Wings Like Eagles
Well-Known Member
Messianic believers will often do a detailed teaching on the parts of sheol --Hebrew, for the place of the dead--which is divided into two parts. Paradise (probably an Aramaic transliteration from the Persian paradesa--) a beautiful garden reserved for those who belong to God (also called the "bosom of Abraham"). The other part was "the place of torment"--what we commonly think of as "hell"--a place of torment for the unrighteous dead--a type of "holding tank" where a soul was imprisoned, waiting Final Judgment. There is an unbridgeable gulf between the two sides. It is this place that Jesus depicted in Luke 16. It seems to be a place of unbearable heat--but doesn't appear to have flames. It was believed and taught that there were different levels in the place of torment and that the most intense suffering happened at the lower reaches. It was also taught that there was a gate at the bottom, with a road that led to the Lake of Fire (gehenna) where those who were judged, were thrown. Ultimately, the place of temporary confinement and death itself will be disposed of in the Lake of Fire where the smoke of their torment will rise up forever. Interestingly, the earth, were we to travel to the centre of it, gets hotter and hotter and hotter as one would descend, until reaching a virtual white hot iron core that is about the temperature of the surface of the sun.RC Sproul was a calvinist and a preterist so he isn't too well liked here, but there is a distinction between hell and the Lake of Fire, if that's what you are getting at.
At the Great White Throne Judgment, unbelievers are resurrected and then thrown into the Lake of Fire. Hell is thrown into the Lake of Fire too, so in a sense hell does actually end.
Since we belong to Jesus, we can know that heaven, while beautiful, is also, in a metaphorical sense, a Person. When we pass from death to life, which the Bible tells us happens when we believe in Him and respond to Him in humility, His presence is and will be, astoundingly beautiful. Amazing grace.