Care about people, however....

...1 Don't let them lead you to hell along with them, and this especially applies to those who claim they have "saved" anyone from hell.

2 Don't get too attached. Love and like, yes, but do not assume that you know how God will dispense another person's soul (including your own). Saying it so in someone's obituary does not make it so.

EVERYONE has plenty to worry about in their own salvation. Everyone has blood on their hands in this society. Beware of being smug and self satisfied.

Understanding hell

As a follow up to the previous post, about recognizing the consequences of disbelief and sin.

You can lead someone to hell.
You can be followed by someone to hell.
You can walk side by side with others to hell.
Whatever your companionship or "excuse," the result is always the same.

There is not a single person in hell who thinks that he or she "can handle it" and it's "not so bad."

It is the painful unbearable reality forever.

understanding Satan, another point re: angels

I hope the previous blog post was helpful. This morning it occurred to me that you might still find it difficult to understand how ex-lead angel, fallen angel Satan can lack comprehension of God's All Knowingness. After all, would not an angel know better than anyone? That is exactly my point: no, they do not. None of the angels comprehend God's All Knowingness since it is totally impossible to comprehend, by either angels or human beings! But here is the difference. The angels in heaven believe. They have total faith in God, which overcomes their inability, as created beings, to totally understand God's All Knowingness. Only God himself understands his All Knowingness.

You see, some "New Age" thinking has crept into the thinking of both believers and non-believers that once one achieves heaven, or nirvana, or "is one with the universe" that suddenly one "understands everything." You most certainly do not. No one has ever believed that until these modern technical times, where humans have started thinking of themselves as having the ability to "be anything you want to become" and to "achieve anything." Older humans were a lot more humble and realistic. They realized that going to heaven meant being constantly at peace in God's presence in paradise, NOT becoming God given "experts." So no, the fallen angels, the multitude that is unimaginable that are in heaven with God, and humans who achieve paradise through salvation do not at all understand God's All Knowingness. The difference is that the multitude of angels who serve God have total faith that he is the All Knowing, and humans who achieve heaven also have as their reward total faith and ability to believe with no question that God is indeed who he is, but the fallen angels recognize God, but lack faith that God is all that he really is. To use a modern term, fallen angels (and living humans) have a "mental block," an inability to comprehend God's All Knowingness.

Humans have that mental block as a condition of their being alive in a finite world within finite bodies that are limited (no matter how intelligent or "spiritual") by the neurons of the brain and the reality of the body. So humans are incapable of truly comprehending God's All Knowingness because they are in bodies and minds that can't grasp it. They can, however, develop marvelous and tremendous faith, in that way emulating the angels in heaven who believe because of course they are there and can see God all the time. It is important to cultivate faith because faith overcomes natural blindness. That is precisely the problem with Satan and those who follow him. Lacking faith that God is totally who he truly is, they have mental blocks and blind spots to understanding God's true nature and All Knowingness, even though Satan can and does, as we see in scripture, continue to be able to speak to God face to face when God allows it. Satan can look at God and obviously believe in his powers and obviously attest that God most certainly exists and is the creator of all (since Satan like the other angels saw it all), but Satan and the fallen angels are flawed not by being "born evil," but because they would not serve.... and service, in heaven, means having perfect faith!

Generations of humans have been saved and reach heaven based on faith, not on their ability to perform "good deeds." Without getting into that whole argument (that is based on misunderstanding plus a weakness of faith in God, ironically), the faith versus works artificial argument among some denominations is a similar lack of faith problem in God's All Knowingness. How is it that the poorest of the poor, those who are unable to do any "good deeds" such as "works," but have unshaken faith go to heaven (see the Beatitudes for the scriptural references) while at the same time, rich people with faith risk going to hell if they do not accomplish the very specific works that God expects them to do, rather than works of their own choosing (see Luke 16)? It all comes down to faith in God's All Knowingness. God knows the true state of each person's heart, soul, thoughts and purity of intentions. This is why a poor person unable to do any works but filled with faith will go to heaven, while a rich person who believes in God but thinks that he or she can pawn off certain works "good deeds" or "social work" with the intention that those are earned tokens toward heaven certainly risks hell instead. God knows before one even has the thought just how dumb a person thinks that God is.

So Satan must be understood in exactly that light-of being unable to understand, as we see in scripture, God's All Knowingness-to serve as the correct negative role model for human beings who wish to be saved. When you read the beginning of the Book of Job, if you understand what I have just pointed out to you in these two posts, now the scales will fall from your eyes and you will really "get" the Book of Job properly. Why did Job suffer so much? Because Satan, like humans, cannot understand God's All Knowingness, and constantly challenge, marginalize and test it, while the faithful, such as Job, do not lack understanding that God is All Knowing.

For more scriptural reassurance on what I am saying, read the sections where the mother of James and John asks Jesus that they sit at his right and left hand when Jesus comes into the Kingdom (which she of course misunderstands the nature of). But think about what the court favorites who sit around the king indicate. These are people who are near to the king, but not the king. These are people who are rewarded by the king, but do not as a result receive or have the power or the knowledge of the king. Everyone in Biblical times understood full well that even the people who achieve heaven do not receive "secrets" or gain God's knowledge, etc... they hoped for being in his constant presence.

And thus you can see that indeed happens for some as you read the Book of Revelation. John sees that a number of (unidentified) elders surround the throne of God, casting their crowns in front of him and worshipping him. If these are the few humans, the prophets and elders, who achieved such proximity to God, and they are still in the form of humans in their spiritual glorified bodies who glorify God all day, you have to understand that there is still that distinction between God and everyone else, both angels and saved humans. No one is "absorbed" into God's All Knowingness. That is a fake technology industrialized and now New Age affectation and false belief that has no bearing on reality since obvious physics of God and his created creatures belie that if you give it any thought, and the scriptures illustrate actual scenes and events that show such thinking is totally false. The difference is that in heaven, both angels and saved humans have perfect faith and know that God is All Knowing: a belief that the faithful have while on earth but have rewarded in the knowing when in heaven.

That lack, by the way, is one way to characterize humans who go to hell. No one who really, really, REALLY believes that God is All Knowing is stupid enough to do the things that they do, and think the things that they think, that ends them up in hell for eternity of suffering and punishment. Every chronic sinner (both of sins of commission and omission), does not, despite what they may say, believe that God is All Knowing. Again, a great way to improve one's chances of salvation is to have faith in God, but the God as God really is... because when you believe all there is to believe about him exactly as he has constantly presented himself to generations of the faithful and the chastised unfaithful, you in turn will have cascading changes in behavior and mindset that improve greatly your chances of becoming worthy.

Here's a mental image for you. Suppose that someone in hell was taken out of hell by God, put back in their body on earth, and "given another chance." What would happen? Your knee jerk reaction is to say, "Well, of course that person learned his or her lesson and that he or she will lead a wonderful life that is corrected from all bad ways." Wrong! The person who goes to hell, and then in theory gets a second chance at life, thinks to his or her self, "Ha! I knew the religions were wrong and that hell is permanent. See? I'm back." A person who goes to hell is permanently flawed, like Satan, in their lack of faith, so that even if God gave them mercy and through a miracle took them out of hell and gave them a second chance at life, the person would view that as another cornerstone to their lack of faith rather than increasing their faith. They figure if God "breaks his own rules," then the rules are bogus in the first place. That is why no one ever leaves hell, not even to give a message of warning to those who are in danger of hell themselves on earth (Luke 16). God in his All Knowingness knows that those who merit hell are incapable of increasing anyone's faith, no matter what mercy God bestows on them, since they have warped their soul into being incapable of having humility of faith, say nothing of conveying it to others still alive. How can you feel comfortable inferring this? Notice how even in hell the rich man expects the poor man, Lazarus, who is being comforted by Abraham himself in heaven, to be the one to bring him some water in hell. The man in hell is too darned arrogant and stupid to do something like pray to God for relief, even as heaven is opened up to him in this one time event! Luke 16 is a constant gold mine of understanding God's reality, faith, and the pernicious problem of lack of faith.

So yes, the angels observe and serve God all the time in heaven, and have perfection of faith, but this does not mean that they are now "extensions" of God, that they share in his All Knowingness, which is not possible. They do, however, have perfection of faith in God, as do all humans who are saved and gain eternity in heaven. This is one reason, by the way, for my Muslim friends, that in the Qur'an you read that God ordered the angels to worship Adam right after God created Adam. The angels are not worshipping Adam per se as the flawed vessel that all humans are by nature (even though Adam had not yet sinned) but the angels are paying obeisance to God's All Knowingness in his wisdom to create goodness. So the angels are not lifting Adam up, but they are acknowledging that they are to continue to have faith in, believe and honor the works of God.

Those who are saved have as their hallmarks either the simple faith in God of the good hearted and naturally humble, or faith in God that they have had to constantly work at, like a garden that is always threatened with weeds, so they look to the saints, and the read the scriptures, and they work, really work, at increasing their faith, not their works. Good works and what God expects of everyone in charity is a natural fruit of faith: it does not have to be artificially planned and managed like on a spreadsheet or a shopping list that has check off marks. If one works only on fear of God and increased faith, one will naturally heed God's expectations for their works as a result.

I hope you have found this helpful!

Understanding sin or "doing something bad"

Hi young people especially. It has been a while... I've not been blogging much (and not much that is cheerful) because I've been sad and upset about a friend of a friend's unnecessary death... and also some continuing really bad behavior I've been seeing and experiencing. So I've thought of a kind of spiritual lesson to think about today that is rooted in these past few days, and also one that I think young people need to better understand (since they've not gotten good data on this in the past!)

