VICTOR ZAMMIT
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THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN 'ETERNAL DAMNATION'

By Fr. Johannes Greber - receiving information from an highly evolved teacher from the afterlife. Judge and check these facts for yourselves:

“A doctrine to which you cling with astonishing tenacity although it
was unknown to the early Christians is that of an ‘eternal hell’.. This is a
specter that you seem unwilling to surrender.
Do you perhaps imagine that you can accomplish more with poor humanity by preaching a barbarous
untruth than by preaching love and mercy? To what trouble you go to find
support for this untruth! You say that a so-called ‘mortal sin’ must entail
eternal punishment, seeing that it is an unforgivable affront to God.

Those are wholly mistaken, manmade concepts. No creature can affront God
unforgivably and thereby incur unending punishment. The lower the
standing of him who affronts you, the less attention you will pay to his
insults. What is a miserable creature as compared with its Creator? A mere
speck of dust! Your insults do not even touch God; they hurt not Him, but
yourselves. Again, if a mortal sin were an unpardonable affront to God, it
could not be forgiven during your lives on earth.

On the other hand, if, as your doctrine claims, it can be forgiven in men, why should it not be forgiven the spirits in the Beyond? They are, after all, the same spirits, whether they inhabit a mortal body or have become separated from it by human death. It is the same ‘I’ with all its spiritual attributes in the Here and in the Beyond. Hence a change of heart may occur in spirits in the Beyond as well as while they reside on earth.

“Proof that the tortures of hell are everlasting is sought by invoking
the Bible, by citing the word ‘eternal’ used in your translations of the New
Testament in connection with punishment in the Beyond. But what is the
word in the original Greek texts that your translators have rendered as
‘eternal’? What matters are not your translations, but the sense of the word
as it occurs in the original text. It so happens that wherever your translators
of the Scriptures use the words ‘eternity’ or ‘eternal’, the Greek text has
‘eon’. You, too, have adopted this word and speak of ‘eons’ to designate
long periods of time. That is correct; for also in Greek the word ‘eon’ never
signifies ‘eternity’ or the idea of anything everlasting, but merely an
indefinite period of time. Antiquity was an ‘eon’, the Middle Ages were an
‘eon’, the Modern Age is an ‘eon’. The Romans regarded an ‘eon’ as the
equivalent of a hundred years.

“An ‘eon’ is therefore a period of time, the limits of which are
sometimes seen to be closer together, sometimes further apart. Even a
human lifetime is sometimes so designated. Never, however, can ‘eon’ be
used to describe a never-ending period of time. So you may never translate
‘eon’ as ‘eternity’, or the adjective derived therefrom as ‘eternal’. The
correct equivalents are ‘time’ and ‘temporal’.

“First I want to call your attention to the interesting circumstance that
in many passages of the Bible the word ‘eon’ and the corresponding
adjective have been correctly translated as ‘time’ and ‘temporal’, because in
those particular places the word ‘eternal’ would be nonsensical. Only when
punishment in the Beyond is involved have the translators used that word,
indicating clearly that they were influenced by the Christian religions that
preach eternal damnation.

“Let us consider a few of the numerous passages in the Bible in which
the word ‘eon’ can be translated only as ‘time’ or ‘pertaining to time.’ Thus
it is said that blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven, either in this
‘eon’ or in that which is to come, that is, neither in this age nor in the next,
or neither in this life nor in the next. Inasmuch as there is only one eternity,
you cannot rationally translate that it will not be forgiven in ‘this eternity’ or
in the ‘eternity that is to come.’ For there is no such thing as two eternities.
In the parable of the sower, it is said that some of the seeds were choked by
the cares of this ‘eon’, which again has been correctly translated as ‘by the
cares of this “life”’. Here also the rendering of the word as ‘eternity’ would
obviously be inappropriate. The same is true of the parable of the weeds
among the wheat, in which Christ explains that the harvest will be the end of
this ‘eon’, that is, the ‘end of this age or this world.’ Here, too, it cannot
mean ‘eternity’. In this passage the word ‘eon’ occurs twice more, both
times in a limitative sense. Finally, I shall quote a few passages from Paul’s
epistles: ‘Do not conduct your lives in the manner of this “eon” (these
times).’ ‘We speak a wisdom not of this “eon”, or of the rulers of this “eon”,
but we speak God’s mysterious wisdom, which He foreordained before all
“eons”.’

“From these passages, which could be multiplied many times, you
may see that the word ‘eon’ does not mean ‘eternity’, but a time period of
limited duration. Now, this same word ‘eon’ occurs where a punishment in
the Beyond is mentioned. Whence do you derive the right to translate a
word as ‘eternal’ when referring to damnation, when you have rendered it as
‘time’ and ‘temporal’ in countless other passages? It would almost seem as
though you took a particular delight in the thought of an everlasting hell.
Greber – Communication with the Spirit World

“According to the translation you have, Christ said: ‘It is better for
you to enter into life maimed or lame than to have two hands and two feet
and be cast into the “eternal” fire.’ What you here designate as the ‘eternal’
fire is also only a fire that will last throughout an ‘eon’ and hence last only
for a time. Strangely enough, the original text did not even contain the word
‘eon’ in this passage; it was added as a falsification. The original text read:
‘into the fire of hell’ and not ‘into the eternal fire’.. Similar spurious
alterations have been made elsewhere. Thus your present Bible translations
say: ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire’, whereas the authentic
version was: ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into the outer darkness.’ I believe
these explanations will suffice to convince you that there is no basis in the
Bible to support your inhuman and untrue doctrine of an ‘everlasting hell’.
“The duration of the punishment meted out to the different spirits
depends above all upon the spirits themselves. The longer they persist in
their rebellious attitude, the longer their exile and the punishment of
separation. Not even God knows when the individual spirits will come back
to Him, since their return depends upon their own free will, and, as I have
told you, all future decisions that spirits are free to make lie outside the
scope of God’s foreknowledge of events.

“Also, what has been incorrectly translated as ‘eternal life’ by a
mistaken rendering of the word ‘eon’ is merely a life in the ‘eons’ or ‘ages’
to come. How long this life with God may last depends upon you
yourselves. If you remain faithful to God, that life will be, in truth, eternal.
But who can tell whether in the future there may not be another rebellion of
the spirits, in which you will again take part, as you did in the first revolt
under Lucifer? Spirits in heaven have the same freedom of choice now as
before, and the possibility of a misuse of that freedom is as much a fact
today as it was at the time of the first revolt. Whether or not there will ever
be another is something that even God does not know, for the reason I have
already indicated to you.

“You cannot, therefore, speak of an ‘eternal’ reward, any more than
you can speak of an ‘eternal’ punishment.

“Wherever the Bible refers to the ‘fires’ of hell, this is symbolic of the
excessive pain suffered by those who must endure hell’s punishments. You,
too, speak of a burning pain without meaning actual fire. The torments of
hell are so great that they are beyond human conception. Christ says: ‘The
damned shall be salted with fire,’ for as salt permeates everything, so does
agony permeate the spirits of the damned; but he adds: ‘Salt is good.’ So,
too, the torments the spirits must endure are in reality good for their
Greber – Communication with the Spirit World.

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