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A “PERCY WETMORE” KIND OF JUSTICE

A dissenting Christian theologian once wrote that if hellfire really tortures sinners forever, for all eternity, “It would make Hitler a third-degree saint, and the concentration camps . . . picnic grounds.” The debate about hell is growing - is that a dangerous trend?

What kind of a person would burn someone alive and deliberately prolong the process? And enjoy it, savor it? Filmgoers a few years ago got an explicit answer to that question.

The Religion Communicators Council awarded it as Best Picture 1999. But even though Christianity Today gave the Stephen King film The Green Mile high marks for grappling with spiritual themes, I’m not going to come on the radio today and recommend it to you; it’s a tough, wrenching, sometimes profane story. But if you’re a thinking Christian who wants to prayerfully wrestle with the doctrine of an eternally burning hell — which this story of the Rich Man and Lazarus explores — then this is a cinematic anecdote to think about.

This Tom Hanks film, set in the 1930s, is framed by three electric-chair executions. And the middle one is where we need to go today. The guards on “the green mile,” a fictional prison in Mississippi, are actually a kindly bunch of men. Knowing the strain the prisoners are under, as they wait to sit down in “Old Sparky” and “ride the lightning,” they treat them as gently as possible. Except for one: Percy Wetmore. He’s a mean, cruel, sadistic little guard who wants more than anything to “be out front,” to supervise and see an execution up close.

Always, as they go through this sad routine of putting a man to death, the guards put a dripping wet sponge underneath the leather electrode cap they strap onto the condemned man. The wet sponge conducts the powerful voltage into the brain “like a bullet,” one guard explains, and makes the killing merciful and quick.

Well, when it comes time to execute a little Frenchman named Eduard Delacroix, this Percy Wetmore surreptitiously uses a dry sponge instead. And the resulting debacle is pure horror: Delacroix, screaming in agony, essentially burns to death. It’s a slow, devastating, unwatchable, R-rated bit of hell on Cellblock E. The spectators can’t stand to watch; the warden is sick to his stomach; the other guards are aghast at such inhuman cruelty. And by the time it’s done, when the prisoner finally slumps down in the electric chair, mercifully dead at last, Percy Wetmore has entered into the annals of Hollywood’s Hall of Shame. He’s an antagonist, a villain, right up there with Hannibal Lecter, Timothy McVeigh, and Adolf Hitler — a man you love to hate.

As we conclude this week of studying, where Jesus tells a parable or story about a rich man who is likewise burning, and burning, and burning in the flames, we have to ask: What kind of a person does this? Is God a monster? One evangelical theologian who questions the traditional view of hellfire writes:

“Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for His enemies whom He does not even allow to die.”

Now friend, let me say a couple of things as we study. God is God. God does what His omniscient wisdom dictates. And you and I have to get our doctrines, our beliefs, from the Word of God. Not from movies. Not from each other’s pet theories. And not even from our own sense of moral indignation, which might be very badly formed. You and I are human beings; we’re the creatures, not the Creator. God does what He wants to do. Dr. John Walvoord wisely writes:

“The vote against it could be unanimous, and still hell might be a reality.”

We’ve been offering you a special book this week, and I want to comment on it right here. Just the title — Four Views on Hell — reveals the dilemma facing the Christian Church. This Zondervan book is part of their “Counterpoint” series; four eminent evangelicals – Walvoord being one of them – have written to defend the perspective their own biblical study has led them to embrace. Then, after each theologian shares how this doctrine appears to them, the other three graciously point out flaws and weaknesses, and also the strengths of the various arguments. It’s a gentlemanly debate, a warm and thoughtful Christian discussion of a hard, difficult issue. There’s no name-calling, no accusing of bad faith or sinister motives. Just four dedicated followers of the Christian faith trying to work their way through what sometimes appears to be an insoluble problem. But one of them, Dr. Zachary J. Hayes, who teaches at the Catholic Theological Union, comments:

“We need only think of the tremendous diversity of opinion among biblical scholars to recognize that something puzzling is afoot here.”

