Hell

Scriptural discussion of Hell What does the Bible reveal about Hell? A wonderful, thorough survey of all Scripture says about this place of the dead, dispelling myth and revealing the love and goodness of God towards men.
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What the Bible really says about HELL

Tartarus

In addition to Hades and Gehenna, one other word, used but once in the Scriptures (2Pet. 2:4), is translated as "Hell" in the King James and other versions. This word is Tartarus, and it is a word that never refers to Hell. References to Tartarus anywhere in the ancient world are infrequent, but here is one from Homer's Iliad (8.13), written as much as a thousand years before Peter penned his second epistle. In this scene from The Iliad, Zeus, the Greeks' supreme god, is threatening any of the gods who disobey his command, "I'll catch him and throw him down into Tartarus! A black hole that! A long way down! A Bottomless Pit under the earth! Iron gates and brazen threshold! As far below Hades as Heaven is above the earth!"7

Tartarus, to the Greeks, was an indescribably gloomy and horrible place, reserved for the very most wicked of mortals and for the most dangerous enemies of Zeus among the immortals, in particular, the Titans (including Zeus' father who, according to Greek mythology, ruled the universe before Zeus overthrew him). There is some truth to this general concept.

Peter used a verb form of Tartarus when he wrote (2Pet. 2:4), "God did not spare the angels who sinned, but He gave them over to chains of darkness, consigning them to Tartarus to be preserved until the Judgment." It sounds a little odd to translate the phrase, "consigning them to Tartarus" as "God tartarized them", but that is actually what Peter wrote. So, from here on, I will use the word as a verb, as Peter did.

If the evil spirits, or demons, mentioned throughout the Bible are, in fact, the angels8 who were cast out of Heaven with Satan (Rev. 12:9), and since those fallen angels have already been "tartarized", or consigned to Tartarus, as Peter said, then Tartarus is not a place of fiery torment but a place of utter hopelessness. Tartarus, then, is not a location but a spiritual condition, a living damnation. It is the very worst of all spiritual conditions, for reasons we will now explain.

Demons are undeniably in Tartarus right now, as Peter said. However, they have not yet been cast into Torment, as they themselves acknowledged to Jesus in Matthew 8:28-29: "And when Jesus had come to the other side into the territory of the Gergesenes, two demoniacs, coming out of the tombs, met him, so extremely fierce that no one could pass by along that road. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?"

Peter's description of Tartarus, where fallen angels now dwell, matches what Jude said in verse six of his brief epistle: "And the angels who did not retain their original office, but abandoned their home, God has retained in eternal chains, beneath darkness, until the Judgment of the great day." First, note that Jude taught that fallen angels are at this time "beneath darkness". This suggests (and even Homer felt the truth of this) that Tartarus is a place worse than the typical fiery punishment of dead sinners; that is, worse than Hell. God's judgment of His unfaithful angels, then, is that Hell is too good a place for them. And that means that Tartarus is the worst of all places to be, a place to which only the creatures most abhorred by God are consigned, being held in the chains of that darkness until the time comes for their torment to begin.

One's first reaction to this might be that Tartarus does not seem that bad, since the flames of Hell are presently being escaped. But wisdom teaches us not to be so hasty in reaching such a conclusion. The fundamental difference between Hell and Tartarus, and the thing which makes Tartarus a far worse place than Hell, is that, since no one in Hell can any longer do anything, it is impossible for those who are in Hell to sin any more, while in Tartarus, just the opposite is true. In Tartarus, it is impossible to stop sinning. Those in Tartarus are condemned to live, but to live in sin only, continually storing up an increasingly horrific punishment in the Lake of Fire.

The beauty and goodness of life on earth is that it is a place of almost boundless hope, a place of opportunity to do the will of God, a place of opportunity for growth in understanding and in goodness, a place of hope for correction and for change, a place where choices are still available and responses can still be made to God's love. Not one of these precious blessings exist in Hell; they are reserved only for those still living on the earth. But in Tartarus - and tragically for those condemned to dwell in it - some of these wonderful blessings are still available. That is what makes Tartarus the most horrible of all conditions.

God hates wickedness, of course, but He hates a mixture of wickedness and goodness even more. He forbade the Israelites so much as to wear a garment woven with two kinds of cloth (Dt. 22:11), and He strictly forbade yoking different kinds of animals together, such as an ox and a donkey. There was a half-hearted shepherd in Laodicea who mixed love for God with love for the world. Jesus said to him, "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I prefer that you be either cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am about to vomit you out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16). Yes, God abhors a mixture, and "mixed" is an apt description of Tartarus. It is a mixture of blessings and curses, and it is the most hated of all places. It is the most despised of all spiritual conditions, reserved for the most abhorred of all creatures, and from which there is no hope of escape - until the time comes for those unfaithful angels to be cast into the Lake of Fire.

