Pro and con on hell

I can’t believe the answer you gave concerning a literal hell (“Your Thoughts,” August 2006). How can you say it will last only a short time? My Bible tells me that hell is a lake of fire and everlasting and unquenchable.

—Donna Wilkey, Murray, Kentucky

Jonathan Edwards, that brilliant early American theologian and president of Princeton University, indicated that looking over into the abyss of hell, where the torturing of the damned is taking place, would be one of the great joys of the redeemed. But if heaven is a place of total joy and happiness, how could such a blissful state exist knowing that a loved one is in hell being tortured eternally?

—Paul W. Jackson, M.D., Wallingford, Pennsylvania

Editor’s response: According to Revelation 20:7-15, the wicked who are raised to life at the end of the millennium will surround “the camp of God’s people,” after which they will be judged and cast into the lake of fire. Thus, hell—what Revelation calls a “lake of fire”—will occur on planet earth (see also 2 Peter 3:10-12). If hell is eternal, then our planet would have to be on fire throughout eternity. How then could God recreate it into the eternal home of the redeemed (Revelation 21:1; 2 Peter 3:13)?

Help for a health problem

As a med-surg R.N. for 45 years of physically demanding work, I have taken Tylenol sparingly during the last 10 years for recurrent back pain. Your “Health Nugget” in the February 2006 Signs (“Breathless”) gave me personal insight regarding one possible cause for my persistent but otherwise asymptomatic cough. I have begun taking a glutathione supplement daily, and it has already helped decrease my coughing.

—Ruthie L. Flynn, Citrus Heights, California

Angels as spirit beings

In your July 2006 “Bible Questions Answered” department you stated that other worlds may be inhabited by angels. According to the Bible, angels are spirit beings. They don’t exist anywhere or anytime, and therefore don’t need any planet on which to live. Why would God create a planet inhabitable by physical beings and then populate it with spirit beings?

—Oscar Lynch, e-mail

Editor’s response: We don’t know enough about the nature of spirit beings to say whether they would need “a place” to live. However, the Bible does suggest that the angels inhabit heaven (Revelation 12:7-9), which presumably is a “place” in space and time. That being the case, there should be no problem with angels also inhabiting a planet somewhere in the universe.

Your Thoughts by Readers	From the January 2007 Signs