Who Wants To Go To Hell?

"Hell ain't a bad place,
 Hell is from here to eternity!"

- Iron Maiden

Bruce got it wrong. Hell is a bad place. "Prove it!" you say. I can't. I don't have any Hell-rocks. But I believe what the Bible says, that it is a real place. A place for the unrighteous, the unrepentant, the unholy. A place of everlasting suffering.
But what is it really, and why do people go there?

That looks painful. The Bible says that Hell was "created for the Devil and his angels". When the time comes, that is where they will go. They aren't there yet! Not all of them anyway. Some are indeed locked up in darkness somewhere, but that is another story. Hell predates the creation of mankind. I know, you could say the concept was created by the Egyptians or Greeks and then passed down to the Jews who incorporated it into their theology, but the Jews didn't talk about it much. Not until Jesus showed up. Isn't it possible, though, that the first man knew about Hell and passed the knowledge down to everyone else after that? That the idea originated with God, not man?

Like I said above, it can't be proven. It has to be believed on in faith. So from a Christian perspective, is Hell a place of eternal torment in a lake of fire, or is that figurative language to describe a horrible place? I think it's both. Revelation talks about the "lake of fire and burning sulfur", but the book is symbolic. "Fire" can mean cleansing or destruction. In this case, destruction. Hell isn't meant to clean anyone up. It isn't annihilation, either, but eternal torment.

This a film maker's idea of eternal torment. "Torment" in some people's minds means hooks, chains, demonic torture, blood, dismemberment. Remember, though, that the demons will be suffering too, and not torturing anybody!

Dante had the Devil in a frozen lake at the center of Hell. Some have described it as having many levels, with varying degrees of torment. I think Mary K. Baxter as well as Clive Barker read Milton and Dante when they were kids. Baxter wrote that book about how Jesus took her on a tour of Hell so she could tell the world about it. As if the Bible wasn't enough. Jesus Himself told a parable about the rich man and the beggar, how the rich man went to his place in torment, which was a place of flames. The Old Testament talked about Sheol, where the "shades" are.

Constantine showed Hell as a blasted-out city. This one was particularly unnerving for me for some reason. Imagine a place with no reprieve from the heat. . .

Then there is the painting above, which is downright weird. A "vision of Hell", by a Polish artist named Zdzistaw Beksinski. Everyone has their own idea. But George Foreman's vision is most interesting of all. He said he died and went to a place that was dark and lonely, a place absent of light and feeling. God was not there. And that, my friends, is what Hell really is. Eternal separation from God.
Whether or not it is literal flame or metaphorical flame is not important. What is important is that it's a real place, and you don't want to go there. Or do you? If a person wants nothing to do with God here, why would they want to be with Him forever in Heaven?

Why do people go to Hell anyway? Sin, plain and simple. Sin lands a person in Hell. See, sin demands judgment. If it is not atoned for, there is punishment. In Christian theology, Christ paid for the sins of those who believe and they are then considered "righteous". Not because they are good, but because Jesus bought them at the price of His own death. The reward is eternal life. All you have to do is follow Jesus and believe what He said. R.C. Sproul put it this way, badly paraphrased: Pygmies in Africa don't go to Hell because they never heard the Gospel of Jesus, they go to Hell because are sinners. Sin, that rebellion towards God, is what damns us. Not a lack of hearing. Jesus saves because He wants to, but He's not obligated to do so. We are eternal beings, and there is an eternal reward for us, destruction or life.

Hell, it would appear, is a perpetual state of wickedness. There will be no parties, and no reprieve from whatever torment is assigned. The Bible hints at people being "stuck" in their sin even after death. It is a place of utter, continuing ruin. No relief from the addictions, no peace, no grace, no forgiveness. Just anguish.

Does anyone really want to go there?

GALACTUS!

Deep in the primordial past, before our universe began, lived a man named Galen. He dwelled in a place called Taa, one of the last planets left in the shrinking universe. Galen had a plan to survive the Big Crunch, which he implemented with success. He flew through the implosion of his universe and out into our own Big Bang. He incubated for a billion years and became the most feared being in the Marvel Universe:
GALACTUS!

Man, I love Galactus. When I was a kid, I first read about him in the Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe, under the entry for Silver Surfer. This was the 'S' volume, so there were no pictures of him. I just imagined some gigantic being who had a mouth big enough to eat planets! Being the World-Eater and all. Some time later I picked up Fantastic Four #262, the one where Reed Richards was on trial for saving Galactus's life. There I saw his big purple and blue self, and found a new character to adore. Anybody remember that story?

This was after Reed couldn't let Big G die from hunger. Reed saved him, but Galactus went on to devour the Skrull's Throneworld. They weren't happy about that. . .

Next I saw Galactus in Rom, where Rom tricked Galactus into leaving Galador and going after the Dire Wraiths world. It didn't work out. The Wraiths were some sick freaks.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came up with the idea of a God-like being and his fallen angel-like emissary, the Silver Surfer. Galactus needed to devour the life energies from planets to survive. He first encountered the Fantastic Four, naturally, and was driven away by something called the Ultimate Nullifier. You know you're cool when something named the Ultimate Nullifier is used against you!
Bam!

