Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 891

891. So what is "hell fire"? We know already that "hell" is a phenomenon that lies beyond the current physical life. It was the home of all those who did not fulfil the great commandment of neighbourly love, in other words so-called "evil beings". But since we know that the "kingdom of heaven" or the "resurrection", which is the home of the so-called "good beings", occurs in the individual's continuing physical existence beyond "heaven" or the non-physical or "spiritual" state that the individual has to live through after the cessation of its current terrestrial life, that is, after so-called "death", it will not be so difficult to understand that "hell" also lies in the continuing physical existences beyond this "spiritual" existence after the conclusion of the individual's current physical life. Where else could it occur? If "hell" were to be exclusively a non-physical or "spiritual" existence, what about all the war, horror and mutilation, the sorrow, sickness and misery that we are witnessing on the physical plane? Is there not "weeping and gnashing of teeth" here? Can such a phenomenon be manifested more strongly or reach more of a culmination on a spiritual plane than on the physical one? How many human beings have not over the course of time on the physical plane been burnt to death, either by accident or as a result of fanaticism and superstition? Is there not also a considerable number of beings that have simply decayed bit by bit from leprosy and other horrible diseases? What attitude do we have towards living in organisms that are riddled with venereal diseases, cancer and tuberculosis, not to mention illnesses that slowly and gradually deprive little children of the use of their limbs, thereafter leading them inevitably to a far too early death, and forcing them during the long process of dying to be fed and cared for at the discretion of other beings? What about the thousands of beings that have died of starvation or have frozen to death or those beings that have become slaves to vices that undermine soul and spirit and turn their organisms into wrecks and their existence into a process of dying that lasts for years? Is not the torrent of suffering that we have given examples of here a persistent and consuming fire in the body and soul of terrestrial human beings? Can this fire be worse in "heaven" or in a non-physical "hell"? It is stated here that it is "eternal", which means that the individual in it is condemned to never ever be able to be freed or delivered from it, whereas the beings in the state of suffering on Earth are, to a steadily increasing extent, made to combat it.