Spirit World Truths: Truths of the Spirit World

Truths Of The Spirit World...The Hells
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(Continued)

This is a message received from a messenger or angel from the other
side of the grave. It describes what happens when one dies, and
crosses over to the spirit world.

"I merely want to say that I was present at the church tonight and
listened to the preacher tell his congregation what he didn't know about
hell. What he said, in many particulars, was untrue; however, it was
pleasing to hear him tell his people that there was no physical suffering,
although he didn't explain to them why there could be no such suffering.
I mean that no spirit, when he goes into hell, carries with him his
physical body, or any other body that has such substance that would be
affected by fire and brimstone and the other unreasonable things that
the churches have for so many years taught and terrified their members
with, and as a consequence, caused them to believe that the Father is
such a "cruel" and "wrathful" Father, demanding that His "cravings for
satisfaction" be supplied by the sizzling of the bodies of His children in
fire. No, this damnable doctrine is not true, and I am glad to see that the
churches are ceasing to believe it or teach it!

But the doctrine that the preacher taught is quite as bad, and as
useless as the former, for the reason that punishment of sinners and
those who are out of harmony with God is a fact which they all will
realize when they come to the spirit world. With that being so, to teach
that this punishment is everlasting is as harmful as the one that I first
mentioned.

How strange that preachers and teachers will try to cause their people
and listeners to believe that God is such a wrathful and vindictive being,
having less love and mercy than the most wicked earthly father has for
his children! It is so very deplorable that these supposed instructors of
what God is should make such attempts to blaspheme Him, completely
disregarding His Great Qualities of love and tenderness, and His
desire that all His children become happy.

Oh, I tell you that these preachers will have a woeful sin to answer for
when they come to an accounting! And this will not be at the "great
judgment day," as they teach, but will be just as soon as they enter
spirit life and realize the great harm that they have done to many who
have followed them in their teachings. And they will realize that awful
result very soon after their entrance into the spirit world. For they will
have come to them, as clouds of witnesses, the spirits of those who
were under their instructions on earth, bringing with them all the
evidence of the results of their erroneous beliefs and the stains of this
great sin of blasphemy.

I, Paul, write this, for I have suffered from this very cause myself. When
on earth, I taught some doctrine like unto the one that these preachers
are now teaching, and even now I realize that I am responsible to some
extent for many false beliefs. But I thank God that I am not responsible
for all that is ascribed to me in the Bible, and that if my true teachings
were known and taught, the blind and erroneous beliefs that are now so
prevalent among Christians would not exist. I tell you that mortals do not
conceive of the great harmful and deplorable results that flow from their
beliefs in the Bible in many particulars. This book is one of falsehoods
and forgery and imputations that have no resemblance to what the
Master or any of his apostles taught. And you can readily realize how
anxious we all are that these errors and untruths be removed from the
minds and souls of men.

The hell of the orthodox preachers, as formerly taught - that is, a hell of
brimstone and fires - is not the true hell, and has no existence save in
the minds of these orthodox believers.

The true hell is a place and a condition, and one is not separated from
the other. And while the condition of the soul and the beliefs of men
create the hells to a very large extent, yet hell is a fixed abiding place,
made and established, and of such a character as to suit the inhabiting
of it by the soul according to the condition of that soul. To illustrate, a
soul that is less vile and less filled with evil thoughts and the recollection
of evil deeds and false beliefs is in a very different place from the soul
that has more of this evil in it. The former soul would not find its
habitation in the same place as the latter soul, any more than the highly
developed soul would find its home in the same place as the soul that
is less developed.

Heaven is a place, or many places, suited to the development of the
soul. At the other extreme, hell is a place suited to the souls that are in
a condition of degradation and evil. I mean to be understood as saying
that place and condition of soul are correlative terms - the home of the
soul depending on the condition of the soul. As these different hells
vary, so they are suited for the souls of spirits according to the
defilement of soul.

As I said before, hell is a place as well as a condition. And the man
who believes that it is nothing more than a condition of his mind or soul
will be wonderfully surprised as well as disappointed. I know the
condition of mind and soul creates a man's hell to a very large extent,
and that it is the chief source of his suffering and the darkness that
surrounds and envelops him. Yet this condition is not the only source of
that suffering or of the darkness in which he finds himself. Hell is also a
place. It is a place that has all the appearances and ingredients that
are in exact agreement with a person's state as produced or caused by
the condition of his mind or soul.

It is not a place of universal character, fitted for the habitation of all
souls irrespective of conditions of degrees of defilement and sin and
darkness. It is not a single place,forming a common home for all fallen
souls, but is composed of many and different places. And as has been
said, there are many hells, having gradations of appearance and
surroundings that are suitable for causing the additional sufferings
which souls may have to endure. The expression, "the lowest depths of
hell," is not a meaningless one, but portrays a truth - a real, existing fact
that many spirits are now experiencing the reality of.

