Eternal life does not start when we die.
Eternal life starts at the moment of Salvation, right here on earth.
Before salvation, we are living this human life separated from relationship with God.
Salvation is accepting the invitation to enter into personal relationship with God, through the belief in God’s sovereign master plan of sending us Jesus, the incarnate Christ for death and resurrection, and then the outpouring of His own Holy Spirit to dwell among us and empower us to live the life HE ordained us for.
The fact that Salvation is an invitation indicates that it is a gift. The gift is free, so we cannot boast of it or claim that we earned it.
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Accepting the invitation to personal relationship with God means His Spirit enters into us and we can now commune with Him daily about HIS will and HIS plans for us.
To commune with God is to be in the presence of God and to interact with Him directly.
Oppositely, if we never accept the invitation of Salvation, we then continue to operate outside of relationship and communion with God.
To operate outside of relationship and communion with God is to live in separation from the direct presence of God.
To live in the separation from God means that when we die, we will remain in that separation from God.
Dying in separation from God means eternal separation from God.
Eternal separation from God means we are in Hell.
Therefore…
God does not send people to Hell.
We choose it. It’s not a secret.
He gave us the answers to the test already.
And God does not hate you. God loves you.
But God does hate sin.
God being a God that loves us means that He (by definition) MUST hate the thing that RUINS us.
God hates sin because it the CAUSE of separation between creation and His direct presence among us as individuals.
What is a simple definition of sin?
Disobedience or operating in a heart posture that is directly against God.
However, if we love our sin (disobedience) so much that we habitually choose to live in it, accept it, tolerate it, and embrace it… Then we are also choosing to live separated from Him.
And He will (eventually) give us over to our choice.
God is MANY THINGS
God IS patient.
God IS merciful.
God IS forgiving, upon repentance.
However, God IS NOT tolerant.
If God was tolerant to the things that separate us from Him, then He would not be a very good, loving, and just God.
Instead, He mapped out a perfect plan from the beginning of time.
What is the opposite of eternal life?
His perfect invitation to relationship is meant to empower us and save us from ourselves, the world, sin, and eternal torment.
Notice that the opposite of eternal life is not eternal death.
The opposite of eternal life is eternal torment.
God IS love, light, joy, peace, holiness, beauty, safety, refuge, wisdom, perfection, etc.
So what does an eternal life that is forever separated from those things look like?
Pure Torment.
But He will not force Himself on us or infringe upon our free will.
The choice is ours.
We can continue in separation or we can repent of our desire for control, self-righteousness, independence, and the belief that our feelings are sovereign.
The healing, and growing, and studying and asking questions that lead to understanding God and the Bible come later in this life as we PARTICIPATE in COMMUNION with God via His Word and His Spirit living in us.
But genuinely accepting His invitation to eternal life through belief, acceptance, repentance, and communion with Him is the key that opens the door to that walk.
Otherwise, we remain outside of the door.
And it is the job of those of us living in current eternal life and communion with God to share this Good News with the world and not to boast of this communion but to share the invitation with the world.
[Ephesians 2: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.]