Bill Wiese, author of 23 Minutes in Hell, isn’t interested in softening the truth about eternity. In his latest message, he answers one of the most unsettling questions a person can ask: Who will be in hell?
“Jesus said in Matthew 7:13 and 14, ‘Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it … narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it,’” Wiese said.
According to Wiese, these are not vague warnings. He pointed out that “many are going to hell and few are going to heaven,” emphasizing that the Bible gives clear and repeated answers on who ends up there — and why.
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The core issue, Wiese explained, is not our ability to be “good” but whether we’ve received Christ. “It is the rejection of the provision for our sins, Jesus Christ, which sends a person to hell,” he said.
Quoting 1 Corinthians 6:9, he continued, “‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?’” Wiese warned that many fail to realize just how comprehensive this warning is. “For whoever shall keep the whole law, yet offend it in one point, well, he is guilty of all,” he said, referencing James 2:10.
Wiese gave examples from Scripture of specific individuals who are condemned. “Jesus said to [the Pharisees], ‘You shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am, you cannot come,’” Wiese said, citing John 7:34. He also quoted Jesus’ sobering words to Judas in Matthew 26:24: “It had been good for that man if he had not been born.”
From there, Wiese listed the sins outlined in multiple passages of Scripture that, without repentance and salvation through Christ, lead people to hell.
He quoted 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: “The fornicator will not be in heaven. The idolator, the adulterer, the effeminate, the abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners — they shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
From Galatians 5:19-21, he added: “The adulterer, the fornicator, uncleanness, lewdness, the idolator, witchcraft, hatred, contentions, jealousy, wrath, strife, dissensions, heresies, envyings, murderers, drunkenness, and revilings.”
He then quoted Revelation 21:8: “The fearful, the unbelieving … the abominable, the murderers, whoremongers, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire.”
“This list leaves us all out of heaven,” Wiese said. And yet, he offered hope.
Job 15:16 says, “How much more abominable and filthy is man who drinks iniquity like water.” Isaiah 64:6 follows with, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags.”
But there is a way out.
“There is only one way a person can be saved,” Wiese said. “It is by repenting of our sins and trusting in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Jesus said He is the only way to heaven in John 14:6. And He said also, we must repent in Luke 13:3.”
Wiese closed with this final warning: “Repent while you have the opportunity or you will be one of hell’s occupants.”
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James Lasher is staff writer for Charisma Media.