My Hot Take on Hell & Why It’s a Burning Issue

More than a few well-meaning Christians feel uneasy on the topic of hell and may prefer we simply talk about something else. Unfortunately, because hell—pardon the pun—regularly comes “under fire,” you’ll have to excuse me for entering the fiery fray.

Now to be fair to myself, I am not normally hellbent on controversy. It’s not like I woke up this morning and decided I needed a new fire to put out—or in this case, put back on. But then Hollywood icon Kirk Cameron lit the torch for me. In a nutshell, the former child actor prodigy got himself into a bit of hot-molten water recently when on his podcast he tried to snuff out the flames of hell’s eternality. The Growing Pains star suddenly felt his own growing pains when some of his online listeners pushed back on Cameron’s newfound viewpoint with regard to how God will handle the wicked in the age to come.

If you’re not familiar with Cameron’s newest perspective on hell, basically the filmmaking celebrity, who performed the lead role in the movie Left Behind, has “left behind” the traditional (and I will argue biblical) view of hell, that which involves eternal, conscious torment. The traditional view of hell, I should note, says that hell is a literal place of everlasting punishment. Cameron, for his part, now holds to the “annihilationist view,” which essentially says that hell is a real place and a real penalty but only lasts for a limited time, then poof disappears into nothingness, along with those who suffer there. In short, Cameron believes that once God doles out the necessary dose and duration of punishment, he then makes the wicked cease to exist. In Cameron’s defense, the annihilationist view is not exactly new. Some of the early church fathers (like Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons) may have leaned in that direction. In more recent times, Bible scholar John Stott seemed to sympathize with this view. So Kirk Cameron is hardly novel in his newfound understanding of hell—yet he is hardly right. To the contrary, Cameron’s view of annihilation radically reduces to nothing—literally—the biblical picture of hell.

So here’s a refresher on hell, in three vivid images. And yes, hell is every bit as awful and unending as your Sunday School-attending grandmother said it is. In other words, hell is punishment and hell is permanent. Let’s take a look:

Weeping and gnashing of teeth

Jesus speaks of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” no less than six times in Matthew’s Gospel (8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30). There will certainly be weeping in hell, won’t there? I’m talking about a deep anguish of the soul, a literal and physical crying, that is, loud lamentations and not silent tears. It will be the kind of insufferable sobbing and wailing that no funeral home on earth has ever seen or heard.

But with the anguish there will also be intense anger. Gnashing of teeth refers to grinding or clenched teeth, the sort of rage/hatred/hostility shown by the religious leaders in Acts 7 when they gnashed their teeth at Stephen, just before they hurled at him their deadly stones. Super interesting, right?—anguish mixed with anger. Hell’s inhabitants will shed tears, sure enough. But these are not eyes wetted with repentance but rather resistance, like a little child who screams out of defiance, or like Pharaoh who hated each plague just as much as he hated God. They say Denial is not just a river, you know. Not surprisingly, even in Revelation, the recipients of God’s judgments just never can seem to muster up the heart to repent (16:11).

Worm that never dies

In both Old and New Testaments we read about the “worm that never dies” (Isa. 66:24; Mk. 9:48). Imagine an eternal maggot or ever-consuming agent, with its inescapable, irreversible, relief-less agony. At least in Acts 12 when Herod was eaten by worms, the little invertebrates eventually had their fill. Not so in hell, as there will be no final consumption. Indeed, the ongoing regret and open shame for those who occupy hell will last forever. Their physical and psychological torment will have no terminus.

Unquenchable fire

Endless weeping and worms do not make for popular preaching. Yet there is hardly a harder (and hotter) topic than that of endless fire. Scripture speaks very clearly of an eternal fire that cannot be quenched (Isa. 66:24; Mk. 9:47-48). Elsewhere, Jesus mentions the “fiery furnace” (Matt. 13:42, 50), which conjures up images of the fiery furnace in Daniel 3 or the fire and brimstone that rained on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. The Bible makes no bones about the ultimate (and never-ending) lake of fire (Rev. 21:8). Some, like Kirk Cameron, try to argue that the word “destruction” (see, for examples, Matt. 7:13; 10:28) refers to annihilation. But again, their theory falls flat, as even in our own English language we can say that a house or car has been destroyed, not at all to suggest that either went poof into thin air. A house can be ruined by fire. A car can be wrecked or totaled. But in either case, the said object still exists even if unsalvageable. And that’s the point, isn’t it? The “destroyed” thing is now ruined and completely useless. Hence, hell will be a place of utter ruin and misery, never to be salvaged or repaired.

Hell is for real. Hell is literal. Hell is awful. Hell is painful. Hell is an eternal punishment. Hell is not purgatory. Hell is final. These are all the more reasons for the enemies of God to repent while they still have breath in their lungs. Today is the day of salvation. Trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Flee to Jesus from the real and irreversible wrath to come.