When I was a teenager, the local Pentecostal Church was dropping flyers in mailboxes around the neighborhood, advertising a free theatrical production that promised to change your life forever.
I was intrigued.
It was called “Heaven’s Gates & Hell’s Flames.”
And, as a young evangelical, I had no problem whatsoever going along to check it out and even convinced some of my non-Christian friends to come along with me by promising that there were lots of girls at the Pentecostal Church.
My secret agenda, though, was that I was hoping they might watch the play and come to faith in Jesus Christ. I was taught that it was my job to save my friends from the bowels of Hell, and was frequently on the wrong end of some guilt-inducing sermons where the preacher would paint terrifying scenarios of the people I love pleading with me…. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus?”… before they were thrown into a lake of fire to suffer for all of eternity while I watched on in horror.
If the preacher got us to merely imagine it, then the play “Heaven’s Gates & Hell’s Flames” left nothing to the imagination. For an hour and a half, we watched person after person “dying” on stage and then coming face-to-face with their eternal fate. The “good” ones — the ones who believed in Jesus — were welcomed into Heaven. While the “bad” ones — those who did not believe in Jesus — were taken off to Hell by Satan and his demons.
Aside from the bad acting that only well-meaning local church people can bring to the table, and the cheesy plot, the play was deeply impactful for all the wrong reasons.
Even as a good evangelical boy, I found it horrifying.
In fact, I would call it near-on traumatizing.
In one scene — one that is regretfully burned into my memory — a mother and daughter are out shopping together, having a great time, doing all the lovely things that mommies and daughters do together. The conversation turns serious when the daughter says to the mother, “Mommy, I do wish you would come to church with me,” to which the mother replies, “Oh, you know how busy I am, sweetheart.”
No sooner has the conversation ended than the two of them get hit by a car and die.
In the next scene, when they “wake up,” the little girl exclaims, “Mommy! Look! This must be heaven! Isn’t it beautiful!” But her joy is short-lived. They find that the Mom’s name isn’t written in the Book of Life. A downcast angel dutifully shakes her head, and the set turns blood red. Satan arrives on the scene with a couple of his demons and drags her… literally drags her, kicking and screaming away from her daughter, off into hell, grasping, fighting, scraping her nails across the floor of the stage on the way out.
The daughter — who unfortunately seemed to be the only decent actor in the whole drama — screamed and cried and begged for her Mommy to be saved. All to no avail.
The girl is left alone on stage in a single beam of light.
Weeping.
“Mommy, I need you. Mommy, come back.”
Fortunately, Jesus rocks up at that moment and reminds the girl that although He has just sent her Mommy to Hell, she gets to go to Heaven! Hooray!
For those who are game, I found the offending clip from “Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames” on YouTube. Watch it if you dare:
Horrible, isn’t it?
Sadly, even in 2022, this play is still doing the rounds. And this particular scene is just one of many from the play. In scene after scene, people make last-minute, death-bed acceptances or refusals of Christ and then immediately face the “consequences.”
I remember another scene where a family dies in a car crash. Some of them are believers. Some of them are not. You watch the family torn apart before your eyes and sent to their separate eternal destinies.
Then, at the end of it all, the Drama finishes with an ultimatum… “If you were to die today, where would you spend eternity.” This was followed by an altar call.
I remember after I had sat through all the carnage, the death, and the horror with my non-Christian friends, I was still hoping that they would get up out of their seats, go down to the altar, and give their lives to Christ.
Lots of other people did.
They did not.
Instead, when the lights came up, and the show ended, one of my friends turned to me, furious — and I’ll never forget what he said — “If your God is like that, then I want fucking nothing to do with Him.”
Fair enough.
Another reason why Hell makes no sense
Do you imagine that this little girl whose Mom was shipped off to Hell would somehow just get over it, forget her Mom, and dance about with the angels for all of eternity?
How about you?
Do you think you would enjoy Heaven if you lived there with the knowledge that some of the people you loved — some of your friends and family — were living somewhere else in eternal conscious torment?
The only way Heaven could possibly be heavenly in that case was if somehow God magically erased our memories of those we once loved who happened to make the “wrong choice.” But again, let me ask you, would you want to lose your memories of the people you once loved just because they didn’t choose Jesus?
I would say no. I think most people would say no. That being the case, how can Heaven possibly be Heaven if there be people in Hell?
Author Steve Gregg explains it best:
BOOM.
This is just another reason why the theological case for universalism (the belief that all end up with Christ in the end) is very compelling indeed.
One more thing… There is a point at which Christianity diverges from most other belief systems, and that is the command to love our enemies. In fact, Jesus said it himself in Matthew 5.
So, on one hand, the believer is told to love their enemies, when, on the other hand, the “God” who sends people to Hell apparently does not. He punishes his enemies for all of eternity.
Why would God demand one thing from his followers while imposing a different standard on himself? That would make God seem remarkably inconsistent, if not downright hypocritical, wouldn’t it?
The more I think about God…
I am told that God is love. The longer I live, the more I learn about love and, therefore, the more I learn about God.
The more I learn about God, the more incomprehensible the idea of Hell becomes. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
In fact, I can’t help but shake my head in utter confusion at the person who has convinced themself that they will somehow enjoy the party upstairs while people they love are being tortured in the basement.
That ain’t love.
And that ain’t heaven.
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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