If God Made the Rules About Hell, Isn't It His Fault If We Go There?

An influential apologist for atheism seems to be a man by the name of Matt Dillahunty. I’ve seen him a few times on YouTube, and recently in a short clip on TikTok. In this short clip, Matt gives the following analogy (paraphrased in my own words.) He says that if anyone goes to Hell, God is to blame for that, seeing as He makes all the rules, and needn’t have made the rule that sinners go to Hell. The analogy he then gives is that if a man makes the rule in his home that if his wife raises her voice, he’ll slap her. If, then, the wife raises her voice and he slaps her, is it not the man’s fault for making such a rule? And this argument, based on the reception in the comments section of the video, appears very wise to many people. But actually it’s quite a flawed analogy, and not a very sound argument. Why would Matt choose for his analogy a rule like slapping a wife for raising her voice over a rule like, for example, going to prison for murder? The government makes that a rule, and yet if I commit murder I can hardly say “Well, it’s the government’s fault that I’m now going to prison because they make all the rules.” So even on a human level this analogy is flawed. But when you consider that the one making the rules about Heaven and Hell is God, it really doesn’t hold up at all! The man who makes the rule about slapping his wife for raising her voice… What wisdom did he have in arriving at such a rule? What consideration did he have as to the justice of such a law? Was he right to make such a rule in the first place?

When you consider the laws of God in the Bible, you have to remember who the law-giver is. Perhaps part of the atheist's struggle here is that they take for granted that these laws were really just devised by men who attributed them to a higher authority. But let me give an analogy of my own… Imagine you start a new job and the company director tells you on your first day that there are various company rules that must be complied with. They are, for example… No deliberately turning up to work in pyjamas. No riding motorbikes inside the building. No defecating on the floor… Three examples of what nobody is ever likely to do anyway, right? Well, that’s precisely what God’s laws are like. If we did not have a sinful nature and were perfect as God created us in the beginning, His laws would appear just as absurd and needless to say. That is, they would appear to be a list of things that nobody would even dream of doing anyway. The first of the ten commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me.” If we were not sinners, this would seem just as needless to say as your boss asking you not to work for another company during the hours you work for his company. And even so, most of the other of God's laws do seem needless to say; “You shall not murder”, “You shall not steal”... well, obviously! And yet we do these things. So, going back to the analogy of the workplace, imagine that your new boss tells you that the penalty for breaking any of these rules is death. Would you care? I mean, what risk is there that you might face death? I think I’d accept that job despite the possibility of the death penalty, because I know I’m never going to do any of those things. (Note also that in human terms we may not trust our boss not to falsely accuse us of something in order to put us to death for some reason, but with God we can trust His perfect judgement.)

Now you may wish to interject that even if God is right, from His perspective, to make laws that nobody would bother to break; surely He has to take into consideration that we are not like Him and are unable to keep them? God does indeed know that we are unable to keep them. In fact, the Bible says that anyone who thinks they are without sin deceives themselves (1 John 1:8). We cannot keep God’s laws and God knows it. Who, then, can escape the sentence of Hell? Presumably nobody can. And this is precisely the gospel message. Nobody can escape the sentence of Hell by keeping God’s commandments. But there is another way, and that is what theologians call “the substitutionary atonement of Christ”. The key word, there, is substitutionary. That is because Christ, the Son of God, is a substitution for us. In dying on the cross, Christ suffered the punishment due to us, instead of us. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is by faith. That is, belief that Christ is the Son of God, and that His death and resurrection saves us. We are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8); believing in Christ is all that God asks. Why? Because this is the only thing, when you break it all down, that makes a difference. Jesus explained that what we believe will affect everything about us (Matthew 15:18-19 for example). There are many things that should characterize a Christian, but they are all the result of that belief in the reality of Christ. Love and good works are some of those characteristics. Believing in Christ… that is, truly believing in Him… one desires to please Him. But our belief remains in His work on the cross. We can believe that our good works please Him, but we cannot believe that our good works save us. He is the only salvation that there is. And knowing that my salvation does not depend on my own efforts, I then have no fear of Hell. If it were up to my own efforts, I would certainly fail. Not one of us would succeed in saving ourselves. So Christ has saved us. More than that, He has given us the Holy Spirit to transform us and keep us in that very faith which saves us.

