The purpose of your life is to glorify the Lord God, to exalt His name above the heavens, it is why you were created, it is why every living soul has been created. “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (Eze. 18:4)
No one is in heaven that did not want to go there, everyone in hell wants to leave, and they never will, until the Great White Throne of Judgement when they are cast into the Lake of Fire, the second death. (Rev. 20:14) All those in heaven will willingly throughout eternity sing the praises of the Most High, it will be our pleasure to do so, none will feel obligated, none will ever be inconvenienced by doing so, it will be, He will be our greatest joy. Everyone in hell prays, they beg for forgiveness, for a second chance, for an opportunity to repent, everyone of them, and in doing so they glorify God. Their mere presence there brings glory to His name.
“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” (Romans 9:22) We will glorify Him for putting them there, for unrighteousness will be gone, sin will be a thing of the past, and Jesus Christ will reign supreme over all of creation. It matters not in this short discussion where any soul spends eternity, that soul will give glory to God, and more than just at that one moment when “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God,” (Romans 14:11) but throughout all of time, forever. “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” (Rev. 4:11)
This verse and those like it cannot be fully comprehended unless one can completely understand the word Sovereign, and the only One it can ever be applied to, the Almighty. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) He made everything, He controls everything, everything that is, all of reality belongs to God. He has no challengers, there is none that can stand against Him, He alone is eternal. It is only by His will that we will live forever, both those in heaven and those in hell.
Many times, I have pondered why would He keep those in the Lake of Fire alive forever, why not just blink them out of existence, so to speak, consume them so they are no more. How long does a person need to be in hell before they have learned their lesson, much less the Lake of Fire. That is how mankind thinks, isn’t it, time served in prison for a specific amount of time relative to the crime. Even if it is for the entirety of their lives, in man’s mind justice has been served. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” (Isaiah 55:8)
Here is the answer, “I don’t know,” and I don’t believe anyone else does either.
I will offer you a statement that has crossed before me more than once in the past, and let you ponder it. “How is there any joy in heaven for those who know for a fact that some of their loved ones are going to spend eternity in that Lake of Fire?” I will add this to it, do they deserve to be there?
I believe that my lovely wife and I will get to spend time with our pets that have died when we are in heaven, not continuously of course, but when we “have the time,” so to speak. They will appear then disappear at our call, and we will spend eternity with that knowledge that they will always be there when we want to see them. You may have loved ones in heaven, and for all of time they will be there with you. All of us will glorify the Lord above anything that we can ever begin to imagine today, and so will those souls in hell.
No one in heaven wants to be anywhere else besides in the presence of the Lamb forever, everyone in hell will forever want to be somewhere else. Perhaps when those tears are finally wiped away forever (Rev. 21:4) we will understand better.
