Hell is certainly a terrible thing to envision, and for many Christians it is a difficult doctrine even to defend. Many believers resolve it at the end of the day by deciding we need someplace to put the Hitlers and the Stalins, and then deciding to not look too closely at it thereafter.
But God does not limit Himself to the sins that we consider high wickedness. In the list of the damned given at the end of Revelation, it is striking what He begins with.
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death”” (Rev. 21:8, ESV)
“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).
The word rendered as cowardly by the ESV and fearful by the KJV is deilos. It refers to the timid, the skittish, the shy, the cowardly, the fearful. It is the word Jesus uses when He rebukes the disciples on His way to rebuking the winds and the waves (Matt. 8:26; Mk. 4:40).
Now Hell really is an awful prospect, and it will be an awful prospect for all who will be consigned there. Tammerlane will fear when he gets there, but he will not have been sent there for his fearing. But this text teaches us that some will be sent there on account of their fear. This is, therefore, writ large, a form of “if you are going to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
To use our phrase for it, the last judgment is going to include the delivery of snowflakes to Hell. There are three lessons we can take away from this. One is that we should see something of what God thinks of cowardice, and we can do this by noting the company He places it in (murdering, whoring, sorcery, etc.). Cowardice is not a mere foible. Cowardice is no bagatelle. Second, the answer to cowardice therefore needs to be repentance, not outside reassurance. Cowardice is a moral failing, and not a temperamental excuse that extricates us from any and every responsibility. While pep talks are pastorally helpful in ministering to the downcast, there comes a point where something more must serve. And last, as confessing Christians consider the nature of the conflicts approaching us, and the fact that we have been ill-accustomed to the prospect of risking anything serious for the sake of the truth, we must guard ourselves against the pressure to be cowards on the threshold of a very great battle. But better that than on the threshold of the final word.
The warning of “cowardice” stands in perfect contrast to the admonition to be “violent men,” Matt. 11:12. Like men willing to tear the tiles from the roof to get front row seats for their infirm friend at Jesus’ feet, we are to boldly embrace and participate in the Kingdom that will conquer the world. It’s not possible to be “more than conquerors” and “cowardly” at the same time.
this is good and interesting.I guess my only question would be what does repentance look like? is it just “suck it up buttercup?”
I think it looks like courage. :)
Is it really wise to build firm doctrines about the afterlife from the obviously highly symbolic book of Revelation?
Fear not young Kardashian. The post was not about the afterlife but about courage.
LOL
I’m 66. So you must be really old if you consider me young.
No fool like an old fool.
Watch it! I’ll be 66 in another month or so.
But you’re not a fool. ;^)
Thank you!
But you’re not a fool. ;^)
Jilly not a fool?
Yeah, right.
She’s nuthin’ but a fool for the city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWT4u_-rdeU
I’m a fool for love.
I’m a fool for love.
I’m a fool for Christ.
Which is kind of the same thing.
Holy fool.
Perhaps you should take a Russian name next time you change your commenting handle (http://incommunion.org/2007/02/02/holy-fools-in-russian-literature/).
I would, but, to be authentic, I’d have to sit here naked while I post.
And I’m not much for posting naked.
Age comes to all of us. Wisdom comes to some of us. Often they go together. With 40 acres, the former has come but the latter has not yet appeared.
Did anyone else do a double-take on seeing 40 ACRES ask a question that begins with, “Is it really wise …”?
Perhaps he will begin asking that question more often. It couldn’t hurt.
Well, his ego maybe.
Is Jesus really going to cast adulterers into a bed along with Jezebel?
The passages cited are not symbolic nor is the context from which they are taken symbolic. You’re throwing the mule out with the bath water.
That’s right.
There’s nothing at all symbolic about the context of this passage
The book of Revelation is 100% literal.
LMAO
I don’t understand the theology here. I understand that God hates cowardice. But surely developing moral and physical courage, or avoiding the other sins mentioned here, isn’t enough to save us from eternal damnation. I thought that only trusting in Christ’s atonement could do that.
jillybean wrote: But surely developing moral and physical courage, or avoiding the other sins mentioned here, isn’t enough to save us from eternal damnation. Agreed. Interestingly, neither the verse from Revelation, nor statements from Wilson, suggested anything about what it takes to avoid eternal damnation. Wilson addressed how to deal with cowardice directly, but not as though simply avoiding cowardice is therefore a means of avoiding Hell. Far from suggesting that the answer to eternal damnation is through developing more courage, Wilson actually said that “the answer to cowardice therefore needs to be repentance”. Did jillybean see something that I’m… Read more »
No, I think I probably didn’t understand it properly. Thanks, Katecho.
