Biblical Descriptions of Heaven and Hell
Read the following verses from the Bible and see if this is the heaven of your conscious, unconscious or fantasies. How much of this do you still believe?
Genesis
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide
the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that is was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Contrast the above view of creation with Kinesis in the Boomer Bible, written by R.F. Laird. In Chapter 19 of the Book of Willie, Harry, the Messiah writes:
1 As I have already told you, science has shown that the whole universe came from a great big explosion of chemicals,
2 Which operate in accordance with the laws of nature,
3 Meaning they change a little bit all the time,
4 At random,
5 Completely by accident.
6 And it is this simple law of random change which accounts for everything. Every form of life you can think of resulted from zillions of little changes,
7 At random,
8 In the same basic chemicals that made up the earth after the Big Bang,
9 Which means that you and the trees and the snakes and the dinosaurs and the gerbils and the sponges are the result of the same process,
10 Which keeps going,
11 And has been since the first amino acid got formed.
12 If you have to be scientific about it, the race of Mankind resulted from about a jillion little random changes in the race of apes,
13 And there were several different versions of Man first,
14 And the one who survived was the one that was the best at killing,
15 Which is the tree of man that all of us are part of,
16 And explains why there is genocide,
17 And always has been.
Chapter 20
1 But don't let this upset you,
2 Not even for a moment,
3 Because there's nothing evil about it.
4 We survived because we were smart and knew how to kill like nobody's business,
5 And while there is a downside,
6 Which is that we have nuclear weapons and will certainly annihilate ourselves,
7 Unless we kill ourselves off with pollution first,
8 There is no evidence of any kind that we were created in the image of any God at all,
9 Let alone a personal God who cares about whether we are good or evil or go to church or give alms to the poor or anything else.
10 In fact, from what we know about history,
11 It looks like pretty much of an archeological certainty that it was Man who invented God,
12 In his own image,
13 Because Man was afraid to be alone.
14 And it was also Man who made up the idea of good and evil,
15 Because it helped keep people in line,
16 And people had to be kept in line if they were going to work together,
17 And develop advanced enough civilizations to produce plenty of things,
18 Not to mention nuclear weapons.
So according to Laird, man has created his own hell on earth. It is doubtful if heaven exists beyond a kind of hope or fantasy. In Chapter 2 of the Judaeo-Christian Bible, we get a description of an earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden:
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Naturally woman is to blame for eating the forbidden fruit and ejaculating man out of paradise. The God of Goodness suddenly turns vengeful:
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thyhusband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also fo the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
So not only is Eve responsible for throwing man out of earthly paradise, she also stirred God's wrath enough to make him invent death. Is God also trying to prevent man from achieving his immortality? Immortality later becomes something man must gain but only his soul, not his body goes to heaven. For Laird, the soul does not exist outside the body and burial rites in his version of the Bible are as follows:
We now commit this Body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain knowledge that natural processes shall consume the corruptible bodies of those who are no longer breathing. And truly nothing more need be said about their future career.
Because man was now writing about God, sooner or later he had to invent Satan, the king of evil. He tempts everyone, including Jesus Christ, with the seven deadly sins Dante also describes in detail. But Jesus Christ Superstar appeals to the masses because he tells them how they can get to paradise for sure when they die:
New Testament, Book of Matthew, Chapter 5
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their's is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Christ then develops a more stringent version of the ten commandments including:
44 Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
He talks incessantly about how hard for some to get into the kingdom of heaven ( the rich, intellectual, skeptical) and how easy for others (repentant, humble sinners.) His language is beautifully cloaked in parables and analogies:
Chapter 13, verse 47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.
49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Christ, Dante and the Greeks has pictured hell as a furious fire of physical torture. Contrast these views with Sartre's visually deceptive pleasant eighteenth century salon. Which is worse? Christ also describes a hell on earth:
Chapter 24, verse 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
Part of the ritual of purification to make it easier to enter heaven is Holy Communion, a kind of symbolic cannibalism where penitents devour the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ: Chapter 26, verse 26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.
27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Thus began the ceremony of last rites where one symbolically devours Christ before death. Even a murderer on death row can use the last rites to get him a crack at Heaven once he is executed. Compare the Christian ritual to Laird's version of Holy Communion in the Boomer Bible. What does the messiah Harry offer his followers? How do the two kinds of paradise differ?
Book of Willie, Chapter 71
2 Do this in remembrance of me.
3 Look upon your own face in the mirror,
4 Which is the face of yourself alone,
5 As we are all alone in this vast meaningless universe.
6 Then cover the face in the mirror with little white rocks,
7 Which are the slayers of thought, and your consolation for all things which may trouble you.
8 When you have done this, take the blade of a razor,
9 Which is as deadly and useful as blame itself,
10 And cut the rocks into lines, so that the slayer of thought may serve you and your desire,
11 Then roll some money in your fingers,
12 Because, outside of yourself, money is the only certainty one can have,
13 And besides, it makes an excellent device for inhaling lines.
14 Finally, as you inhale, remember me,
15 For the briefest possible instant,
16 Which should not be too hard,
17 Because when you have finished inhaling, you will no longer remember me,
18 Or anything else.
What actions do you think will help you get to the heaven or hell of your choice?
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