DECEMBER 22 2018
IS THERE A HELL? NO.
WILL THERE BE HELL? YES.
All requiems start with DIES IRAE (pronounced dee-es ee-ray) the entire text in church Latin. I have five or six CDs of different Requiems, my two favorites being the one by Berlioz with that magnificent Sanctus toward the end, and Brahms’ German Requiem.
They all follow the Roman Catholic liturgy, and all major composers wrote one. Even Bach, a confirmed Lutheran, composed a mass.
A Requiem is a Mass for the dead, and they don’t shy away from the Gospel truth: they all have the same wording, starting with “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine”, Lord, grant them eternal rest.
All Requiems begin and end with lines the churches today are loath the mention: the Day of Judgement.
Dies Irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in Favilla,
meaning,
“Day of Wrath, that dreadful Day:
it will resolve the earth in ashes.”
To retain the Latin rhyme, I would translate this as,
”Day of Wrath, that Dreadful Day,
the earth ablaze, immense dismay.
Perhaps the church kept these explosive lines in Latin on purpose, obscuring the true state of the world now becoming raw reality in Global Heating.
Toward the end there’s a repeat:
“Lacrymosa dies illa
qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus”
which tells us that
“Mournful that dreadful day
when from the dust shall rise
guilty man to be judged.”
Handel, in his masterpiece, The Messiah, is also quite explicit in his wording. There, in a beautiful aria, also near the beginning of this universally admired oratorio, he quotes Malachi, the very last Old Testament Bible book:
But who may abide the day of his coming
And who shall stand when he – the Lord – appeareth?
For he is like a refiner’s fire.
The He is Jesus.
Today we are on the cusp of Jesus’ return. Jesus? Who is he?
The Bible, the record of happenings from the very beginning to the end, tells us that (see Colossians 1: 15-17):
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Here we have the true story of creation. As I see it: Jesus is the first human being, true God and perfect human. Whatever good exists is his doing.
We now own the earth.
The Bible story continues and we read that, as Psalm 115: 16 confirms, “The Highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he gave to humanity.”
We all know all too well what we did with the earth. Today it is increasingly becoming clear that we have mismanaged that gift to the extent that we running out of options, the only way is death.
One of the miracles of creation is that it has a built-in destruction mechanism which is now being triggered.
At one time, near the beginning of history, when humanity had become so wicked that God decided to have a new start and asked Noah to build a life-preserving ARK, God pledged that this sort of thing would not be repeated knowing full well that in the End humans themselves would do the job.
We are now at that point of history.
Here’s how in a 16,000 word essay, Professor Dr. Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria, in the UK, entitled, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, summarized it.
Conclusion.
“Since records began in 1850, seventeen of the eighteen hottest years have occurred since 2000. Important steps on climate mitigation and adaptation have been taken over the past decade. However, these steps could now be regarded as equivalent to walking up a landslide. If the landslide had not already begun, then quicker and bigger steps would get us to the top of where we want to be.
Sadly, the latest climate data, emissions data and data on the spread of carbon-intensive lifestyles, show that the landslide has already begun. As the point of no return can’t be fully known until after the event, ambitious work on reducing carbon emissions and extracting more from the air (naturally and synthetically) is more critical than ever.
That must involve a new front of action on methane. Disruptive impacts from climate change are now inevitable. Geoengineering is likely to be ineffective or counter-productive. Therefore, the mainstream climate policy community now recognizes the need to work much more on adaptation to the effects of climate change.
That must now rapidly permeate the broader field of people engaged in sustainable development as practitioners, researchers and educators. In assessing how our approaches could evolve, we need to appreciate what kind of adaptation is possible.
Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress.
Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.
This situation makes redundant the reformist approach to sustainable development and related fields of corporate sustainability that has underpinned the approach of many professionals
Instead, a new approach which explores how to reduce harm and not make matters worse is important to develop. In support of that challenging, and ultimately personal process, understanding a deep adaptation agenda may be useful.”
(Bendell et al, 2017).
I emphasize:
“Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress.
Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.”
In the very short term, Dr. Bendell writes that we will experience drastic disruptions to our way of life. The Bible calls this The Day of Wrath: Dies Irae.
And that brings me to Gehenna.
For some reason Bible translators have substituted “Gehenna” with “Hell”. Thus if you look up Matthew 10: 28, you won’t find Gehenna –the word in the Greek – but HELL.
