A re-post since I’m cranky that I have covid again. Also, we lost the little guy in this video about a month ago. If sarcasm (the lowest form of wit) annoys you, skip this one.
Originally Posted on April 18, 2022
Who doesn’t miss the good old days? I mean, 1950s ironically upbeat television totally proved how fabulous life was. In the old days, a man could legally punish his wife, women couldn’t own property, and a dad could trade his daughter for a field, or whatever else benefited the clan. Back in the day, there wasn’t a disease a little bloodletting couldn’t cure.
Right now we don’t know if he’ll come through like in the past. He may have parted the Red Sea, but he could have brought us here into the desert to die. We’ve always seen him faithful before, but he might not be this time…
Nothing is like it used to be. It isn’t a subconscious justification to prove cessation theology when we say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. We just know there can’t be growth in translation philosophies. We could only expect God to help that one time in Latin and we needed the Holy Spirit to change to prevent confusion since we’re devolving.
That’s also because we’ve lost our language and ability to see beauty in words. There’s no hope for our grandchildren to communicate. Instead of “nothing new under the sun,” we should fear because “it’s all new,” and a slightly downgraded version of a changing God who used to move his people but is pretty much done now.
Your parents were better than your children, so you were born too late. He spoke to previous generations, but he’s going to drop this next one because their pants are too tight. We tried to make America great again, but the glory days are over.
And also, you should just be sad because the world is going to end. The promise of life more abundant was a promise with a shelf life. The only promise left is the great apostasy, so stop looking for God’s miracles in your sphere. Lament, not over your sin, of course, but over the way it used to be!
Actually, be careful of romanticizing the past—you can turn it into something it never was.
God has so much good in store for us. It’s just going to look different. So different, so good, no humankind can comprehend it.
You may be “Two steps behind the rest, one fingertip too long…” but you didn’t miss the boat. God is still moving and has good plans.
I once said to my grandma, “I wish Jesus would come back.” It wasn’t during a trial. I think I was just feeling the irritation of living. I had a bill due, or something equally inconsequential.
She said, “Yes, I hope so too. But, not yet.”
I was shocked. Maybe even a little worried that she didn’t want Christ to return at that very moment. I mean, you get a crown just for longing for his return! Why wouldn’t she want him to come immediately?
I hadn’t yet known the pain of a lost loved one. The pain of longing for someone you love more than yourself to be reconciled to God before it’s too late.
It isn’t easy to balance these two longings (Christ’s return and the salvation of loved ones) inside the same heart space. When I spoke that to my grandma, I was being selfish. The Lord tarries, desiring none would perish.
During that season, we attended a church that gave regular prophecy updates. Jesus’s return occupied much of our attention, maybe more focus than bringing God’s kingdom here to earth through actions and stewardship.
Conversation about The End Times was casual—albeit with a heightened sense of macabre excitement. “God is going to come back and punish everyone but me! The earth will be filled with the blood of evil unbelievers and those who vote Democrat.”
Our blind anticipation about eternity did a little damage. Like someone who gives up living, preparing to plan their funeral, rather than do anything to bolster their life. Although, in some seasons of pain—selfish is all you can muster.
But focusing solely on eternity means sacrificing his gift of abundant life now. Both for yourself and what you have to give others.
It is selfish to wag your head at an earth “headed to hell in a handbasket.” And to harden your heart against those leaving the faith—drawing comfort that it’s just predestination. I read something recently that said, “a salvation that requires someone else’s destruction is too small a salvation since ‘everyone belongs to God.’”
It is the Kindness of God that Draws to Repentance
You could speak like Paul if you loved like Paul. But if we aren’t willing to give up our salvation for someone else—we should be careful how we instruct, exhort and justify “the end” in our minds.
Always question doctrine and interpretation that causes you to turn your heart away from humanity.
Long for his return, for the reconciliation to the lover of your soul… but not at the expense of bringing his kingdom here to earth in the meantime. I often think about an ending scene in Schindler’s List. While people thank him for their lives, Schindler can only stare at his watch and lament that he could have sold it to save more.
A Thief in the Night
If you think it’s hard to live now, in a fallen world, fearing the future loss of your freedoms… read scripture about the end. You might not be so eager to usher it in, other than the glorious result of reconciliation. Christ’s analogy to birth pangs is perfect. For most of pregnancy, there is still so much left to do to prepare for the arrival. You don’t want birth to happen until you’re finished getting ready. You’re eventually willing to go through labor to have the baby in arm, but you never wake up and think, “Today is a good day for hours and hours of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced and possible death.”
There’s an interpretation about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the Parousia, or second coming of Christ, being the same event. But I favor the “already and not yet” duality of scripture. It shows up in too many places and correlates to our entire faith-walk. For example, we are already redeemed, but sanctification is still happening in our sinful bodies until we will be changed in heaven. We are already, and not yet, justified.
So, even though Christ was teaching in the temple in Luke 21, I believe the passage has use as instruction for us.
Verses 34-36: But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of all the earth. So keep watch at all times, and pray that you may have the strength to escape all that is about to happen and to stand before the Son of Man.
Pray to Escape
When you read Revelations, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, there are common threads to pray that you will escape or you will endure. Certainly, God does not give us a spirit of fear, so fear is not an appropriate response to the discussion. We are safe, we cannot be snatched from God’s hand. We should lift our eyes and watch for redemption, but we shouldn’t disregard the warnings either. There is tension here—just like the tension of balancing a longing for Christ’s return and longing for the salvation of loved ones, first.
