Call Us: 423 661-4734 | Email: requests@comeandreason.com      
The Truth About Hell

The Truth About Hell

Perhaps no doctrine has done more to turn people away from God than the teaching of an eternally burning hell. The idea that God is love but if you don’t love Him, He will torture you for all eternity in fire has turned millions against our loving Creator.

The Anglican church officially rejected the doctrine of an eternally burning hell last century. And many evangelical Christians have joined theologian Edward Fudge, who has also rejected an eternally burning hell. In his book The Fire that Consumes, he takes the view that the fires burn up and annihilate the wicked rather than torment them for all eternity.

Seventh-day Adventists also teach the ultimate annihilation of the wicked, that the fires burn only long enough to consume sinners and then they go out.

Have you ever struggled with the question of hell? How could a God who is love create a place of torture and torment for those we are told He loves? Well, the good news is that God is love and that nothing in Scripture contradicts this. We don’t need to reject the Bible to believe God is love; in fact, rightly understood, the texts about consuming fire are an amazing affirmation of God’s love.

The Consuming Fire

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah describes this eternal fire:

“The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: ‘Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?’” (Isaiah 33:14).

What is being described? Doesn’t it sound like hellfire?

But the question Isaiah poses is: Who can live in this fire? Who will spend eternity in the flames? And the prophet gives a shocking answer:

“He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil!” (v. 15).

What? It is the righteous who will live forever in this fire—and not the wicked? If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry; when I first read this passage, it didn’t compute for me either, not until I searched the entire Bible, allowing the evidence I uncovered within its pages to form my conclusions.

And what does Scripture reveal?

  • When God spoke to Moses from within the bush, the bush burned but did not get consumed (Exodus 3:2–4, Acts 7:30–36).
  • When God came to Mt. Sinai, His presence was described as a “consuming fire,” but the elements did not melt (Exodus 24:17).
  • When Solomon’s Temple was dedicated, the priests couldn’t enter because the brightness of God’s fiery glory was too great, but the temple did not burn down (2 Chronicles 5:14, 7:1–3).
  • Before his fall, Lucifer walked among the “fiery stones” of God’s presence (Ezekiel 28:14, 16).
  • God takes His throne and “rivers of fire” come out from Him, yet billions stand in this fire without any harm (Daniel 7:9, 10).
  • Prior to his crucifixion, in a body still subject to death, Jesus was bathed in heavenly fire, yet no harm came to Him. His clothes didn’t even get scorched (Matthew 17:2).

Hebrews plainly tells us that “our God is a consuming fire” (12:29). The Song of Solomon states: “Love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away” (8:6, 7).

The Big Deception

What does this mean? The lie that Satan has foisted upon us is this: The place you don’t want to go, the place you don’t want to be, is the place of eternal burning and consuming fire. But, as amazing as it may seem, that place is God’s very presence! The righteous will spend eternity bathed in the flames of God’s fiery presence. But the wicked will be consumed in that same eternal fire.

When Christ returns, He doesn’t come veiling His glory but in the full splendor of His holy, loving, righteous self—brighter than the sun! Rivers of blazing love surging out from Him, the earth will be bathed in His glory (Isaiah 6:3). The righteous will be transformed by the life-giving fires of His love, just as Moses was transformed after being in God’s presence. Remember, he came down off the mountain with his face radiating heavenly fire. But Moses wasn’t in pain. He didn’t have third-degree burns. His whiskers weren’t even singed!

But when the children of Israel—unrepentant, still filled with sin and selfishness—saw Moses’ face, they shrank back and begged him to wear a veil. They couldn’t stand the heavenly light (Exodus 34:33–35).

The fire of infinite love is painful only when the mind is not healed; the guilty conscience, the unregenerate heart that prefers lies and selfishness, cannot tolerate the light of love and truth. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

This is why the Bible describes the wicked as being destroyed by the brightness of Christ’s coming (2 Thessalonians 2:8). But how could this be? How can a fire that doesn’t burn up bushes or buildings or faces consume the wicked in the end? What kind of fire does this?

This is the fire of love and truth that glorifies God’s people while it cleanses the earth of sin.

A fire that consumes sin? What is that? It is not the fire of combustion, which burns material substances—things made out of molecules, like our homes, furniture, and books—for sin is not made of physical matter. Sin is made of ideas, thoughts, concepts, attitudes, beliefs. At its core, sin is composed of two elements: lies (Satan is the “father of lies,” John 8:44) and selfishness. Fires of combustion don’t destroy ideas. Fires that burn material substances don’t consume lies and selfishness.