Thanks, Pastor Doug. I think often times when we are afraid, our inclination is to give ourselves pep talks or find ways to avoid confronting a bad situation head on. Is courage battling a problem ourselves or is courage actively trusting in God to either defend us or bring justice? (I’m not speaking about getting audited by the IRS here. I’m speaking more to the situation the 1st century saints found themselves in, and we Christians may soon face here in the US.) Psalm 56:3-4 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise… Read more »
If we confess our sin He is ……
A good reminder, yet there may be times that it takes great courage… not to engage. (Eccl 3)
Q: Are the Amish cowardly?
doug sayers asks: Q: Are the Amish cowardly? As strict pacifists, the Amish may be in error, but it comes from a principled position, and not from cowardice. We know this because the Amish have stood up to the U.S. government on a range of issues, such as the combat draft, Social Security, compulsory government education, and Obamacare, and they managed to retain their religious freedom. Almost no other Christian denominations have. Unfortunately, if too many other Christians tried to learn something from the Amish in how they were able to accomplish this, it could simply result in our government… Read more »
Thanks for that article. I had to look around, but I didn’t find any religious/Biblical reason for the Amish not to want their children to go to school. Their reasoning seemed to be centered around community cohesion.
Is that courage from a Biblical view, and is Christian courage the same as courage from the secular worldview with regard to those passages in Revelation?
From what I read, I think there are two reasons. One is that the Amish oppose formal schooling after the eighth grade because they believe that is a critical time in the child’s religious life and they want to avoid worldly influences. The other is that they support vocational training supervised by the parents and the community after eighth grade. This is when boys get more training in farming, and girls in domestic arts. Amish teachers are usually young unmarried women who have not gone beyond eighth grade themselves. Another factor might be that children do not learn English until… Read more »
Thanks, jillybean. That’s helpful to understand their reasoning. I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how narrowly we should define courage when we’re talking about those passages in Revelation. It certainly takes a type of courage to stand up to the government, but I want to know what type of courage keeps us from the Lake of Fire. If the government uses our taxes for abortions and unjust wars, is that reason to not pay taxes? That’s another type of courage for sure and one that most of us shove under the carpet and probably shouldn’t. I guess… Read more »
I think you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Most of us are so secularized by living in this society that we are not even aware that some of our core assumptions are not godly. I think the best we can usually do is to strive not to stifle the voice of conscience when it whispers in our ears. I don’t think most of us are called to martyrdom. I think a few people are, and they are given the courage they need. I hope I would not disregard a suggestion from a multitude of counselors that I needed to… Read more »
I think you nailed it in your first paragraph when you said, “Most of us are so secularized by living in this society that we are not even aware that some of our core assumptions are not godly.” Up until the 50s or so, women wearing head coverings in church was normative. Since Christ, almost 2000 years of head coverings. Who would have predicted that less than a generation after women stopped wearing head coverings they would be pastoring churches and ruling over men? “So if women are thus permitted to have their heads uncovered and to show their hair,… Read more »
I have a terrible tendency towards being flippant, and my first thought on reading the Calvin passage was that if women start coming to church showing their breasts uncovered, maybe men will be happier about being dragged to church!
Flippant suggestion, but I’m going to answer it seriously.
Men go to church to worship God. Seeing bare breasts would present an unnecessary distraction from worshiping God, not only for the men but also (for different reasons) for the women,
This is neither kind nor charitable to one’s fellow Christians,
It would be a very bad thing indeed. Catholic women are taught that if our immodest dress causes someone to sin, we are also held accountable for that sin.
JL wrote: I had to look around, but I didn’t find any religious/Biblical reason for the Amish not to want their children to go to school. The Amish do send their children to school through eighth grade, so they aren’t against schooling per se. Their reasons for not wanting to participate in government education hopefully have to do with not wanting their children indoctrinated in secularism, pomosexuality, evolutionism, and the sickening pretense of “neutrality”. Aside from the ungodly content, there is also the principle that the sword-bearing magistrate has no authority to educate our children, let alone do it by… Read more »
Amen! It’s good to see someone tell the truth about what those words really reveal about us as people.
The only thing I’d add is that bullies, tyrants are also cowards and fearful. That is why they torment you for months and then start crying when you punch them in the nose. There can be some crossover, too, some snowflakes are terrible bullies, all about their own victimization and hurt feelings while stabbing people in the back and trying to annihilate them.
Does the dichotomy between cowardice and fear apply in your view?
Courage is doing what one must do even though one is afraid.
Cowardice is a failure of courage.
Both feel fear, only one is a coward.
Perhaps that applies well in things like rushing into a burning building. So heroes may feel the fear and set it aside, not allow it to rule their actions.
In other situations however, less dramatic ones, we should not be feeling fear, we should be feeling faith. So in our culture we are taught to be victims, to be fearful, and modern society is now riddled with anxiety and fear based disorders.
It depends what the KJV means by fear, or more what the Greek means.