True repentance (one of the precious blessings available to people on earth) is not something men are capable of doing on their own; it is the work of God within the heart. The very earliest believers understood this well. When the believing Jews in Jerusalem heard that some Gentiles had been converted, they rejoiced - but not because the Gentiles had decided to repent and believe the gospel! Rather, they rejoiced because, as they said, "God has granted repentance to the Gentiles" (Acts 11:18). They understood that true repentance is something that must be granted by God. In Tartarus, fallen angels are not allowed to repent, for God refuses to allow them ever to feel compunction for wrongdoing. Nor can Satan, the fallen cherub who is tartarized along with the angels who followed him, feel shame for his evildoing. The condition of his heart toward God is described well by Job: "His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the lower millstone" (41:24). Neither Satan nor his angels are restrained in wickedness, as men are, by the influence of God's holy Spirit, and being no longer under any law from God, they cannot possibly do good in God's sight, only evil.

Everything Satan or the fallen angels do is sin, no matter what they do. They cannot cease from sin because God will not grant them grace to stop. They are cursed with the most terrifying of all of God's curses; namely, a combination of God's refusal to allow them to repent and God's refusal to let them die. Those who are in Tartarus are blessed with life but cursed with the kind of life they must live. They are also blessed with the ability change, but without any grace from God, they can only change for the worse. They retain the blessing of liberty to make choices, but with no help from the Spirit, they can choose nothing but what is ungodly. They can still grow (they have no choice about that), but with no mercy from God, they can only grow more wicked - and this they constantly do.

This partial liberty, this mixture of good things and bad, is what makes Tartarus so much worse than Hell. Those in Hell can sin no longer, and for that, they should be grateful. The degree of their final suffering is set and will not change, but those in Tartarus are cursed to continue living sinful lives as long as God chooses to impose upon them His blessing of life. They are doomed to constantly add to their record of sin in God's books (Rev. 20:12) and, so, to make their eventual judgment and torment far worse than if God would bless them with death so that they could stop sinning. In Hell, as the Scriptures say, souls are "preserved" in death, for they are locked into the ungodly condition in which they died. In Tartarus, however, spirits are "preserved" in life, to commit ever more iniquity and, so, to become worthy of an ever greater damnation. For the souls in Tartarus, death and Hell would be a blessing.

2Peter 2: "Cursed Children"

It would be misleading for me to leave the topic of Tartarus without pointing out the unsavory biblical fact that Satan and the fallen angels are not alone in the place of extraordinary damnation they inhabit. It is a fact that Peter's reference to God's tartarization of fallen angels is found in a chapter that is not focusing on the spiritual condition of angels at all; rather, that entire chapter concerns the spiritual condition of certain of God's own children who are still living on earth. Peter's description of the state of fallen angels is only one illustration among several that he employed in that chapter to show how severely God deals with treachery in His family. Peter's whole point in bringing up the issue of God's tartarization of treacherous angels and their present state is to emphasize a far more important point for us; namely, that some of God's own children are tartarized just as the treacherous angels are.

In this 2nd chapter of his 2nd epistle, Peter's entire focus was to warn the body of Christ that it is possible for children of God to provoke the Almighty to such wrath that they, too, may be "preserved [in life] unto the Day of Judgment to be punished" (2Pet. 2:9). Such reprobate brothers and sisters are, Peter said, "cursed children", who, like the fallen angels, "cannot cease from sin" (2Pet. 2:14) because God will no longer extend to them His grace. Peter described them in much detail. The following information about tartarized children of God is gleaned from 2Peter 2:10-13:

Cursed children of God "walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government." Incredibly, Peter says they are "made to be taken and destroyed." (I could hardly have believed that such people existed in the body of Christ unless it had been written in Scripture.) They unwisely "speak evil of things they do not understand", and "they shall utterly perish in their own corruption", receiving "the reward of unrighteousness."

They consider "public luxury a delight," and their exalted opinion of themselves notwithstanding, they are "spots and blemishes" in the assembly of the saints, presuming too much about their standing before God and "reveling in their lusts while they feast with you." When Jude spoke of these fallen saints, he called them, "trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots" (v. 12), and the author of Hebrews held out no hope for those who are already dead a second time (Heb. 10:26-31), ending that portion of his letter with the oft-quoted warning: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Swift Destruction?

