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00:01Most scholars interpret the passage to mean that Jesus descends not to battle Satan or deliver the damned,
00:07but rather that he journeys to Sheol in order to free the just souls who had gone to the realm
00:12of the dead.
00:13After his death on the cross, Jesus, in a spiritual sense,
00:17went to Sheol, to these Old Testament saints, to announce to them that the ultimate sacrifice had been made,
00:22their sins were forgiven, that heaven was open for them.
00:25Over time, Catholic oral tradition expanded the story into the so-called harrowing of hell.
00:31One reason the harrowing of hell becomes so important is that Christianity wants to save the Hebrew forefathers.
00:39It wants to save Abraham and Isaac especially.
00:41It shows Jesus in a role that is very different from anything we actually see in the Bible.
00:47We see him not as being a preacher or being crucified in a sort of passive role.
00:52We see him really and truly as Jesus Christ's superstar, as Jesus coming down, rescuing people,
00:59a very virile, strong image of Jesus.
01:03A few biblical passages hint at this story, but none directly supports it.
01:08Hence, many Christian denominations have removed the phrase descended into hell from the creed.
01:14At no time in the harrowing of hell, or in any biblical story, is Satan able to control Jesus or
01:20God.
01:23But can he invade a human being?
01:25You know the devil has his claws in you.
01:28I came here for that sole purpose, to be delivered from all these evil spirits that were inside of me.
01:34And if possessed, how does one recover?
01:39Satan!
01:41Go now!
01:48In 1973, the horror movie The Exorcist shocked audiences with its vivid portrayal of satanic possession and exorcism.
01:59But notions of demons infiltrating the human body date back throughout time.
02:05Some believe concepts of possession originated in prehistoric shamanistic beliefs.
02:10Those believed to be shamans drove evil spirits from the bodies of victims of witchcraft.
02:15By the 1500s, church leaders, authors, and artists had popularized Satan.
02:23Sermons, paintings, books, and plays all confirmed that the devil was everywhere.
02:30Leering from the church door.
02:32Launching wars.
02:35Lurking in every man's bed.
02:38Even Martin Luther, who rejected much of Catholic dogma, believed that demons invaded his body.
02:44Martin Luther was the most devil-obsessed man in history.
02:47Martin Luther, which appears, suffered from very bad constipation for most of his life.
02:51And he believed that was the work of the devil.
02:52The devil was there in his bowels.
02:54Luther lived in an age when the devil's influence reached its peak.
03:02From 1500 to the early 1700s, witch hunts raged across Europe.
03:07Neighbor was set against neighbor, husband against wife,
03:10as accusations of lust, envy, desperate love, and frustrated desire filled kangaroo courts.
03:18Witches were considered to be agents of the devil, and they were everywhere.
03:25During the witch hunts, you had a terrible explosion of guilt.
03:28People cannot bear to feel too guilty.
03:30It torments them.
03:31Finally, they can't punish themselves enough.
03:34And they have to project that rage on other people and punish it in others.
03:38During the Inquisition, 100,000 women were burned at the stake as witches.
03:43The great deceiver, the father of all lies, was thought to delight in corrupting the innocent.
03:49The more innocent you looked, the more often you went to church, the holier you seemed,
03:53well, the more likely it might be that you are an agent of Satan, because who would suspect you?
03:57You seem so innocent.
03:58You seem like someone who would never do this.
04:00You are the perfect tool for Satan to use.
04:05Soon, new tools were adopted in the never-ending war with Satan.
04:11In 1468, Pope Paul II decreed that torture was acceptable in cases of suspected witchcraft.
04:18Two years later came the Malleus Maleficarum, one of the most popular books of the age,
04:23and the unofficial textbook of the Inquisition.
04:26It emphasized that witches were in league with the devil, and offered hints on identifying the guilty.
04:32So if they had stones sewn into their garments, and they were thrown into a lake or a pool,
04:37and they drowned, the understanding was not that the stones had held them down,
04:41but their evil deeds had held them down, and it was a sign that they were truly witches.
04:44Prior to the modern world, politics and religion are not separate.
04:47They're the same thing.
04:48If there's a disorder in society, it has a religious dimension.
04:51They honestly and seriously believe that when something peculiar occurs,
04:55and it has an adverse impact on society, that somewhere along the line,
04:59there is some diabolical aspect to this.
05:01It's a way of personifying the evil that they experience in the world.
