“In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  (Matthew 13:42)

On any given Sunday in America it is doubtful that many of the preachers will be speaking on the subject of hell. Many of them don’t even believe in hell. The word is used more often as a curse word than as a description of the place where the living dead are suffering in torment.

Let’s face it, hell doesn’t mean very much to us. Hell doesn’t disturb us. I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to “hell fire and damnation” preaching. It wouldn’t take much of that to thin out the crowd in most of today’s mega churches.

If you are an evangelical Christian believer, I wonder when you last heard a sermon on hell. I wonder if you have ever spoken to anyone about this place prepared for the Devil and his angels and that eternal abode of the vast majority of unbelieving, unrepentant humanity.

On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut. It was Spirit empowered and produced dramatic results.

Listening to Edward’s sermon, some worshippers clung to the edge of their seats, fearing that they would drop into hell. While he kept preaching, some moaned, crying out, “What shall I do to be saved?” You won’t find this kind of reaction in the average Evangelical Church today. I doubt you will find people crying out to be saved by God. Edwards proclaimed,

“Natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked.”

Nor will you hear that kind of preaching today.

Few people realized that Jesus preached about hell more than any other individual we find in the New Testament. Why was He so deadly serious and consistently preaching on hell? Consider these facts:

1. He created hell.
2. He sustains and governs hell.
3. He sees the vast majority of mankind as fearing neither Him nor hell.
4. He will one day be the judge of all men.
5. He will send unbelieving men and woman to the torments of hell for eternity.
6. He knows that His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension provide the only means for deliverance from eternal damnation in hell.

What grieves me is the almost total abandonment of preaching on hell in Evangelical churches today. It is as though pastors don’t agree with what Jesus said about hell. They are too educated and sophisticated. After all, such preaching might anger some people. It might cause some people to flee to churches where they will be coddled in their depravity and will have their felt need for self esteem met by preaching that is soothing and personally uplifting. They prefer a religious life coach rather than a real preacher who tells it like it is.

How we need the attitude of Jesus today. He wept over Jerusalem, knowing they would not come to Him for life. Paul was willing to be accursed by God, if only his fellow Jewish brethren could find salvation in the Messiah they had crucified. As the valley of Hinnom – the garbage dump south of the walls of Jerusalem – constantly burned and maggots fed on rotting flesh, so the eternal Gehenna, Hell, waits for the death of the unbelieving of this world. May we be awakened from our lethargy to truly believe the words of Jesus,

“So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:49-50).

Oh, that we believers might have revival in our hearts. That the Spirit would cause us to see into eternity and truly grieve, pray for, and endeavor to see our loved ones and friends delivered from the curse of condemnation that is on their souls for refusing to acknowledge and trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.