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00:02For centuries, great religions have preached of sin and punishment.
00:08Of Satan.
00:09The devil is the arch enemy of a human race.
00:12And hell.
00:13It's a mist of darkness, weeping and wailing.
00:16It's a place you do not want to go.
00:17Stories of an evil Satan and hell's torment are handed down in scripture.
00:22Jesus spoke far more about hell than he did about heaven.
00:25Where was the devil in the Garden of Eden?
00:27And of course the serpent.
00:28But concepts of a fiery underworld watched over by a great beast evolved.
00:34Most of what we believe about hell and the devil is not taken from the biblical tradition.
00:39Just what is hell?
00:41And who is Satan?
00:52In recent decades, numerous people have reported near-death experiences.
00:57A conscious perceptual experience which takes place during a near-death encounter.
01:02Most describe a peaceful journey, being guided through a tunnel bathed in bright light.
01:09But a select few have experienced something far more frightening.
01:14They claim they have journeyed into a world alive with torment.
01:18They believe they have been to hell and back.
01:21Anything that you've ever imagined or seen in a horror movie, it was worse than that.
01:26In 1985, 38-year-old Howard Storm was traveling in Europe when he suddenly collapsed with a perforated stomach.
01:34Rushed to the hospital, his condition quickly worsened.
01:37The doctors told me that my life expectancy was about five hours.
01:41That night, Howard lost consciousness.
01:46As he slipped toward death, Storm believes he left his body.
01:50Mysterious voices called out to him and he followed them into the hallway.
01:54There were a number of these people, male and female, all adults, and very difficult to see them.
02:04They immediately encircled me.
02:08They were getting closer and it was getting tighter as we went into this increasing darkness.
02:15And I'm like, I'm just completely terrified.
02:19So they began to push and pull at me.
02:23They were definitely trying to elicit pain.
02:26And what they were doing at first was scratching and biting.
02:31And then it got much worse.
02:33And I had their mouths in me and on me.
02:42I was screaming, I was fighting.
02:48Although not a religious man, Storm says he called out prayers he had learned as a child in Sunday school.
02:53And the people who were around me couldn't bear the mention of God.
03:00And they became extremely violent and agitated.
03:04So I yelled out with everything that I had, Jesus, please save me.
03:08And he came to me and touched me and lifted me up and made me whole and filled me with
03:16his love and embraced me.
03:20Within minutes, Howard Storm was revived.
03:23And after surgery, he recovered.
03:25But his life was forever changed by what he believes he saw.
03:29This was like the portal of hell or the entrance to hell.
03:33People need to know that they are making their eternal destiny right now, today, at this moment.
03:42Death, the great equalizer.
03:45People across the globe and throughout time have believed that life endures beyond the grave.
03:50Modern religions offer differing concepts of an afterlife.
03:53But most are linked by two beliefs.
03:56A life lived in accordance with God leads to a positive afterlife, a heaven.
04:02A life lived in league with the devil leads to something negative, a hell.
04:07Reward and punishment in an afterlife is axiomatic to a belief in a good God.
04:12If you believe that God is good, then by definition you believe that there is reward and punishment after this
04:19life.
04:20But just how will evil be punished?
04:25Is hell a physical realm, a state of suffering, or does it exist at all?
04:32We all feel guilt, and therefore we all need torment.
04:35And in a sense, we all need hell.
04:37And if we don't believe in it literally, we find some way to create it here.
04:41The Bible indicates that hell is a place because it's a place where God sends the devil and his angels,
04:48and it's a place where Jesus said that those who reject him by faith will one day live.
04:53Hell, of course, is a metaphor.
04:55Hell is a mythological concept.
04:57What it means is to live without any relationship to God, which is the great gift of human life.
05:03Hell may be symbolical in the sense that we are not roasted over fires for eternity or for two minutes
05:09for that matter,
05:10but the symbolism is critical.
05:13Most Christian faiths hold that a mighty force both draws us towards evil and watches over hell.
05:19This power, this persona, is most often identified as the devil.
05:23There's something that grasps human freedom and radically corrupts people's ability to choose good,
05:31and we call that the devil.
05:33We call that the evil one.
05:35Over the past 2,000 years, the devil has been depicted as God's great adversary,
05:40the one who can lead us to eternal damnation.
05:43God is trying to tell us this is what the story of man is all about,
05:47is the devil is coming to test us and tempt us and try to get us to curse God.
05:53God wants people to follow him by choice.
05:56He doesn't want robots.
05:57He wants us to choose to place our faith in him, to choose to live in obedience to him.
06:02And perhaps the devil gives that opportunity for us to make those very hard choices.
06:06When every other word, every other complex modern idea fails,
06:10we do fall back on the devil because it's the only way we can put into words
06:16our horror, our confusion, our uncertainty, our fear.
