How can a God of love send anybody to Hell? Does God allow jails and prisons for some people? Does God allow the electric chair sometimes? Does God allow sin to break homes and hearts? Does God allow war?

Sin will lead you to Hell.

All of these things are the consequences of sin entering into the world, and in some cases the direct result of man's rebellion, and the result of greed, pride, egotism and hunger for power that doesn't have any use for people; only the desire to get ahead.

This is the incredible fruit of sin. Sin brings suffering into the world. There is no way of getting around it. And the greatest sin in the world is to reject the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.

Mankind has a catalog of sins. Mankind have rape, incest and murder; and we have them all cataloged and classified, but there isn't one of them (or even put them all together in one big hunk) that comes close to the sin of keeping Jesus Christ out of your life. Did Jesus say, 'I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin because they rob banks' or, 'because they believe not in me'?

It is folly to expect that you or I can trifle with the Lord Jesus and not have a penalty attached to it. What ridiculous thinking people have in this area! We expect penalties for doing much less. Life is just built that way.

Can Rules be Broken?

Would you jump off from this edge?

You jump off a bridge, the law of gravity will take care of you. You might say, "God is love" all the way down, but you're still going to get splattered when you hit the bottom!

You break the law of gravity, and it breaks you! You may love your little child, but if he puts his finger on that hot burner on the gas stove or the electric stove, he's going to get burned!

Fire burns. Gravity kills. Water drowns. And you can say, "God is love, God is love, God is love," until you're blue in the face. But water will still drown you, fire will burn you, gravity will kill you, and sin will damn you no matter how much you say about loving God.

God sets up life that way. He sets up the rules. He sets up the laws by which we are to live. And if we break those laws, they break us, and we pay the consequences. In a sense, the concept of hell gives meaning to our lives. It tells us that the moral choices we make day by day have eternal significance, that our behavior has consequences lasting to eternity, that God Himself takes our choices seriously.

The doctrine of hell is not just some dusty theological holdover from the Middle Ages. It has significant social consequences. Without a conviction of ultimate justice, people's sense of moral obligation dissolves, and social bonds are broken. Of course, these considerations are not the most important reason to believe in hell. Jesus repeatedly issued warnings that if we turn away from God in this life, we will be alienated from God eternally.

We may rest assured that no one will suffer in hell who could by any means have been won to Christ in this life. God leaves no stone unturned to rescue all who would respond to the convicting and wooing of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible says that God prepared hell for the devil and his demonic cohorts (Matthew 25:41), that He is ...not wishing for any [person] to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9), and that He has done everything possible to save us from that terrible, terrible place.

Yet in the end God will not violate or overrule the deliberate choice of those who consciously and willfully turn away from Him.

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