My Childhood and Hell

The question of 'hell'... Very few Christians are willing to study it in an objective way. They grew up being taught it in church. It scared them. As adults, it still sort of terrifies them in that it is what they were awaiting, but it really does terrify them for the people who are going to go there.

It is a critical aspect of their theologies. And because most were inculcated with it at an early age, before they could objectively consider it, then they largely cannot be exposed as adults to the fact that it is not an eternal place, and that there is no coming out. They believe that the sinner is put there to suffer eternally. But the Bible clearly teaches from beginning to end that hell is not eternal.

I know very much what the experience was like. When I was a child, me and the other children were taught  about hell in church. We were told the rapture was going to come, Jesus would take the true believers away.  We were told we better get right with God! or we would be left behind and an antichrist figure would take  control and start killing everyone! And even worse, if we did not turn to Christ, we would all burn in hell!   

I was horrified. I had nightmares. I begged Jesus every night to not send me to hell. 'Please let me die before the rapture comes, I cannot make it in the tribulation!'

Some evenings, the night skies were colored red, ominous to a child. I fear we would not make it home, my  family would be taken and I would be left to die.

And even as a child I knew strange things were afoot. I knew, thanks to my East Texas conservative  upbringing that there was a weasel in the White House. In the fall of '96 at a hayride, just after the election Gore-Clinton campaign placards were burned in effigy on a fire.

I remember the haunting of TWA Flight 800.. so many souls downed off the coast of New York City, their  faces haunting from the tabloid magazines.

At church, I never had any friends there. I spent nearly ten years of my childhood in that church and there is no one from there I talk to today. I hated them. I reviled them. A Sunday school teacher said I spoke to them with venom on my tongue. I hated them because I saw them for what they were, an exclusive little clique that welcomes no outsiders. My family and I were never accepted by those people and I hated them and their fakeness.

And this was a large church too. One of the larger ones in town. Easily several hundreds.

There was nothing about my childhood that would conform me to a Christian experience. All I knew is they  were fakes and they lived to scare people.

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As a boy in school, I was extremely autistic. I was practically insane because of my autism. But I was only  on the spectrum. In those days they didn't know what it was, the name Asperger syndrome only came about in 1994 and it took a decade before it started resonating as a major diagnosis.

The little world I created was an escape. It was the only thing I could do to respond to the events of the  world around me. At the school were bullies, who often didn't target me at once, but came and went in  episodes. When year I'd share a class with a boy like Kyle and he would target me. Other times Kevin would target me. And other boys. The teachers never made any effort to stop it. They were probably scheduling a teacher's rally or something for 'not getting paid enough' boo-fucking-hoo.

So I chose to withdraw as much as I could. But even then, they bullied me even stronger so I would withdraw even further.

Despite losing memories of much of my childhood, I remember a few brief moments of clarity when I started  beating the shit out of some of these kids for what they had done, and then getting sent to the principal's  office where I'd be put in a box for three days at a time or sent home and suspended. Funny, the only thing  the teachers had a problem with was self-defense.

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At 18, I was a senior, and that in itself is tough, finishing your last year of high school at that age. If you're 17, you're probably living at home and can't afford to be stupid. I had an apartment at 18 and I began inviting over potheads. I started smoking weed. It was therapeutic. And I had friends. For the first time in my life. I had people I could really talk to and say I shared interests with.

So I was thrown out of school, lost my apartment, and after staying with a friend for a couple weeks I went  back home. I was after a few months thrown out. So I drove my Chevy Malibu into town to embark on a period of living in my car.

All things considered, it was great at first, but later it turned into living hell.

It was such a living hell, I faced imminent imprisonment or death toward the end, or at least I felt that way.

I gave my life to Jesus Christ. And I was delivered from that.

That was in November 2007.

What I had to do from there, was read the Bible. I had to pray over it and ask for the meaning. I had to seek counsel. I had to study the words.

And what I came to find out about this 'hell' thing.. It's not what you think. You think people go there to  suffer eternally for their sins. That's not it. They go there to die. It may take ages for them to die out, I don't know. But they know what's happened. They see the life, the one life they had to live on earth, and in contrast, they see the life they might have had, the 'Lazarus in Abraham's bosom', and they know they are dying. And then finally, at the last moment, they breathe their last and they're gone.

I have to tell you guys, that is more horrifying than anything I heard growing up as a child.

I eventually in my late teenage years started to come out of that world more and more. I gradually gained  healing from much I had endured.

But the church, what it did to me as a kid, the years it took from me I will never get back. I never had the chance at a normal childhood and the church has a lot of blame to accept for that.

So I can relate to the young people who experienced this sort of brainwashing and scare tactics. But to turn this on God, for what these stupid moron Christians have done, is wrong. God didn't do this to you. People with low education, low IQs, did it to you and they thought they could 'scare' you into being good. And some of them are just flat out rapists, let me say that.

God had nothing to do with that. I hope at some point you can see that God does love you and He hates them even more than you do.

