Lake of Fire

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Ravens

Puritan Board Sophomore
I've posted on this board for awhile now, and while I am not known for sagacity, I do think I avoid posting tabloid-type theology (I hope). That being said, I realize that my thoughts here will probably come across as uneducated, unpolished, and dangerously simplistic. Anyhow, I just wanted to come right out with it in the hopes of engendering a few serious responses. By the way, my views have nothing to do with any alleged volcanoes, tape recordings, or any other story of that nature.

Also, I just sat down, spur of the moment, and typed this. It isn't a "presentation to the board", and I'm doing it off-the-cuff, so pardon the lack of polish. I also have not buttressed the argument as I could; I'm just interested in hearing the thoughts of others.

Blessings Friends!:

A few years ago I began to realize the importance of the new heavens and the new earth. Though the spiritual joys of restored intimacy with God are the highest blessing of reconciled eternity, I fully expect to spend eternity on the very same planet that I now plant my feet on. Reshaped, burned-over, recreated, what have you, I have come to see the physicality and earthy nature of our future home. To some that might sound obvious, but for years I viewed that as too carnal, too base, etc. Anyhow, through various sermons and authors, from David Silversides to A.A. Hodge, and my reading of the Scriptures, I radically reshaped my views on the future earth.

That being said: I also can not avoid the necessary implication that, just as the future state of the redeemed would be locatable in the new heavens and the new earth, so the future state of the damned should be (especially since they too will have resurrected bodies, and bodies exist in space). And over the past few months, through a chain of different reasonings, my mind continually moves towards the fact that Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, etc., might very well be under the earth, in the core of the earth, etc.

Bear with me. None of the "reasons" are ironclad and foolproof. I wouldn't swear to this in a court of law. But here are at least how my thoughts are working.

1) I've often wondered what Eph. 4:9 meant, that Christ descended into the lower parts of the earth. Granted most people take this as a reference to the incarnation, and I might be inclined to do so as well. But it doesn't explain Philippians 2:10 to me, "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." Clearly (I've never seen it suggested otherwise) sentient beings are intended in this statement, be they angelic or human, and glory will be extracted from those "under the earth." I realize this is exalted language about Christ, but nothing in the passage, to my mind, allows for taking this in a metaphorical or hyperbolic sense, at least as the primary reading.

2) Christ speaks of cities being "brought down to Gehenna" (I'm doing this from memory, so if I get a reference wrong, bear with me). Sheol is constantly spoken of, if I understand aright, as "downward". Hades and Tartarus are both used in the New Testament, and both Hades and Tartarus were understood to be places below the surface of the earth in Greek mythology, with Tartarus being a deeper place of extreme punishment.

3) Granted this makes use of science, but the mantle-core is roughly understood to be layers of molten liquid rock, with layers of molten iron below them, and solid iron at the center. This seems to do justice to almost all of the Biblical statements. And I realize that many of these are metaphors, but I take them as possibly pointing towards something other than solely spiritual pain. Seas of molten rock easily explain the contrast between "burning and fire" associated with Tophet, and the "darkness" it is often said to be. No light will reach into the earth, it will be pure darkness. Also, how could molten rock and molten iron not be perfectly described as a "lake of fire"? Revelation refers to it as a "bottomless pit", and when the demons begged Christ not to send them into the abyssos (if I remember correctly), they presumed that this abyssos was already in existence at the time. This also allows for degrees of punishment even in a physical sense (which most people believe in), as the rock and core gets hotter as you descend into it.

4) This also wonderfully ties in another strand of Biblical teaching, namely, that Christ's foot shall smash the head of the serpent, and that all things shall be placed under the feet of Christ, and by Him, under the feet of His church. That seems to be a dreadful, irrevocable, and exclamatory way to accomplish that very thing, and we will "tread on the ashes of the wicked", or however Isaiah (or Malachi? From memory, remember) says it.

5) A couple of times in Scripture it is hinted that there will be a "nearness" of heaven to hell. Granted they are not (as most people take them) literal passages of Scripture. Nevertheless, there might be a literal truth in the parable and apocalyptic. Namely, Abraham is near enough to the man to contemplate his suffering, though he could not pass over. And the smoke of the damned rises in the sight of heaven (or the redeemed, or angels) in Revelation, and causes men to glory.

6) If Hell is, in some sense, an everlasting monument to God's wrath, righteousness, purity, and Justice, then might one expect it as able to be contemplated by glorified men?

7) Virtually all strains of the world's religions view "the underworld" as a dark, fearsome place located below the surface of the earth. Granted we shouldn't take our cues from world religions. But to me it is somewhat confirmatory. I have come to distrust more and more the latest scholarly tofu fads that come from the universities, and to realize the wealth of ancestral memory and tales that, though garbled, Noah's son's passed on to their descendants. And certain things seem to be "cultural constants": Namely, a belief that God (or the "gods" [sic]) are angry and need to be pacified with blood, a more or less global flood which only one man, or one family, survives, tales of giants and coexistence with large reptilian beings (which the Bible would require) and, lastly, the belief in an "underworld."

8) Some might levee the same argument against this that is leveed against the gap theory, namely, how could Adam stand on the bones of dead dinosaurs and have God pronounce creation "good". (NOTE: I do not hold to the gap theory, or death prior to the fall). However, if we grant that hell will be in some sense physical (and I think we have to, for the damned have bodies), then the problem would be erased. For if the new earth would be tainted by Hell's presence, then so would the new heaven's, which pretty much means, "everywhere else". So if Hell is physical at all, it will need to exist somewhere. Also, that infers that Hell is "bad". But in some sense that is to impugn God's character.

As I said, I realize these are not popular thoughts. They are the type of thoughts that many (maybe I am sinfully judging; I know I would have been embarassed to share these with an unbeliever a couple of years ago, and would have laughed at any of you who posted such things as this...) would be embarrassed to adhere to. Surely they smack of unsophistication and a lack of philosophical acumen. Regardless, I can't help but seeing that "all roads lead to Rome" on this one, namely, that every strand of evidence to which I turn conveniently fits with this model.

So: Thoughts?
 
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