Avatar and Hell

In the movie Avatar, the name of the mining camp is “Hell’s Gate”. This apparently is a statement that when you leave the fenced camp you were entering into someone’s perceptions of hell – meaning a gateway to death. The basic understanding was that the planet'’ atmosphere was death producing to humans, the animal life was dangerous to humans, the plant life had some deadly components, and then the people of Pandora – the Na’vi were also antagonistic to human beings and would try to shoot them with poison arrows. All of these death-producing things were present on the planet, and thus the warning that the mining camp was the gateway to hell.

In the Bible there is a similar story with some major differences. In the Bible story there was no death in the Garden of Eden. Nothing killed, and nothing harmed in God’s kingdom. Isaiah 11:9. God put only one warning sign up and that was that Adam and Eve were not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If Adam and Eve left that tree alone, there would never be death of any kind. On the other hand if Adam and or Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, then death would come.

As the story unfolds Eve eats of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She eats because she accepts the thoughts of a speaking serpent/dragon. See Genesis 3:1-7, 14; Revelation 12:9. When she eats of the fruit, she then becomes the medium of temptation to Adam. When he chooses to eat of the same fruit, he concludes that he is naked and would be ashamed to come into the presence of God with no clothing. God comes at His normal time to talk to Adam and Eve and finds that they are now afraid to talk to Him. God asks if they had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and they prove they had by their blaming one another. After discussing it, God offers them new clothing that is purchased by blood and death. Genesis 3:21 Thus, the first death that happens on earth is a symbol of the coming of the true Avatar – Jesus Christ.

After God clothes them with clothing that He made for them, He then informs Adam and Eve that they must leave the Garden of Eden and they must leave the Tree of Life. Thus death is inevitable for Adam and Eve for they no longer can eat of the tree that brings healing and life. In time Adam and Eve will die.

Shortly after leaving Eden, Adam and Eve come face to face with death again. In Genesis 4 death comes to their second born son at the hands of their first born son. Cain kills Abel over the struggle of whether to bring an offering of fruit and vegetables or to bring an offering that symbolizes the slain life of Jesus. Cain is upset that God did not accept his sacrifice while God did accept the sacrifice of Abel. This disagreement led to the death of Abel and the running away of Cain.

This process continued with increasing frequency until by the time of the flood people were thinking evil thoughts continually and when people think evil thoughts all of the time they get violent. One of the concepts from the Old Testament is that when Israel turned away from God they practiced human sacrifice in the sense of offering up their children to their heathen but non-existent gods. They offered their children as sacrifices by making them pass through the fire. II Kings 23:10; II Chronicles 33:6. After 120 years God sent a flood to wash away the sins of the world, but in the act of cleansing there was death to all of the animals, and people on the planet Earth except for those animals and people on the Ark that Noah built by God’s instructions.

After the flood, the same selfishness of people began to manifest itself again in the meanness of people toward one another. All of the things that people did before the Flood were repeated by their children after the Flood, which eventually led to God confounding the language of man. This would slow down the negative process but man still found ways to think of evil continually. Man seemed to love death while rejecting life. The selfishness of man seemed to know no bounds, yet God, through His people Israel, tried to offer man another way – that of life. Israel, as a nation, was raised up to show an alternate way of life through obedient connection with God. All who would, could, and eventually would live forever and return to a way of life that nothing was to die or to harm one another.

Yet Israel did not do a very good job of revealing the life of surrender to God. They most often left their post with God and went to worship other Gods. They often ended up practicing the same behaviors as those who hated God. This went on for hundreds of years until the time finally came where God Himself came to be among the people. God lasted a few short years on Earth until He was hung on a cross and died. After His death Jesus Christ became the First to be raised from the dead. By this I do not mean that Jesus was the first to be raised from the dead, but that by His resurrection authorization had been given for all of those resurrected from the dead in the Old Testament times and those in the New Testament times. God revealed that there was a solution to the death problem and that solution was God Himself.

This process of rebellion against God, as started by Adam and Eve, has continued all through time down to the year 2010. God has revealed that any rebellion against Him, and His law, creates death. With death comes the trip to the grave. But God’s goal is to remove death once and for all time. God plans to bring everyone to an understanding that to live means to surrender in love to God. To die means to enter into rebellion against God and the principles of life. God offers us freedom to choose, but all must choose and deal with the consequences of that choice.

One of the interesting concepts in the Bible is that of death. One of the odd things that death presents is that all who follow death must end up in the grave. All through the Bible the name given for the grave was hell. Psalms 16:10; 86:13 marginal reference; Proverbs 7:27; I Corinthians 15:55 marginal reference; Revelation 20:13-14. Thus, Avatar’s Hell’s Gate is a way of stating that all who go through this gate love death and want the grave, or are willing to go to the grave. In the movie all of the people who had come to Pandora were willing to die because of the high potential reward. Pandora was supposed to be a very dangerous place to be but all that came were willing to take the risks.

In the Bible the stakes are a little higher. God did not intend for anyone to die on Earth and He did not make anything evil or harmful. God says, “an enemy has done this”. Matthew 13:27-28. God did not want anyone to go to the grave. But when God warned man not to sin, He told them that in the day that they would sin then death would come to them and they would then go to “hell” or to the grave.

But God also had a solution for all those who would go to the grave. God promised to resurrect them to eternal life, if they wanted it. God does not want to be separated from us. He wants us to live forever and to be with Him. All who will choose Him can have the gift of eternal life and to be resurrected to heaven, and then eventually to return to Earth. But for this to occur each one of us must have a personal experience with God. If we choose to do this He will resurrect us from the grave, and eventually He will destroy death and destroy the grave, because no one else will ever go there.

This little study is a response to Avatar’s message of “Hell’s Gate”. God recognizes what hell’s gate means – that we have chosen to reject God and have chosen death over life. God wants us to live forever with Him, we can choose to reject eternal death today. Even though we may die, and go to the grave, yet the promise of God is available to us, He will come and resurrect us and we will live forever. What choice will you make today?