That Common Hell Question

As I have written here, my belief is that the damned will go into the ground and they are gone. I don't accept an eternal Hell and I might be open to some sort of amnesty policy whereby at least some of the unbelievers might receive salvation, some sort of apokatastasis. Then Christians ask me this question: If unbelievers can make it to Heaven without accepting Christ? Which I accept as a legitimate question. But I ask that you respect that I get to ask legitimate questions too. My question for you is this: If there is no Law, then why do unbelievers need Christ? You who argue that Paul has instituted liberty and grace and that we're free to eat bacon and ham sandwiches, you who say there is no Law, then good for you because now you have made Christ to be useless at best. There is no Law so there is no need for Christ so that we may receive forgiveness and salvation anymore.

(EDIT: Several weeks after writing because some of you are dense: If Christ died because many of you are rebels who eat ham sandwiches and sausage on a stick, but you say that it's perfectly okay to eat sausage on a stick and ham sandwiches, then you're saying Christ died for nothing at all. 'He meant well but he was deluded' in other words. Or some of you will try to be tricky and say He died just so we could eat as many ham sandwiches as we want. Hey that's a good idea, I guess we can all go around stealing from people and killing anyone we dislike too can't we, I mean since Christ already died for everything anyway, right?)




But you want your cake and to eat it too. (That's such a stupid cliche. If it's my cake, then why don't I get to eat it?) Your point is that there is a Law that judges people who reject Christ but then once you get saved the Law flies out the window and you don't have to respect any of it? Wait, I just remembered something. The (false) Apostle Paul said that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law. The Law is no curse, that is a flat out lie. Eating balogna intentionally in defiance of God's Law brings a curse. The German language is cursed too because of cologne, balogna, and colonel, they make no sense whatsoever, learn to spell. Either that, or Americans don't know how to read and we're cursed (I would say in fact this nation is already cursed).

But to get back to the point, why do you say that you sit in special category and don't have to obey the commandments but if an unbeliever does he reserves a front row seat in Hell? So your question is faulty because it uses an inconsistent rule.

Many Christians Roasting in the Fires of Hell

Let me start off by reminding those of you who read one of my latest message that I don't believe in a place of eternal torment. A common is why would God not send evil people to Hell, furthering the dichotomic view that the good go to Heaven and the evil go to Hell. The answer is because there is no Hell to send them too. The place of damnation is the place of final rest, no more no less. If you are counted among the goats on the left then you will be daqmned and it will be lights out for you. Your final state will be as that of compost, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah that the worm would not die. You will be in the ground and there will be no coming back.

But let's pretend for a moment that there is a Hell. It is completely apparent to anyone who has been paying attention for sometime that Christians are so gung-ho and chipper about reminding people that they are going to burn in Hell when they die. Especially when you don't accept their views on doctrine or perhaps on politics and who to vote for. So let me ask the Christians? How many of the people that you share pews and churches with on Sunday are going to be burning there? My suspicion is most of them are going to be damned. Your churches are filled with adulterers, fornicators, liars, slanderers, backbiters, and backsliders and you all forget about them don't you. I haven't been unfair in my generalization. When the medical professor points out that between you and the two people sitting next to you, between one two of them will not complete medical school, he isn't being unfair, however unpleasant the fact may be, but he is providing a warning by pointing out the truth. And I am not being unfair either, I am pointing out the fact that the church is not the first place to look for a message on the virtue of morality, although it could make a good defense of why you shouldn't live an immoral life since so many damnable people with every sort of  life problem are found there.

Again, how many people that you share a pew with on Sunday are among the damned? Until you call them out, no one will take you seriously, not even other Christians, except maybe for the bigots.

As I said in another message that we as Christians can be defined as being followers of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is disappointing to see how Christians, who are commanded to not bear false witness, can so believably assure you of something that is false and thereby lead you to believe a lie. They will lie right to your face whenever it is convenient, and I can tell many of them have had a lot of practice because they do it very well, that is, they are very believable.

Or how about the part about when they offer their steps to salvation or some other stupid observation on life. They have a lot of ways, they speak eloquently of their ways and their theories but very little of God's way. How Sunday after Sunday, endless messages are preached on Paul's very inconsequential epistles while very little reading of the words of Christ in the Gospels is done. I suspect it is because very few men actually know the true Way and know how that is reached.