05:04When the Puritans journeyed to the New World, they brought old fears.
05:09Early Protestantism was very, very devil-obsessed.
05:12It was also very anti-sex.
05:14So when you get to groups like the Puritans, who went over to America and settled in New England,
05:19they brought that baggage with them.
05:20They were devil-fearers.
05:22They saw the devil all around them.
05:24One of the most effective at instilling the fear of the devil in his followers
05:28was Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards.
05:31His commanding sermon, Sinners of an Angry God, demands all be righteous, or face the horrors of hell.
05:37There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment.
05:42They deserve to be cast into hell so that divine justice never stands in the way.
05:47Justice calls aloud for infinite punishment of their sins.
05:50Sinners of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards.
05:55When Jonathan Edwards was preaching Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
05:58why would they go for three days in the snow to listen to this man preach,
06:02when what he had was, in effect, their eventual damnation?
06:07People like fear.
06:08We place ourselves in fearful situations.
06:11Fear and terror are primary human emotions.
06:15Consumed by fear, the Puritans generated the Salem Witch Scare of 1692.
06:21Once again, there was no defense against a charge of collaborating with the evil one.
06:25The people doing the questioning in witchcraft interrogations
06:29often worked from a prepared set of questions.
06:31They knew what the devil did.
06:33The Salem Scare was small by European standards.
06:37Just a score of women tried, condemned, and executed over a single year.
06:42The devil seemed to take a vacation.
06:44For a time.
06:45For nearly 300 years after Salem,
06:48legal cases involving the devil were rarely seen in American courts.
06:54But suddenly, with the satanic ritual craze of the 1980s and 90s,
06:59he was back.
07:00Hundreds of parents and daycare workers in Britain and the United States
07:04were accused of abusing thousands of children in bizarre witch's sabbaths.
07:08When supposed victims failed to support allegations,
07:11they were said to be in denial.
07:12There was a theory put forth that, essentially, the worse the abuse,
07:18the harder the children were struggled to deny.
07:20So, in a sense, the less information you got from the child,
07:22the more evidence it was that they'd been abused.
07:25But children were not the only alleged victims.
07:28Many of the charges were thought to be the result of recovered memory syndrome.
07:33If we dig too deeply into our past, and we say to ourselves, as in the recovered memory therapy,
07:38that all the monsters and all the dreams and all the ghosts we saw as children were actually real,
07:43then the demons come out and haunt us.
07:45Some therapists drugged and hypnotized adult patients, urging them to probe their memories for signs of childhood abuse at the
07:53hands of satanic cults.
07:54The media fanned the flames by inflating cult numbers.
07:59Hosting a television special on the phenomenon in 1987,
08:03Geraldo Rivera estimated that there are one million practicing Satanists in the United States today.
08:09But after exhaustive investigations into hundreds of cases,
08:14the FBI found little evidence of ritual satanic abuse.
08:17No bodies, no blood, no bones, no signs of ceremonial sites.
08:24While widespread satanic abuse has been discredited,
08:28there are groups that firmly believe in demonic possession and the power of exorcism.
08:38Be gone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit.
08:42It's really a prayer for the healing and the liberation of this person
08:47from some kind of evil force, personal or impersonal, that seems to have a hold of the person.
08:54The Catholic rite of exorcism is rooted in New Testament accounts of Jesus casting out demons.
09:00In the Middle Ages, the practice became more popular.
09:04But Catholic exorcism has never been commonplace.
09:07In 1999, the Vatican announced a revised rite of exorcism,
09:12the first change in the rite since 1614.
09:15In the name of Christ, be gone!
09:18Still, the new rites of exorcism are almost identical to the old.
09:22The primary change is an emphasis on using exorcism only as a last resort,
09:27making exhaustive efforts to rule out physical, psychological and emotional behaviors
09:32that might be confused with possession.
09:35Exorcisms are a rare event.
09:41The 1973 film The Exorcist is based on the Catholic rite of exorcism,
09:45and is a fairly reliable guide to what church officials look for in possession.
09:52In each case, the exorcist must find four types of behavior.
09:56A subject who exhibits a superhuman strength, who shows a fierce reaction to holy things,
10:03who displays hidden knowledge, and who speaks in languages he or she would not normally know.
10:08But I trusted in thee, O Lord, I said, Thou art my God!
10:11As described in the Catholic rite, exorcisms begin with a sign of the cross and a sprinkling of holy water.
