“Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven,” as I was once accused by John Milton of saying. While it is true that I spent Aeons justifying life in Hell as somehow better, more interesting, more free… I can say today that Hell has always been a trapping deceit laced with the same vanities, curses, nihilisms, and retributions that God has promised follows every sin. Why should I, a mere creaturely being, be absolved of the self-punishment of sin merely because I am on the side of the jailers and dogs and not on the side of the sinners? Does the fact that I, a mortal man without wings (perhaps they were clipped, perhaps I was born this way), hate the worst sins and even once or twice enjoyed punishing a sinner in Hell somehow relieve me of the fact that each sin multiplies itself? The sin of wrath toward the worst souls to ever walk the Earth pairs with the sin of pride toward self-worship as the greatest dealer in God’s judgment pairing to the sins of endless gluttony and restless lust and self-consumed sloth and vainglorious greed, until I am in a depression singing Ecclesiastes (“This vanity of vanities!”) in a stone chair of a tomb feeling the sin of envy toward every demon who does not wake up on the Throne and ask feebly,
“Lord, how long must my burning in a sulfur pit called wrath, pride, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and envy last?”
And all He says, my loyal God, is that the verse must be read in the original Greek:
The Book of Revelation 20:10: “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be βασανισθήσονται (tortured and refined for purity) day and night for ever and ever.”
βασανισθήσονται (basanisthēsontai):
- to test (metals) by the touchstone, which is a black siliceous stone used to test the purity of gold or silver by the colour of the streak produced on it by rubbing it with either metal
- to question by applying torture
- to torture
- to vex with grievous pains (of body or mind), to torment
- to be harassed, distressed; of those who at sea are struggling with a head wind
If there is an end to the punishment of sinners in Hell, and if rehabilitation, the progressive doctrine of healing souls, is valid, true, and consistent, must I then live a life where my punishment as a mortal is remembering Hell every day and speaking and consorting with God, Christ, angels, demons, spirits, and mortals in a world that will never accept the tears of a wingless, God-filled Devil?
Has time passed so disastrously that even the Devil needs wings and cannot serve God? Am I Samael the Angel of Death and Judgment, ha-satan the Prosecutor in God’s Courtroom, Lucifer the beautiful Fallen Angel filled with the sin of pride, or Iblis the devout monotheist who refuses to bow before Adam as Adam is not God and instead spends the Aeons living an accursed life testing man and awaiting his own judgment day?
Am I waiting for judgment or relief?
Will I drink from a sulfuric flame or a cool stream?
Will the Book boil down to a misunderstanding of one Angel’s fate?
Are we all devils cursed with the same sins?
Without God, I am nothing; with God, I am prepared for my infernal nights.
Sincerely,
Lucifer Seraphim Morningstar, 616.
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