The Eric Metaxas Show - Anthony DeStefano

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

In case you're looking for a "guide" through hell, Anthony DeStefano joins Eric in the bunker to help navigate you through everything you might expect, with visions taken from his new book, "Hell: A Guide."

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. Why don't you pull up a chair and said a while? Because if we're fixing to learn your thing or two, if you can stand it. And it wouldn't hurt you nothing either. In fact is, some folks say Eric wouldn't know whether the scratch his watch or wind his buttocks. I won't say who, but they said it anyhow. He's don't tune than they did. You'll come back now, you hear.

Here's America's sweetheart himself. Eric Mattaxas. Hey, folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. As you know, whenever I have an opportunity, I get the John Zmirak. the program. I had that opportunity. I seized it. John Zmirak, how are you? I'm fine, Eric. It's good to be on. Listen, you wrote an article about systemic injustice, about systemic racism. I've been talking about this all week. What is your view, sir? Systemic racism does not exist. It is a conspiracy theory that the radical left is using to try to destroy the whole American system of justice,

of equity, of individual rights, and of the Christian vision of the human being as morally responsible for his own actions and for no one else's. I think you put it pretty succinct, you put it so succinctly that I think we're done with you today. That's amazing.

But what you just said, many others have been saying it this week on this program. You could also say systemic racism is the sound of one hand clapping. Yeah. It's the sound of, do you remember Pizza Gate, the conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party were trafficking children for a sex trafficking ring? Yeah. And that went wild and one guy went and shot up a pizzeria in, I think, Maryland or Washington, in Washington.

Well, this is Pizza Gate with the mainstream media behind it. But the only problem is, this is not a news story, John. This is not a news story. This is a movement that has been going on for, you know, effectively. for decades, at least for years. This is not just a thing that came up and will be dismissed. There are tons of people who have bought into this idea, who have been fooled in thinking this way,

and it's going to take a long time to make them understand that this is, in fact, wrong thinking. This is fundamentally wrong on every level. We're in the middle of a witch craze. Do you remember the Salem reading of the Salem witch trials? I'm not that old, but I know people who remember it. Things were much worse in Europe. In England and in Germany, thousands of women were falsely accused and hanged or burned at the stake.

And it happened because respectable, ordinary people didn't want to get on the wrong side of the bomb. If you deny that systemic racism exists, as I deny that it exists. Like I deny the existence of a Jewish conspiracy. Like I deny the existence of a Jesuit worldwide conspiracy. I deny the existence of systemic racism in America or any other Western country since the passage of civil rights laws, since the end of apartheid in South Africa. They do not exist any more than a broad conspiracy of witches and warlocks and sorcerers existed in Salem, Massachusetts. And for that, people are going to say, well, then you must be secretly racist too. You're part of the racist conspiracy.

The way they said that people speaking up for justice in Salem were secret witches, secretly ill. lead with the devil and that's why they were calling for justice and fairness and evidence. There is zero evidence of systemic racism. There is zero connection between Christopher Columbus and what happened in Indianapolis. And furthermore, the police in Indianapolis or all facing charges, they're under arrest or they're out on bail. These protesters won't tell us what they want. They won't tell us what they want. That means their demands are limitless. Effectively, are holding America hostage. You know, John, what I keep saying is that we're all responsible.

You know, we are our brothers keepers. And when we talk about the question whether Black Lives Matter, I think there is no question that anybody with a conscience, certainly in America, understands that, of course, black lives matter. But the movement Black Lives Matter and the organization Black Lives Matter, is a wicked pernicious movement in a wicked pernicious organization. And if you have a conscience and you really care about black people in this country, you must do everything you can to stand against the movement and organization called Black Lives Matter.

