The Consequences of Not Believing GR 864

The Bible is clear that there is an eternity after this life. Eternity will be spent in one of two places either in the Glory of God's presence which is heaven or separated from that Glory in the suffering and torment of hell. Many people, perhaps most people, are unwilling to consider that a God of love would ever be able to consign people to suffer day and night forever and ever in a place called hell. Our difficulty in this comes from two directions. Number one, we fail to have a true comprehension of God as a God of all holiness. And on the other side we fail to comprehend how depraved and vile and sinful we as human beings really are. We have lowered our concept of the holiness of God and raised our concept of man's sinfulness so that the gap between us is not that great. And while God of course is more holy than we are, we don't conceive of His holiness being so pure and bright and burning that it would consume any defilement.