Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We Made Up

by Francis Chan

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) says that the rich man goes to “Hades” while Lazarus goes to “Abraham’s bosom” (NASB). Hades here should not be confused with hell. Hades is where the wicked go to await their judgment, after which they are thrown into hell—their final state. Lazarus is also in some sort of intermediate state where he is waiting for his resurrection. Significantly, the rich man, who’s in hades, is “in agony in this flame” (16:24 NASB), and he’s very aware of it. Moreover, Jesus says that there is a chasm that separates the wicked from the righteous and “none may cross from there to us” (16:26). So this passage affirms that there will be some sort of punishment and torment for the wicked immediately upon death, and there is no sign that these situations can be reversed. This intermediate state for the wicked should not be confused with the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which has a very different function from what we see in Luke 16. So Luke 16 doesn’t refer to the duration of hell.