A POTPUREE OF BIBLICAL EXOGESIS ON DEATH AND OTHER MATTERS
I feel led to talk a little about God, mortality, Life and Death. If there was one book in the Bible I'd say Don't read it would be Hebrews. It wasn't even cited as a book untill AD 180 and wasn't cannonized till almost the year AD 200. There are ideas expressed on Death that are at variance with the entire rest of the Bible. Hebrews after talking about the Martyrs, speaks of "a cloud of witnesses we are surrounded by", looking down on us, kind of what the Catholics believe. It also says "It is appointed once to die and then the judgement". Not exactly. Everyone who has ever lived and died on Planet Earth is still dead and awaiting the Judgement Seat of Christ. As of now they are unconscious and un-judged. Hebrews seems to imply that "Jesus will appear" after we die, and once we die we are "with Jesus". If you think Hebrews is right and I'm wrong read ANY OTHER BOOK of the Bible. Some say the verse about dying "once" means there is no reincarnation. Here is my position on reincarnation. In Eccliastes it says "after you die, the spirit of a man goes back to God, who gave it". It also says "As a dog dies, so dies a man". It also says "- - - but the dead know nothing" and "The memory of them is forgotten" (meaning their OWN memory of themselves) Let's look a little further. In Genisis 2 in the "second" creation story it speaks of a time when there was NO LIFE on the Earth. Then it says that God formed man from clay and breathed into his nostrels the breath of life and he became a living soul. Two things. More properly this story should be called "The first protoplasum" rather than The First Man. Because the earth was lifeless at the time. This "breath" or "energy" or "life force" mixes with the "dust" out of which man and all life comes. I've heard that the same seventeen elements that are in the soil are also in the human body. Organically, that's logical. The next thing is that the SOUL IS MORTAL. Once the "vessle" of the flash passes and returns to the dust, the soul ceases to exist. Now all that "life force" goes back to God and I suppose if God wants to "give it again" in a future life form after we die, that's his perogitive. It's a fact difficult to overemphasize that the Soul is mortal and doesn't go on forever. Indeed Jehovah says not to attempt to contact the dead, because the realm of the dead is the realm of Angels and Demons. If you doubt me on this just think a minute what the somon societal perception of Witches and the Occultic community refers to human beings as. They refer to us by the supposidly desparaging term of "Mortals". Even THEY know we are not immortal like themselves. I guess we won't talk about Alice Cooper.

MORE DISCUSSION ON THE SUBJECT OF DEATH

There are a few things I'd like to express now in terms of TRUTH IN SCRIPTURE. A lot of popular ideas people have are "extra Biblical". A comon theme is that we are carried by angels to heave, or that we become angels ourselves and sprout wings and will be able to fly. Chuck Smith teaches that we will be able to fly in outer space and visit other planets after we did. In popular song lyrics there's "And if my wings should fail me won't you (Jesus) meet me with another pair". That's from "In My Time of Dying". There's another lyric "Just before the angels come to carry me, I want it down in writing how to bury me", and also another line "She grew so lonely in the end; the angels picked her for a friend." You have talked about Christianity being "stories". This bit about being "carried by angels to heaven" comes from a Parable Jesus tought about the rich man and Lazzarus. It can't be literal truth because there are Other theological problems with it. Also in Revelation there IS a relating of how we're given White Robes after we die. The trouble is if you analize this it looks like another "story" because it also says we are to Wait- - for God to take out his vengence on all those who martyred us". That's two thousand years of just "waiting around" with the same prayer on our lips. I don't think that makes sense. God tells these people to "rest a little" and I think that's just just what they do. They "rest"; they're not conscious. Paul and Judy in their letters to me talked about the Glories of the Next Life- - so it doesn't matter whether I'm happily married in this one. The only time Jesus ever talked to people in Hell- - it was "departed spirits" who sinned at the time of Noah and the flood. There is no specific reference to their being human. Gene Scott teaches that God did a "castration job" on the angels because in the Days of the Flood they came down and had sex with women and spawned mutants. They are held in a place called "tarterus", which is sort of like Hell. But it also says in scripture that DEATH (as when you and I die) will be the Last Enemy to be Defeated. Read and learn. We are promised "Dinner and a tournament" when the rapture comes lasting up to seven years but perhaps much shorter. After this there is a reference to Jesus Christ coming back to earth, "with ten thousand times ten thousands of his saints". We spend a thousand years on Earth- with no promise of "flying" anywhere. The last time I checked that's a hundred million. It sounds like a lot. I was just thinking that Bush's popularity rating is at 36%. That would just about accound for the hundred million, given America's poor popularity rating in the rest of the world. We will be like the angels in one sense. NO SEX. About the best we can brag about is we can point the finger of shame at all the mortals STILL ON THE EARTH at that time, and accuse them of sin. That's not much to look forward to in my oppinion.