10:18A selection of prayers, litanies, and gospels are read aloud.
10:23Strengthen her will! Let vanish from her soul the temptings of the mighty adversary!
10:29After these rites are complete, the exorcist places the end of his stole on the neck of the possessed,
10:35reveals a crucifix, and traces the sign of the cross upon the forehead.
10:40If deemed necessary, the exorcist then commands the devil to leave the possessed person.
10:46We command you to leave in the name of God!
10:49The ceremony concludes with a prayer and blessing. The entire rite can be repeated.
10:57Catholicism is not the only Christian faith to practice a form of exorcism.
11:05I rebuke you, Satan, now! And leave him now! Go from his soul and from his mind! In Jesus' name!
11:15Each week, Pastor Tom Brown, a charismatic evangelical Christian,
11:19delivers dozens of souls from Satan's grip at the Word of Christ Church in El Paso, Texas.
11:25Leave her now! In Jesus' name! In Jesus' name! There you go! There you go!
11:31We don't really use the term exorcism. We prefer the term deliverance or casting out demons.
11:36We don't use the word possessed, because possessed implies a total control.
11:40What we believe is that demons can influence us.
11:44Pastor Brown traces the practice of casting out demons back to Jesus.
11:49If you read the first account in the Gospel of Mark of an exorcism,
11:53is when Jesus is in a synagogue, a demonized person, all of a sudden lifts up his voice and says,
11:58Aha! We know who you are, the Holy Son of God! Have you come to torture us before our time?
12:03And so this man is screaming, but it's not the man, it's the demon.
12:07And then Jesus tells the demon to shut up and come out, and the man is set free.
12:10We believe there are millions, perhaps even billions, of fallen angels that are working underneath Satan's control.
12:17So with so many of them, we do believe we have to be on guard.
12:22I said let her go now!
12:25Satan doesn't want anybody on this earth to be happy.
12:28She doesn't deserve this.
12:31You have no legal right to be in her.
12:33He wants everybody to be unhappy, and he wants everybody to be with him in hell.
12:40You let my sister go now! Come out of her!
12:45Because he is very real. He is very, very real.
12:50You can't see him, but he is real.
12:53Once and for all! Come out! In Jesus' name! Hallelujah!
13:02I heard voices, evil voices, telling me to do things, to do evil things to my family.
13:11And I was trying to fight that.
13:14Nazarene! He is mine!
13:18I believe when people are shaking and talking in voices that the demons are reacting.
13:23The demons are using their vocal cords, and they are screaming out things.
13:27I did feel it physically inside of me to a point that the demon always made me commit suicide, just
13:32maybe two or three days ago.
13:34That demon told me, get a butcher knife and stick it in your stomach.
13:38There it is! There it is! There it is! In Jesus' name!
13:42Oh, Jesus!
13:46I felt alleviated. I felt illuminated.
13:50And I felt free from all these evil spirits that were inside of me.
13:56Sing it!
13:57Oh, Jesus!
14:01When it's time for Jesus to come back, he will decide.
14:04You are with me, and the others that are not will be cast in a lake of fire.
14:12For many Christians, the existence of Satan and some form of hell is self-evident.
14:18But there are also other visions of hell.
14:22We believe that only a few people are going to receive God's condemnation and God's wrath.
14:39For centuries, followers of the world's great religions have grappled with fundamental concepts of heaven and hell.
14:46You look at all the images of the afterlife, and you treat all of them with respect.
14:52You come to the notion that human beings always believe in an afterlife.
14:56So what could it mean?
14:57I think people look into the afterlife as if it's a mirror, and there they see what's important about themselves.
15:05Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have different views on the afterlife.
15:10Islam means surrender to Allah's will, and contains no figure with the influence of Christianity's devil.
15:18However, Christianity and Islam do both believe in the existence of hell.
15:27The Quran tells us that hell is a physical and literal place, an abode for the sinners.
15:33Hell is an essential part of a human life.
15:38And without hell, this life will be in disarray and disorder.
15:44This is why God created the paradise and hell, for us to be disciplined, for us to follow the truth.
15:54And when it is said unto him, be careful of thy duty to Allah, pride taketh him to sin.
16:00Hell will settle his account, an evil resting place.
16:03The Quran, chapter 2, verse 206.
16:07Those condemned to the hell of Islam are met in a frightening manner.
16:10We read in some of the Quranic passages that when the sinners are being driven towards the hell,
16:17it would welcome them with a huge roaring voice.
