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I AM HERE. Paul, the Apostle.
I merely want to say that I was present at the church tonight and listened to
the preacher tell his congregation what he didn't know about hell. What he said,
in many particulars, was untrue. However, it was pleasing to hear him tell his
people that there was no physical suffering, although he didn't explain to them
why there could be no such suffering. I mean that no spirit, when he goes into
hell, carries with him his physical body, or any other body that has such
substance that would be affected by fire and brimstone and the other
unreasonable things that the churches have for so many years taught and
terrified their members with, and, as a consequence, caused them to believe that
the Father is such a “cruel" and “wrathful" Father, “demanding" that His
“cravings for satisfaction" be supplied by the sizzling of the bodies of His
children in fire. No, this damnable doctrine is not true, and I am glad to see
that the churches are ceasing to believe it or teach it!
But the doctrine that the preacher taught is quite as bad, and as useless as the
former, for the reason that punishment of sinners and those who are out of
harmony with God is a fact which they all will realize when they come to the
spirit world. With that being so, to teach that this punishment is everlasting
is as harmful as the one that I first mentioned. How strange that preachers and
teachers will try to cause their people and listeners to believe that God is
such a “wrathful" and “vindictive" Being, having less love and mercy than the
most wicked earthly father has for his children! It is so very deplorable that
these supposed instructors of what God is should make such attempts to blaspheme
Him, completely disregarding His Great Qualities of Love and Tenderness and His
Desire that all His children become happy.
Oh, I tell you that these preachers will have a woeful sin to answer for when
they come to an accounting! And this will not be at the “great judgment day," as
they teach, but will be just as soon as they enter spirit life and realize the
great harm that they have done to many who have followed them in their
teachings. And they will realize that awful result very soon after their
entrance into the spirit world. For they will have come to them, as clouds of
witnesses, the spirits of those who were under their instructions on earth,
bringing with them all the evidence of the results of their erroneous beliefs
and the stains of this great sin of blasphemy.
I, Paul, write this, for I have suffered from this very cause myself. When on
earth, I taught some doctrine like unto the one that these preachers are now
teaching, and, even now, I realize that I am responsible to some extent for many
false beliefs. But I thank God that I am not responsible for all that is
ascribed to me in the Bible, and that if my true teachings were known and
taught, the blind and erroneous beliefs that are now so prevalent among
Christians would not exist. I tell you that mortals do not conceive of the great
harmful and deplorable results that flow from their beliefs in the Bible in many
particulars. This book is one of falsehoods and forgery and imputations that
have no resemblance to what the Master or any of his apostles taught. And you
can readily realize how anxious we all are that these errors and untruths be
removed from the minds and souls of men.The hell of the orthodox preachers, as
formerly taught—that is, a hell of brimstone and fires—is not the true hell and
has no existence save in the minds of these orthodox believers.
The true hell is a place and a condition, and one is not separated from the
other. And, while the condition of the soul and the beliefs of men create the
hells to a very large extent, yet, hell is a fixed abiding place, made and
established, and of such a character as to suit the inhabiting of it by the soul
according to the condition of that soul. To illustrate, a soul that is less vile
and less filled with evil thoughts and the recollection of evil deeds and false
beliefs is in a very different place from the soul that has more of this evil in
it. The former soul would not find its habitation in the same place as the
latter soul, any more than the highly developed soul would find its home in the
same place as the soul that is less developed.
Heaven is a place, or many places, suited to the development of the soul. At the
other extreme, hell is a place suited to the souls that are in a condition of
degradation and evil. I mean to be understood as saying that place and condition
of soul are correlative terms—the home of the soul depending on the condition of
the soul.
As these different hells vary, so they are suited for the souls of spirits
according to the defilement of soul.
As I said before, hell is a place as well as a condition. And the man who
believes that it is nothing more than a condition of his mind or soul will be
wonderfully surprised as well as disappointed. I know the condition of mind and
soul creates a man's hell to a very large extent, and that it is the chief
source of his suffering and the darkness that surrounds and envelops him. Yet,
this condition is not the only source of that suffering or of the darkness in
which he finds himself.