Bad behavior is sin; they are not two separate matters. This is a confusion that has crept into the modern mind and you young people get the brunt of the confusion regarding understanding God, and avoiding sin, as a result.

Let's look at an obvious easily agreed upon example and analogy. Suppose that someone murders someone else. That can be easily categorized as: bad behavior, a crime, and a sin. So everyone can easily understand that a murder is both doing something really bad to a person, but also a sin against God.

See, many people think that a "sin" is defined as breaking a list of laws or instructions that God has given you. If the thing is "not on the list" then people think it might be bad behavior, or uncouth, but not a sin. That's wrong and not Biblically accurate. No where does the Bible say that sin is the breaking of a list of specific laws given by God, and the rest falls into kind of optional "good" or "bad" behavior that does not "involve God" since it is person-to-person behavior. In fact, the opposite is true that all bad behavior including even thoughts but not follow up deeds ARE sins against God.

If you missed it, you can go back in my haphazardly organized blog ;-) and read my long commentary that cites scripture indicating that Jews and Christians have well understood from the very beginning that even having a mean thought about another person is a sin against God, not just a mean spirited thing against a fellow human being. I probably labeled that under "sins" so you might find it easily that way. So I won't repeat all that, but I cited much scripture regarding the explicit statement that even having a mean thought about another human, even if you don't actually follow up on it, is not only a mean spirited and unrighteous feeling to have, but also an actual sin and offense against God himself. So yes, every mean thought, say nothing of actual follow up bad behavior, is a sin against God, even though common modern thought assumes that it is "just" poor behavior and lack of self control or "spirituality."

So here is where you get into very tricky territory indeed. If you pick on someone, or scorn them, or otherwise torment them, such as stalking and bullying, even if you are not breaking a "Biblical law" or Commandment or committing a human "crime," you are committing a sin directly against God. There are two Biblically cited ways that one can understand why that is.

The first reason is that avoiding sin is not a matter of do's and don'ts, but the maintenance at all time of a righteous mind. Throughout the Bible there are numerous explanations that all humans are sinners, but it is the righteous who are saved. Righteous is not defined as someone who dodges a list of sins. A righteous person is one who strives ALWAYS to do and to think/feel only what is Godly, pure and correct. When one walks in righteousness one does not "do good deeds" but have a mind and a heart like a sewer. Righteousness is a lot like the old fashioned concept of being "honorable." This is why in Revelation 21 you see, depending on the translation, that God through Jesus Christ at the End of Times states that "dogs" or "the fearful" or other translations of kind of craven sorts will not be in heaven. I blogged about that too, recently, that God does not mean that four footed canines are denied heaven but that "dog" is a widespread ancient cultural concept for humans who act dishonorably or who are dishonorable. Someone who thinks something dirty in their mind about a child he or she sees, for example, is a
"dog" and craven, and even if the person does not follow up that thought with actual molestation, they are guilty of that sin.

So to summarize the first way to understand the enormity of the problem to maintain a state of not sinning against God, remember that sin is not simply refusing to heed a stated prohibition in the Bible but is being un-righteous in any way at all, both in the commission of un-righteousness, but also in the thoughts or feelings of it AND, further, deliberately avoiding chances to be righteous. That is why some translations of Revelation 21 include the word "fearful." Those who are fearful to be righteous will not inherit their place in heaven and will, instead, go to the lake of eternal fire.

The second Biblical way to understand how crucial it is to not sin against God by behaving badly toward other human beings is to understand that God stated that he created men and women "in his image." When one torments another human being through bullying, for example, one is mocking and degrading a person who is created, like everyone else, in God's image, just one step below angels. No matter how ugly or unpleasant that you think the person might be, having that thought falls in the category of un-righteousness, and hence a sin, because you are being 1) uncharitable, which Jesus repeatedly said is a requirement of his saving grace and 2) you are mocking something that God has created. A human being may have a bad hair style, but that human being's body and dignity is created by God. There is a huge difference (and that is called "sin") between thinking that a person has a bad haircut that does not suit them, and is even a bit funny (but humorous through kindness) and having degrading thoughts about that person, which is mocking God's creation and a sin. Skin color, as in racism, ought to be another obvious example, one much more serious than the haircut example (though the cruelty of these times regarding a person's appearance is astonishingly destructive and thus serious). Blacks who hate whites and whites who hate blacks are committing individual sins with each and every thought and deed generated by that un-righteousness, since God is neither black nor white, but all are created in his image.

God will not be mocked, as St Paul warns in the scripture. One mocks God not only directly, by making fun of God or attempting to degrade Him, but one also mocks God by tormenting and mocking one of His creations: a fellow human being. Beware of this because hell is getting packed, yet there is always plenty of room.

More about demons, sin and temptation

Following up on previously discussed material with a bit more detail of "how it works" using analogies, of course.

When thinking about demons and devils, remember two things. They are not fallen angels, who are confined to hell (only Satan can wander, not the other fallen angels). Also, they are not life forms created by Satan. Only God can create life in any form, including life forms we may consider "bad." But God did not create demons, although he allows them to exist as the consequence of human's continual accumulation of sin.

There's an old country saying "Hell's a popping." What that means is that hell is so active that it is exploding in a spewing type of way, like popcorn exploding from a heated container to escape. Another analogy is when a volcano erupts lava spews out of it, both flowing but also viscous globs of it fly through the air, landing with burning force on whatever it hits.

Demons and devils are like the hunks of spiritual evil, like lava, that is spewed from hell. So they are "globs" of hell evil combined with the accumulation of unrepentant and unforgiven sinners in hell, plus all of the sins that have ever been committed, which are also consigned to hell. Remember there is no sin in heaven. While God forgives sin through Jesus Christ as if it never happened, that means the soul is restored pure; it does not mean that the sin itself or its harm to others never happened, of course. God does not erase time or the consequences. So when he purifies a soul before it goes to heaven all sin is shed and dropped into hell.

This is why hell emits three things: demons (devils), temptation, and sin.

But one cannot blame hell's emissions for making one be tempted or sin. Think of the volcano analogy. If the blob of burning lava flies through the air and hits water, it steams but is harmless and cools to rock. If the blob hits rock or other inert ground it also cools and turns to rock. But if it hits the roof of a house it might burn the house down, and if it hits a person, it could burn and kill the person from either impact or being on fire.

That is how it is with sin and temptation. If it hits something "inert" there is no impact. But if it hits something (someone) who is predisposed to be weak to sin, it impacts and "takes hold" of that person. This is what Paul meant by being "dead to sin," which we discussed previously. Someone who is dead to sin is also dead to temptation. When hell spews sin or temptation it does not take hold of such a person, as that person is like the glob of lava hitting the bare ground or the water. The temptation and sin "lava" blob does not stick, does not adhere, and instead is rendered harmless by turning into rock. But someone weak to temptation or sin is like a house with a flammable roof, or the person who stands unprotected outside during an eruption, waiting to get hit.

So the spew from hell is all of the same substance but has as you can see increasing impacts, just as if the glob is small, medium, or large. Small globs are temptations. They can be felt but resisted. Sins are medium blobs, where the person does not resist the temptation but commits sins, both minor or grave. The quantity and degree of sin can be thought of as the damage done to the house or the person due to burning. Then the worst of all is the impact of hell spew that becomes a resident demon. As I cited previously in Bible study this is very rare and because it is rare the Gospel authors made great note of Jesus' cure of those with demons, singling them out for specific recording.

People tend to exaggerate the number of demons abroad in the world (very few) and minimize their own receptivity to the small and medium spew of hell, which is temptation and actual sin. Much of what people attribute to demons or "devils" is actually their listening to and being receptive to temptation and sin that is of hell but not demonic in nature.

Think of hell as the giant library and storage facility for all of the sins that have ever been committed. That should scare you straight if nothing else does, as no one would want to be doomed to live in torment eternally within the inventory of every single sin that has ever been committed. I explain this so that you realize that everyone's sin harms everyone else as it simply builds not only a living culture of sin on earth that promotes temptation and sin, but also continually "adds" to the inventory of every sin ever committed in hell. While hell is sealed off from heaven, of course, and also does not have free access to earth, it does emit its malevolence back to earth from which much of it came. Satan moves about trailing behind him a train of potential sins and temptations. People who are pure of mind and deed tend to not even notice. Others stop to "look" and "listen" at what temptation and sin "wares" that Satan has on display for them. Thus a culture that specializes in a particular type of sin adds many examples of that sin to hell, and then finds that in a feedback loop, Satan is more than happy to drag along behind him as he travels earth some examples for further consideration. This is why it is a vicious cycle. Humans, sadly, seem to only become less holy, not more and, further, they add to the repository of sins all that time, that then echo back into the current time.

I want to address two New Age obsessions as if any of you are still prone to believing them, they will be easier to refute and discard if you think about what I said. One is that many New Agers think there is some sort of celestial "book" of wisdom in the sky, and that "adepts" can access it. That is wrong because there is no matter, energy, time or other temporal knowledge in heaven as God is all knowledge and heaven exists through his continual emitting of his core being. There is no need nor is there the physics of having a place of "reference material" in heaven. However, here is the problem. One of the greatest temptations for false prophets (and well meaning followers) is the classic "having a secret source of arcane knowledge access" temptation and it is all of those past believers that they have some "secret lore" that resides in, yes, hell, that people tap. In other words, all of the sins of occult and other inappropriate study and the temptation to do it are all residing in hell. Each generation raises up people who are certain that they are the ones who "really, really, really" "access" all of this supposedly celestial knowledge, but they are just, like children playing dress up, dragging out of the trunks of hell the discarded clothes of temptation and sin to believe in having "secret," "spiritual" access to the "books" and "records of what had been and will be" etc. etc.

