keys

Keys.
Locks.
Inclusion and exclusion.

Contemplate the lowly scrap of metal you call a key.

Seriously, come up with a couple observations yourself before you go forward with reading this bit of drivel.

We use keys for a very specific reason: to prohibit people from entering or using the locked object. Houses, cars, deposit boxes, guns, and lockers are reasons for a lock and key. We do not want those to be opened or accessed by anyone except those who we give the privilege of  owning the key. Those that own the key have all the rights to allow or disallow others access to the locked item.

If one does not make a copy of a key or share the key, then it is assumed that others will have no access at all to the desired object locked.

"Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." Revelation 1:17-18

Jesus holds the keys to death and Hades. Wow, take some time and turn your earlier observations about keys into applications about Jesus owning the keys to death and Hades... Satan doesn't have a copy, death and Hades are wide open, Cerberus is necessary to keep the dead inside, not keep the living out! Hades is the most INCLUSIONARY place ever created, while Heaven is the most exclusionary place ever created. The criteria for entrance to Hades is simple: did you live. The criteria for Heaven is incredibly narrow: is your name in the Lamb's book of life?

This is the last chapter in "The Story - The Bible As One Continuing Story of God And His People" and my review of chapter observations. And how fitting that God would drive the word "keys" into my conscience. As a pastor I was often asked if someone was in Heaven after death. It was most often specific: Aunt Jane, Grandpa, Billy. Now I understand why it was such a frustrating question: I don't have the key to that place. Jesus does have the key. I cannot know fully what is true in a man's soul, his connection to the crucified one, his transformation, his sanctification. I can only be a shepherd to those who choose to identify with the Lamb who was slain according to His Word. I cannot lean on my own interpretations.

Perhaps that is why I lean so heavily on the text of Scripture rather than theology or interpretations. Too much man, too little God. What does the Book say?

"The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into (Heaven). Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life." Rev. 21:27

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolators and all liars - they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." Rev. 21:8

At the end of the ages, after the final judgments, when Hades and death are depopulated of the redeemed and Jesus has claimed His own (those whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life) then the keys are brought out and Jesus locks the door of Hades shut. This I read. This I believe.

This is a truth that grieves me, for you dear reader. We have only this life to choose the one solution to man's core problem: sin. Once this physical life is over we are not just inanimate matter to dissolve and be reused by the scavengers of life. We are more, and you sense it in your soul. When the final key is used, which side of the gates of Hades will you be on?