The Burning Truth

So, what does consume a lie? The truth! And what does consume selfishness? Love! And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of both truth and love. Amazingly, when the Spirit fell at Pentecost, they all witnessed two streams of fire over each person (Acts 2:3), yet no one got burned. The building didn’t burn down. Their clothes didn’t ignite. It was their hearts and minds that were cleansed by that fire—the fire of love and truth. Distortions about God were removed from their minds; envy, strife, and selfishness were burned out of their hearts. Love blazed in them again! Just as was promised, they were baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire—the fire of love and truth (Matthew 3:11).

But if the fires are the fires of truth and love, why do the wicked suffer and die when these fires burn freely? “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10).

What happens in the mind of those who reject truth and cling to falsehood when the truth of God comes shining through? They suffer torment of mind, anguish of heart, and suffering of psyche. And what happens to those whose hearts are filled with selfishness when the pure, undiluted love of God comes blazing through? “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink [love him]. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (Proverbs 25:21, 22; Romans 12:20). What happens in the mind of the unhealed when they meet pure love and truth face to face? The terrible suffering that unremedied sin causes.

We can never avoid the truth. We can only delay the day we deal with it. We can deal with the truth about ourselves, our histories, our characters, our mistakes here and now, under God’s grace, and experience forgiveness, healing, restoration, regeneration, and ultimately eternal life. Or we can delay dealing with the truth—put it off, deny, externalize, project, blame, and scapegoat others. But if we don’t deal with the truth now, one day when Christ returns, such people will come face to face with ultimate truth.

On that day, what will it be like for that abusive mother, for that sexually deviant father, to look into the mirror of undiluted truth and see their own selves as they really are—no self-distortion, no lies—just the plain truth? What will it be like for such a person to have full awareness of what their actions did to their child? What will it be like to have this truth sear through their mind in front of the entire universe?

Yes, there will be terrible suffering in the flames of God’s love, but it will not be inflicted as an external penalty. That suffering will not be the torture of melting flesh but the unavoidable torture of the soul that unremedied sin inflicts. Just as Moses came out from God’s presence with love and favor in his heart, yet the people shrank back seeking to hide from his face, so too, when Christ arrives, He returns with love and favor, but those solidified in the lies about God cannot stand the light of love and truth, so they run to hide from His face (Revelation 6:15, 16).

Nadab and Abihu: Picture of the End

The Bible confirms that the fire of God’s presence consumes sin, not material substances. God has also plainly demonstrated that the “consuming fire” that destroys the wicked is not a fire that burns elements. In Leviticus, we read about Aaron’s sons, who as priests brought unauthorized fire before the Lord:

Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. … Moses summoned Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come here; carry your cousins outside the camp, away from the front of the sanctuary.” So they came and carried them, still in their tunics, outside the camp, as Moses ordered (Leviticus 10:1–5, emphasis mine).

The fire of the Lord “consumed” them—yet their bodies weren’t charred and their tunics were still intact.

This is what happens to the wicked in the end. They are “tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (Revelation 14:10). Notice, it is in Jesus’ presence where they suffer. What about the term “burning sulfur”? It comes from the Greek thion and means the divine fire—or the fire of God’s presence.

Eventually, after all the wicked have been consumed but their physical bodies are not destroyed, as it was with Nadab and Abihu, when only dead bodies of the unrepentant remain, then the fires of combustion commence—spoken of by Peter, in which the elements melt in the terrible heat, consuming all that remains. Then the earth is recreated free from all sin—a new earth, the home of the righteous (2 Peter 3:12, 13).

But Revelation also tells us:

And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever (14:11).

Smoke is what is left after something is burned. This “smoke” symbolizes the memory, the lessons learned of what unremedied sin does to sinners—it torments and destroys. This lesson will never be forgotten by the universe. The righteous will remember for all eternity that the wicked suffered and died, not at God’s hand, but because of their condition and because they refused to allow God to heal them. The righteous will remember for all eternity that every person who is eternally lost is lost only because they prefer non-existence to living in a universe of love and truth.

What incredibly good news that God is not the source of suffering and death! The Bible is proved true that it is sin that causes death (Romans 6:23; James 1:15; Galatians 6:8). What incredibly good news that because these truths are revealed and will never be forgotten, sin will never arise again and God’s universe and every saved individual will live in eternal peace, health, happiness, and security, living and thriving in the consuming fires and eternal burnings of God’s very presence!

Email me the blog whenever a new one is published.

