Again in Rev. 14:10, 11, we read regarding those who worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in their foreheads or in their hands: +"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 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 Bible makes it clear as language can make it that the lake of fire to which "whoever is not written in the Lamb's book of life" is consigned, is a place of continued, conscious torment. There is no escaping the clear teaching of the Word of God unless we throw our Bibles away and discredit the teaching of the Apostles and the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself.
Next Sunday night we will take up the question, Is the Punishment of the Wicked Everlasting, but we must stop at this point to-night. Sherman said, "War is hell." Of course, in the way in which Sherman meant it, this is true. It is far more true of war to-day than it was in the worst and most inexcusable phases of our Civil War—Libby and Andersonville, for example, on the part of the South, and the march through Georgia on the part of the North. But even war to-day as carried on by Germany in all its appalling frightfulness, is not hell. Hell is incomparably more awful than the war now raging in Europe, and this awful hell of which we have been studying to-night is the destiny of some of you here in this room, unless you soon repent and accept the Lord Jesus Christ. Other appalling facts about hell we will take up next Sunday night, but we have already seen enough to make any true Christian determine to work with all his might to save others from this awful hell. And we have seen enough to make every honest and sensible person here to-night determine to escape this awful hell at any cost.
Jesus Christ plainly taught that there was to be a literal hell and that this hell would be a place of conscious suffering, suffering far beyond that experienced by any one here in this present life, but we are faced by another question of great importance, Is this future, conscious suffering of the impenitent to be _endless_? There are many who believe in future punishment of a very severe and awful character, and who indeed believe in a literal hell of awful, conscious suffering, but they deny, or at least doubt, that this future hell will be a place of _endless_, conscious suffering. Many of them admit and teach that the suffering may go on for a long time, and perhaps for thousands of years, but they hold that it will end at last and that all men will ultimately come to repentance, accept Jesus Christ, and be saved. What is the exact truth about the matter? We cannot decide this by asking what the majority of supposedly reliable theologians believe, for majorities are often wrong and minorities are often right. Neither can we decide it by reasoning as to what such a being as God is must do. It is impossible for finite and foolish men such as we are, and such as the wisest philosophers and theologians are, to judge what an Infinitely wise and Infinitely holy God must do. All reasonings by finite men as to what an Infinitely wise God must do are utterly futile and an utter waste of time. _All we know about the future is what God has been pleased to tell us in His Word._ The Bible, as we have seen, is beyond a question the Word of God, and therefore what it has to say on this subject, or any other subject, is true and absolutely sure, and in a question of this character one ounce of God's revelation is worth more than a thousand tons of man's speculation. The whole question then is, what does the Bible teach in regard to this matter?