06:21Over time, the devil has been given many names.
06:25The beast, the deceiver, the father of all lies.
06:31And hell has been imagined in countless waves.
06:37Those perceptions began to take shape ages ago,
06:40in a time before Jesus walked the earth.
06:51The hell of fire and brimstone is but the most well-known vision of the netherworld.
06:57From Neanderthal man to the 21st century,
07:00from the deserts of Mesopotamia to the islands of Greece,
07:03humankind has created strikingly similar images of an unpleasant afterlife,
07:08portraits of our darkest imaginings.
07:12The ancient Egyptians were obsessed by the idea of immortality.
07:16They built elaborate tombs to protect the physical body.
07:20For any soul to reach the next life,
07:22it first had to conquer a gauntlet of terrors,
07:26lakes of flames,
07:27harsh deserts,
07:29ravenous crocodiles.
07:30The whole afterlife, according to the Egyptians,
07:33was an incredibly complex world that had to be navigated.
07:37When a person died, there were seven different gates
07:39that a person had to go through just to get to the entrance to the actual afterlife.
07:43The Egyptian Book of the Dead listed the secret spells and intricate rituals needed to navigate this supernatural maze.
07:51The Egyptians were the first to believe that souls would be judged after death.
07:55Those who traversed the underworld came before King Osiris for final judgment.
08:02The just were granted eternal life.
08:04The unworthy, savagely devoured by the hideous monster Amut,
08:09one of the first depictions of a hell mouth,
08:11a gruesome creature who devours the damned.
08:13One of the oldest and most pervasive images of hell is the hell mouth.
08:20A person doesn't so much go to hell as hell consumes souls.
08:25It's not something that they passively go to and are destined to enter,
08:28but something that comes up to claim them and take it into its bowels
08:32for untold horrors that would lie within.
08:36An equally grim fate awaited those who followed the 6th century B.C. prophet Zoroaster.
08:42The religion of Zoroastrianism dominated Europe and the Middle East for nearly 1,000 years.
08:49According to its myths, swift and sure judgment of the dead
08:52takes place on the razor-thin Shinva Bridge.
08:55And this bridge is hazardous. It's very thin.
08:58The good person survives the bridge, the walk across the bridge,
09:02because their body and their soul are light.
09:05The sinful person or the evil person doesn't,
09:08because their body is heavy, so they tip over and they fall.
09:11And they fall right into the pits of the fiery hell, into eternal judgment.
09:18Zoroastrianism would soon be dwarfed by the teachings of a new prophet.
09:22Eventually, the disciples of Christ, the apostle of love,
09:26would also help define the hell of eternal damnation.
09:38For many people, their concept of hell is based on one book.
09:45The Bible says that hell is a place for people who reject
09:48his gracious offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ
09:51will spend eternity.
09:52It's a place of eternal separation from God.
09:57Biblical conceptions of hell evolve over the course of the Bible.
10:04The Old Testament contains only fleeting and indirect references to hell.
10:09Sheol, the Hebrew abode of the dead,
10:11is sometimes compared to the gloomy perceptions of modern hell.
10:14But in reality, it is quite different.
10:18The common destination of both the righteous and the unrighteous dead,
10:22Sheol was synonymous with the grave and with separation from God.
10:26For Sheol cannot thank you.
10:28Death cannot praise you.
10:29Those who go down into the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.
10:32The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day.
10:35Isaiah chapter 38, verses 18 and 19.
10:38Sheol is a place where everybody went.
10:41It wasn't a matter of reward or punishment.
10:43Everybody went there, good or bad.
10:45It was just another way of describing
10:47what happens to you when you die.
10:54The word Sheol does not appear in the New Testament.
10:57Instead, the Bible makes reference to Hades.
11:00In Greek mythology, Hades is both the name
11:02for the ruler of the netherworld and his domain.
11:06And on this rock I will build my church,
11:08and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
11:11Matthew chapter 16, verse 18.
11:13But scholars assign the same meaning to Sheol and Hades,
11:17the realm of the dead, not a place of torment.
11:22The Bible's first clear reference to a hell of punishment
11:25comes in the book of Daniel.
11:28Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake,
11:30some to everlasting life,
11:32others to shame and everlasting contempt.
11:35Daniel chapter 12, verse 2.
11:40But not until the New Testament does hell find a home in the Bible.
11:44Jesus' ministry turned human eyes away from the earthly
11:47and toward a transcendent relationship with God.
11:50In the Gospels, Christ proclaims a message of redemption,
11:54but also warns of sin's consequence.
11:57And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.
11:59It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye
12:02than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire,
12:05where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
12:08Mark chapter 9, verses 47 and 48.
12:13Jesus talked about hell more than he talked about heaven.
