“There is a great gulf fixed.”

(Luke 16:26)

Once a faithful church member came to me with this urgent request: “I want you to preach a sermon sometime on your idea of hell.” “All right,” I promised, “sometime I will.”

But as soon as I began work on this topic there came floating back the memory of that doughty Dutchman, Dr. John Vandermullen, standing in our Seminary class on Systematic Theology and admonishing us: “Young men, preach on hell, but never preach on hell without tears in your eyes.” So, very soon in that sermon preparation I knew that I must preach not just on hell, but on heaven and hell — that I must try to do justice at one and the same time to both the mercy and the justice of God.

Well, of course, that’s the way the scriptures deal with the subject, you know. Heaven and hell are most often put in close juxtaposition as in Revelation 21, where the seer of Patmos describes the glory and bliss of heaven, and includes that one, dire verse on “the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, reserved for the abominable and murderers, the idolaters and liars.”

And in Jesus parable of Dives and Lazarus, which we read a few minutes ago, we hear of the pain and anguish of Dives hereafter in torment, related alongside of the perfect picture of Lazarus’ well-being in Abraham’s bosom.

So also, where Jesus tells of His coming again to judge the quick and the dead, His picture of that ultimate evaluation of all human existence includes a glimpse of the future destiny of both the blessed and the condemned. The Judge on the throne of His glory says to those on His right hand: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But to those on His left, the solemn words of the Judge are: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” The scriptures deal with heaven and hell in close juxtaposition.

Now the first thing that I want to say today about heaven and hell is that too much has already been said. Considering the sparseness of the scriptural record and the limited testimony of travelers who can report first hand the condition of climate and the degree of hot and cold and the topography of the land in heaven and hell, too much has already been said, far more than can be reliably reported.

How much too much, for example, has been said about hell which has been spoken for the purpose of frightening people into embracing religion. You’ve heard, of course, that story of the clergymen of the various denominations who were downgraded when they got to heaven and were outfitted with Ford’s and Chevys, and the violent objections they raised when they saw the taxi driver from their city driving around heaven in a shining Cadillac. And the reason given them by the celestial authority for such a system of rewards was: “Why, this taxi driver has scared the hell out of more folks than all the rest of you preachers put together.”

And the spuriousness of the story lies, of course, not in the fact of the down-grading of the clergy (for I can easily believe that), nor even in the presence of late model cars in heaven (for I might like to believe secretly in that), but the spuriousness of the story lies in its appalling, yet popularly held, notion that the way to get people into heaven is to scare the hell out of them.

It simply does not work that way. The scriptures do not so present Christ preaching the good news, but rather: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” And the New Testament does not record St. Paul exhorting men and women to flee to heaven out of fear of hell, but rather pleading: “I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies living sacrifices, wholly, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

And psychologically it is a false and groundless expectation to presume that “putting the fear of hell into people can make them love the one who makes them afraid, or intensify their eagerness to do his bidding. Thousands of people have been frightened with stories of hell-fire, and tens of thousands have been told, ‘If you aren’t a good boy, Mummy won’t love you,’ and worse still, ‘If you aren’t a good boy, God won’t love you.’” (Prescription for Anxiety by Leslie Weatherhead — p. 44 — Abingdon)

Too much has already been said about hell for the purpose of scaring people out of sin and into salvation.

And furthermore, too much has already been said about heaven by way of getting into people’s heads the utterly false and unscriptural idea that salvation is just a paid-up ticket and reservation to the pearly gates. Religion’s preoccupation with the nature of the heavenly abode of the blest to the neglect of concerning itself with the evils and injustices that some of God’s children suffer in this present life has long been the scandal of Christianity. The charge has been made that religion is too “other-worldly”, that its concentration of attention on heaven has had the effect of lulling its communicants into insensitiveness and inactivity before the evils and injustices that mar our earthly life.

So, later day prophets have arisen among us to disturb the Christians’ trance-like rapture over the nature of the world beyond and goaded them to gird up their loins and enter the struggle for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Early in the 20^th century, Walter Russell Bowie wrote a great hymn challenging us in these words:

O Holy City, seen of John,

Where Christ, the Lamb doth reign,

Within whose foursquare walls shall come,

No night, nor need, nor pain.

 

Give us, O God, the strength to build

The city that hath stood

Too long a dream, whose laws are love,

Whose ways are brotherhood.

And all solid Biblical and New Testament scholarship shows the gospel presentation of Jesus concerned with the Kingdom of Heaven primarily as it served as the ideal for the Kingdom of God on earth.

