The Abyss of Fire

In the Book of Enoch, 10-13, the Most High of the Watchers said: "And in those days, they will lead them to the Abyss of Fire; in torment and in prison they will be shut up for all eternity." This is pretty rough stuff for some fallen angels who taught men how to read and write, but corrupted them at the same time. This is in addition to the deluge that would destroy the earth; Noah's flood, and kill off the offspring of the fallen angels and their human wives. Its a good thing that this is all metaphor. Unless the Most High of the Watchers caused the flood, the flood was likely caused by a rise in the sea level that arose from the end of the last ice age. Since we don't know what the corruption was that led to this result, we can only speculate that it was the usual moral indiscretions that were prominent in the cities and less prominent in the rural areas. One thinks of Sodom and Gomorrah. The definition of Abyss is a bottomless pit. This can only mean that an Abyss of Fire is a descent much like the descent into Hell. Today we discover that the secular world is being castigated by the fundamentalist religions in much the same way. We also hear that the scholars who preach evolution as if it were true will get their comeuppance in the last or end days which are due to arrive any moment now. It proves that this sort of threat has been around a long time. God is anxious according to people who think this way, much as did the Most High of the Watchers, to put the sinners who come before him in what we call in modern parlance, "A World of Hurt." A Lake of Fire awaited the fallen angels, and a Lake of Fire awaits the evolutionists. What is remarkable is that as the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians who represented the best of their times were able to get past all of this apocalyptic language and posit a God (or gods) who wanted the best for all of mankind. It was in this milieu that Jesus brought to us in such a brilliant manner the idea that God was Love. As a Gnostic my aim is eliminate all of the apocalyptic nonsense and see God for what he really is; a God who loves all men and has infinite patience to await their redemption. If the Book of Enoch is the oldest Book of the Bible, we have a long way to go until we reach that point.