Tale of Two
Islands
You’ve been found guilty of breaking
the law, and the consequences will result in being sent away for a
while. You brace yourself for the judge’s sentencing, hoping
for mercy. But when the judge has you escorted to the docks
to transport you to the destination where you’ll carry out your
sentencing, you don’t quite know what to make of it. You
expected to go to jail, but instead, you board a small boat with a
captain and security guard as your companions.
After a while, you notice the
captain is steering the boat towards a couple of islands, and the
security guard begins explaining your options. “You’ll be shown two
different islands,” he explains, “and you will be able to choose the
island on which to serve your sentence.”
As you approach the first island,
your first thought is that it resembles a picture out of a travel
brochure. The water near the shoreline is pristine.
It’s so clear you can see the sandy bottom and the beautiful tropical
fish swimming just below the water’s surface. The beach is
made up of white sand, littered with exquisite shells that would be a
collector’s dream. Just beyond the beach are numerous
varieties of tropical trees and plants, which are home to a dozen or
more species of birds, butterflies and animals. The fragrances
permeating from the flora and fruit trees are tantalizing. The sights,
sounds and scents of this first island put your senses on
overload.
While exulting in the first island’s
beauty, the captain steers the boat towards the second. The
closer you get, you notice the air gradually changes over to an
offensive odor. As you approach the shoreline, you look
around in an attempt to find what’s causing the stench. Ah,
now you see it. The beach sand can’t be seen for all the
dumped, rotting garbage. Evidently, this island is a trash
site for a nearby town or city. Then you notice rivulets of
gooey liquid seeping from underneath the piles of trash and running
into the shallow waters. That causes you to look down to see
brown, polluted water with dead fish floating on the
surface. The repugnant stench makes you gag.
Noticeably absent are the melodic
notes of any tropical birds, or any fruit bearing trees or flowers.
Instead, you see vultures and other birds of prey circling overhead,
looking for their dinner of rats or any other varmints ravaging through
the waste. This island is the exact opposite from the first in
every sense of the word. The sights, smells and sounds couldn’t be any
more different.
After showing you the two
destinations, the captain turns in his seat and says, “Okay, now you’ve
seen the two islands, on which one do you want to carry out your
sentence?”
Your first thought is, “This must be
a joke, right?” Who in their right mind would choose the
stench and ugliness of the second island? Who would want to
wallow in filth and inhale nauseous fumes day in and day
out? The obvious choice, of course, would be the beautiful,
picturesque island paradise. In fact, the choice is much like choosing
between heaven and hell.
Exactly. The contrasts of
this Tale of Two Islands doesn’t even begin to describe the contrasts
of the literal heaven and hell of the Bible. The new heaven
described in Revelation 21 and 22 is a paradise like nothing we can
even begin to imagine. It’s a magnificent structure made up of
levels of precious gemstones, the streets are of gold, and the gates
are made out of enormous pearls. A pure river of water, clear
as crystal, flows out of the throne of God, and on either side of the
river the tree of life grows, producing twelve types of fruit every
month. There is no darkness, and it is free of physical pain,
death and sorrow.
Unlike heaven, we’re told in
Revelation 20:14 that death and hell will be cast into the Lake of
Fire. It’s a place where everything burns for eternity, yet
with the blackness of darkness (Jude 13), with no quenching of thirst
(Luke 16:24). People who don’t grasp the severity of hell, or
want to make light of it, often joke about going there to party and
hang out with their friends. That delusion will last less than
a millisecond before you realize it’s nothing but a place of torment.
While it seems that no one in
his/her right mind would choose anything other than the first island to
carry out his/her punishment in the Tale of Two Islands, every day
millions of people reject God’s gift of grace, thereby choosing to pass
on the perfection of heaven and choosing the ugliness and torment of
hell for their eternal abode. Unlike the illustration above
where you get to preview the two islands before choosing your final
destination, your choice of going to either heaven or hell is made in
the here and now. It requires acknowledging that what the
Bible says about each place is true, and a faith in the Bible of how
one will spend his/her eternity in either place. Also, unlike
the above scenario where the sentencing on either island is temporary,
heaven and hell are for an eternity.
God, in His mercy, has made an
eternity in heaven, a literal paradise, available to everyone. Will you
be there with me?
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