This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

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While followers of Jesus enjoy everlasting life in glorified bodies on a restored earth, the ultimate destiny of the wicked is the same habitation created for Satan and demons: gehenna.

It’s a place in English we call “hell,” and a place Jesus and the New Testament writers describe in various ways, among them: outer darkness (Matt. 8:12), the second death (Rev. 2:11; 20:14; 21:8), and the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8).

While the Hebrew term sheol and the Greek hades generally depict the temporary abode of the dead, gehennaand its associated terms describe the place of everlasting future punishment for those whose names are not written in the book of life (Rev. 20:15).

The term gehenna is derived from the Valley of Hinnom. Located southwest of Jerusalem, this steep, rocky valley is the scene of human sacrifices to pagan deities (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6). Jeremiah declares it the “Valley of Slaughter” (Jer. 7:31-34 ESV). To the Jewish mind, the images of fire and destruction become appropriate representations of the fate of idol worshipers.

Jesus seizes rabbinic language connected with gehenna, such as “unquenchable fire” and “never-dying worms,” to impress upon his listeners that their choices in this life have everlasting consequences. In fact, of the 12 uses of gehenna in the New Testament, 11 come from the lips of the Messiah. 

Traditionally, these passages are understood to speak of final judgment, with Jesus using images from everyday life to warn about a place of everlasting separation from God. It should be noted, however, that hell does not undermine God’s omnipresence, since the idea of separation in hell is set in the context of relationship, intimacy, or fellowship. 

Scripture teaches that those who worship the beast are tormented forever “in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb” (see Rev. 14:9-11). As Alan Gomes notes in 40 Questions about Heaven and Hell, “In hell, God is completely absent in terms of his presence to bless, but is only present to impart suffering and pain to the sinner.” 

A scriptural summary of gehenna reveals the absence of all good and the misery of an unshakeable evil conscience. John MacArthur suggests that Jesus’ depiction of hell as a place where the unbeliever’s “worm does not die” could be emblematic of an eternally accusing conscience (Mark 9:48; cf. Isa. 66:24). 

It gets worse. The most terrifying aspect of hell is complete and final alienation from God and others. As Ralph Powell notes in The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, “This is the worst possible punishment to which anyone could be subject: to be totally and irrevocably cut off from God and to be at enmity with all those who are around oneself.” Another painful consequence is to be at odds with oneself – “torn apart from within by an accusing sense of guilt and shame.”

In the end, the divine wrath of hell is the necessary response of an eternally holy God to the rejection of his gracious provision for sin. As Powell notes, “When the only remedy for human sin is rejected and all appeals of a loving, seeking God for the reconciliation of rebellious sinners are refused, there is no other course of action which God himself can pursue but to leave the sinner to his self-chosen destiny.”

Is hell forever?

Do hell’s inhabitants experience suffering without end? 

Anglican cleric John Stott, who wrote the influential book Basic Christianity, found the idea of eternal suffering in hell so repugnant, he rejected it in favor of annihilationism – the view that the wicked do not experience an eternity of suffering in hell; rather, they are extinguished after death, perhaps suffering first in hell for a period.

While rejecting annihilationism, other Christian leaders favor the idea of suffering in the afterlife as a prerequisite for heaven. This may be in hell, or in an intermediate state such as purgatory. 

Augustine, for example, appeared to believe there may be real, but temporary, punishment for those destined for heaven. Meanwhile, eternal punishment is reserved for the unsaved. 

Even so, Jesus’ teachings on “outer darkness,” “eternal fire,” and “eternal punishment” support the concept of gehenna as a place of conscious, everlasting separation from God. There is no scriptural provision for temporal post-mortem punishment to pay the debt owed an eternally holy God. Nor does there appear to be a temporary state of suffering after death to prepare the adopted sons and daughters of God for heaven.

Paul describes heaven – not purgatory, nor time in hell followed by heaven – as the intermediate state between death and resurrection for followers of Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul describes two mutually exclusive states for Christians. While we live now on earth in our bodies, we are absent from the Lord. And when we are “away from the body” in death, we are “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).

If there’s an interim step between death and heaven, the Bible makes no mention of it, and we would do well to rest in the plainly stated promises of God’s word. For those who die in the Lord, heaven can’t wait, nor should it. At the same time, Scripture offers no hope for the unbeliever – no second chance. As the writer of Hebrews makes clear, “it is appointed for people to die once ​— ​and after this, judgment” (Heb. 9:27).

Next: The Eternal Fire (Matt. 25:41)