Let me return to that film, The Green Mile, for just one moment. Because as this guard, Percy Wetmore, deliberately burns a man to death, it’s horrible to watch. It essentially is un-watchable. It sickens everyone in the death chamber that night; the guards are livid at what Percy has done. And do you know how long the punishing is actually going on? We timed it; it runs for exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds. That’s right. A man is being burned to death by electric current, and when it runs for just under three minutes, the person who inflicts that suffering is immediately perceived by the average person watching the story as a monster, as evil personified. I can’t cover that over; I can’t deny it. This is how the average person on the street sees a person who would do something so cruel.

Hell being such a hard doctrine means that many Christians — including the pastors — simply walk away from studying it.

“[Many Christians] will probably never hear a sermon on hell,” Walvoord writes in his essay.

The vast majority of non-believers, in considering this teaching, turn away from the Church altogether, unable to comprehend a God who behaves like Percy Wetmore. Many Christians become universalists, deciding that an eternally burning hell is so horrible, a punishment so out of proportion to the crime, that God will eventually just save everybody in heaven, including Hitler and McVeigh. Others move instead toward the “metaphorical view,” deciding that hell is real, but not hot. Eternal separation from God, but not fire. Kenneth Kantzer, a former editor of Christianity Today, suggested years ago that the flames Jesus spoke of were “most likely figurative warnings.” Billy Graham, in an article entitled “There is a Real Hell,” writes:

“I have often wondered if hell is a terrible burning WITHIN OUR HEARTS for God, to fellowship with God, a fire that we can never quench.”

But it gets worse. A theologian named R. H. Savage, in reaction to what he sees as the impossibility of God taking on this kind of Percy Wetmore role, says this in response:

“If the doctrine of eternal punishment was clearly and unmistakably taught in every leaf of the Bible, and on every leaf of all the Bibles of all the world, I could not believe a word of it.”

Another student of the Word, a Theodore Parker, write a book entitled Two Sermons, where he makes this incredible statement:

“I believe that Jesus Christ taught eternal punishment . . . [and] . . . I DO NOT ACCEPT IT ON HIS AUTHORITY.”

That’s frightening, isn’t it? And friend, here at the Voice of Prophecy we don’t want to go there. Nowhere NEAR there. But the fact is that many sincere people are saying, “If the Bible teaches that God tortures sinners in hell forever, then I reject the Bible. And I reject that kind of God.” And it’s not a great leap from there to say: “If Jesus taught such a thing, then I reject Jesus too.”

Friend, listen to me. Here at the Voice of Prophecy we don’t want to reject the Bible. Or God. Or Jesus. They are the ultimate authority in our lives. And however God chooses to handle the problem of sin and sinners is fine with us. We accept whatever He does as being true and right and perfect. But of the four views on hellfire dissected in this book — literal (meaning traditional), metaphorical, purgatorial, or conditional (meaning annihilation, where the rebellious sinner is finally destroyed and ceases to exist at all) — we have to sympathize with Dr. Clark Pinnock, who defends the last of those four views, and who makes this plea:

“It is not our place to criticize God, but it is permitted to think about what we are saying.”

In other words, it is all right to study. It’s all right to acknowledge the apparent contradictions – notice I said the APPARENT contradictions – that appear to be in the Word of God. For example, in the little one-chapter book of Jude, verse 13 describes the punishment of the lost as “blackest darkness.” Six verses earlier he uses the more traditional image: “eternal fire.” Now, fire is not “dark.” It’s brightness of the most agonizing kind. Can both pictures be somehow true?

Dr. Pinnock joins with other thinking evangelicals like John Stott in pointing out that the Word of God regularly describes the final punishment as “destruction.” In the book of Psalms we read:

“Like the grass they [rebellious sinners] will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. . . . A little while, and the wicked WILL BE NO MORE; though you look for them, they will not be found.”

Well, time is gone. We offer this book, not for debate, not for division, but for dialogue and study. In the spirit of Christian humility, fully confessing that no man or woman understands all truth, that no denomination or body of believers has all correctness on doctrine — we are all wrong on something — we invite your participation in the journey. With full respect for the Bible as God’s inspired Word, with full acknowledgment of His sovereignty to resolve the sin issue according to His wisdom and love, and with full gratitude that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ sets us free from the condemnation of hell, we wish you all God’s blessings and leadings as you study.