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Hope Channel

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Joe Reeves

Paul Samuel

01 Why Apologetics?

Jonathan Walter

02 Climbing Mars Hill

03 Divine Design

04 The Problem of Evil

05 Jesus and Hinduism

06 Jesus and Buddhism

07 Jesus and Islam

08 Jesus is Different

09 The Resurrection: Evidence that Demands a Verdict

Joe Kretschmar

10 The Bible

11 Hellfire

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, Welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves, with Inverse.

Hello, my name is Joe, and welcome to Inverse.

This is a program where we study the Bible, opening our Bibles, praying together, asking questions, finding answers.

We're going to have another good episode with Sebastian.

Glad to have everybody here and you at The Other Table.

Maybe you don't have the headsets on with us like we do, but you are studying the Bible with us.

We're doing apologetics this season, and we're asking the foundational questions about Christianity.

We're especially thinking about those things that push people away from God, or push people away from the Bible, and from Christianity.

And we're gonna be doing a golden 1 today, and our questions after prayer.

And prayer we need, and Felicia, can you start us out?

Father, we just praise you for being a good, loving, kind God, and you're also a God of justice.

And as we study this topic of hell fire, that can be intimidating for a lot of people.

Help us to see how your love is demonstrated through the fact that there is hellfire.

Bless our study in your name I pray, amen.

Before we, we're going to Malachi 4, but before we read this first verse, This chapter, this episode's on hellfire.

Why in apologetics are we talking about hellfire?

Why is this important for defending Christianity?

Well, I can speak from my experience that As a non-christian at the time when I was in college, this was my number 1 issue.

Because I would sit down with Christians and they would say, if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to go to hell.

And I'm like, okay, so you believe in hell?

Yeah, people are burning there right now, I see.

So Hitler in 1940 to 1945 systematically killed 6 million people and he's been burning since 1945, according to you.

And Cain killed 1 person at the beginning of the world, and he's been burning since the beginning of time.

And so in this sense, And then you're gonna say, I'm gonna burn with Hitler because I don't accept your religion.

And so the concept of hellfire is that many times people have been scared into the kingdom of God.

And that does not produce the right character of God.

And this is ultimately 1 of the reasons why several people have rejected Christianity.

Is that this is a just loving God that's like, I'm going to torture you forever and burn you forever and ever.

And for many Christian denominations, hellfire is almost the main tool of trying to win people over to scare them and send them into the church.

But it's driven a lot of people towards skepticism.

Charles Darwin himself wrote the origin of species and is considered the father of evolutionary theory.

And in his autobiography, he wrote about this, about eternally burning hell.

And if it's true, then my father would be there and my brother would be there.

God is not going to burn them and me in hell forever and ever and ever, endlessly.

So there's a lot of these ideas that really provide motivation for the way we think.

So this is very important that we understand what the Bible says.

I do believe it will dismantle what many people say about hell.

Hell is very real, but we want to understand the nature of it.

So, Malachi 4, verses 1 through 3, and Sebastian, you're up to bat when it comes to reading.

For behold, The day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.

And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch.

But to you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings, and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves, and you shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this, says the Lord of hosts.

Okay, Jonathan, help me understand what the Bible teaches about the destiny of the wicked.

So hell, I wanna start by saying hell is not a place.

And I offended 1 billion Christians by saying that.

But the Bible does not say that hell is somewhere in the center of the earth or somewhere else in the universe, this burning place that burns forever.

It's an event, hellfire is an event that will take place at some point.

And what we read here, and I'm gonna just refer to Malachi right now, is 1 of the many descriptions of this event that will take place.

And it talks about 1 thing I wanna bring out first here is in verse 1, it says, and the day which is coming shall burn them up.

This right here, that phrase says, there will be fire, there will be a destruction of the wicked at some point, there will be justice, but it will burn them up.

And we see that because later in verse 4, you shall trample the wicked for they shall be what?

If they're burning forever, then they wouldn't be ashes.

They would be in some flames and whatever, and you would be above the flames, but it's gonna be ashes.

So what we learn here is that hell is gonna be an event.

It's gonna take place, but it will end, it's not an infinite thing, and it will be over at some point.

So that's just kind of like the foundational things that I see just out of this course.

Any of you have a fireplace in your home?

And you gotta clean the ashes out because once those are ashes, it can't burn up anymore.

And so if you don't clean those ashes out of your fireplace, it just builds up because it's not going to burn down anymore once it's turned to ashes.

Does anybody here at this table see any significance in this phrase about the root and the branches?

They will leave them neither root nor branch.

Well, you have the fact that the root is essentially like the very foundation of the plant, right?

Like there's no way to get this back again.

For many plants, you can prune a branch, you can prune certain twigs, and then it can grow back because there are roots.

But if he leaves you no root and no branch, there's no hope of life ever again.

And there's completely cut off the very source and any draw and anything else that could even be utilized.

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Series

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

11 Hellfire

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Why Apologetics?

28m

02 Climbing Mars Hill

29m

03 Divine Design

29m

04 The Problem of Evil

29m

05 Jesus and Hinduism

29m

06 Jesus and Buddhism

29m

07 Jesus and Islam

29m

08 Jesus is Different

28m

09 The Resurrection: Evidence that Demands a Verdict

29m

10 The Bible

29m

11 Hellfire

29m

Sound Doctrine