Then the life which they offer is every bit of worldly satisfaction and privilege, the cheese puffs and twinkies, of the flesh which has made them fat, and of the spirit which has made them abominable. On one forum they criticized James David Manning who was speaking about the false ministry of a very well known TBN preacher. They said he was jealous of this "minister"'s wealth. We are not concerned with your wealth, we
who are speaking on the prophetic. It means nothing to us but a thing which is transferred from one hand to another, that purchases a thing which we might enjoy but then it is only fleeting. At some point in time it will be useless for much else other than as kindling which we may provide warmth to ourselves by lighting it aflame. Peter said "Silver and good have I none but such as I have I give thee," and he also rebuked the man who tried to purchase his anointing. This cannot be purchased and it cannot be sold. Karl Marx's mother said that Karl should spend more time accumulating wealth rather than writing about it. But for the true ministers, they are concerned neither with economic theory nor amassing a fortune. What God sees fit to provide us, we believe is that which we are entitled to or what we are worth, but in any case which He
has seen fit to provide. With that we should spend wisely and be a cheerful giver in what has been entrusted to our care. We thank God endlessly for that which He has seen fit to provide as we recognize we are all sinners of the worst variety and that we are no more entitled to what we have then the African overseas is entitled to it, (yet he lives without and you live with it, when there is not rhyme or reason as to why you do and he doesn't).

To conclude, I want to remind you that I do not teach of an eternal hellfire because, try as I might, I couldn't find any verses that taught that. But if there is, I trust God in His great might of wisdom and righteousness that many Christians are going to have a great number of seats reserved first for them, and secondly, for the people of the world. Theirs is a first-class ticket and their wealth and cheese puffs amount to nothing in my book because at the final disposition they will be condemned.

Atheists are right about Hell

I am a Christian but I do not believe in Hell. Many of my "brothers" if that is indeed what they are find this idea to be repulsive. There's nothing repulsive to me about Hell as much as it is unbiblical. The Bible does speak of the Lake of Fire but this must be understood in the vernacular of when it was said. A very grammatical-historical approach I think. Dispensationalists have trademarked this form of interpretation but prefer not to use it when it flies in the face of orthodoxy the same way Christians pick and choose what parts of the Bible they agree with.

Grammatical-historically, the lake of fire referred to was Gehenna, a landfill. When it is said in the Bible that the soul goes to Gehenna, or, the Lake of Fire, that is to say the person goes into the ground to rot and become compost. I can use an allusion to demonstrate this: When you throw away your baby diapers and empty Cheeto bags, which Americans are so well-known for since they have a healthy appetite with one head and no responsibility with the other, to borrow and alter a line from Reagan, they go to Hell. They go where the other heaps of trash go and that is it for them. No recycling reincarnation, no heavenly paradise awaits it, simply just a dump. That is what will happen to the souls of the wicked when the end comes.

Jesus said, "...that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Biblically, when read within context, you see that there is no lingering into eternity facing eternal conscious torment. Some have used the phrase conditional immortality which is what it is. If you are of the redeemed, you go on to eternal life. If not, then your life is cut off.

I lean mostly towards anihilationism. John Stott felt that those who hold to the infallible view of Scriptures could sincerely hold to this belief. Anglican theologians have come out in support of anihilationism and it is something that I think we need a frank discussion on, but we won't, because pastors hold to the mistaken belief that it will scare people into going to church. In fact, atheists have a lot to say about this issue.

Atheists argue that at the end of one's life, they go into the ground, they're done, poof, out of here. I've got news for you atheists: You are absolutely correct! You will be out of here, 'from dust thou art and to dust thou will return' [Genesis 3:19]. You will end your last days on this earth and then afterward there will be no more of you. Good riddance I say because some of you are the most awkward people I have ever dealt with, arrogant and way overestimate your own intelligence. You post these stupid little bumper stickers on your car, one of which says, "Come the Rapture We Will Have the World to Ourselves". (I don't believe in a pre-tribulation Rapture either and Christians are waking up to that lie too in my generation). Many of your own thinkers have shed light on why holding to a belief in an afterlife is for people who are too scared to face the reality of death. The atheists are not afraid, they say. Very good for you, good boy, we're happy for you that you're not afraid. Because that is where you're going. Yes, you are going to wind up much like Jimmy Hoffa, probably in a ditch that when Christ returns He will pave over with streets of gold, just like Hoffa allegedly wound up under the George Washington bridge. Many years from now, the beautiful flowers which arise from the compost of your decay will be enjoyed by young girls and boys as they run through the fields, make shapes out of clouds, and play with the animals of the earth, who will all live at peace with one another. Is that something you suggest we should be terrified of? There's nothing terrifying about this vision of the future at all. On the contrary I see yours as being rather bleak.

Voltaire, one of your great philosophers, wrote in Candide that Lady Cunegonde was traded between several men as a slave, finally falling into the hands of Don Issachar the Jew and the Grand Inquisitor. Candide kills Don Issachar and the Inquisitor and Voltaire writes that "His Eminence was buried in a beautiful church, and Issachar was thrown into the garbage dump." That is Hell. Your body will be cast to the ruinous heap and you will be done, just like Don Issachar.

In conclusion, I will end with a couple Bible verses.

Matthew 10:28 "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell."

That is to say in Hell, you die, and you are done. The soul will be killed.

Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death..."

If you die and you are one of the wicked, then you are done and gone.

Revelation 20:14 "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death."

You also see here, there is no talk of eternal torment. If you die as one of the wicked then you perish, you are dead.