About Me - And My Best Friend (cont.)

The consequences of mankind's sin are all around us. In the world today there are untold amounts of wickedness, and we see murder (including abortion and euthanasia) and violence on the increase, the rise of STDs like AIDS due to sexual promiscuity (fornication - sex outside marriage - adultery and homosexuality are rife), a growth in the popularity of witchcraft (fostered especially by the likes of the Harry Potter books, Pokemon and fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering), wars, and all kinds of general selfishness, greed, disrespect of each other and much worse besides. Planet Earth is in a mess. It's not in a mess because of the Greenhouse Effect, pollution or whatever. These are just by-products of the real problem. For the root cause of all the world's problems is that simple three-letter word, the "spiritual pollution" of our lives, which significantly has "I" at the centre - SIN.

But the mess we and our world are in because of sin isn't the worst of it. The Bible makes it plain that those who die in sin will burn in Hell for all eternity. Hell, like Heaven, is real, but unlike Heaven, it is a place of eternal torment. Hell is worse than all the horrors of the Holocaust, Inquisition and other past and present calamities put together. If you think you have it bad here, wait until you get to Hell. Because if you die in your sins, without Jesus as your Saviour, that's where you're going. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3) And if you do end up in Hell, the troubles of this world will pale into total insignificance compared with the torments that await you there. Many people are already in Hell, and billions in the world today are on their way there. And once you're there, you're stuck. For good. It's the "everlasting fire" (Matthew 25:41). The Bible says:

"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night […]" Revelation 14:11

"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Revelation 21:8

"Oh come on!" someone cries. "Enough with this 'fire and brimstone' nonsense already! You're just trying to scare us! There's no such thing as Hell. A loving God couldn't send anybody to an awful place like that. Anyway, we all get reincarnated, don't we?"

I'm not trying to scare you, but I do want to tell you the truth. If I were a lifeguard and didn't warn you of a rip, and you got drowned in it, I wouldn't have done my job properly. A lifeguard warns you to stay away from a certain part of the ocean to save your life. If you go against the warning, you do so at your peril. In the same way, I want to warn you of the dangers of Hell before it is too late. For there is such a thing as Hell. It is every bit as real as Heaven. Oh, and we don't get reincarnated. The Bible makes this quite plain:

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment". Hebrews 9:27 (My emphasis)

We only get one life, folks. One shot at it. Once you're dead, you go to one of two places: Heaven or Hell. (There's no such thing as purgatory; this is nowhere in the Bible and has been made up by the Catholic Church, which is guilty of many false and blasphemous doctrines. If you're a Catholic, please click here.) God is a loving God, but He is also a holy God, and cannot stand sin. "And there shall in no wise enter into it [Heaven] any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." Revelation 21:27

To find out why God cannot abide sin, and why it separates us from Him, click here or on Page 4 below.