The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:41-42)
The 1970’s hit show, Dallas, has returned to network television. TNT launched a reprise of the series, except that this time around there is a new generation of Ewings to get to know. Don’t fret. Larry Hagman, aka J.R., is still around and as conniving as ever.
In real life, Hagman, like Dallas, has gotten a second chance at life. I remember a 1996 interview of Hagman on Entertainment Tonight to promote a two-hour Dallas special that appeared on CBS. Hagman was then and still is a recovering alcoholic whose passion for the bottle ultimately destroyed his liver and placed his name on a transplant list.
The actor, who personified evil through his character, J.R. Ewing, recounted his brush with death for the ET Reporter. The experience had obviously changed his whole outlook on life as well as death. He was convinced he had seen the other side and was no longer afraid of dying. “Believe me. Everything’s okay. No matter what you are, everybody’s going to the same melting pot.”
I can’t tell you how sorry I felt for Larry Hagman. His near-death experience had brought him no closer to God whose grace not only found him a liver, but vaulted him in front of a lot of equally deserving candidates. Oh Hagman had seen the other side all right, but he didn’t see heaven. Larry Hagman had peeked over the lip of hell.
The Bible doesn’t sugar coat what hell is like, or how you can get a free ride to it. It was so important to God that he waited until the New Testament to deal with it personally. His description of hell was told to us through the eyes of Jesus. And almost every time Jesus talked about hell, he mentioned the weeping and gnashing of teeth. That’s Jesus’ way of describing how man will react he realizes that God has finally and eternally abandoned him.
Billy Graham once said, “God will never send anybody to hell. If man goes to hell, he goes by his own free choice. Hell was created for the devil and for his angels, not for man. God never meant that man should go there.”
Billy Graham is right. Matthew 25:41 is clear about why God created hell. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you are cursed, into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels’.”
God created heaven for us and sent his son to show us the way there. That exactly why Jesus says, “In my father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) God tells us through his own son that he has prepared heaven for us, and there isn’t a verse in the Bible that says God prepared hell for anyone other than Satan and his angels.
It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In other words, even good people, like Larry Hagman, can go to hell. The truth is many good people do not even know they are headed in that direction, which prompted C.S. Lewis to say, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
I agree with C.S. Lewis for the most part. But there is no safe road to hell.
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