Hell is also a place. It is a place that has all the appearances and ingredients
that are in exact agreement with a person's state as produced or caused by the
condition of his mind or soul. It is not a place of universal character, fitted
for the habitation of all souls irrespective of conditions of degrees of
defilement and sin and darkness. It is not a single place, forming a common home
for all fallen souls, but is composed of many and different places. And, as has
been said, there are many hells, having gradations of appearance and
surroundings that are suitable for causing the additional sufferings which souls
may have to endure.
The expression, “the lowest depths of hell," is not a meaningless one, but
portrays a truth—a real, existing fact that many spirits are now experiencing
the reality of. In its broadest sense, hell is every place outside of heaven;
and heaven is that place where everything entering into it—its appearance and
qualities and its inhabitants—is in perfect harmony with the respective Laws of
God and His Will concerning the same. And this statement involves the fact that
there are several heavens. The heaven of the redeemed, or those who have
received the Divine Essence in their souls and have become of the Divine Nature
of the Father, is a distinct heaven from that wherein those live who have been
restored to the perfect condition of their natural love that the first parents
possessed before the fall—the condition of the restitution to mankind of that
perfection which was lost by the disobedience of the first man and woman.
Mortals usually believe that heaven is a condition. And the Bible, in which so
many believe, attempts to describe this heaven with its streets of gold, and
pearly gates, etc.; and, as a fact, it is a real, substantial place, having all
the elements and appearances of a home of bliss which help to bring happiness
and joy to its inhabitants, in addition to the happiness which their soul
perfection and development cause them to have.
Then, as heaven is a place, having real substance that is perceptible to the
spirits who inhabit it, why should not hell be a place of real substance also,
with those qualities and appearances exactly suited to add to the unhappiness of
those who are fitted for it? The spirit world, both heaven and hell, are places
of substance, having their planes and divisions and limitations of occupancy.
They are not mythical, invisible conceptions of mind, as you mortals ordinarily
conceive ghosts to be. Also, the spirits of mortals are real and more
substantial than are the physical bodies of mortals. Further, these planes and
divisions, whether of heaven or hell, have a more real existence than mortals
have in their places of habitations or confinement in the earth life.
The hells are places of darkness and sufferings, but in them are no fires or
brimstone, etc., as have been so commonly represented by the preachers and
teachers of the orthodox churches, because there is nothing therein that would
feed fires or that fires could affect. And there are no devils or Satan, though
there are evil spirits of men who are more wicked and vicious and horrifying
than have ever been pictured of the devil and his angels.
In your communications, you have had some very realistic descriptions of hell
from those who are actually living therein and who are realizing its tortures
and realities, and I will not take the time here to attempt to describe it in
detail. I will only say that, as it has not entered into the minds of men to
conceive of the wonders and beauties of heaven, neither have they ever conceived
of the horrors and sufferings of hell.
BUT, FROM ALL THIS, MEN MUST NOT UNDERSTAND THAT THE PUNISHMENT AND DARKNESS
WHICH THE SPIRITS OF EVIL ENDURE IN THE HELLS ARE SPECIFICALLY INFLICTED BY THE
FATHER BECAUSE OF ANY “WRATH" THAT HE MAY HAVE TOWARDS THESE SPIRITS, OR TO
GRATIFY ANY “FEELINGS OF REVENGE," OR EVEN TO SATISFY ANY “OUTRAGED JUSTICE,"
FOR IT IS NOT TRUE.
MAN, WHEN HE BECOMES A SPIRIT, IS HIS OWN JUDGE AND EXECUTIONER, SUBMITTING TO
AND RECEIVING THE INEXORABLE RESULTS OF THE LAW THAT WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWS THAT
SHALL HE ALSO REAP. THIS IS A LAW THAT IS NECESSARY TO PRESERVE OR BRING ABOUT
THE HARMONY OF GOD'S UNIVERSE, WHICH, OF COURSE, IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. AND
WHILE IT MAY APPEAR TO MAN, AT FIRST SIGHT, TO BE A HARSH AND CRUEL LAW, YET, IN
ITS WORKINGS AND RESULTS, EVEN TO THE INDIVIDUAL SPIRIT WHO MAY SUFFER IN THE
REAPING, IT IS A MOST BENIGN AND BENEFICIAL LAW BECAUSE THE DARKNESS AND
SUFFERINGS OF A FEW YEARS, AS YOU MORTALS SAY, BRING ABOUT AN ETERNITY OF LIGHT
AND HAPPINESS.
