Return to Patrick Henry
I googled Billy Graham, out of curiosity, to see how keen on hellfire he is. It seems to me I read an article recently that said he was more of a fan than I had (vaguely) thought – but I’m not at all sure. This site certainly doesn’t think so – it thinks Billy is a dang backslidin’ heretic, and it’s pretty pissed about it.
Scripture is not unclear about the fact that Hell is a place of fiery torment (Isaiah 66:24; Mark 9:43-48; Matthew 3:12; 5:22; 13:40-42, 49-50; 18:8-9; 25:41; Luke 16: 19-31; John 15:6; Revelation 14:10; 19:20; 20:10, 14-15; 21:8). Yet, Mr. Graham denies this truth. In an interview with Time Magazine (November 15, 1993), Mr. Graham said this about hell:
“The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don’t preach it because I’m not sure about it. When the Scripture uses fire concerning hell, that is possibly an illustration of how terrible it’s going to be – not fire but something worse, a thirst for God that cannot be quenched.”
First of all, Scripture never depicts or describes hell as “a thirst for God”…Secondly, Graham denies hell fire by saying it is “not fire.” Yet, Scripture is very clear about the fire of hell. In fact, the rich man in “Hades” in Luke 16:24 said, “I am tormented in this flame.”
Good. Lovely. Super. I do like scholarship and accuracy, don’t you? (Although the rich man thing is a bit of a poser, isn’t it. Since those nice people at Patrick Henry College pretty much worship George W, and he’s not famous for being hard on rich men. Oh well, I’d better leave these doctrinal niceties to the scholarly people at PHC and the Washington Times.) It’s good to have it firmly nailed down that the Bible says Hell is a place of fiery torment.
PHC is interesting in a lot of ways. Reading some of the ways, one is tempted to fall to one’s knees and pray that they all become harmless real estate agents rather than going into the government in any capacity whatsoever.
God is a self-existent and transcendent spirit, who is incomprehensibly holy, righteous, good, just, omnipotent, omniscient, wise, omnipresent, loving, gracious and faithful…God created the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them for His own good pleasure. He has absolute sovereign authority and control over all His creation, and sustains it by His gracious providence.
Okay. Fine. If God is good and just and loving and gracious, and ‘he’ created the earth and everything in it (for his own good pleasure?? what is he, a child?) – then why is there so much pain and fear and loss in it? Okay, Pat Henry – did you see that picture from Zimbabwe the other day? Of the two little orphan boys sitting in the rubble of the market hanging onto each other, the older one cuddling the younger? What’s that for? Is that God’s own good pleasure? If so he’s a miserable shit, isn’t he. Now multiply that picture by, say, 100 billion for recent human miseries, and say 1000 billion for the miseries of other sentient beings. No, don’t give me that ‘incomprehensible’ nonsense – with that you can just argue anything and everything and nothing. What the hell make you think this ‘God’ isn’t incomprehensibly evil, bad, unjust, omnipotent, stupid, omnipresent, hating, sadistic and treacherous? The Bible – well that’s another circular answer, isn’t it – what if the evil hating treacherous sadist wrote it? How do you know that’s not the case? Because the Bible says so. Well it would, wouldn’t it!
Human life begins at conception; it is a gift from the Creator, sustained by His grace and to be taken only upon His authority. Abortion and euthanasia are sins and violations of the public good.
And that’s the end of that subject. Notice anything missing?
The Lord is the author of the union of marriage, made evident when he provided a companion for the first man, Adam…Husbands are the head of their wives just as Christ is the head of the church…
So – all girls who attend PHC have signed on to official, explicit inferiority and subordination.
Any biology, Bible or other courses at PHC dealing with creation will teach creation from the understanding of Scripture that God’s creative work, as described in Genesis 1:1-31, was completed in six twenty-four hour days. All faculty for such courses will be chosen on the basis of their personal adherence to this view. PHC expects its faculty in these courses, as in all courses, to expose students to alternate theories and the data, if any, which support those theories. In this context, PHC in particular expects its biology faculty to provide a full exposition of the claims of the theory of Darwinian evolution, intelligent design and other major theories while, in the end, teach creation as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data.
