Saturday, August 16, 2008

What is the bottomless pit?


2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. (Revelation 20:2-3)
What is this bottomless pit? Can you imagine falling into a bottomless pit? Falling..

down…

down…

down…

down..

down..

down…

down…

down..

down..

down…

down…

down..

down..

And never stopping?

I imagine something like at the beginning of the movie “Enchanted” when the girl falls into the well that just keeps going and going and going…

Imagine falling like that and never hitting bottom! If there was a bottom, then you could hit it WHAM and then start thinking about how to get out.

You hear of drug addicts and drunkards that eventually hit bottom and decide that they are going to start climbing out of the pit they have fallen into. Hitting bottom is about deciding you have gone far enough.

But Satan’s pit is bottomless. He likes what he is doing. His spirit can’t die and he can’t experience physical pain, because he doesn’t have a body. The only way he can be frustrated is when we decide not to listen to him any more. It hurts his pride. He hates being ignored. But he doesn’t deserve our attention.

I suspect we each have our pits that we fall into—bad habits, sins, faults. When we hit bottom and decide it is time to stop, time to repent, and time to climb out of them, we take away a little more of Satan’s power, add another link to his chain, and make the world a better place.

(Image credit - "Suzanne's drawings, photos and texts" blog, suesdrawings.blogspot.com/2007/11/bottomless-...)

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