To bring this back to Matt Dillahunty’s point… his point was this: Isn’t it God’s fault if we go to Hell since He makes the rules? Well, the rule He’s made is that if we believe in Him then we have nothing to fear of Hell. How is that unreasonable of our Creator? This is like one of those silly rules that should be needless to say. Who wouldn’t believe in their own Creator? Who really needs to be told to? The analogy Matt used doesn't even work in human terms. The government sets the law that those who murder go to prison but those who refrain from murder can avoid prison, and nobody thinks this unreasonable, nor do they blame the government if they go to prison for murder. If the analogy fails for imperfect human laws, how much more does it fail for God's laws which are perfect? We are given a means to avoid Hell, and that means is well within our grasp. All God is asking us to do to avoid Hell is that which should be natural for us to do anyway. Believe in Him.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
Romans 8:1-3

Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?

Folks, the title of this post deliberately echoes a post I wrote in 2014. It was titled "Is Ebola The End Of The World?" Back then there was an outbreak of Ebola and I find it incredibly interesting that everything that people are saying now about Coronavirus is similar to what I then outlined as the typical response to a crisis like Ebola. I'm not going to re-hash what I said in that post, but if you read it, it's precisely what I would say in response to the question "Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?" In short... I don't know if it's the end of the world. That's up to God. But what difference does it make? There is an end coming at some point, and we need to be ready for it by sorting out the most important thing of all... Do we believe and accept who Christ says He was and have faith in Him for eternal life?

With regard to Coronavirus... mankind has experienced many plagues throughout its history. The most famous, probably, is the bubonic plague. One wonders how much damage the bubonic plague might have done if the people of that day had the technology we have now; the Internet to forewarn one another, and the medical knowledge to organize proper quarantine and testing? And even though we have these things, the Coronavirus is taking a serious toll on the world. You cannot escape the purposes of God. But what is God's purpose?

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I don't presume to know what God's specific purposes might be. What I do want to do is share what the Bible says about plagues and God's purposes behind them. The first would be what people think of when they associate such a plague with the end of the world... to punish the world for their sins. This is in keeping with various Biblical references to plague. For example, when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Lord (that is, the same artifact depicted in the Indiana Jones movie), God sent a plague on their cities. Or when the Israelites built an idol in the desert, a plague broke out amongst them. A plague was one sign that God was punishing people for their sins. So was famine and war. Nobody wants these things, and the response should always be to turn to God. When King Solomon spoke at the opening of the Temple, he said:

If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind), that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers.
1 Kings 8:37-40

Note especially that it says "hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive..." In other words, the assumption should be that these things are God's response to sin. This is all the more clear since, in a few places in Moses' writings, God literally says that if the people obey Him they will be prosperous, but that if they disobey Him they will see curses like plagues and famines and so forth. The thing we need to remember here is that mankind is always guilty! Does the world, right now, deserve a plague for their sins? Of course it does. But it has always been deserving of this, and we ought not to forget that God has shown mercy all the years that we haven't had a plague on our doorsteps.

Now, we should recognize that it is a good thing for God to withdraw His mercy a little from time to time. There's a verse which says:

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.
Ecclesiastes 8:11

If God never reminded us that there is a punishment for sin, who would turn from their sin? The greater purpose of God in sending the plagues and the famines is to remind us that we are at His mercy, and that He will indeed judge sin. Many turn from their sins because they believe the Word of God when it says that there will be a coming judgment, and they believe the Word of God that speaks of the judgments which God brought upon the Earth in the time of Noah, upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and upon Israel. But it is right and just for God to give us a very real reminder in our own lives from time to time. In fact, any time that a person dies of anything it should be a reminder of "the wages of sin", as the Bible calls it. What difference does it make how and when we die? Let no one say there was a lack of evidence of the consequences of sin; not when God Himself has told us through His Word, if we will believe it, why there exists death and suffering. Coronavirus may not be the end of the world, but it serves the same purpose as the plagues of the Bible, along with the famines and the wars... and it has the same purpose as the bubonic plague, or the Ebola outbreak... all of these things point to God's judgment of sin. That's the most Biblical answer I can find. These things are designed to provoke us to turn to God for salvation.

