THE IMPORTANCE OF TALKING ABOUT HEAVEN & HELL

'...to a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must not be that he fiddled while the city was on fire but that he fiddled on the brink of hell. You must forgive me for the crude monosyllable. I know that many wiser and better Christians than I in these days do not like to mention heaven and hell even in a pulpit. I know, too, that nearly all the references to this subject in the New Testament come from a single source. But then that source was our Lord himself. People will tell you that it is St Paul, but that is untrue. These overwhelming doctrines are dominical. They are not really removable from the teaching of Christ or his Church. If we do believe them, our presence in this church is great tomfoolery. If we do, we must sometime overcome our spiritual prudery and mention them.' 

CS Lewis, 'Learning in War-Time' in CS Lewis Essay Collection: Literature, Philosophy and Short Stories, p.171.  

HELL

'...is the counter echo of God's mandate that it is not good to be alone.'
Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame, p.114.

THE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DEATH

'The problem we often face is that we wait until somebody has died to talk about life after death. The one time in our lives when we simply cannot engage in any meaningful creative theological conversation is when we are in the grip of a raw and disorientating grief. Unless discussion about the fundamentals of what we believe happens after death becomes a common conversation among us, we will never be able to become a community that can talk meaningfully, confidently and compassionately about death, grief and loss.' 

Paula Gooder, Body, p.44. 

HELL

'If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.' 

Charles Spurgeon in Mark Jones, Knowing Christ, p.196. 

HELL

'"Maybe you don't have to think about hell because probly nobody you know going to end up there."'

Marilynne Robinson, Lila, p.102. 

HELL

'If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.' 

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being, p.354. 

HELL

'Hell...is the trajetory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.'

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p.77.

HELL

‘...in a sense, none of our loved ones will be in Hell – only someone we once loved. Our love for our companions in Heaven will be directly linked to God, the central object of our love. We will see him in them. We will not love those in Hell because when we see Jesus as he is, will love only – and will only want to love – whoever and whatever pleases and glorifies and reflects him. What we loved in those who died without Christ was God’s beauty we once saw in them. When God forever withdraws from them, I think they’ll no longer bear his image and no longer reflect his beauty. Although they will be the same people, without God they’ll be stripped of all the qualities we loved. Therefore, paradoxically, in a sense they will not be the people we loved.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.362.

HEAVEN & HELL

‘Earth is an in-between world touched by both Heaven and Hell. Earth leads directly into Heaven or directly into Hell, affording a choice between the two. The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life is a glimpse of Hell. For Christians, this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.28.

HELL

‘There seems to be a kind of conspiracy to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of hell comes from. The doctrine of hell is not “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgement on sin...We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.’

Dorothy L Sayers in Randy Newman, Heaven, p.26.

HEAVEN & HELL

‘For every American who believes he’s going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they’re going to Heaven.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.23.

HELL

‘...we need to stop explaining away hell and start proclaiming His solution to it...’

Francis Chan & Preston Sprinkle, Erasing Hell, p.146.

HELL

'"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there would be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."'

CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, p.66.

SUFFERING & SIN

'This is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering. "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but have this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.'

CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, p.62.

HELL

'In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.'

CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p.105.

HELL

'Hell was abolished around the same time that abortion was legalized and the death penalty was done away with. It would not be surprising to peer into an old Hansard from the middle 1960s and find that the House of Commons had quietly passed the Infernal Regions (Closure) Act one unseasonably hot Friday afternoon when the Scottish MPs were all away. A beaming Roy Jenkins would have found parliamentary time for it, as part of his efforts to make Britain a more "civilized" society. Like so many similar reforms, making Satan redundant was or appeared to be a change whose time had come. After all, nobody went to Hell any more, did they?'

Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain, p.107.