Hell is a hot subject. In fact, it is one of the hottest subjects in the Bible and is used fifty-three times, not to mention its synonyms. David, by the Holy Ghost, said, “The wicked shall be turned into Hell, and all the nations that forget God.” (Psalm 9:17). He also said that the prostitute’s guests are in the depths of Hell. (Proverbs 9:18). It was Isaiah who proclaimed, “…Hell hath enlarged herself.” (Isaiah 5:14). The infallible Word of God has clearly revealed the mind and truth of the eternal God regarding the truth of Hell. To deny a literal eternal Hell of fire and brimstone is to blaspheme the Holy Bible. It also reduces the teachings of Jesus Christ to being riddled with error. It makes Him a fear monger to dare proclaim the story of the rich man that died and cried out of Hell. Such a story is extreme and misguided unless Jesus was indeed the spotless Lamb of God declaring the absolute truth.

Denying Hell is an Insult to Calvary
Our God so loved His created world and His created family that had fallen into sin that He sent His only Begotten Son to be His sacrifice for their sins. Why would the Sovereign God of this universe offer His Son on a cruel cross if there were no eternal penalty for sin? Such thinking is insanity. The Son of God is eternal and has inhabited eternity forever. Yet, He stepped out of that realm to become the Son of Man. He is the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8). He left eternity and descended into time and space for a short season. Hell had been created for the devil and his angels, but now God’s human family was in danger. Justice demanded that sinful men be given the same punishment as sinful angels. The Holy God is perfectly just and the penalty of sin had to be paid.

Man was created below the angels and the higher order. Since man was created on a human level and the angel Lucifer had wrought this terrible fall of men, God provided mankind a sacrifice. Calvary is God’s wonderful plan to save the human family from sin and Hell fire. To speak of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ on any other level is to insult, even blaspheme, the greatest love story of this universe.

But, Calvary was not just a picture of love, although love was at its very heart. The angels do not fly around His throne declaring love, love, love; they declare holy, holy, holy. Calvary was certainly the ultimate picture of love, but what it really proved was holiness. God is holy and His Son hanging on a cruel cross is God’s greatest example of His holiness. His Son had to become sin for us. He, who knew no sin and existed in the divine without even the possibility of sin, had now taken sin upon His own soul as a human substitute. That substitute is now God’s escape from a burning Hell. Every soul that clings in faith to His shed blood is washed from sin and all its power to damn. You cannot deny Hell as long as you stand in the shadow of Calvary. The person that denies Hell fire has forgotten or never knew the heavenly joy of being washed from all their sins. The hope of Calvary demands the hopelessness of Hell to justify its cost to God and His Son.

Calvary: Close to Hell
Calvary was the closest thing to Hell any man had ever experienced without going there. The Son of God had an equivalent experience of being totally forsaken by God as a person cast into Hell experiences. That’s the meaning of His heartrending words, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). For three hours He hung writhing on His cross with a total sense of separation from His Father. It’s impossible for us to understand or know the union with the Heavenly Father that the Son of God knew. They were one from eternity, inseparable, until the Father smote Him in death and let Him hang there as a sin sacrifice for three dark hours. It was Hell for the Son of Man to be so utterly forsaken. Maybe He will explain to us in eternity the price He paid for our salvation.

But, it doesn’t end there. While the Son of God was on the cross, He uttered “seven statements” that actually define the depth of His death. The first three reveal His undying love for humankind. The second two reveal the Hellish experience of His suffering and the last two reveal His glorious triumph. One of the two that reveals His horrible death experience is the quote regarding being forsaken. The other is more revealing than I ever before imagined. He uttered a breathtaking expression which appeared to arrest those individuals that were beneath His cross. These individuals were the ones that had nailed Him to the tree and were waiting to finish their dark deeds. It appeared that He suddenly proclaimed, “I thirst.” Those words have intrigued many readers and writers, but we have missed their utter significance. Jesus told of a rich man that went to Hell and begged for Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue. There is no question, but that the cry of Hell is, “Water, water, water.” Up and down the corridors of that horrible place, men are begging and screaming for water.

When the Son of Man was experiencing the throbs of His horrible excruciating death and was forsaken by His God of which He was One, He cried out, “I thirst.” Hell is indeed a real place, but it is more than just a place, it is a state of existence where all things beautiful and satisfying are lost. The Son of God so experienced the penalty of sin for us that He suffered the pains of being completely emptied of all that makes life bearable. He experienced the utter emptiness of a man lost and desperate for the most basic need of water. It was as though His cry, “I thirst,” was an echo of the rich man’s cry for “water.” He was on that cross for us that we might be “forever saved.” I believe His Words, “I thirst,” can be called, “Sounds from Hell.”

