed, which depending on the position being postulated, would include the devil and the demons too!
So, I’ve decided to take up the challenge of dealing with this latest barrage of regurgitated lies.
The devil may be more crafty than any beast of the field, but the light of God’s word always exposes such craftiness for what it is, whether the devil and his dupes repeat it over and over and over again ad naseum or with added variety to make the gullible accept it as true.
For the sake of God and those who have been fooled or are contemplating that hell is something other an eternally horrible place to end up, let the truth of God shine forth.
