People ask, “Why does God send people to Hell?” Some people also say God is cruel for creating Hell for people. Yet neither of these complaints are true. Technically, God does not need to send people to Hell (they are already doomed, which I’ll explain), and He did not create Hell for people. God did not even want Satan to go to Hell, but after Satan viciously rebelled against God and enabled the murder of millions of people (through human violence against people), God was forced to create Hell for Satan and his demon angels (co-murders). “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling {their intended home with God in heaven}—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day,” Jude:6. God did not want to punish even Satan, for heaven was supposed to be the proper dwelling place of Satan and his angel friends, but they perverted their glory into evil, so God had to cast them out.
God did not want Adam and Eve, the first humans in Hell. So he gave them a warning, “But you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die,” (Gen.2:17). When God said “die,” he meant spiritual death, where the only eternal home has to be in Hell. In this simple statement, God shows that Hell is a human choice.
God doesn’t want anyone in Hell, (2Peter3:9) “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” If God does not want anyone to perish in Hell, then why would anyone go to Hell? It turns out we are all born, doomed to go to Hell, due to the curse of sin, which (beginning with the first father, Adam) is passed through each father’s sin filled blood line. We are born with a curse. According to Jesus, who spoke to unrepentant Pharisees, this curse sentences us to Hell, (“You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to Hell?” Matt 23:33). No baby in the womb has committed a crime, and no new born baby is guilty of doing sin. Sin is a terrible curse that Satan enticed humans to commit, and now we all suffer from sin. Eventually babies grow old enough to commit sin–no one knows at what age, but we all know they sin, because we have seen very small children purposefully being mean to other tiny children.
But if people are doomed (“sentenced”) to go to Hell, because of our sin, why doesn’t God intervene to save people from this disaster? Actually, God gave himself, in the form of Jesus, to save us from Hell. Jesus left the joy and perfection of heaven to become a baby to a poor, Jewish, working-class couple. The Holy Spirit enabled Mary to conceive without a man’s sperm (no sinful father’s bloodline). So Jesus was perfect. He lived a sinless life, and he was willing to pay the price for our sin, taking temporary ownership of the horrors of evil sin, and separation from the father, also a temporary loss, all on the cross. The most innocent person, who was more innocent than the most pure baby, had to carry the filth and evil of all of our sins and then feel the wrath of his heavenly father, all to pay our “fatal price.” And this is not “son abuse,” because Jesus wanted to do this. “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame…” Heb. 12:2. We were the joy that Jesus had that enabled him to scorn the shame (and terror and wrath) he would endure.
No one should go to Hell. No one needs to go to Hell. Furthermore, no one will go to Hell if they want to know God. God will move the earth itself to get unbelievers to hear the Gospel. There was a tribe in an inland part of Africa, yet a missionary ended up meeting one of their members. It was an accident. A terrible, plague-like sickness forced the missionary to be dropped off, far from his original destination. Earlier that tribe had found a scrap of a Bible verse (in an African trade language), and this tribe wanted to know more about God. By “chance” (truly God’s will), a member of that tribe was at the shore when this missionary was dropped off. He told his story to the villager (who could speak the trade language, as could the missionary). The villager took the missionary far inland to the village, where the people gladly received the good news that Jesus saves.
In Nazi Germany, where Jewish people were put into Concentration camps, Christians, like Corrie Ten Boom, shared the Gospel, and many Jews became Christians before they died.
Some may say a sincere Jew should automatically go to heaven for following the Jewish faith. But please know that any good Jew has the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. From the book of Genesis to Malachi (the last book in what gentiles call the “Old Testament,”) Jesus was foretold as the coming Messiah. Micah 5:1-2 even confirms Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. Jesus is available to all people, and many Jewish people have become believers in Jesus, the Messiah. Yet they must accept Jesus, the Messiah, foretold in their own Scriptures. Jesus is there, in their Scriptures, waiting for them, but many of them reject Jesus.
We cannot say, “Jesus is being too narrow for not allowing other religions to lead people to heaven,” because there is no other religion where God promised to die for our sins. The other religions are from humans trying to gain salvation on their own by their own works. Only the Lord Jesus paid for our sins with his life.
Beside the devil, there is a group who would like to send people to Hell. Sadly, these are other people. Jonah (a prophet) wanted all the Ninevites to go to Hell, but God saved them. Jonah complained about this in Jonah 4:2 “So he complained to the Lord about it, ‘Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people,” (remember though, God may “destroy” a village like Nineveh, but not the souls of those people. God allows people to fall into their own destruction by rejecting salvation.).
So please know no one needs to go to Hell, and God does not need to send anyone there, because we were all born already programmed to go there. Some people live their lives, doomed, but unwilling to accept salvation, but they do not need to do that. If you would like to ask Jesus into your heart to forgive your sins, please simply do so, and then let me know, in the comments you did this. Then I can share more to help you know the Lord better. Please know God loves all people and wants everyone in heaven. We just have to let Jesus save us.
And to all my believing readers, thanks so much for reading this. Please share it with any unbeliever you know who needs to understand God’s grace. I am praying for many unsaved friends and family members too!