Heaven and hell

What is heaven and hell? Do all people go to heaven? How can a good God send people to hell?

Heaven and the New Jerusalem

Heaven is usually pictured as a place where people are happy and live well because they were good, and hell as a place where people suffer and are tortured because they were evil. But that popular picture isn’t quite what Revelation describes.

The book paints heaven with a couple of different metaphors: in chapter seven the saints are comforted, and in chapter 21 the New Jerusalem describes heaven at much greater length. Both descriptions converge on one main point: heaven is defined by fellowship with God.

That intimacy comes through even more sharply once you notice that the New Jerusalem is described as the bride of the Lamb, prepared and dressed for her husband.

The language of chapter 21 also draws heavily on the temple, the place where Israel had fellowship with God — and the temple itself is a reflection of Eden. The shape of the New Jerusalem makes the connection explicit: it is a cube, and the only object in the Old Testament with that shape is the Holy of Holies, the place where God lived — a space so saturated with his presence that only the high priest was allowed to enter, and only once a year.

So the New Jerusalem, or heaven, is described as the place of greatest possible intimacy with God.

Commitment

The temple theme resurfaces in chapter eleven, where it is tied to worship — and, if you read that chapter to the end, to a faithfulness that holds even unto death.

The New Jerusalem is a cube, and those who remain outside it — the unbelievers barred from entry — stand for the same reality the lake of fire depicted at the final judgment in chapter 20: final exclusion from God’s presence. In other words, you are either all the way in or all the way out. That might sound extreme, but it isn’t, once you see what’s actually being described: priority. If you are not fully committed to something, it means something else matters more to you, or you don’t fully trust it — and that is the key issue in any relationship, including this one.

What is hell about?

Hell, then, can be described quite simply: it is the place where there is no relationship with God.

This is not the whole picture Revelation paints — the beast’s worshippers are tormented with burning sulphur, the smoke of their torment rising for ever and ever, and the condemned are consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur, the second death. Serious theologians disagree on how to read that imagery — as eternal conscious torment, as a picture of final annihilation (the “second death” language has been read to imply extinction rather than endless suffering), or, for a minority, as compatible with eventual universal reconciliation. What follows is common ground across these readings: the removal of relationship with God is the root of hell’s horror, whatever its final form or duration turns out to be.

That is precisely why it is such a bad place. Everything good has its origin in God — including the things we take for granted or assume we can control or produce ourselves, like hope, joy, peace, purpose, or forgiveness. We experience these things here on earth because this is where God is courting us. But that season will end, and then we will be with God or without him. Christians disagree on whether that separation is everlasting conscious suffering, final destruction, or — for some — not necessarily the last word at all; Revelation’s own language of a “second death” has been read in support of more than one of these positions.

Without God, what remains is a downward spiral of unforgiveness, bitterness, hopelessness, and fear.

God will not force anyone into fellowship with him. If we don’t want to be fully with him, he will let us go — but the consequence is a life without him, and therefore without his gifts, which is exactly what leaves that life in the realm of hell.

Hell is often wielded as a threat to produce fear: repent and become a Christian, or you will go to hell. Given everything above, that claim isn’t false, but it’s incomplete. Fear and manipulation are attributes of the beast in Revelation, not of the church. The church’s defining attribute is instead her testimony, borne as a witness.