BEHOLD THEY HAVE A FORM OF RELIGION BUT DENY THE POWER OF GOD
The following is a letter to a Sunday "religion" radio show that was never sent:

I'm the same person that sent that E mail six or so hours ago under the heading of "The Malcolm X of Christianity". When one looks at the beliefs or rather lack of beliefs of the Jesus Christ Show it's amazing. If something in the Bible doesn't fit in with your science of "Hermanutics" you throw out the verse or verses. You don't believe in a God who answers prayer. "God is not your own private bell-hop" is the stock line of you and others. You don't believe in the Spiritual gifts in general including, tongues, prophecy, and healing. I remember one caller who says they were healed for the moment of an illness and Jesus' only response was, "I hope you have your affairs in order. It's a horrible thing for a person to die and leave others to wonder what his wishes were". You don't seem to believe in the very coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. As you put it, "The study of Last Things is best done last- - - or not at all".

One time you said there were Three Heavens. You left out what St. Paul refers to as "The heavenlies" where there is an ongoing battle between angels and demons, presumably for our souls. You don't seem to believe in Satan at all. You seem to feel sorry for practicing Witches and you refer to them as being persecuted. You feel empathy for gays to the extent that one time when one gay left a regular church for a gay church- - - you condemned not the gay man but the Church that made him feel "unconfortable". It's a generality worth making that you seem to major on the minors and minor on the majors. Put another way in the Gospell's words you "Strain at a gnat and swallow a cammel". St. Paul once said "I count all my rightious acts as loss". Ironically, I find myself in the same boat when I look on my Christian life and my own "good works". I know that were I to try and justify myself by my works you would say that I was in a vain persuit. So I won't. I'll just leave the Church and everybody will be happy. And I already have.

Ther is indeed "gifts" in the modern church but not the "gifts of the spirit". Indeed the lack of regard for the Spiritual gifts Paul talked about in scripture has always baffled me in the church. No. People have the "gift" of "being lucky". I suppose a Black man would say they have the "gift of being born White" - - not that I'm Black or anything. You yourself have stated that there is no moral wiggle room with God. If someone owes you a few dollars down here you as a human can choose to let it slide and that's OK. But you say God works on moral perfection. If You really died for our sins how come Paul in Ephisians is still talking about Spiritual warfare against legons of demons and principalities and all that? My response to your supposed "perfection doctrine" is merely to say "Be it done unto you have said". That goes for you and your show. "What you mete out will be dealt back to you".

I want to mention one more thing. Both St. John and St. Paul taught that the Kingdom of Heaven was coming in their life times. Both spoke of being Born Again as living in a somehow higher dimension. You yourself seem to teach that this life is just a waiting period for the euphoria of heaven. You describe this as being in some other time realm where they don't seem to remember or at least care about the past or their loved ones still on earth. I don't think you will find one verse of scripture saying that people "go to such a place- - after they die". I happen to think of that Homer Simpson episode where Homer was in heaven but it wouldn't really be heaven without his loved ones there. I'd have to think Homer Simpson is more spiritual than Jesus but that's what it looks like.