THOUGHTS ABOUT HELL

Jesus describes it as the towns dump (Genenna). John in Revelation 20 describes it as “a lake of fire.” Is it really full of fire? Does it stink? What does a place without God look like? If God is light, life, our guide, love, kindness, patience, freedom - then is hell dark, dead, always lost, lonely, hard, where we are living as an impatiently frustrated slave to self?
If God is eternal (forever young), then life in hell must be somehow out of our time, (forever old). We are told it exists forever, but the punishment within seems to have different degrees. “It will be worse for you than for Sodom…” How can there be degrees of not-God? Is it degrees of darkness, of pain, of length of time before disolving into nonhumanness, of frustration, of stink?
The real question is, “Why?” Why doesn’t He find another way? What other ways are there? Annihilation maybe – but then God is no longer just, or a liar. Sin must be punished. Let Someone else take our hell for us? He did that. Tell the world to repent? He did that too. Give more time to give us more chance to escape? He is doing that now. There seem to be just two choices. We can say “God’s will be done,” or wait for God to say “Your will be done.”
CS Lewis (of the Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters fame) wrote, "a man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam... the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end... the doors to hell are locked on the inside.”
What do you think?

By Dan Cooley

THOUGHTS ABOUT HEAVEN

Do you ever find yourself thinking about what Heaven will be like? If you're like me then you defintely answered yes. When I was a kid, I had this image of Heaven that was something like Cloud City in Star Wars: a big gate sitting on top of a white fluffy cloud, golden streets and angels swooping around, harps playing in the distance, etc. As I got older I started to think of Heaven as a private fantasy island, where I would have a big house on a lake that I could jet-ski in all the time. (Oddly Jesus never seemed to be at the forefront of these dream scenarios, but they were still fun to think about.

Today for me, Jesus is really what Heaven is all about. Finally getting to meet Him. Even in that scenario though, plenty of questions still arise. Will we get to talk with him? Grill him about all the wonders of the universe and why this is like this and that is like that? Or will we simply spend eternity in a heavenly choir singing His praises along with the angels for time unending? A friend of mine recently asked if we would really see anyone else there, or if we would only have eyes for Jesus in all of His glory. This raises a really good question, who will be there? I don't know about you but I know plenty of Christians who, nice as they are, I'm not sure I want to be hanging out with for eternity. So will we see everyone there, or just the people we want to, if anyone?

Lastly, I want to jump back to my second scenario, is Heaven really one physical place where we will all be, or will my Heaven be different from yours? Will Dan get to cruise around in his red Ferrari while I'm off sky-diving or just cozying up with a good book? What do you think?

By Aaron Blackwell

Welcome

Welcome to Cottonwood Church's blog. Here, some of our members will write about upcoming topics and readers will comment and ask questions. Come back to this site often for updates and discussions.