Sometimes it seems like the easiest answer is for the end to arrive, but instead of looking forward to your enemies being crushed under God’s feet, spend your energy on the concept that those who endure to the end shall be saved.
Pray to Endure
Most Jews didn’t recognize Jesus because they had purposed in their minds what the coming Messiah would look like. Don’t become so fixated on how you expect the end to play out that you’re unprepared.
Luke 21 verse 19 says, “by your patient endurance you will gain your souls.” Make sure you really believe what you believe, memorize and take his word into the deep inner parts. Prepare for labor before victory.
When I first heard the gospel, it was good news. Everybody was going to hell where there would be eternal, unbearable punishment…wait, here’s the good part: I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. I could have a free ticket out.
Yes, please. Sign me up. I was eleven years old. Who the hell would want to go there?
Then came other questions. Do you have to be baptized for this free ticket? What if you’re baptized in the wrong church? What if it’s a sprinkle, not immersion, or it’s before the age of reasoning? Do you have to get baptized again for the free ticket? And a weird question that arrived later…can someone else get baptized for you after you die?
Paul addresses some believers who have an incorrect view of eternity in verse 12. Apparently, they didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead.
Let this sink in. It’s possible for believers to have an erroneous belief.
Paul reasons that if there is no resurrection, then Christ didn’t rise. If Christ didn’t rise, then it’s all in vain and worthless. And if our faith is worthless, then we’re still in our sins. And we should be pitied more than all men. Basically, what the hell is this life for?
He says in verse 18 that if this is so, believers who have died perish. Without resurrection, you perish. You are destroyed; you cease. Without resurrection, you don’t live forever.
Last week’s post challenged the idea of humans having an inherently eternal soul. But let’s say eternity is not a gift from God, and the Greek philosophers rationalized correctly: our souls live forever. Maybe Satan was right when he assured Eve, “You will surely not die. You will be like God.” God, who is immortal.
Unrepentant or not
Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 15 to describe how God will subjugate everything under Christ. And the last enemy will be death. Verses 26-28 What it would look like if a billion people are in outright, unrepentant rebellion, hating God and cursing his name, writhing in the pit. Are they subjugated?
To subjugate is to conquer into submission. And I can see the victorious lion who comes bringing war ruling the earth this way. One day, every knee will bow—but I’m unsettled that their hearts don’t matter anymore. That heaven is eternity with some still despising the king.
It’s equally unsatisfactory to believe that the uncleansed sinners grow horrified at their mistake while writing in pain, and acknowledge the one true God, crying out in repentant sorrow. When the hell would it end?
I doubt people in hell will eat from the tree of life (just so they can suffer eternally) since that right is given to the residents of heaven. While they burn, instead of the fire doing what it normally does, consume completely to ash, will God preserve bodies and souls like he did with the burning bush? Will he preserve minds as well?
Kept conscious
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is one of those books that seems to take me longer than it should to finish. I wait months without picking it back up. It’s just a hard read for me, not uninteresting. I’m fascinated that our human bodies have so many ways to protect our brain from trauma: blacking out, going insane, disassociation, repression of memories.
In verse 51 when Paul says not all will die but all will be changed, is he talking about unbelievers as well? Will residents of hell be given a special new body that feels all the sensations of trauma, but they cannot escape in any way? Will God supernaturally keep them conscious to make unbearable punishment just bearable enough to last forever?
Torturers study and aspire to that goal.
Who is a vindictive torturer, delighting in our suffering? I think our enemy doesn’t just try to look like God—sometime he tries to make us think God looks like him. So much skewed doctrine comes from thinking God is like man, or evil.
“Does the one who told us to love our enemies intend to wreck vengeance on his own enemies for all eternity?” Rethinking Hell Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism
Irrevocable, not ongoing
I’m not suggesting there is no hell, or that there will not be a punishment. I’m merely suggesting that the punishment might not be ongoing torture—but irrevocable perishing. Eternal separation from God, who is the source of life and in whose hand all things are held together. And I am suggesting that eternal just means permanent.
I am not a scholar, and I have been mulling over these ideas for a few years. So, I do not reject the suggestion of eternal conscious tournament lightly. Neither do I need this to be true because I want to escape hell. I earnestly desire to spend eternity with the God I love. But something shifted inside me toward God when I began to contemplate these ideas. I don’t actually know how it will all work out, but based on what I know of God, I can trust him.
There are terms for last week’s post (conditional immortality) and this week’s (annihilation view of hell.) But I think we are too quick to jump into labels. We tend to want to know what flag to raise so we can know who is in a different camp and where to aim the heretic gun. Working out your faith is a process and you will have to be willing to sit in undefined thoughts and to wait on the Lord. As you read and study on your own, consider that every time the Bible speaks of eternal punishment, perishing, death and destruction, it means that there is no going back. Not torture.
If, at the end of your physical body, you still reject him and do not want to spend eternity with the Almighty God who loves you, he will let you have your way.
You may ask, “How the hell are we going to scare people into heaven?” It’s true that if you take the fear out of religion, it is a different choice. Fear the Lord is a reverent awe of him, not cowering before capriciousness.
The crux
If you want to spend eternity with God because you love and trust him—spend this life loving and trusting him. Just the possibility of the annihilation view of hell helps me do that a bit more.
Of course, the truth of God is not based on what “feels” right to humankind. But if the traditional view of eternal conscious torment in hell is unseated according to your prayer, reflection and study—is that because you have more compassion than God? Give me a freakin’ break.
I would like to apologize to my mom for the language in this post.