12:16And I think implied in there is an urgency to warn people
12:20that unless you do something about it, you will be going to hell.
12:28Jesus also gives his followers a visual depiction
12:31of what hell might be like.
12:35Just outside of Jerusalem was Gehenna,
12:37a noxious trash dump where refuse was burned.
12:41In the Gospels, Christ speaks of Gehenna as a metaphor
12:44for the fires that will not cease to burn.
12:49The imagery comes from this trash heap on the edge of Jerusalem
12:53where the refuse of Jerusalem was constantly burned.
12:57And that provided the kind of image
12:59that has come down through the Christian tradition of hell
13:02as a place of smoke and fire and eternal torment.
13:09It communicated a thought,
13:11the worst possible place,
13:13the most painful,
13:14a fire that never goes out.
13:15It's a terrible place.
13:17Although the Bible makes relatively few overt references to hell,
13:21its graphic nature is forever emblazoned in several passages.
13:25They will throw them into the fiery furnace
13:27where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
13:29Matthew chapter 13, verse 42.
13:32Depart from me, ye cursed,
13:34into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
13:37Matthew chapter 25, verse 41.
13:40But for all the torture described in biblical portraits of hell,
13:44many theologians hold that the ultimate agony
13:46described in the Bible comes from eternal separation from God.
13:51He will punish those who do not know God
13:53and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
13:56They will be punished with everlasting destruction
13:58and shut out from the presence of the Lord
14:00and from the majesty of his power.
14:022 Thessalonians chapter 1, verses 8 and 9.
14:05Probably the most basic meaning of hell
14:09is separation from God.
14:11That really is what it's all about.
14:13That's privation.
14:14Absence from the presence of God forever.
14:20However, some who read scripture literally
14:23believe hell is a physical place,
14:25with the Bible offering clues to its location.
14:28The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them.
14:30They went down alive into the grave.
14:32The earth closed over them.
14:34Numbers chapter 16, verses 32 and 33.
14:38Hell is located in the middle of the earth,
14:40the center of the earth.
14:41God created that place for the devil and his angels.
14:43Jesus tells us that.
14:44Biblical descriptions of hell's agony
14:46culminate in a brief notation in the book of Revelation,
14:49the apocalyptic story about the end of the world
14:52and final judgment.
14:53And the devil who deceived them
14:55was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur,
14:57where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown.
15:00They will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.
15:03Revelation chapter 20, verse 10.
15:06I think many of the descriptions of hell in scripture
15:08are allegorical.
15:10The Bible describes hell as a lake,
15:12and a lake is always changing, undulating,
15:15never the same, it's not stable.
15:16Hell is a place of enormous instability.
15:19We always feel that things are changing
15:20and nothing is the same.
15:29As biblical concepts of hell were defined,
15:32concepts defining codes of conduct
15:34that might earn a sentence of eternal damnation
15:36emerged in the early centuries.
15:37Perhaps none of Christ's followers did more
15:40to formulate notions about who goes to hell
15:43than the 4th century philosopher Augustine.
15:45St. Augustine felt that in order to appreciate
15:52the grace of being saved,
15:54you had to know that the majority of the people you knew
15:59were probably going, damn.
16:01Augustine spent his early years in drunken debauchery.
16:05Despairing over his misspent youth,
16:06he yearned to find meaning in his life.
16:09In the Confessions, what St. Augustine says
16:11is that I reasoned as far as I could go
16:12and I still couldn't make the jump to religious belief.
16:15He's in a state of almost madness,
16:17tearing his hair out, running up and down,
16:18trying to overcome his lack of religious faith.
16:25Finally, while attending his mother on her deathbed,
16:28Augustine was convinced by her to convert to Christianity.
16:34His conversion was very dramatic for him.
16:38He felt that he had performed deeds
16:41which should normally have condemned him to hell
16:43for all eternity,
16:44and had distanced him from God.
16:46And for no reason that he could justify
16:50or ever explain in his life,
16:51God came to him with great love and God, grace,
16:55and Augustine was converted.
16:57Augustine's subsequent writings
16:59combined the zeal of the converted
17:00with a love of logical reasoning.
17:02He found comfort in devising strict codes
17:05to regulate salvation and damnation.
17:07He believed such things that unbaptized infants
17:10could not ascend to heaven,
17:12not because of anything they had done wrong,
17:14but because all human beings were born
17:16with the original sin from Adam.
17:17And until they were baptized,
17:20that sin could not be washed away.
17:22Augustine played a critical role
17:23in making sexual sins
17:25one of the most common signposts
17:26on the road to hell.
17:28Lust requires for all its consummation
17:30darkness and secrecy,
17:31not only when unlawful intercourse is desired,
17:34but even such fornication
17:35as the earthly city has legalized.
17:37St. Augustine, city of God.
