HOPE! - Working Backwards

There is an enemy at work against us whose desire is to pull us away from union with God out into the void of nothingness. The enemy has been known by many names – the devil, Satan, Apollyon, and so on…

He is seen as the great enemy of God and all who follow Jesus. But sometimes we talk as though the devil were God’s equal – as if good and evil were equal powers fighting to gain the upper hand… like the Force or something. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The devil lost a long time ago. He was never really much of a threat. Oh sure, he seems all big and scary… especially when we begin to behave the way he does. But really, there is nothing big or great about the devil. He is consumed in himself… and anything consumed by itself isn’t so great. It may trick you into appearing powerful and explosive initially… but it quickly burns out.

And we’re not that much different than the devil. Like him, we can be consumed by pride and we can lock ourselves away inside of ourselves and devoid ourselves of all that is good. That’s what the devil did. And that’s what we do too. And isn’t that really where hell begins? In being so consumed in ourselves that we become isolated from all that is good?

But the kingdom of heaven has come… and it has come ahead of schedule. When Jesus drove out demons, they accused him of coming to torture them before the “appointed time.” You see, the kingdom of heaven works backwards. The goodness of God and the sacrifice of Christ transcend time and space, so that the glory of the future travels backwards and becomes the reality of the present. The kingdom is… and is yet to come.

Throughout biblical history we see a protoevangelium – a gospel in advance. We see this from the beginning when God promises that a descendant of the woman will crush the head of the serpent – the enemy.

This type of imagery is seen in other places in the Old Testament, where the enemy of God who is described as having serpent-like qualities receives a crushing head wound. One example would be Goliath, whose armor is described as having the appearance of “scales.” David defeats Goliath with a blow to the head. Another example would be the story of Jael, who drives a tent peg through the head, or temple, of General Sisera, who is a serpent-type. This kind of language is not uncommon throughout the Old Testament.

You see, salvation works backwards. So that the final redemption starts in the here and now. Damnation works the same way, too, though.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis spoke of heaven and hell beginning in this life, and that the next life would be the continuation of what we had chosen in this life. He says that those who are in heaven at the last will look back on their life on earth and say that they had always been in heaven, and those who were in hell at the last would look back on their earthly life and say that they had always been in hell, and both would speak truthfully. Those who are in hell, then, lived life on earth in a weird sort of anticipation of ultimate damnation; and those who are in heaven, lived life on earth in anticipation of salvation. Both the damned and the saved experienced the end results of their choices before the end results were finally brought about. This is how, Lewis says, heaven and hell “work backwards.” He says that heaven works backwards from the future to the present in the life of the believer, making even the worst trials and persecutions bearable through hope and joy; and that hell works backwards in the sinner, contaminating even the most pleasurable of sins with the stain of the anticipation of damnation.

Just as it is important to view the kingdom of God as “is and is yet to come,” so it is also appropriate to view the kingdom of the devil in this way. Though, hell would work in the opposite way of heaven. When heaven comes to earth, there is no more room for any traces of hell to remain. If heaven is the presence of God and hell is the absence of God’s presence, then the fact that heaven would come to earth would mean that hell would no longer have any place or hold here.

The hope of a future heaven where no good thing is destroyed means that we will be able to see our lost loved ones who died in the Lord. They will be raised in the Lord along with us, and there will no longer be any stupid and hateful death that takes us away from our loved ones, destroying God’s good creation, and defying God and the image of God. We will be together again and it will be wonderful. God will restore all things, and death will be damned forever.

Revelation says that death and hades and the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire. Fire is meant to purify, but they will be in this fire forever, indicating that there was nothing in them that could be refined. There was nothing gold about them that could emerge from the flames. They all melted away like wax in everlasting destruction. And through this final destruction, we will be rid of all our enemies forever.

This belief in a future hell is one of the ways in which we are reminded of the surpassing greatness of the glory of Christ Jesus that will be revealed in us – a greatness that is greater than all of sin and death. A belief in hell helps us to realize that we need God. We need salvation. We need to live in a healthy fear and love of the holiness of God. A belief in heaven gives us hope that there is more to this life than what we currently see, and that in the end God will restore all things and be all in all.