The same is true when Jesus had a temper tantrum and shouted to the Pharisees, the church leaders of his day (as recorded in Matthew 23: 33), “You snakes, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna?
So is Gehenna Hell? No, Jesus did not mention hell, he mentioned Gehenna.
Translators are humans. They are influenced by current doctrine which focuses on heaven. So they reasoned, if there is a heaven where believers go to – the overwhelming belief of church-goers – there is hell where unbelievers go to.
Makes sense, but is not true. Jesus did not mention hell, He said: Gehenna. And in that he pointed to a concept, quite familiar to the people of Israel.
Gehenna is the Greek and Latin version of the Hebrew word for the valley of Hinnom, the name of the ravine south of Jerusalem, which during the days of monarchy, was the scene of an idolatrous cult involving the passing of children through fire.
In the first century B.C. this name came to be used in a metaphorical sense to describe the place of fiery torment believed to be reserved for the wicked after the Last Judgment – Hell, in other words.
I believe that our god, Capitalism, (which according to Schumpeter involves ‘Creative Destruction’) is the one worshiped today, and Capitalism also requires us to sacrifice our children.
I better explain.
Thanks to our addiction to carbon fuels, only used because of their combustible potential, we are causing a drastic temperature rise, so high that in a few short years – and that means within a time span of 5-10 years – the world will burn to a crisp: exactly as the idol MOLOCH required, a pagan deity to whom human sacrifice was made.
Jesus, in his dispute with the Pharisees, by mentioning Gehenna, told them point blank that they were promoting the gospel of human sacrifice, that they were preachers of a pagan cult. No wonder he called them vipers, serpents, and offspring of poisonous snakes. I think Jesus here had the serpent in mind who talked to Eve in Paradise, a reference not lost on these church leaders.
The forgotten Covenant.
God made a covenant (Genesis 9) between God and humanity, a pure promise to be an equal partner with us and all created matter, including all animals and all that lives and moves and has a being – such as insects – implying that they too deserve total consideration as allies of humanity because they form an integral part of human durability: everything is connected to everything else.
God has abided by that solemn treaty. We did not. We now face the fateful consequences of breaking this covenant.
And here is where HELL comes in. God is angry at us. We have not abided by the terms of the treaty, the contract, the covenant, we made.
Handel, in his Messiah, quotes Isaiah 53: 6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.”
Gehenna again.
Today we all are on our way to Gehenna. This means that we all have to go through hell, because we all have sinned against creation, we, the last generation, more than any previous one.
Why we and not previous generations?
I have a picture of my paternal grandfather, a country grocer, who, seated on his two-wheeled horse-drawn wagon, made the rounds of his clientele, including my maternal grandparents, often bartering eggs for coffee, tea, sugar, the only items they usually needed: the rest of edibles they themselves supplied.
That was sustainable living, a way of life long gone, a way of life we should emulate, but no longer can: we have gone too far on our road to Gehenna.
Oh, I find the parallel so striking. Those who burned their children in that dreadful place near Jerusalem are exactly the same people we are today: we now sacrifice our children and grandchildren to a future that inevitably leads to HELL, all-consuming fire.
That’s the ultimate result of Global Heating.
Since the year 2000 of the 18 summers, 17 have been the warmest ever, and, by all indications, next year will be the hottest ever, as El Nino is combined with an ever mounting CO2 rate.
Decision Time.
I see the coming years as decisive. I have long felt that we will see a confluence of events: huge earth-shaking events, comprising the economy, the weather, pandemic and war, likely including tremendous earthquakes, as we are distorting earth’s fragile balance.
All this assures that the DIES IRAE, the Day of Wrath, is imminent.
There’s no escape.
We all will have to go through this time of trial: we all are guilty as hell. We all have failed to detect the dangers we are in, and we all have to pay the price. That’s why there will be a HELL to pay.
But the Lord is gracious: for the sake of the elect he will shorten the days of trial. Still, we too have to go through the purifying fire, because our bodies are full of toxins: we are not allowed to enter the New Creation unless we too are clean, made clean by fire.
So, yes, there’s Hell to come, a place of our own making.
Pray that the Day of Trial may come soon. As the apostle Peter
wrote (2 Peter 3):
The Day of the Lord
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness as you anticipate and hasten the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with God’s promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
All is well that ends well.