In the main, Jude and Peter were speaking of believers who function as ministers, those dedicated but deluded workers who are the New Testament equivalent of ancient Israel's "false prophets". This is the awful conclusion forced upon us by the opening words of this incredible second chapter of Peter's second epistle: "But there were false prophets also among the [Old Testament] people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. Through covetousness, shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you, whose judgment now of a long time lingers not, and their damnation does not slumber" (2Pet. 2:1-3). This condition would be a terribly tragic end to a life once sanctified by the holy Spirit of God, but we must confess that it happens. To deny it is heresy.

For years I wondered, if it was true that these false teachers are still functioning as leaders of God's people and are prospering among the saints, how could Peter say that "swift destruction" had come upon them and "their damnation does not linger"? Now, I understand. And tartarization is the answer. A tartarized minister may prosper in Christianity, may be zealous and happy, and may be confident in his relationship with God. But the blindness to his true condition is part of the curse. That is why, as Peter would also say of them in this chapter, "They sport themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you."

Our point is that brothers and sisters in this state are in a spiritual condition similar to that of fallen angels; that is, they are now in that place called Tartarus. Being alive on earth, they are no more in torment than are the fallen angels, and despite any pleasant circumstance in their lives, "their damnation" really "does not slumber" because they are in Tartarus. They live out their damnation every day, ever confident, but supremely blind to their spiritual state, and they are now used by God only as stumbling-blocks for the purging of others who still have hope. Jesus spoke of what will happen to them when, shortly before his return, God will have finished using them to try the faith of the upright: "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and those who commit iniquity, and they shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mt. 13:41-42; cp. 49-50).

In the last half of 2Peter 2, Peter continues his description of children of God who are in Tartarus by saying that these cursed children are ministers who have followed Balaam's example (2Pet. 2:15-16). Balaam was an ancient prophet of God who lived in Mesopotamia. His story is recorded early in the Bible, in Numbers. He was not an Israelite, but he did serve the true God and became famous because of his many true prophecies. Balak, king of Moab, sent to Balaam and offered him great wealth if he would make the long trip south to Moab and prophesy against Israel, but God would not allow Balaam to curse His chosen people.

Balaam, frustrated at his lost opportunity to gain wealth, immediately consulted with some nearby Midianites (the cleverest people on earth), and together they devised a plan to gain for Balaam the reward that Balak had promised. Realizing that God was never going to allow him to curse Israel for Balak, Balaam, with the Midianites, counseled Balak not to fight Israel but to humble himself (or so it would appear) to blend his nation with Israel through intermarriage and a mixed worship of Jehovah and the gods of Moab. It was extremely crafty and wicked advice, and when Israel fell into the pretty trap, Balak was pleased and Balaam secured his reward. But his plan inflicted a deep wound on Israel's spirit that was never completely healed. So, through Balaam's counsel, King Balak conquered God's people through peace, a cunning tactic prophesied to be used by Satan again to confuse and subdue the people of God (cp. Dan. 8:25). Balaam's sin was so heinous a crime against God that Jesus still spoke of it with indignation in the last book of the Bible (Rev. 2:14).

Balaam was driven by a desire for earthly gain to the extent that he was willing to teach what he thought would bring it to him. In short, he became what Jesus called a "hireling" (Jn. 10:12); he agreed to perform a religious service to the wicked for money and position. He became a purveyor of false hopes, a professional liar, using his gifts and closeness with God to obtain earthly riches.

The Way of Balaam

Ministers among God's people now who are hired to teach a particular brand of doctrine are also walking in the way of Balaam (cp. Rev. 2:14), and Paul prophesied that many such men would be needed in the future in order to satisfy the lust of fallen saints for pleasant doctrines (2Tim. 4:2-3). Borrowing some imagery from Solomon (Prov. 25:14), Peter calls such ministers "wells without water" (2Pet. 2:17a), for their sermons can raise hopes, but they can never satisfy souls hungry for the true knowledge of God. They are "clouds that are blown about" by an impressive wind, clouds that betoken showers of blessing, but the rain never comes (2Pet 2:17b). They are speakers who can enthrall audiences, but only "through lusts of the flesh" (2Pet 2:18). But most tragically, for those who have newly been converted to Christ, such ministers are an especially dangerous attraction (2Pet. 2:18b), promising to lead those "babes in Christ" into liberty while they themselves have actually "returned to their own vomit" and have again become "the servants of corruption" (2Pet. 2:22, 19).