This is why when you first heard that type of idea (maybe while smoking pot), you thought, "Wow, a book in heaven with everything recorded there. That makes sense." It "makes sense" because it is a generation after generation temptation of hubris and pride with a huge repository of those sins ready for you to be tempted by and emulate from hell. That sense of familiarity and that this notion could possibly be logical thus, through temptation, overrides real common sense which would tell you that God and the angels have no need for any books or records at all.

The second New Age idea that you can better understand and refute is the idea that so called "aliens" have anything to do with human beings. They do not. Again, when people theorize and even state as a fact that aliens have a karma, reincarnation or spiritual relationship with humans, that is because that person is responding to the "something is out there" instinct, but that "out there" is, well, no nice way to put it, hell. People who believe that aliens have an influence on humans are those who have the biggest ears toward hell and that particular line of temptation. It's related to the first temptation of having "access to heaven's books" but different because it's more a temptation of "it's not my fault that bad things happen; it's the bad aliens" and those sins, while the first is more the sin of false prophecy, pride and hubris. (Trying to reduce the grandeur and all knowing of God as if he would have a book with spiritual lore laying around for those really special people to access). As we all know the book of God is those who are saved, who are written in it for saving. That does not mean it is a literal book anyone can read any more than when Jesus says that some people are wheat and some chaff that if you had a DNA test you are either the grain or the leaf. I mean, duh.

Here is another way to better detox from the alien myth. Notice that humans are tempted by the same old sins relating to being human. I mean, have you noticed that humans are never tempted to act like a "bad wolverine" would act, or tempted to commit some sort of interspecies fraud? I mean, people do not in general run around being tempted to construct robotic birds to disrupt mating seasons and survival of a particular bird species. People may be tempted by gluttony (shoot all the birds for food until none left), but people are not tempted to act the way a "sinful parakeet" might act if animals were capable of sinning. Likewise no humans feel "alien" temptations. If aliens exist (and God has wisely made a vast universe that, science fiction aside, no one need worry about every encountering any aliens at all.... in fact I seriously doubt that humans will every leave the solar system in space flight before the End of Days, actually) they have their own biology, mentality and sin profile. If humans had even the smallest amount of spiritual so called contact with aliens they would know what their sin profile is more surely and more quickly than knowing how to say "hello" in their language. Why? Humans sure pick up sin faster than anything else. So this is a way to logic through genuine science and philosophy, forget even being religious, to reason through that if aliens had been "spiritually" among humans there would be a very strange eruption of mental illness that is totally incomprehensible since humans would be feeling alien temptations and sins that are totally outside the realm of human understanding.

I've explained this before regarding reincarnation that, with all respect of the traditional faiths who believe in it, if you only think about the problem of animal and human instincts one would realize that reincarnation would never have evolved because it is antithesis to survival, not beneficial to survival. Butterflies, bees, bats, salamanders, dogs, cats, whatever the animal, they survive as a species because they have the genetics, parental learning and instincts that their species needs. If a butterfly had residual "reincarnation" "memory" of eating dog food that would sure be a problem. So through sheer science and logic one can rapidly and totally refute any notion of interspecies "reincarnation." That belief was simply the way those cultures had where wise men taught the young that if they lived bad lives they would come back in a reduced state as punishment, and that is what they envisioned. Not knowing science and evolutionary realities, of course, they had no way to realize that blackbirds could not exist if they subliminally had a "reincarnation" "memory" of eating pasta with spaghetti sauce, and thus stopped looking for their natural food. You must combine kindness, in understanding that people of different cultures tried to reason their way through a "survival and subsistence" level worldview before they even knew of the existence of simple things like germs, genetics, and the evolution of complex life from simple life over millions of years: facts we all know now (or at least should, assuming you have stopped with the pot and cutting school) with being truthful, even if the truth hurts.

So to recap what we have discussed, recognize these points:

1. Satan and hell cannot create; only God can create life.
2. God allows humans to suffer the consequences of their own temptations and sin.
3. Even when God forgives sin and washes the soul clean as if the sin never happened, that means the soul is clean as if it never happened; the sin, of course, did happen and continues to resonate in the consequences in life and also in the repository of hell.
4. Only Satan is free to roam among humans from hell, the other fallen angels reside in hell at all times. Demons are eruptions of tempting, sinful and chaotic energy from hell, fueled by human's own patterns of sin, since hell is where all stain is discarded, either attached to the damned who are unforgiven who go to hell, or shed from those whom the Lamb has washed clean and who are saved.
5. Eruptions from hell are not even felt by those who are, as Paul puts it, "dead to sin." Temptations do not even enter the mind of such people, even when placed directly before them. That is what people need to strive toward.
6. Those who are, like the vast majority of humans, unable to be completely dead to sin feel the occasional temptations put their way as eruptions from hell that they can either ignore or allow to stick and thus sin. Thus those who live in a society that pushes one or more particular forms of sin have the double challenge of not only being pressured by that society to sin likewise but also more sensitively feel the temptation of that societal sin by all who have gone before them and who have discarded that still active form of sin in hell, which can and does erupt.

For example, with point number 6, here is how to understand what I am saying. Suppose someone lived among a political system that uses genocide. There is the temptation to preserve one's life and also to gain power by joining in with that genocidal mindset. That is practical, earthbound temptation. At the same time, however, such a person might be sensitive to all those who have performed a genocidal accommodating sin before him or her and who are now either in hell for their sins or are forgiven, in heaven, but their stain and sins are shed into hell. So some people are tempted both by the realities of their day to day existence, but also feel the temptation of spew from hell of those who "solved the problems" using the same sin that one is tempted by in the current timeframe. This is the cumulative and corrosive effect of sin, both on earth as societies structure themselves to accommodate more and more sin, and as hellish spew, as more and more people and instances of sin fill hell to bursting with historical pressure and temptation legacy. Satan, even without trying, drags such samples from the warehouse behind him as he roams the earth: past models of sin and temptations for people to follow once again in the current time, rather than shun, as one considers what happens in consequence.

7. When those in occult or other New Ages or marginal beliefs "feel" the "rightness" of their "worldview," often they are "feeling" the weight of "truth" alright, but it is the truth of what has happened in a bad place in the wrong way, which is the patterns of past sin. Because they "feel" the "rightness" of their "adept" "readings" they confuse correctness as in, yes, people have had these same thoughts and beliefs before and acted upon them, with being correct in their perceived spirituality, which they are not. Just because one thousand people before you believed in the planet named Dingbat made out of marshmallows, and you "correctly" "pick up" that one thousand people believe in the marshmallow planet Dingbat, does not mean that the planet exists.

I hope this helps, though I feel like a broken record.

(5) Understanding hell, demons and sin

Back to the Qur’an inventory of mentions and explanations or descriptions of hell:




17:97 And whomsoever Allah guides, he is the follower of the right way, and whomsoever He causes to err, you shall not find for him guardians besides Him; and We will gather them together on the day of resurrection on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf; their abode is hell; whenever it becomes allayed We will add to their burning.

This is an example of Gabriel speaking about God in the first half of the sentence, and then shifting into being God’s voice (we can identify that when the imperial we is used) in the second half. Gabriel is explaining that God is the guide of both those who believe and are righteous, and that he is the defacto guide of those who disbelieve and err, simply because there is no one else but God. So those who believe in false gods still have not found any other “guardians besides” God. God remains the guardian and guide of those who err, sending them opportunities to convert and repent, and eventually guiding them to fall into chastisement through their own consequences of their unrighteous actions.

Then in the shift to hearing God’s own words God states that incorrigible unrighteous, unjust and unbelieving sinners will be gathered as a group on the final day, where they lose their earthly senses as the reality that what they have ignored from God they will now lose in truth in all ways, and then they are cast into hell. God understands how bluntly that humans need to be spoke to, which is why he adds that even if it feels like the pain of hell lessens or is even imagined to be bearable, he will turn up the heat. This does not mean that hell is ever bearable, even though of course it must be since one is stuck there and must endure the unendurable forever. God is using an imagery that he knows will drive home the point that one can never “adjust” to being in hell.

I want to show you the next sentence even though it is not another mention of hell because it is very informative about God.

17:98 This is their retribution because they disbelieved in Our communications and said: What! When we shall have become bones and decayed particles, shall we then indeed be raised up into a new creation!

See, God is explaining that those people who go to hell are punished because they do not believe in the good news of God’s realm of heaven, of the resurrection of the dead at the end of time, and the new life that believers receive after death and after the end of time. Disbelievers do not believe in God, in his power to judge, and thus by implication, they therefore do not believe the good news either, of life in paradise for the righteous. So God is voicing here with some sarcasm but lots of experience how such pagan, sinning or unbelieving humans scoff at God’s delivery into paradise from death the righteous and instead believe in their own nihilistic or fantasy cosmos, or just that death is the end and that is that, and there is no judgment, accounting, new life for the righteous, or punishment for the unjust.

