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Transcript 732A — "I Don't Care if I Go to Hell"
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Is this a Christian station, where you talk about the Bible?
HC: Yes. This is a station where we're interested in encouraging people to the Bible. If you have a question, I'll try to relate it to the Bible.
CALLER: Okay. I don't care if I go to hell.
HC: You don't, care.
CALLER: I don't. I really don't.
HC: Why do you say that?
CALLER: Because, first of all, I couldn't believe in the Bible, because if I did I would feel like a robot: "You can't do this, you can't do that, God's watching you."
HC: Yes, I can see what you're saying. And of course the fact that you don't believe the Bible and you really don't think that the Bible means what it says when it talks about eternal damnation, of course doesn't mean that hell doesn't exist, does it?
CALLER: No.
HC: And the Bible indicates that it's everlasting torment. It is a terrible thing to come into the hands of an angry God. And when the Bible paints pictures of hell, it paints it in the language of the most terrible kinds of suffering. Now since you can't see hell, and you can't go anywhere to see people suffering in hell, it seems like that's only a figment of man's imagination, and maybe it's not real. And very boldly you can say, "Well, I don't care if I go to hell or not," but the fact is that doesn't change the matter of hell. Hell is still there. And if you die unsaved you're going to hell. You may say, "I don't care," but you'll care when you get there. And there is no escape from hell. It is eternal damnation.
CALLER: I just have a hard time, I don't know if it's pride (I hope it's not) or whatever, but I just have a hard time believing that.
HC: You mention that you hate to get to the point where you have to do this and you have to do that, and you just become a robot of some kind. Well, you know, before we're saved. before we're really a child of God, the Bible says that we're blinded by our sin. We're deceived by Satan. We're slaves of Satan, and he rules over us. And we really think we've got a lot of answers, but the fact is we don't have the truth at all.
Now let me just tell you something. Those who have really become children of God, those who have really trusted in Jesus as their Savior, are not robots. Nor do they find that it's just an uphill climb, a miserable existence, because they can't do this and they can't do the other thing. As a matter of fact, they have a lot more joy in their lives than people who are not saved. You see, when you're not saved of course you would hate to always obey God, because in every part of your being you want to do your own thing. Man by nature is very selfish and just wants to do his own thing. But when you become a child of God, God makes you a new personality in a real sense. In your soul existence He gives you a brand new soul. And in that sense you have an earnest desire to do the will of God. And the joy of obedience to God will be far more wonderful than the miserable pleasure you get in doing your sin today.
Now I can only say these things as a fact because I've experienced these things. And the Bible tells us about these things. But you have not experienced that, so of course you can say, 'Well, I just don't buy that.'
CALLER: Yes, but man was created to do great things, be creative and be constructive, and so on. And yet when you look at the Bible, you can't do this or you're sinning, or you can't get rich or you're going to hell, etc.
HC: Well, you see, man was created, first of all, to have fellowship with God. The Bible opens up the curtain and really gives us the full explanation. You know, even heathen people sense that they ought to have some relationship with God. They'll worship an idol, or they'll worship the crocodiles. And they'll even get uneasy about the way they're living, and they'll offer sacrifices of some kind. Sometimes they'll even offer their children as a sacrifice, because deep in man's heart he realizes that there is a God and he's got to have some kind of a relationship with Him. And he'd like to figure out how to do it.
Now wonderfully, the Bible is God's book to us, that opens up the curtain and tells us the truth about ourselves. The Bible tells us that we were created in the image of God. We were created to have fellowship with Him. And that's where we can have our highest joy.
But the problem is that man rebelled against God. And so man's heart has become desperately wicked. And so we're in rebellion against God. And we're under the curse of God. And so we're really all messed up, and man cannot realize his highest goals and good. He can't live with maximum happiness and satisfaction, because he's estranged from God.
But when you become a child of God, then you are reunited with God, and then you find a real love for God in your heart. And you find that life really has meaning and purpose, and you no longer wonder about what's going to happen when you die. You know what's going to happen. The Bible tells us exactly what will happen when we die. And when you see troubles around and in your life, You know where they come from, because the Bible tells us. I'll tell you, the Bible is just absolutely a wonderful book. You can learn more truth there in a day than you could in a million years going to some of the great libraries and universities of our land, because the Bible gets right down to the very fundamental truth.