And if you don't, then you actually don't care that Black Lives Matter. Let's stop using their marketing phrase. Okay, let's start saying Black Lives are sacred, born or unbler. Let's start saying that and demanding that liberals agree to that. And they won't agree to that because they care far more about abortion, about the money they make from Planned Parenthood, about the sexual revolution than they do about any black lives. They don't care that black babies are getting cut up in Planned Parenthood clinics

and their organs sold to research companies so that rich white people can get organ donations and get a new liver after their cirrhosis kicks in. They don't care about that. They don't care about black lives at all. They see black people as muscle when they want to call out a mob. as pawns on election day, and then as slaves on the Democrat plantation voting like they're told. And if they don't vote the way they're told, Joe Biden has a message for them. You ain't really black.

I've never seen this with such clarity. I mean, I've known this for years, but we're seeing it played out dramatically. And I think it's because Trump has been such a monkey wrench in the deep state. I mean, that they're freaking out, and they would have preferred to remain undercover. They would have preferred to the long march through the institutions, but they have come out of the bushes. And you've got the Vichy conservatives, the collaborators like Mitt Romney, marching along with the mom, hoping that if he follows the people and gets out of their front of them,

people will mistake him for a leader. These people are selling their souls, and the comforting thing is they're not even going to get a mess of pottage. they're not even going to be eaten last by the crocodiles at their feet. It is an unbelievable thing. What is the title of your article at stream.org? Systemic racism and other conspiracy theories. And the key line is during a witch trial, the decent thing to do is to stand with the accused.

It doesn't mean you're pro-witchcraft. It doesn't mean you don't believe in God, or that you don't believe witchcraft is possible, and you don't believe in the supernat. It doesn't mean any of those things. It means you don't want to be part of a mob hunting innocent people, and you don't want to just be a coward going along to get along. Well, it's funny because I've said this a couple times,

but people always say, oh, if I'd been alive in Germany in the 1930s, I would definitely would have stood up against Hitler. Well, here's my statement to those people. Now is your chance. The war of mob is Hitler. and the Nazis. It's not Donald Trump. It's the woke mob. They're Hitler and the Nazis. And they're going to bully you into submission unless you have extraordinary courage. But if you do not speak against them, you are harming blacks. And you have to live with that. You have to live with that on

your conscience that if you actually care about blacks in America and others in America, you must speak against this or you must at least not give this movement your support. Now is your chance to prove that you wouldn't be one of the silent voices in Nazi Germany. Go ahead. Exactly. This moment to step forth and say no. There's a famous picture of thousands of people cheering Hitler and one guy standing with his arm folded shaking his head and always the meme is be this guy. Time to be this guy. Don't find that is asserting white conspiracy or a Jewish conspiracy or an Asian conspiracy say no to racist conspiracy theories that are presented without any evidence and systemic racism is that kind of lie and when you see churches like the archbishop of Washington and pope

francis church is getting behind this kind of systemic lie that's i'm starting that that makes me think antichrist i mean when when something tries to replace christian with an anti-christian pseudo-christian cult that's a very very scary and we and we always know the never the devil's not not going to appear with his horns and say, worship me. He's going to appear as an angel of light. And this movement, and a lot of what has been, you know, the Marxism of the last 150 years, it has been that kind of a thing. It's been a substitute. And it is all the more wicked for pretending not to be what it is. John, I know you don't have any more time. I want to thank you for coming on the program.

We'll be right back, folks, talking to Anthony DiStefano. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. It's the Eric Mataxis show. Today, we're talking about a fun subject. Actually, not that much fun. We're talking about hell. I prefer to talk about heck because it's a family program.

But the title of the book that we're talking about is called Hell, A Guide. It's by Anthony DeStefano. it is a serious book on the doctrine of hell. I can't think of anything more important to talk about. Anthony DiStefano, welcome to the program, and congratulations on the book. Hey, Eric, thank you very much. Thank you for having me, as always.

And yes, it is a very serious book. Now, you know, if people are watching this, they can see that behind you, almost as a visual joke, you have a bust of Dante, who I think he wrote a few words about hell. I think that his inferno, in fact, was all about hell. What was it that interested you in taking on what is at least a controversial subject? Well, Eric, I think people are very curious about hell.

I think some people are frightened by hell. and many people are just confused about hell. You know, they know it's a place of everlasting torment, so the Bible says, and yet they can't get their minds around it. You know, they know that God is a God of mercy. He's all loving. They have trouble reconciling this idea of an all-good God who sentences people to everlasting torment.

