Promised justice.

Over the last couple of months, my hatred for Satan has grown, he makes me livid. When I stopped to think about when this feeling really launched forward recently, I realized it was after watching this clip by Francis Chan ( http://vimeo.com/24016195 ) a week after we had the discussion in my LIFE group about the book Love Wins and its denial of hell. In this clip, I was super struck by Revelation 20:10; here it is in context:

Revelation 20:7-10 “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

I had never intentionally looked at this passage before. I wish I had before this point, honestly. I feel that is holds immense implications, some of which comfort me. In my bible, this paragraph of text is entitled “The judgment of Satan.” The judgment of Satan...consider that thought for a moment as I tell you what my view of hell seems to have been over time.

I don’t think I ever doubted hell existed. Sin was a concept that was a big part of my life growing up, I understood that sinners without a Savior go to hell. I did not, however, understand sin; the reality of what is was had become so muddled in my mind throughout my childhood, that the word itself felt empty of anything but a habitual aching conscience for unknown reasons. A couple of years after I accepted Christ, I actually had sin explained to me the most clearly by a second grader:
Sunday school teacher: What is sin?
Second grader: Sin is what separates us from God.
Me: Oh.

Until this point, I understood hell was a bad place where I deserved, but didn’t want, to go and heaven was a glorious place where I did want to go, but I didn’t necessarily understand why until I understood what sin was. What makes heaven Heaven, is that we are in perfect union with God. What makes hell Hell, is that we are eternally separated from Him. These truths are enough to make me cling to Jesus Christ with a desire to follow Him and His teachings.

As I read this passage in Revelation, I realized some things in the typical depiction of hell that it directly refutes. All of the caricatures, painting, articulations of hell that I have seen around me present hell as Satan’s domain; a place he brings his captured souls to and then draws pleasure by tormenting them for all of eternity; a place where he stands immense over the burning, cowering humans with a huge pitchfork as his scepter; a place where his work of deceiving as many as possible for his “kingdom” of hell has paid off as he stands victorious over his screaming, despairing subjects. Satan is often painted as an equally powerful force on the opposite end of the spectrum from God, the idea is that you choose God or the devil.

But this passage in Revelation refutes these ideas. What this shows is that hell is not the devil’s domain, it is instead the means by which he will suffer for all eternity for his work; a place where justice will play out as he receives judgment for all of the deceitful, festering sin he brought about through his lies and schemes and intentional deceit; a place where he is rendered helpless, completely defeated and brought to nothing alongside those he has beguiled. It also shows that Satan is not an evil opposite of God; he is subject to Him. Christ has declared victory over him for us and will one day subdue him with the eternal torments of hell.

There is the promise in Genesis 3 that Christ will crush Satan. I believe the devil knows he is defeated. If that is the case, it makes me consider his ways and the drive behind them. Imagine if you knew your end (the stripping of all power and then eternal torment) and Who will send you there...would you not desire to do as much damage to spite them? Is the purpose of his wickedness simply to take as much glory away from God as he possibly can and to grieve the heart of God to the greatest of his abilities? To destroy as many of God’s people as possible? This is a terrible, yet clarifying, thought for those living in sin. The devil tempts us with things we desire, convincing us that it is our good and our pleasure that he wants for us...what a profound lie. It reveals new and profound depths to the deception of the compilation of his work. It is certainly not for our gain...it is not even for HIS gain! His goal and target seems to be to destroy God; His joy, His people, His plans, His purposes, His glory. I venture to you that we are not the point at all, not even a little bit. If we do not have Christ, we are simply pawns in Satan’s plans to take from the only One who deserves.

To my surprise, for the first time, I found comfort in the thought of hell. It may just be me, but I find it comforting that hell is not the devil's domain, it is instead where he will suffer with those he has deceived (It says in revelation 20:10 that these numbers are like the sands of the seashore...such widespread deception!). Justice. I have never considered that Satan will receive judgment, and justice will be brought to fruition for all that he has done. I knew he was defeated and powerless before God, but I never realized that he would be punished by the fires of hell for his deeds.

When I look around me at things like the sex trafficking of children, marriages ripped apart by pornography, mass murders in Mexico in the name of drugs, the list goes on...I can know that the one who started it all and is the destroying, driving and deceiving force behind it will not go unpunished. I am grateful that the one who deceived from the beginning and caused the spiral of every sin of humanity and who purposes to destroy and torment and turn God’s creation away from Him will be brought to justice.

God is just.

And as I consider these things, I find that amid the grief I feel for what I see, my hearts leaps with a new found and deeper desire to, all the more, give all that I could ever have to give, to bring all that I could ever bring, to worship with every ounce of me that can worship the ONE God of ALL. Satan may seek to turn me from my Lord and strive to take what I wish to give to my God, but I pray it would only serve to spur me on to glorify my Savior more and more.

Philippians 2:9–11
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and EVERY tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.