Where is Hell located?
Question 10168
The question of where hell is located surfaces with regularity, often in the context of popular imagination that places it beneath the earth’s surface. It is a question that mixes legitimate biblical curiosity with assumptions drawn from Dante, medieval art, and cultural mythology. What Scripture actually teaches is more nuanced, and more sobering, than a simple answer about geographical coordinates.
Distinguishing Hades from the Lake of Fire
The question cannot be answered without distinguishing between two distinct realities that are often conflated. Hades (hadēs in the Greek) is the intermediate holding state for the unsaved dead between death and the final judgement. The Lake of Fire (limnē tou pyros) is the final, eternal place of judgement. These are not the same place. Revelation 20:13-14 makes the distinction explicit: “Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.” Hades is emptied and itself destroyed; the Lake of Fire is the permanent destination. When people ask “where is hell?” they are typically asking about the final state, but the answer requires awareness of both stages.
Hades and the Language of “Below”
The Hebrew Old Testament uses Sheol (she’ol) for the abode of the dead. In many passages, Sheol is described with directional language that places it downward: “going down to Sheol” (Genesis 37:35; Numbers 16:30; Psalm 55:15; Isaiah 14:9-11). The Greek equivalent, Hades, carries similar associations. Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) describes the rich man in Hades, in torment, able to see Abraham and Lazarus “far off” and separated by a “great chasm” (v. 26). The directional language is present but does not function as a geographical description with measurable coordinates. It is the language of separation, distance, and finality.
The directional “down” in these passages serves a theological rather than cartographical purpose. To descend to Sheol is to be removed from the land of the living, from the community of God’s people, and from the sphere of earthly blessing. It carries connotations of judgement, separation, and exclusion from God’s presence. Whether Sheol/Hades corresponds to a physical location beneath the earth’s surface, or whether the language is metaphorical in its directional aspect while being entirely literal in its description of conscious existence and suffering, is a question Scripture does not answer with finality. What is beyond question is the reality of the state it describes: conscious, personal existence in a condition of suffering and separation from God.
The Lake of Fire
The Lake of Fire is described in Revelation 19:20, 20:10, 20:14-15, and 21:8. It is the final destination of Satan, the beast, the false prophet, death, Hades, and every person whose name is not found in the book of life. It is described as a place of “fire and sulphur” where the condemned “will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). The language is vivid and, within a dispensational framework committed to literal interpretation, is to be understood as describing a genuine, eternal state of conscious suffering.
Scripture provides no geographical or cosmological information about where the Lake of Fire is located. It is not identified with any earthly location, any celestial body, or any region of the created universe. It is described entirely in terms of what it is, not where it is. This is significant. God has chosen to reveal the nature and duration of final judgement with great clarity while leaving its location unspecified. The effect is to focus attention on the reality and the seriousness of the state rather than on its spatial coordinates.
What About the “Centre of the Earth” Theories?
Popular teaching has sometimes identified hell with the molten core of the earth, drawing on the “downward” language of Sheol and on passages like Numbers 16:31-33, where the earth opens and swallows Korah and his company. Matthew 12:40, where Jesus says the Son of Man will be “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,” has also been pressed into service. These readings take the directional language of Scripture and treat it as a geological claim. The approach is understandable but goes beyond what the text requires. Jesus’ reference to “the heart of the earth” may refer to Hades without implying a literal location within the planet. The Korah incident describes a unique, miraculous act of divine judgement and does not establish a general principle about the location of the afterlife.
The honest position is that Scripture does not tell us where hell is. It tells us what hell is, who goes there, why they go, and how long they remain. The “where” is deliberately left unanswered. Attempts to fill the gap with scientific or geological speculation move beyond the text into territory that is interesting but unsupported.
So, now what?
The location of hell is less important than its reality. Scripture describes a conscious, eternal state of separation from God and suffering under His righteous judgement. It is not a metaphor, not an impersonal consequence, and not a temporary purification. It is a place, or a state, of final and permanent judicial sentence. The right response to hell is not curiosity about its coordinates but gratitude for the cross, where the penalty that would otherwise have fallen on every human being was borne by the Son of God in our place. The God who warns of hell is the same God who provided the way of escape, and the urgency of the gospel is measured by the reality of what it saves us from.
“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