17:39It was a bit like someone
17:40who'd been a chain smoker,
17:41who suddenly gave it up
17:43and couldn't bear to be in a room
17:44with a cigarette again.
17:45St. Augustine had a lot of sex
17:46before he found Christianity.
17:49And then suddenly having found Christianity,
17:50he turned his back on that
17:51and became very, very pessimistic about sexuality,
17:54very pessimistic about women.
17:55Augustine's dark message
17:56soon found a ready audience.
17:59During the first 1,000 years of Christianity,
18:01hell was rarely mentioned from the pulpit.
18:03But with the Dark Ages,
18:05holy men latched onto Augustine's teachings,
18:08sometimes to further their own agendas.
18:10Where you needed some kind of power
18:13other than guns and rifles
18:14to convince people to follow your way
18:17rather than someone else,
18:18then hell as a place
18:20became more and more real.
18:22In a time ripe with famine,
18:24plague, and war,
18:26most people had no trouble
18:27envisioning an equally savage afterlife.
18:30Augustine's warnings of the terrors of hell
18:32helped to convert pagan masses
18:34who lived in the shadow of death.
18:36To know that you can wake up
18:38and in one week lose your entire family
18:39to the plague,
18:41and that half of Europe
18:42is lost to a plague
18:43over a period of four years,
18:45this tends to put a whole new perspective
18:47on the afterlife.
18:48As preachers would constantly tell
18:50their congregations,
18:52think on death.
18:53Think on death often.
18:57Righteous in their cause,
18:59church leaders used the fear of hell
19:01to scare souls into pews.
19:03And they would go on and on and on
19:05about the tortures of it,
19:06the misery, the pain,
19:07the horrible smell,
19:08the unending fire,
19:10the flesh writhing in agony.
19:12Eventually what they found
19:14was that people were coming more
19:15to hear the spectacle about hell.
19:17It's like going to a good horror movie.
19:19You want to be grossed out,
19:20you want to be terrified.
19:21And the preachers realized
19:23that hell was becoming
19:24the attraction in itself.
19:27For Europeans of the 1500s,
19:29hellfire sermons were truth incarnate.
19:32We had this sense of hell,
19:33and the sense of hell was very real.
19:35Because all people had
19:37was this life in this little town.
19:39And this little town only had a church.
19:41And that church was your gateway to salvation.
19:44And whatever was said in that church
19:45was true.
19:48The elites are not necessarily
19:50gulling the masses
19:51when they proselytize about heaven and hell.
19:54They're actually telling them
19:54what they understand to be the truth.
19:58But forceful sermons were not the only tool
20:00used to paint portraits of a fiery underworld.
20:03Church art and architecture
20:05vividly visualize the story of hell.
20:09What you can see with your eyes
20:11and you can hear through your ear
20:13when the sermons are being spoken to you,
20:15the hymns are being sung to you,
20:17or the scriptures being read to you,
20:18come together then in your heart
20:20and are emblazoned with you forever.
20:22Frescoes favored the abominable fancy,
20:25the saved up in heaven
20:26gazing down upon the horrors of the doomed.
20:30Many early Christian pictures
20:33show people sitting safely up in heaven
20:37looking down as if they were
20:38up in the upper balcony at a theater
20:41looking down at sinners being tortured in hell
20:44and metaphorically at least
20:45rubbing their hands in glee over them.
20:48But visions of hell's torture
20:49were not complete without a picture
20:51of an evil angel to watch over the netherworld.
20:54Holy men and authors would elevate
20:56the host of hell to dazzling heights
20:59of power.
21:03For centuries, hell and Satan
21:05have been inextricably intertwined.
21:11According to the Christian tradition,
21:13the devil both watches over hell
21:15and entices us to join him there.
21:17The quickest path to hell
21:18is doing Satan's bidding here on earth.
21:21The devil's presence and the devil's temptation
21:24give me a choice to do right or to do wrong,
21:27a choice to give in to the temptation
21:29or to resist it and be obedient to God's word.
21:35The devil has many ancestors.
21:39Ancient faiths were guided by an array of spirits,
21:42angels, ghosts, and goblins.
21:45Two deities foreshadowed later imagery of the devil,
21:49Seth, the Egyptian crimson god of the underworld,
21:51and Pan, the Greek mythological half-man, half-beast
21:56with cloven hooves who ruled sexual desire.
22:00Perceptions of a modern Satan began to be formed in Bible passages.
22:05The Old Testament devil was an enigmatic and minor figure,
22:09not an evil mastermind.
22:10But early Christians, zealous to spread the word about Christ as the Messiah,
22:15used Satan to their advantage.
22:17They warned of the devil's wickedness
22:18and sought him out in Scripture where he had not yet been found.
22:22What the writers of apocryphal literature did
22:24was they started poring over virtually every text in the book of Genesis
22:27to try and find evidence of the devil there.