In its broadest sense, hell is every place outside of heaven; and heaven
is that place where everything entering into it - its appearance and
qualities and its inhabitants - is in perfect harmony with the respective
laws of God and His Will concerning the same.

And this statement involves the fact that there are several heavens. The
heaven of the redeemed, or those who have received the Divine
Essence in their souls and have become of the Divine Nature of the
Father, is a distinct heaven from that wherein those live who have been
restored to the perfect condition of their natural love that the first
parents possessed before the fall - the condition of the restitution to
mankind of that perfection which was lost by the disobedience of the
first man and woman.

Mortals usually believe that heaven is a condition. And the Bible, in
which so many believe, attempts to describe this heaven with its
streets of gold, and pearly gates, etc.; and, as a fact, it is a real,
substantial place, having all the elements and appearances of a home
of bliss which help to bring happiness and joy to its inhabitants, in
addition to the happiness which their soul perfection and development
cause them to have.

Then, as heaven is a place, having real substance that is perceptible to
the spirits who inhabit it, why should not hell be a place of real
substance also, with those qualities and appearances exactly suited to
add to the unhappiness of those who are fitted for it?

The spirit world, both heaven and hell, are places of substance, having
their planes and divisions and limitations of occupancy. They are not
mythical, invisible conceptions of mind, as you mortals ordinarily
conceive ghosts to be. The spirits of mortals are real, and more
substantial than are the physical bodies of mortals; further, these
planes and divisions, whether of heaven or hell, have a more real
existence than mortals have in their places of habitations or
confinement in the earth life.

The hells are places of darkness and sufferings, but in them are no
fires or brimstone, etc., as have been so commonly represented by the
preachers and teachers of the orthodox churches, because there is
nothing therein that would feed fires or that fires could affect. And there
are no devils or Satan, though there are evil spirits of men who are
more wicked and vicious and horrifying than have ever been pictured of
the devil and his angels.

In your communications, you have had some very realistic descriptions
of hell from those who are actually living therein, and who are realizing
its tortures and realities, and I will not take the time here to attempt to
describe it in detail. I will only say that, as it has not entered into the
minds of men to conceive of the wonders and beauties of heaven,
neither have they ever conceived of the horrors and sufferings of hell.

But from all this, men must not understand that the punishment and
darkness which the spirits of evil endure in the hells are specifically
inflicted by the Father because of any "wrath" that He may have
towards these spirits, or to gratify any "feelings of revenge," or even to
satisfy any "outraged justice," for it is not true.

Man, when he becomes a spirit, is his own judge and executioner,
submitting to and receiving the inexorable results of the law that
whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. This is a law that is
necessary to preserve or bring about the harmony of God's universe,
which, of course, is absolutely necessary. And while it may appear to
man, at first sight, to be a harsh and cruel law, yet, in its workings and
results, even to the individual spirit who may suffer in the reaping, it is a
most benign and beneficial law, because the darkness and sufferings
of a few years, as you mortals say, bring about an eternity of light and
happiness.

The law must rule. But in all the apparent harshness and suffering and
want of mercy, the great love of the Father overshadows the sufferer
and finally makes the defiled and wicked soul become one of purity
and goodness.

Men may never have thought of this fact: that if it were possible for
these evil spirits to live in heaven, their sufferings and unhappiness
would be greater than what they endure by living in a place that is more
in agreement, in its surroundings and appearances, with their own
distorted conditions of soul. So, even in their hells, the Father is
merciful and good to them.

Regarding the second proposition by the preacher in his sermon -
namely, the duration of suffering or of the life of the spirit in hell - his
conclusion was that this duration of the spirit in hell is eternal,
everlasting, and without end. How it must have hurt and violated the
teachings of his soul and his conception of the Loving Father to have
come to such a conclusion! But yet, being bound by his creeds, and the
domination of his belief that the Bible is the sole authority upon hell as
well as heaven, in the conviction of his mind (and here I want to
emphasize mind, for his heart was not in agreement), he declared that
the duration of the sufferings and life of the hells is eternal; and that the
saying of Jesus proved it to be, not only because it was in the Bible but
also because the true meaning of the original Greek word can have no
other translation. He said this not knowing, or if knowing, not recalling
that Jesus, even if he used such expression, did not speak in Greek,
and that in order to obtain the true meaning of the word used by Jesus
in back of the Greek word, he (the preacher) must go to the word as it
was uttered by Jesus for its true meaning.