Worst Among The Worst

As awful as the tartarization of fallen angels and the Devil is, the tartarization of cursed children of God is actually worse. And what makes the curse of God's unfaithful sons so much worse than the curse on unfaithful angels is that the angels know they are damned; whereas, from everything we see in the New Testament writings, and in life, it appears that when sons of God are tartarized, they think they have actually taken a step forward in grace. Paul called this a "strong delusion" sent by God (2Thess. 2:11). Like Samson when he awoke from his nap on Delilah's lap thinking God was still with him, they do not even realize that God has forsaken them and that their hearts have been cursed with hardness against the light of God. God looked on in deepest grief while Israel (often called "Ephraim" in the book of Hosea) became ever more hardened, to the brink of being forsaken by the God who had loved them so long and so dearly. "Strangers have devoured his strength," said the Lord, "and he knows it not. Yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knows not" (Hos. 7:9). Finally, the awful day of the curse came, and with a heavy heart, God resigned Himself to the fact that His people just did not love Him: "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face" (Hos. 5:15). With His withdrawal came the loss of holy correction and guidance. "I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery. . . . The people who do not understand shall fall. . . . Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone" (Hos. 4:14, 17). Jesus, with the heart of God, knowing that many in Israel were about to be turned over forever to the ceremonial forms they had chosen instead of life with him, sat on the hill overlooking the holy city and wept aloud, "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How often I would have gathered you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate" (Mt. 23:37-38).

This curse of a rock-hard, misguided confidence in one's standing with God is without doubt the most fearsome curse imposed upon any of God's creatures, but it is the real condition of some believers, as many Scriptures indicate. Under this curse, "blind guides" consider themselves to be apostles of the Lord Jesus (2Cor. 11:13), and, like their Old Testament counterparts, they run when God has not sent them (Jer. 23:21). What they run with is humanly devised doctrines. They run, as Isaiah put it, with their own "fire", setting others on fire around them with their lies, who in turn become little sparks reflective of their leader and who then pass on to others that self-willed style of worship and service to God (Isa. 50:11). Jesus bluntly and roundly condemned such religious zeal among God's people (Mt. 23:1-33). Under this curse, many leaders of God's own people had spent their lives and fortunes reaching out to others with their own ideas about God, but Jesus was not impressed: "Woe unto you . . . for you compass land and sea to make one convert, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of Gehenna than yourselves!" (Mt. 23:15).

A man under this curse does not know that his leader is the Devil and that the voice guiding him is Satan's voice, speaking as "a messenger of light" (2Cor. 11:14). Under this curse, God's own sons become "ministers of Satan" (2Cor. 11:15), and, "thinking to do God a service", with a heart cursed to be as hard as Satan's, they disparage "the way of truth" and persecute the upright - all in the name of the Lord.

This is the greatest curse of all, the same curse which Christ besought the Father to impose upon the Jews who turned him over to the hands of sinners (Psalm 69). In that Psalm, Christ prayed that God would turn His blessings to Israel into curses; that is, that He would turn into a stumbling-block the very things God had given to Israel for their blessing: "They gave me also gall for my meat, and for my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table [of shewbread] become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare [the law of Moses], let it become a trap. Let their eyes be blinded, that they see not . . . Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your wrathful anger take hold of them . . . Add iniquity unto their iniquity, and let them not come into your righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the Book of the Living, and not be written with the righteous" (excerpts, Ps. 69:21-28).

This astonishing prayer of the Messiah for God's greatest curse to come upon rebellious, unbelieving Jews was answered after the elders and people of Israel rejected Jesus, choosing instead to continue in those things he came to fulfill: the temple worship, robes and incense, holy days, and the other ceremonies that the Law commanded them to keep. All these things were holy blessings, but they were intended by God to be prophetic signs of the work and majesty of their coming Messiah. And by rejecting him and clinging to the now worthless works of the Law, their greatest blessings were transformed into their greatest curse - just as the Son of God had prayed. They gave their hearts to the works of the Law instead of to the One to whom those works pointed. Tragically, instead of submitting to their own Messiah and being filled with God's Spirit, they spent the rest of their lives performing the now dead ceremonial works that Christ had fulfilled, in rebellion against the God who had given them the ceremonies to keep.

Through Jeremiah also, the Spirit of Christ cried out for God's help for his soul in Hell and for God's curse upon those who had persecuted him. Listen to his story: "My enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off my life in the dungeon and cast a stone upon me . . . I called upon your name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon [the heart of the earth]. You have heard my voice; hide not your ear at my breathing, at my cry. You drew near in the day I called upon you; you said, 'Fear not!'