Wheee! Talk about the inmates running the asylum…
Private Property. As God’s image-bearers with dominion, and stewardship responsibilities, over the remainder of creation, men and women have the inalienable right to own and manage their own property, subject to government regulation only in the unusual situation where the rights of others are endangered. Government systems such as communism and socialism, which give the government primary control over property, are a violation of God’s creation order.
That’s right. So if some smelly bozo asks you for your shirt, here’s what you do – you don’t hand over your cloak as well, you whip out your cell phone and call the cops. Then you can while away the waiting time by telling smelly bozo what eternal torment is like. Have a nice day.
Interesting to read that creation was completed in six twenty-four hour days. Particularly as creation would seem to involve creating the galaxies, stars and everything, and planets spinning in their orbits around their own axis.
But good to hear that students will be exposed to alternate theories and data supporting those… if any.
My theory about God, btw, is that if he exists, he is not omnipotent, not omniscient and quite possibly not very nice.
And talk of the Devil, I just read that a Dutch MP wants the Creation story scrapped from highschool biology lessons… Which makes me wonder what it was doing there in the first place.
I’ve just finished reading ‘The Unauthorised Version’ by Robin Lane Fox, (an examination of the Bible by a historian) which shows that anyone who speaks of the bible as being a coherent ‘word of…’ well, anyone is talking utter bollocks.
For example: is this god fellow responsible for all the contradictions, re-writes, omisssions, revisions, selections, alterations to so-called prophecies so that they match events and on and on and on.
If so, then this god fella is more suited to a job as a tabloid journalist or official historian of a totalitarian government than as a supreme being.
Presumably, a believer must assume that if god has all the almighty characteristics claimed for him, he could have done the work of those six days in a nano-second or less if he’d wanted to, but he preferred to work to a timetable. To propose that he was merely a very fast worker who could get all that done in those six days would appear to be a contradiction of claims made for his limitless powers (Merlijn’s comment induced in me a vision of god struggling with deadlines – and then the thought “deadlines imposed by… ?”). Since it is explicitly stated that he rested on the seventh day, I take it the creation work of each of the preceding six was precisely a 0:00-23:59 job, with time out only to see that it was good, but no coffee. Should we, however, take the rest of the seventh day to mean that creating all that in six days was knackering, even for god? He’s god, you can’t claim he needs to rest, but he did, anyway. Why does he do these unnecessary things? And how does someone so perfect and all-seeing come to create man, realise he’s alone and that that’s not good and go on to create woman? Was he unable to predict that bit in advance? I’m also missing a lot of what screenwriters call “backstory.” He’d been there for eternity before he got this creation bug. Doing what? Is the really big revelation one day going to be that all we see around us was beaten into existence by – Solitaire?
“… teach creation as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data.”
Bit of a mind-blower, isn’t it? Once one swallows that they have decided to believe everything in those scriptures they consider kosher, all the faith/belief issues are taken care of. But here, instead of saying that their faith is stronger than any disagreeing evidence you might bring, they are determining in advance that any evidence that does exist, has existed or will exist in the future will match what they believe. I wonder why only “best fit to” instead of “perfectly matching?”
Well, reading the Bible itself makes clear that the God of the Bible is not perfectly good in any way. If I am anything, I may claim to be a Gnostic (Jehovah is basically a fallen demiurge, separated from the godhead, and in no means wise)
Indeed. But of course if you just define ‘perfectly good’ as whatever God is and God as the God of the Bible – then that takes care of that problem. Of course, it still leaves the question why you would do that in the first place, and the next question, why the God of the Bible doesn’t fill you with repulsion – but that’s two questions too many.