When I walked into the Pagosa Springs Post Office a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the trash cans were overflowing with junk mail.
Overflowing trash cans at the Post Office is not an unusual sight. Pagosa might be a small town, in the middle of nowhere, but hordes of junk mail purveyors still find us, somehow.
When I checked my mail, I was surprised to find that a company called AmazingFacts.org had mailed me a 50-page magazine, addressed to “PO BOX CUSTOMER 81147”. To judge by the cover — I know; you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but we all do it, right? — anyway, to judge by the cover, the magazine was aiming to help me separate the ‘facts’ from the ‘fables’, concerning Hell.
There have been a lot of facts and fables circulating in Pagosa Springs these past few years, although almost none of them have any direct connection to Hell. Mostly, they have to do with politics.
Or… maybe there is a direct connection after all?
Anyway, walking back to my car, I noticed that a significant portion of the junk mail in the overflowing trash cans consisted of these same 50-page magazines, all presumably addressed to “PO BOX CUSTOMER 81147”. Apparently, there are a lot of people in Pagosa Springs who are not curious about the Bible Truth about Hell. Either they don’t believe in Hell, or else they’ve already arranged things with the Lord, so Hell is not an issue.
Skimming the booklet, I got the impression that the author had come to the conclusion, after a careful reading of the Bible, that unrepentant sinners are not going to burn in Hell for eternity.
A visit to the AmazingFacts.org website revealed that the likely author of the magazine is Doug Bachelor, better known among his followers as Pastor Doug. He’s senior pastor of Granite Bay Church in California and the president of Amazing Facts. “His long and winding journey from anti-social drug user to president of a worldwide ministry has helped shape him into an engaging speaker with whom audiences the world over can identify.”
Speaking for myself, I try not to think about Hell. I have no definite opinion about Hell’s existence, but I’m pretty sure, if it does exist, I will spend at least a portion of eternity there. Hopefully, that day is a long ways off. I have enough to worry about in the current reality, just paying the rent.
The way I look at it, if you are telling people not to worry about Hell, when in fact people ought to be worrying about Hell, you are probably going to end up in Hell, yourself, as a punishment.
So just to be clear, I am not taking sides in this debate.
But the thing I found myself wondering about was The Devil. A lot of fables (as opposed to facts) have The Devil serving as the warden of Hell. The guy in charge.
Other fables (as opposed to facts) have The Devil running around collecting people’s souls, and generally spreading temptation and causing trouble.
I honestly don’t see how the same Devil could be handling both the supervision of Hell and the spreading of Worldly Temptations. They both sound like full-time jobs.
I definitely question whether The Devil lives in Hell, however. Can you imagine listening to all those millions of sinners moaning and groaning, day and night? It’s one thing to toss people into a lake of fire, and quite another thing to hear them endlessly begging for mercy.
If I were The Devil, I’d want a penthouse apartment located far, far away from Hell.
As I mentioned, The Bible Truth about Hell magazine seemed to be suggesting that there is no such thing as the particular form of Hell as many Christians envision it. According to Pastor Doug, you die, and then you just calmly wait around for the Second Coming. Sounds kind of boring. Reincarnation seems like it would be a lot more exciting, and a great way to avoid Hell, if it actually exists.
On the back cover, the magazine offered me a chance to visit AmazingFacts.org and order more books and magazines.
Looking at this back cover, I noticed that the two people in the upper left corner appear to be Asian.
My first thought — before I visited the AmazingFacts website and learned about Pastor Doug and his international effort to share ‘facts’ — was, that maybe Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, had authorized this magazine.
I mean, speaking of The Devil.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.