Who goes to hell?

I’m mainly responding here to a lady named Donna Baer, who writes about her current beliefs in hell in an article titled “Confessions of a Recovering Calvinist.” In it, Mrs. Baer describes her journey from her “Calvinistic” belief in a God who sends people an eternal hell, to a God who perhaps sends people to hell not forever, but just for a limited period of time to soften their hearts toward Him. Mrs. Baer thus arrives—wittingly or unwittingly I’m not sure—at the Roman Catholic belief of Purgatory. Her explanation turns out to be Purgatory dressed in different garb.

I can sympathize with Mrs. Baer, and understand why she would not want people to go to hell. After all, if hell is the very place that the Bible describes it to be—a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:30, for example)—who would want anyone else to go there? Right? Elsewhere, Mrs. Baer and her husband Steve Baer, call hell an “eternal Auschwitz,” a place where God consigns “all Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, pagans, animists, agnostics, atheists, backsliders (and basically all who’ve not savingly confessed Christ by their last heartbeats) etc, etc to everlasting flames and torment.”

It is indeed hard to think of the Jews who died in Auschwitz being sentenced to an eternity in hell. I do not want that to happen. But do I not want justice? Think not only about the Jews who died in Auschwitz. But think about the Fuhrer who murdered them in Auschwitz. Would anyone not want Hitler to be rightly judged? I think anyone who has (or whose family or friends have) been at the receiving end of egregious injustice and atrocity longs for the righting of those injustices. The Bible teaches that in eternity, after judgment, those injustices will be righted, culminating in Heaven, and Hell. So, while I can sympathize with Mrs. Baer, I cannot agree with her based on what I read in the Bible, and how I read what I read. Even if I wished along with Mrs. Baer for hell to go away, it does not change reality, nor does it change what the OT prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles clearly taught.

On the one hand, while I appreciate Mrs. Baer’s heart in her article in wanting to highlight the love of God, and the redeeming nature of God, on the other hand, some of her conclusions are simply wrong. I will bring up two of her wrong conclusions, which emerge as central.

First of all, neither does the Bible or Calvinism teach that children who die go to hell. Mrs. Baer’s case in point, the one that landed her in her “crisis of systems,” is a sad one indeed. If you have even an iota of compassion, your heart twinges when you read about a four-year-old mentally handicapped girl dying. When one such girl died—the daughter of Mrs. Baer’s friend—her pastor could afford the bereaved mother no words of comfort about the eternally destiny of the child’s soul. I am sorry for the mother, that she got no comfort from her pastor. Jesus, as Mrs. Baer points out, did say, “I am the way the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6) But Jesus also did say, “Allow the little children to come to me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:16) Will the Creator of these little children, who hardly know the difference between right and wrong (sinners though they are), not judge them rightly? Will the Judge of all the earth not take into account all factors and usher into Heaven children who are not mature enough to reject Jesus outright? Did not David say of his departed infant, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me”? (2 Sam 12:23). Does God not perfect or ordain strength out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants? (Psalm 8)

Second of all, Mrs. Baer wrongly defines the Greek word aionios, which is translated in English as “eternal.” She does this in an effort to re-interpret passages (Matt 18:8, 25:46, and 2 Thess. 1:9) which teach about the eternality of hell. Mrs. Baer says that an eon means “a period of limited time or duration.” This is wrong. In fact, it means the exact opposite. Greek scholars are mostly agreed that it means eternal, that is, never ending. For example, Louw-Nida defines it as follows: “αἰώνιος: pertaining to an unlimited duration of time—‘eternal.’ ” When Mrs. Baer gives us her definition of eternal, she does not quote a source there. Is this her own definition?

