There is no HELL…Psalm ix.17

Speaking to my sister Jenny this past weekend, she was in a furor over Psalm ix verse 17.In the New International Version and the American Revised Standard say:

17 The wicked return to the grave, all the nations that forget God.

The Amplified OTOH, says this.

17 The wicked shall be turned back [headlong into premature death] into Sheol (the place of the departed spirits of the wicked), even all the nations that forget or are forgetful of God.

To Jenny the Amplified is better but she still does not like Sheol over Hell because most people do not know what Sheol is and the parenthetical “place of departed spirits of the wicked” does nothing to help. Most translations, give the same…God’s Word, New Living, New American Standard, Darby Translation, English Revised Translations, NET, World English, Young’s Literal Translation

What Jenny wants to see, is HELL, not the “grave” which I must admit is rather vague nor does she like Sheol because Where the hell is that? Personally, I think Sheol loses a certain punch…Go to Sheol…No I don’t think that will catch on.

17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God.

From the Douay-Rheims, KJV translations, Wycliffe

The KJV, Purple edition, my personal favorite KJ version, tells you Sheol is Hell while the New Living puts in a footnote: 17 The wicked shall be turned into sheol {hell}, and all the nations that forget God.

So why does this matter? Well first, to Jenny it matters because the Church she goes to, her husband A’s choice btw , — which I believe it is Methodist — is using the NIV and no one in the congregation under 40 knows that Hell exists or that it even matters. S so when Jenny got to that particular verse in her Sunday School class and said “Hell” from memory (she loves the Psalms and knows them by heart) her students corrected her and told her that there was no HELL. Jenny who has a bad temper, something I have to admit we share, was furious
and asked them where they heard that? They pointed to the NIV Bible and she had to check. Amazed she then went to talk to the Elder of her church and ask why they did not use the NKJV; it seems that the Methodists do not, plain and simple because the NIV was friendlier and more accessible (easier to read).

The Elders, minister included btw, agreed with the students that Hell was a bad idea and scared people, Jenny countered that it was supposed to, but they countermanded, that was not what they wanted because and this seems to be the key, it just was not “inclusive” enough.

I thought that funny particularly considering the firing of Brendan Eich this past week from the CEO of Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird) over his small donation to California’s Proposition 8 — that marriage was solely the union of man and woman. Mozilla said that Eich was “not inclusive” of the large LGBT community. Large? It’s less than one percent, but they and their minions are very vocal and that is the real problem.

It does not matter that both President Clinton, also a Methodist, and Obama ran on that platform, what matters is that now, within the past year actually, they both have refuted it,and so that’s what counts. Of course Clinton passing the “Defense of Marriage” Act does not matter either, for whatever reason, everyone was cool with that too. It’s a shame that our press is so vapid and corrupt. We really need an honest press, not one with an agenda — and that does not seem to be happening because it is a business and everyone wants a piece of the green pie.

But I digress and uninstalled both Thunderbird and FireFox today. I went to the Norwegian Opera instead, I used to use but found too many sites were incompatible, Now with the open source Chrome engine that has been fixed. So you too can upgrade to Opera, simple by following this link. I love this site as it is totally virus free. I get everything from Softpedia.

In the meantime, Jenny is on “sabbatical” as she learns to get into step with the NIV and the new inclusiveness doctrine of her Church. I am not sure what will happen because the real issue is that the idea of Hell and paying for one’s sins is actually evaporating in of all places Christian Churches…this is truly a sad state of affairs, which leads me to another note I wrote to a Roman Catholic novitiate of all things just a month or two ago where I …