Broad meadows

I didn’t grow up in a church as a child, but there plenty of pastors, reverends and evangelists who I would hear from time to time say some version of “eternal damnation in hell”. As a child I obviously knew nothing about the topic, but it seemed that God kept putting His word in my hands over and over again starting in my childhood.

Recently I saw a facebook post of a pastor saying if you spend ten trillion years in hell you’re no closer to getting out than when you went in. But is that what the Bible says? Revelation 20:14 says, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.” When does this occur? After the thousand years are ended as it says in verse 5 and after being emptied in verse 13.

We then see a list of who goes into the lake of fire in Revelation 20:10 it says, “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Then in Revelation 21:8 we get another list, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars —they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” So is that eternal punishment? Well, from Revelation 20:8 it is for the devil and his angels, but what about the other list?

In Revelation 22:14-15 it says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. And where is this city portrayed? Revelation 21:5 says this, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” They are portrayed as outside the city gates, not in the lake of fire. How did they get out?

In the parable “The Game”, I illustrate the problem this creates for the Christian to answer that requires both sympathy and biblical understanding. The idea that God only cares about the few and the rest must suffer in extreme anguish for all of eternity makes God look weak and uncaring, but the Bible doesn’t indicate that in any way. After reading Luke 15, do you think the shepherd that seeks the one lost sheep, or the women seeking a single coin will stop in their efforts to seek and save that which was lost? Do you think a God that says to love your enemies would then dedicate the vast majority of humanity to the ash heap? Not the God I know. The question then becomes about what mechanism God achieves His purposes. Could not the God who defeated physical death not also defeat the second death? The answer is yes and the sun/goat series I wrote on earlier provides the mechanism not only defeating the second death, but how the Elijah to come of Mark 9:12 “restores all things”. More on this to come.