16:21They're going to hear the roaring of the fire.
16:25And the fire is deep, narrow, tight.
16:30After arriving in Islam's hell, the pain is fierce.
16:35Lo, hell lurketh in ambush, a home for the rebellious.
16:39They will abide therein for ages.
16:41Therein they taste neither coolness nor any drink, save boiling water and paralyzing cold.
16:46The Quran, chapter 78, verses 21 through 25.
16:51The Quran continues to mention how people are going to be tortured and receive chastisement there.
17:01Their skins will burn, but God would renew their skins so they can taste the punishment of the fire.
17:11The torture is not one time or twice.
17:13It's numerous. It's continuing.
17:15Although relentless in its torture, the hell of Islam is not permanent.
17:20Punishment may take days, weeks or years.
17:23However, all but the most evil will eventually find their way to paradise.
17:27And the Quran implies that a majority of souls will avoid hell entirely.
17:33We believe that only a few people are going to receive God's condemnation and God's wrath.
17:42And therefore, few of the people are thrown into the fire.
17:45He has to be, in his character, he has to be angry and wrathful.
17:50But this is only temporary.
17:52We always say that his mercy overcomes his wrath.
17:57And he uses his mercy more than he uses his wrath.
18:03But the wrath is needed for people to serve him.
18:09But not all faiths embrace belief in a physical hell.
18:13The Hebrew Bible does not emphasize the afterlife.
18:16It's not unusual today to find conservative and reformed Jews all over the world saying that Jews don't believe in
18:22an afterlife.
18:23They believe that the good that one does lives after one.
18:26One is remembered by one's family.
18:28That one should do good deeds and attest to the memory of one's forefathers.
18:31But there's no literal afterlife.
18:34However, according to one of the 13 principles, a code of ethics penned by Rabbi Maimonides in the 12th century
18:41and still sung aloud today at synagogues, reward and punishment exist after death.
18:48Maimonides set forth 13 principles of the Jewish faith.
18:51One of them is that God judges people and gives to the bad according to his badness and to the
18:56good according to his goodness.
18:58The literal hell is not a big issue in Jewish life, but it doesn't matter.
19:03What matters is, does the truly evil person get his justice hurts?
19:08And the Jewish belief is emphatically yes.
19:14Even Orthodox Jews, some who do embrace an afterlife, find it improper to appeal to God for a better station
19:20in the next life.
19:22The mourner's Kaddish, the prayer recited by those grieving for lost loved ones, does not mention the deceased or ask
19:29God to look over them.
19:31Rather, it reaffirms the survivor's faith in the Almighty.
19:36The Buddhist conception of an afterlife differs considerably from many creator-based religions.
19:42The afterlife is not a place, but a state of existence.
19:47Hell is a realm where the dead are reborn into anxiety and distress.
19:51He sees living beings seared and consumed by birth, old age, sickness and death.
19:58Care and suffering sees them undergo many kinds of pain because of their greed, attachment and striving.
20:03They undergo numerous pains in their present existence.
20:07And later, they undergo the pain of being reborn in hell as beasts or hungry spirits.
20:11Buddhist Sutra, Chapter 3.
20:17The Wheel of Life offers a visual depiction of the many Buddhist states of being and realms of life.
20:23The second circle, half white, half black, represents the afterlife.
20:28Those who take the path of light are led to positive rebirths.
20:31Those who follow the path of darkness experience negative rebirths, the hells of Buddhism.
20:41There is no divine judge to condemn one to hell.
20:45Rather, one's own evil karma gives rise to rebirth in this realm.
20:49The result of a human soul either ascending or descending is no different than if a person ate spoiled food
20:56and became sick.
20:57When you become sick on the food, it's not because someone's punishing you.
21:00That's just a natural result. That's how the body works. That's how human nature is.
21:04They believed in the afterlife the same thing.
21:06A soul would either ascend because it was light and beautiful or it would descend under the weight of its
21:11own evil.
21:13In Chinese Buddhism, there are multiple realms of hell.
21:23In these hells, living beings suffer incalculable and indescribable pain.
21:28Gnawed by hungry jackals, ravens, black dogs, speckled vultures and crows, the sufferers groan.
21:36Such a state is experienced by the man of unwholesome deeds.
21:39It is a state of absolute suffering.
21:49But as in Islam, the suffering is not eternal.
21:52The living beings suffer the pain of hell until the unwholesome karma they have generated in life is exhausted.