THE LAW MUST RULE. BUT IN ALL THE APPARENT HARSHNESS AND SUFFERING AND WANT OF
MERCY, THE GREAT DIVINE LOVE OF THE FATHER OVERSHADOWS THE SUFFERER AND FINALLY
MAKES THE DEFILED AND WICKED SOUL BECOME ONE OF PURITY AND GOODNESS.
MEN MAY NEVER HAVE THOUGHT OF THIS FACT: THAT IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR THESE EVIL
SPIRITS TO LIVE IN HEAVEN, THEIR SUFFERINGS AND UNHAPPINESS WOULD BE GREATER
THAN WHAT THEY ENDURE BY LIVING IN A PLACE THAT IS MORE IN AGREEMENT, IN ITS
SURROUNDINGS AND APPEARANCES, WITH THEIR OWN DISTORTED CONDITIONS OF SOUL. SO,
EVEN IN THEIR HELLS, THE FATHER IS MERCIFUL AND GOOD TO THEM.
Regarding the second proposition by the preacher in his sermon—namely, the
duration of suffering or of the life of the spirit in hell—his conclusion was
that this duration of the spirit in hell is eternal, everlasting, and without
end. How it must have hurt and violated the teachings of his soul and his
conception of the Loving Father to have come to such a conclusion! But, yet,
being bound by his creeds and the domination of his belief that the Bible is the
sole authority upon hell as well as heaven, in the conviction of his mind (and
here I want to emphasize mind, for his heart was not in agreement), he declared
that the duration of the sufferings and life of the hells is eternal, and that
the saying of Jesus proved it to be, not only because it was in the Bible but
also because the true meaning of the original Greek word can have no other
translation. He said this not knowing, or, if knowing, not recalling, that
Jesus, even if he used such expression, did not speak in Greek, and that in
order to obtain the true meaning of the word used by Jesus in back of the Greek
word, he, the preacher, must go to the word as it was uttered by Jesus for its
true meaning.
So many preachers and commentators on the Bible attempt to determine a most
vital truth by a shade of meaning that they conceive a particular word in its
original may have had. But they are not justified in concluding that such word
had, at the time used, such shade of meaning, or that the original, as they
conceive it to be, was the original word actually spoken or written. They seem
to lose sight of the fact that the writings of the Bible—I mean the manuscripts
to which they make reference to prove the correctness of their conclusions—are
far removed from the original writings, and that, by reason of the copying and
recopying of the word upon which they rely, the shade of meaning that they give
it in their interpretations may not be an exact translation of the word
originally used. Of course, they have no way of learning this fact; and,
consequently, they have to resort to the best authority that they can have
access to. But, under such circumstances, it is not a justifiable thing to have
a vital question of man's future and destiny determined by the shade of meaning
that may be given to one or more words, without reference to other declarations
of the same book* that have relation to the subject matter of the inquiry.
The preacher said that, in his conclusion as to the question, he must be
governed by the Bible alone, that he had no right to indulge in speculation
concerning the philosophies of other men, and that he could find nothing in the
Bible that would justify him in coming to any other conclusion than that the
duration of punishment in hell is eternal. Well, he was not honest with himself;
for if he had searched a little more deeply and had given as much credence to
other parts of the Bible as to the passage that he quoted, he would have found a
strong statement to the effect that the evil spirits in hell have the
possibility of leaving it; and not only that but also that a part of the great
mission of Jesus, upon whose supposed declaration the preacher based his
conclusion, was to show the Way and induce these spirits of evil to leave their
hells. This was the Master's first work after he became a spirit, and he would
not have attempted to preach to these wicked spirits in hell if there had been
no possibility of their ever leaving it.**
Also, the preacher might well have considered more deeply the contradiction
presented in the Bible that, at the time of Noah, because of their great sins
when mortals, God punished His children as He never punished any other of His
children for their disobedience, utterly destroying them by one great
catastrophe, removing His only living human creatures from the face of the
earth, and thus leaving only Noah and his family to serve as a reminder of the
great failure of God Himself in His Creation of the most perfect and the “Very
Good."
