"The chasm between "heaven" and "hell" in this story does not seem infinite. The rich man, though dead, is not beyond the reach of love. All he needs is for someone naked and alone to seek him out in hell---a loving emissary of the naked God, come to liberate him from his own internal prison."
- Doug Frank (A Gentler God, p.302)
"Jesus once treated a crowd that had gathered around him to these cryptic words: "This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Ninevah, so the human son will be to this generation (Luke 11:29-30).
How does Jonah point to Jesus? Perhaps by spending three days in Sheol and then returning----a human son who goes to hell and back. When Jonah finally meets the Ninevites and warns them about God's judgment, he speaks with the conviction of one who has experienced that judgment----not as condemnation, but as salvation. He knows that hell's eternity is not literally eternal, and those who find themselves alone in their sufferings there are not literally alone.
It will be a cold day in hell before evangelical preachers use the story of Jonah to explain that "eternal" flames are not without end and that Jesus is present in hell. But large sectors of the Christian church have kept alive the strange idea that Jesus went to hell to put and end to its tortures."
- Doug Frank, pp.309-310).
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