We are eternal beings. You, me, every person on the planet… we’re all going to exist forever – in one of two places. There’s heaven. And there’s that other, much less desirable, destination.
 
Just in case you’re doubting its existence, Ann Barnhardt offers some instructive Notes on Hell ~

It is essential to know and understand that you will never, ever, ever, ever cease to exist. Most people, it seems to me, don’t really process or understand this […]
 
The temptation in the mind of sinful man is to quietly assume, without really giving it much thought because thinking about eternity can become very frightening very quickly, that when we die we just fall asleep and it’s “lights out”, baby […]
 
You can see why satan is FULLY onboard with and not the least bit offended by a planet full of human beings who deny that he, or hell, exist. Because if it is just going to be lights out someday, why not fornicate? It feels good. Why not lie? It makes life so much easier. Why not cheat and steal? Everyone else is doing it.
 
In the end, whether we screw around, lie and cheat won’t make any difference. It’s just going to be lights out and that’s it, so we might as well go for the most carnal pleasure and the path of least resistance and work in life.
 
This is, I think, the way the majority of people convince themselves to commit and persist in mortal sin, and is also how most people convince themselves that they need not correct their family and friends who are in mortal sin. Deep down, none of it really matters anyway because “lights out” […]

 
But all of that is just a pack of lies Satan wants you to fall for ~

Because God loves you personally, He holds YOUR EXISTENCE and your FREE WILL SACRED. Think about that. God holds YOU sacred. Could He snuff you out of existence? Oh yes. But He never, ever, ever will, no matter what, because if He snuffed even one human soul out of existence, then ALL human souls would then be nothing more than meaningless chessmen, plastic toys being played with by a capricious deity for nothing more than his perverse entertainment. That is not what God is. He is infinite, perfect love, truth and beauty, and He made you so that you might know, love and serve Him in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next. That is why you exist. That is the meaning of life. And life is SACRED not because WE hold our own lives sacred – life is sacred because God holds it sacred.
 
Sadly, most people reject God in various and sundry ways, and when they die, since they never repent of their sins and believed to the end of their earthly lives that their sins weren’t sins, or that they need not cease their sinful ways and instead presumed upon God’s mercy, these people simply cannot achieve the Beatific Vision, because God is also perfectly just. And, so, people go to hell […]
 
We have all been mislead by the depictions of heaven as a frankly boring place where souls and angels float about in a benign Stepford-esque stupor, wiling away eternity. I cannot tell you what heaven is like, obviously, but I can tell you that it is so far beyond anything we can possibly imagine here on earth that God Himself became incarnate and suffered and died for our sins so that we might have a chance at it.

 
Forever is a long, long time…