Featured Hell . . . The Bad News.

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● Rev 21:8 . . But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers,
sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in
the lake which burns with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.

The koiné Greek word for "brimstone" is theion (thi'-on) which means sulfur,
which Webster's defines as a nonmetallic element that occurs either free or
combined esp. in sulfides and sulfates, is a constituent of proteins, exists in
several allotropic forms including yellow orthorhombic crystals, resembles
oxygen chemically but is less active and more acidic, and is used esp. in the
chemical and paper industries, in rubber vulcanization, and in medicine for
treating skin diseases.

Whenever sulfur is mentioned as a tool of judgment in the Bible, it's always
in combination with fire since sulfur doesn't exist in nature as a flaming
substance like lava and/or magma. Sulfur is flammable, yes, but then so is
an oak log and/or a lady's handkerchief.

One of the purposes for setting sulfur on fire is the fumes that it gives off
are quite useful for fumigation. Personally I wouldn't want to fumigate my
house with sulfur if perchance it might leave behind a rather unpleasant
odor. In point of fact, sulfur is one of the ingredients found in skunk scent
and we all know just how stubborn the odor of that stuff is.

I don't know exactly why God prefers using ignited sulfur in some
applications (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah; Luke 17:29) but one thing's for
sure: if the conflagration doesn't get you, the fumes surely will without
respiratory protection. Perhaps God uses sulfur as a means of sanitation;
with all those dead bodies floating around out there.

Perhaps the impoundment of fire and sulfur depicted at Rev 20:11-15 and
Rev 21:8 is some sort of super-lethal weapon of mass destruction; viz: first
the fumes terminate your life, and then the fire cooks your corpse. Pretty
grisly thought.

However, though the corpses of the lost will be cooked, they won't be
cremated to oblivion. According to the Bible; the dead will be preserved
as perpetual nourishment for a curious species of fire-proof worm. And
they'll also be on public display like the remains of those prehistoric animals
in the museum of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

● Isa 66:22-24 . . All humanity will come to worship me from week to week
and from month to month. And as they go out, they will see the dead bodies
of those who have rebelled against me. For the worms that devour them will
never die, and the fire that burns them will never go out. All who pass by
will view them with utter loathing.

● Mark 9:47-48 . . If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It is better to
enter the kingdom of God half blind than to have two eyes and be thrown
into hell; where the worm never dies and the fire never goes out.
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Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, a.k.a. the Milwaukee Cannibal (May 21, 1960
November 28, 1994) murdered upwards of 18 males. I won't go into the
grisly details of those incidents other than to say that he cannibalized,
lobotomized, dismembered, beheaded, eviscerated, and performed
unspeakable acts of necrophilia with their remains.

His primary motivation? Well; none of those murders were done in a spirit of
malice; nor were they kill-for-thrill murders either. His primary motivation
was actually very practical. You see; Dahmer was a lonely gay man plagued
with some serious abandonment issues. So in order to prevent his lovers
from dumping him, he simply killed them so they couldn't. His attempts to
lobotomize some of the males and turn them into love zombies did not turn
out well.

Now what really interests me the most about Dahmer is that it's reported he
became a born-again Christian while in prison. If that report is true, then
according to John 3:3-18 and John 5:24, Jeffry didn't go to hell. Well; I
wouldn't be surprised if a number of conscientious church-goers, who had
been model citizens all their entire lives; will be very resentful over Mr.
Dahmer's unqualified acceptance into the heaven they worked so hard to
obtain; and failed.
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● Ecc 1:2-4 . . Meaningless! Futile! complains the Teacher. Utterly
meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does a man gain from all his
labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.

The earth is dumber than a spatula; yet easily outlives its human potentate
whose IQ is infinitely greater. Take for example the great granite
monuments in Yosemite Valley. Tourists to the valley come, and tourists to
the valley go; and one day old age catches up with those tourists and
they're gone; yet Yosemite's great stones abide decade after decade;
century after century. Most children born this day will be dead in 100 years;
and those stones won't even notice. Though a child born today may be
intelligent enough to eventually understand orbital mechanics and string
theory; the stones-- stupid, mute, and uneducated --will easily outlast it.

