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WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To subscribe to this blog, click here.  To subscribe to this podcast, click here. If this blog and podcast have blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! Be sure to check out our Featured Book of the Week at the end of this post. ______________________________________   Do you prefer listening instead of reading? Then click below to listen to today’s blog post on podcast. https://archive.org/details/is-hell-real.-2021.09.27 ______________________________________ Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, novelist and life coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Monday, September 27, 2021, and this is Episode #34 of Series 2021. This episode is titled “Is Hell Real?" _______________________________ Mention the topic of Hell these days and you will get a variety of interesting reactions. Some that I've gotten personally are the following: __I don't believe in Hell.  __A good and loving God would not send people to Hell. __I don't care if I go to Hell. My friends will be there, and we'll have a big party. __The concept of Hell is a crutch to control people. __Hell is real, and I don't want to go there. Perhaps you, too, have heard some or all of these statements about Hell. Let's look at them one by one. 1.__I don't believe in Hell. Just because a person says he doesn't believe in Hell doesn't mean that Hell does not exist. Whether something is true or not does not depend on what we believe. It depends on an absolute standard of truth established by God. God alone is capable of establishing what is true or not. We are not God. For example, you could say, "I don't believe in sound frequencies." But just because you don't believe in sound frequencies doesn't mean they don't exist. Or, you could say, "I don't believe in gravity." Well, try jumping off a roof and see where that belief takes you. 2.__A good and loving God would not send people to Hell. If you believe this, then you haven't read the Bible. The Bible includes several examples in which God executes mass killings of people in punishment for their sin. Here are a few: __The Great Flood (Genesis 6; Genesis 7; Genesis 8); __The destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18; Genesis19); __The killing of Egypt's firstborn sons (Exodus 11; Exodus 12); __The killing of the Canaanites under Moses and Joshua (Numbers 21; Deuteronomy 20; Joshua 6); __The mass murder of the Amalekites by King Saul (1 Samuel 15). Those who don't recognize the justice side of God do not know God. He is not only the God of mercy; He is also the God of justice who will punish sin. The only way to avoid that punishment is to accept Jesus Christ as one's Savior. Jesus took the punishment for the sin of every human being, but unless a person repents of his sin and trusts in Jesus to save him, that person will eventually be punished. And the punishment will be in Hell. 3.__I don't care if I go to Hell. My friends will be there, and we'll have a big party. Wrong! There will be no partying in Hell, I can assure you. On the contrary, people in Hell exist in unending torment of spirit, soul, and body, isolated from God and from one another. There are no relationships in Hell, only abject despair. The Book of Revelation, chapter 19, verse 20, describes Hell as a "lake of fire burning with brimstone."  This past week, you may have watched footage of the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. Did you ever consider that the fire and lava we see erupting from volcanoes could be coming from Hell?  You might be thinking, "Dr. MaryAnn, how can you make such a ridiculous statement?