IS THERE REALLY A HELL? – PART II

Sunday once again and here is Part II on “Is There Really a Hell?” Your feedback is always welcomed.

Revelation 14:10 says, ” . . . and he shall be tormented with fire and BRIMSTONE . . .” And Job 18 describes the ” . . . PLACE of him that knoweth not God” (vs 21), in verse 15 as, ” . . . BRIMSTONE shall be scattered upon his habitation.” Do you know what brimstone is? It’s sulfur. And do you know where sulfur or brimstone is found? INSIDE THIS EARTH! According to the book Volcanoes by Pierre Kohler (p. 43), when Mt. St Helens erupted in 1980 — 150,000 tons of sulfurous gas was ejected! Job is the oldest book in the Bible, written over 3,000 years ago, and yet Job knew what science wouldn’t know for years — inside this earth is BRIMSTONE!

Sheol (Hell) – It is the non-permanent place or temporary address of the disembodied souls of dead. It is not the grave or sepulcher, nor is it the eternal location of the souls of the dead. It is the same as the Greek word “Hades”, which we will look at in a moment. Prior to Jesus Christ’s resurrection, both the souls of the evil and the righteous went there after death. It is translated “grave” 31 times, “hell” 31 times, and “pit” 3 times in King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.

Sheol (or Hades) has two separate halves. One side was and is reserved for the torment of the evil, while the other side, called “Abraham’s Bosom” in Luke 16:22, was for the comfort of the righteous. There is and impassable canyon, or gulf, between the two halves. When Christ was resurrected, he led the righteous out of Sheol to Heaven. Many (probably not all) of the Old Testament saints were resurrected into their immortal bodies at that time (Matthew 27:51-53). Since then, the souls of all of the saved people go directly to Heaven when their bodies die. The lost people still go to Sheol and join the lost people of the Old Testament in torment on one side of the canyon when they die. The other side of Sheol formerly known as Abraham’s Bosom has been vacant since Jesus Christ led the saints within it to heaven after His resurrection.

The English word “Hell” refers to a place of eternal punishment for the wicked. Its meaning does not distinguish between the two separate places for the wicked to be punished, one temporary for the soul, and the other, the Lake of Fire, permanent for the soul and body. Nor does its meaning include the place of comfort for saints prior to Christ’s resurrection. In normal English conversation, “Hell” is used only in the negative sense, with no saved people ever going there.

This caused some inadequate translations of “Sheol” and “Hades”. Often these words are translated “Hell”, which, as just explained, is rather ambiguous and non-descriptive. In many other places “Sheol” and “Hades” are translated as “grave”, but the grave is only the place for the body after death, not the place for the soul. This confusion often occurs when the verse refers to a righteous man going to “Sheol”, such as men like Jacob, Joseph, (Genesis 37:35) and Job (Job 14:13). Of course, these men did not go to a place of torment, but to the comfort side of Sheol (Hades), called Abraham’s Bosom.

Hades (Greek) – It is identical to Sheol (Hebrew). It is the non-permanent place or temporary address of the disembodied souls of dead. It is not the grave or sepulcher, nor is it the eternal location of the souls of the dead. Hades is translated “Hell” 10 times and “grave” once by KJV. It is the place for the soul, not the body.

Gehenna (Greek, but originally from a Hebrew name) – translated “Hell” all 12 times in KJV It is the permanent place for destruction of the “… soul and body …” (Matthew 10:28). It is a place of “… fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:45). In most of the references, it is clear from the context that those who enter Gehenna, do so in their bodies, not merely as bodiless souls. For this to happen, it must occur after the resurrection of the damned at the great white throne of judgment. Therefore, Gehenna is the Lake of Fire described in Revelation 19 and 20. It is presently uninhabited, but the Beast and the False Prophet will be cast into it at the end of the tribulation (Revelation 19:20). One thousand years later, Satan will be cast into it (Rev 20:10) and will be followed shortly by the lost people of all previous time periods (Revelation 20:15). They will all enter Gehenna together, in there resurrected bodies, where they will remain in torment for all eternity.

The future destruction of the wicked is symbolized by the Valley of Hinnom to which Gehenna refers. It is a place south of Jerusalem where the bodies of dead animals and rubbish were taken to be burned. The Valley of Hinnom was also the site of much human sacrifice to the pagan god Molech (2 Kings 23:10, 2 Chronicles 28:3, 33:6, Jeremiah 32:35). The fire burned constantly in the valley since additional fuel was frequently being cast into it.

And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place” (Jeremiah 7:31-32). Here we see that in the Valley of Hinnom is a place called “Tophet” whose name means “place of fire”.

For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it” (Isaiah 30:33).

According to my understanding of the Bible, Hell is a place for persons who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  There are some, however, that do not believe in a salvation plan nor do they believe there is a place call “Hell.”  As a Christian, I believe in Hell and therefore, I have accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior.  Just suppose, however, that the “non believers” are right; that there is no salvation or Hell, then what have I lost being a Christian? Nothing.  But just suppose that the Bible is correct and there is a “hell,” then the non-believers have lost everything.  It’s all just a matter of choice.