22:29In the Hebrew Bible,
22:31the snake in the Garden of Eden is simply a snake.
22:34That changed.
22:36They look at the Garden of Eden,
22:37and they say, well, why did it go wrong for Adam and Eve?
22:39Where was the devil in the Garden of Eden?
22:41And, of course, the serpent.
22:47The overt biblical birth of Satan is described in the book of Revelation.
22:52Lucifer, the light bearer,
22:54is one of God's most beautiful and beatific angels.
22:57But his hubris drives Lucifer to challenge God.
23:01And the Bible says that Lucifer decided in his heart
23:04he wanted to be like God.
23:06In fact, he wanted to be God,
23:07and he wanted to ascend to the throne.
23:10Lucifer and his warrior angels engaged the army of God,
23:13led by the archangel Michael.
23:17The great dragon was hurled down.
23:20That ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan,
23:22who leads the whole world astray.
23:24He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.
23:27Revelation chapter 12, verse 9.
23:29There was a battle.
23:30There was a fight.
23:31There was an argument.
23:31There was a reckoning.
23:33And God said, you can't be up here anymore.
23:36I cannot use you as I'll use others.
23:38And banished him to earth.
23:40Lucifer is joined in exile by his legion of watcher angels,
23:44one-third of all the stars in God's heavenly court.
23:47God grants him dominion over hell,
23:49from where he schemes to avenge his fall from grace.
23:52He knows he can never be restored to his former greatness.
23:55He knows he can never hurt God.
23:57But it's like a human being.
23:59If you've got a big, strong, beefy neighbor,
24:01you might not want to take him on.
24:02But when he's not looking, you might kick his dog.
24:04When he goes after human souls,
24:06he's doing it to try to get even with God.
24:10The perception of Satan's ability to lure human souls
24:14was enhanced by human beings.
24:16In the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great
24:18imbued the devil with sweeping powers
24:20by laying the seven deadly sins at his doorstep.
24:23If you look at the seven deadly sins,
24:25in many ways what Gregory was doing was rejecting the world.
24:27So everything that the world liked doing,
24:29not working or eating too much or enjoying themselves,
24:31and anything worldly,
24:32he characterized as the work of the devil.
24:35So the seven deadly sins became a means
24:37by which the Christian church almost damned the world
24:40and set itself up against the world.
24:41So everything worldly was the work of the devil.
24:44Everything otherworldly was the work of God.
24:47As the devil's biography was developed,
24:50visual portraits of an evil beast
24:52were imagined in stone and glass
24:53in magnificent cathedrals.
24:55The imagery of the medieval cathedral
24:57with Satan with his horns and his tail
25:00and Satan tempting Eve as a snake
25:03wrapped around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
25:06these are all medieval Christian notions.
25:08And all of that comes from imagery.
25:11By the 10th century,
25:12the beast had assumed monstrous form.
25:14He dominated religious art,
25:16appearing in a thousand grotesque and terrible guises,
25:19dressed in black,
25:20the color of dark, night, and evil.
25:27The devil's color changed
25:29during a Renaissance reincarnation.
25:31If you are furthest away from God,
25:33then you are in the dark,
25:35you are not near the light,
25:37you are not near warmth,
25:38you are in eternal cold.
25:40Eternal cold, you are blue.
25:42So we begin to see the devil
25:43either represented as half human and half animal,
25:46or fully animal form,
25:48but dark blue.
25:53Depictions of Satan began to take on characteristics
25:56of the Catholic Church's rivals.
25:58With the stakes no less than eternal salvation,
26:01anyone who opposed the church
26:02was tagged as a friend of Satan.
26:05Images of the devil merged with caricatures of Jews
26:07with long hooked noses.
26:10In the stories of the Gospels,
26:12the Jews arrive to doubt the story of the empty tomb,
26:16and this is considered demonic.
26:18The Jews begin to be symbols
26:20for people who doubt the truth of Christianity,
26:22and that's why they get demonized.
26:24Plagues were blamed on those who traded with the Jews.
26:27In 1236, Pope Gregory IX condemned the Talmud,
26:31the Jewish holy text,
26:32as satanically inspired.
26:35Christians puzzled by the Muslim habit
26:37of frequent bathing
26:38dubbed Islamic bathhouses temples to the devil.
26:41So everybody is demonized.
26:43It's basically the idea
26:44that if you're not with us,
26:45you're against us,
26:45and if you're not in the Christian fold
26:47and doing what Christianity wants,
26:48you are the servant of the devil.
26:49The early church was instrumental
26:51in molding perceptions of both Satan and hell.
26:54But come the Renaissance,
26:56two poets would overcome their personal demons
26:58to create a new vision of hell,
27:00a vision that lives to this day.
