When Do People Go to Hell?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:06] Speaker B: We're in a season discussing questions related to heaven and hell. And today's question is, when do people go to hell? [00:00:13] Speaker C: Oh, that's a great one. All right, so the answer is very simple. People go to hell after the Great White Throne judgment. Okay? So at the end of history, we have the end of the world, all the stuff that comes with that. And you can, you know, debate your friends on how you think it's going to go down. But we agree on this. Jesus will come back again. The second coming. There will be a final judgment, and then that will usher in the new heavens and new earth, where the spirit and the physical realm converge. We get resurrection bodies. And we talked about this in the last episode. So somebody's kind of parachuting into this one. Where is Hell? Scriptures teach that hell is on the new earth. So when do people go to hell? They go to hell after Jesus comes back. They go to hell after the Judgment, when the new earth, if you will, is created. So most people think, though, that when you die now, you go to hell, you go to a place called Sheol or Hades. It's a temporary holding place for souls who rejected God. But hell itself is a future yet to be made place that's going to be on the new. The new Earth. Somebody can go back and listen to. I think it's season three, episode seven on where is Hell? If they want to kind of go deeper. So let's read some scripture together. Revelation, chapter 20. Ryan, would you. Would you read this? [00:01:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:01:31] Speaker A: Verse 7, Revelation 20. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were. And they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. Awesome. [00:02:16] Speaker C: So this is striking. It's very hard language sometimes to understand, but like, you have a battle at the end of the world, Jesus comes back, judges them, judges humanity. And then what you find here is he's kind of forming the new heaven and new Earth. [00:02:33] Speaker B: If you will. [00:02:33] Speaker C: Or the new Earth, it's the new heavens. He kind of converges. All the physical realm is being recreated, from the stars to the moon, to our atmosphere to our Earth. Everything physical, everything material gets basically cleansed and purified. And then what you find here is very simple. Like, the world ends, the beast is judged. It says, the false prophet is judged. And then. Yeah, like all of this, the creation of hell, all of it happens at that point. But keep going. There's more in Revelation 20. [00:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Verse 12. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened, then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. [00:03:19] Speaker C: Yeah, and this is important. Everyone is judged by what you do. You are saved by faith in Christ, but you are judged for what you do. And unfortunately, you and I are going to be judged as guilty, but we're going to be declared innocent because of the blood of Christ that covers us. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Verse 13. [00:03:34] Speaker A: And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death, the Lake of Fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the Lake of Fire. [00:03:55] Speaker C: Yeah, so you. This is. This is striking here, but like, you have books, one is the Book of Deeds, if you will, and one is the Book of Life. We're all going to be guilty based on the Book of Deeds, but like in the Book of Life, right, if your name's in there, you are going to be on the new earth with God. Now, here's the striking part. He says, this is the second death. Everything, basically everything that was in Death and Hades, everything that was in Sheol, all the Spirit, whatever, everything gets dumped into hellfire. And that's essentially the picture here. And so again, a lot of metaphorical language, but really, if you boiled it down, it's the world comes to an end, it gets chaotic. At the end, Jesus comes back, he ends the chaos. He judges the false beast, the prophet, angels, people who've rebelled against him. And if your name is written in the Book of Life, you go under the new earth, as with resurrection body, where you worship God and you're with him forever. And if your name is not written in the Book of Life, then you are sent into the Lake of Fire, which again, we talked about is on the new Earth. [00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:53] Speaker C: So it's. It's not complicated, but there's so much language here and detail and metaphor and apocalyptic literature that we can kind of get lost in it. But if you really boil it down. Yeah. Later. So hell doesn't exist yet. [00:05:06] Speaker B: It sounds like there's a whole series [00:05:08] Speaker A: on Revelation at some point. [00:05:09] Speaker C: Do you know how many people ask me for that? [00:05:11] Speaker B: People that. [00:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:12] Speaker C: Like, the amount of fights that we could start in our church is striking. It'd be. It'd be a blowhouse. [00:05:17] Speaker B: I took a class on Revelation in college, and honestly, I feel like I left a little more confused than when I went in just because there's so much. And there's timelines. People have positions on all the different. How it's the sequence of events. But what's important is, again, coming back to the text. But, yeah. [00:05:34] Speaker C: A little secret at Village Church. Okay. Most people don't totally know this, but I get to listen to a lot of people's doctrine and convictions. And so, like, I'd mix people up into three categories. Okay. On the Rapture, the Rapture is always the one. Unfortunately, the Rapture doesn't come up in Revelation. So, like, if we teach through it, we never touch it. But there are those group one who's like, rapture, Rapture, Rapture, Rapture. It's real. It's real. And they. Most of them don't even know that, like, people don't believe in the Rapture. And there's a Rapture that's like a group of people. The Rapture is not in the Bible. It's the second coming. It's one event, you know? And then there's this third group who's like, what? [00:06:08] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. What are you talking about? [00:06:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's funny because the Rapture people think the non Rapture people are dumb, and the non Rapture people think the Rapture people are dumb. And so it's kind of a funny thing. So I'm like. I don't know if I really, like, want to unnecessarily pick a fight, but maybe we should, because it'd be fun to kind of get people off their soapbox and really think critically about what Scripture says. And I get asked. It's one of the most frequent questions, like, what's your view on the Rapture? [00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like, future. Future Village Church digital episode. Yeah, yeah. [00:06:37] Speaker C: It's so funny. There is more controversy on the Rapture than there is me talking about gay marriage, trans issues. I could. I could get up and talk politics and there would be less tension. And this. I think this is actually the case in most churches. [00:06:50] Speaker A: It's the. [00:06:50] Speaker C: The rapture is a very emotional doctrine for the people who know. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm personally reading this passage. I'm like, man, there is a lot here. Like, I'm trying to think through all the details, but again, God's word is his word, and we get the chance to read it and talk about it and appreciate you helping kind of like bring some clarity into it. [00:07:10] Speaker A: So thank you.