In a short article today at the blogsite of Crossway, my friend Tom Schreiner posted a few brief comments about the nature and reality of hell. I thought it would be good to follow up on this by reminding us all of several misconceptions or myths about the nature of hell.

Myth #1. Hell is a place where we are united with our unbelieving friends and drink beer all the time in an endless party. The fact is that hell is a place of utter isolation, loneliness, and deprivation.

Myth #2. Hell is the place where Satan and his demons exercise their authority to rule and reign. The fact is that hell is the place where Satan and his demons suffer eternal punishment. Satan and his demons are inmates in hell, not its warden or guards.

Myth #3. Directly related to the previous myth, there is the notion among many that in hell Satan and his demons torment human beings who also are there. No. There is not one text in the Bible that suggests Satan and his demons afflict or torment human beings. They themselves, instead, are the object of God’s punishment.

Myth #4. There are people in hell crying out for mercy who want to reconcile with God. Nothing in Scripture indicates this is so. Instead, those in hell are eternally defiant of God and hate him all the more with each passing moment.

Myth #5. There are people in hell who don’t deserve to be there. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God’s justice is impeccable and he never consigns anyone to punishment in hell who does not fully deserve to suffer there.

Myth #6. There are people in hell who wanted to go to heaven while they were still alive, but God wouldn’t let them. That is utterly false. Jesus himself made this clear when he said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.... whoever comes to me I will never cast out.... For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:35, 37b, 40).

Myth #7. There are people in hell who will eventually be released and granted entrance into heaven. As much as we might wish this were true, it isn’t. The Bible does not teach the doctrine of universalism, that is, the idea that everyone will eventually be saved and given eternal life in the new heaven and new earth.

Myth #8 - In hell people will finally be rid of God and have no experience of him. That is not true. It is true they will have no experience of God’s loving and gracious presence, but they will most assuredly experience his presence in justice and wrath. In fact, we read here in Revelation 14:10 that they will be tormented “in the presence of the Lamb,” that is, in the presence of Jesus Christ. As John Piper once said, verse 14 is not saying that “those in hell have the privilege of seeing what they enjoy, but that they have the remorse of seeing what they rejected.”

Myth #9 – Those who suffer in hell for their sins will eventually be annihilated, which is to say they will cease to exist altogether. Although many wish that this were true, it isn’t. The punishment in hell is eternal and conscious.

There simply is no way around the truth of God’s wrath against sin. There are, in fact, more than six hundred references to God’s wrath in Scripture. And when it is described, there is no hesitation or embarrassment or the nervous shuffling of feet that we so often witness today. Furthermore, as someone has said, “In the Bible, God’s wrath is not the problem but the solution…. [It is] not the offensive doctrine needing defense but the long-awaited vindication of justice after” the suffering endured by God’s people at the hands of the followers of the Beast.