● Ecc 2:15-16 . . I thought in my heart,: The fate of the fool will overtake
me also. What then do I gain by being intelligent? I said in my heart: This is
meaningless For the intelligent man, like the fool, will not be long
remembered-- in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the
intelligent man too must die.
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A corpse is called "remains" because it's no more sentient than a gas pump.
Corpses look like human persons; and that's because at one time they were
human persons; but that's over. Once the breath of life is gone out them,
corpses become no more a human person than a car seat.

When my father-in-law passed a while back, we all went to the hospital to
view the body. Well; I was very impressed that the frozen figure the hospital
staff brought up from the morgue on a portable slab wasn't my father-in
law, rather it was a wooden mannequin that resembled my father-in-law. He
was gone; and the rigid, stone-cold statue lying in repose before us was what
was left of him. Very disturbing.

Death is depicted in the Bible as a pit. But not a grave pit: it's a hole dug in
the ground to trap wildlife. In other words: a hunting device from which an
animal is helpless to escape.

In life my father-in-law was a war hero-- a pipeline engineer in Burma on
Stilwell's' Road and flew The Hump into China. He was also a senior vice
president with Safeco Title. But in death, my father-in-law was trapped and
just as helpless to do anything about his circumstances as a Rhinoceros shot
dead by poachers for its horn.
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The only hell known to be fueled by sulfur is the fiery impoundment
described at Rev 20:11-15. The chemistry of the material fueling
the hell depicted at Luke 16:19-31 isn't stated. However, it appears that the
rich man isn't afloat in an impoundment; but rather, warehoused in
something more like a large furnace where he's at liberty to walk around a
bit and chat with his neighbors.

Alighieri Dante's Divine Comedy depicts a variety of punishments. For one
thing: his hell isn't strictly fire. In point of fact, the very lowest tier is ice. On
a higher tier; people are inserted head down in socket holes bored in solid
rock. On another tier, people are being dismembered over and over again by
demons with big swords. On yet another, people are submerged in boiling
pitch. On another, a guy is pinned down on a path where people repeatedly
walk on him. On another tier, people are continually pelted by embers. And
of course everybody on every tier is stark naked and afforded no protection
for their skin whatsoever.

It wasn't Dante's intention to provide an accurate picture of hell; but to
illustrate the wish of justice to administer punishment that fits the crime. It's
a common complaint that hell isn't fair. Everyone pays the same no matter
what they've done. Well; I'm not so sure; because that wouldn't be justice;
but would in fact be injustice. I think it's safe to assume that some people
will pay more than others in ways we cannot even imagine.

● Ps 89:14 . . Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Thy throne
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● Gen 2:8-9 . .The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, and placed there the
man whom He had formed. And from the ground the Lord God caused to
grow every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food, with the
tree of life in the middle of the garden,

The tree of life doesn't give life; but rather, according to Gen 3:22 has
something in it that sustains life: indefinitely. Exactly how the chemistry of
any plant could be so rich in nourishment as to stop the human body from
getting old and falling apart is currently unknown.

A very active field of modern scientific research in our own time is
gerontology-- the study of the phenomena of the aging process. As yet,
gerontologists have no significant understanding of the aging process, and
therefore no clue as to what treatments, or nutrients, might be employed to
stop it.

The tree shows up again in the book of Revelation at 22:2. In the future, the
tree won't be utilized to keep the resurrected righteous forever young
because according to 1Cor 15:50-54 their bodies will be impervious to death
and the aging process. However; though their bodies will be impervious to
death and the aging process; to my knowledge they won't be impervious to
injury; hence, the tree's leaves will be utilized for First Aid treatments.

For really serious injuries-- e.g. broken teeth, dismemberment,
disemboweling, crushing, loss of an eye, and the like --Christ has already
proven himself up to the task of fixing things like that so people won't have
to worry about going through eternity handicapped and/or disfigured.
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● Rom 3:19 . .Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the
law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty
before God.

Q: Does that passage indicate that underage children and mentally
challenged folk are in just as much danger of going to hell as everyone else?

A: When Rom 3:19 is interpreted in context with Rom 3:9-20, it's readily
seen that the "the whole world" isn't talking about every person on Earth,
rather, it's talking about every nationality on Earth. For example: a Canadian
sinner has no advantage over an Australian sinner; nor an Israeli sinner over
an Arab sinner, nor a Mexican sinner over a Zimbabwe sinner.