Donate online, securely via PayPal using your credit or debit card (no PayPal account needed, unless you want to set up a monthly, recurring payment).


cancel recurring payment

 

Want to use zelle instead?
See how on our
Support and Donations page.

Upcoming Events

calendar

Testimonial Post Slider

Testimony 31

It was very touching to hear the testimony of your class share how viewing God’s true character has changed their lives. My feelings are the same – there is so much freedom in knowing that God LOVES me – regardless of my… just, REGARDLESS! I’m still blown away by the true gospel, the fact that God is not ready to strike us when we fail. He is not arbitrary. He simply loves us and warns of the natural consequences because He can’t stand to see us suffer. I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS GOD!!!

Ceil V.,  UT, USA

 

Testimony 71

When I was 9 years old, I remember setting at our devotional table with a hunger and thirst for God that wanted more, deeper, BETTER. I can remember literally crying and pounding on the table, “I know these teachers didn’t mean to give us error. They taught what THEY had been TAUGHT, but didn’t ANYBODY READ THE BOOK?!?!?” It mattered to me then. It mattered to me as a teenager. It matters now as I teach bible classes. It didn’t have to be so hard as I watched so many give up and lay God’s great plan and gift of salvation aside as being “impossible.” Then, a friend sent me a link to Come And Reason’s website. I grew excited. YES! FINALLY! Then another friend told me to stay away, saying her son had just broken up with a girl because she was involved with Come And Reason and that “Tim Jennings preaches a false gospel.” But, AFTER many years of developing an authentic and, dare I say FUN relationship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit I see this message has been around a LONG time, since the apostle Paul, Ellen White, Graham Maxwell, Ray Foucher, and yourself (though I admit, you’ve made me back up, rewind and replay the clips, and get out my well-worn Bible on a few things.) I’m so thankful I have found LIGHT during these DARK days. I am not alone.

Vicki DiNitto

Testimony 30

God lead me to your book “The God-Shaped Brain” while I was searching for another book about the brain and then to your interview about your book on HeartWise Ministries [where] I found out about [Come And Reason Ministries]. I’m now devouring the webcasts of your Bible studies. I have been so greatly blessed and I thank God so much for your courage to speak the Truth in love no matter what. Listening to you contrast the two opposing systems (laws) and digging deep to unearth the hidden treasures in the Bible makes me so incredibly happy and I feel very blessed to be part of your Bible Study Group although I live far away. I am just so excited that there is a group of people that is spreading the Truth about the character of God and it saddens me how few realize what our Father in Heaven is really like.

Kessy B., Australia

 

Testimony 25

I just want to say thank you so much for your conversations via YouTube. I regularly tune in to your lectures, “Let’s Talk” sessions, and many others. Through these I’ve found greater depth and meaning to God’s word. Thanks for all that you do and please continue. I’m currently working in the middle of Silicon Valley at Stanford University. I feel like God really has me in the right place right now and I’m sensing that your teachings might be part of it.

B. F., Silicon Valley, CA, USA

 

Testimony 70

I have been watching you for many years and have learned to love God with all my heart. I was raised by a loving Christian mother that had been lied to about who God really was, so our religious upbringing was hell fire and damnation. As soon as I was old enough and moved out, I not only left the church, I ran as fast as I could to get away from it. Sad to say, it wasn’t until the past couple of years that I learned and understand who my Father really is and how much He loves me. I understand God’s Design Laws (which make sense) and when I’m teaching my church Bible study class, I’m able to really put to use the things I’ve been learning and Holy Spirit is leading. Thank you for introducing me to my Father of true, pure love. Everyday with Him is new and exciting. One thing that breaks my heart is that I didn’t know Him sooner. God Bless you and your ministry!

Judy Phelps, Reno, NV, USA

Testimony 37

Hearing Dr. Jennings’ presentations in person came at a pivotal moment in my spiritual journey that began about nine months ago, when the fault lines inherent in my belief system began to crack under questions that most reasonable people end up asking about God and His nature. These were questions I couldn’t find answers to, and they shook my faith. I was unable let it go any longer and be satisfied. My Christian experience became distant. I was afraid; the fear in me rose like thorns, pushing me away from Jesus. And then someone heard my questions and introduced me to this ministry, and my life has totally changed.

I can tell you that this new, “present truth” message is far grander and life-changing than when I shifted from being an agnostic and then a nominal Christian. It has radically altered my worldview, because it reveals a God that makes sense. It is a revolution. I believe that Dr. Jennings’ message is the final message that must go to the world. If any message could be called “righteousness by faith,” as abused as that term is by the right and the left, this is that message, because Jennings’ biblical message identifies a God who is different, whose character isn’t an impossible contradiction.