18:29 And say: the truth is from your Lord, so let him who please believe, and let him who please disbelieve, surely We have prepared for the iniquitous a fire, the curtains of which shall encompass them about; and if they cry for water, they shall be given water like molten brass which will scald their faces; evil the drink and ill the resting-place.

The Qur’an explains, as we have seen previously, that the liquid of hell is molten rock with no water in it. The Bible agrees because St. John the Apostle and Evangelist saw the “lake of fire” into which hell is cast in his heavenly vision of the end of times in Revelation. This passage reiterates that humans have “free choice” to do what they “please,” but that they must be aware that hell is already in existence, and the disbelieving and unrighteous will be cast into it, and that very graphic description follows, in God’s voice.

20:74 Whoever comes to his Lord (being) guilty, for him is surely hell; he shall not die therein, nor shall he live.

Gabriel explains that the guilty in hell are neither completely dead, and thus at peace, nor are they fully alive, as then they would be in eternal life in heaven. Instead they retain enough awareness to be eternally punished.

Whenever there is one of these grim mentions of hell, the Qur’an almost always has a contrast of what the righteous can expect, and this is no exception, as the next passage is this, as an example.

20:75-76 And whoever comes to Him a believer (and) he has done good deeds indeed, these it is who shall have the high ranks. The gardens of perpetuity, beneath which rivers flow, to abide therein; and this is the reward of him who has purified himself.

Notice the just and the true believers who achieve the gardens of heaven are described as being “purified.” This is another example where the Bible, most closely followed by Catholics in this regard, and the Qur’an describe those in God’s presence as having been purified (even though they are already righteous) in some way. Catholics view it as a process performed by God called purgatory as they interpret scripture in that regard. Muslims understand purification as something that is a result of following God’s instructions in certain things such as the washing of the hands and feet before prayer (and the Qur’an says that if no water is available that sand will do, that it will also purify.) I point this out so you can see that there is enormous agreement in scriptures in concepts such as a process, even if that process differs in method and interpretation, of purification.

21:29 And whoever of them should say: Surely I am a god besides Him, such a one do We recompense with hell; thus do We recompense the unjust.

That one speaks specifically of those who equate themselves with God by being idolaters or claiming that they have some divinity, power sharing or equivalence with God.

21:98, 100 Surely you and what you worship besides Allah are the firewood of hell; to it you shall come. For them therein shall be groaning and therein they shall not hear.

22:19-21 These are two adversaries who dispute about their Lord; then (as to) those who disbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire; boiling water shall be poured over their heads. With it shall be melted what is in their bellies and (their) skins as well. And for them are whips of iron. Whenever they will desire to go forth from it, from grief, they shall be turned back into it, and taste the chastisement of burning.

Remember this is not prophecy but a chilling (no pun intended) reporting of what occurs for those already in hell. The demonic forces contained in hell are pretty much free to do whatever horror they wish upon the damned who reside there.

23:103-108 And as for him whose good deeds are light, these are they who shall have lost their souls, abiding in hell. [By “light” here means few in number or of little real generosity]. The fire shall scorch their faces, and they therein shall be in severe affliction. Were not My communications recited to you? But you used to reject them. They shall say: O our Lord! our adversity overcame us and we were an erring people: O our Lord! Take us out of it; then if we return (to evil) surely we shall be unjust. He shall say: Go away into it and speak not to Me.

25:11-12 But they reject the hour, and We have prepared a burning fire for him who rejects the hour. When it comes into their sight from a distant place, they shall hear its vehement raging and roaring.

Obedience and belief in God cannot be “delayed” or scheduled at the time that the person “feels like” finally acknowledging God: those who reject the “now” of God’s rightful respect will see for themselves hell.

25:65-66 And they who say: O our Lord! turn away from us the punishment of hell, surely the punishment thereof is a lasting evil. Surely it is an evil abode and (evil) place to stay.

This is part of a passage that explains that those whose goodness and worship of God match their ardor in asking to be spared hell will be saved, however those who continue evil, particularly also calling upon other gods to save them, will be cast into hell.

29:54-55 They ask you to hasten on the chastisement, and most surely hell encompasses the unbelievers. On the day when the chastisement shall cover them from above them, and from beneath their feet; and He shall say: Taste what you did.

This is about unbelievers who demand from the prophets before Mohammed (such as Moses), “proof” of God’s punishment before they will repent and believe; this is why they are in a way “asking for chastisement,” which then they will not like when they receive it.

32:13-144 And if We had pleased we would have given to every soul its guidance, but the word (which had gone forth) from Me was just: I will certainly fill hell with the jinn and men together. So taste, because you neglected the meeting of this day of yours; surely We forsake you; and taste the abiding chastisement for what you did.

This passage means that God could have forced every soul to believe by imposing “guidance” upon everyone, but his justice is to give free choice to humans (his “word,” to give free choice, is “just”). Thus those who choose to be against God will be in hell with the demons.

32:20 And as for those who transgress, their abode is the fire, whenever they desire to go forth from it they shall be brought back into it, and it will be said to them: Taste the chastisement of the fire which you called a lie.

Those who deny the existence of hell and of the deeds that will place them there will taste the chastisement of the fire of hell in person, and each time they try to evade punishment in hell they will be reminded that they did not believe in hell.

Many more citations about hell in the Qur’an!

(4)Understanding hell/sin. also Jesus love, miracles

Here is an interlude to speak about Jesus some more, before returning to the Qur'an discussion regarding hell, demons and sin. It’s not really a departure from the topic because I’m picking up on a related tangent that I had made in a previous post of this series regarding Jesus. I commented that even if one is not genuinely of the faith, I could not understand how anyone could not be overwhelmed with love for Jesus, the Jesus that he truly was and is. My point was that even if one did not embrace religion at all, or Christianity, I do not understand how simply understanding that Jesus performed thousands of cures of people who were the lowest of the low in that society: the crippled, the lame, the blind, those with bleeding or other medical ailments, those with mental illnesses (considered to be possessed by demons and totally shunned), those possessed by rare but genuine demons, and actually raising some from the dead.

I want to talk some more about this topic because in a way, understanding why I am baffled that people resist loving Jesus (even scorning or mocking him or, at best, caricaturing him as a well meaning “social worker” or “community organizer”). And trust me: I don’t want people loving Jesus because they think he was the prototype hippie, though that, of course, is one step better than nothing, LOL. But that would be a totally inaccurate picture and thus not a worthy basis for genuine love. Anyone who has been studying what I have been writing here sees that Jesus was anything but a laid back fellow shooting the breeze about love with fellow travelers. His very dire admonishments and explanations about hell and sin are unmistakably commanding, authoritative and not squishy. No, rather, I do not understand how people do not understand him as he actually was (and is described in black and white print in every language to clearly understand by those who were with him personally). And so the exercise I alluded to regarding his miracles, which is how can people not love him even if that is the only part that they understand and “believe in” is worth further exploration here.

Start by trying to imagine what one day would have been like as one of Jesus’ followers, what it would have been like to be with him. First of all, you would be with someone that you could ask any question of regarding God and receive the immediate and truthful answer about who God is, his plans, and what God is “really like.” Jesus didn’t have to pause, run a few astrology charts, furrow his brow in “meditation” and try to “divine” the answer to those questions. That is for phonies who do not know. Jesus was the only person to walk as a human on earth, who was with God completely, is of God completely, knows God totally, and serves God totally. The non-human examples are the angels, who also know God totally and dwell with him, but angels are in harmony with God’s will and serve him accordingly, they are not of God’s divine personhood as Jesus was and is. Thus angels would not be able to answer some questions, if God did not will that they have that information, the way Jesus could and did. When Jesus did not know something (such as when God will end humanity at the end of time), he said so, explaining that only God knows that fact. However, everything else Jesus knows and thus any disciple could ask him anything about God at any time. Imagine what that would have been like.

Now, the disciples would have all been God fearing believers as pious Jews in the first place, but as human beings, imagine the reassurances they felt at hearing Jesus describe God and answer their questions so matter of factly and with full authority. Jesus disciples would have furrowed their brows only in trying to understand the more difficult things that Jesus was explaining, not in worry or doubt about the existence of God and heaven them selves. So that alone should help you to understand why those who were with him loved him so much, while those who previously had the “answer man” authority hated him. The priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, those who taught that the poor were poor, the sick were sick, the injured were injured, and the dead were dead due to their own failings and sin, were used to generations of thinking they and only they had “all the answers.” How very much it shocked and frightened them when they discovered that no, not only didn’t they have the answers but that they were “outed” by Jesus as being in error and religious hypocrites. But my point is that for those who genuinely love God, as the simple, average people did, who then were open to listening to Jesus, they had an overflowing of love for him, which is why crowds followed him everywhere.

But the exercise I want to focus on is to imagine how one would feel total love for Jesus based on only one aspect of his ministry, which was the miraculous curing of the sick, the injured, the deranged, and even raising some from the dead. Here is what modern people must understand, which is what everyone around Jesus, and subsequent generations, fully understood. While Jesus was given by God the authority and the power to perform miracles, Jesus made his own decisions regarding the use of that power. In other words, Jesus could have “just done a few miracles to prove who he really was” and left it at that. But while the Gospels report in specifics such a number of miracles, the Gospels also report that Jesus would essentially set up shop in a region or a village and cure everyone who was sick or wounded who was brought to him. Jesus would often cure everyone of every ailment who came to him from an entire village. Imagine what that would have been like, for a disciple, to be with Jesus, to be part of his ministry, and to watch Jesus elect to spend many hours and days from his precious life curing each and every person who came to him in need.