21:59The hell dwellers, hungry spirits, beasts and the numerous others who are in difficult circumstances are thus able to be
22:06saved.
22:07Vodasutra, Chapter 24
22:10When their bad karma is exhausted, the occupants of hell are reborn in more fortunate realms of existence.
22:21For all their differences, the dominant religions of the world generally agree on a code of human conduct.
22:27But over time, rebels and dissenters have challenged traditional notions of hell and Satan and adopted the devil as one
22:35of their own.
22:48Rebels of all stripes have long latched on to the devil's coattails to express disdain for conventional authority.
22:55Celebrating the devil is a startling way to oppose all that society holds sacred.
22:59A fact that some in rock and roll have exploited.
23:03What better way to define itself as being rebellious in a Christian society than to start glorifying hellacious imagery
23:08and having bands who took on the persona of demons and devils and who sort of laughed at the idea
23:13that hell is a bad place.
23:15Hell is a place where the partiers go. It's the place of scantily clad women where the alcohol never stops
23:20flowing and the parties go on forever.
23:26Throughout history, hell and the devil have served as symbols for the disaffected.
23:34America was born in rebellion and a few of its greatest icons made alliances with the host of hell.
23:42In the late 1700s, a group of Englishmen formed the first Hellfire Club, a fraternity dedicated to drinking, sex and
23:51at times ridiculing Christianity and mocking its sacred rituals.
23:56Members met at ruined monasteries to revel in black masses and drunken orgies.
24:01An occasional participant was the American ambassador to Great Britain, Benjamin Franklin.
24:07A century later, Mark Twain displayed his iconoclasm by celebrating the underworld.
24:13I recall Mark Twain's apt quip, Heaven for Climate and Hell for Company.
24:18That if you want to meet really interesting people, you don't go to heaven, you go to Dante's Hell.
24:23Twain's essay, Letters from the Earth, includes fictional missives penned by the devil that expose the egocentric aspect of human
24:30nature.
24:32He thinks he's the creator's pet. He believes that the creator is proud of him. He even believes the creator
24:37loves him.
24:38Has a passion for him. Sits up nights to admire him. Yes, and watches over him to keep him out
24:44of trouble.
24:45Ain't it a quaint idea. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth.
24:52Writing in the same age as Twain, British romantic poets embraced the devil as a powerful way of rejecting society.
24:59William Blake said a true poet is of the devil's party, and saw the greatest sin as ignoring the impulses
25:06of one's own heart.
25:08As William Blake wrote in Marriage of Heaven and Hell, you need both the heavenly and the hellish aspects of
25:15the world and aspects of the soul to have a full human life.
25:17Now this is deeply anti-Christian. This is deeply anti-religious. What the romantics do is turn art into a
25:23kind of substitute for religion.
25:25For Blake, hell was a realm of spectators. Souls spiritually dead through their lack of creativity.
25:32Lo, a shadow of horror is risen in eternity. Unknown, unprolific, self-closed, all-repelling. What demon hath formed this
25:41abominable void? The soul-shattering vacuum.
25:44William Blake, Book of Urzin.
25:51By the 20th century, even many churches had de-emphasized the horrors of hell. The ruler of hell, often absent
25:59from the pulpit, found a second career in popular culture.
26:03Demonically themed novels and movies drew huge followings.
26:08For many children who came of age in the 1950s, one of their first reading experiences came from comic books
26:14set in a hellish underworld.
26:16Horror comics like Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt grew so popular that Congress investigated the phenomenon.
26:23There was a very real fear that children were spending too much time with these undead otherworldly creatures and that
26:29it was poisoning this upcoming generation.
26:31There was a very famous German doctor, Werthen, who said reading these comic books is absolutely destructive to the psyche.
26:39This is going to produce a generation of emotionally ruptured people who are incapable of having decent relationships and of
26:46functioning in a society.
26:49Today, rebels of all types adopt infernal imagery to outraged offenders of the status quo.
26:55One of the reasons that hell's angels use that imagery is because it makes other people angry.
27:01And they want to make other people angry and they want to make other people scared of them.
27:08But perhaps no group has ever taken on the trappings of the devil with more enthusiasm than the modern church
27:14of Satan.
27:35The church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in Hebrew it means adversary, opposer, one to
27:42accuse or question.
27:43We see ourselves as being the satans, the adversaries, opposers and accusers of all spiritual belief systems that would try
27:50to hamper enjoyment of our life as a human being.
