Skip to content
Home » Life After Death (Part 5) – Hell: David Pawson (Transcript)

Life After Death (Part 5) – Hell: David Pawson (Transcript)

Full text of Bible teacher David Pawson’s teaching on Life After Death titled ‘Hell (Part 5)’

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

David Pawson – Bible Teacher

While people are just finding seats, may I remind you that you’ve been given a little blue piece of paper as you came in and a pencil if you haven’t got anything to write with. And any time while I’m speaking this morning, if you have a question you’d like to ask about life after death, anything that I’ve said or some of the things I may not have said. If you have a question, will you write it down between now and the end of my talk this morning.

And then we’re going to sing a hymn and then the questions will be brought up to me in the pulpit and I shall do my best to answer them. If we don’t get through them this week I’ll continue later.

But I promise to answer your questions if I can and if I can’t I’ll tell you I can’t. The reason why I’m inviting you to write them down is that some people are sometimes a bit shy to stand up in a large company and address a question to the pulpit. Maybe you’d feel you could do that, well you can do that, there’ll be other occasions.

But I thought this morning, since probably you’re new to asking questions of the pulpit, that you would like to write it down and then it’ll be passed up to me and I’ll deal with them.

So do feel free to use that pencil and paper any time you like for the next half an hour. And then the questions will be brought up to me.

Now as you know and as I have announced, the subject this morning is HELL. And your reaction to this word may vary tremendously.

To the British workmen the word ‘hell’ may simply be a swear word that you use when you hit the wrong nail with a hammer.

To people living in Texas the word ‘hell’ brings to their minds a small town, an oil town which is called hell and which tourists love to visit so that they may send a postcard with that postmark on it. Here we are in hell having a lovely time sort of thing.

In British Columbia there is a deep dark valley called Hell and there are people living in it and some of them have chosen to do so for the novelty.

To the Anglo-Saxons where the word hell originated, to the Anglo-Saxons perhaps 600, 700 years ago the word hell meant quite simply a hidden place. It was used for example of the hollow under a tailor’s bench where he threw all the scraps of material he didn’t need and it was simply a hidden place.

It was used by lovers of a secret trysting place where they could be unseen by others. And the word hell as it originated in the English language simply meant somewhere you can’t see, a hidden place or a dark place. You can begin to see how it became attached to certain other ideas.

But I suppose to the Western world generally the word hell signifies something much more serious than that. Because we have been heavily influenced by Dante’s poetry and Milton’s and by Doris’ paintings we have a picture of hell, part of that picture may well be true and part of it may not.

There have been certain embellishments by the human imagination and this morning I’m not concerned with some of the embellishments. I’m not concerned in this series with either the temperature of hell or the furniture of heaven. And I’m not concerned certainly with the kind of jokes about red hot ice cream and the rest of it which I’m quite sure you heard as I did both at school and at work.

I am concerned with the reality. Now the idea that in the afterlife there is a good place for good people and a bad place for bad people is something that had gripped the human mind long before the Bible or the New Testament was written.

Deep down in human nature there is an instinctive belief that after we die there is some kind of distinguishing between the good and the bad and that there are two places awaiting in the future. One of which is a place of unending bliss and the other a place of unending torment.

Now Plato for example describes these two places, he gives them two names: Elysium is the name he gives to the happy place and you’ve heard about the Elysian Fields. But to the other place he gave the word Tartarus and it’s rather interesting that that word is used in the New Testament, though it was originally coined by a pagan philosopher. And so the New Testament seems to give approval to an idea which began outside the Bible.

Well now I’m going to DEFINE HELL for the moment as a place of conscious torment where the wicked are punished forever. And I’m going to ask, is it possible –

IS IT RIGHT FOR CHRISTIANS TO HOLD SUCH A DREADFUL IDEA TODAY IN THE 20TH CENTURY?

I’m going to approach it from three angles. First of all an intellectual angle, dealing with some of the arguments that have been used on both sides. Then I’m going to approach it from a Biblical or Scriptural angle to ask what does the Bible actually say? And then thirdly I’m going to approach it from a practical angle. What difference does it make to your daily life whether you believe in this or not?

Take first then the INTELLECTUAL APPROACH. Now there is no doubt about it that the majority of people in the 20th century in our society have rejected belief in hell. There can be little doubt about this.

I have talked to many people about this subject and it seems quite clear that the majority of people in Britain no longer believe in the idea as I have defined it.