Our death, or His?
(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Vladimir
Ladyzhenskiy is dead. It had come down to the final at the World
Sauna Championships in Heinola, Finland, last Saturday, and he placed second. But they couldn't give him his prize.
Seconds before he died Ladyzhenskiy was still competing, giving a thumbs up to the medics watching through a window (along with a thousand spectators). The sauna was above boiling--230 degrees fahrenheit, to be exact--but neither Ladyzhenskiy nor five-time champion Timo Kaukonen were willing to lose. The other finalists exited around three minutes and Kaukonen had just three minutes more to wait until Ladyzhenskiy's death crowned him the six-time champion.
When medics entered the sauna...
to pull Ladyzhenskiy and Kaukonen out, the floor was littered with skin and blood. Ladyzhenskiy had been thumbs up less than five seconds before he was lying outside the sauna, dead. And the victor?
He's in the hospital in serious condition, but he retains the title.
Police are investigating and organizers say the competition won't be held again.
What a perfect picture of man's momentary glory before God's judgment and the bottomless pit of eternal torment. Like these competitors, man arrives at his grave in tatters; skin hanging from his forehead, arms, and back; his nose boiled like a brat; his conscience seared beyond recognition--of sin, that is; all his God-given glory consumed in the pursuit of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Leaving behind a bloody mess--including body parts of his unborn children, in one instant he is translated to the Judgment Seat of the Holy God where he must give an account for every single word and deed.
Here is our work, brothers and sisters, Titus 2 women, deacons, elders, and pastors. Our Lord has sent us into the sauna to break the spell of false glory and pull men from the shedding of their own flesh and blood, out into the safety of the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Some among us call it "contextualization" to awaken sinners by speaking of the bloody horror all around us in dulcet tones. Or to describe the joys of the cool evening breeze they're missing as sinners stew in Satan's sauna--that highly vaunted demilitarized zone hip pastors refer to as "culture."
Who knows? Maybe it works. You can't argue with success and there's no question they get thousands to listen to them each Lord's Day morning.
Speaking only for myself, though: generally, I've found it best if the medium matches the message. And I've never heard dulcet tones from a fire alarm.
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Wow. And Monty Python's "Upper Class Twit of the Year Olympics" was just a comedy skit and these blokes actually played it out for keeps.
We do not pull fire alarms in evangelicalism. We're embarrassed and scandalized by Hell, clueless about the Holiness of God, and rather covet our time in Satan's sauna and will fight anyone and offer any rationalization to defend our right to stew in it.
Luke 18:8 "...when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth?"
I was preaching a couple of Sundays ago and finished (because my material was leading that way) by making some comments about Hell. Now, I live for feedback after anything I've preached, and normally get it - even if the feedback is critical - but this time I didn't get anything.
I would like to preach a longer and more thorough sermon on the topic, but I am not sure that I will get the opportunity.
This story gave me the icky/uncomfortable feeling I remember having as a child when my thoughts turned to eternity; I would lie awake thinking about people who I knew who didn't know Jesus and how if nobody told them the gospel they would inevitably end up under the fierce wrath of God. It's the same feeling I got reading Jesus' many warnings about outer darkness and later when I first read Edwards's "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God". This feeling causes my usual complacency with hell to evaporate. For the unbeliever who perishes his next sensations, body and soul, are no more to be compared to the madness of these men than a kiddy pool to the Atlantic. Thank you for such a visceral reminder.
I'm going to post here some comments from C.S. Lewis. He doesn't get everything right, but I can not read this without conviction:
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1174.htm
(page down to the heading on Hell)
... The doctrine of hell, although barbarous to many, has the full support of Scripture, especially of our Lord’s own words; and has always been held by Christendom. And it has the support of Reason: if a game is played it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in voluntary self-surrender to God, it also has the right to voluntarily refuse.
I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved’. But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it’? In fact, God has paid the price, and herein lies the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is hell.
God can’t condone evil, forgiving the wilfully unrepentant. Lost souls have their wish – to live wholly in the Self, and to make the best of what they find there. And what they finds there is hell. Should God increase our chances to repent? I believe that if a million opportunities were likely to do good, they would be given. But finality has to come some time. Our Lord uses three symbols to describe hell – everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28), and privation, exclusion, banishment (Matthew 22:13). The image of fire illustrates both torment and destruction (not annihilation – the destruction of one thing issues in the emergence of something else, in both worlds). It may be feasible that hell is hell not from its own point of view, but from that of heaven. And it is also possible that the eternal fixity of the lost soul need not imply endless duration. Our Lord emphasises rather the finality of hell. Does the ultimate loss of a soul mean the defeat of Omnipotence? In a sense, yes. The damned are successful rebels to the end, enslaved within the horrible freedom they have demanded. The doors of hell are locked on the inside.
In the long run, objectors to the doctrine of hell must answer this question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins, and at all costs to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty, and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so – in the life and death of his Son. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, that is what he does. Hell, it must be remembered, is not only inhabited by Neros or Judas Iscariots or Hitlers. They were merely the principal actors in this rebellious drama.
You should look into the story one more time..half lies to make it worse..like it was a bloodbath huh..Valdimir belived in God..
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