Tag Archives: Kingdom of God

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 25: Unbelievers are going to Hell!

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Spoiler alert: No, they’re not.

 

HellIt’s always nice when the local fellowship keeps in touch.

There’s good news and bad news. First, the good news: Hell doesn’t exist. You can’t go to a place that doesn’t exist.

 

Next, the bad news; you’re not going to survive your death. Sorry to break it to you like this, but there it is: no-one survives death. Once the physical, chemical and electrical processes in your brain cease then so do you, because that’s what you’re made of. That self you have a sense of – your soul if you want to call it that – is entirely dependent on those electro-chemical processes. It doesn’t exist independently from them. You cease to be once the brain dies and begins to deteriorate*. Everyone who has ever lived and died, including true believers down the ages – from Jesus, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to Augustine, Bede, Wilberforce and C. S. Lewis – have all ceased to be, dissipated and obliterated forever, along with their physical brains and bodies.

 

And why, dear Christian, would you want to survive death? What makes you think that the bundle of petty concerns, loves and hates, neuroses, reactions and habits that you call ‘you’, merit long-term survival? Because that odd little collection of impulses is what you’re talking about when you say you are going to live forever. You may regard yourself as changed into some sort of reflection of Christ, but it’s your essential self that you desperately, and arrogantly, hope will enjoy eternal life. It won’t – and why should it?

 

So, there’s no you to survive and no Hell, or Heaven, for you to go to. The Bible doesn’t offer Heaven – see my previous posts here and here – but it does talk about Hell. It’s the place the Unrighteous go when the Righteous™ take over the earth (albeit it in the first century). According to Jesus in Mark 7.20-23, the Unrighteous are people like murderers, thieves and the proud, while Paul includes other ‘undesirables’ like homosexuals (1 Corinthians 6.9). This isn’t nearly enough for today’s Christians though**. They want everyone except themselves to be sent to Hell. So if you’re not ‘saved’ according to their magic formula, then you’re certain to go there. Never mind if you’re not a murderer or proud or gay. That’s where the God of Love is going to send you, to be tormented forever.

 

And where is Hell? Jesus seems to think it’s in the heart of the Earth (Matthew 12.40) and invariably those threatened with Hell go ‘down’ to it. The wingnut who wrote Revelation also implies it’s in the Earth (9.2). You’d think, that being the case, we would have found it by now. But we haven’t because, of course, it doesn’t exist. And you’re not going. And there won’t be a ‘you’ to go in any case.

 

So don’t waste any time worrying about it or letting Christians persuade you Hell is a real place. Live your one and only life in the here and now as best you can. Enjoy it. It’s not a rehearsal for a better place, and certainly not for a far worse one.

 

Notes:

* In The Lazarus Effect, Dr Sam Parnia relates instances of people being revived up to an hour after death, but only in specific circumstances, when the brain remains undamaged. Any longer than an hour and it’s not possible. Such revivals are extreme forms of the rebooting your brain does every morning after sleep; the brain itself and all its neuro-connections must still be capable of functioning for you to be you again after sleep or even apparent death.

 

** Yes, I acknowledge some Christians don’t accept Hell. American pastor, Rob Bell, suggests in Love Wins that Hell doesn’t make ‘a very good story’, and that God will save everybody. All Hell was let loose in the resulting backlash from true, Bible-believing Christians; a response that was extreme, brutal and frequently sanctimonious. How dare Bell contradict God’s Word, Holy Scripture? Surely he deserves to go to Hell for that.

 

Which Christians won’t be resurrected after they die?

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Robertson

All of these well-known Christians are unworthy of the Kingdom of God and won’t live again after they’ve died. See if you can work out why:

Billy Graham, Justin Welby (Archbishop of Canterbury), Desmond Tutu, Pat Boone, Mel Gibson, John Sentamu (Archbishop of York), Stephen Green (Christian Voice), Bono, Her Majesty the Queen, Sarah Palin (politician), Pat Robertson (700 Club), Joyce Meyer (evangelist), Bryan Fischer (outspoken radio broadcaster), Rick Warren (pastor of US mega-church), Rob Bell (ditto), George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Cherie Blair (barrister), Graham Kendrick (songwriter), Tony Perkins (anti-gay preacher), Scott Lively (ditto), Matt Barber (ditto), Peter LaBarbera (ditto), Tom Wright (theologian), Fred Phelps (late of Westboro church), Joni Eareckson Tada (writer), Mike Ratcliff (minister and blogger), Kirk Cameron (actor)… and, in all probability, your local pastor  – and maybe even you yourself, Christian reader.