"O Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul; you have redeemed my life. O Lord, you have seen my wrong; judge you my cause. You have seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me. You have heard their reproach, O Lord, and all their imaginations against me, the lips of those who rose up against me, and their device against me all the day. Behold their sitting down and their rising up; I am their music. Render unto them a recompense, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. Give them [hardness] of heart, your curse unto them. Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord" (Lam. 3:52-66).

As for the traitor Judas, after the Son of God prayed for God's vengeance against him (Ps. 109), that poor man had no hope whatsoever. Jesus prayed that the Father would make even Judas' prayer to be sin (v. 7). "As he loved cursing," Christ prayed, "so let it come unto him" (v. 17). And it did.

Judas had walked closely with Jesus for years and probably was wise enough to realize, at least to some extent, that he had been tartarized by God and, so, he could never again do anything but sin. What a terrifying place for a man to find himself! It is not surprising that this doomed disciple chose to commit suicide rather than to live out his earthly life in Tartarus with the fallen angels, constantly sowing seed for a greater damnation in the Lake of Fire.

How well David understood the value of being chastened and allowed to repent! "Blessed is the man whom you chasten, O Lord, and teach out of your Law, that you may give him rest from the days of adversity, until the Pit be dug for the wicked" (Ps. 94:12-13). And how true are the Master's words, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." If you have ever done wrong and felt conviction enough to repent for it, fall on your face and give God glory! You have been loved! Those who are cursed with God's greatest curse are not loved, and God in His righteous fury has so blinded them that, more often than not, those tartarized children of God think they are still blessed. Didn't Peter tell us that they "sport themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you"? The chief priests who helped kill Jesus no doubt made sacrifices to Jesus' Father the next morning, kneeling and thanking Him for finally being rid of the troublesome carpenter's son from Galilee.

"Better Never To Have Known"

Jesus taught that to whom more is given, more is required (Lk. 12:48), and believers in this New Covenant have been given much more than angels in heaven have ever been given. "Behold," wrote John, "what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!" (1Jn. 3:1). Ours is a relationship with God about which angels know nothing. In fact, angels long to understand our relationship with God (1Pet. 1:12). Then, because the sons of God are more blessed than angels, more is required of them than of angels. From that, it is easy to see that unfaithful sons of God are worthy of a far greater damnation than are unfaithful angels. And that greater damnation expresses itself on earth in fallen saints' joy while in Tartarus. Their great blindness makes them happy to be where they are, and zealous to do such religious works as God hates, "thinking to do God service."

Peter's final words concerning these tragically fallen saints are sobering: "If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment given unto them" (2Peter 2:20-21). Because of what eternity now holds for them, it would have been better for the fallen angels if they had never been created at all. And because of the special damnation waiting for the tartarized children of God in the Final Judgment, it would have been better for them if they had never even heard of the name Jesus. Their own new birth experience will testify against them.

Paul pointed out the justice of such terrible judgment from God in his second epistle to the saints in Thessalonica. There, Paul shows that God is neither cruel nor unjust in His tartarization of especially stubborn and rebellious saints; quite the contrary, it is manifestly just to turn over to darkness those who are given light but choose not to walk in it, but cling to darkness instead. Paul said that it was "because they did not receive the love of the truth" that God would "turn them over to a strong delusion." And God will thus curse these formerly loved sons and daughters "so that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2Thess. 2:10-12). We cannot help but see and say that this is harsh; nevertheless, we cannot call God unjust.

The wise humble themselves to confess this simple truth, and it is a truth that makes every wise soul tremble: No matter what God decides to do with any of us, it will be a perfectly just judgment. That always will be true because God Himself is always perfectly just.

During the Thousand-Year Reign

Finally, as to God's future dealing with fallen angels, it appears that during the thousand years that Jesus reigns on the earth, they, like their leader, the Devil, will be rendered inoperative, so far as earth is concerned. We know that at the beginning of Jesus' thousand-year reign, John saw "an angel come down from Heaven, having the key to the Bottomless Pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years should be fulfilled. After that, he shall be loosed a little season" (Rev. 20:1-3).

It stands to reason that if the ruler of demons is kept in prison until God visits him and releases him for a short time, then his followers would be imprisoned, too. That scenario certainly makes part of the prophecy from Isaiah concerning the end of the world understandable: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the Pit, and shall be shut up in prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancient ones gloriously" (Isa. 24:21-23).