What is hell according to the Bible?

In Matthew 5 the statement is general: danger of hell-fire — thy whole body cast into hell; referring to sacrificing one member rather than sin; clearly not the valley of Hinnom. "Fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell," chap. 10:28. It is not the valley of Hinnom. They do not put souls there. It is metaphorically used for the place of final judgment and punishment. Chapter 18:9 is as in chapter 5; in chapter 23:15, a child of hell — one who is the natural heir — belongs to this place. That it is the place of condemnation in judgment Matthew 23:33 shews: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the judgment (kriseos) of hell?" (Mark 9:43-48.) We have solemnly repeated the call to sacrifice the dearest thing that is a snare to us, under penalty of being cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. It is a judgment, a judicial punishment, for which there is no relief, of which there is no cessation.

133 In Luke 12 it is used as a known thing, a place, the effect of divine judgment. James 3:6 is only of importance as shewing that it is connected with pure unmitigated evil; where nothing else is. Now a person who reads all this cannot doubt that that which the word "hell" is used for in English is fully contemplated. The desirableness of not confounding it with Hades, the vaguest possible word for the unseen world, no reflecting mind would deny. It is a place into which God's judgment casts the unrepentant and rebellious wicked, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. That human figures of fire and worms are used may be; but the force of it is plain enough — it is the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, where God casts in judgment those that are righteously rejected, where there is no remission, when God says gegone, It is done; and without are whoremongers, and all who love and make a lie. Hades is not Gehenna, and Gehenna in the New Testament is never used as the Valley of Hinnom. The proper English word is "hell"; that is, the place where pure evil, if such a phrase may be used, meets its final doom, after restoring means (even to God's giving His own Son, and beseeching men to be reconciled) are exhausted, and where the effect of judgment remains unquenched.

Whatever figurative meaning there may be in the use of any of the above words, it is plain and certain from scripture that there is a place of everlasting punishment. It is awfully described as the LAKE OF FIRE, 'the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Rev. 19:20; Rev. 20:10, 15; Rev. 21:8. It was prepared for the devil and his angels, but into it the wicked also will be cast. Matt. 13:40, 42; Matt. 25:41; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6, etc. See ETERNAL.

The Lake of Fire is called the Second Death (Rev. 20:14; 21:8). The first death is separation of the body from the soul and spirit which never die (James 2:26). The second death is the eternal separation of the entire person from God (2 Thess. 1:8-10) in hell (Gk: Gehenna) (Matt. 5:21-30; Mark 9:43-49) where the fire of judgment is not quenched and the worm of conscience does not die. There are no friends there: each person is isolated as wandering stars (comets) in the blackness of darkness forever (Jude 13), under God's eternal wrath (John 3:36; Rev. 20:10). It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31).

— Then follows the fitting conclusion to this grand declaration of combined divine and human glory: “And have the keys of death and of hades.” In our English Bibles the order is reversed, hades preceding death. But clearly this is a mistake, and contrary to the general order in which the words are found in other parts of the book (Rev. 6:8; Rev. 20:13-14). Death demands the body; hades claims the soul. The Lord became subject to the one, and entered the other. Our English word “hell” should be discarded, and “hades,” signifying the unseen, substituted. Efforts have been made to fix the locality of hades. It is impossible to do so. It is rather a state than a place, and refers to that condition in which all, good and bad, are found after death and previous to the resurrection. For believers, hades is to be with Christ; for unbelievers, hades is to be in torment. Thus both the Lord and the rich man went to hades (Acts 2:27; Luke 16:23). Christ has come out of it; the rich man will do so when raised for eternal judgment. Hades as a state exists between death and resurrection. The word does not in itself signify either blessing or misery. The state is one of conscious blessedness for believers, and one of conscious misery for unbelievers.