So many preachers and commentators on the Bible attempt to
determine a most vital truth by a shade of meaning that they conceive a
particular word in its original may have had. But they are not justified in
concluding that such word had, at the time used, such shade of
meaning, or that the original, as they conceive it to be, was the original
word actually spoken or written. They seem to lose sight of the fact that
the writings of the Bible - I mean the manuscripts to which they make
reference to prove the correctness of their conclusions - are far
removed from the original writings, and that, by reason of the copying
and recopying of the word upon which they rely, the shade of meaning
that they give it in their interpretations may not be an exact translation
of the word originally used. Of course, they have no way of learning this
fact; and consequently, they have to resort to the best authority that they
can have access to. But under such circumstances, it is not a justifiable
thing to have a vital question of man's future and destiny determined by
the shade of meaning that may be given to one or more words, without
reference to other declarations of the same book that have relation to
the subject matter of the inquiry.

The preacher said that in his conclusion as to the question, he must be
governed by the Bible alone, that he had no right to indulge in
speculation concerning the philosophies of other men; and that he
could find nothing in the Bible that would justify him in coming to any
other conclusion than that the duration of punishment in hell is eternal.
Well, he was not honest with himself; for if he had searched a little more
deeply and had given as much credence to other parts of the Bible as
to the passage that he quoted, he would have found a strong statement
to the effect that the evil spirits in hell have the possibility of leaving it;
and not only that, but also that a part of the great mission of Jesus,
upon whose supposed declaration the preacher based his conclusion,
was to show the Way and induce these spirits of evil to leave their hells.
This was the Master's first work after he became a spirit, and he would
not have attempted to preach to these wicked spirits in hell if there had
been no possibility of their ever leaving it (First Epistle of Peter
3:19,20. "...being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which
sometime were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God
waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few,
that is, eight souls were saved by water..").

Also, the preacher might well have considered more deeply the
contradiction presented in the Bible that, at the time of Noah, because
of their great sins when mortals, God "punished" His children as He
never punished any other of His children for their disobedience, utterly
destroying them by one great catastrophe, removing His only living
human creatures from the face of the earth, and thus leaving only Noah
and his family to serve as a reminder of the great failure of God Himself
in His Creation of the most perfect and the "Very Good."

No, in addition to recognizing this obvious contradiction, if the preacher
had searched the Bible, he would have found that the hell that
contained the spirits of all the human race that were living at the time of
the flood (except Noah and his family) was not eternal in its duration.

And again, had the preacher searched even further, he would have
found that the Master himself declared by necessary implication that, at
least for some of the wicked who became inhabitants of hell, there was
the possibility of release upon certain conditions. I refer to the
declaration attributed to him where he said, "He that sinneth against
the son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he that sinneth against the
Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the
world to come." (Matthew 12:32.)

Now, to any reasonable man, there is only one interpretation of this
declaration, and that is: that for any and all sins, except that against the
Holy Ghost, there is forgiveness in the next world as well as in the
mortal world. And that being a fact, it is an irresistible conclusion that
the Father would not compel a spirit to remain in hell after He had
forgiven that spirit's sins.

No, the preacher had not searched the Scriptures, as he was duty
bound to do. Could he have rid his mind of the beliefs that the creeds of
his church had driven into his intellect, and of the teachings of the
ancient Fathers, as well as of the churches that had taught such false
and damnable doctrines for so many years, his conclusion would have
been very different.

The preacher repudiated the old teachings that there would be physical
suffering in hell, or fire or brimstone, etc., and expressed his
commiseration for those preachers and others who had taught such
doctrine, and for their awful responsibility and accounting. And his
commiseration was needed and appropriate. But I want to say here
that he needs as much commiseration, if not more, for the preaching of
his false doctrines, as did those preachers to whom he refers. He has
more light, or may have, and his accounting will be correspondingly
greater.

I have written a long letter and you are tired, and I must stop. But before
doing so, let me declare the truth to be that hell is not a place of eternal
punishment, that all the hells, as well as other parts of the spirit world,
are places of progression, and that the privilege of probation is not
taken from any spirit, no matter how wicked; for all are God's children.
And in his plans for the perfecting of the harmony of the universe and
man's salvation, all the hells will be emptied and the hells themselves
destroyed.

But men must not think from this that the duration of suffering in these
hells is necessarily short, for that is not true. Some of the evil
inhabitants of these places have been in such darkness and suffering
for centuries, as mortals count time, and may be for centuries more.
But the time will come when they will have the awakening to the fact that
they may become children of light; then, when they make the effort to
progress, they will succeed.

The sooner that mankind learns that hell is not a place of punishment to
satisfy the "wrath" of an "angry" God, but merely the natural and
necessary living place of the spirit whose condition of soul and mind
demands that location, the better off they will be. Further, that condition
changes, and it will change. The hell of a spirit's habitation will change
until, finally, for that spirit, all the hells will disappear."

This was excerpted from Angelic Visitations who publishes James Padgett's
messages received from messengers on the other side, back in the early
1900's.



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