I was having a chat with a friend about hell - my life is fascinating, I know - and this idea came to my mind. The bible says that God expelled Satan and his demons and they came to the vicinity of the earth, causing all sorts of trouble. My question is, if Satan and his troops are around the earth, who's managing hell?
Personally I don't believe in hell, but I'm trying to come up with some sort of reasoning. I know a lot of people who still live in fear of eternal suffering.
I’m not sure the question of who manages hell is applicable. I don’t think those who reject God, the Source of life and all that is good and meaningful, those who end up either in Sheol/ hades after death or in the lake of fire after the final judgement will have freedom or independence of any sort or need of management. It will be a place of confinement or more explicitly a state of total separation from God; apart from His order.
“They will he excluded from the presence of God and the glory of his power, and that is what Hell is. You see, it is the presence of God which makes life worth living, All the qualities in life that are worthwhile come from God. He is the Giver of every good and perfect gift - love, friendship, creativity, art, music, companionship, comfort, laughter, humor, joy - all these come from God. And when God is absent, they cease to be. We have never experienced that in this life - no one has - not even men and women who do not know God. Because God is still present, and he freely imparts himself - even to those who despise him. Every bit of joy and laughter we enjoy is ours because God loves us and freely gives himself to us -- even if we rebuff him.
But there will come a time in life - if a person refuses to acknowledge the presence and the power of God, and wants to live without God - when God will give him what he wants. And he goes out into eternity without God without his presence, and away from the glory of his power. There is no light there, no joy, nothing worthwhile. But the people there have precisely what they demanded. If they insist on their own way, God will let them have it, and thus they experience exclusion from the power and the presence of God. Rightly understood, then, Hell, in some strange way, is a provision of the love of God. If men do not want God, he will not compel them to have him; he will let them go. We can experience some measure of that now. We can experience "hell on earth" if we choose to do so. But never completely. That only comes at death, and then that separation is irrevocable, eternal.”
Dead Men Don't Sin
Ultimately, it must be that God Himself somehow, with much grief, maintains the eternal separation ( for those who refuse His Presence ).
“According to Ray Stedman, a little reflection on the nature of God, for God is love, makes it clear that maintaining hell must be a terrible torment and pain to a God who is self-giving love. He is the Holy One who "takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked," and who "is not willing that any should perish." God must be willing, therefore, to pay the price of His own eternal pain, suffering, and hell so that the few who are righteous, (by faith), might enjoy eternal bliss. Such is another aspect of the mystery of the suffering of Christ on the cross. Most of us are accustomed to thinking that we suffer more than God, and that He surely cannot fully identify with our minor pains and afflictions.
But a loving God who created us for good things surely suffers infinitely more than any human parent when a beloved child refuses the good and chooses the path leading to destruction. Surely it must be grievously painful for a God who is love to be denied the opportunity to give of Himself to the objects of His love. No man can suffer more than Christ has already suffered, nor can mortal man contemplate what is meant by the "longsuffering" of our God (who is outside of time) which will continue, we are assured, at least until the world is changed. "God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance," Paul writes in Romans, Chapter 2. How great is that kindness!”
“Our God is a Consuming Fire
The letter to the Hebrews says,
"Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28, 29)
The same fires which heal, purify and warm the righteous are the consuming, everlasting burnings of Gehenna, (named after GeHinnom, the valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem)---where beings who refused to become the human persons they were designed to be must finally endure the "backside" of love, which is hell. They are discarded because they have not been willing to become (by their own life-long choices) what their Designer intended them to be. C.S. Lewis wrote,
"God is going to invade this earth in force. But what's the good of saying you're on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else, something it never entered your head to conceive comes crashing in. Something so beautiful to us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left. This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love, or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down, when it's become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realize it or not. Now, today, in this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever; we must take it or leave it."
Jesus' Death: Six Hours of Eternity on the Cross