They’re not worthy of God’s Kingdom nor are they likely to be resurrected because they’re married. And who says this makes them unworthy? Not me… Jesus:

those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age (of God’s Kingdom on Earth) and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage (Luke 20.34-35).

So next time one of these famous Christians or some other married believer tells you you’re not saved, tell them that they’re not either. Jesus says so.

They won’t care, of course, because they pick and choose the bits of the Bible they believe. They’re more than happy to pretend this tricky bit doesn’t exist or doesn’t apply to them. Obviously, or they wouldn’t be married. Naturally this doesn’t stop them going on about about God’s plan for marriage™ even though it’s one they’ve made up themselves that flies in the face of what Jesus says.

Which means these same believers also have to ignore Jesus when he says, ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you?’, which is a very good question.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 16: Christians treat others as they themselves would like to be treated (Luke 6.31).

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Gun

Jesus promised his followers, back when he was alive, that they would take over the world when God’s new Kingdom arrived: ‘Blessed are the meek,’ he’s reported as saying in Matthew 5.5, ‘for they shall inherit the earth.’ He failed to tell them that this inheriting wouldn’t be any time soon, even though he himself thought it would be (Mark 13.26-30). Even so, Christians today fully expect JC to return any day now to vindicate them and turn the world over to them. Then, the meek – assuming that Jesus meant ‘Christians’ when (and if) he used the term – will inherit the Earth, whatever that actually means.

Back in the early 1980’s, when I was a Christian myself, I campaigned, in a very small way, for persecuted believers in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union. Together with others in my church, I spoke out against the clampdown of Christian worship, restrictions on the availability of the Bible and the harsh punishments meted out for exercising faith. Certainly believers in Russia were meek and humble then, because they had no other choice.

How things have changed in the intervening thirty years. Now in Russia, under Putin, faith is supported and encouraged and formerly persecuted Christians have the upper hand. They have the ear of the Kremlin and are influential in deciding policy especially in so far as it relates to ‘morals’.

And do those Christians, having known the scourge of persecution, say, ‘we cannot support the persecution of others; we disliked it when it was done to us and, in the words of our saviour, we recognise we should treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated’ (Luke 6.31)?

What do you think? You think the meek, having found acceptance themselves and inherited positions of respectability and influence, use their new prominence to defend other minorities who are now being persecuted?

Of course not. The church in Russia endorses, supports and influences the policies of state that have lead to the persecution of people who have ‘non-traditional’ relationships; LGBT people and those who support them. Watch the Channel 4 Dispatches programme ‘Hunted’ (on 4 On Demand, with clips on YouTube) to see how gay people in Russia are hunted, tortured and humiliated. Witness a so-called Christian proudly relate how he shot a young gay man in the face with a ‘non-lethal weapon’ because he was carrying a rainbow flag. See Father Sergei Rybko from the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrate true Christian love when he says:

Even cattle don’t engage in this (homosexuality). I just consider them spiritually and morally ill. Something is not right here (in their heads)… they’ve started to plant the idea in young people’s minds that this is normal, that they are just a bit different… Well excuse me, paedophiles and sex offenders are just different too. Murderers and thieves are just different – so we should also give them freedom to do what they want? Where gays are allowed, paedophilia will soon flourish. Permitted evil gives rise to more evil. Paedophiles, gays and people like this are basically serving the Devil.

Church condoned persecution of homosexuals is what we can expect when God’s Gentle People inherit the Earth. We know this because it’s happened before, many times in history. When Christians get the upper hand, others suffer, whether they’re Jews, women, children accused of witchcraft or LGBT people.

Mercifully, Jesus was wrong, as he was about so much, when he promised the meek would inherit the Earth: they will never hold sway over the entire globe and for that, we should all be eternally grateful.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 4: Heaven Awaits

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Heaven2Quite a few Christians are now following this blog and I’d like to issue them with a challenge: show me where Jesus or the gospel writers or St Paul or any of the New Testament authors promise you that you’ll go to Heaven when you die.