Finally, I want to draw our attention to how God, even while punishing us, can have a purpose for good. When Italy went into lock down because of the virus, it was widely noted that the canals in Venice and other water ways around the country, began to clear of all their silt. With no one using them, the water became clear and fish could be seen swimming around in them. And it occurred to just about everybody... though they put it in more sort of New Age terms... that "the Earth was healing itself." Or that "mother nature was taking back what was hers." But to my Christian sensibilities, it reminded me of what God did when the Israelites went into exile in Babylon. God had declared in His laws that Israel should keep the Sabbath; that is, that no work be done on the 7th day of the week, and also that the land rest from farming every 7th year (Exodus 23:10-12). But Israel hadn't done that. So when the Israelites went into exile and the land of Israel itself became essentially uninhabited, the Bible explains:

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
2 Chronicles 36:20-21

Not that I'm saying that our sin has been not keeping the Sabbath, but simply to note that it is of a similar vein. The people hadn't let the land rest as they ought to have, and so God's punishment served the secondary purpose of giving the land that rest. We're all so aware these days of how we have exploited the Earth's resources, and industry just marches on and on, never ceasing to consume and pollute. It may well be that God's purpose is very much about giving the Earth the rest it needs as we all hunker down in our homes. The economic ramifications of this may be significant, but we ought to read and understand the Words of Jesus in the Book of Revelation. According to my understanding of the Book, we are to expect famines, wars, plagues such as this Coronavirus... and economic collapses. Consider Revelation chapter 18 about the "Fall of Babylon", (which I think is symbolic of all society)...

As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,
since in her heart she says,
"I sit as a queen,
I am no widow,
and mourning I shall never see."
For this reason her plagues will come in a single day,
death and mourning and famine,
and she will be burned up with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.
...
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore
Revelation 18:7-8,11

Again, I'm not saying that this passage refers specifically to current events with Coronavirus, but rather that the Book of Revelation speaks of the kinds of things God will do in the world, so that when we see them we might remember His words and turn to Him in repentance for salvation. The end is coming. This may not be it, but this is a reason for people to write posts like these and for people to be thinking about these kinds of questions. And that's really the purpose of God in all this, I think. Seeing the disasters which God brings upon the world for its sins, the sensible thing would be to repent. But sadly there are those who still will not...

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons wand idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Revelation 9:20-21

What Is The Book of Revelation About?

For those unfamiliar with the Book of Revelation, it contains a description of a vision that the Apostle John had. The vision contains such imagery as angels unleashing plagues upon the Earth, and of people obtaining a mark on their forehead or hand, called “the mark of the beast”, which later consigns them to eternity in hell. And people naturally want to interpret this vision. Many have claimed to know what the vision means, and yet there are many different interpretations. Some say it refers to actual events in our future where, for example, a government will require a literal mark imprinted in our forehead or hands. Others say it refers to actual events that have happened in the past, such as the reign of specific emperors and the specific persecutions that they carried out against Christians. I wouldn’t be confident enough to make specific claims like that. But I do think there are a number of basic things we can say about the book for certain, and that those things may be all we really need to know.