In other words; the indictment is very broad rather than personal; and most
certainly does not condemn underage children and mentally challenged folk
because the wording of the indictment assumes a high enough degree of
intelligence for people to know what they're doing.
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During the 16th century, an Italian man named Niccolò Machiavelli wrote a
political treatise titled: The Prince. It's main theme is how to get power, and
once you've got it; how to keep it.

The book's instructions apply to all forms of power whether in business, in
government, the military, the mafioso, school boards, investment banking,
and even religion and church management practices.

You might be surprised at the number and variety of famous, respectable
people who've been influenced by The Prince, not only in the past, but right
up to the very present. Machiavelli's book, like Sun Tzu's book The Art Of
War, is timeless.

However; there's a hitch. Machiavelli's ideas work best when employed by
monsters, i.e. sociopaths: because it's necessary to sacrifice integrity and
conscience to make them work; i.e. it's necessary to become cruel,
inhumane, and thoroughly indifferent to the principles of trust, loyalty,
and honesty.

The word "Machiavellian" is in Webster's defined as: marked by cunning,
duplicity, or bad faith, i.e. not guided by, or showing a concern for, what is
right in respect to social norms and acceptable behavior.

In other words: it's not what's right that counts with Machiavellian
personalities; it's what works, viz: they practice a sort of moral flexibility.

The Bible describes heaven as a place of peace. I think it goes without
saying that Machiavellian personalities are not allowed there. For one, they
would make heaven unbearable for the decent folk. For another, they would
not fit in. And for another, their way of life would just end up turning heaven
into another Earth.
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● Lev 24:10-12 . . And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an
Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the
Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp; and the
Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name of The Lord, and cursed.

. . . And they brought him unto Moses: (and his mother's name was
Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan) And they put him in
ward, that the mind of The Lord might be showed them.

That incident is a pretty good illustration of the current purpose of the fiery
sector of hades. It's a place to hold people till the day when the mind of the
Lord will be shown concerning them.

● Rev 20:13. . Death and hades gave up the dead that were in them, and
each person was judged according to what he had done.

NOTE: Rev 20:13 is a record of things that the apostle John saw in the
future; which means they're on the way, and only a matter of time now
when they'll be seen in the present by everyone.
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The six days of creation are all bounded by evenings and mornings. The
seventh day is not bounded, i.e. the seventh day is an on-going day; viz:
God is still on sabbatical and hasn't created anything new for the current
cosmos since the end of the sixth day.

So then, babies are nothing new; they're just extensions of the one soul that
God created in Gen 2:7, viz: the "all souls" of Ezek 18:4 are simply multiples
of that one soul; which is exactly what Adam was instructed to carry out.
(Gen 1:28)

"In Adam, all die" (1Cor 15:22)

Well, all die because all were doomed to die when God doomed that one soul
to die for eating the forbidden fruit; viz: it only stands to reason that if that
one soul was doomed to die, then of course its multiples would automatically
be doomed to die too regardless of age, race, or gender.
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● Matt 25:41 . .Then he will say to those on his left: Depart from me, you
who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.

The Greek word for "angels" is aggelos (ang'-el-os) which is one of the
Bible's many ambiguous words. It means messenger; and it isn't limited to
spirit beings.

For example at Matt 11:10 it refers to John the Baptist. At Luke 7:24 it refers
to John's disciples. At Acts 7:53 and Gal 3:19 it refers to divine apparitions
in the form of voices, fire, smoke, earthquakes, and a human likeness. At
Jas 2:25 it refers to the spies that hid out at Rahab's home. At Rev 1:20-
Rev 3:14, the word aggelos refers to high-ranking church officers.

So, we have in view at Matt 25:41 not only spirit beings, but quite possibly
also human beings who serve as messengers for the Devil, e.g. preachers,
ministers, Sunday school teachers, Deacons, missionaries, evangelists,
cultists, etc; whose version of Christianity is a doctored version rather than
Christ's.

● 2Cor 11:13-15 . . For such are false apostles, deceitful workmen,
masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself
masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants
masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their
actions deserve.

I have a personal interest in this matter. My eldest brother is a Friar; he and
I are both now in our mid to late seventies. My brother has been spending
his entire adult life obedient to Rome and propagating Catholicism. If it turns
out that his version of Christianity differs from Christ's, then my brother won't
make it to safety when he passes on. His life's work will go up in smoke, and he
will be branded forever as one of the Devil's angels. That possibility does not
set well with me.
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