Most Christians do not understand HELL. Most people imagine it to be just the opposite of Heaven. But in the simplest of households people just know that it is the one place you sure as heck do not want your eternal soul to go to.
We do not judge one another’s eternal future because it is not our place. We do however have the obligation to pass on the good word to our beloved neighbors. Almost everyone has an idea what sin is, whether they were told in Sunday school or because their mammy’s told them.
Bottom line is you will not go to Heaven with a grave sin on your soul.
Understand that in all our simplicities and even our eccentricities we know deep down inside that Hell is a place you do not want to experience. Eternal damnation, eternal pain and suffering, eternal longing for all and everything that you once had that you will never have again. There is no pleasure, there is no love, there is no joy, and there is no HOPE.
Hope is something we cling to and we hold dear to our souls. We hope in the future, we hope that our children will return to us, we hope that evil will perish and that good will prevail, but most of all we HOPE to get to Heaven.
Most people have pretty good imaginations. Let us step out of our normal selves and into the dark imagination of a deep and painful place. Hell being so far away from anything good. In it you can glimpse into a mirror that shows the hope that you cannot feel or know. You will always be able to see glimmers of what you could have had, but you will never for all eternity be able to reach out and touch it.
Imagine yourself alone. Picture yourself away from all those you love. Picture yourself without the hope or even remote possibility of you ever being able to be with your loved ones again. While you are there in that desolate place, out of the watchful and loving eye of God, all you feel is pain. Envision the happiest day or moment of your life. Now paint the idea in your mind that you will never ever be able to be apart of that again. You will never be happy, you will have no cause to smile, no cause to laugh, and you will be so exhausted from the pain and mental anxiety that you can not even weep it away. On earth we understand pain, we feel it every day, but we still have the hope that it will eventually go away. We know that we will stop hurting with time, prayer, and healing. In Hell it never goes away.
To over emphasize the pain you will feel in Hell let me be blatantly obvious and explicitly colorful. Visualize in your mind the worst burn you have ever felt. Now let the pain of that burn consume your entire physical form. All you feel is excruciating agony but instead of your body withering away and melting into nothingness your body stays the same. While you are burning you are still in that desolate place alone without the hope of being healed. You scream in pain and you see far off places that you cannot go to. You only wish to be relieved of the pain, but it never goes away…You blackout…You awake to find yourself drowning, your lungs are filling with liquids and all you see around you is clear blue water…nothing to grab onto, no probability of escape…your lungs are bursting and you feel fear…You blackout…You awake instantly in a different setting and it hits you like a bag of bricks…numb, hypothermic, biting cold…It envelops your entire being and you do not know warmth, in fact you wish you were on fire because of the cold you feel…no hope, no joy, only pain…You blackout.
You awake in bed back at home. You have just been given a rare blessing. God let you see, feel, hear, and know Hell. Know it well and tell it to others, it is a place that you never want to go. You should be in so much fear of it that when you sin you should be so sorry for what you did, that you weep in confession.
It is a dark thing I describe, and some can probably do so much better than I. It is my intent to scare you, to make you see what I see and HOPE that it will never come to that.
A painful feeling, A lonely place, A lack of holiness, A lack of grace. Without Hope all is lost, and all joy is forgotten.
Discovering Reality 