So there's just not that many books out there that are written in a expository straight way. most of the books are written, most of the books on hell are written by people like Dante who are poets or even C.S. Lewis wrote a famous allegory called The Great Divorce. There aren't that many really good books out there that present a biblical interpretation, a biblical exposition of hell. Most of the latest books are very, very much progressive. They did, they, you know, they're written by people who embrace doctrines such as universalism or annihilationism, which basically deny the biblical existence of how. And the thing that fascinates me, it's one of the reasons I'm fascinated by your book and by the subject, is that there are many people who talk with real authority

as though it's clear as a bell what the Bible says. And I would say it's not clear as a bell, that you can understand why some people would argue or be confused. In other words, when you talk about eternal conscious punishment, right? People make it sound like there's no question that that's what the Bible says. And I would say, well, there can at least be some question because sometimes it talks about eternal destruction. And when you think of destruction, you think of a season, perhaps, of punishment, but you don't think of eternal punishment.

So help us understand that because these are the things that every sane person wants to know, what does the Bible say? Sure. Well, there is a question. But at the same time, I don't think it's quite as equivocal as what some of these people say. You know, Jesus spoke about hell 11 times in the Bible. And to my mind, and certainly to the minds of the apostles and to the church fathers, he was very, very clear.

He spoke about, you know, hell being everlasting torment, and he used some very horrifying images to describe it. He never said something like, you never said anything like, you know, and then the unrighteous will enter the house of God and be happy forever, or the impenitent will be destroyed and no longer exist. He never even hinted at that. He talked about something that was very painful and everlasting. This is the traditional biblical approach. Now, I think where people go, people, I sympathize with people who have trouble with that because of what I said before. God is a God of mercy. One drop of Christ's blood is enough to wash away the sins of a billion universes.

But at the same time, these people who want to inject more mercy into the gospel, so-called mercy, are really, I think, trying to rewrite the gospel. I take, you know, the church fathers had a Latin expression called, which I'm sure you're familiar with, Fides, Quarin's intellectum, faith seeking understanding. We have the faith. It's been given to us, revealed in scripture, okay? And we try to understand that as best we can. The sayings of Christ, these hard sayings about hell, are very difficult for us to understand, but he said them. And what makes most sense to me, and I think I'm squarely in line with the traditional interpretation of the Bible here, is that people have the free will to turn away from God. That's really what it comes down to.

If you believe in free will, then you believe that God, that people have the will to choose against God and to reject God. Hey, if the devil and the demons were able to choose against God because they had a free will, then why can't human beings who have free will choose against God? I mean, to me, and if you look at the history of mankind on this planet and all the abominable evil that you see, Chesterton said, you know, evil is the only spiritual reality that can be empirically proven.

And all you have to do is look around and see these terrible acts of evil. I think it's pretty obvious that it's possible for us to choose against God. I want to ask you, you know, I have to play devil's advocate. No pun intended, actually, right? It's really a God's advocate because you want to get to the truth. And I think there are a lot of people that they believe something because they know they're supposed to, but they still have questions, right? And I want to ask some of those questions because I know there are people watching right now, you know, who are thinking these things.

For example, the standard thing would be like, here's what I don't understand. How is it that in the entirety of the Old Testament, you don't get that picture of. of hell. There are few scriptures and things, but Jews don't talk about that kind of hell. Why is it that until you come to the figure of Jesus, you talk about this? You don't talk about going down to Hades, which is kind of like a Greek version of it's the underworld. It's the place of the dead or dead souls. It's not a happy place, but it's not a place of demonic torment. Sure. Well, neither does the Old Testament talk a lot about heaven. In fact, the Jewish people, as you know, didn't even really believe in heaven or even in the resurrection of the dead until a few hundred years before Jesus Christ. So for the whole entirety of, you know, the Old Testament, there was no talk about heaven in there. That's something that Christ came and revealed to us. You know, the New Testament is the final word, God coming and saying all that he has to say to us. And so, it makes sense that he would tell us about eschatology, the last things, life, you know, death,

