The sinners in Zion are terrified;
trembling grips the godless:
“Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?
Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?”
Those who walk righteously
and speak what is right,
who reject gain from extortion
and keep their hands from accepting bribes,
who stop their ears against plots of murder
and shut their eyes against contemplating evil— (Isaiah 33:14-15, NIV)
The Orthodox Church believes that because God is omnipresent, Hell is what an unrepentant sinner suffers in his presence. (Though they are probably in a different place to where the repentant are.)
God is omnipresent; there is no part in all of creation where God is not. He can make his presence felt. For the unrepentant, this is very unpleasant.
‘A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, 10 they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” ‘(Rev 14:9-11, NIV)
“They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.”
What about 2 Thessalonians 1:9? The word translated “away from” in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is the Greek word “apo” (ἀπὸ). Apo means “from” or “away from.”
Apo is used in Philippians 1:2 in the following way:
“Grace to you and peace from (ἀπὸ) God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (ESV)
So why is apo translated as “away from” instead of “from” in some translations of 2 Thessalonians 1:9? Theological preference.
In the presence of the Consuming Fire, every punishment, and every act of kindness, will cause evil doers to suffer until they begin to realise that God is for them, not against them. God will completely destroy all evil doers, but He will destroy the evil people by making them good. (See Is Hell Eternal?)
“Because God is so altogether alien to wrong, because it is to him a heart-pain and trouble that one of his little ones should do the evil thing, there is, I believe, no extreme of suffering to which, for the sake of destroying the evil thing in them, he would not subject them. A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax a tyrant; but there is no refuge from the love of God; that love will, for very love, insist upon the uttermost farthing.” ~ George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons
“While men take part with their sins, while they feel as if, separated from their sins, they would be no longer themselves, how can they understand that the lightning word is a Saviour—that word which pierces to the dividing between the man and the evil, which will slay the sin and give life to the sinner? Can it be any comfort to them to be told that God loves them so that he will burn them clean. Can the cleansing of the fire appear to them anything beyond what it must always, more or less, be—a process of torture? They do not want to be clean, and they cannot bear to be tortured. Can they then do other, or can we desire that they should do other, than fear God, even with the fear of the wicked, until they learn to love him with the love of the holy. To them Mount Sinai is crowned with the signs of vengeance. And is not God ready to do unto them even as they fear, though with another feeling and a different end from any which they are capable of supposing? He is against sin: in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them—against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether and always for them. That thunder and lightning and tempest, that blackness torn with the sound of a trumpet, that visible horror billowed with the voice of words, was all but a faint image to the senses of the slaves of what God thinks and feels against vileness and selfishness, of the unrest of unassuageable repulsion with which he regards such conditions; that so the stupid people, fearing somewhat to do as they would, might leave a little room for that grace to grow in them, which would at length make them see that evil, and not fire, is the fearful thing; yea, so transform them that they would gladly rush up into the trumpet-blast of Sinai to escape the flutes around the golden calf. Could they have understood this, they would have needed no Mount Sinai. It was a true, and of necessity a partial revelation—partial in order to be true.” ~ “The Consuming Fire,” Unspoken Sermons
Punishment, Forgiveness, and Wisdom