I think I see his analogy.
On the one side, we have the Christ, who referred to himself as the ‘wine’ (oinos, in the Greek), or ‘good fruit of the vine’, which came to represent first Christ, then his followers.
To give Brian the benefit of the doubt, I’m pretty sure he meant ‘by raisins alone.’
On the other, the devil–and those who follow him to ‘hell’–with all the inherent properties of hell, namely torture, heat and flames.
Now, massive_attack’s offering was quite a flame against Christianity–slipshod and ham-handed, yes, but a flame nonetheless–and Brian stoked that fire by offering his own vitriolic fuel.
We understand that ‘hell’ bears properties of heat also–‘where the fire is never quenched, and the worm never dies’–and who is the ‘accepted’ denizen of hell? Why, ‘the devil,’ of course!
Now, we have Christ who ‘descended’ into hell (if we are to understand that he first descended into the depths for three days before rising again)–
So it is possible that to many who were/are burning for eternity, due to the constant irritant of sulphur and smoke, not to mention the eye-watering brightness of the fire itself, when Christ appeared they mistook him for the devil, as he did not burn like everyone else–and the only one who’d managed to be so flame-retardant up until that point was ol’ Scratch.
Now, returning to the ‘good fruit of the vine,’ meaning Christ and those who follow (whom we alredy mentioned)–
I stands to reason that the burning condemned were those who were not the ‘choice fruit’–unrepentant souls, cut off from the ‘vine.’ Bad fruit. ‘Sour grapes,’ to speak. And thus, these were remanded to hell.
What happens when grapes are placed into heated environs?
They dry out.
This is why I am convinced that though Brian said
I’m pretty sure he meant:
The confused, dried out ‘bad fruits’ mistook Jesus for the devil because they couldn’t see properly down there!
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Hey, you try staring into a fire for eternity, then looking away at someone.
Heck, go out and try it with the sun for two minutes, then look at your buddy and tell me what color his kerchief is!
Boy, it’s tough, isn’t it!
Ow!
Yeah, that’s hard to do.
BTW, it’s yellow.