I walk this path now without fear. I see people differently, and the Holy Spirit burns in my heart. Many call Dr. Jennings’ message false and compromising, but it isn’t false, because I’ve seen the fruits within my mind and body. It is not compromising, because in this message is the only road to holiness that makes any sense. No longer do I behold a pagan god who is always angry and suspicious. Instead, I behold a God who is freeing and loving, always working for our good, and giving me every reason to love my enemy even to my own death, just as Jesus pleads with us. God is good.

Anthony L., CA, USA

 

Testimony 41

I have been blessed by your ministry. I have experienced personally, and deeply resonate with, the God of love and the beautiful picture of God’s character that you present. I have seen your seminar series on YouTube, read ‘The Journal of the Watcher’ book, used your mobile app, and also listen/study the bible study lesson with you each week. I concur with many of the thoughts and perspectives that you share. I understand your conclusions on natural laws vs imposed law and the legal/penal substitution (incorrect diagnosis). This makes perfect sense to me.

Bless you for all you do.

Melissa L.

 

Testimony 69

After reading your book, ‘Could It Be This Simple,’ someone was explaining Christianity in a way that made sense to me for the first time in my life. One morning, I simply prayed “I’m sorry and I love you.” As soon as I silently said that, I could literally feel God’s presence and light flood down on me from above and fill me up with love and joy. I sat there crying my eyes out, because I was so overpowered with this feeling of love and joy. It was just so incredible. I hope that more people can read this book and get a blessing from it. It’s really amazing.

Rachael H.

Testimony 63

I’ve been very blessed by “The God Shaped Brain” and this ministry, through video and podcast, over the last few years. It’s truly opened up my eyes more to the truth about God and the importance of that truth in the present world. The message is so inviting, freeing and enlightening and MORE people need to know about it. I believe it is the last message that can truly, not only prepare a people for salvation and translation, but vindicate the character of God.

Michael V., Yonkers, NY, USA

 

Testimony 58

I have been watching your videos in The Power of Love seminar and I must say these have liberated me and have improved my relationship with the Lord. I am no longer terrified of him as I was before following your teachings.

Thando N., South Africa

 

Testimony 3

My husband is a pastor and I listen to your lesson almost every week. Thank you for helping me in my study life and to help me love the “real” God more.

C. F., NC, USA

 

Testimony 7

Ok, so last night I listened to “The Law of Liberty” and “How to Achieve Victory: Freedom, Truth and Spirtual Warfare.” These are both MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITES so far! The logic is just soooooo beautiful. I had to re-listen to them a couple of times. I just want to EXPLODE! (<< we assume with joy and happiness)

N. B., Canada

 

Testimony 42

I am just writing to say that I have been so blessed by the teachings of Come And Reason Minitries recently. I watched last week’s bible study lesson on Youtube and am thankful that the error in the printed lesson guide you use was pointed out and this week’s study was of equal benefit, if not more so. My understanding of God’s nature has been very confused of late and I am so grateful for clarity in this matter. I have never really fully understood previously how a good God can cause bad things to happen and now I realise that He doesn’t, it’s a natural consequence of sin. May the almighty Father and His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, continue to bless your ministry.

Laura P., United Kingdom

 

Testimony 64

I’ve been reading the bible and walking with Jesus since I was around 16. I’m 42 now. I’ve mostly been alone in my walk although I went to several churches in different denominations. For the past 3 years God has been showing me His character of agape. It’s been a blessing and changed how I view God and my walk with Jesus. About a year ago I came across the power of love and the principles of design law. These teachings changed how I read scripture and have been such a beautiful blessing. I’m very excited and grateful for these truths. We share these truths of agape, design law and the reality of the principles of the two trees in the garden of Eden with people on Facebook and YouTube. People all over are learning to trust God and His agape design law which makes life possible. Thank you for everything you shared with me. May God continue to bless your ministry and lives.

Bradley M., Hinsdale, NY, USA

 

Testimony 53

I was so blessed by a friend who gave me your book, “The God Shaped Brain,” while I was sitting in church asking God to please help me learn more about Him and help me not to be so confused and scared. That was about 2 years ago. Your books have helped me to love God even more. I’m not confused or scared anymore! I have listened to all of your bible study classes and feel like I know the wonderful people that attend every week. Thank you for all that you’re doing in spreading the true message about God and His law of love. God bless you and your whole class.

Elssy P., Modesto, CA, USA