Firstly, there are seven letters written to seven churches, and these are not terribly cryptic. They are fairly straight forward, and I think they form the key to understanding the message of the entire book. The general content of each of these letters is to say that in each of these churches there are things that Jesus commends them for, but that there are those in the church who do things that Jesus rebukes them for. He thus divides each church into two groups - those who do what they ought and those who, despite attending the church, do not. Each letter has in common a sentence which begins: “The one who conquers…” (or in other translations, “the one who overcomes”). “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life”, “The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.” ... Each of these sentences, in each of the letters, are synonymous… The one who conquers will receive eternal life. That is to say, the one who does not continue in the errors that Jesus has named in these letters. This refers corporately to the churches but also to us individually. We fall into various errors, but how do we overcome these errors? Later in the book we read:

And they [the saints] have conquered him [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. (Revelation 12:11)

We also read in 1 John the passage:

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. (1 John 5:4)

This passage in 1 John, which refers to the world in the sense of the corruption of the world and its allegiance to Satan, reminds us again that it is not through our own efforts that we overcome our errors, but rather that our faith in Christ gives us that victory. The things that we do in this life are the effect of our faith. We do what pleases God because our faith influences us to do so. And we avoid errors for the same reason - our faith shows us our errors and gives us an aversion to them. So it is true that we work towards doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing, but it is because we have faith in Christ that we desire to work in this way and are able to. Thus, those who overcome the world (that is, the errors of this world), demonstrate evidence of faith. And in regards to the message of Revelation, this is really the foundation. What Revelation teaches us through the bulk of its content is that keeping ourselves from error in this life will be no easy task. It will be no easy task because there will be persecution towards us, and injustice done to us. The story of Revelation, presented in a vision, is (at a high level) this: That there are God’s people and then there are God’s enemies who war against God and against His people. They cause God’s people to suffer persecution and injustice. But in the end, God’s people are taken up to heaven and God’s enemies are destroyed. The key message of the book is this, then… that we must endure persecution and injustice in the assurance that God will bring justice in the end. The letters to the seven churches establish this basic message; those in the church who are truly the people of God will receive their reward, but those who are not will receive their judgement. The book ends on the same note, Jesus speaking saying…

Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy. Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. (Revelation 22:11-12)

In other words, from the time of John’s writing this in the first century AD until the return of Christ, yet future, the book has shown us that there exist the enemies of God and the people of God who suffer at the hands of the enemies of God, and that justice awaits them both at the return of Christ. And it teaches us that we are to allow those who persecute us to do so. As it reinforces in other places in Scripture…

But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. (1 Peter 2:18-19)

If we are the victim of persecution and injustice, we must not ourselves become persecutors as a response. Rather, we endure it, knowing that God is the one who is able to judge rightly.

And then we read something that I find very interesting…

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book (Revelation 22:18)

We see this as a warning against trying to modify the message of the book. But this, to me, also says something about the plagues described in the book. People try to interpret the various “plagues” in Revelation as somehow referring to some actual event, perhaps past, or of a future event - a nuclear war, or some chemical weapon… But Jesus is saying that to anyone, at any time in history, who tries to modify the message of this book, “God will add to him the plagues described in this book.” I personally feel that the things described in Revelation at least have a more general sense to them. Whether they refer to specific events in the past or in our future… they may well do… but that doesn’t exclude the idea that they refer to a general state of affairs for all humanity for all of history. People suffer war, famine, pestilence… we have suffered horrific wars, from the 100 years war in 1300-1400s or World War II as an obvious example. And we have seen the bubonic plague, or outbreaks of syphilis and ebola, to barely mention a few.

At the very least we can say that if the visions of Revelation refer to actual plagues in the past or in the future, or to actual governments in the past or in the future, we can still, nonetheless, apply the message to ourselves. Do we suffer at the hands of unjust governments now? Do we suffer persecution for our faith? These are things which apply to us all, and the message is the same… To the one who conquers (by faith), there is a reward and justice will be done in the end.

Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 10:21-22)

Is Ebola the End of the World?