Now, its not that these sometimes scandalized “social gospelers” were saying: “There is no heaven.  There is no hell.” Rather, they were contending that God wants his church to be alive to his demands now — that the present is all we have to bring to Him — that if we live in it with God and our fellow human beings as Christ has taught us, and strive for the principles of His Kingdom to be enshrined in our lives and the structures of our society, then as faithful, trusting Christians, we can safely leave to a just God, the loving Heavenly Father of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, those eternal, yet not in this life completely revealed, realities of heaven and hell.

Now, having said this, I want to hasten to say that the second thing I want to say about heaven and hell is that something scriptural, and something in true perspective, needs very much to be said on this subject. The faithful church member is right in making the request that somebody preach a sermon on hell. No theological system is complete without its doctrine of last things.  We need to have as clearly as possible before us our ultimate goals in life.

Our great error has been in departing from Biblical doctrine in our pronouncements on heaven and hell.  Because of the paucity of the record and the dimness of the outline in Holy Scripture we have allowed our imaginations to run riot, to borrow from Dante and Milton and Hogarth and Jonathan Edwards and the heaven and hell obsessed artists of the Middle Ages. And what we have too often come out with is a wholly unbiblical idea of last things.

Sometimes people ask: “Do you believe that heaven and hell are conditions or places? So and so said hell is not a place but a condition. Do you believe that?” But this is to ask the wrong question. The right question is the contrast: “Are heaven and hell real or unreal, and what is ultimate reality?”

Now the Christian faith is that ultimate realities are not material, not flesh and blood, but spiritual realities. St. Paul says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” The lasting and highest joys are spiritual ones, like satisfaction from performing an unselfish service, like loving and not counting the cost, like giving expression to a God-given creative urge in poetry, song, or art. “When beautiful music makes us cry, or when the account of some heroic deed touches our heart, our feelings are really those of nostalgia or homesickness.” (Ibid. Leslie Weatherhead) These spiritual realities touch us in the deepest depths of our beings and beckon us homeward and heavenward where such make up the whole of existence, where we may be at home with God.

So also the most horrible pain and suffering is not physical, but spiritual anguish over sin and failure — alienation from those we love, or those we have wronged. Therefore, when the Bible pictures heaven with golden streets and hell as a lake of molten fire that never burns up, these are material symbols of spiritual realities. They are not to be taken as literally descriptive.

It must not be supposed, however, that it was from mere whim or caprice that earlier Christian leaders and thinkers stressed the terrors of everlasting punishment. Primarily it was because they felt, as we all must feel, that there is something tremendously solemn and decisive about the choice we make in following Christ or rejecting Him. Jesus Himself stressed the momentousness of this choice, and in His teachings and parables He speaks of doors that have been closed and opportunities that have passed. In a very real sense, we are facing eternal issues when we make great moral and spiritual decisions.

“Hell, in its essence, is the final separation from God, from the society of our loved ones, from the fellowship of the redeemed. It is the absolute loneliness of the loveless. Hell is to look backward and see only failure and regret, to see the dim reproachful faces of those who loved us; those whom we betrayed.”  (Heaven and Hell — John Sutherland Bonnell — Abingdon)

As it is written in the Theologica Germanica, “Nothing burneth in hell but self-will; therefore, it hath been said, put off thine own self-will and there will be no hell.” To be separated from God and in rebellion against His will is spiritual hell — actual hell. To be reconciled to God and in fellowship with Him is heaven, now and forever.

Finally, this needs to be said about heaven and hell, that the supreme reason for a clear scriptural statement on last things is that the Christian may face death, that doorway to the other world, without fear, with supreme composure, even with a glad expectancy.

William Hunter, a famous doctor, on his deathbed said: “If I had the strength to hold a pen, I would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die.”  (Prescription for Anxiety — Weatherhead — p. 119.)

The purpose of all that God has given us of glimpses into the world beyond is to condition our minds in such a way as not to be anxious about death or view it as a menace to our ultimate well-being.

“When my last heart beats tap at the door of eternity,” wrote Leslie Weatherhead, the beloved British Methodist pastor, “I shall feel as I do when the taxicab man knocks at the door of my house to take me off for a holiday.” That’s thoroughly Christian, and the legitimate hope of every sincere Christian. To sing, not only with our lips, but with our souls, the words and triumphant music of our Hymn:

For all the saints who from their labors rest,

Who thee by faith before the world confessed,

Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.

 

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song;

And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong

 

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,

Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,

Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Alleluia, Alleluia.

 

ASCRIPTION OF GLORY

“Now unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us a Kingdom and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen.”