“A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.” — Boethius
Because most Christians have been taught by their religious leaders that Infernalism is scriptural (Infernalism being the soteriological doctrine that not everyone will experience salvation, but that some people will instead suffer forever in some manner in a place called the lake of fire), the vast majority of them have very little hope, at least when it comes to the topic of salvation.
Now it is true that, if they’re selfish, they might have a little hope for themselves, in the sense that they themselves will hopefully experience salvation in the end. But if they have loved ones, they know deep down that they’re eventually going to lose many, if not most, of the people they care about forever. And this is all before we even take the rest of the humans they don’t know personally into consideration, the vast majority of whom will suffer forever if the Infernalist “gospel” is correct.
And what is that Infernalist ”gospel”? Well, it’s basically the ”good news” that those people who are lucky enough to manage to do the right thing(s) will get to experience salvation and avoid suffering everlasting torment. But for those Infernalists who are reading this, are you sure you’ve managed to do the thing(s) necessary in order to get saved from this outcome? Remember, as an Infernalist, you don’t believe that Christ saved you through His death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day, as those of us in the body of Christ believe. Because if you believed that He did, you’d already be saved without having to do anything at all, which would mean that everyone gets saved. So what you really believe is that there’s still something we have to do on top of what Christ did in order to get saved. And if you’re lucky, you’ve managed to do the right thing(s).
But are you sure you’re so lucky as to have managed to actually do the right thing(s)? There are many denominations within the Christian religion, and many of them have conflicting views on what it is someone has to do in order to get saved. Some Christians believe you have to pray a specific prayer, sometimes referred to as ”The Sinner’s Prayer,” in order to get saved. And maybe you’ve said some variation of a prayer, asking God to save you, but are you absolutely certain you said the exact right words that are required to get saved? Others believe you only have to “accept Christ’s sacrifice” in order to get saved. But are you absolutely certain you’ve believed exactly the right thing about Christ’s sacrifice in order to properly accept it? And for those who say that you just have to choose to have faith in order to get saved, are you sure you’re having faith in exactly the right thing? Meanwhile, others believe that you also have to have the right kind of repentance on top of all that in order to get saved, while there are also a lot of Christians who believe that water baptism is required for that salvation to take place (with the right kind of ”formula” being spoken at your baptism also being necessary). And if the Calvinists are right, none of that matters if you aren’t among “the elect,” because only they can get saved anyway, and are you certain that you’re actually among “the elect”? (Statistically speaking, odds are high that you probably aren’t, if the Calvinists are correct.)
But all that aside, while you yourself might have been lucky enough to have stumbled into doing the right thing(s) in order to get saved (or might be lucky enough to be among “the elect,” if the Calvinists are correct), the vast majority of humanity wasn’t as smart, or as wise, or as humble, or as righteous, or as lucky as you might be (whichever it is that happens to be the reason you chose to get saved while they didn’t), and they definitely aren’t all among ”the elect” if the Calvinists are right. So either way, for those of you who happen to have loved ones, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose most of them forever when all is said and done.
Of course, if you only really care about yourself, then maybe you’ll be okay with that outcome. But God gave the vast majority of us the ability to care about what happens to other people, not to mention the ability to miss them when they’re gone, and so the reward for salvation for most of you will be quite sad and lonely without them (or worse, when you consider the fact that your loved ones will be suffering a horrible fate that they won’t ever be able to escape) if the Infernalists are right.
Oh, and before Christians who happen to be Annihilationists who might be reading this start feeling too smug, it should be noted that the same hopelessness applies to Christians who believe in Annihilationism as well (Annihilationism being the soteriological doctrine that some people will cease to exist forever rather than experience salvation). While it’s less horrific than Infernalism, this doctrine isn’t really much more hopeful than atheism is, since the only hope here is that you yourself might be lucky enough to manage to do the right thing(s) in order to get saved. But everyone else is going to burn up in the lake of fire, never to be heard from again, which means your reward is going to be just as sad and lonely as the reward the Infernalist hopes for would be if they’re right. So, enjoy… I guess?
Of course, it really doesn’t matter how hopeless the end result of Infernalism (or Annihilationism) might be, because the only thing that really matters is what’s taught in Scripture. We might have negative feelings about all this, but as the saying goes, ”facts don’t care about your feelings.” Thankfully, however, the so-called ”gospel” taught by both of these groups isn’t the Gospel taught by Paul in Scripture at all. While few Infernalists and Annihilationists reading this will actually dig into what I’m about to say, because most are afraid to go against what their religious leaders have taught them is true, Paul was very clear that everyone will eventually experience salvation because of what Christ accomplished, which means that the Gospel Paul taught is a Gospel with hope for everyone, not just for a lucky few who managed to do the right thing(s).
As for the scriptural basis for this claim, here are a few articles I wrote that explain exactly what Paul taught about the salvation of all, so if you’re at all willing to admit that you might have been taught falsehoods, I recommend checking them out:
- How Paul used parallelisms to teach the salvation of all
- “…all men, especially…”
- To be “in Christ,” or not to be “in Christ”? Is that the question?
And I’m sure that some of you are now thinking, “But didn’t Jesus say that not everyone will get saved?” Well, that’s true, He did, but that’s because the word “salvation” has multiple different meanings in Scripture, and the salvation He talked about while He walked the earth was a different sort of salvation entirely from the one that most people are thinking of. I actually wrote about this fact in another article, so please go check it out as well if you aren’t familiar with the different types of salvation mentioned in Scripture: Not everyone will be saved, and yet everyone will be saved