Universal Reconciliation

Apart from these two points, Mrs. Baer supports her doctrine of a limited hell, with the study of her husband’s best friend, who had been studying about Universal Reconciliation, and got the Baer’s rethinking their own beliefs, which is a good thing. But where they have arrived having rethought things is not the best conclusion. According to Universal Reconciliation, in the end, God “reconciles” everyone and everything to Himself. That is, they say, all people who were relationally alienated from God, in the end, will all be relationally reconciled to God. The problem here is the understanding of reconciliation. The eschatological reconciliation that is talked about in Colossians 1:20, for example (which Mrs. Baer cites), is not a reconciliation of relationship, where warring parties now come to love each other and forgive each other. No. It is a reconciliation of dominion. Where as now there are certain things under the control of the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2), Satan, Christ waits for a day when “His enemies will be made His footstool.” (Heb. 10:13) Everything and everyone that seemed to function in autonomy from God—albeit a temporary lease of an autonomy from God—will be reconciled to God, under His control. The imagery of Christ’s enemies being made His footstool suggests to me that He has His foot on their necks in final triumph. Yes, there will be a universal reconciliation! But not one in which God-haters and Christ-rejecters suddenly fall in love with the Lord whom they spurned all their lives. This universal reconciliation will be one in which the power and glory of God and Christ will be fully unveiled, irresistibly so, for all the world to see—inaugurating a time of eternal joy for the righteous, and eternal agony for the unrighteous.

Another interesting facet of Mrs. Baer’s article, is that any talk of justice is absent. Conspicuously absent, in fact! In her writing about hell, she does not factor in justice or the Judge of all the earth. She also does not mention the Devil and his followers, when in fact, Jesus taught that hell is prepared as an eternal fire for the Devil and his angels. (Matt. 25: 41). And in that passage, Jesus announces that God will send people to that same place. Hell is not just for the Devil and his angels, but for people who followed the course of the world, the flesh, and the Devil in this life time.

“Thy will be done…”

C.S. Lewis said, “There are only two kinds of people —those who say “Thy will be done” to God or those to whom God in the end says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell choose it.” “Hell…” says Tim Keller, “is the trajectory of a soul living in a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.” That this is indeed the case, is taught by Christ. When our Lord taught about Hell, specifically in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, He describes the increasingly hardened heart of the rich man in hell. Is he in agony? Yes! But this agony and heat does not seem to melt his heart like wax. Rather, the man’s heart is further hardened. He dictates to Father Abraham what must be done to save his brothers on earth, treats Lazarus like an errand boy, and never asks to be released from the flames, but merely for the flames to be eased. The one who on earth tried to work for his own salvation and failed, here in hell tries to engineer the salvation of his brothers.

Love and Justice

The doctrine of Hell ought to both comfort and afflict people, for it is part of the grand, cosmic justice plan of God.

It should afflict people with fear and terror because without Christ, they will end up there. It should urge us to plead with people to escape the wrath of God. Along with Paul, knowing the terror of the Lord, we should persuade men. (2 Cor. 5:11). And like Abraham, we should plead with the Judge of all the earth for the salvation of souls (Gen. 18).

But it should comfort people, those who have been saved from the wrath of God. For what a great deliverance this is for those of us who have been saved! And it should also comfort us because Hell will be the righting of all earthly injustices. It will prove that God all along was watching the wickedness of man throughout the ages. Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini’s hate crimes against helpless humans will be judged, and the Judge of all the earth will decide who it is who spends eternity in hell, forever. We are not to judge who will be in hell, ultimately and eternally. But we are to believe what the Bible says about hell.

Yes, God is a God of love. More than that, He is very love (1 John 4). God is the essence, energy, and embodiment of love. But a God of perfect love, must by very nature, be a God of perfect justice. He cannot be a God of perfect love without being a God of perfect justice. He cannot love on the one hand and allow punishment for sin to go unpardoned. But wait! He didn’t let it go unpardoned, did He? He took the punishment for sin, yes, very “hell” itself, on His sinless and perfect Son, Jesus, who died on the cross to save those who would believe on Him, from the wrath of His Father. And if people reject the suffering Savior who died on the cross, what must God do with such people?—Allow them into heaven where that Son they rejected is praised and blessed forever? God forbid! He cannot and does not. But God does allow those who reject His Son the experience of the hell they could have been spared had they placed their faith in Jesus.

It was on the cross that perfect love and perfect justice met. The arms of God’s mercy extended wide on Calvary, offering salvation to all who will believe. Now is the time to receive that mercy and pardon. In eternity, even the cross cannot bridge the gulf between and hell, for “between us and you a great gulf is fixed: so that those who would pass from here to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from there.” (Luke 16:26)

© Kenny Damara, 2018

1 Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., Vol. 1, p. 641). New York: United Bible Societies.

2 Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. MacMillan, Pg. 116

3 Keller, Tim. The Reason for God. Dutton. Pg. 177.