If there's up, there's down.
If there's hot, there's cold,
and believe me, I figured that out.
I now live in Minnesota.
I used to live in Florida, where it was warm.
There's this thing called the polar vortex,
so if there's hot,
oh, believe me, there's cold.
But if there's darkness, there's light.
We understand that.
That's pretty easy to comprehend, right?
If there's this, there's that.
Well, why is it then that billions of people
have walked around this planet
and have denied this other truth,
that if there's Heaven,
there's hell?
There's so many people who reject
that truth that hell actually exists
and that hell is real.
They think, well, we were an accident.
We weren't intended to be here.
We just happen to be here.
We live, we die,
that's it, poof, game over.
Then they go, well, there isn't a hell.
Does that make hell disappear?
If someone thinks in their mind, there isn't a hell,
does that make hell go away?
That'd be like me saying,
over my shoulder, there isn't a lamp in this room.
By the way, do you know that we actually
film in a space in a room?
There's not a green screen
behind me. I get this question all the time.
Do you guys film in front of a green screen?
If you remember, we used to film with cars in the background
and people would count the cars to see if it was on a loop.
Like this is a legit room.
This lamp,
this lamp is here.
If I were to say, there is no lamp,
that doesn't make the lamp go away.
If someone says,
there is no hell,
that doesn't make hell go away.
This week, we're going to take
a deep dive into looking at hell.
We've got hell week here with our video devotions
and how I make these encouraging, I don't really know.
We're going to learn a lot of the truths of hell.
And the first truth
that we're going to examine today
and know today is this:
is that hell is absolutely 100% real.
Now, there's a lot of people who say that hell isn't real.
And they say that to try to make themselves feel better.
I can live however I want
and there's no consequences,
but that doesn't make hell go away.
Someone who thinks there is no hell will say,
even the Bible's confused about hell,
about whether or not it exists.
They'll say, when you look in the Old Testament,
hell isn't even there,
that hell was invented.
The concept was invented in the New Testament
to control Christians, to control people.
Well, that's not true at all.
In the Old Testament, the word hell,
sure, it doesn't show up.
The word isn't there, but the concept,
the truth, the place of hell,
absolutely is.
In the Old Testament,
you'll find a word called Sheol, S-H-E-O-L, Sheol.
And Sheol's an interesting word.
It can mean just death, the grave,
or by context, if can mean that outer darkness
of death away from God for eternity.
So hell, it's always been there since,
basically, the beginning of time.
We find this truth in Matthew, chapter 25,
where Jesus says this,
talking to us about when hell came into existence.
"Then he will say to those on his left,
"depart from me, you who are cursed,
"into the eternal fire prepared
"for the devil and his angels."
So hell was created, hell was prepared
when the devil rebelled against God.
The devil was a perfect holy angel
and those angels with him, but they rebelled.
They lost that perfection,
so God had to kick 'em out of Heaven,
only perfect people or creatures are in Heaven,
and he created hell.
So hell has just always been,
and in the New Testament, it's pretty obvious.
Hell is mentioned over and over again.
It's for those who go to outer darkness
because they rejected Jesus in unbelief.
Tomorrow, we're going to talk on that.
Tomorrow, we're going to talk about
what it means to be an unbeliever, how someone goes to hell.
But today, here's our truth.
Hell is real.
It's a real place
and saying it doesn't exist does not make it go away.
But here's the joy.
If there's darkness, there's light.
If there's hell,
well, then there's Heaven,
and Heaven is your home.
If you believe in Jesus, you have trust
that Christ is your savior from sin,
you're never going to have to experience how real hell is
because you're going to know how real,
how joyous,
how glorious Heaven is.
That's the gift that God gave in Jesus.
That's the gift that you have in Christ.
Hell is real.
Thank you, Jesus.
So is Heaven.