It seems that a lot of what we consider feelings the Bible considers actions. The obedient son was not the one who said yes but the one who obeyed. I suspect courage is largely defined by what a man has done over what he feels about the situation
Burkini sales skyrockting! And our country insists two dudes having a**l sex is a good thing. hehe… http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/australia/burkini-ban-france-aheda-zanetti.html
NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE!!! I SWEAR!!! Speaking of Hell…Doug, rabbis who say God is a tranny and that YHWH in the original Hebrew actually means He/She, and that Eve, Noah, and Rebecca were all trannies…where do they go when they die? I’m a rabbi, and so I’m particularly saddened whenever religious arguments are brought in to defend social prejudices — as they often are in the discussion about transgender rights. In fact, the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers a highly elastic view of gender. And I do mean highly elastic: In Genesis 3:12, Eve is… Read more »
Just for the record, if this guy lived next door to me, I’d go to his backyard BBQ.
Even if I wasn’t invited.
And I’d bring the bacon, ham, and pork chops.
If he is as unorthodox as his article suggests, I am sure he would happily chow down. Add some shrimp and lobster as well. I have learned here that very few non-Orthodox Jews follow the dietary laws. I used to be so careful when I had relatives over for dinner until I realized that!
Yeah, you’re probably right.
So much for witnessing to him.
I guess I’ll just head over to the homos’ house with Doug.
For sure you would get better food.
“The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi”
LOL. The secret to correct biblical hermeneutics is backmasking.
Honest to Pete, 40, you have too much time on your hands.
We’re cutting up trees for firewood next week. Why don’t you come out and give us a hand. Honest work will do you good. :)
Really?
You think it’s a waste of time to point out that our country’s most influential newspaper published an op-ed by a rabbi claiming that God’s a tranny, His real name is He/She, and Eve, Noah, and Rebekah were all trannies?
Thanks for letting us know.
I take it that’s a no. :/
The pity is that a newspaper that would publish that tripe would be considered influential. Up is down.
40, that Rabbi rejected Christ. What else do I need to know about him to know that his theology and hermeneutics will wander into wickedness?
Did you really need the wicked Times to tell you that Rabbis will try to besmirch God and his people? What authority does the Times have over you exactly?
I would be very hesitant to say that all rabbis, or Jewish people in general, have rejected Christ. How many have had an opportunity to come to know Him? If we had been brought up in devout Jewish homes, worshiping God as we had been instructed to do, are we so sure that each of us would have discovered the truth of the Christian faith on our own?
Hey jillybean, I wasn’t making a general accusation against all Jews. I was talking about that particular rabbi. God has reached people no matter what religion they have been brought up in, and I praise him for it. There’s a great video called “More than Dreams” about Muslims that have converted because of dreams of Christ. Those who seek him will find him. Edited to add, I reread my post and saw that I did generalize about Rabbis in the last sentence. Yes, I do believe that Rabbis, because they have rejected Christ, cannot accurate read or teach Scripture. If… Read more »
Judaism is a post-Christian religion founded on the basis of rejecting the gospel. So in that sense it’s entirely reasonable to say that Jewish people have rejected Christ.
Oh you hardy northerners. On the day I arrived at Mile 300, I was invited to a party to get to know the other teachers. They were skinning a bear, and someone handed me knife and set me to work on the poor creature’s paw. I made one tentative cut, and spent the rest of the evening being sick in the bathroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh5X5QWvXZk
That was hilarious. Thanks for that.
We were thinking about you at dinner tonight. Black beans and white rice. ;)
Glad you liked it. I’d never heard of it before, but when I watched “Joan Baez” singing “Pull the Tregroes” on YouTube, it came up on the side, as they were both part of the legendary Lemmings live show by Chase, Belushi, Christopher Guest, and others.
It reminded me of your post, and I thought you’d get a kick out of it.
Glad you did!
Pitiful. But just remember that this guy is no more typical of your average rabbi than the kind of Christian “theologian” who says that Jesus was secretly married to Mary Magdalene, and who exactly has a problem with that? The NYT isn’t interested in publishing serious and sober statements of what most people within a religion actually believe.
No, they are interested in destroying Christ and his followers by any means possible.
Some gullible evangellyfish will read that article and throw her support behind all of the Proggish ideas of gender-fluidity, harming her own faith and that of anyone who listens to her when she extols the “virtues” of trans-whateverism.
this guy is no more typical of your average rabbi than the kind of Christian “theologian” who says that Jesus was secretly married to Mary Magdalene
Ever watch the “History” Channel?
On there, it seems as if there are two essential truths about Jesus Christ:
1) He’s a myth. Jesus of Nazareth never existed. He wasn’t born of a virgin, he didn’t die on the cross, and he didn’t rise from the dead.
2) Then he got married and moved to France.
“Many believers resolve it at the end of the day by deciding we need someplace to put the Hitlers and the Stalins”
And the French, in keeping with your points on cowardice.
Creeping Sharia if it succeeds will eventually reveal a stand of courage or cowardice. Jesus said something about “if you deny me before men, I will deny you before the Father”. This is the ultimate act of cowardice.
What does the term “snowflakes in Hell” mean?