CALLER: Yes, but everybody interprets the Bible in their own.
HC: It's true that a lot of people don't regard the Bible properly. The Bible insists that we are to believe it alone and in its entirety as the Word of God. The Bible insists that we are to interpret the Bible by the Bible. In other words, the Bible is God's whole textbook for man, and all the information is there. We simply have to check the Bible against the Bible. And then we will come to truth.
Now if we don't obey the Bible's rules, then we can go off in all directions and come up with wrong conclusions and doctrines and practices, and really go haywire. But if we really go to the Bible trusting it is the Word of God, and this is God speaking to me, as we go from page to page, and when we see something significant checking to see if there's anything else in the Bible that relates to it, slowly on we do come to truth. And I can tell you, it's wonderful. It's really wonderful to know that I'm not faced with hell. I know that God is my Savior. I know that I am free to live a life that is pleasing to God, and I am not afraid of wanting to do the things that the world thinks are important.
You know, when we're unsaved, we really think, "Boy, if could only do this and if I could only do that as much as I want." We think that's great. But the fact is, when you have all that you want of any kind of sin, there really is no ultimate satisfaction. You simply want to go deeper into that sin, or you want to try out another sin. A fellow tries marijuana, and he gets jaded with that, so he tries some opium or some speed, or something else. And if that doesn't help for a while, then maybe he'll try alcohol. You just go from one thing to another, looking for something and never quite getting it. You think for the moment, that you have really found joy, but then the next thing you know it isn't there. And in the meanwhile you find that your life is just falling apart. And your health is failing and you're messing up in every way, and you wonder, "What has happened?" Well that's because you're not doing it God's way. if you do it God's way, God has laid down rules so that we can have maximum happiness.
CALLER: But I went to church a couple of Sundays ago, and the preacher said that all people who want to get rich are going to hell. And I can't see that. If a man sets a goal for himself and goes after that goal and becomes rich, I think that person deserves it. I don't care if there's a God or not.
HC: Let's put it this way. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we cannot be rich and be a child of God. But we will have priorities in our life. When we have become a child of God, we'll find that getting rich is not the first priority. Oh, God may bless us. I know businessmen who are Christians, and God blesses their business, and they really become very wealthy. But because they are children of God, they have an earnest desire to make that wealth available to send forth the Gospel into the world, because they have a different priority.
Now an unsaved person becomes rich only because he thinks that this is going to make it possible for him to please himself. He can live in the biggest possible house and drive the finest possible car, and have all the other things that money can buy. That is his pursuit. And he'll get a certain pleasure from that. But he'll never be satisfied. He'll go after more riches so he can have more expensive things. And all the time he'll be worrying that somebody is going to take it away from him.
But when you become a child of God, then you realize that money isn't that big a deal. It's nice to have money, but there are more important things than money, and ultimately it doesn't make that much difference what kind of house we live in or what kind of a car we drive, or what kind of clothes we wear, because we've got something that is far more precious, far more wonderful than the things that money can buy.
Now until you are a child of God, of course you can't understand that. And so your question is not, "Shall I become rich or not?" That's not the question you have to face. What you have to face is, "Suppose I died tonight." And remember that you don't have any guarantee that you'll be alive tomorrow morning, anymore than I do, or anymore than anybody else does. And suppose there really is hell. Suppose that the Bible is true. And if you die without Christ, it means that you'll wake up on the last day and you'll have to answer for your sins, and you're going to be removed into eternal damnation.
You can say, "All right, I'll run that risk. But until I die, I'll be able to live the way I want to live." Well all right. Let's examine the kind of bargain that you're getting. You're going to get a few hours or a few days or months or years of doing your own thing. And you're going to trade it for an eternity in hell. Now that to me is a pretty bad bargain. That's pretty awful. And frankly, the more I study the Bible, if I were unsaved I'd be climbing the wall with fear. I don't want to go to hell. I'd be running out of my skin with fear, because hell, according to what I read in the Bible, is certain and sure, and I don't want to go to hell.
