This, from you based on prior comments you have made in the past is an astounding proclamation. Though your inconsistency must be noted. You say that love, compassion and concern for others are so important, so non-negotiable as values that you would discard God and his affirmed ideology if it did not include them (or included their opposites). I am rather pleased to see you say this and implore you the burden of saying it more often when necessary. However...
Why does the doctrine of hell, which you do so affirm and defend not bother you? If an absence of love and compassion would be enough to make you discard yourself from Christianity then why isn't the very idea of an existent realm of which over 70%+ of the human race, according to your understanding will languish for eternity not make you wretch? Why is the non-specific "love" as a concept so important but not the idea that people do not deserve to be tormented or tortured for eternity for how they think or for being born with traits or tendencies they did not know how to remove?
The doctrine of hell does not bother me because in the two-thousand and sixth year since the year of our Lord, I, by the will of God, had my eyes opened to see who I was as God saw me. I at once saw myself as one beloved of God and at the same time, saw myself as one who was in active rebellion against Him. I, saw, by the will of God, that I was at once, a murderer, an adulterer, a sexually immoral whoremonger, a reviler, a drunkard, a drug abuser and drug seller, liar, undisciplined, ruthless, faithless, heartless, hater of good, hater of authority, selfish, egotistical, maniacal, lascivious, boaster, prideful, arrogant thief among other things.....
This revelation of God pierced my soul and cut me to the quick, exposing me for all that was in my heart. Outwardly, I was your typical young twenty year old. Inwardly, I was a ravenous man. Not unlike the demon possessed man in the land of the Gerasenes who cried aloud night after night and roamed through the tombs naked, bruising himself with stones, delirious with grief, hatred, sorrow, and loneliness.
Like so many men and women who saw themselves as sinners when convicted of their inner sin sick condition after having had the light of God shine upon them, I knew I needed a physician. I knew I needed to be made well. I knew it was not a doctor that I needed however, for my sickness was not of the physical sort at all. My sickness came from within, in my heart. I cried out in the torment of my exposed soul which sought to hide from that radiance bright. But Christ was already there waiting and did not suffer me to wait a second. He was there, even before I cried out, waiting for me, with such unspeakable patience and love. He had been waiting for twenty long years. I did not have to run and find Him! I did not have to ascend up into the heavens to find Him there, nor did I have to descend into the depths of the earth to seek Him out there. He sought me out, and His seeking, caused me to seek Him.
He had been standing at the door of my heart knocking for some time.... I had heard it clearly at first, years prior, when I was in church sitting with my mother. I was afraid, as most young children are. I did not really understand that sense, that urgent compulsion within my breast that made me almost stand up of its own accord and walk down the aisle. Even then I had some sense, however small it was, that I was in need of forgiving. That I had done some things that God was not pleased with. Things I would never tell anyone, not even my mother......And so Sundays came and Sundays went....I grew up and eventually that voice, that knocking grew dimmer and dimmer, until it was altogether silenced, drowned by the cacophony and bustle of teenage life.
And so, God allowed me to keep the door of my heart closed. It was my own choice you see. I could have opened it and allowed Him to come in. Such sweet fellowship was mine for the accepting. But out of fear, I did not open that door. God, in some strange, mysterious, and magnificent way, allowed me to indeed keep that door closed. He could not open it from the outside. He had to be welcomed in. He loved me too much to intrude and upset my petty little party I had going on inside. But nevertheless......He waited there....outside for many many years; protecting me, watching over me. I know personally, that several times I should have been all but dead from the things I was doing, the drugs I was taking, and the fast, loose, and reckless way I was living. Several of my friends have passed away....they were doing nothing different than I.....but they are gone....I still remain.....
Late that night, or early that morning, I know not which one it was....I know that Christ came inside when I at long last....like the prodigal son.. confessed my folly and ignorance and rebellion, and sought to return home....I opened the door of my heart and He came inside. It is marvelous, now that I recall that moment....I feel like the Apostle Paul felt when he said that he saw things and heard things that mere mortals are not fit to utter. It cannot even be appropriately described in words. This encounter with the Divine....it is something altogether different. I think God has made it so that those who have experienced it might never forget it.