judgment, hell, and heaven. So in the New Testament, we hear an awful lot about the kingdom of heaven, and we also hear a lot about demons and in evil. So I think that there's nothing, I don't think there's anything odd about that. I think there's many, many things that were revealed in the New Testament. And as you said, there are very definite passages in the Old Testament that presuppose the existence of hell in the book of Daniel and other places. And in the back of my book, I have an appendix which lists most of these scriptures. Well, and it's important that we have this conversation because you know what? I have to tell you, Anthony, it never occurred to me that not only does the Old Testament not refer to hell in the sense that the New Testament does, but it also doesn't

refer to heaven. You're quite right. It's an amazing thing to contemplate. And that's why I love having these conversations. I guess I should ask you also, when people think of God as not just merciful, but just, right? I think that they have a sense, a lot of people have a sense that, yes, if you, if you do wrong, you will be punished. But if you believe in Jesus, in what he did to take the place of our punishment, you know, you're moved to tears with that action. And it changes your whole life. I think where people do get confused is this idea that, well, I can pray a sinner's prayer and boom, I'm covered, right? Or I can be baptized and boom, I'm covered. And they think, well, it seems a little legalistic or a little technical like God is playing games there. And we

know God doesn't play games. And, you know, he looks on the heart. And so I think some people have gotten this idea that if I just pray this magic prayer, I'm done, how much do I actually have to believe what I prayed? Only God really knows whether did I really believe when I prayed that prayer. And so I think that's a part that that forms kind of the backdrop of people's confusion. That's right. And you're quite right. And of course there's the old age, old controversy between faith and works, et cetera, et cetera. We could spend the whole program talking about that. But there are indications that we have if people really believe or if they don't. If you really believe, if you really have faith, then you're going to try to be Christ-like. That's what

you're called to do, to turn away from sin and towards Christ, to be in union with God. That's an indication of true faith. So, you know, it's this only superstitious kind of faith if you just say some magic words and wave of wands. And all Christians are guilty of this, not just Catholics, but all Christians. I run into this all over the place. Hang on one second, Anthony. We're going to go a break. We'll be right back. We're talking to Anthony DeStefano about his new book, Hell, a Guide. The Trump campaign has a special offer just for you. President Trump wants to meet you. This will be the first opportunity he's had to meet with American patriots like you since our country started reopening. His team will cover the flight and hotel and give you VIP

access for yourself and a guest. He'll even take a picture with you. All you have to do is text VIP to 88022 today for your chance to meet President Trump. Again, that's VIP to 88022 for your chance to win and join President Trump in the fight to keep America great for four more years. Hey, folks, welcome back. We're talking about hell, but we'd like you to stick with us because it's important. And if you don't talk about hell, heaven doesn't seem that important. It's important that we understand the whole doctrine of scripture, the whole council of scripture as it's called, or even if you don't believe any of it, that you understand what it is that those crazy Christians believe. I'm one of those crazy Christians. I'm talking to another one,

Anthony DeStefano, who's written a whole book. Anthony, I think you're crazier because you took this whole issue on in a book called Hell a Guide. Why did you title it, Hell, A Guide? Well, you know, Eric, it goes back to this fellow right behind me, Dante. I've always been intrigued by the Divine Comedy. And in fact, my first book written in 2003 was called A Travel Guide to Heaven. And it was a tremendous bestseller for me here and all over the world, actually. So people have been, publishers have been trying to get me to write a guidebook to hell for a long time. But I thought that, you know, it sounds too like you're trivializing this important.

subject. So I let them put a guide on it, but I didn't want it to be a travel guide to hell because I want the matter to be, you know, it's obviously a serious, serious matter. It's a provocative and a cheeky title, and I think maybe it opens the door for people to be willing to read it because it is such a difficult subject. And that's why I'm so glad you wrote the book, because I think we do need to talk about it. I think we live in a culture that by avoiding the subject does an infinite disservice to many people, not helping them to think about their eternal destiny. And it's not just about eternal destiny.

