Leonidas: "Tonight, We Dine, in Hell!"

Revelation 20:7—15

"Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire."

Still stuck in Revelation haha, but I wanted to discuss this one before we leave the book and move on to Lamentations. It has always been asked: How can a loving God send people to Hell? and What is Hell anyway? I'll try to answer the first question next week, because in the process of reading up about Hell, I got more than what I intended to discuss for today. We had a glimpse of it in the last chapters of the Book of Revelation. Most make light this severe idea, saying "Hell, yeah/yes!" or joke about that it is going to be "more fun there" since most of their "friends are going there too" or poking fun at the texts saying that it is "where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth", another friend of mine just remarked that Manila traffic is worse than Hell and finally, the cult classic exclamation of King Leonidas "Tonight, we dine in Hell!" (*Director Frank Miller said he took "a lot of liberties" in making 300, and "if you want reality, catch a documentary.", well, documentaries = reality? I don't necessarily agree.) I don't think most of our friends, and us sometimes, even begin to understand the gravity of Hell – this Separation from God, as much as Heaven may ultimately be beyond our grasp, and beyond these analogies we make of it. My atheist professor mocked the idea of Heaven by rhetorically asking: "Is it a place of eternal orgasm?" and looking back, I thought, whatever it is you think that gives you happiness, joy and pleasures, Heaven is always better than that since it is beyond what we could ever hope or think of. So far from ridiculing it, my professor maybe got the idea right somehow, he is just incredulous) Jesus, in His Revelation (via the apostle John) here not only vividly describes the Lake of Fire, in many references He also talked about it in the Gospels and the Bible is peppered with many similar ideas of both post-life "destinations", Heaven and Hell: Sheol, Hades, Valley of Gehenna (Valley of the Sons of Hinnom), Paradise, Abraham's Bosom. Gehenna is interesting, it is the Greek word used for our common New Testament understanding of Hell. I read it's more of a historical metaphor since Gehenna, the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom is a literal place in Israel – the unholy site where children are offered in the flames to the detestable pagan god Molech. (2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 33:6; Jeremiah 32:35). "Eventually, the Jews considered that location to be ritually unclean (2 Kings 23:10), and they defiled it all the more by casting the bodies of criminals into its smoldering heaps." In the Lord Jesus' time on earth "this was a place of constant fire, but more so, it was a refuse heap, the last stop for all items judged by men to be worthless." When the Lord spoke of Gehenna, "He was speaking of the city dump of all eternity...fire was part of it, but the purposeful casting away—the separation and loss—was all of it. The Lake of Fire, mentioned only here in vv. 10, 14-15, is the final hell, the place of eternal  punishment for all unrepentant rebels, both angelic and human (Matthew 25:41). It is described as a place of burning sulfur, and those in it experience eternal, unspeakable agony of an unrelenting nature (Luke 16:24; Mark 9:45-46). Those who have rejected Christ and are in the temporary abode of the dead in hades/sheol have the lake of fire as their final destination. I would be more restrained in thinking that these description albeit Biblical, are literal ones over metaphorical. The first priciple that I am working with is that if Heaven is ultimately indescribable, there is more reason to think Hell is that way too so that if Heaven is a place of eternal bliss and described as such only up to a certain literal extent such as in an analogy to physical objects and realities such as fire, heat, pain and darkness, Hell must really be describable only as analogous to a place of physical burn, pain, torment and agony. After all, Heaven and Hell are parallel ideas. It does seem to tell us simply that we wouldn't want to be there for eternity. Nevertheless, these are actually real places, and I think there is still room literal or material/physical sense since with respect to the resurrection of the righteous dead (which wil clearly be physical although of a reality other than what we perceive now, 1 Corinthians 15:42–49), the fate of the unrighteous rebellious dead and fallen angels will seem to have some sort of physical, material reality as well. I'll leave that to you to decide what to believe, I do think there are good arguments for either and they may not be mutually exclusive after all depending on qualifications. Some think, and I see this all the time in internet memes, that Hell is some sort of crafty blackmail God has set up in order for us humans to accept Him, if not He will send us there. But that is just silly, and would be tantamount to the tail wagging the dog! In much simpler terms, I sometimes think about it this way: Hell is basically Separation from God. Existentialist thinker Jean Paul Sartre said "Hell is other people." Some do reject and hate God with all their guts, and it is their sacred freedom to do so and to them God maybe exactly that other person. And so regardless of what "Eternal Separation from God" entails physically/consciously, is there anything worse than to forever be in the presence of someone you hate? God desires that we all come to Him freely, in love, and "so that none may perish" (2 Peter 3:9) that is why He sent His Son (John 3:15–17). "God doesn't send us to Hell", I heard Ps Wee Long preach, "It is sin that sends us there." Our finite and limited human words will ultimately fail to describe either Heaven or Hell, but that doesn't mean these aren't real places and locations of eternal destiny. Whatever future reality these ideas mean, Scripture does indicate that the conscious experience, of either eternal joy or eternal agony, will be there right with Him, in the indescribable glorious, blissful and complete presence of God or right without Him, in the indescribable misery of His absence.

John 3:15–21

"...that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not 

perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

~14.12.2014