27:11The hell of popular imagination has many authors.
27:15Most of what we believe about hell and the devil
27:18is not taken from the biblical tradition.
27:20The Bible doesn't say all that much about it.
27:22The details come from our poets,
27:24not from our prophets.
27:26Most prominent among literary works
27:28that helped shape our sense of hell
27:29is Dante's Inferno.
27:32I am the way into the city of woe.
27:34I am the way into eternal pain.
27:36I am the way to go among the lost.
27:39Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
27:41The Inferno, Canto 3.
27:49Composed by Alighieri Dante in the early 1300s
27:52while in exile from his beloved hometown
27:54of Florence, Italy,
27:56the Inferno was inspired by turbulent events
27:58in the author's own life.
28:03During Dante's time,
28:05the Vatican coveted control over all of Tuscany.
28:08Dante, a devout Catholic,
28:09believed that the church should share power
28:11with civil authorities.
28:13While in Rome,
28:15he was arrested on a series of bogus charges,
28:17including hostility against the Pope.
28:19The church threatened his life,
28:21confiscated his property,
28:23and banished him from his native city
28:24never to return.
28:28Dante responded by composing the Inferno.
28:31Midway upon the journey of our life,
28:33I found myself in a dark wilderness,
28:35for I had wandered from the straight and true.
28:38The Inferno, Canto 1.
28:41It's a voyage of the soul.
28:43Dante is also a pilgrim.
28:44He is going through the entirety of the cosmos,
28:46which means that he's also going through
28:47the entirety of the soul.
28:49Dante's portrait of hell
28:50is far more detailed than biblical descriptions.
28:53He imagined nine circles of hell,
28:55each level designed to imprison souls
28:57guilty of specific sins.
28:59It started on the uppermost level of hell
29:02and described the Inferno as nine descending realms
29:05with the worst, most vile centers
29:08at the very pit of hell in the ninth realm
29:10with Satan himself.
29:14Connecting punishment to the severity of sin,
29:17Dante graphically described the suffering of the damned.
29:20People stripped naked
29:22and their faces torn with rage.
29:24They thumped each other with the head,
29:26the chest, the feet, the teeth,
29:29snapping to rip each other limb from limb.
29:31The Inferno, Canto 7.
29:34It really hit people on a very different level
29:38than just another hellfire sermon
29:40that talked about how bad things were
29:41because it equated it with what a person does
29:44is directly connected to how he will suffer in the afterlife.
29:48The fortune tellers were said to walk through eternity
29:50with their heads sewn on backwards
29:52for pretending to see the future,
29:53which could be known only to God.
29:55People who had given in to their passions,
29:58people who were adulterers,
29:59were swept along eternally by winds
30:01because in life they had been swept by their passions.
30:03Every sin had a very specific punishment.
30:10I set the Father and the Son at war
30:12because I severed two such persons' joint.
30:15Severed, I carry now my brains,
30:17alas, from their stem in this trunk.
30:19Thus you may see the rule of retribution work in me.
30:23The Inferno, Canto 28.
30:28One of the interesting things about the Inferno
30:30is that the thing that gets people sent to hell,
30:32the thing that's damnable and sinful about them
30:34is the fact that they love,
30:36but they love the wrong things.
30:38Everyone is in hell because they love.
30:40If you love wealth or sex or political power
30:43or any of the other possible things
30:44that we could love instead of loving God,
30:47those are damnable sins.
30:48For Dante, the one unforgivable act
30:51was betrayal of trust.
30:53The ninth and lowest level of hell
30:55is occupied by history's greatest traitors,
30:57engulfed not in flames,
30:59but in an arctic chill
31:00that distances them from God's light.
31:02If you were the great traitors,
31:04like Judas and Brutus and Cassius,
31:05you were going to spend eternity
31:08being chewed upon
31:09in the mouth of this three-headed beast
31:12who was immobile, blue, and frozen
31:15in the deep, dark coldness of hell,
31:19separated from God.
31:21Dante placed several church fathers,
31:23including Pope Celestine V
31:25and Pope Boniface VIII
31:27in his lowest circle of hell.
31:28Are you standing there already, Boniface?
31:30The great priest, may he be dragged to hell.
31:34The Inferno, Cantons 19 and 27.
31:37Dante was exiled from his country
31:39and many enemies,
31:40and you find them all in his hell.
31:43They're all there being punished
31:44with his artistic imagination,
31:47just as they deserve to be.
31:50The Inferno's impact
31:51was profound and immediate.
31:53It was read aloud
31:54to large assemblies
31:55of enthralled listeners.
31:57It was quickly translated
31:58into every European language.
32:01Italian artists discarded
32:02time-worn clichés
32:03and began painting Dante's hell.