But wonderfully, not only does the Bible tell us about hell (and it really does; it's got a lot to say about hell); it also tells us of a way of escape. And it's a wonderful way of escape. And that way of escape is to just recognize the truth, that if I'm unsaved I'm a sinner, I'm under the wrath of God, I'm going to hell, I deserve to go to hell. And the only way is through the Lord Jesus Christ. And I begin to cry out, "Oh God, have mercy on me. I'm a sinner. I want to believe in Jesus. I want Him to be my Savior. Oh Lord, help me to believe in Him."
CALLER: Have you ever heard of hope?
HC: Hope for what?
CALLER: I mean, everybody that lives has a hope.
HC: Yes. Everybody that lives has a hope. And what hope do they have? They have a hope, first of all, that they'll just keep living for another day. And they're hoping that they'll live to a ripe old age. They don't want to even think of death.
And they hope that everything is going to be all right on the other side of the grave, that maybe since most of the people are like they are most people can't be wrong, and somehow it's going to be all right.
Well, that can sustain them. But the Bible opens up the picture and tells us whether that hope has any reality. And the first thing the Bible says is, Look. you have no guarantee you'll be alive tomorrow. You can hope you'll be alive tomorrow, but a lot of people are going to die tonight - in an accident or from an illness, or, for unexplained reasons. We can die for a lot of reasons. And so your hope that you're going to live to a ripe old age is on really thin ground.
But when it comes to life after death, the hope that everything is going to be all right has absolutely no basis in fact. That is simply a vain, empty hope. The fact is that it is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment. And the wages of sin is death. The Bible is absolutely insistent that there is hell to pay. And so that hope is totally empty.
Now on the other hand, when you become a child of God, you have a hope. But it is a hope that is rooted in absolute solid fact. It is the fact that I know my sins have been paid for, that Jesus Christ is my Savior, and therefore I cannot go to hell. Christ has already endured hell on my behalf. It is a hope that is rooted in the fact that when I die I know that I'm going to be with the Lord Jesus in glory, where there's not going to be any more suffering or sorrow. It is a hope that is absolutely certain and sure, and the Bible speaks of it as a hope. But it's an entirely different kind of hope than the hope of the unsaved.
CALLER: I had a friend that thought the Bible was a lie. And he ended up dead a couple weeks ago.
HC: All right. Now imagine that had been you. Just imagine that had been you. That's awful close to home. He thought it was a lie; that's his privilege. That didn't make it a lie, though. The fact is that the Bible is still the Bible. It is still the Word of God. And your friend, if he died unsaved (and according to your testimony, we'd have to assume that this is so) is going to spend eternity under damnation. And frankly, that's the most awful thing that could have happened to your friend. And except for God's grace, that could have been you, because you have no more reason to be alive today than he had to be alive. I have no idea why he died, whether it was an accident or self-inflicted, or whatever it was. But the fact is, it could have been you. And now you're still alive. And the Bible says, "How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation?" And so you can still do something about it. You can face yourself honestly and start crying out to God for His mercy.
CALLER: But don't you think we're going to destroy ourselves anyway in a nuclear war?
HC: Whether man kills off each other by war or not, and whether two people with a pistol kill each other, or whether it's some people killing each other with bows and arrows, or whether they're dropping bombs on each other, or whether it's through a nuclear holocaust, it doesn't make any difference. In every case, when man is dead the next thing that he will face if he's unsaved, is eternal damnation.
And the very fact that we live in a world that is so threatened by war makes it even more imperative that I know that I'm a child of God. Suppose some nation drops a nuclear bomb on us. And that could happen. That certainly could happen. Then none of us would be alive. We'd be dead. But that doesn't change the fact of where we're going. Whether we died of a nuclear bomb or whether we died of old age at the age of 93, or whether we died of an illness when we were 19, we're dead. And there are certain things that follow. And for the unsaved it means eternal damnation. The Bible says that we're going to be resurrected on the last day. And we're going to stand for judgment if we're unsaved. God keeps an account of every idle word that we ever spoke, or every thought that we ever expressed. God keeps accounts of this. And we have to answer for this. And if anything was sinful, it is enough to send us to hell.
CALLER: I have a hard time believing that.
