“God hath appointed a day, wherein he will judge the world, in righteousness, by Jesus Christ, to whom all power and judgment is given of the Father” (WCF 33.1). So opens the final chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, “Of the Last Judgment.” But Judgment Day, otherwise known as “the great and terrible day of the LORD” (Joel 2:31 KJV), is not the conclusion of all things. In the most significant of senses, it is the beginning of the final state of men and angels.
For unfallen angels and redeemed men found righteous in Christ through faith (Rom. 3:22; 2 Cor. 5:21), Judgment Day ushers in a condition of everlasting bliss and blessedness in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity. Conversely, the final destination of fallen angels (i.e., Satan and his demons) and unrepentant men “dead in trespasses and sin” (Eph. 2:1 KJV) is a state of eternal punishment, conscious torment, and unremitting restlessness known simply as hell. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).
Satan’s nefarious design is to drag with him as many angels, men, women, and children as possible into the fiery pit of hell. The Apostle warns the church in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” And Jesus Christ the Son of God who came “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) had much to say about hell, describing it in language borrowed from the prophet Isaiah as that nightmarish arena reserved for unrepentant sinners, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). Paul writing to the church in Thessalonica described hell as a chamber “of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:9).
The Westminster Confession of Faith picks up on Paul’s Spirit-inspired language at this point. Returning to the Confession’s last chapter, we read in clear—and chilling—doctrinal terms that hell is a place of “eternal torments” where “the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ” will suffer forever the “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (WCF 33.2).
Believe it or not, the Bible’s teaching on hell as a place of eternal punishment and conscious torment is not very popular. But whether men believe it or not, the Bible’s teaching on hell is clear, insistent, and true. It is alarming in the best possible way. And yet, there are those that plug up their ears against the alarm, denying the reality of hell.
Nineteenth century American Presbyterian theologian W. G. T. Shedd (1820-94) defended the biblical doctrine of hell against the error of Universalism (i.e., the view that God saves all men without exception), drawing on historical theology and deductive reasoning to make his case. Shedd’s contemporaries—both those who agreed with him and those who did not—recognized his work as singularly effective in defending the conception of hell as eternal punishment. Thomas Ephraim Peck (1822-93) contended that Shedd’s work on this doctrine “is the ablest argument for ‘endless punishment’ we have ever met with.”[1] The famous (and profligate) preacher Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87) reneged on an engagement to rebut Shedd’s work, writing to his editors, “Cancel engagement. Shedd is too much for me. I half believe in eternal punishment now myself. Get somebody else.”[2] In his introduction to the third edition of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology, Alan Gomes writes that The Doctrine of Endless Punishment (adapted as a chapter in Dogmatic Theology) “contains some of the most cogent reasoning against universalism, conditional immortality, and annihilationism ever written.”[3]
One of the salient points which Shedd made is that “the rejection of the doctrine of Endless Punishment cuts the ground from under the gospel. Salvation supposes a prior damnation. He who denies that he deserves eternal death cannot be saved from it so long as he persists in his denial.”[4] In other words, there is no good news without bad news.
Here is the bad news. At root, hell is eternal separation from the goodness of God. The perfect holiness of God, the eternal justice of God, the absolute power of God, and the infinite wrath of God against sin and creaturely rebellion are all immediately present to the immortal residents of hell. Yet, His goodness is nowhere to be found. There is an uncrossable gulf separating the unquenchable fires of hell from the unimaginable delights of heaven where Jesus stands as Savior in the midst of His redeemed people. In hell, Christ the Lord is known only as a great and terrible judge.
Such a vision of Christ will cause eyebrows to rise and eyelids to blink nervously in our day of sentimental and self-serving spirituality. But bear in mind the following words from Augustine of Hippo: “It is not the justice of the judge, but the desert of the crime, which is the cause of the punishment.”[5] Shedd adds to that observation, “It is the author of sin who is the author of hell. The opponent of endless punishment should, therefore, level his reproaches against sin and the sinner, not against holiness and God.”[6]
The good news is that the God of perfect justice is the God of perfect mercy who offers a full pardon to all those who believe on Jesus Christ, repent of their sins, call upon the Name of the Lord, and enjoy atoning forgiveness and imputed righteousness bought at the price of Christ’s blood shed on the cross. The really bad news about hell, therefore, should drive us to the cross of Christ where the really good news about redemption is held forth for man’s salvation.
As the great Presbyterian preacher John Lafayette Girardeau (1825-98) reminded his hearers from Psalm 23, our Great Shepherd “whispers to the sinking believer that he died to save him, that his blood has cleansed him for all his sins, and that his perfect righteousness, his atoning merit, is a ground of acceptance, a foundation that will not fail him when the wicked and unbelieving shall be driven from the divine presence like the chaff before the storm. It is enough.”[7] The horrors of hell are real, but they cannot hurt the penitent and forgiven believer whom Christ has saved by divine grace.
[1] Thornton Whaling, “Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” Presbyterian Quarterly 9 (1895): 323.
[2] Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium Designed for the Use of Theological Students, Three Volumes in One(Valley Forge, PA: The Judson Press, 1970 [1907]), 1053.
[3] William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Third Edition, Edited by Alan W. Gomes (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2003), 35; I am indebted to Dr. Gomes and Pastor Zachary Garris for the preceding two citations.
[4] William G. T. Shedd, The Doctrine of Endless Punishment, Second Edition(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887), vi.
[5] Augustin, On the Holy Trinity,trans. Arthur West Hadden, in Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004 [1887]), 77.
[6] William G. T. Shedd, The Doctrine of Endless Punishment, ix.
[7] John L. Girardeau, “Christ’s Pastoral Presence with his Dying People” in Southern Presbyterian Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons by Ministers of the Southern Presbyterian Church (Richmond, VA: The Presbyterian Committee on Publication, 1896), 85.