In Revelation Chapter 20, it states that Death and Hades gave up their dead, and Death and Hades are placed in the lake of fire when God reclaims the
world. If the ones in Hades were judged and will be in torment for eternity "far from the Lord" as so many think, why would these same ones be
released from Hades when God returns? It is because all who have died reside in "Death and Hades" until that moment, when Death and Hades can no
longer exist because God is present. The "lake of fire and brimstone" into which Death and Hades is placed, in the Greek would be grammatically
correct to translate as the "lake of fire and divinity", or even "the lake of divine fire". When Death and Hades is placed in the fiery presence of
God, in the "lake of divine fire", it is destroyed, because it is in the very presence of God, death can not exist when God is present.
It is interesting to examine the Greek word for "divine", it is from the Greek "theion", which could also mean "divine being", but also means
"sulfur', or in Old English "brimstone" [lit. 'burning stone']. As strange as that sounds to us, it is because of the ancient understanding of the
cosmic order of the nature of all things. All people in all cultures from the Near East to the West understood that there were four 'elements', these
were: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Their nature was that Earth and Water tended to go down toward Hades, and Air and Fire tended to go up toward
heaven. This could plainly be seen when the heavenly fire, lighting, would hit a living tree and burn the "life" out of it. Anyone could see that the
heat from the tree would go back to heaven in the fire, and the ash that remained would go down into the ground. But there was this mysterious
yellowish earth substance that behaved very differently, when placed in a fire it burn so brightly that your eyes could not bear to look at it. As it
burned, it would release the heavenly substance that was trapped inside and it would rise back to heaven. Clearly, this "burning stone" was a divine
substance, and as such, it was simply called "divinity. It was burned within a new temple to "purify" it before consecration, presumably when this
burning stone released it's divinity, it causes all evil things to flee from the temple, and thus was the temple readied for worship.
|