Charles Spurgeon, Treasury of David
The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God! Psalm 9:17
How solemn is this verse, especially in its warning to forgetters of God! The moral who are not devout, the honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who are not believing, the amiable who are not converted- these must all have their own portion with the openly wicked, in the Hell which is prepared for the devil and his demons! There are whole nations of such; the forgetters of God are far more numerous than the openly profane and profligate!
According to the very forceful expression in the Hebrew, the nethermost Hell will be the place into which all of them shall be hurled headlong! Forgetting God seems to be a small sin, but it brings eternal wrath upon the man who lives and dies in it!
(The following is by Thomas Watson) “The wicked shall be turned into Hell.” The ungodly at death must undergo God’s fury and indignation. I have read of a lodestone which has two corners; with one it draws the iron to it, with the other it thrusts the iron away from it. Just so, God has two hands- of mercy and justice: with the one He will draw the godly to Heaven, with the other He will thrust the sinner to Hell!
And oh, how dreadful is that place! It is called a fiery lake- And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire, Revelation 20:15. A lake, to denote the plenty of torments in Hell. A fiery lake, to show the fierceness of them!
Fire is the most torturing element. Strabo in his geography mentions a lake of such a pestiferous nature, that it scalds off the skin of whatever is cast into it. But alas! That lake is cool compared with this fiery lake into which the damned are thrown!
To demonstrate that this fire is terrible, there are two most dreadful qualities in it: It is sulfurous- it is mixed with brimstone, which is stinking and suffocating. It is inextinguishable- though the wicked shall be choked in the flames, yet not consumed.
And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever, Revelation 20:10. Behold the deplorable condition of all ungodly ones in the eternal world- they shall have a life that always dies, and a death that always lives! May not this affright men out of their sins, and make them become godly- unless they are resolved to experience how hot Hell-fire is!