If there are people at this moment consigned to an eternal state of hopelessness in a place called hell, what are they doing? What kind of state are they in? I mean existentially…morally? Or maybe you believe in some kind of intermediate state or in a soul sleep until the resurrection unto eternal damnation. Well, however your version goes let me ask the following question: What will the souls in hell be doing in say, 10 thousand years …while we are “bright-shining like the sun”?
Will they hate God?
Will they hate all that is good?
Will they hate us in heaven? A kind of eternal feud? Will we love or hate them?
Will they hate everyone that they ever knew even if while on earth they loved them? Will people in hell be devoid of the love or goodness they had on earth? Is it all evaporated? Will God take away the goodness or love they had in their lives and turn them into utter fiends? Or perhaps it is because God IS love and since He removes His presence from those in hell there is consequently no love in hell. Is that how it is?
Is this what God does/will do? Will He make sinners on earth into fiendish and horrible entities? Or like NT Wright proposes, will they morph and degenerate into animals over the course of eternity? So is that it? God’s image bearers whom He could not save or would not save will turn into sub-image bearers or even no longer image-bearers? Does this mean God loses these people to Satan, the prince of darkness?
Hmm…would you think these would be the likely actions/solutions of a good, powerful, holy and just God? Would He create billions of image-bearers knowing they were going to fall hopelessly and allow them to live forever as sinful beings keeping alive endlessly the present realities of evil, rebellion and death? Will they exist in a cycle of sin and punishment for all eternity as D.A Carson has proposed? Just wondering what that would look like and if it makes any sense in light of all we have been told about God and His nature of love and His power as Lord and King.
But you say that God doesn’t want this but He is “just” and must punish sin. Did you know that the word for justice is the same word for righteousness? The SAME word! Did you know that the word literally means “right-useness”? Therefore justice means a return to right-useness or righteousness. Check out how Justice = Righteousness
So what do you think the people in hell will be thinking/doing/being in 10,000 years?
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