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Verse:“That will leave them neither root nor branch.” —Malachi 4:1
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to spend eternity suffering in hell? Many Christian preachers and authors have portrayed hell in the most dramatic way possible. For example, on July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards, a famous eighteenth-century American theologian and preacher, frightened his audience in Enfield, Connecticut, with his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He stated straightforwardly that at any moment, the impenitent listeners could be swallowed into “the glowing flames of the wrath of God,” having to unceasingly suffer in hell for “millions and millions of ages.”12 No wonder the audience begged so loudly for God’s mercy that Edwards was unable to finish his sermon. Much of the medieval notion of hell was expressed in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Divine Comedy, in which he says hell is inside the earth and reached through nine circles of suffering. In his booklet The Sight of Hell, English Roman Catholic priest John Furniss (1809–1865) illustrates the length of eternal torment using a “great solid iron ball, larger than the heavens and the earth. A bird comes once in a hundred millions of years and just touches the great iron ball with a feather of its wing.” The burning of sinners in hell continues even after that iron ball is worn away by such occasional touches of a feather! But if life on this earth is so short (Psalm 90:9, 10), why would God punish the impenitent sinners so severely and for all eternity? As a child and teenager, Ellen Harmon (later White) was much troubled with the notion of an eternally burning hell.
In her mind, “the justice of God eclipsed His mercy and love” until she understood the biblical teaching that human beings are not naturally immortal and that all impenitent sinners will be destroyed.
Later on, she even wrote that the exclusion of the wicked from heaven and their final destruction are acts of God’s mercy to them.
Sin and suffering had a beginning and were not part of God’s original plan. They will be completely eradicated and God will “make all things new” (Revelation 21:5) so that the universe can be restored to its original perfection. Love will forever triumph over sin!