Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Fires of Hell
Commentary
for the December 3, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
"Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought
against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not
strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled
down---that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world
astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."
Revelation
12:7-9, NIV
One of the most jumbled up popular
theological myths in Christian equivalents to what we call urban legends is the
idea of the devil reigning over a fiery place of torment where those who were
evil in life are eternally tormented by he and his minions. This is a modern accretion
to Christian mythology. When we examine art and literature, the idea of torment
with flames before the Renaissance is not found in the "Divine Comedy" by Dante
Alighieri. Instead, he depicts Hell as a very cold place. The deeper he goes
into Hell, the colder it gets until he reaches the very center where Satan himself
is frozen in the ice. But with the Renaissance, Hell, as pictured by Hieronymus
Bosch, is very much a fiery place where the wicked suffer all manner of
torments. So why the change?
It may have a lot to do with
theodicy. If God is love, how can he tolerate the evil, the injustice, the torment
that exists on earth? This is not a new question. It is as old as the Book of
Job in the Bible. Even the final book, Revelation, focuses on restoring the
balance to the universe by righting the injustices suffered by God's people.
Prophets like Habakkuk could not understand how things could be so out of
balance in the presence of God if he truly cares for his people. In his case,
God revealed he was working to restore that balance. While shocked that God
would use the tools he was using to achieve that end, Habakkuk decided that God
is ultimately in control and all the earth should stand humbly silent in his
presence. Indeed, this is often the modern response to theodicy. We stand in
silence trusting that God will work out justice and, in the end, the right
people will come out on top.
Many years ago, while engaged in
a Bible study with a neighbor who had asked me to work through a few biblical doctrines
with him, his girlfriend dropped by. At that moment, we were examining the idea
of Hell and punishment. The question came up about why, if God is love, would
he keep a person alive for all eternity simply to torture them endlessly? The
girlfriend interjected that if God was not going to torture her enemies, then
she wanted nothing to do with a god that failed to exact never-ending revenge
for all the mean things people had done to her in life. She felt so strongly
about it that she demanded my neighbor stop studying the Bible with me and
reject this idea that God is love. This was the end of our friendship for he
told me that she demanded he choose between her and me over this issue of God's
love. He was true to his word for he never spoke to me again. Obviously,
whether biblical or not, popular mythology about Hell, the devil, and eternal
torment holds a powerful sway over some.
There are several reasons why
this came about. First, if there is a devil, where is he and what is he doing?
The Bible doesn't say except to warn us about him. However, demons, evil gods,
and demigods are very much a part of pagan mythology. As these individuals
joined the Christian community, they offered some of their beliefs to inform
some of these grey areas of theology. Despite the fact they contradicted
scripture, they were embraced as reasonable and even righteous explanations of
the otherwise unexplainable. We see an example of this even in the book of Acts.
Unable to explain the miracles being wrought by Paul and Barnabas, the people
of Lystra explained it in terms of their pagan gods and the attributes they felt
those deities had, assigning Barnabas to Zeus and Paul to Hermes. Had they
succumbed to the temptation of being worshipped as gods, they may have exerted
tremendous influence over the people of Lystra, but for all the wrong reasons.
Fortunately, they were of better character and revealed the truth about God to
the confused minds of the citizens of the city. Sadly, less scrupulous persons
swayed the suggestible crowd against them. They were stoned, dragged from the
city and left for dead. Such is the power of myth when challenged by scripture.
This means that whatever I say
here, despite biblical support, will likely be rejected unless those who
receive it are already open to the working of the Holy Spirit. For instance,
they may already have ferreted out scriptures that seem to support the idea of
an ever-burning Hell where people are kept alive to be tormented forever,
despite the fact that it makes no sense to do so instead of simply putting a
final end to evil. How much evil could a person commit in their short life that
would require all of eternity to balance out? At this point, some might mention
the Holocaust, or the Holodomor and the millions consumed in those horrors. But
if we see eternal torment as deserved for those things, what about those who
did far, far less but were still wicked individuals? Is God's justice so
disproportionate that it demands eternal torture for them as well? Our sense of
outrage over evil may prevent us from seeing this kind of justice as injustice,
but others see it as such, and it drives them from God, not because he is
really this kind of being, but because we make him out to be.
If we are honest, we will admit
that the idea of fear of horrific punishment at the hands of an irate deity is
a powerful tool for exercising political control over the credulous. This is
another reason such a belief not only arose but then was promoted as a means of
controlling those resisting the power of the church. The church had become so
powerful by the 11th century that Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor,
was forced to humiliate himself to regain the favor of the church. This power brought
great wealth into the church, and reluctant to curb such power and return to
the humility of Christ, they used whatever means they could to maintain
control. A master stroke was the introduction of the idea of purgatory. By such
an invention, they were able to bring vast wealth into the church by claiming
that they could still use their power to move a person from purgatory to heaven
if only the survivors left behind were faithful enough in their obedience to
the church and willingness to fill its coffers. It was the use of indulgences
by Tetzel for this exact purpose that helped to propel Martin Luther to stand with
the Reformation as he sought to loosen the stranglehold the church had over the
people. For Luther, it was all about theology, but for the people and some of
Luther's compatriots, it was clear that it was about the secular power enabled
by the church's support, and they fomented the ill-fated Peasant's Revolt.
Despite the Reformation and the
Age of Reason that followed, and despite the country championing religious
freedom that arose in North America, the United States, the church has not
forgotten the heady times when it held tremendous, almost universal power. The
tools it used to keep that power are still used today. While the church in the
United States no longer exercises the power of inquisition and excommunication
over the civil authorities, dominionism reveals it is not above seeking its
return. Candidates for political office unwisely seek the endorsement of the
church over issues like abortion, unaware that the church has a much more
ambitious agenda that would return it to the glory days of vast wealth and power.
If we open our eyes, it is obvious when church leaders use their positions
today to accumulate wealth and power. Private jets and palatial mansions are
the stuff of the church before the Reformation.
When we understand this, we can
also see that the idea of a person having an unconditionally immortal soul only
provides corruption another handle for control that extends beyond this life in
order to manipulate individuals in this one. But the truth is that those who
grasp for such things will be brought to an end. The torment will not go on for
eternity. There will be an end to the evil and only those who are in a
righteous relationship with Jesus will find the conditional immortality that
Paul wrote about, John wrote about, and Jesus taught. "And this is the
testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever
has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."
(1 John 5:11-12) There is no immortality, no life, for those who turn from
Jesus and his teachings. No immortality in Hell to be tortured forever. No
immortality in purgatory to get a second chance at heaven. The prophet Malachi
tells us that neither root nor branch will be left of them. They will be
reduced to ashes.[i] There is nothing to
continue on in torment. God is love.[ii] He
takes no delight in torturing the lost.[iii]