Today's question comes from Calum in South Hampton, England, Hello Pastor John.

After listening to episode 996, do some people have more joy in heaven than others?

I remember the number of passages in the New Testament where Jesus seems to suggest that

there will be people for whom the day of judgment will be worse even than for the people

of Sodom and Gomorrah or Tyre and Satan.

Matthew 10 verses 12 to 15, chapter 11 verses 21 to 24, and in second Peter 2, 19 to

22, it describes people who have known the way of righteousness and then turned back to

them.

Peter explains it would have been, quote, better for them never to have known the way in

quote.

Revelation 14, 19 describes the enemies of God being gathered and swept into the, quote,

winepress of God's wrath.

And this doesn't seem to leave much room for a hierarchy, so to speak.

I love the explanation in episode 996 about the differing capacities for joy in heaven,

about how the most joyful in the kingdom will in fact be the humblest, amazing.

But does something like this happen in reverse in God's judgment?

Are some people in hell able to perceive greater despair than others?

People to perceive greater despair.

That may be true.

I didn't expect them to end with that phrase, but it's a fascinating and helpful question

to ask what we're actually told or not told in the New Testament is in what way the suffering

will be greater for some than others.

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