Incredibly, over time, can you imagine how the disciples were no longer totally stunned as Jesus would, in an “average work day,” restore sight to the blind, straighten limbs as if they were never crippled, restore sanity to the raving, cast out a demon who would acknowledge the identity and authority of Jesus? I mean, think what it would have been like to be Peter, glancing over once in a while and thinking, “Ah, well, there is Jesus, restoring sight to another blind person!” As if it was just another day at the office. But see, it wasn’t like that, because while the disciples would of course become used to the miracles and no longer be astonished, they didn’t just sit around. Jesus mandated that they go forth and perform miracles themselves, through his authority. The Gospels give details of some of their specific efforts to perform miracles, where they were successful and where they were not. So again, imagine the love that these disciples felt for Jesus as they witnessed him 1) have the full authority and love of God to perform these miracles 2) elect to spend precious days from what was clearly going to be a very short ministry on earth before he is crucified doing such miraculous healings and cures and 3) give them, ordinary men, the power to do the same in his name through the authority of God.

I do not understand how a single person in modern times cannot be swept away with love and admiration for Jesus just based on what I have explained to you, and what is clearly stated in the Bible, regarding the miraculous cures of his ministry alone, say nothing of the rest.

See, that is the problem with the human weakness of pride and sin, which work hand in hand. Pride and sin block understand and love.

Jesus performed his cures right in the open, even in the local synagogues and Temple itself. Anyone and everyone could see it, and the ordinary people saw and loved him, not only in gratitude if they or a family member was cured, but in awe that this was how he was spending his authority, rather than acting the big authority as did the Pharisees and others. Yes, Jesus preached and taught, but he taught with the kindness of his deeds too, at a time when even talking to someone poor, sick or injured was viewed as “agreeing with whatever sinfulness filled that wretch so that he or she had these bad things happen to them.” See, the religious people thought that beggars, the poor, the sickly, the diseased, the injured and even who have early deaths had “deserved” what they got because they or their family were “sinners.” Thus they would view anyone who even talked to such people as consorting with sinners and thus condoning it. How far they had fallen from what God taught about alms and charity! These people were more concerned with what money was left in the Temple than what went to the poor, who they viewed as poor because they or their families were sinners. You need to fully understand that to understand the shock wave that Jesus wading in among the poor, the sick, the injured, and the diseased in order to cure them caused among both the people, who loved him, and the powers that be, who feared and despised him. All of this could have been different if the Pharisees and others rejected their pride. This is why the Bible warns of how pride leads to just about all sin.

Imagine if the Pharisees and other religious authorities, instead of worrying about their erroneous status, were humbly open to correction and thought to themselves, “Wait a minute. He is performing these miracles and refuting what we always believed. Could we be wrong? Let us at least learn more.” In fact, several of them did, coming to Jesus in private to learn more, and they came to believe in him in secret. But it had to remain secret because the vast majority of the religious authorities did not want to see how they had warped and strayed from God’s true doctrine, and how Jesus had come with severe exposure of their error and hypocrisy. We have seen in previous blogging how rather than marvel at his cures they resorted to even arguing that Jesus was “breaking the law” by performing cures, such as restoring a man’s sight, on the Sabbath!

This is why I want people to regain their own ability to read the Gospels and understand Jesus and love him as he actually was, rather than marginalize him or caricaturize him. It is only then that one can feel the love for Jesus that not only he deserves but YOU deserve to feel because that is, after all, why he came here at God’s behest and ministered out in the open. Each child should be raised to understand who Jesus was and what he did, and explaining the miracles of curing the sick is something that every young child can well understand. That is how each generation comes to know and fall in love with Jesus again, as God intended. Loving Jesus is a gift that God gave humanity, and it is so sad to see that increasingly in times when people supposedly seek love they reject even the facts which when understood would cause many to receive the gift of love, of knowing that someone loved people so much as Jesus did that he elected to perform these cures.

Look into your hearts and think about, “Why would someone know these facts about Jesus and his miracles and not love him?” What would be the barriers? Here we are speaking just of the miracles, not of the entirety of dogma, so the answer that “Well, I don’t believe in all of the doctrine” would not be a sufficient answer to why one would not be filled with love for Jesus just by contemplating what he chose to do regarding the thousands of miraculous cures. So if one believes the facts of what happened with the miracles, and one understands the context (that this was dangerous and socially outrageous to do in the eyes of the religious authorities, and Jesus took that risk everyday anyway), why would one not feel a rush of understanding and love?

Deadness and hardness of heart toward life in general would be one reason. Part of the problem with the overwhelming artificiality of modern life is that people have lost some of their fundamental sense of genuine feeling. There are many who are so deadened in their heart that they cannot easily experience love, even of Jesus. That is one of the grave crises of modern times, where if you cannot love Jesus, how can you love and not abuse a child? Or abuse one’s self out of self loathing and despair, as so many do? In a way I think contemplating these miracles of Jesus and trying to role play feeling the love that those around him would have felt can break through some of the ice and deadness of heart that people feel toward everyone today, including themselves. This is one reason I offer this meditation on the love of the disciples and the people for Jesus as expressed through understanding his election to perform many miraculous cures.

Another reason that one might still resist feeling love for Jesus even if one understands what he chose to do regarding the miracles is pride. Again, it is a modern crisis that many people, when faced with something very good that someone else has done, are jealous, envious or dismissive. I mean, it’s laughable but I can hear people thinking, “Well, shoot, I could have done those miraculous cures too if I had been the Son of God!” With one sweep of pride they totally dismiss the greatest kindness and love that ever lived, simply by saying, “Well, it could have been me.” Well, duh, no, it could not have been you, but that is what the temptation of pride tells people everyday.

The third reason and the one most pertinent to our previous discussions is that one will not allow one’s self to love something better and good because then one might have to give up sin and bad behavior. That is the heart of the point about teaching you about identifying, resisting and becoming “dead to sin,” as St Paul put it, using this very exercise. What does it tell you if you are having this thought process: “Well, Jesus sure is wonderful and worthy of love. I get that. But if I allow myself to love him for his miracles, then I have to start thinking about if everything else he said and did is true. And then I might have to give up some of my sinful ways and bad behaviors.”

Sin blocks love, and the desire to keep sinning (even the mentality of “leaving one’s options open to make a ‘personal choice’ to sin) blocks truth and understanding. You know what it is like? It is like buying a beautiful sleek performance car, and really enjoying looking at it, but you refuse to open the door because then you have to get in and drive it. How logical is that, to have a great car but never drive it, while others would swoon to have that car? That is the “logic” which is the illogic of sin. The temptation to keep on sinning or, at the very least, to live a hedonistic and selfish life, prevents many people from accepting any part of or all of the love that God offers “no strings attached” just by understanding what Jesus did and who he was. Loving Jesus and accepting his authority does not cause some mechanical arm to fall from the sky and force you to church and prevent you from doing the sinful things you may or may not enjoy doing. Loving Jesus is a genuinely free gift. The worst sinner in the world can touch that gift of loving Jesus, assuming he or she genuinely comprehends the facts of what Jesus did, in this case, the generosity of his many miraculous cures. Of course there comes the time when there is the corundum, the problem, of loving and believing Jesus, and then comparing how one is living one’s life with what Jesus said and what God expects.

This is why people cannot preach the Gospel based on “love, love, love” all by itself. While I offer you this exercise as a way to 1) discover for the first time your love of Jesus, 2) reconnect and refresh again the ardor of love you once felt for Jesus, 3) break through the deadness of heart of modern times and 4) reduce your exposure to pride and prideful thinking, this exercise cannot by and of itself 5) bring those committed to sin to repent and convert. Why? Because only the other half of reality, the recognition of the awful and dreadful unbearable torment of hell as consequence for sin can break through the barrier of a person who has committed his or her life to sin.

When Jesus cured people he would often say, “Go your way and sin no more.” Why would he say that if he understood what people of the times did not, which is that physical and mental infirmities were not caused by sin? Because Jesus knows that everyone is a dreadful sinner, and when he gave someone a miraculous cure, he was giving them a second chance at a better life. So even if a blind man was blinded through, of course, illness or accident, and not sin, Jesus would cure that man of blindness and tell him to sin no more. Jesus did not mean that the blindness was caused by sin. Jesus meant “This cure is your personal wakeup call that all people sin, and I know you do, and God most certainly knows, and so you should use the opportunity of this cure to stop sinning.”

If one of the disciples had asked Jesus (and they never would have because this is a modern mentality, not the mentality of the traditional religious Jew) “Why is it wrong to sin, is it because it is not nice and it hurts people?” Jesus would of course reply, “Sin offends God and the unrepentant sinner goes to eternal torment in hell.” If people are to have an accurate understanding of the divine cosmos and of God, they must understand that unrepentant and continuous sin results in the sinner going to hell. The fact that sin hurts other people is a symptom of sin, not the core “reason not to do sin.” Jesus covered that thinking in the Eleventh Commandment that he gave in the New Covenant, which is to love one’s neighbor as one’s self (and then he explained through the Good Samaritan that neighbor can mean a stranger in need, not one’s literal neighbor). So Jesus gave at God’s behest to people the Commandment that recognizes that sin hurts other people and is wrong, and that not only should one not hurt other people through sin, but one should proactively love and promote love of others, in the good behavior, golden rule, fullness of charity of heart sense. But, see, it’s not like Jesus said, “And if you break the eleventh commandment, and hurt someone due to sin, that is why sin is bad.” No… Jesus is simply articulating that all paths of sin lead to the potential of damnation in hell because sin is living against God’s will, and God’s will includes that people should not harm one another and should instead have charitable and “neighborly” love.

