Absolute Darkness

Absolute Darkness

Matthew 6:23 KJV

But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

   What do you think of when you think of “dark?”  I’d guess that we've all got a little different perspective on what the word "dark" really means, because we've had different experiences in our lives that we base those mental images on. To many when we think of darkness, we see images of barely seen objects, like the furniture that you almost trip over if you get out of bed in the middle of the night.  Others see dark roads out in the country away from the lights of the city.  I used to work a watchmen job on the third shift, and have a different mental picture of “dark.”  I was walking out to a storage area that was on a suspended floor over a warehouse.  There were openings in the end of the building for ventilation that were shut because it was winter time.  I was nearly at the end of the floor where the watch clock key was hanging when the lights went out.  There was no warning that the lights were about to go out.  The weather was calm and nothing unusual was going on.  Somewhere nearby, a transformer simply reached the end of its operational life and burned out.  I was suddenly standing in the middle of a really dark room a long way away from the nearest window.  Where I was, it was darkness that was thick, black, silent, and a bit frightening.  It was almost like you could feel the darkness.  I froze in place, and tried to get past the disorientation and shock of this sudden, unexpected, absolute absence of light.  I could not see my hand right in front of my face.  It was as if my eyes stopped working.  I had to feel my way out of the room a step at a time frequently stumbling over machine parts and boxes of machine parts that were stored all over the floor.  Getting back to a room with windows was such a relief!  Even what little light I had was better than the complete blackness of where I had been.

   One of the theories about what Hell is like describes it as absolute darkness.  This is based on 1 John 1:5, which says that "...God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all."  I see Hell as a place where there is an absolute absence of God, and therefore there will be the absolute absence of light.  An absence of light worse than that awful deep darkness that I suddenly experienced when the power went out that winter night. 

   I know and know confidently that I will never personally experience hell, because Jesus Christ has saved me and the Bible promises me that I will spend eternity with Him.  If Hell is anything like those moments of utter darkness, I'd be really afraid to go there and it would make me get to my knees and plead with God for mercy.

   No one really knows what it is like to be in a place with the complete absence of God’s presence.  I've been in some pretty ungodly places in my lifetime, but even in the worst of these places God was there offering grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation to any and all who would receive it.  In the most hopeless of situations, God offers hope to all who call on Him.  There's really nothing that we have experienced or can ever experience that even comes close to the horror of being in a place with the complete absence of God’s presence.  What could be more hopeless than that?

   But,…..  But, nobody has to experience it.  That's the best news of all.  It's totally, absolutely optional, and anyone who ends up experiencing that dark, miserable eternity does so by their own choice.  God has gone out of His way to offer you that choice; the choice of eternal life and light or eternal death and darkness. 

It's up to you to make a choice.  To me, it was a pretty easy choice.

Stephen Cram                         January 16, 2011                                 Colossians 2:8