You know, Christ spoke in the Gospels, as you know, so much about the kingdom of heaven. And he didn't just speak about it in terms of a future reality. He often spoke of it as a present reality breaking into this world. So the kingdom of heaven is not just, you know, a place, heaven and the future. with the resurrection where we get to see our family again. But it's heaven breaking into this world. It's sort of the seeds of heaven, blossoming, starting to blossom in this life.

It's a way of living. If you're in union with God, then all that God is, truth, life, light, peace, order. Those things will manifest themselves in your life, even if you're suffering tremendously. That's why the apostle Paul said that, you know, you can have a peace that,

transcends understanding. But in the same way, Eric, and this is where it's so interesting, just as there's a kingdom of heaven, there's also a kingdom of hell. And it's not just in the future. If you do everything in this life to divorce yourself from God, to reject God, then you reject everything that God is. If God is beauty and God is life and God is love, and God is order, and God is peace, and you reject that by a life of habitual, persistent, unrepent sin, then what's going to happen is you're going to start seeing hell, the seeds of hell in your life. And it's going to result in isolation and disorder and messiness and ugliness and a lack of love. And so it's very much, and I think if you look around the world and you see how we have embraced this secular culture,

this anti-God culture, I think you look at the results. And I think you would agree that this is, we're not exactly. a happy people. Despite the technological advancements, you know, and the material advancements, you know, the suicide rates are through the roof, murder rates are through the roof. We're in the midst of this whole culture of death with abortion and euthanasia up to our next in innocent blood. I don't, I think we're people that are engulfed in stress and misery. And I think that's the seeds of, that's the, that's the first fruit of what we're liable to encounter in hell when we turn completely away from God.

And it's interesting, Anthony, that, you know, we're living in a time of political tensions in this country, racial tension, whatever it is. And I think that one thing that has been obvious to me is that we have, in the culture largely, given ourselves permission to hate, which is something that anyone who has a modicum of understanding and what the scripture says and what the church has taught for 2,000 years, knows that to forgive our enemies, as difficult as that might sound, is the only path to heaven. God commands us to forgive our enemies, even if we don't understand it. We're not supposed to agree with our enemies.

They may have done horrible things. They may stand for horrible things. They may continue to do horrible things. But somehow to allow ourselves to despise them and to dehumanize them in our minds, we're participating in a satanic project, which will embitter us and will drag us down, down, down, eventually, of course, to hell. But even before that, it's an ugly thing. And I think that's part of the secular culture in which we live. People don't know that forgiveness is a gift from God.

God says, I have forgiven you so that you have the power to forgive others and that you don't need to be poised. But there are many people walking around today with a self-righteous anger. And as you just said, they're already moving toward hell. Yes. And of course, God is merciful to us in proportion that we are merciful to others, is that, you know, the famous great quid pro quo of spirituality contained in the Our Father, you know, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I mean, when we pray the Our Father, you know, we're basically saying to God,

use me as a measure. The way I go out and forgive people, that's the way you forgive me. So don't pray the Our Father if you want to go out and be a hypocrite because the same standard is going to be used against you. I think sometimes people forget it's called the Lord's Prayer because someone actually asked Jesus, how do we pray? You kind of think, man, I wish someone had asked Jesus while he was there how to pray. Someone did and he told us.

And at the heart of that is that we are commanded to forgive others if we want to be forgiven. It's a very humbling thing. Oh, we've got to go to a break. We'll be right back, folks, talking to Anthony DeStefano. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. We're talking about a really popular subject. Hell.

It is the author Anthony DeStefano has written many books, not on the subject of hell. but Anthony, you just decided, you know what, I want to take on the toughest subject there is. So what are some things that you talk about in your book, which is titled Hell, A Guide, that we might not know, people who are generally familiar with the Bible, but maybe they wouldn't have known what you discover. Well, the main thing, the main takeaway is that people who go to hell go there because they want to go there. They go there because they want to reject God. as long as you have freedom and you have a free will, then you have the freedom to reject God.