This is why hard core sinners need to understand both the free gift of loving Jesus as he really was, but also that Jesus spent a lot of his time explaining the actual structure of life and the cosmos under God, which includes the certainty of hell.

When I say hard core sinners, unfortunately I do not just mean the mass murderers and the incorrigible criminals. That is the point in my first commentary in this series which is that much behavior that is accepted, engaged in, widespread and promoted today is sinful and that many “ordinary” people incur hundreds of sins a week, unrecognizing and unrepentant. The more this modern society goes on the more I only see hard core sinners, as each child grows up enmeshed in the structures of what has become a sinful economy, a sinful lifestyle, a sinful mentality and a sinful fantasy life. Now I am not speaking as a prudish church lady, far from it. You have to think back to the five types of sins that the Bible identifies that I listed for you in the first post of this series. It is the spitefulness, the foolish thoughts, the manipulation of others, unrighteous thoughts and deeds, and lack of justice that fuels the tremendous volume of sins that occur every day and every hour in this society. I will give you an example so that our understanding is more in harmony.

I have spent my life thus far going “Oh, oh” whenever I see a shift that is toward the sinful and away from the good. I can still remember the moment I had that “Oh, oh” regarding a type of commercial advertisements, back in the 1980’s. There was a sudden flurry of advertisements for various food products that are “so good” and “so tasty” that the consumer hides them from the rest of his or her family. The consumer was usually a woman, the wife, girlfriend, or mother. It would show the consumer savoring the product and then upon hearing the arrival of a family member, hide the food and deny having it. I had, and still today as I recall it, a dreadful “Oh, oh” in the pit of my stomach, as that represented a terrible sinful shift in mentality. It is not ironic, edgy or “cute.” It became the commercialization of competition for food among family members and loved ones, something that no human had ever even thought of even in jest previously. Think about that. If you ran that commercial in Biblical times they would have been horrified and stoned you right on the spot. It is unthinkable to make food a competitive, especially in a hedonistic sense, resource in a family, and it certainly made every woman who appeared in those commercials ugly, no matter how thin or beautified she was. In Victorian times, in the times of Charles Dickens, no one hid food from each other in the house. Sometimes hard decisions had to be made. The one egg might go to the head of the household for breakfast instead of the hungry child because the head of the household had to go out and earn some wage in back breaking labor. But never in all of human history, in any culture or any generation would anyone have laughed or found a food hiding family commercial witty. It would have been viewed as horrific. Like I said, in Jerusalem you would have been stoned on the spot for such a display. In Rome too, unless you were in with the depraved Emperors where anything goes, I guess. But I am joking about that because seriously, it is against the very soul of humanity and of God for food hiding and competition to take place in a family and among loved ones.

And so what have we seen? A breakdown of the natural priorities and attitudes toward each other, in this case manifested by food in those commercials, and that watershed landmark commercial example is just one of the many drops in the bucket of the slide into a mindset of sinfulness that has rotted out much of basic humanity. Just in the past months in the United States there have been several cases of horrific child abuse where children are tied up or chained in their homes and deprived of food by their so called caregivers, often unto death. Do an Internet search and you will find horrific examples, including one where a little girl was singled out not to receive any water at all by her mother, and was abused if she was found even licking the moisture off of a window. Now sure, some of you will say, through your guilty consciences, “Well, those are crazy people, and there have always been abusers.” But look at it in the pattern of the breakdown of attitudes toward food in general, including diabetes and obesity, and how parents don’t even know how to give babies and young children milk, but give them soda pop and endless fruit juice, and you start to see the bigger picture. Extreme abuse occurs as eruptions out of what has become a distorted “norm.”

Let me repeat that. If you went back in time to Biblical Jerusalem you would see that yes, there are crazy people who abuse children, but there were different checks and balances than there are today. For one there were lots of strong men who would swiftly avenge an abused child or woman in their family. For two the types of abuse sprung out of what is the societal norm. For example, a father might beat his son for being lazy and not working in the field because the norm was that everyone, even young children, had to labor so that all could survive. Such a beating would be considered child abuse today. However, you would never find an instance of a parent manipulating for insane or power control reasons the food that a family member ate. Again, a woman who did that would be stoned on the spot. Crazy stuff tends to follow the societal pattern of normal behavior, and then erupts as a shocking and hideous distortion.

I know this is a lengthy digression and worthy of much more in separate treatment, but I needed to give you an example of how invisible and acceptable sinful thoughts and behaviors have become and are indeed even admired and marketed. There is absolutely no reason to market a food product in such a way except pride in one’s own cleverness and participating in the destruction of moral balance, fiber and perspective. So when I rant about the high levels of sin, it will help you to use the example I gave you as a yardstick of what I mean, rather than imagine that I’m making a point about the “usual” topics such as sex or abortion. I’m not in this case at all. I am speaking of the terrible crushing weight of sin on the world today that is generated by millions of occurrences of the types of sins that are not the classic Ten Commandment breakers (though obviously the neglect of God as expressed in the first two Commandments fuel the breakdown through sin of everything else).

Every individual is walking around with an incredible weight of unrecognized participatory sin. If you could see it through my eyes, and I sure hope this particular blogging helps, it is terrifying to the maximum. Long ago I had to give up mourning that many people I know have put themselves on the path to hell and, worse, urge others to join them, even forcing them to join them through their power as money lenders, as bosses, as power brokers, as advertisers, as politicians, as celebrities, and as merchandisers. As I gave in this one out of many examples, one is not only forced to sin (by thought and temptation) whenever one views a sinful program, movie or commercial, one is indoctrinated to admire the sinful posture that is used to promote the entertainment or advertisement. The worst examples are, of course, looking at youth in lustful ways.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was sent by God to Fatima to warn about these very things. There are two things one must really understand about what was said and done in Fatima. The first is that Mary gave the children a few second glimpse of the reality of the horror of hell. This is because God saw (being all knowing of course), that modern society was beginning to disbelieve in the reality of the horror of hell. It does not take a genius, especially as we go through the Biblical and Qur’an explanations of hell, to comprehend the message that God is making when he sends Mary (armed with a solar miracle, of course, to prove her given authority), the gentle virgin, to show hell to small gentle children. He didn’t send Michael with a sword to scream at humans, since that is not his way. He sent the mother of Jesus who shows the horror through the concern of a mother to little children, children who are not yet older cynics who try to rationalize away even a miracle.

Second, Mary warned that a great many people will go to hell due to lust. Again, one must understand that lust is not used as code word for extra sex. Lust is the craving and coveting of the things of the flesh, idolizing them and putting them over God, if one even takes notice or heed of God at all. People focus too much on trying to be “prophets” (and “profits”) to try to interpret details of Lucy’s visions of Mary and what was revealed rather than heeding the two crucial points that were made: the reality of hell and that many-think millions-are going to hell due to the societal crisis of lustful sinfulness. Why Mary and why Fatima? Think about it. Have we not been examining how much Gabriel has articulated in the Qur’an the inevitability and the horrors of hell for sinners, the unjust and unbelievers? God does not talk in “code” with secret phonetic meanings and so forth; he talks in terms of family names on those rare occasions. Fatima is a pointer to God and Jesus, of course, but also a nod to the Qur’an of Gabriel, since Fatima was the name of the Prophet’s daughter. Mary reveals a glimpse of hell to the children, and there are over eighty mentions of the reality of hell in the Qur’an. Figure it out. You don’t need secret numbers, codes, astrology, phonetics or “Freudian slips” or “meaningful coincidences.” You only need to read the Bible or the Qur’an, believe and repent.

(3) Understanding hell, demons, and sin

Part III

Here I will direct your attention and comment upon mentions and descriptions of hell in the Qur’an. Paperback versions of the Qur’an, one of which I am using, number around 420 pages of text, a fraction of the length of the Bible. Yet the Qur’an has about eighty mentions of hell. This ought to tell you something.

To put this into context, let’s address the most common argument, which is that religious authorities “make up the idea of hell” in order to “scare” and “control the people.” Um, OK, but here is the problem. There were no religious authorities and indeed there were no Muslims at all, since Islam did not exist, when the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was given and transcribed the Qur’an! What “people” would he have been trying to “scare” and “control” into “good behavior?”

Likewise, remember the Psalm citation by King David regarding the risk of people and cities going to hell. King David was “already in charge” and he was penning the Psalms as his own adoration to God put to music. He was not ranting about hell in order to “scare” or “control” people who were already the most pious and God-fearing people on earth, under his rulership! I mean, if you use a little common sense when you hear these things and look at the FACTS, you will not be so easily mislead into fatal error. It is also easier to deal with idiots who attack the faith with such accusations by calmly making note of the facts and that their facts are wrong. The MOST mentions of hell are in the Qur’an, which will be the scripture for a religion that does not even yet exist, the second most mentions of hell are by Jesus and the Apostles, who seek no rulership or control whatsoever, and the fewest mentions of hell are in the Old Testament, where it’s presence is simply understood, feared, taken for granted and not a fundamental decision point in either individual or the collective faith of the Israelites. People believed because God was there, working among them, through the prophets, in person, not because leaders “scared” the poor peasants with “made up” tales of hell. You don’t have to be a PhD or a research genius. Simply take the scriptures, look at the index, mark down the number of mentions, then correspond the number of mentions to the time in history, and you can see for yourself what I have just done here.

