September 02, 2009
Special Places
The unfolding story of Jaycee Lee Dugard who was kidnapped and held as a slave for 18 years is unfathomable. I doubt that most of us will be prepared to hear the truth of this tragic story when it’s finally revealed. More than a few people are commenting that there’s a ‘special place in Hell’ for the likes of the captors. Isn’t it strange that some of us find comfort in thinking there are degrees of Hell. Though Hell was established by God, it’s the separation from God that makes it Hell. Sure makes one appreciate that our place in heaven is being prepared for us by Jesus…
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----My educated guess is that the concept of the degrees of hell arose from Matthew 10: 15, “Truly, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.” Then Dante refined our “knowledge” of it. But Hell, the actual lake of fire, is kind of like a black hole - we know about it, but no one has or can go there and return to tell us its true details. Therefore we are left only with conjecture. So, here is my conjecture.
-----In Matthew, Jesus three times referred to folks being cast into outer darkness. Matthew and John also present Jesus’ analogy of the condemned being gathered like weeds and branches and burned with fire. Seven times Jesus used “Gehenna” to refer to the fate of the wicked, twice calling it “the Gehenna of fire.” (Gehenna was the valley west of Jerusalem used as a trash dump. Fires were kept burning there perpetually to consume the trash.) Psalms says the heavens and the earth will be folded up like an old garment and set aside. Revelation says that the heavens and earth will flee from the face of God. II Peter states that all the elements will melt away with fervent heat. And five times the Bible refers to all of the stars falling to the earth. If we must think of Hell as a physical place, then I think of it as Christ withdrawing the power of His Word that upholds all things from its support of the physical universe, which then collapses into a black hole. This would certainly be a folding up, as well as a very fiery event. From the perspective of God and all who chose to escape this present system, its eternal collapse into an ever diminishing speck is a flight from His face, a casting into outer darkness, and a setting aside. To those on the outside of it, it would be the unobservable black hole. To those on the inside, well, who knows what it would be physically. Some astrophysicists conjecture that even the laws of physics are destroyed within a black hole. Others think a new law of physics exists there. No one knows because you can not see into one, nor can anything that enters one ever escape.
-----I think Jesus’ withdrawal of His support from this present system is the final, permanent breach of all contact or association with God for those who have chosen to live according to themselves instead of according to Him. It is the eternal death, and they will be trapped in it by their choice of this life instead of the next. But if God chose there to be levels of punishment in Hell, He could not Himself uphold them, for He will have withdrawn all contact. Only something in the physics of the place itself, or the reactions of those spirits trapped in it could enforce such degrees upon those who deserve them. However, every soul in Hell will at some point in time have had the incredible blessing of the presence of God. For Satan and his angels, they were present with Him before they rebelled. For everyone else, they stood in the judgment room in His presence before being banished. All will have tasted the perfection they missed, and all will have eternity to reflect upon their misdeeds for which they were judged. Their memories will eat at them as emotional worms after experiencing the blessedness of His righteous presence. And the more and the worse the deeds they have for memories, the worse will be the eating.
-----Of course, I have never been to Hell to come back and tell you these things, so we all know that I am simply guessing. But this settles my mind about both the degrees of Hell, and about how a loving God could cast anyone there. Those who go there create the degree of torment they will have by the memories they make from their misdeeds right now. And their being cast there is only a metaphorical term for their having chosen unity with a place and condition God created to be thrown away. It is all their own fault.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
P.S
-----To be more precise, Tartarus was a section of Hades (the Greek concept of death) reserved as the place of torment for the wicked. If my memory serves me well, there were two levels of Tartarus, one for the simply wicked, and a worse for those who specifically offended the Gods. The Greek place of the dead was a highly popular concept in the first century, Tartarus even gaining mention in the Scriptures (II Peter 2:4). I speculate a link was made between this Greek concept in the minds of the early Christians and Jesus’ mention of it being easier for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment. Then Dante further details the idea in the Inferno.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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