More horrible quotes from John R Rice's message on hell. These words are Biblical truth. The world hates this truth. I believe this truth makes us all very uncomfortable. We must do all we can to tell the world about Jesus.

If every sinner would have to suffer in Hell a few score years, or hundreds of years, or thousands of years, until the Great White Throne Judgment, that would be terrible enough, God knows! Every sinner could then come out of Hell, get his resurrection body, and appear before that awful court for sentencing. If then he could drop into the lake of fire and his poor wicked personality be snuffed out in a moment’s flame, that would be bad enough. But the Bible carefully teaches that sinners must live on in torment forever beyond the judgment.

The terms used in the Bible about Hell and the condemnation of lost people are not words of temporary meaning. They indicate an eternity of suffering and shame. Daniel 12:2 says that some shall awake “to shame and everlasting contempt.” EVERLASTING contempt! In Mark 3:29 Jesus warned against the “danger of ETERNAL damnation.”

The future blessedness of a Christian and the doom of a lost man are many times contrasted in the Bible, but the inference everywhere is that the one lasts as long as the other. To the one is promised “everlasting life,” to the other, “everlasting contempt.” Abraham said to the rich man concerning Lazarus, “Now he is comforted and thou art tormented.” Lazarus was being continually comforted; the rich man was being continually tormented.

“The Smoke of Their Torment Ascendeth Up For Ever and Ever”

In Revelation 14:10, 11 God gives us a vivid and fearful picture of the torment of the lost, proving that people will remain in an eternal Hell of torment.

“The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: AND THE SMOKE OF THEIR TORMENT ASCENDETH UP FOR EVER AND EVER: AND THEY HAVE NO REST DAY NOR NIGHT, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”

The smoke of their torment continues to rise day after day, forever and ever. If that were all, one might hope that after a sinner had been consumed with the fires of Hell and had ceased to be, the smoke should go on up and up and higher up forever. But the rest of the verse makes it clear that sinners continue to suffer there forever: “And they have no rest day nor night”! The night brings no rest from the torture of the day, and the dawn of a new day after a night of horror only promises more torment to those in that restless place, those who rejected Christ and would not have His mercy!

This is the kind of Hell Jesus talked about when He said, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

I do not know all that this Scripture means. I know that in this present world all the aches and pains of body are caused by sin. The infections of germs, the plagues of parasites which infest the human body, the decay of cancer—all are the result of sin. They could not have happened to a perfect Adam in the Garden of Eden.

It may well be that a thousand such unspeakable horrors of bodily suffering await the sinner in Hell beyond the resurrection of the unsaved dead and the last judgment day. When Jesus said, “Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” He certainly meant continuous suffering.

 John R. Rice, “Hell-What the Bible Says about It,” in Great Preaching On: Hell, Great Preaching Series (Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1989), 23–24.