Godly fear

Over the past two nights I have been blessed enough to catch some chilling warnings on the Vision Radio network in the form of Rescued, an audio drama adapted from a John Bevere novel.

Rescued examines the vivid experience of hell and eternal judgement by a pastor during a near death experience. Without going into detail about the plot, the imagery, sound effects & first person narrative of hell, judgement and the lake of fire is a wake up call.

After hearing the first part last night I remarked to a friend that most Christians don't really believe in hell. What I mean is, we give mental assent to the Scriptural teachings on the afterlife, but because hell isn't a nice thing, we don't let it get very far into our theology.

As others with far more talent in communication than myself have expressed, an accurate realisation of hell magnifies both one's reverence for a Holy God who must execute divine judgement and a desperation to prevent one's self and others from meeting this terrible fate.

While the Word tells us to think upon the lovely things, we must at some point in time give serious thought to this unbearably dreadful destination and maintain an appropriate response in our lives. Indeed, what I'm saying is in order to have that eusebeia godliness and correct attitude towards God, we must also have the right attitude towards sin (ie; hatred) and hell (ie; horror).

If we merely condense it to a distant reality where severe heat is a daily occurence and strange fiends run around with pitchforks, godly fear will disappear out the window. Because a theology that points toward a God unable or unwilling to punish sin, eliminates reverence, cheapens grace and emasculates* efforts in evangelism.

You'll no doubt see many posts on godly fear as an aspect of eusebeia here in the future, because the people of Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe need frequent reminders of this part of Christianity that has been neglected in recent times.

To conclude with another insight provided by Bevere, the attribute ascribed to God the most strongly in the Scriptures is holiness ("Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty") and consequently reverence is one of the most important (perhaps the most important) aspect of our relationship with the King of Kings & Lord of Lords. We hear so much about God's love and His love is of great importance indeed, however I am growing in the opinion that God's great love is also a wondrous expression of His Glory (only a truly Magnificant Deity could love us in the manner that the LORD does). So whenever we rejoice in the greatest love the universe could ever know, we must never deprive the love-giver of the glory he deserves.

*I apologise if any readers find this adjective too strong (or perhaps confusing), however I think it comes close to explaining the state of evangelistic efforts minus the consequence of rejection.

Postscript

After writing this post I began surfing our links and found an amazing correlation at Christian Discernment Ministries' Herescope site:

"The Bible teaches that unbelievers will be condemned to an eternity in Hell (Revelation 20:14-15). If we really believed that, we would be spending much more time on our knees in prayer. And we would be pleading with people to make right with God with a sincerity and conviction that would convince many that we actually believed what we were saying."

So if that's not confirmation, I don't know what is...