Description

THAT THE WICKED die and go to hell for eternal punishment in flames, inflicted by the will of God, is embedded in Western consciousness and culture.
Our great artworks and literature, especially poetical works, display tormented infernal scenes, managed by a curator lord general with a pitchfork, stoking the torturous fires. Fires for the damned.

Sometime in the year 1980, an evangelical leader took me for a walk across the Devil’s Punch Bowl at Hindhead in Surrey, near his home. In the depths of the Devil’s Punch Bowl, I asked him about “hell”. And what about my parents? They were not born again. Yes, they’ll go to hell. But they’re awesome people. Ah, but in hell they’ll be exposed for the people they really are. You’ll know what they’re really like. But … I already know what they’re really like. They’re wonderful people.

Well, it was in the Bible, wasn’t it? It speaks of “hell” and “hell fire”. The difficult question about my parents I left in abeyance, praying they’d be saved. That “saved” presumably meaning saved from “hell” and torturing fires from God.

In the late summer of 1997, I began my project: the Bible has got to be translated according to the prophets and apostles, not according to traditions. So putting on the cloak of the utmost integrity, I developed Translation Targets and Translation Laws, and grammatical organic processes. It was astounding yet plain to see: such an approach had never been used before in English Bibles.

And so with these organic principles in mind, this book examines the veracity or otherwise of God inflicting on His own creation eternal torture in flames – and the predicament of my parents.