The nature of this judicial doom is explained to be the second death. The first death pronounced, as the penalty on Adam's transgression, meant far more than the death of the body. The moral use of the word in the phrase "dead in sins" proves beyond a doubt that it signifies, in its essence, the separation of the soul from God, together with the state of the soul as being without a single movement of life towards God. This interpretation is confirmed by the statement in Romans, that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin" for it is clearly the state of man which is thus indicated. (See also 2 Cor. 5:14.) This, rightly understood, throws great light upon the term here employed — "the second death." "Death," then, will keep its meaning — the absolute separation of the soul from God, its total exclusion from the source of all light and life, and its confinement for ever in the region of darkness; for as light and life, so darkness and death are in their very nature indissolubly connected. Then we have the additional element, "the lake of fire." "Fire" in Scripture is the symbol of the holiness of God as applied in judgment. This may be easily traced through the various books of the Bible, as, for example, in the fire that consumed the sacrifices, and, as again, in the statement that "our God is a consuming fire." (Heb. 12: 29.) The second death therefore is the moral exclusion of the soul for ever from God, or rather, it should be said, the separation of the whole man (body, soul, and spirit) from God, under the infliction of His judicial wrath. This is the lake of fire, God's eternal judgment, according to the standard of His own immutable holiness, as visited upon those who refused His grace, rebelled against His authority, and chose death rather than life. It is into this "lake of fire" that every unconverted one, as this scripture plainly teaches, will be, if dying impenitent, finally cast; for it is there that all this multitude find their doom.

That, only in the full reality of it, is the judgment which awaits guilty man; when, as rejecting God, God shall in His righteousness reject him. That awful distance! who knows (blessed be God that we do not know!) what it is? We are in a world where yet God's mercies come, as the sun upon the evil and on the good, or His tender rain upon the just and unjust. It is only here, encompassed by the infinite compassions of God, that one can dare to dream of doing without God; but to do without God is nothing short of HELL. It is the "outer darkness" of which Scripture speaks, where no ray of light is; for God, the Light of lights, is absent! Thank God, we do not know it. May none among us here ever know it. Only One ever did, to come out of it again; and we, permitted, as it were, to stand by the cross in the awful hour of the Saviour's agony, may look at least upon its outside, if we cannot (as we cannot) penetrate its inner reality.

The Valley of Hinnom, the refuse dump outside Jerusalem, where fires always burned and maggots continually did their work, was known as Gehenna; and this word on the Lord's lips became a terribly apt figure of the abode of the lost. Verily hell will be the great refuse heap of eternity, where all that is incorrigibly evil will be segregated from the good, and lie for ever under the judgment of God. This terrible fact reaches us from the lips of Him who loved sinful men and wept over them.

Hades is not Gehenna. The latter is the lake of fire, to which the lost are despatched after the judgment of the Great White Throne (the mass being preceded by the Beast and the False Prophet, and Satan); Hades is the term divinely employed to designate the intermediate unclothed state.

Finally, taken as figures, these expressions have a significance and power which fail altogether when taken literally. The undying worm has indeed been commonly held to be the type of remorse of conscience, and this as bred of corruption it would very naturally represent. But then the fire unquenchable would almost of necessity be figurative also, and stand for the wrath of Him who is a "consuming fire." With this would agree the title given to Gehenna of "the second death," as being complete spiritual separation, finally by divine judgment, from God the source of life; and this again would give full and terrible typical significance to that millennial judgment with which Isaiah closes, where the subjects of the worm and fire are "carcases" — the dead. This explains also why the fire can torment a spirit, and why a corporeal being may exist in it unconsumed; or why the "destruction" brought about by it need be no material destruction. Everything, in short, in this way is consistent and harmonious, as much upon the literal hypothesis seems difficult and contradictory.

The books are opened, for in these are recorded all the works of all who stand there. No believer will be among them, for all believers who ever die will have been raised in the first resurrection. The book of life also is opened to confirm that the names of all who stand there are not written in it. They are all judged according to their works. This being the case, there is no possibility of their escaping the Lake of Fire. They have depended on their works to save them, but those works can only condemn them. Their works will not all have been the same, and the judgment will be perfectly just. Luke 12:47-48 shows that some will receive many stripes in the way of punishment, others fewer. The degree of guilt will determine the degree of punishment, but the place and duration of punishment is the same for every unbeliever. They were before under condemnation, having not believed in the Son of God (John 3:18). Now sentence is carried out.