32:06What Dante does,
32:07he manages to put into narrative
32:09a way of thinking about the sublime,
32:12a way of thinking about the divine,
32:14that all the language of hell
32:15is kind of shorthand caricature,
32:16trying to talk about moral possibility,
32:19about what human life might be like.
32:22Dante had transcended simplistic views of hell
32:24with a grandly metaphorical vision.
32:27He transformed hell
32:28into an ongoing story
32:29of man's struggle
32:30to understand the world.
32:34Just as Dante forever expanded
32:36our notion of hell,
32:38English poet John Milton
32:39revolutionized the character of the devil.
32:42Milton elevated Satan
32:43to a champion of the dark side,
32:45an immensely powerful force for evil.
32:47He's a warlord,
32:49and all of the other mafiosi under him
32:52are paying tribute to him.
32:54His ego is enormous.
32:56His individuality is huge.
32:58During his college days in the 1620s,
33:01Milton dreamt of creating an epic poem
33:04on the scale of the Iliad or the Odyssey.
33:06But his youthful idealism crumbled
33:08under the sorrow of the deaths
33:09of his two wives,
33:11two children,
33:12and an illness that left him blind.
33:15Twenty years after losing his sight,
33:18Milton battled back
33:19to produce his masterpiece,
33:21Paradise Lost.
33:22The mind itself is its own place,
33:24and in itself can make a heaven of hell,
33:27a hell of heaven.
33:28Paradise Lost.
33:31His insight is opened up
33:33and become sharpened
33:33by his lack of external sight.
33:35And his insight is not sight
33:37into the world around us.
33:38It's sight into his own soul,
33:39into his psyche.
33:41That's where he finds Satan,
33:42and that's where he finds God.
33:47Paradise Lost retells the story
33:49of Lucifer's fall from heaven.
33:50In this version,
33:52Satan is a romantic hero
33:54brought low by his pride.
33:56The story opens
33:58with a dramatic landscape of hell.
34:00The rebel angels are defeated
34:01and demoralized
34:02until Lucifer rouses them.
34:05Here we may reign secure,
34:07and in my choice,
34:08to reign is worth ambition,
34:10though in hell.
34:11Better to reign in hell
34:12than serve in heaven,
34:14Paradise Lost.
34:16Milton kept the idea of him
34:18as being an immensely potent,
34:20charismatic,
34:22outsized figure.
34:23The sort of leader
34:24that you can understand
34:25would bring down
34:26a third of the stars
34:27from the sky.
34:29A third of the angels
34:29in heaven followed him
34:31down there
34:31because he was their leader.
34:34A magnificent leader,
34:36Milton Satan cannot bring himself
34:38to atone to God
34:39for leading an insurrection.
34:42Satan's loss
34:43is somehow powerfully human
34:45in a way that God can't be.
34:47It's very hard
34:48to identify with God
34:49in his perfection,
34:50but we all know
34:51what it's like
34:51to have a certain
34:51satanic impulse in us.
34:53All of us know
34:54what it's like to transgress.
34:55All of us know
34:56what it's like to be stubborn
34:56and to refuse to admit
34:58that we were wrong.
34:59The demons of self-justification
35:01are things that almost
35:02everyone can identify with.
35:05Milton's vision
35:05embellished the notion
35:06of a powerful Satan
35:07in an adversarial role.
35:10Throughout time,
35:11the devil would engage
35:12in epic battles,
35:13clashes against both God
35:15and man.
35:22From the beginning of time,
35:24man and God
35:25have battled the evil one.
35:27One of the earliest
35:28biblical examples
35:29of the devil standing up to God
35:30and testing human faith
35:32is found in the book of Job.
35:34The book of Job
35:36recognizes that there are
35:37other forces,
35:38other powers
35:39that somehow
35:40are under God's control,
35:42but God is not
35:44the cause of evil,
35:45even though he's
35:46master of the universe.
35:48So you have God
35:49who's in control
35:50of everything,
35:50yet not the cause of evil.
35:52Satan,
35:53who's the tempter,
35:54who causes that evil
35:55to happen.
35:57In Scripture,
35:58God boasts to Satan
36:00of his faithful servant,
36:01Job's righteousness.
36:05Satan counters
36:06by charging
36:07that Job reveres God
36:08only because wealth
36:09and prosperity
36:10have been bestowed upon him.
36:12In the book of Job,
36:13Satan is a member
36:14of the heavenly court
36:15who tests human beings.
36:17Satan challenges God
36:19by stating that
36:19if afflicted,
36:20Job will denounce
36:21the Almighty.
36:22But stretch out your hand
36:24and strike everything
36:25he has,
36:25and he will curse thee
36:27to thy face.
36:28Job chapter 1,
36:29verse 11.
36:32Satan is saying
36:33his man is only good
36:33because he expects
36:34a reward.
