Trinity and Eternity
“The doctrines of heaven and hell are most awesome and unfathomable. Every doctrine in the Bible involves mystery. The doctrine of God, for example, confronts us with transcendent reality infinitely beyond our comprehension, and the doctrine of the incarnation teaches us the unfathomable miracle of God become man. The doctrines of heaven and hell, however, confront us with an especially inscrutable and wonderful revelation: the incomprehensible truth that man lives forever – either with God or without Him. Because we are God’s image, we share God’s attribute of eternality; therefore, at physical death, our souls do not simply evaporate into thin air and cease to be. Like all of created reality, our existence depends upon God, because we possess no principle or power of everlastingness within us. But God does not annihilate anyone. All live to testify to His glory, whether we are in heaven or in hell. Also, it is not just the duration of our eternal abode that we find daunting. The bliss of heaven is far beyond our imagination and the horror of hell too terrible to contemplate. Both quantity and quality overwhelm us: eternal life or everlasting death. Every man has his final abode in heaven with God or in the place prepared for the devil and his angels.” – Trinity and Reality, pg 181, by Ralph A. Smith