Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

So what do YOU make of the Sounds of Hell?
 

Earth sounds like nails on a chalkboard, hell sounds like the reaction to nails on a chalkboard. ;)
 

Re, "So what do YOU make of the Sounds of Hell?"

Bad joke. Amd what Frenzied said.

Good Lord, what do you THINK anyone should make of it?
 

I think that one should make of it whatever ones own personal agenda requires of it to feel as if something important has been accomplished ... or you could make a nice bernaise sauce out of it and in the process learn to make another sauce that one could properly spell out of it such as lets say Rock Sauce which can be found in any Led Zep alnum in heaping quanitities....or maybe a nice little origami bunny rabit with a fake "arrow through the head" and a pair of Groucho Glasses... or....
 

"Sounds from hell"? To me, that's Britney Spears covering the Rolling Stones. Or Don Ho covering Peter Gabriel. That mp3 from the Art Bell radio program is nothing more than the kind of background tape radio and movie producers have for soundtracks, made from building up various sounds to create the impression of a multitude of persons screaming in pain.

The first tape is real science. The second tape is someone's idea of a bad joke. The idea that someone took a tape player in to a deep pit in Siberia and recorded the sounds coming through the rock of the tortured souls in hell, just meters below their feet is ludicrous. Even should hell exist as some kind of metaphysical reality, that it exists in physical space, that the disembodied spirits who are tortured there are able to emit sounds that we can record on magnetic tape runs counter to all the myths about it.
 

"...myths.."

What about Hell itself. Myth or reality?
 

Hell as a "place"? No more a "place," as we understand the term, than heaven.

Hell as a state of selfishness and separateness from God? I have room for that. But I am not sure at all that God's grace cannot yet penetrate even *that.*

Jesus "went to" hell once. Who's to say he hasn't been back? Or that he won't again?

Forever? Eternity being a human attempt to explain something that's inexplicable, I don't profess to know what it means -- either for those "in" hell or those "in" heaven. Time being part of the creation, and "eternity" being a human expression of time, I'll just leave all that to God.

Just thinking out loud here. I simply will NOT put any limitation on God's Godness -- especially when it requires limiting God to my own, or any other human's, understanding.
 

To answer ELAshley's question as honestly as I can, I will begin by saying I don't worry about that stuff all that much. Heaven, hell, purgatory - all that afterlife business is neither here nor there for me. If it exists, wonderful. If not, well, that's OK, too. I am far more concerned with life than with whatever may come after it's done.

Speculatively, I would say that should we stand before the throne of God and refuse an offer of grace, God's grace would be large enough to include a final separation. That is to say, I believe God would send us away, a tear in the Divine Eye. That is as far as I will go on the whole question of eternal separation from God. As I say, it is only speculation, however, and I am hardly wedded to it as a doctrinal position.

I read nothing in the Bible to warrant belief in a place of eternal punishment. Indeed, I read little to warrant belief in a place of eternal bliss and reward. All the statements, especially in the Fourth Gospel, concerning "eternal life" can be correlated far more with Jesus' acceptance of the Pharisaical doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (as pointed out by theologian Jurgen Moltmann and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright among others) than the medieval teaching of the cloud city with gold streets.

I wish to emphasize that, for the most part, as I said at the beginning, I really don't care all that much one way or another about these things. If they exist, fine. If not, well, since I'll be dead, "caring" will be among the endless list of things I won't be doing anymore. Since being a Christian isn't about me anyway, I try to avoid thinking about things that make it about me.
 

Re, "Since being a Christian isn't about me anyway, I try to avoid thinking about things that make it about me."

Echoed.
 

go to latest Red State Update

they mention one of your favorite newspapers...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WROqq6X4jGA
 

Oh, that is a hooooooot!