WHAT IS HELL?

“What is Hell? I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love,” said old Father Zossima in the ‘Brothers Karamazov.’ Or as John puts it in his first epistle, “He who does not love remains in death.” (1 John 3:14)

Or as C.S. Lewis puts it, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.” (From ‘The Great Divorce’)

I believe Hell is to “be away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.” Paul, an apostle, wrote, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”
(2 Thessalonians 1:7-10)

Not knowing God is hell now and hell later just as ‘being in the presence of the Lord’ is heaven now and heaven later.

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Jesus