Mark Dever, On the Presence of God in Eternity

“Even if we arrived in heaven and received everything else that we wanted – friends, family, health, riches – we would be uninterested in being there if God himself was not present. He is the center of it all. In that sense, the people who are preparing for heaven are the people who ae increasingly centered on God and God’s presence already. As I meditated on this idea, it occurred to me that the opposite is true as well. Hell is the place where God and his presence are absent (his pleasing presence, anyway; God is present in hell only to judge). And the individuals whom Scriptures promises will go to hell are individuals whose lives are already marked by indifference to God, by coldness to God, by opposition to God. These individuals follow laws different than God’s laws, and they pursue loves different than God’s loves.” (The Message of the Old Testament)