To be honest, I haven't read any hype saying that Ebola is the end of the world… the fourth horseman of the apocalypse or some such? But neither have I been looking for such articles. Still, the thought can't help cross one's mind. The news reports sound just like the introduction to one of those post-apocalyptic, Planet of the Apes style movies. A virus wipes out all of mankind leaving a tiny remnant of a population who happened to be immune. Or maybe the virus was let loose by the Illuminati as they plot to destroy all of mankind, save the super elite who will have exclusive access to the antidote, which they already have? Like I said, I haven't been reading the theories, but I'm guessing there are some out there that go something along these lines. Well, I'm not prepared to stand up and say "The end of the world is at hand!" but I do want to say that an end is coming, and whether this is it I don't know. What I do know is that whether it comes now or hundreds of years from now, an end is coming and we must all be ready. When a crisis such as this arises, there is no shortage of people who will say "This is the end of the world!" But that just proves the point that a crisis like this reminds us of how feeble our existence is, and the fact that Man has survived so many of these close calls is testimony to the fact that there is a God who is in control of all things.

The Book of Proverbs, which epitomizes God's wisdom, says:

The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. (Proverbs 22:3)

Throughout the Bible, God presents to us the danger over and over again; that is, the theme of a judgement to come, and we can either be prudent and wise, or "simple" as in the proverb. Noah believed God's warning and so built an ark to hide in (Hebrews 11:7). And when the angels came to Lot, living in Sodom, they warned the whole family. But his soon-to-be sons in law scoffed at the news. They perished when the hailstones fell. The warning of danger came to these people, and each one had a different response. Similarly Jesus warned us:

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:26-30)

We don't even have to get caught up in technical matters of a Great Tribulation and the Rapture. All we need to notice here is that a future end is still to come, and we can have the response that has proven to fail from these two examples of Noah and Lot (which are only two of many), or we can have the response of faith which, like the faith of Noah and Lot, saved them.

The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. The wisdom of this statement is evident to anyone, but the problem for many is that they don't see the danger. They don't see it because they don't believe Jesus. Is Ebola the end of the world? I don't know. But we've been through world wars and we're still here, nuclear missile crises and we're still here, environmental disasters and we're still here. But how foolish it is to think that we survived these things because we are invincible? Any of these could have been our end. How close to destruction do we have to get before we'll take God's warning seriously? My fear is that when the Ebola virus is contained, people will say to themselves "Hooray for mankind! We're so clever that nothing can defeat us!" And they'll forget that all of mankind could have suffered an "end of the world" devastation. They'll forget that the reason they Googled "Is Ebola the end of the world?" is precisely because at one point they started to wonder... maybe the Bible's warnings are true? Whether Ebola is the end of humanity or not, it should indeed remind us that our very existence rests solely in God's hands - we are powerless to circumvent His will. And we should realize that God is not about making idle threats but even Ebola is a serious warning from God. Whether it is, in fact, a plot by some secret organization, we are powerless to stop it. If it is the angel of death, like in the days of King David's census, we are powerless stop it. Powerless, that is, unless we repent.

The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. In this sense, the prudent sees the danger because they believe God's Word. If you don't believe God's Word you won't believe that the Ebola danger is in God's hands, but rather in the hands of scientists in a lab. No wonder the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But repentance, which is evidence of belief in God's Word, can save us. There is something we can do to "hide ourselves" from the danger. When Nineveh repented, God spared Nineveh. When Josiah humbled himself, God delayed the captivity. And God says explicitly:

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. (Jeremiah 18:7-8)

True repentance is not just turning away from the evil deeds themselves, but away from the very heart of evil; and that necessarily means subjecting one's self to God. An atheist will say "I'm moral", but by what standard is he moral? His own. And he can define morality any which way it suits him. No, believing that there is an end for those who harden their hearts toward God, you must also submit yourself to God. Sodom and Gomorrah is explicitly called an example of what is to come, as we have seen, yet Jesus said "And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." (Matthew 11:23) In context, the implication is that they would have remained because they would have repented. If Sodom is a forewarning of what could happen to us, then so is the message that if we would repent we might be spared.

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. (Hebrews 12:25)

For he will hide me in his shelter 
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.
(Psalms 27:5)