36:35And God says,
36:36no, that isn't true.
36:37So the devil says,
36:37well, let's put them
36:38to the test.
36:38Satan makes a wager
36:39with God.
36:40Now this is profoundly
36:41diabolical.
36:42What could be more futile
36:43than betting against God?
36:44What are your chances
36:45of winning?
36:46Zero.
36:46So why would anyone
36:47take such a bet?
36:48Only to do evil
36:50for evil's sake.
36:51God permits Satan
36:53to visit Job
36:53with a series
36:54of shattering catastrophes.
36:56The only restriction
36:57is that he not
36:58physically harm Job.
37:00In one day,
37:01Job loses
37:02all his material possessions.
37:04Satan also rubs Job
37:06of his family.
37:17Your sons and daughters
37:18were feasting and drinking
37:19when suddenly
37:20a mighty wind
37:21swept in from the desert
37:22and struck the four corners
37:24of the house.
37:24It collapsed on them
37:25and they are dead.
37:27Job chapter 1,
37:28verses 18 and 19.
37:31Though Job is deeply grieved,
37:33he does not curse God.
37:34But Satan does not
37:35back down.
37:36He claims Job will falter
37:39if he can inflict
37:39harsher treatment.
37:41God agrees to the test
37:42with the exception
37:43that Job's life
37:44be spared.
37:45Satan smites Job
37:46with boils
37:47from head to toe.
37:49Finally,
37:50Job assails God
37:51for his misfortunes.
37:53I will say to God,
37:55does it please you
37:56to oppress me,
37:57to spurn the work
37:58of your hands
37:58while you smile
37:59on the schemes
38:00of the wicked?
38:02Job chapter 10,
38:03verses 2 and 3.
38:05In the end,
38:06Job repents
38:07and pledges
38:08full allegiance to God.
38:09Satan goes down
38:10to the earth
38:11and removes
38:11these good things
38:12from Job,
38:12takes away his family,
38:13takes away his property,
38:14takes away his health,
38:15and still Job
38:16does not blaspheme.
38:20Man has stayed true
38:21to the Almighty,
38:22but Satan has exposed
38:24a fissure
38:24that he will forever
38:25seek to exploit.
38:27There are many lessons
38:28to be learned
38:29from the book of Job,
38:30and one of the lessons
38:32is that Satan
38:32cannot touch my life
38:34except he has
38:35God's permission.
38:35So when bad things
38:37come into my life
38:37and perhaps Satan
38:38has orchestrated
38:39some of them,
38:40then I know
38:41that my Heavenly Father
38:42has shielded me
38:42and protected me
38:43and if he lifts
38:44his hand of protection
38:44and allows Satan
38:45to attack,
38:46it's going to be
38:47for my own good
38:47and there's a better
38:48ultimate purpose.
38:51While Satan
38:52is allowed by God
38:53to bring tragedy
38:54upon Job,
38:55in the book of Matthew,
38:57the devil tests
38:57the Son of God.
39:09While Jesus
39:10fasts in the desert
39:11for 40 days
39:12and 40 nights,
39:14Satan offers him
39:14three temptations,
39:17including the most
39:18alluring one of all,
39:19power.
39:23The devil took him
39:24to a very high mountain
39:25and showed him
39:26all the kingdoms
39:26of the world
39:27and their splendor.
39:28All this
39:28I will give you,
39:29he said,
39:30if you will bow down
39:31and worship me.
39:32Matthew chapter 4,
39:33verses 8 and 9.
39:35We are tempted
39:36not with the worst
39:37of sins,
39:39but with the noblest.
39:40We're tempted
39:41to take things
39:43into our own hands
39:44rather than
39:45to trust God.
39:46Jesus,
39:46in that time
39:47of spiritual isolation,
39:49of testing,
39:50is tempted
39:51to take things
39:52into his own hands,
39:53is tempted
39:53to use his power
39:55to control
39:56rather than
39:56to serve,
39:57to create an empire
39:59rather than
39:59to be God's son.
40:02Jesus refused
40:03to take any shortcut.
40:05He refused
40:06to get the kingdoms
40:06of this world,
40:07which Satan offered him
40:09as the God
40:09of this world.
40:10He refused
40:10any shortcut
40:11to the cross.
40:12He had to die.
40:17After Jesus' death,
40:19one Christian text
40:20suggests that he
40:21descends into hell.
40:22the Apostles' Creed,
40:24written sometime
40:25between the 2nd
40:26and 9th centuries,
40:27is the most popular
40:28creed used in worship
40:29by Western Christians.
40:31He suffered
40:32under Pontius Pilate,
40:33was crucified,
40:34died,
40:35and was buried.
40:36He descended
40:36into hell.
40:37On the third day,
40:38he rose again.
40:39and was buried.
40:42He did not
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