Straight to Hell—or the Way to Heaven?

Carmen Fowler LaBerge · September 25, 2025

Because there actually are two destinations and the road you’re on leads to one of them or the other.

There’s a serious matter before us this week as leaders at the highest levels of the American experiment are talking casually in public and on social media about who among them is going to hell and what paves the way to hell.

Anytime that the world offers up a very public conversation about heaven or in this case about hell, you and I as Christians have a responsibility to lean in, to step in, to speak the truth, in love to tell people what we know about heaven and hell and what paves the way to each of those eternal destinations.

Here is the headline: yesterday, the Vice President of the United States said that the Governor of California and others like him, who can “go straight to hell” if “your political rhetoric encourages violence against our law enforcement.” The Governor of California snapped back in a post on X, saying, “No thanks, JD. I will not be going ‘straight to hell’ today. Though when I watch you speak I certainly feel like I’m already there.”

What is hell and how do people end up there? And, should we wish for anyone to go there? What is the mind of Christ on this particular matter of the day?

So let’s talk about where you’re headed and where the road you’re on leads because in the end, there actually are two destinations and the road you’re on leads to one of them or the other. This is critically important. These are real places. These are the real realities in which you’re really going to spend eternity either in one or the other.

First, let’s talk about the road that leads to heaven. The one I want people to be on. I wish no one to go to hell. I don’t want anybody to go straight to hell. I want everyone to find the road that leads to heaven and to join me on it.

The road that leads to heaven: Jesus is the Way and the way of life.

Jesus is the way that God has opened where there was once no way. He invites people to himself and then to follow Him, to join Him, to allow themselves to be carried and shepherded by him.

You may feel like you’re living in hell today. You don’t have to be. You can already be on a journey with Jesus all the way home to heaven. You can start living today in the kingdom reality that you will also enjoy for eternity with Jesus. And that doesn’t mean that everything here is going to miraculously change at the snap of a finger or at the praying of a prayer. But everything about you and your hope and the way that you live in that hope moment by moment will be radically changed.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). To go and prepare a place for those who would become His disciples— to go and prepare a place so that where He is, we might be also (John 14).

Jesus not only cuts the path to heaven with His death and resurrection, He tells us what life with Him is like. Heaven is a real, physical place where He is preparing a place for believers and where they will live with God in perfect joy and fellowship. Jesus spoke of heaven as:

His Father’s House: Jesus uses the imagery of “My Father’s house with many rooms” to explain that heaven is a real place, not just a state of mind, where He is preparing a dwelling for those who believe in Him. (John 14:2-3)
A Destination: He promised the penitent thief on the cross that he would be with Him in Paradise immediately after death, indicating heaven is an immediate destination. (Luke 23:42–43)
A Re-created Earth: The Bible teaches that the eternal home for Christians will be a re-created earth, not an escape from reality, but a renewed and perfected creation. (Revelation 21:1-3; 2 Peter 3:13; Isaiah 65:17 among others)
The Kingdom of Heaven: He also taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is a spiritual reality that is both present (“at hand”) and future, a goal to be sought by living out God’s righteousness. (Matthew 4:17)
Present and Future: Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was not just a future reality but was “at hand,” meaning it was present and among people in His time. (Luke 17:20-21)
A Goal to Seek: He instructed his followers to “seek first the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 6:33), making it the primary goal in life, achieved by living righteously.
Inhabited by the Righteous: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus described the qualities of people who belong to the Kingdom, such as the meek, the merciful, and the pure in heart. (Matthew 5:3–10)
The Experience of heaven:
- God’s Presence: A major aspect of heaven is to enter into full, intimate, and joyful fellowship with God and the Holy Trinity. (Revelation 21:3–4)
- Eternal Joy: Heaven is a place of everlasting and perfect joy, without the pain, suffering, and sin that characterize earthly life. (Revelation 21:3–4)
- Reunion: People will be reunited with loved ones in perfect relationships and will also have perfect relationships with everyone else. (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; Hebrews 12:22–23)

But not all roads lead to heaven. There is only one way to heaven and there are many roads that lead to hell.

What did Jesus have to say about hell?

John Piper writes succinctly about Jesus’ teaching on hell:

“Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He referred to it as a place of “outer darkness” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). In other words, all the joys that we associate with light will be withdrawn, and all the fears that we associate with darkness will be multiplied. And the result will be an intensity of misery that makes a person grind his teeth in order to bear it.

Jesus also refers to hell as a “fiery furnace” where law-breakers will be thrown at the end of the age when he returns. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:41–42). He calls it “the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22), “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46).

And the road to hell? What did Jesus say about the paths or roads or ways that lead to hell?

Jesus stated that the gate to destruction is wide, and the road that leads to it is broad, with many people entering through it; this path is one of ease and popular acceptance. He contrasted this with the narrow gate and constricted road that leads to life, finding that only a few people discover this challenging, countercultural way. (Matthew 7:13–14)

What road are you on?

When we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-13), Christians, we’re supposed to be a provisional demonstration of the reality of the kingdom of heaven today. In the midst of the kingdoms of this world, we are supposed to show people what heaven is like.

We are not supposed to tell them “It’s okay with me if you go straight to hell.” That is not okay with me as a believer, as a believer in Jesus, it is not okay that anyone is hellbound.

If you know that you are on a path of destruction that leads to not only death but darkness and separation from God forever and ever, I want to disrupt that right now.That road to hell you’re on— you don’t have to take one more step in that direction.

You can make a U-turn right now. That’s repentance. That’s what repentance is. It’s turning away from darkness and depravity and sin and death and destruction, and it’s turning toward the hope that is offered in Jesus Christ and in him alone. You do not have to continue down that broad road that leads to destruction. Many take it absolutely, but it leads to ruin.

I invite you, my friend, make that pivot. Turn today. Go through the narrow gate. Walk down the narrow road. Jesus. That’s his name. That’s the way, that’s the truth. He is the life and he then becomes the way of life for those who walk in his way. And so the way of the life of Jesus was to hope to condemn no one, no one straight to hell, but to provide a very straight way to heaven. I hope you find it today.

Listen to this discussion on The Reconnect (begins at top of this segment):