The dire lake of fire warning message of Revelation is backed up in other scriptures. It incentivises a greater effort to get completely free, like an animal escaping a trap. The usual path of faith is to hear about Jesus and through his teachings, accepted in faith, to get to know him a little. The little knowledge of his promises helps to get free from the corrupting influences of the world around us. This little bit of freedom starts to show in how life is lived. The knowledge of the truth of Jesus grows to improve understanding of his teachings. Virtues start to form in the life of the person who starts to put his teachings into practice. It grows as his promises give greater freedom from the bad influences around. There might be experiences of the love of the Father, and gifts of receiving the Holy Spirit. The faith comes to fruition in doing great things through Jesus, greater and greater as the tiny mustard seed of faith grows into a large plant, when the faith is carried through into actions. The corrupt life lived previously diminishes. But then as interactions with certain kinds of people grow, the tendency is to be lured back into corruption. These are the false believers, false pastors, the ones who themselves were lured back and gave in completely, or simply those who speak without understanding and perhaps pass on bad versions of the truth. The words are corrupting but even more so these people’s behaviour. Now the truth of the lake of fire warning message of Revelation can intervene before things unravel too much. As too do other scriptures with similar warnings such as Jude and 2 Peter. The warning is that the ones duped by these false teachers, false believers, badly behaving Christians, can suffer the same fate as them. The lake of fire. This incentivises a greater effort to get completely free, like an animal escaping a trap. For some it can be enough. Deepening the knowledge of Jesus and his promises, and earnestly seeking to do works as he did and even greater than he did, this strengthens the resistance to the bad influences. But be warned. These influences, if they win even after grace has manifested as miracles and great works like Jesus’ own works, it can get to a point that there is nothing left as a life line. We must be earnest in adding to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness kindness, and to kindness love. If you stop pedalling, you fall off.