No, in addition to recognizing this obvious contradiction, if the preacher had
searched the Bible, he would have found that the hell that contained the spirits
of all the human race that were living at the time of the flood (except Noah and
his family) was not eternal in its duration.
And, again, had the preacher searched even further, he would have found that the
Master himself declared by necessary implication that, at least for some of the
wicked who became inhabitants of hell, there was the possibility of release upon
certain conditions. I refer to the declaration attributed to him where he said,
“He that sinneth against the son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he that
sinneth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this
world nor in the world to come." ***
Now, to any reasonable man, there is only one interpretation of this
declaration, and that is: that for any and all sins, except that against the
Holy Ghost, there is forgiveness in the next world as well as in the mortal
world. And that being a fact, it is an irresistible conclusion that the Father
would not compel a spirit to remain in hell after He had forgiven that spirit's
sins.
No, the preacher had not searched the Scriptures, as he was duty bound to do.
Could he have rid his mind of the beliefs that the creeds of his church had
driven into his intellect, and of the teachings of the ancient fathers, as well
as of the churches that had taught such false and damnable doctrines for so many
years, his conclusion would have been very different.
The preacher repudiated the old teachings that there would be physical suffering
in hell, or fire or brimstone, etc., and expressed his commiseration for those
preachers and others who had taught such doctrine, and for their awful
responsibility and accounting. And his commiseration was needed and appropriate.
But I want to say here that he needs as much commiseration, if not more, for the
preaching of his false doctrines, as did those preachers to whom he refers. He
has more light, or may have, and his accounting will be correspondingly greater.
I HAVE WRITTEN A LONG LETTER, AND YOU ARE TIRED AND I MUST STOP. BUT, BEFORE
DOING SO, LET ME DECLARE THE TRUTH TO BE THAT HELL IS NOT A PLACE OF ETERNAL
PUNISHMENT, THAT ALL THE HELLS, AS WELL AS OTHER PARTS OF THE SPIRIT WORLD, ARE
PLACES OF PROGRESSION, AND THAT THE PRIVILEGE OF PROBATION IS NOT TAKEN FROM ANY
SPIRIT, NO MATTER HOW WICKED; FOR ALL ARE GOD'S CHILDREN. AND, IN HIS PLANS FOR
THE PERFECTING OF THE HARMONY OF THE UNIVERSE AND MAN'S SALVATION, ALL THE HELLS
WILL BE EMPTIED AND THE HELLS THEMSELVES DESTROYED.
But men must not think from this that the duration of suffering in these hells
is necessarily short, for that is not true. Some of the evil inhabitants of
these places have been in such darkness and suffering for centuries, as mortals
count time, and may be for centuries more. But the time will come when they will
have the awakening to the fact that they may become children of light; then,
when they make the effort to progress, they will succeed.
THE SOONER THAT MANKIND LEARNS THAT HELL IS NOT A PLACE OF PUNISHMENT TO SATISFY
THE “WRATH" OF AN “ANGRY" GOD, BUT MERELY THE NATURAL AND NECESSARY LIVING PLACE
OF THE SPIRIT WHOSE CONDITION OF SOUL AND MIND DEMANDS THAT LOCATION, THE BETTER
OFF THEY WILL BE. FURTHER, THAT THAT CONDITION CHANGES, AND IT WILL CHANGE. THE
HELL OF A SPIRIT'S HABITATION WILL CHANGE UNTIL, FINALLY, FOR THAT SPIRIT, ALL
THE HELLS WILL DISAPPEAR.
You are tired and I must stop. So, thanking you, and leaving you my love and
blessing, I am
Your brother in Christ,
PAUL.
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About James E. Padgett
 Born August 25, 1852, Mr. James Edward Padgett
practiced law in Washington, D.C. Subsequent to his wife's, Helen,
passing in February, 1914, James learned from a psychic that he had
the gift of automatic writing. Based on the promptings of the
psychic and with a desire to reach his dearly departed Helen, he
commenced take messages from the spirits in the spirit world. At
first, James denounced the messages as merely coming from his mind,
driven by a strong desire to reach his departed wife. Eventually,
however, James could not deny the fact that information he was
receiving could not have possibly come from his own mind - for the
content of the messages surpassed his own education and knowledge.
Before his passing in March, 1923, James had accumulated hundreds of
messages from spirits and celestials in the spirit world.
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