Is Death The End and
What Will Happen To Me When I Die?

In the movie Field Of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson asked the question when seeing the beautiful baseball field, Is this heaven? The response of Kevin Costner character was, No, this is Iowa. Is this life all there is? No, it is not. Death is not the end of your existence. There is something beyond that stretches into eternity. However, at death, the fate of each person is irreversibly set. Your will is set for eternity.

People have varying ideas of what happens when a person dies. Some believe that good people live on, everybody else gets annihilated. Others believe that everyone gets to go to heaven, except for the really awful people like Attila the Hun, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. Still others would tell us that even such sinful people get to go to heaven, but first must go through a purifying process so that they can be made ready for heaven. There is nothing in the Bible that supports any of these conceptions or beliefs.

Instead, the Bible tells us, it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27) At that point, there is a separation of people. Those who are in right relationship with God will be with him in heaven while those who have are not face the punishment of God, being assigned a place in hell.

Many people make light of such a place, thinking that they will be among friends and able to party all the time. Such is not the picture which the Bible gives to us. And pictures are what the Bible gives us, images that are to impact us with the severity and length of the punishment. They are not literal snapshots, so to speak, but literary images meant of capture our attention. The truth is that hell itself will be much worse than the pictures which are given to us, just as heaven will be much greater than its images.

Good news about hell. The good news is that God is worthy of your respect. He is holy and just and He does not play games. He does not say one thing and mean another. That is good news because it means his character is faithful and consistent to His Word as is found in the Bible. The doctrine of hell is good news because it reminds us that every wrong is to be avenged in history. Evil will not prevail.

Moreover, it is good news because God respects human dignity. God grants perpetual existence to everyone. He does not simply discard man as junk. God says, I so respect your choice that I will not send you into non-existence, but I will give you the reward of your words, forever. You see, God honors human choices through all eternity. He is sovereign but he will not override human personality. When you make a choice, God honors it, forever. In other words, what you sow, you will reap.

Bad news about hell. The bad news is that we all deserve it. There is not one righteous person, no not one. What should we do? The Bible instructs us to flee from the wrath to come. In other words, we ought to be afraid of hell.

Why? The Bible tells us that it will be a place of emotional anguish. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. People will know eternal shame and contempt. It is a place of physical anguish where there is no rest or peace. There is relational anguish as you are a part of the worst maximum security prison imaginable, without guards to intervene or regulate. You will be with the devil and all his angels for eternity. Then there is the spiritual anguish of bitterness of soul as one is confronted with the justice of God and their own foolishness. It is utter darkness. No, it is not a place of partying and frolicking. It is a place that we should do everything to avoid.

The justice of God. But some will ask: Is that fair of God? Such a doctrine of hell is unpleasant. I don't like to think of God in that way. It is not the doctrine which is unfair, but our own estimate of sin's wickedness. Sin is not just an alternate lifestyle. We do not have an appropriate appreciation for how wicked rebellion against God really is. If you think the doctrine of hell is unpleasant to you, it is nothing in comparison to how unpleasant your sin is to him.

The punishment of sin is a good thing. If left unpunished, sin would be far more unbecoming and unpleasant. But God is so holy and good, that he will not let sin pass. If God were to tolerate sin, he would not truly be God.

But why so long? Is an eternity really just? Why not just three years of torment, and then a promise to be better? Why an eternity? The length of punishment is not based on the infinitude of our sin. You are right, no finite person can sin infinitely. However, one sin, by itself, alone, warrants from a holy, absolute, sovereign God eternal damnation. Hell is infinite in duration because God's infinite purity has been violated. It is the infinity of his purity that requires hell to be infinite in duration.

You see it is not the person committing the crime, but the one against whom the crime has been perpetrated that set the punishment. When a person hits a dog with their car and it dies, what is the punishment? Well, there is none. Why? Because it is only a dog. What if a dog attacks and kills a person, what happens? The dog is put to sleep. Why? Because they killed a person, and a person, made in God's image, has value.

What if you insult your next door neighbor, what happens? Nothing, legally. What if you were living in Iraq, and you insulted Saddam Hussein? You would lose your life. What is the difference? The position of the person. Rebellion against a holy, infinite, sovereign God demands an infinite punishment.

Now can you see why the Bible tells us to flee from the wrath to come?