HELL and a lost Eternity are frightful realities, ―who can fathom their horrors?
The soul of man will live as long as God Himself exists. God is the eternal God, and man will live for eternity. What will it be to spend eternity in hell, the place of ceaseless torment and unimagined woe, the abode of universal despair, the region of never-ending, and unavailing weeping and gnashing of teeth?
Hope never enters there; the lost regard their dark dreary eternity with blank awful despair. Slowly and ceaselessly the ages roll on, but they bring no relief, no respite of suffering, no termination of time, for it is ETERNITY, ―and there is no end, no termination to that; the torment, once begun, never ends, the wailing never ceases.
And the damned know this; they realize that they are lost forever.
Oh! the soul-horror, ―the passionate weeping of the lost, ―the wringing of hands, ―the wild outpourings of useless regrets!
Memory will be busy in hell; not one neglected opportunity of salvation will be forgotten there, and this will augment the torment; these remembrances, like specters, will forever haunt the lost, perpetual witnesses of soul-suicide.
Tears, groans, and sighs will fill that awful place, but none of these will lessen the burden of woe. That burden will ever increase; deeper and deeper in the hearts of the unsaved will grow the terrible realization of what eternity is. Mind and thought will swiftly travel along the ever-coming ages vainly seeking the end, BUT THERE IS NO END, and the heart will fail as it realizes this.
No, there is no end to eternity, ―no cessation of the torment of hell, ―no such thing as annihilation; the Son of God has said, “Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
IT WILL BE ALWAYS ETERNITY. A million ages will pass, but it will still be eternity; a million of ages will come and go, but it will be eternity still; the end will never come, for there is no end.
Caste and class will be unknown in hell. The lost king will be on a level with the lost subject; ― position and riches on earth will count for nothing in hell; ―the high-born despiser of grace will suffer in company with the low-born despiser. All there are simply lost sinners, sharers of a common doom, each and every one receiving sin’s fatal wages.
No sweet Gospel proclamation of salvation through the Lamb’s most precious blood will be heard there, nor the strivings of the gracious Spirit of God felt; only the wild ravings and cursings of lost men and fallen angels, the mad ravings of evil desperate natures, unchecked by a single influence for good, will resound in hell.
Joy will be unknown in hell; the sound of laughter will never be heard there. No comforter will be found; sympathy is a stranger there. None can comfort, for all alike are tormented; none can sympathize, for all are occupied with their own sorrow. All alike inherit an eternity of woe.
All the sorrows belonging to this world will be multiplied ten million-fold in hell; the woes of this life will be forgotten in the great woe of a lost eternity.
There will not be a moment of forgetfulness in hell, but an eternity of wakefulness and full consciousness. Though the blackness of darkness is there, sleep will never visit the eyes of the lost.
“The smoke of their torment ascendeth, up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night” (Rev. 14:11).
God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
God says, “Now is the accepted time; behold, NOW is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).
Reader, WHERE will YOUR eternity be spent? W. H. S.