If any non-believer desires to join the family of Christians and avoid Hell, the following is a suggested prayer.  All you have to do is to say a prayer similar to the following and you will be saved (see Romans 10:9).  If you make this decision, email me at rotay@verizon.net and let me know.  If you like, I can give you some information on what to do next.

Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner and I am sorry that I have sinned against you. I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died for my sins that I would have eternal life.  I invite you now to come into my life as my Lord and Savior.  Amen.

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A DYSFUNCTIONAL CONGRESS – PART II

Well Congress will be back in session after its five (5) week vacation and I would guess that the politicking and position jockeying will start again.  Actually, it started before the Republicans in Congress adjourned because they pulled a “parliamentary trick” to prevent President Obama from making any recess appointments.  They obviously hadn’t read Article II of the Constitution, Section 3, “State of the Union, Convening Congress.”  This provision provides, among other things, that the President “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend for their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.” As with everything, however, there are caveats such as what constitutes an “extraordinary occasion” and getting the Congress (House and Senate) to both disagree about the time of the adjournment.  But, in all fairness, the Democrats were guilty of similar parliamentary maneuvers during the Bush administration.  I guess all’s fair in love and politics, or is it?

In my view, one of the major issues that have already surfaced is the position that Eric Cantor is taking with respect to providing disaster relief for Hurricane Irene’s devastation.  There has never been an occasion in Congress where spending cuts were required before disaster relief is approved.  But spending cuts had never been required to raise the debt ceiling either and that didn’t stop House Republicans from creating a crisis that caused the Standard and Poor’s downgrade.

In case you didn’t know, Cantor has a history of calling for offsets in exchange for federal disaster aid.  After the tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri, Cantor said, “And also we see in the healing process that there is an appropriate federal role. Congress will find the money and it’ll be offset.” However, this same offset standard doesn’t apply to Cantor’s own district.  After the recent earthquake that was centered in Cantor’s district, he promised that federal aid would be given and did not mention a word about spending cut offsets.  In addition, after Tropical Storm Gaston hit the Richmond, VA area in 2004, Cantor appealed to President Bush and Department of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge for disaster assistance and even took credit for securing federal funds when they became available.   If that’s not being hypocritical, I don’t know what is.  This should not even be an issue and was never an issue under previous administrations.  This is just another Republican political tactic for trying to make McConnell’s pledge of making Obama a one-term President realized.

FEMA is running out of money and early estimates suggest that damage from Irene could exceed $10 billion.   Cantor and the rest of the GOP leadership in Congress seem to agree that more funds are needed but they refuse to budge until President Obama and the Senate agrees to more budget cuts.  Recently on Fox News, Cantor made clear that he would not support any additional funding unless matched with “savings elsewhere.”  Cantor also said on Fox that he supports $1 billion in disaster relief funding as part of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill which contains massive cuts to FEMA and first responders.

This past July, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) detailed the draconian problem with the legislation Cantor favors:  The House bill slashes funding for grants to equip and train first responders by 40 percent.  This is on top of the 19 percent cut in FY 2011.  The House defense appropriations bill provides $12.8 billion to train and equip troops and police in Afghanistan — yet the House provides only $2 billion for first responders here at home.  The proposal also slashes FEMA by 6 percent at a time when the agency has never been busier.  Does it really make sense to pay for response and reconstruction costs from past disasters by reducing our capacity to prepare for future disasters?

Cantor’s budget cut hang-ups have only been an issue under this President.  In fact, during the Bush administration, Cantor and the rest of the Republicans of Congress, supported the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and raising the debt limit five times without a penny in spending cuts.  Yet Cantor calls himself a patriotic American.  I sure hope that the folks in his district realize that he is not representing his constituency by trying to take America hostage once again.  You would have thought that the debt limit fiasco would have been enough.

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Obama Will Triumph — So Will America By Frank Schaeffer

I thought that I would post this because it was an interesting perspective and is consistent with by blog post on “Will Racism be an Issue in the 2012 Presidential Election?”  I think Schaeffer is “spot on.”

Before he’d served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds — including this white, straight, 57-year- old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter — are sticking with our President.


Why?– because he is succeeding.

We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama’s steady supporters will be proved right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe , the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left.


As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty website’s and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.

The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy”– snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office– none of which was his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries

# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral

# The worst economic crisis since the depression

# America ‘s standing in the world at the lowest point in history

# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war

# A health care system in free fall

# An educational system in free fall

# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans has done nothing)

# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left

# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration.

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk!

“Help” from the Right?

What did the 
Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists — that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office — do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed?

They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating “racist”, was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8.

They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon.

They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) “commentators” from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!”

In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!

“Help” from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they’d been “betrayed”! (Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how “disappointed” they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!

And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond. “Governing”?! What the hell does that word, uh, like mean?”

The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it- all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as
they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama critics’ ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas-say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office. Twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months — President Obama:

#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Restored America ‘s image around the globe
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”.
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

Other than those “disappointing” accomplishments — IN ONE YEAR — President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!

Who actually has failed… …are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for
this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned 
“news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.

Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good!

After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts — with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but sillylet the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was/is falling!!!!!

Just because we didn’t get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

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