Now the existence of Hell opens the door to many fascinating insights about God. Ironically, it is Hell that helps us unlock this mystery of what really happened with Jesus on the cross. We’re used to thinking of Hell as a statement on how much God hates sin, but it’s much more than that. It’s primarily a statement on how self-centered God is. God will always exalt Himself first—He will not take a backseat to anyone. He will dominate everything that He creates. If any human tries to resist His domination, they’ll end up in Hell, where they will be utterly dominated by Him forever.

Our next clue comes from understanding God’s view of time. Though God describes Himself as “long-suffering”, this is really a lie. God is only long-suffering from the perspective of humans who are living in a temporal dimension. In this world, it’s like we’re running through a pool of Jell-O: everything is in slow motion. Snap your fingers together once: that’s how long your life on earth is from God’s perspective because He is not in time. So when God talks about being so patient about waiting for you to repent, in reality He’s not being patient at all. One snap is all the time God is giving you to fall on your face and revere Him. If you take longer than the length of a snap, He throws you into Hell.

So what can we conclude from a God who applauds Himself for being so patient with rebellious humans when really He’s only giving them one nanosecond’s worth of time to align with His program before He starts to eternally torture them? God is so consumed with exalting Himself, that as far as He is concerned, He really is being incredibly generous to put up with your snarky attitude at all ever. You see, God considers Himself to be so infinitely magnificent that it is utterly inexcusable for us to intentionally withhold praise and glory from Him.