God in that moment, actually became real to me. Prior to, He had been nothing more than a concept, or an ideal....I often, as a child, tried to rap my mind around it all....but it was all a mental exercise....I knew God then like a person who has never met the President could say they know him. They may know how old the President is, they may know where he lives, what school he went to, how many kids he has, and a plethora of like facts. But when God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit entered me, I
knew God. God was no longer an abstract concept...the subject of philosopher's and theologian's musings....No no....in that moment, a relationship was initiated and I began to commune with the Very God who spoke the universe into existence. The very God who formed man from the dust of the earth.... The very God who spoke life and light into the dark void of the expanding cosmos.... This God who spoke to His prophets in the Holy Scriptures and who has spoken in these last times through His Son Jesus. He speaks now, for He has never ceased speaking. He speaks not to the ear of man alone....for how could He restrict Himself thus???? This would be to neglect the deaf! He manifests Himself, not to the human eye...for then what would become of the blind???? No no....He reveals Himself to the spirits of men and women who have been touched by His love, who have been awakened from their sin induced slumber and He invites them to fellowship with Him in righteousness and holiness....
So my friend, when you ask me about hell, and why it does not bother me, that some people are going to ultimately be there for eternity, I can honestly say that I myself deserved it. I am simply being honest. I also know that I am no different than any other person who has ever lived. If I need a Savior, everyone does. There is none righteous, no not one. If I had died in my sins, I would have had no one for my defense except myself, and I would have made a lousy lawyer indeed! For what could I say to Him who sees all and knows all? What excuse could I bring to satisfy the Holy God who created me and showed me the way therein that I should have walked? If I had dared to defend myself in the presence of the Almighty then it would have only served to confirm my sentence of condemnation. I would have not had Jesus there by my side as my propitiation. He would have caused to pass before my eyes the hundreds of times the Holy Spirit was convicting me and pleading, begging me to repent and to turn from my sensual wickedness. And all the times I ignored that pleading.....He would have caused to pass before me the countless sins I committed, in thought, word, and deed....sins so innumerable that to endeavor to count them would itself take an eternity....
When a person stands before God on judgment day, oh that dreadful day for the unrighteous, faithless, and wicked...that day will not be a day for excuses. If you think about it....how could it be? What excuse could a wicked man give God for living wickedly that would suffice??? Lord Lord, I did not know it was wrong to cheat on my wife!, Lord, I did not know that it was evil to lust after women in my heart and harbor all sorts of vile thoughts in my mind!!! Lord, I did not know it was wrong to hate others because of the color of their skin!!! Will these excuses satisfy the Holy requirement of a righteous God? The sad part is that in seeking to justify himself, the man would be adding one more sin to the list.....that of lying! For not only did the man know that all of the above were wrong, but is seeking to justify this wrong! Christ, in all His splendor and majesty would simply cause every instance of stinging conviction of his conscience to play like a movie reel before him...starting from the first time as a child when he stole the lolipop from the drug store and got that queer sense that the act was wrong.....like a parade of military soldiers marching before their commander....so too would every instance of his conscience convicting him form into an innumerable mass as they made their way past him....leaving the man in utter silence and shame. Alas.....for the man, there would be no excuses, he would have to admit that for whatever reasons, he neglected this conviction and chose to live as he were his own god with no one to answer to.
And then of course, Christ would allow to play before the man, every instance of the man's life that the gospel had been proclaimed in his hearing and it entering in one ear and out the other, never making its way to his heart, and the man would be reduced to tears and shame....
Seeing there is no recourse and no way of escape, the man levels his head, and lifts his chin as his pride comes roaring to the fore to defend him and he gnashes his teeth. In one last desperate display of self-sufficiency, he shakes his fist at Christ and is there.... consigned to abide forever away from the presence of God.
Eternity is not to be seen as a million years or a billion years or even a trillion years....Eternity is the very absence of time itself....There is no measure of passing time there....
And so, for eternity, the man is consumed....consumed by his own hatred, his own malice, his own pride....this consuming is like a fire that never goes out....for there is no one there to put it out....each person there is so self-centered, so self-sufficient, that they would never even think about anyone but themselves....this pride....this fuel which feeds the flames that ascend forever and ever come from the very soul of the one it consumes....perpetually...eternally.
Hell is a horrific place.....more horrific than anyone can possibly imagine....so horrific that Christ warned that if our eyes cause us to sin that we should pluck them out, that if our hand causes us to sin that we should cut it off....why? It is far better to enter into life maimed, than to be cast into the hell of fire whole.....
Hell is real because God is real. If it had not been for Christ no one would have hope. Those, however, who are well, have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.
But Christ has come....His atoning work has been finished.
For Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