It is therefore logical to wonder why would there be so many mentions of hell in the Qur’an. First of all you must read the references to understand what categories they fall into. Like the Bible, the Qur’an is a mixture of explanation of how things are, and admonishments and exhortations for good behavior. In other words, not every mention of hell is done so in order to be menacing but, rather, is the way that the configuration of the God created universe and how it works is explained to the faithful. So many of the mentions of hell are not so much to scare the listener or the reader, but to be somewhat “tour guide” in describing what it is like.

Remember too that the Qur’an is not like the Gospel, which is an evangelizing type of scripture that seeks to convert the reader. The Qur’an assumes that the reader IS a believer and a Muslim. So the Qur’an has even less reason than the Biblical authors to “scare” people into believing since the Qur’an assumes the believers are the readers and studiers of the Qur’an! In fact, much of the Qur’an descriptions of hell (as you will see when I cite and comment on them) are of a “tsk, tsk, look what happens to those unbelievers who are in hell,” rather than being used to “scare” believers into good behavior. You have to use some common sense and discernment to place these simple but misunderstood theological concepts in place in your minds.

Another thing to recall, which a lot of Christians do not understand about Islam, is that the Qur’an is revelation that is given by God to the Prophet (PBUH) through the archangel Gabriel, the very same angel who in the Annunciation appears to Mary to proclaim that she will be the mother of Jesus Christ. So not to oversimplify but you need to understand that basically the Qur’an is God’s revelation spoken through an angel and thus has an “angel’s perspective.” God sends angels, instead of appearing him self, when he wants the perspective of the angel to predominate. This does not mean that angels modify God’s messages at all; in fact they are the most reliable of messengers, of course, since God speaks through them. When I say God speaks through them I do not mean angels are an amplifier of God’s voice. What I mean is that each angel is in individual but totally harmonious accord with what God wants to say and how he wants to say it: that is why a particular angel is selected by God and sent in the first place!

Thus, think about what it might mean that the gentle and joyful archangel Gabriel, who announces the coming of the Messiah to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her subsequent pregnancy, is six hundred years later the deliverer of extremely robust, even militant, revelation to the Prophet, giving birth to Islam. Of all the angels that God could have selected, why would God have selected Gabriel to be the one to reveal to Mohammad? One cannot always, or even often, understand God’s will, but it is essential to notice these facts or one misses entirely a profound piece of understanding God.

This also puts lie to those who would accuse the Prophet of just making up scriptures and that it is not divine revelation. If the Prophet were seeking to start a religious empire and “impress” potential followers, he would have fictionalized a visit by a more militant angel, such as Michael, who provides revelation or, more likely, he’d make up a new angel, an Islam angel, new to the scene, just for Islam. Instead, can we not wonder and marvel how honored the Prophet was to have the same angel who Annunciated to Mary be the one to reveal to him, but how he must have been a bit surprised by that selection too, in the very beginning?

The reason is that Islam was not a new or “made up” religion but the reuniting of the branch of the family of Abraham with knowledge of the one true God and their own shared past in the faith history documented in the Old Testament. Much of the Qur’an is explaining to these Arabic people how they are descended in biological and faith lineage from Abraham too. So one can be safe to surmise that God selected Gabriel because as the one who Announced to Mary the coming of Jesus, titling her “full of grace” and awaiting her “fiat,” her agreement to bear the Messiah, that Gabriel is the angel most harmonious with the voice God wished to use in reuniting these children of Abraham back into knowledge of him.

Thus the Qur’an, and specifically the mentions of hell, is a very robust scripture, in places quite militant, that at first blush worries some Christians. However, Christians need to understand two things. One is that Jesus himself was quite militant, as we have seen in the previous posts on this subject of hell, demons and sin. It is a myth that Jesus just tiptoed through the tulips throwing daisies around and preaching “love” and “let it all hang out.” Jesus delivered the first Biblical descriptions of hell and stark dire warnings of the consequences of sin and damnation regularly and consistently throughout his preaching and teaching. As we saw in the previous posts the Apostles learned about hell and the reality of the many ways that sin results in people being damned to hell directly from Jesus himself. Likewise, it is a mistake to think that Gabriel, because of the joy of the Annunciation, is somehow the “fluffy” angel, all sweetness and light. Just as Jesus was not sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, neither is Gabriel, the one who Announced God’s selection and preparation of Mary to be the mother of Jesus.

So now that you see this it is very logical that the archangel Gabriel, being an angel who has great power and first hand knowledge of all things of heaven, earth, and hell, should provide a great deal of information regarding hell in the course of revealing the Qur’an. Gabriel can be thought of as the faith family’s historian, who “was there” at all the big events. He’s the angel who is selected by God when God needs to “tell it like it is.” And so, far from being a “scary” scripture, the Qur’an has what modern journalists would call a great deal of “color commentary.” Gabriel, in expression of God’s will, takes the time to provide further, more detailed information about hell. The Qur’an is adorned with “additional” information provided by Gabriel on a number of topics, including even Jesus himself. One particularly fascinating “extra” that Gabriel reveals in the Qur’an, just through one casual mention, is the existence of atoms.

This helps you to see that when God selects an angel to represent him, one that is not God himself in angel form, he is selecting someone who is in total harmony with what God wants said, of course, but he is also selecting a particular voice and a particular perspective for the benefit of the listener. Imagine what the Qur’an would read like if God had sent Michael to do the dictating and the revelation. People would be shaking in their boots, a hundred times more than they would in reading the Qur’an as it is delivered by Gabriel, as robust as THAT is. Either would represent perfection of information and God’s will, but it is God’s will to select the angel who provides the tone and the relationship, and the areas of emphasis that God understands is the best for the hearer and the faith.

Can you see now why the Qur’an is so poetic and punctuated by frequent short phrases of praise of God? That is a hallmark of how angels really “speak.” Angels rarely speak without punctuating all that they say with praise of God. Angels are like the person who loves another person so much that they punctuate every sentence they say to the other person with “by the way, I love you” tacked on to the end, except angels continually shout the praise and glory of God, since that is their fundamental nature. This is why the Qur’an is so obviously written in the vocal intonation of an angel, and most specifically Gabriel.

I’m going to be a little tongue in cheek but very serious here. Imagine if it were the archangel Michael who was selected by God to deliver the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet. There would be that punctuation of praise for God just as with Gabriel, but Mohammad would probably have had to duck for cover as the walls shake every time that Michael would shout praise of God into Mohammad’s head! I also can easily imagine that every other sentence of scripture would contain “Get down on your knees NOW!” Ha. And if Michael dictated the Qur’an to the Prophet there would be much less of the tender moments describing baby Jesus and the virtue of Mary. No, one could imagine that Michael would be much more emphasizing of the suffering of both Jesus and Mary and punctuated with “get down on your knees NOW,” in his Christian color commentary sections of the Qur’an. Both a Qur’an delivered by Michael and a Qur’an delivered by Gabriel would be the word of God, effective and true for the faith, but they would have different intonations representing the different aspects of God’s will that each represent. If you think the Qur’an is short in length and somewhat terse now, imagine what the version delivered by the Michael archangel would be if God had willed it!

Understanding this, then, one must have very sober consideration of how the archangel Gabriel would be the one to reveal a Qur’an that has more than eighty mentions of hell. There ought to be a thoughtful silence right around now in each reader’s mind, as he or she absorbs that if the angel of the Annunciation delivers over eighty mentions of hell, how dire and vital that information about the reality of hell is for everyone. The Qur’an is delivered six hundred years after Jesus Christ and hell is mentioned even more than by Jesus himself, not less. Clearly the need to understand the reality of hell only grows with time and so called “human progress,” not less.

2:24 But if you do (it) not and never shall you do (it), then be on your guard against the fire of which men and stones are the fuel; it is prepared for the unbelievers.

This is the first mention of hell in the Qur’an, already on the second page of scripture. Can you not hear Gabriel’s voice when you read this? The “it” refers to serving God and believing his prophets. Is it not crystal clear that this first mention of hell is phrased by someone who has seen it with his own eyes? The very first mention of hell contains the stark visual that in hell a fire burns that has as its fuel both the bodies of the unbelievers who are damned there, but also the melting stone around it. This is not just an admonishment phrase; this is an eyewitness descriptive phrase. If you ever wondered what real “angel speak” is like, that is one of the best examples. Gabriel in one short terse sentence says that if one does not believe and serve God and, further, one will never change one’s ways to do so in the future, then be warned of going to the place that is prepared for those types of people, where the people and the stones burn as fuel to the fire. Gabriel is describing a both a progression of human choice of believing and describing the visuals of a place where one ends up if the wrong choice is made.

If that is not stark and chilling enough in its factual eyewitness simplicity for you, read the second mention of hell:

2:206 And when it is said to him, guard against (the punishment) of Allah; pride carries him off to sin; therefore hell is sufficient for him; and certainly it is an evil resting place.

Here Gabriel once again describes first a progression of human behavior, and then the consequence in an “eyewitness” way. In this citation it is described that the person in this example, when told to beware of being punished by God, ignores the warning because of his own pride and certainty that he can do whatever he wants, including to commence or continue to sin. So Gabriel observes that a typical person who ends up in hell first hears the warning, is filled with pride, and therefore through his pride ignores the warning and pride then leads him to sin. Notice the coolness of the phrasing “hell is sufficient for him.” Angels like Gabriel do not rant because they are detached, having seen millions of souls be saved, and millions of souls be damned. Gabriel is very cool and dry, stating what he has seen many times, and thus you can easily hear his voice as he calmly gives to the Prophet the assessment that “hell is sufficient” and “certainly it is an evil resting place.”

