It's very hot here. The heat and the humidity is scaring me because if I find this heat hot, how much hotter is Hell?
Summer is one season I hate because it reminds me of Hell and how hot it will be if I go there, not to mention it's hitting all of your naked body parts, and it's forever.
I just don't want to keep thinking about Hell during summer. It's so annoying, and it puts me under a lot of fear. I want to end this hellfire fear, and the fear of it being never ending. I want the fear to stop and go away
Well, for one thing, the idea that hell is a literal fiery cavern underground is probably just the wrong way to look at hell. There are, to be sure, many different ideas about hell in Christianity; and there has never been an official, definitive teaching on the nature of hell. But the idea that hell is literally "down there", while heaven is "up there" is an idea that most Christian theologians, throughout history, would regard as at best naive and simplistic.
I'd say that hell could just as easily be described as exceedingly "cold", but not because of temperature. Likewise, the "fires" of Gehenna are not literal fire, and the darkness is not literal darkness, and the worms are not literal worms. This is figurative, metaphorical language.
We read also about the lake of "fire and brimstone", but it would equally be wrong to imagine that this is literally a lake, or that it is literally comprised of literal fire and literal sulfur.
In the modern world we associate sulfur with the hellish because of St. John's vision of the lake of fire and brimstone (sulfur) in the book of the Revelation. But in the ancient world sulfur had a very different association. In fact the Greeks called it
theion, "divinity"; indeed that is what we read in the Revelation,
καὶ ὁ διάβολος ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς ἐβλήθη εἰς
τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου ὅπου τὸ θηρίον καὶ ὁ ψευδοπροφήτης καὶ βασανισθήσονται ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων - Revelation 20:10
The bold portion is "the lake of fire and sulfur". Sulfur was considered a divine substance in the ancient world, a kind of "divine incense" used to purify sacred objects and sacred spaces. Sulfur was thus seen as an agent of divine purification.
This is not a lake of literal fire, but a "lake" of divine judgment, where that which is rotten is brought in to endure the purification of judgment. I won't entertain speculation beyond that point, but I think it is a worthwhile point to be raised nonetheless.
Fire, we must remember, is used throughout Scripture to speak of both divine judgment and divine purification (and, frequently, these are the same thing).
Earlier in the Revelation, in the letter to the Church in Laodicea, Jesus implores the Laodiceans, "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire," (Revelation 3:18) Jesus had chastised the Laodiceans for bragging about their riches, but telling them that they are not actually rich but poor, and to purchase gold refined by fire. What does He mean? He means that they had become comfortable and affluent, even as their brothers and sisters in the churches were suffering; and they patted themselves on the back for it, but instead Jesus tells them they should seek gold refined in fire--that is their comfort and affluence has made them poor, and if they desire true spiritual wealth, they would desire that which passed through the fire and comes out pure.
When a metal lump is brought to the intense flame, the flame does two things: It burns away, destroying the impurities in the the metal (aka the dross) and it purifies the metal, the result is something of greater value.
Judgment can mean destruction, but judgment also means purification. When St. Peter, in 2 Peter (3:10-13), describes the destruction of the present age with fire, he speaks of a burning away of all evil and wicked works. The passing of this present age, and the newness of the coming age passes through a veil of fire--the threshing floor and the winepress of God's wrath.
Ultimately, instead of letting yourself think about the "fire of hell" during the summer heat, instead--because this is the good creation of God--be reminded of the fires of heaven, the heavenly flame of God's love which shall consume us, as we are brought from death to life, in the resurrection that is to come, and to that beatific life of the Age to Come.
-CryptoLutheran
