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Monday, September 22, 2014

Yup...Hell Exists and We Have No Reasonable Hope that it's Empty!



Jesus warned about Gehenna more than anything else during his life on earth. He died to save people from it. The Mass (since the restoration of the millenial "for many" at the Consecration) is proof positive that ALL are NOT SAVED because Jesus could only die for the salvation of the many who would accept His sacrifice. Note that the bad thief got no guarantee of paradise. Did he repent in the end? Maybe. Let's pray he did, but we have no evidence of it.

I made a Cursillo in the early 1980s
and spent half the night out in the stairwell with a few fellow participants convincing them that hell exists and unrepentant sinners go there. For crying out loud, if no one is in danger of hell why should we bother with the "new evangelization." Just hand out cookies with little tags that say, "Jesus loves you. See you in heaven."

Jesus DOES love us, but he is not the Candy Man. He calls us to respond -- to use our free will to conform ourselves to His will. We cannot "eat, drink, and be merry," persecute our neighbor, rob, rape, and steal and go merrily on our way confident that God will forgive all because He would never be so mean as to condemn us.

Listen up! Your actions show your faith or lack of faith. You condemn yourself by obstinate refusal to believe and act on that belief. (Even the devil believes. It's actions that illustrate how real our belief is.) Jesus won't force you to believe in Him, but if you believe in something or someone else, like the satanists in Oklahoma, He will let you follow that false God. And where do you think that false god is going? Oh, Jesus will definitely pursue you like the Hound of Heaven He is, but He will not force your belief and He will definitely let you follow your free will straight into the enslavement of hell. So repent and believe. What's reasonable is our belief in the Savior and the hope of heaven for all who repent and hear the good news.

Here's what Fr. John Hardon says about faith:
There is no other place to start talking about Christianity than with the Christian faith. “Only faith,” we are told, “can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). 
What the Apostles’ Creed tells us [is] what everyone who calls himself a Christian must accept on the word of God, that is on faith. 
We accept three fundamental truths in the Apostles’ Creed. 
  • We believe that the world did not always exist, but was created by God who existed from all eternity.
  • We believe that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, that He was born of the Virgin Mary, died on the Cross and rose from the dead, and that He will return on the last day to judge the living and the dead.
  • We believe that Christ sent the Holy Spirit who is the soul of the Church which Christ founded and that through the Church we receive all the graces we need to reach the eternal life for which we were made.
What needs to be emphasized is that belief in these revealed truths is the foundation of Christianity. We can hope only in what we know to be true; faith provides us with the guarantee that our hope is not in vain. We can love only what we know to be good; faith provides us with the vision that God is so good we should love Him with our whole heart and soul.
Thank God for your faith and remember those words Jesus spoke to so many whom He cured. "Your sins are forgive, go on your way; your faith has saved you."

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