3:12 Say to those who disbelieve: You shall be vanquished, and driven together to hell; and evil is the resting-place.

3:103 And hold fast by the covenant of Allah all together and be not disunited, and remember the favor of Allah on you when you were enemies, then He united your hearts so by His favor you became brethren; and you were on the brink of a pit of fire, then He saved you from it; thus does Allah make clear to you His communications that you may follow the right way.

3:131 And guard yourselves against the fire which has been prepared for the unbelievers.

3:151 We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, because they set up with Allah that for which He has sent down no authority, and their abode is the fire; and evil is the abode of the unjust.

This warning about hell is directed toward those who establish false religions and speak as false prophets in supposedly God’s name, but do not in fact have any legitimacy or authority from God. An unbeliever is either someone who does not believe in God at all or who believes in false gods.

3:191 Those who remember Allah standing and sitting and lying on their sides and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth: Our Lord! Thou hast not created this in vain! Glory be to Thee; save us then from the chastisement of the fire.

Again, this is a marvelous, complex example of hearing God’s instruction through the voice of an angel. First Gabriel paints the image of how humans through all times, while standing, sitting, or lying in repose, spend time thinking about how the heavens and earth are created. Again you cannot miss the sense of seeing generations of humans pondering creation as seen firsthand by Gabriel. Gabriel then exclaims glory to God (since that’s what angels do since they understand and are immersed in the glory and grandeur of full knowledge of God’s greatest and goodness.) Gabriel then takes on the voice of what a human should say to God when he or she ponders creation, which is to offer glory and plead for salvation from the punishment of hell. What a richness of verse that one could have extended meditation upon, tutored directly by the angel Gabriel through his eyes.

3:192 Our Lord! Surely whomsoever Thou makest enter the fire, him Thou hast indeed brought to disgrace, and three shall be no helpers for the unjust.

3:197 A brief enjoyment! Then their abode is hell, and evil is the resting-place.

This is a pithy observation indeed; the sinner and unbeliever may have a grand life, but it is enjoyed in a hurry and then gone when one finds one’s self in hell for eternity.

4:56 (As for) those who disbelieve in Our communications, We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned. We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is Mighty, Wise.

Here Gabriel is clearly articulating God’s own words. How do we know this? We know because there is the use of what is called the “imperial we.” When the “imperial we” is used it does not mean multiple people, but it means that the divinity or the king speaks with authority for all. When a human king says “We” he means himself, but he has a multitude of authority. When God is speaking his own precise words in the Qur’an, he often uses the imperial we. Notice that this is a grimmer description of the crispy fried reality of those in hell. It is not Gabriel’s dry and detached perspective; it is a hint of the wrath of God in his own words. This is also factual information that is confirmed in the Bible that the bodies of those in hell are not destroyed, but are tormented and burned over and over unceasingly.

4:121 These are they whose abode is hell, and they shall not find any refuge from it.

The “these” in this citation are those who listen to the temptations sent by Satan and his minions.

7:18 He said: Get out of this (state), despised, driven away; whoever of them will follow you, I will certainly fill hell with you all.

This is part of the telling of the story of the fall of the disobedient angels and the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

7:38 He will say: Enter into fire among the nations that have passed away before you among jinn and men; whenever a nation shall enter, it shall curse its sister, until when they have all come up with one another into it; the last of them shall say with regard to the foremost of them: Our Lord! These led us astray, therefore give them a double chastisement of the fire. He will say: Every one shall have double but you do not know.

There are two important points to be made here, both of which are confirmed in the Bible. The first is that entire nations can and do go to hell, as King David states in Psalms, discussed in previous blogging here. Nations that structure themselves to be unbelievers and sinners drag themselves and all who follow them in a slide into hell as a group. So that is the first important point to understand. The second is that there are no friends and allies in hell. Each sinner nation will blame other nations that they used as the role model and thus they both end up in hell. Even in the dreadful punishment of hell the damned do not pray for mercy but haggle over demanding that those who “got them there” get “double” extra punishment. God observes that they already are all receiving the most severe punishment without discrimination. Hell: the equal opportunity and egalitarian pit of eternal suffering and fire.

7:179 And certainly We have created for hell many of the jinn and the men; they have hearts with which they do not understand, and they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear; they are as cattle, nay, they are in worse errors; thee are the heedless ones.

Jinn is the Islamic expression for demonic influences. This passage requires careful understanding and we know this is God speaking using very precise words. When God says that he (imperial we) created hell for many of the jinn and men, God does not mean that specific people are created predestined to hell. It means that God in his all knowing of course realizes from birth and in advance all that a person will decide, and thus that many people, despite being offered chances to be saved, will turn them down and end up in hell. Just because God “knows” in advance who will do what and will be saved or not does not mean that he creates them predestined nor does he cease to offer them opportunities to be saved. By listing those people’s hearts, eyes and ears, God is using an imagery of the specific ways that he sends spiritual help to try to appeal to their hearts, to open their eyes, or to hear what they need to hear to be saved, but they are too heedless and persist in error to recognize the help or to accept and believe it. So if you read this passage too fast you might think this is a “predestined to be damned” statement while the opposite is true. It is a statement that even when God knows what people will do he continues to send messages to those people’s hearts, eyes and ears, but they do not accept those messages.


9:81 Those who were left behind were glad on account of their sitting behind Allah’s Apostle and they were averse from striving in Allah’s way with their property and their persons, and said: Do not go forth in the heat. Say: The fire of hell is much severe in heat. Would that they understand (it).

This is actually an example of hell being mentioned kind of in a rueful joking way among the Prophet’s travelers. They are speaking of the actual heat of battle and travel, and then make kind of a rueful joke about hell being a really hot place, so stop complaining about the daytime heat and get on with the Prophet’s work.

10:52 Then it shall be said to those who were unjust: Taste abiding chastisement; you are not requited except for what you have earned.

Like the Bible it is emphasized that those who are unjust in general, not just breaking a specific law of God or being an unbeliever per se, will earn hell in return (requited) for their unjustness.


14:16-17 Hell is before him and he shall be given to drink of festering water. He will drink it little by little and will not be able to swallow it agreeably, and death will come to him from every quarter, but he shall not die; and there shall be vehement chastisement before him.

There is no water per se in hell but only the festering fluid of the burning fire and brimstone, which people in hell will actually try to drink to quench their thirst. If only all of you truly realized how horrifying hell is.

14:28-30 Have you not seen those who have changed Allah’s favor for ungratefulness and made their people to alight into the abode of perdition; (Into) hell? They shall enter into it and an evil place it is to settle in. And they set up equals with Allah that they may lead (people) astray from His path. Say: Enjoy yourselves, for surely your return is to the fire.

This passage asks if the reader has not noticed people who receive great favor from God, only to return ingratitude back to God instead of thanks. These people will end up in hell. To give an example this passage describes those who receive blessings from God but who then ascribe those blessings to idols, false gods or their own power, and persuade others to likewise believe that blessings come not from God but from idols or themselves. That dry voice of Gabriel returns here with pithy and somewhat sardonic “Enjoy yourselves, for surely your return is to the fire.” By return he means that everyone born comes from God, since he creates the soul, but the good return to God in heaven, while the bad “return” not to God but to hell. “Return” means the dispensation of the soul, not that the soul was in hell previously and is “going back there.”

15:43-44 And surely Hell is the promised place of them all. It has seven gates; for each gate there shall be a separate party of them.

This is part of the dialogue between God and Satan after Satan tempted Adam and Eve into sin, and Satan refused to bow and honor the sacredness of God’s creation of man. So God tells Satan that even though he, Satan, refuses to honor humans, that he, Satan, does not have rulership over humans except for those who he, Satan, persuades to follow him. God then states that those who follow Satan will end up in hell as that is the “promised” place of those who deviate from God and follow Satan.

God then mentions that there are seven gates to hell. Notice that the fact that hell has gates is confirmed in the Bible as Jesus Christ also states that when he promises Peter that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. Why are there multiple gates? They represent the different ways that people find their way to hell through different patterns of sin and wickedness. For example some enter hell through their lack of belief and their work to destroy the faith of others, while others enter hell due to performing evil deeds such as murder. So the fact there are multiple gates to hell is just a way to understand that there are well understood patterns of behavior that differ among people but bring them to the same place.

The Qur’an quotes God as saying there are specifically seven gates. Notice too that this same passage uses a familiar Biblical phrase “promised” as in the Promised Land but in this sense the “promised land” is hell for those who follow Satan. Likewise the fact that there are seven gates to hell indicates that hell uses what is considered a divine number, seven, in its obverse. In other words, we see in both the Bible and the Qur’an that Satan and his minions imitate earthly and heavenly concepts. The number seven in both Judeo-Christian and Arabic culture tends to represent divine goodness. Thus God points out that hell has seven gates, in oppositional counterpoint to the goodness of the gates of heaven.

16:29 Therefore enter the gates of hell, to abide therein; so certainly evil is the dwelling place of the proud.

Once again the point that excessive pride is a most certain way to find one’s home in hell.

There is much more very useful information and very “meaty” perspective regarding hell in the remaining chapters, which we can look at in future postings on this subject.