Fire and Light
“God is consuming fire. When an object touches fire, it is changed: either it is burned up, or it is tempered. So too, a man, in touching God, either perishes or is saved. Fire – always fire! But from contact with it either ashes or steel is obtained, depending on what is touched…What of our lives and ourselves will the firestorm of the Lord’s passion touch?...So does it happen with a man, and everything depends on what he brings to the divine Fire – in what state he touches God. If he keeps himself like iron, the power of the iron becomes steel. If he lets himself go to the point of the weakness of chaff – he will burn up…The winnowing-shovel is in the Lord’s hand. Grain and chaff are tossed up by the winnowing-and is gathered into the granary; the chaff is abandoned or is burned up.” (St. John the Wonderworker)
“ ‘The voice of the Lord divideth the flame of fire.‘ (Psalm 28:7; LXX)…I believe that the fire prepared in punishment for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41) is divided by the voice of the Lord, in order that, since there are two capacities in fire, the burning and the illuminating, the fierce and punitive part of the fire may wait for those who deserve to burn, while its illuminating and radiant part may be allotted for the enjoyment of those who are rejoicing. Therefore, ‘the voice of the Lord divideth the fire’ and allots it, so that the fire of punishment is darksome, but the light of the state of rest remains incapable of burning.” (St. Basil the Great, Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“…the responsibility for the fact that someone by his own sins ended up in this godless and painful state in hell, and not in Paradise, lies on him alone. An unrepentant sinner brings himself to such a godless state—that is, hostile to God—in which the love of God becomes an unbearable source of suffering for him. For those possessed by malice, the most unpleasant, detestable and painful thing is goodness, just as for those possessed by darkness, worst of all is the light. He who hates everyone and everything perceives the light of God’s love as a burning and tormenting fire.” (Priest Tarasiy Borozenets)
“Many modern Christians who have been taught erroneous ideas about the future widely overlook, if not completely deny, the fundamental Christian hope of a transformed world….modern Christians widely assume that Jesus will return to destroy rather than to renew the earth. By wrongly interpreting the apocalyptic language in 2 Peter 3:10–12, many imagine that God does not care about the world but plans to destroy it with fire. Saint Symeon argued that the renewal by fire St. Peter spoke of is comparable to a metalworker renewing a bronze vessel by reworking it: so it is not destroyed but made new…recent translations have noted that major manuscripts use the Greek verb eurisko to mean not “burn up” but to “discover” or “expose.” (Robin Phillips, Dr. William Dyrness)
“…the saints and the damned share the same “location” – being in the presence of God. However, the damned will experience this presence as a burning fire while the saints will see it as “coming to the Light.” Thus, there is no “place” in all of the cosmos where God is not present. Hell is not a place beyond God’s presence, nor beyond His love. Rather for those who hate God, it is being eternally in His presence that is so hateful for them and which burns them, creating their own hell.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
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