The Rich Man and Sounds Out of Hell
Jesus told this vivid story that was mentioned above of the rich man that died and went to Hell. Jesus gave him no name because his name had already rotted, but the poor beggar in the story was named Lazarus. Jesus said, “… the rich man also died, and was buried; And in Hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (Luke 16:23-24). This story is above all an effort by the Son of God to give us a clear picture of eternal torments for the wicked. When, at the beginning of this article, I said, “Hell is a hot subject,” it was meant to be literal. It is not imaginary or some unconscious state. Hell is full of misery and torments so breathtaking as to cause a constant chorus of miserable sounds. Nothing describes misery more than the sounds which misery creates.

Visit a hospital where desperate men and women are patients. Their appearance may be extremely sad and even depressing but their cries and screams can be utterly terrifying. There is no question but that the screams of suffering individuals are more overwhelming than other aspects of their pitiful state. The screams of Hell are enough to make this eternal destination of the wicked the most horrible place in God’s universe.

The rich man was in torments, and his cries and requests reveal just how real the place really was. Look at this list of words which Jesus stated that came from His lips. Jesus said, “He cried.” Then, he stated, “Have mercy.” He then requested “water” and said that he was “tormented.” Abraham responded to him by saying, “Son, remember…” The rich man said, “I pray thee,” and then showed “compassion” towards his lost family. He was clearly a different man than the one that refused to even provide the crumbs from his table for the beggar. Hell had stripped him of his arrogance and rebellion. The sounds of his words make unprepared men with an honest conscious tremble. What our world needs is for the church and the praying saints to get a fresh vision of the horrors of Hell until we are terrified by these words from the lips of a damned man.

The Heavenly Father and Precious Fruit
The Heavenly Father created Hell for His unfaithful angels, but He never intended for one human soul to go there. He cries out to us by His Spirit, “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.” (James 5:7).
He identified Himself as the “husbandman” that “waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth.” What a phrase of words that the Father uses for the unsaved of our world. Liars, thieves, murderers, immoral souls, etc. are all called the “precious fruit” that He wants to redeem. Apostle Peter added that He is “longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9).

Sounds From Hell
The world needs nothing but the Word of God and if they will not listen to the Word and His prophets and messengers, then they will not hear although someone came to them from the region of the damned. Jesus ended the story of the rich man and Lazarus with the following words. “And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:30-31).

A strange story landed on my desk several years ago. This story related what was reported to have occurred in Siberia where scientists were doing research in the deep regions of the earth. I immediately called the newspaper in Finland, where the report was first printed. After much effort to talk to someone speaking English, I did get the right person and they mailed me two Finnish newspapers containing the story. I found a Finnish woman in Charlotte, who confirmed the story as printed in her language.

Here is the exact story as mailed to us from the newspaper publisher:

“A geological group who drilled a hole about 14.4 kilometers deep in the crust of the earth are saying that they heard human screams. Screams have been heard from the condemned souls from earth’s deepest hole. Terrified scientists are afraid they have let loose the evil powers of Hell up to the earth’s surface. ‘The information we are gathering is so surprising, that we are sincerely afraid of what we might find down there,’ stated Dr Azzacov, the manager of the project in remote Siberia.”

The report continued, “The second surprise was the high temperature they discovered in the earth’s center. ‘The calculations indicate the given temperature was about 1,100 degrees Celsius, or over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit,’ Azzacov pointed out. ‘This is far more thea we expected. It seems almost like an inferno of fire is brutally going on in the center of the earth.’

“’The last discovery was nevertheless the most shocking to our ears, so much so that the scientists are afraid to continue the project. We tried to listen to the earth’s movements at certain intervals with supersensitive microphones, which were let down through the hole. What we heard turned those logically thinking scientists into a trembling ruins. It was sometimes a weak, but high-pitched sound which we thought to be coming from our own equipment,’ explained Dr Azzacov.

“’But after some adjustments we comprehended that indeed the sound came from the earth’s interior. We could hardly believe our own ears. We heard a human voice, screaming in pain. Even though one voice was discernible, we could hear thousands, perhaps millions, in the background, of suffering souls screaming. After this ghastly discovery, about half of the scientists quit because of fear. Hopefully, that which is down there will stay there,’ Azzacov added.

While I do not believe this story, they certainly did get their facts right. Hell is in the heart of the earth. “Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into Hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.” (Psalm 55:15). “Though they dig into Hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” (Amos 9:2).

Also, its temperature is over 2,000° Fahrenheit. While searching the Encyclopedia Britannica, I found that the reported temperature of lava from a volcano measuring over 2,000° Fahrenheit after it had moved up from the depths of the earth. It is not hard to believe that Hell is enlarging itself as reported by Isaiah. “Therefore Hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.” (Isaiah 5:14).

Conclusion
The modern church is mostly too sophisticated to believe in a literal fire and brimstone place called “Hell” or the “Lake of Fire.” The infallible Word of God has settled the question. Hell is real and it is the eternal abode of every soul that has not been redeemed by the blood of Calvary’s sacrifice.

If you will live in the shadow of the cross, you will never be seduced to doubt the reality of this ultimate judgment for sin. The suffering of our Savior demands that His great sacrifice was born of equally great love to save man from an equally horrible eternal death. “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:44).