Because, you see, the Bible doesn’t make any such promise.

Jesus was adamant that ‘the righteous’ (he’s not even talking about Christians!) would soon transfer into God’s new Kingdom on Earth. When you say the Lord’s prayer, Christians, this is exactly what you’re asking for: ‘Thy Kingdom come – on Earth as it is Heaven.’ As the former bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, puts it, ‘at no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, “Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven.” It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation’… in the first century, we might add.

Paul, with a version of Christianity that bears little resemblance to Jesus’ own, doesn’t teach that the believer will go to heaven either. In attempting to explain why the Kingdom is late in arriving – so late, in fact, that Christians were dying without seeing it – he invents the idea that the deceased will be woken up by Jesus when he returns to Earth (1 Thessalonians 4.14-16. And yes, he really did make up as he went along).

And after Paul? It was becoming increasingly apparent to later Christians that Jesus really wasn’t coming back any time soon. So they invented the idea that they would go to be with him. As Bart Ehrman puts it ‘with the passage of time, the apocalyptic notion of the resurrection of the body becomes transformed into the doctrine of the immortality of the soul’. But this is not what Jesus himself promised – and you’d think as ‘the Son of God’ he’d have known how it all worked – it’s not what St Paul taught and it’s not even what the trippy writer of Revelation claims. He too insists that everything is going to happen here on a recreated Earth (Revelation 21).

So the choice for you today, Christians, is whether you believe ‘God’s Word’ where, for once,  Jesus and Paul say much the same thing, or you go along with those later, post-biblical believers with their altogether different idea of what happens when we die.

Of course, you opt for the latter – even you have doubts that the Kingdom will come at this late stage – instead of facing the fact that when we die, we are just that: dead.

Ehrman D. Bart (2009) Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions of the Bible. Harper Collins: New York, page 266.

Jesus’ false promises

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I'llBeBackIf Jesus was the Son of God, or maybe God himself, as Christians like to claim, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see his promises come true.  After all, if God says he’ll do something, we should expect to see it happen… shouldn’t we?

The fact is, though, that so many of Jesus’ promises have turned out to be false. They haven’t materialised in the time-frame Jesus set for them. Here are just five that turned out to be a complete let down:

1) I’ll be back…

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels… I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom. (Matthew 16:27-28) 

Just in case we don’t get this the first time, he tells us again in Matthew 24:27, 30-31, 34 and Luke 21:27-28, 33-34, while ‘Saint’ Paul peddles the same nonsense in 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17 and 1 Corinthians 15.51-52. Did JC return with the angelic host for company to establish God’s kingdom on Earth before his disciples died? Nope,’fraid not.

2) Anything I can do…

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14.12)

Do we see Christians walking on water? Changing water into wine? Raising the dead? Doing feats even more remarkable than these? We should, if Jesus is telling the truth here. I guess the fact we don’t means this is another fib.

3) Ask and it’s yours…

I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14.13)

Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. (John 16.23)

Does he? When Christians ask of him, does he always provide what they ask, as he says he will here and again in Matthew 18.19? Absolutely not, which is why Christians like to tell us God’s answer to prayer is often ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘in a while’. But that’s not what Jesus says here; looks like he got it wrong again.

4) Signs and wonders…

These signs will accompany those who believe: …they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover’ (Mark 16.17).

Clearly, this why we’ve had no need for medicine or hospitals these last two thousand years. The Christians have been taking care of it all. Or perhaps not.

5) God will provide…

Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” But strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6.25-7.1)

Which is why true believers don’t need to go out to work to earn money to provide for themselves or their family. Everything they need, the good Lord provides – so long as they ‘strive’ for the kingdom, whatever that entails. Except no amount of chasing the Kingdom of God is going to manifest food and clothing. Jesus must know this because he acknowledges in Matthew 25 that there are people who are hungry, thirsty and without clothes. So why doesn’t God provide for them? It must be that they don’t strive strenuously enough for the Kingdom.

The gospels are full of these empty promises of Jesus’. He fails to deliver on every one, even for those who worship him as God. How would we react if a supposed friend lied to us as often as Jesus does? If we’d any sense, we’d recognise them as a fraud and a failure and send them packing.

Time to do the same to this old con-artist.