HC: Surely you do. Everything within you doesn't want to believe it. You'd give your eye teeth that it wouldn't be true, because it's too horrible. It's too terrible. But that doesn't change the fact that it is true. But wonderfully, God not only tells us that it's true, but He gives the way of escape. He tells us that if we will cast ourselves on Christ, if we will cry out to Him, if we will entrust our life to Him, we can be saved.
CALLER: Are you saying that God knows everything everybody does, billions and billions of people?
HC: You're saying, how can God know all of this? There are 4.5 billion people approximately in the world, and maybe there have been another 5 to 8 billion who have lived before this time and have subsequently died. Can God know all of this?
Look. Have you ever looked at this world, at how intricate it is? Have you ever looked in a microscope or a telescope? Have you ever noticed that scientists will struggle trying to figure out what life is? Well, God created all this. God is infinite God. He spoke and it came into being. And for God to know and have accounts of all of the lives of 10 or 20 billion people is nothing at all. That's nothing for God. God is God. And remember we're reckoning with God. We can't change that fact. All you have to do is look at this creation to know there is a God, because in no way could animals and plants and mankind have come into existence without a master designer, someone to design them and then make them originally. That's the only way that could have happened. So there's got to be a God. And if there's a God, it means you and I have got to answer to that God. That's why the evolutionists are so beset with their blind faith in evolution. They're hoping that there is no God. And evolution is set up under the assumption there is no God, that it all happened by blind chance, which is ridiculous. But evolutionists insist on this because they don't want to face up to the fact that there is a God. The moment they recognize there is a God, then they know they've got to answer to that God. And that's unacceptable. They know they're in trouble, because mankind, deep in his heart, knows that he's going to be found guilty, and then judgment is going to come.
CALLER: I used to be a Christian. I know exactly what you've been talking about And then I went back to my old ways. And it's hard for me to get back to being a Christian. I don't know if it's ego or what.
HC: I'll tell you what the problem is. You were never a Christian. And I say that not judging you. But the Bible says that when we become saved we become a new creature. We are born from above. We are given a brand new soul. And in our new soul, in our new spirit, we never want to sin again. And so had you truly become a child of God, if you had really become born again, then when you started drifting into your old ways, there would have been a violent struggle set up within you.
I'll tell you what experience you had. You had the same experience that many have. You joined up with Christians. You said, 'Yes, that makes a lot of sense, to be a believer in Christ.' And you joined. And you began to live like a Christian. But it was uphill work, because you had not become saved. And neither in your body nor your Soul had you become saved, so pretty soon you got sick and tired of this trying to live like a Christian. And finally you just slipped back into your old ways. And that's why you reluctantly think about trying to live like a Christian again. It's going against your grain, because the heart of an unsaved person doesn't want to obey God. But if you really become a child of God, so that you're really born again, then there is a miracle that has taken place in your life, in your soul existence, that part of you that leaves the body at death and goes to be with Christ. You have experienced the resurrection in your soul. And in that part of your life you never want to sin again. And so when you start drifting into sin there is conflict that develops, and you're not really happy unless you are living obediently before Christ.
But marvellously, even though you are not a Christian, you can become a Christian. But you've got to do it God's way. You've got to look at yourself honestly and cry out to God for His mercy and faith that you might believe in Christ as your Savior. To become a Christian is the moment of truth, when I see myself as a bankrupt, rotten sinner, under the wrath of God, deserving hell. And all I know is I don't want to go to hell. I'm just frightened out of my skin because of hell.
CALLER: Well, I appreciate your time.
HC: All right. I'm very glad you called tonight, because you're making statements that a lot of people would like to make. And I also perceive that you are struggling with this to some degree. Otherwise you wouldn't have taken time to call. But you just reflect on this now. Suppose I die tonight. Your friend died a couple of weeks ago. Suppose that had been you. And remember, every human being dies, unless Christ comes first, at the end of time. And then it's the same as if we died anyway. But every human being dies. And we can die as a young man just as well as an old man, as you know. And remember that no matter what you think about hell, or what your friends think about hell, the fact is, the Bible teaches us that hell is absolutely real. It's absolutely certain. And so as long as you live unsaved, you're walking a very very dangerous line.