A Bottomless Pit of Unrest

I believe if you visited the churches of America today and you had the time, friends, to sit in their sanctuaries from coast to coast, you'd be hard-pressed to find a pastor preaching a sermon warning about the miseries of hell. In fact, hearing that kind of message is so rare in our politically correct pulpits today, you'd almost have a better chance finding Bigfoot than hearing a real fire-and-brimstone sermon on hell. But old-time preachers would always preach the law before grace and thunder, the severity of God's unbending law in the ears of their hearers so they could see their own sin-sick heart and feel their remedy for sin in the person of Christ Jesus.

George Whitefield often said, a sinner must first be brought to Mount Sinai before he can be led to Mount Zion. But today we just offer folks Jesus like we're handing out free sticks of chewing gum, and folks will take them and chew on that for a little while until the flavor goes out of their religion. Listen, friend, have you ever wondered what hell is like? Jesus said it was a bottomless pit of outer darkness where the worm doth not.

He said it was a place of burnings and torments where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. Wailing speaks of loss and great grief, and gnashing of teeth signifies great anger and regret. I think one of the best descriptions of hell is found in my Bible, in the book of Isaiah, in chapter 57 and in verses 20 and 21.

Here now is the word of God. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

I live in Florida, and we get a lot of hurricanes here, and sometimes you have to evacuate. And when that happens, on the way out of town, I'll drive by the shoreline and watch the ocean as it churns from the mighty wind. The once blue-green water turns murky and brown from all the sand and debris brought to the surface.

And it's a demonstration of this verse speaking about the mire and the dirt as waves crash violently against the rocks of the shore. It's a picture of unrest. And that's the picture the Bible paints about hell.

Listen, friend. Once you are locked up in there, you can never get out. Once you are in prison there, you are subject to its torments.

We tell people today when they die, R.I.P., meaning rest in peace. But my Bible says there is no peace for the wicked. If you die in your sins, you will enter a Christless eternity and be cast into a place of torment, unending misery called hell.

In hell, there is continual agony. In hell, there is unending torments. In hell, there is continual misery.

In hell, there is constant turmoil. In hell, there is ongoing uproar. In hell, there is ceaseless screaming.

I wonder what it would do to our senses for a moment if we could walk over to the very verge of eternity and lift the lid off that bottomless pit. And I wonder what it would do if we could only hear the tortured souls in hell. How it would alter our prayers for our lost friends and family members.

How it would give us a reality of a burning place of torment. How it would invigorate our soul with an evangelism. What a witness we would have to warn men and women and boys and girls not to go to that place of unrest and burnings.

How it would transform us as Christians just to hear one time the cries of the damned.