• Heaven is constant holy delight and joy without end – 100% pure immeasurable pleasure.
• Hell is relentless horrific agony and misery escalating in acuteness – 100% intolerable unbearable pain.

 

• Heaven is peace, serenity and security, peace of mind and rest of soul.
• Hell is disruption, turbulence, and insecurity, anguished panic of mind and torment of soul.

 

• Heaven is reward, celebration, affirmation.
• Hell is punishment, mourning, accusation.

 

• Heaven is sweet thrilling angel song, favorite music and dancing and laughter and smiling.
• Hell is sour bitter moaning demon screams, hateful noise and writhing, and tears with shrieks of grief.

 

• Heaven is a perfect youthful energetic fully-realized body and mind and spirit of eternal vitality in Jesus-like resurrection quality and capacity.
• Hell is a wracked damaged diseased fully-jobified (devil-afflicted with sores and boils and arthritis and cancer and flesh-eating worms and nightmares) body and mind.

 

• Heaven is being in the company of amazing, wonderful, delightful, enriching, inspiring, deeply moving people that equally enjoy your company.
• Hell is utter loneliness in the company of no one but your sorry, withering, pitiful, emotionally unstable, cursed, abandoned imprisoned self.

 

• Heaven is positive healthy memory with no regrets.
• Hell is negative self-destructive PTSD flashbacks, tormented memories of what could have been with nothing but regrets.

 

• Heaven is being sinless, error-free, perfect, holy and completely God-pleasing.
• Hell is being utterly sinful, mistaken, deceived, demented, flawed, corrupt, wicked and completely loathsome to God.

 

• Heaven is total satisfaction and fullness of healthy desires and appetites, never going for want.
• Hell is gnawing hungers and thirsts and perverse appetites that yo-yo between going prolonged unmet and gorged to choking and suffocating in one’s own juices.

 

• Heaven is socializing with angels as they share the unsurpassed amazing details and privileges of glory, not wanting them to stop.
• Hell is being satanized and demonized with no restraint on abuse, molesting, possession and inflicted misery with no way to make them stop.

 

• Heaven is spending as much of eternity as possible with your Lord and Savior Jesus in his glorified body, never getting enough of his love.
• Hell is spending as much of eternity as possible under the fearful dreaded wrath of the Lamb of God Jesus Christ in full vengeful judgment glory.

 

• Heaven is fellowshipping in perfect harmony and affection and awe with Abba Father who made everything possible, together with God’s Holy Spirit as Comforter.
• Hell is being the forever object of God’s terrors and justly deserved punishment whom you would never dare call Father in your hatred, pride, and self-consumption.

 

• Heaven is just the right light and color and sound and smell and feel and sensation. Not too much, not too little, absolutely ideal conditions.
• Hell is too much dark and absolute zero light or color. Sound and smell and feel and sensation overwhelm your tolerance. Too much AND too little, abysmal conditions.

 

• Heaven is the ultimate-case scenario of the happiest, most enjoyable experiences you have ever had or could imagine. Best of all possible bests.
• Hell is ultimate-case scenario of your scariest nightmare coming true, most gruesome frightful ordeals you ever had or could imagine. Worst of all possible worsts.

 

• Heaven is the best earth was ever designed to be, Garden of Eden, Tree of Life, most scenic beauty imaginable, fresh and clean evoking constant worship to the Creator.
• Hell is the worst disaster area, catastrophe, war zone, damage path, bottomless pit, supermax prison, Wasteland of Desert, Lake of Lava, so repulsive evoking curses to God.

 

Objections Answered:

 

Objection: A loving God would never create any such hell, let alone populate it with any of his handmade creatures, especially those fashioned in God’s image.

Answer: A loving God whose love for his creatures is the greatest blessing and privilege of those fashioned in his image will not force anyone to counter-love him with their free willing original response to his loving-kindness. God’s only option for those freely willingly rejecting and spurning his patient affection (instead, mean vicious cold indifferent ignoring vile profane disrespectful hatred for absolutely no rational reason) is separation from his loving presence since that is what they choose.