Next came Secret Wars. 1984, that is. The first one. All the villains are gathered together, waiting for the Beyonder. Well, Ultron was there, and he was a egotistical psycho. He bumped into Galactus and got all uppity. Not good. Ultron is powerful, but. . . take a look.

And then:

Snuffed him like a candle! So much for the clown who's going to give the Avengers so much trouble in a few months. Big G only had to lift a finger.
Some time before this, Galactus was searched out by Reed Richards to help battle the Sphinx, a powerful being who had the Ka Stone. The what? Yeah, I forgot about him, too. Galactus got in a hand-to-hand fight, which is the real reason people read super hero comics:

Galactus smacked him down, too, and broke his Ka Stone. There is just something cool about cosmic beings, isn't there? Eternity, The Living Tribunal, the In-betweener, Celestials. . .but Galactus is coolest of all. The Devourer of Worlds and master of the Silver Surfer. And Tyrant. And Morg. And Nova, Firelord, Air Walker, and Terrax the Tamer.
Yeah, good stuff.

Galactus withstood Darkseid's Omega Beams once. Took 'em full blast and didn't blink. Faded, maybe, but didn't flinch. Then Galactus blasted him:

This was a good one. I bought two. Galactus tried to eat Apokolips, but to his surprise he couldn't. Darkseid laughed in his face and told him it was a dead planet. Galactus should've stepped on him, but he just left. Even he couldn't believe Darkseid would let his people live like that!

I'm sure Galactus has ben beat by lots of people since I last read about him, much like how Spiderman gets killed in every What If? comic. Or beat up, or crucified (Kulan Gath, anyone?). But in my youth, Galactus was a treat to look forward to, an unbeatable force of nature that made any comic a whole lot better. I leave you with a cool image from my Pinterest page, by a guy I've never heard of. I'm too lazy to look him up, so you do it for me:

Cool, huh?

 

Why, God, Why?

Why does God allow good people to suffer? Well, why not? He is not our genie that we can pull out of a bottle any time we want. We answer to Him, not the other way around. But still, why? Why doesn't He step in and save abused children, or free slaves, or stop wars? Or for that matter, heal diseases, raise the dead, fix the economy, win me the lotto, make my bed, feed me?
Why doesn't He do what we tell Him to?

Because He's God, and we're not.
I know, that doesn't answer the question. I will try to answer it here, to the best of my layman's ability. I think it has to do with dominion and free will. Free will says we can do what we want, even if others suffer for it. You, me, the other guy, we can do whatever we want. Rape, murder, lies, theft, negligence, etc. Dominion has to do with our responsibility over the earth.
Let me explain.

God gave Adam, and therefore all mankind, dominion over the earth. We rule. We rule over the land, the sea, and the sky and everything in it. Thus, we are responsible for it. As a race, we are collectively held accountable for what goes on here. When Adam sinned, he passed that propensity on to us. We now sin too. So, as collective sinners, we reap what we sow collectively. The world is cursed because of our sin.

We left the Garden long ago. "The wages of sin is death", and that goes for babies, children, and adults, good or bad. We can't look at child slavery and hang that in God's closet as if He did it. The evil offender did. And God lets him sin just as much as He lets you sin. And we can't blame God for the disaster that kills innocent people. We are to blame.

"But, we didn't cause the earthquake!" No, but our collective sin did. So we pay the price as a group. One man's sin is another man's death.
Look, God does help people all the time. Ever escape death by a millisecond? Or somebody gave you money just when you needed it? A kidnapping got foiled? Yes, He is there. But some people get it bad, don't they? Why? I don't know. Trust the He knows what He's doing. He is indeed wiser than us.

My youngest daughter died almost fifteen years ago. I could have raged against God and blamed Him for not saving her. But I didn't. I couldn't. I trust Him. It's the way of the cursed world. Good did come out of the bad, which He promises to do for those who love Him.
I'd love it if some angels showed up and killed human traffickers. Or if a plague melted them where they stood. But God left it up to us to find them and put them away. To punish the men who do it and their customers. It's our world and it's our responsibility to govern it. In the end, we will all be judged and get what's coming to us!

Sin is that hated word that's attributed to Inquisitors and Bible-thumpers. But it is what makes the world go around. This story has to play itself out in God's time, for God's reasons. I don't understand it much, but I trust Him. I would like to believe that we will have a better world, like in Star Trek, but my Bible tells me different. Do you really think we can make a better world? It's only getting worse as the population rises. More people, more sin! And more suffering to go along with it.

God could feed starving people. But so can we. He gave some people the means to alleviate others suffering. Is it His duty to make everyone do what they're supposed to? I don't think so. Remember, we were given dominion here, and we are to exercise it wisely. Somebody go feed that kid!

So I urge you all, to trust God today and believe He is good, despite what you see. That, my friends, is called faith. And faith is what pleases God.