Holy Hell

Introduction
“AND JESUS WEPT”
An astounding statement—God incarnate weeping! On several occa-sions, He wept while here on earth. As He walked, talked, and min-istered to thousands, He wept because of all the human misery and carnage around Him. Jesus was not only fully God, but He was fully man, and as a man He felt the human emotion of pain and hurt at the tragedies that lay around—much like what Adam would have felt. He, too, was a man who, unlike any other human being, once walked and talked with God and had experienced sinless perfection, who, after the curse, saw all the human tragedies around him—for 930 years, in fact. It must have been extremely difficult for Adam to have experienced both ends of this spectrum.
As for Jesus, the perfect, sinless man, He saw through the eyes of eternity and witnessed all the greed, lust, religious pride, and hatred within His own creation. Mankind once made to dwell with Him in the garden was now degraded, blinded, and rebellious against their Maker. But with Him who knew from where He came and to where He would go, it was all He could do at some points but to weep. He knew the answers but wept because most did not—and would not—accept the truth.
The world will always be filled with tragedies, both personal and corporate. Bad things will occur, so bad that it just cannot be ex-plained from a human perspective. Most people shake their heads and think, “Why God?” They do this, somehow asking Him to give them a peek into the heavenlies, hoping that He would miraculously give them the reasons behind the affliction. But there is silence, as if the heavens were shut to their cries. Because of this, some turn and deny God’s existence; for others, there is despair and a sense of lostness. Sometimes we actually think if we could grasp all the de-tails of our suffering and how it fits into God’s eternal plans, it would bring some kind of solace; but it will not. The remains of the emotional pain will still be there. For we live in a sin-cursed and darkened world, lost in its degraded life of rebellion, lies and suf-fering. Therefore pain, trouble, and affliction should not be a sur-prise to anyone if they realize what kind of milieu we dwell within when compared to heaven—a place of eternal peace, totally free from the curse of sin, and where there is no trouble, fear or death. And that is part of the subject of this book.
This book is about suffering—but it’s different. Most books tend to lean towards a philosophical slant, creating more questions than answers, even avoiding answering those really hard questions. But this book does not do that. In this book, instead of man looking up to heaven asking, “Why God?” it is God looking down from heaven saying, “This is My answer.” The journey of understanding suffer-ing begins and ends with the Scriptures alone, God answering us. For it is here the answers given concerning all those hard questions are revealed—clearly, concisely, and biblically. For some, the an-swers are hard, even shocking, but it is truth, Gods truth—not my opinion—that matters. Just as the words that rolled off the lips of Jesus to the crowds were astonishing and, for most, hard to accept, (John 6:60-71), so at times God’s answers from the Scriptures will be difficult, even hard to accept.
When all is said and done, ultimately the goal of this book on suffering is not our exemption from suffering nor my giving detailed answers to your personal suffering experience you may be going through; instead, it centers on and points to something we don’t look for naturally while in the midst of our suffering. What is that one thing? It is something we are usually totally blind too. Ultimate-ly it is the glory of God. I know this may appear strange but after reading this book, you will be back at this one premise, but hope-fully with a better understanding. For as you will see, to get a sharp focus on truth and reality, one must come to the center of truth and reality to grasp why a certain thing happened to begin with. And it all begins and ends with the Glory of God amidst all events in hu-man history.
So, enjoy your biblical journey into this realm of suffering, and rejoice in that after you have finished, you’ll understand God’s overall plan in all sufferings and hopefully can say the same as Paul the apostle could write while in jail—suffering in a sewer pit jail-house or James, the half-brother of Jesus, who suffered much and was murdered for his faith.

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.
(Philippians 3:8)

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete (mature) lacking in nothing.
(James 1:2)