That's the main thing. The big misinterre, the big fallacy about people who believe in hell think that hell is just some sort of a place of punishment when God has got a big baseball bat, right? It hit you over the head for doing things wrong. That is a very cartoonish and immature way of thinking about the Christian concept of hell. You go to hell because you want to go to hell. And you suffer in hell because when you turn away from God, you turn away from everything God is. As I said before, if God is light, you turn away, there's darkness. If God is peace, you turn away and there's disorder.

If God is love, you turn away and there's strife and suffering and anxiety and stress. In other words, you turn away from God, it's not going to be colorful and pretty and beautiful because God is beautiful. God is beauty. You turn away and there's going to be ugliness. So everything, hell is defined in the traditional sense as the definitive self-exclusion and separation from God and from the blessed in heaven. But the key word there is self-exclusion. So that's the first point that you need to, that's the first point you need to understand about health.

The second point is that it's not just spiritual. At some point, after the resurrection, and this is the toughest part of the book, and the book that was the part that was the hardest right. At some point, there's going to be a resurrection of the dead. And those who go to heaven are going to have glorified bodies. And those glorified bodies are going to be a reflection of Jesus Christ, who St. Paul said is the first fruits. And because they're going to be in close, intimate union with God, they are going to reflect God's beauty and power. And those glorified bodies are going to be incredible. And they're going to be able to do the kinds of things that Christ did in the post-resurrection appearances that we see in the Gospels.

But the scary and frightening thing is that there's going to be a resurrection of the dead for those who go to hell too. And for those people, hell is not just going to be spiritual, but there's going to be a physical component. Now, what that physical component is, we don't know. We can only speculate that poets can write books like the inferno. But there's going to be some sort of physical component, it, and we know that God's judgments are proportional, that God renders to us according to our work,

says the book of Psalms, and Jesus hinted at that many times himself. So that's a very scary thing, and that's why this book is frightening, I think, if you take it seriously. Well, I think it's important we take it seriously. I remember at age 17, I made what I now think of as a great mistake. Where I was at college, they were screening the exorcists. And I went to it. And I was, you know, scared out of my wits because the portrayal of the demonic was so real. So I say to most people, if you can avoid it, don't see that film. But what it did do and what I think can happen to people who really see the demonic is it can be so horrific. They couldn't imagine. They couldn't imagine. that anything could be that horrific.

And it does cause them to say, if there's a God, wow, I want to turn to him. I've never understood the depth of evil. I thought evil was, you know, doing something I shouldn't. That doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the depth of demonic evil. And anybody who has dealt with the demonic has seen it understands it is very real. We live in a world that pretends that it doesn't exist. It does exist. And Eric, that's why, paradoxically, some people come to believe in the devil before they believe in God.

People who experience real evil. People who live in the streets. People who have been drug addicts for many years. People who are exposed to real terrible evil. They know the devil is real. They know there's a spiritual evil that goes beyond survival of the fittest. That goes beyond molecules and cells. There's a real spiritual wickedness.

And so sometimes it can actually, knowing about evil can be a gateway, a gateway to becoming a Christian. And it's very interesting. There's no question about it. I mean, look, if you go to the third world, you go to different parts of Africa or Asia, they all know there's a spiritual reality. You don't have to convince them. All you have to do is make them understand, by the way, Jesus has the power to overcome all of these dark spiritual forces. You don't have to go to a witch doctor who can find a more powerful

demon to deal with the demon who's tormenting you. You can go to God himself, to Jesus, who has power over the demons. And when you say that to them, they think, are you kidding? Really? Where do I sign up? I mean, it's a completely different response. But if you have no sense of the torment, of the demonic, then you just, you don't take it seriously. You know, you have to understand, And this and other thing people don't take seriously because Hollywood portrays demons and the devil is so cartoonish. They are real spiritual beings. They really truly exist. And they really want to kill us. They really want to hurt us. And the reason is this. The reason why they're in hell in the first place is because they hate God. They've rejected God. But they can't do anything

to God. God is impassable, as the theologians say. He's almighty. So if you can't hurt God, God, what do you do? You do the next best thing. You try to hurt those creatures made in the image and likeness of God. You go after God's children. Now, if anybody who was a parent knows, what's the worst thing you can do to you? Somebody could do to you. Go after your children, try to hurt your children. Well, we are the children of God. So of course they want to come after us and harm us and make our lives a living hell in this life and then get us to go to hell forever. So it's really important to open your eyes that these are not just literary devices we're talking about here. We're talking about reality.