 

Objection: Heaven’s intensity and duration are hopefully literal and bodily as eternal life indicates. But hell can’t be eternal death, there must be some limit or end.

Answer: Not according to Jesus himself. In Matthew 25, he is clear: ‘and the unrighteous cursed goats will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous blessed sheep welcomed to eternal life. Eternal is the same word for both options. Lessening hell must then lessen heaven’s intensity and duration. Equal but opposite sides of the same after-existence. One cannot be permanent while its counterpart is only temporary. Remember: death does not means cessation of existence, just separation. Eternal death is not annihilation or fading into nothingness or evaporating eventually. It is eternal separation, eternal punishment, eternal wrath for an unforgiven sinner’s eternal ongoing sin that doesn’t stop with earth’s final breath.

 

Objection: Hell may be as bad as all that, but there is hope for anyone sincerely wanting to escape if they respectfully earnestly appeal Judge Jesus’ sentence. God can still save many.

Answer: That would be a surprise to Judge Jesus. Despite creative attempts to reinterpret or soften Jesus’ own parables and all the Bible’s clear warnings, there is no appeal from the Lord’s final sentence on Judgment Day. God is clear that our lifespan is the only Grace Period. It expires when our final earthly breath expires. Time’s up!

 

Objection: Why does Jesus teach so often about hell more than heaven, doom and gloom threats about fiery furnace, outer darkness, weeping, teeth gnashing, eternal fire? 

Answer: Jesus is the ultimate caring compassionate conscientious faithful Lifeguard. When you go to the beach, what do the lifeguard, the signs, the flags emphasize?

The fun and wonders and exciting details of beach going? You will experience that for yourself. Rather you are being responsibly warned and alerted to the hazards of going in the water to avoid rip currents, overpowering waves, sharks, pollution and other life-threatening perils that might well kill or maim you forever. If just one person could be saved or spared, all the dire threats and heartfelt warnings will be worth it to any who care to take seriously as preventive precautionary measures.

 

Objection: How can hell be ‘outer darkness’ and ‘flames of fire’ at the same time? It’s either one or the other, but logically can’t be both?

Answer: Oh Yes it can. Ever see news footage of a forest fire or volcano eruption at night? Pitch black all around, but in the damage path of flame or molten lava – fiery and glowing and burning and destroying and consuming and engulfing everything in its wake. Darkness surrounding flaming fire. Not either/or but both/and.

 

Objection: Is there a way to potentially hedge your bets on various religious beliefs about the afterlife? Christianity claims to be perfectly true, but what if it isn’t?

Answer: French philosopher Blaise Pascal was challenged with this notion 300 years ago. He came up with ‘Pascal’s Wager’. As a Christian, he allowed skeptics for the sake of discussion (‘what if?’) to consider the 2 basic alternatives: If the Bible is not true vs. If the Bible is true.

If the Bible is not true, no harm no foul. Everyone ends up where they are meant by cosmic fate or whatever religion has it right and Christians are wrong. Living the Bible life of faith in Jesus, grace of God, Sermon on the Mount, loving the Lord 100% and your neighbor as yourself under the Golden Rule is hard to outclass.

No matter what, a pretty decent moral upstanding legacy of having lived a good life kind to others. That has to count for something for whatever nonbible deity there is.

If there’s no deity whatsoever, it doesn’t matter what you believe since we are all lucky mud and even our thoughts and spiritual sentiments are random synapse firings just as random as the evolutionary natural processes that brought the universe into existence – and us and our opinions and religions and certainties along with it.

But if the Bible is true, huge harm and fatal foul! Betting against a real heaven is one thing – missing out on something claimed to be utterly fantastic and dream come true.

But betting against a real hell and it turns out you lose that bet, does anyone really want to take that chance, such an unnecessary horrific risk if you wager wrong?!?

If you’ve weighed the religious evidence, checked the Bible out compared to other holy books and philosopher’s writings and credible belief systems and are undecided, best to go with Jesus and his Bible to hedge your bets and hope for full coverage (eternal fire insurance) just in case. IF the Bible turns out true about hell, you really don’t want to risk that worst-case losing all you staked your forever after on, and your soul along with it.