Today on my bus I read a book on hell. It was very insightful, sobering, and motivational to share the gospel. I want to note some of the quotes that spoke to my heart:"The death that each of us has to die one day does not make an end of man. All is not over when the last breath is drawn and the doctor's last visit has been paid—when the coffin is screwed down, and the funeral preparations are made—when "ashes to ashes and dust to dust" has been pronounced over the grave—when our place in the world is filled up, and the gap made by our absence from society is no longer noticed. No all is not over then! The spirit of man still lives on. Everyone has within him an undying soul...
--JC Ryle
"I am one of those old-fashioned ministers who believe the whole Bible and everything that it contains. I can find no Scriptural foundation for that smooth-spoken theology that pleases so many in these days, and according to which everybody will get to heaven at last."
--JC Ryle
"If you saw a blind man tottering towards a precipice, would you not cry out, "Stop!"? Away with such false notions of charity! ... It is the highest charity to bring the whole truth before men. It is real charity to warn them plainly, when they are in danger. It is charity to impress upon them that they may lose their own souls forever in hell."
--JC Ryle
"Here is a sobering consideration for anyone brought up in a Christian home but still uncommitted to the Savior. The deepest pits of hell may well be reserved not only for the notoriously wicked, but for those who from childhood were familiar with the message of salvation, yet never embraced it for themselves."
--Edward Donnelly
"We must remember that hell exists for God's glory ... In hell, and we can say this only in trembling reverence, God's glory will be unveiled in new and amazing ways. His kingly authority will be seen more clearly than has ever been possible before. Fresh aspects of His holiness and justice will be revealed to His wondering people."
--Edward Donnelly
"We can conceive but little of the matter. To help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven or a great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, and all the while full of vivid sense. What horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace! How long would that quarter of an hour seem to you! And after you had endured it for one minute, how overbearing would it be to you to think that you had it to endure the other fourteen! But what would be the effect on your soul if you knew you must lie there enduring that torment to the full for twenty-four hours! How much greater would be the effect if you knew you must endure it for a whole year! And how vastly greater still if you knew you must endure it for a thousand years! O then, how your hearts would sink if you knew that you must ear it forever and ever! That there would be no end! That after millions of millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end and that you never, never should be delivered! ... This is the death threatened in the Law. This is dying in the highest sense of the word. This is to die sensibly, to die and know it, to be sensible of the gloom of death. This is to be undone. This is worthy of the name of destruction. This sinking of the soul under an infinite weight that it cannot bear is the gloom of hell. We read in Scripture of the blackness of darkness—this is it! This is the very thing. We read in Scripture of sinners being lost and of their losing their souls—this is the thing intended. This is to lose the soul. They that are the subjects of this are utterly lost...
--Jonathan Edwards