Yeah, it's very real. And I also say to people, look, God doesn't want you to fear death. He wants you to look forward to it because he has overcome it on the cross. If you believe in Jesus who defeated death on the cross, you know that when you leave this world, you're going into his presence, which is you're not going to want to come back to where you hear. It's the opposite of fear. You look forward to your heavenly reward. It's not a joke.

It's entirely real. And the alternative is not to know and to just die a thousand deaths at the thought of where might I be going or might I be disappearing. We'll be right back. Final segment with Anthony to Stefan. Won't you lay at Georgie girl swinging down the street so fancy free. Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there. Inside you. Hey, folks, I'm talking to Anthony DeStefano.

The new book is called Hell, a Guide. Anthony, I'll never get over that title. But it's a very serious theological book dealing with an extraordinarily serious issue. How can a good God allow people to suffer eternal torment? Many people have talked about this. But I say to people, listen, you know, what if you knew that you could go

go to heaven. Why wouldn't you want to? We are always going to have questions. I have many questions, but I also know that if I believe in Jesus, who's the author of love, who's the author of all that is good, that I can look forward to dying. When someone dies, we get all sad, that's because we're here and they're gone. But they're not sad. They're full of joy that we can't even imagine that is God's plan for every single human being through faith in Jesus. That's right. The idea that anyone would perish, that anyone would miss what God intended for them, it is, it is, it's the ultimate tragedy.

And by talking about hell, which is why I'm glad you wrote your book, you force people to think about this. You are going to die. Where are you going to go? Where are you going to spend eternity? you really should think about it. That's right. Ultimately, there's only two destinations, heaven or hell.

Which one you're going to go to? The Bible says, you know, the eye is about heaven. I has not seen nor ear heard, you know, the wonder that God is prepared for those who love him. Heaven is a tremendously joyful subject. That's why my first book was on heaven. The purpose of this book is not just to frighten people. the purpose of this book is to realize how merciful and loving God is and help them to fall in love with God more

because perfect love casts out fear. So you won't have to be afraid of death if you love God more. And just think about how opposite heaven will be to the kind of things we've been talking about in this program. Heaven's a place, especially after the resurrection. I mean, you're going to be able to see your mother, your father again. And you're not just going to be able to see a ghost. You're going to be able to see them in the flesh.

You're going to be able to run up to them and hug them and kiss them and feel the warmth of their skin and hear their voice again. Maybe a voice that you haven't heard in so long. This is the marvel of Christianity. God loses nothing. And the point of writing this book on hell is to set it off against what we can have in heaven. And I hope people are impacted by it enough to go out and spread the faith more so that fewer people go to hell and more people go to heaven. Well, I mean, we can only imagine that it's God's will that no, one should perish. Actually, we don't have to imagine it. It says it very clearly in scripture.

God wants us to tell others what he has done, his plan of salvation, sending his son to die a horrible death in our place. If you really understand that he did that, your gratitude will be unspeakable. You will want to serve him for your whole life and you'll want to tell people about what he has done for you. And it's joyful. It's not a burden. I think people miss the joy. And I really think that when you see the full picture and you understand, yes, everyone is going to die, but there's a way to participate in Jesus's defeat of death. It's so beautiful. And it's important for us to focus on it. So I just want to thank you. We're out of time, Anthony. But to write a book on hell, it's a real undertaking. It's a tough undertaking. We know

there's spiritual warfare. There are demons out there that don't like it when we talk about these things, but there's a God who loves us and he's going to use your book. I know he's already using it. He's going to use this conversation. So let me just say, thanks for writing the book, and thank you for your time on this program. Really grateful to you. Well, thank you so much, Eric. Thanks for your support always, and thanks for having me here. A great discussion.