The Four Last Things

May I speak in the name of God. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today points us towards the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. In the sitcom Modern Family there is a bit where Jay decides to play golf instead of going to church, and his son Manny is worried that this will incur God’s wrath:

“So you’re not worried about getting into trouble, you know, with God?” asks Manny.
“Oh, I think he’s got bigger things on his plate,” says Jay.
“So you’re not worried about hell?”
“Let me let you in on a little secret, kid. There is no hell.”
“Seriously? No hell? That’s fantastic! So everyone just goes to heaven?”
“Yep. End of story.”
“Even bad people?”
“Yeah, they’re… there… they’re in another section, see? They’ve got this thing figured out.”
“Hmmm… I’m thinking about this heaven of yours that’s full of bad people…”
“No, not full – the tiniest fraction. [It’s ok] they’re walled in.”
“[Walled in?] What if they break out?”
“They’re surrounded… by a lake of fire.”
“[A lake of fire!] This is turning into hell.”

Hell recurs as a factor in Jesus’ teaching on the last judgment, and cannot just be ignored. In the same way that evil cannot just be ignored. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus tells truths to us about the eternal scales of justice – though it isn’t a vision of the future or the present, it’s a parable.

And the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is one of the primary texts for the traditional view of hell as an eternal place of firey torture, a place of eternal conscious torment. Another disturbing aspect of this text is that people in heaven and hell can see and talk to one another! And perhaps in addition it raises the concern about how God enjoys heaven, watching all this.

In visually depicting everlasting torture by fire, the parable deliberately highlights two questions about hell as eternal conscious torment:
How is eternal punishment consistent with the Biblical theme that God’s anger lasts but “for a moment,” but his love and mercy last “forever” [e.g. Ps. 30:5; 103:9; I Chr. 16:24; 2 Chr. 20:21];
And how is eternal punishment consistent with the teaching that “God is love” [1 John 4:8; 16].

In order to understand Jesus’ teaching on hell in this passage we need to remember that Jesus is telling a parable. The main point of the parable isn’t to teach us about the nature of heaven and hell; and therefore we can’t draw firm conclusions about these matters from it. There are other texts in the ancient world where dialogues between people or gods in heaven and hell were used to teach a lesson. This is one such example.

There are many metaphors used to describe God’s final punishment in the Bible. In all references to fire except for this passage the fire consumes the wicked. When it says the fire is unquenchable, it means it won’t be put out, before it does what fires does, which is burn things up.

The most common ways of referring to God’s final punishment on the wicked in the Bible are death, destruction and perishing.

The Bible often speaks of things being ‘eternal’ in outcome, not in duration. When the Bible speaks of eternal punishment or eternal destruction, it doesn’t mean that people will be eternally undergoing punishment or eternally undergoing destruction, but that once they’re punished or destroyed, it’s eternal. There is no going back. God’s judgment is final.

To begin with Hell may seem to be a lake of fire, but as CS Lewis says: hell is in reality the darkness outside; the outer rim where being fades away into nothingness.

In the long run, says CS Lewis, the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is to ask instead a question: “When it comes to those who resist God to the end, What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins, and at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But God has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone, apart from the life of God? Alas, I am afraid that is what the Almighty does.

God’s love is like a fire that purifies all that is consistent with the character of God’s love and burns up all that is not. To those who are saved God is a purifying fire of love, to the rebellious God is a consuming fire. God’s hope and desire, is that God’s fire would purge all and destroy none. This can be seen in Revelation where the gates of the heavenly city are continually open and will never be shut [21:22-27] – but we still have to choose the heavenly city, over the earthly one.

We were created for eternal life, not death.
The consequence of rejecting God is hell, and it’s nightmarish.
The only way to be compatible with God’s love is to submit our life completely to Christ.
Christ came to defeat the devil, rescue you from destruction, and establish God’s Kingdom on earth. You will begin to be transformed by his love when you commit to follow Christ in all things. And so be welcomed into the bosom of the ascended and glorified Christ at the end of all things in heaven.

Amen.

The Rev’d Michael Aylmer
St Mary Magdalene Enfield, 28/09/2025