Salted with Fire

Heres a touchy subject we don't like to discuss much. I'm reading through the gospel of Mark the last few days....as much as we don't like to talk about hell , and we evangelize in complete discomfort that the topic would come up...Jesus talks alot about it. He talks more about hell, and more vividly, then he does about Heaven. Now, I'm not advocating you go around to your neighbors and friends and complete strangers and tell them all they're going to hell, please don't do that. I know people do that, I've heard it from others who've experienced it, and Ive always recoiled as I hear their stories. So I'm included this group of Christians who feel uncomfortable with the evangelism of preaching hell myself. But I can't avoid the reality that Jesus talks about it.....ALOT.

So I come across Mark 42, the temptations to sin , theres alot of talk about hell and he vividly describes it as a place where the "fire is not quenched and the worm never dies". On a side bar, he uses the word Gehenna to describe hell which some scholars say was an actual place of refuse in Israel (what the people considered trash). It supposedly was used for household garbage, corpses of criminals, and its even said that some kings of Judah would sacrifice their children there to foreign gods. It was a place known to have a continually burning fire and maggots....so its a good metaphor of a real place they understood in describing a spiritual place of eternal torment and separation from God. You can study up on it if youre interested. The strange quote Jesus uses is actually speaking directly of what the prophet Isaiah prophesied almost 800 years earlier in the very last book of Isaiah (66:24)

Anyways, this "fire is not quenched" was really standing out to me...then I get to what follows "For everyone will be salted with fire" (Mark 42:49)

And we know that salt is good for the believer! Its a preservative, and the gospels speak alot about salt. we're called to be salt and light. (Matthew 5:13-16)

So we're salted with fire?! So I'm really meditating on this line because I think its brilliant actually. How do we get this salt that we're called to have and be? How are we salty? (btw- did you know the word for salary comes from the word salt?) Have you heard the term "worth their salt"? salt was valuable is ancient days, and was actually used as currency. But we get "salted with fire"...and hell is full of "unquenchable fire".

So I do think that all of us, and it IS a blessing, experience a salting of hell...trials, tribulations, persecutions, effects of our sin, discipline from God. We are "salted with fire"...we are sprinkled with the refining fire of hell. But why? I think thats where our salt comes from, experiencing the salting of fire from hell while we're alive on this earth. We escape the unquenchable fire, the salt preserves us. It gives us a taste of the pain of hell and a reason to hope for a future where it doesn't exist., and its what draws us to the mercy and comfort and peace of Gods forgiveness.

"But if salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again" -Jesus

Perhaps this is why we face continual persecution when we become believers. We need the persecution, the reminder of what we're ultimately being saved from eternally...that feeling of being salted with fire. Its temporary...it lasts while we're walking the earth in this lifetime. But it doesn't carry over to eternity. It preserves us UNTIL eternity and God calls us home.

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4

So thank God for the pain and persecution and discipline while you're alive on this earth. Its good for us...it keeps us salty. Its not forever. Now, the "unquenchable fire" of hell....thats forever. So work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and make peace with God today. "Yield now and be at peace with Him; Thereby good will come to you."- Job 22:21