27:54Founded in San Francisco, California by Anton LaVey in 1966, the Church of Satan sees belief in God or hell
28:02as delusional.
28:03And so they choose to practice self-reliance and self-worship.
28:06This is a very selfish religion. We believe in greed, we believe in selfishness, we believe in all of the
28:12lustful thoughts that motivate man because this is man's natural feeling.
28:18If you're going to be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block.
28:20If you're going to do something that's naughty, do it. And realize that you're doing something naughty and enjoy it.
28:32Many of the church's beliefs are spelled out in the Satanic Bible.
28:36Behold the promise of Satan and his power, which is called amongst ye a bitter sting.
28:41Move and appear, unveil the mysteries of your creation.
28:44For I am a servant of the same, your God, the true worshiper of the highest and ineffable king of
28:50hell.
28:50The Satanic Bible, the 13th key.
28:55The main ritual of the Church of Satan is the Black Mass.
28:59A highly theatrical rite designed to mock the sacred ceremonies of Christian traditions,
29:03the Black Mass exploits imagery of hell and Satan.
29:07Hail Satan.
29:08Hail Satan.
29:10Open wide the gates of hell and come forth.
29:15We have chosen purposefully to use the word Satan because of its theatrical value.
29:18Because we're attracted to the symbol of Satan, we have an approach that enjoys what we would consider a dark
29:23side of existence.
29:27Recently, History Channel producers were given permission to attend a modern-day Black Mass,
29:31an event rarely seen by anyone outside of the Church of Satan.
29:40In Satanism, we practice ritual magic.
29:42We call the ritual chamber an intellectual decompression chamber.
29:45It's where we stop rationalizing and thinking.
29:48We go inside a room that's darkened and lit with candles,
29:51and we release our emotions in a way to clear out anything that might be hindering us
29:55from pursuing all the kind of things we would like to do.
30:00When we perform rituals, we believe that it's necessary to not have distractions.
30:06So most of the men, and many of the women, will wear black hooded robes.
30:10It sort of has a wonderful, almost gothic sensibility.
30:13Hail Satan.
30:14Hail Satan.
30:17Hail Satan.
30:19Hail Satan.
30:23Hail Satan.
30:25Following in the tradition of founder Anton LaVey, the modern Black Mass is sexually charged.
30:32Satanism acknowledges the fact that we have love and lust.
30:34It's natural to the human animal.
30:35So if you're seeking a partner, you might do a lust ritual.
30:39Women sometimes will dress in clothing that's sexually stimulating to the men,
30:42because as we know, men are very easily visually stimulated.
30:50Also a part of the ceremony is the destruction ritual.
30:54We do unto others as they do unto us.
30:56So if someone harms us, we fully believe that you have the right to avenge yourself against that kind of
31:02injustice.
31:03So vengeance is part of our philosophy.
31:04We have a destruction ritual, which is meant to clear away any kind of hatred that might arise in us,
31:09because someone has wronged us.
31:10The mighty voices of my vengeance smash the stillness of the air,
31:14and stand as monoliths of wrath upon a plane of writhing serpents.
31:19Whoever has harmed you, you might make a doll of this individual.
31:22You might stick pins or nails into it or rip it into pieces.
31:25That will be the heart of what the destruction ritual is,
31:28the elimination of the person who has harmed you.
31:32I see your remaining days as nothing but a quiet, tedious collection of hours.
31:38You will find no new love.
31:41You are lost.
31:43Every day will be the same.
31:45You may as well have never have lived at all.
31:48The beliefs of the Church of Satan put it on the very fringe of the socially acceptable.
31:54A fact members savor.
31:55We are the adversaries to all the spiritual creeds and all the people who would say,
31:59you have to take your cue from somebody else.
32:02You have to obey.
32:02We create a heaven and hell here in our own existence,
32:05and it's completely on our own shoulders as to how it's going to come out.
32:08Because Satanists do not accept concepts of an afterlife,
32:12they believe they won't be judged by their earthly deeds.
32:18However, most in the mainstream of religious practice firmly trust a day of reckoning awaits after death.
32:24For them, a haunting question lingers.
32:27Just who goes to hell?
32:36The history of hell and Satan is long and complex.
32:40From biblical teachings to secular imaginings,
32:43our fascination with hell and the devil reflect primal fears of death
32:47and profound longings for immortality.
32:50Ninety-some-odd percent of us answer yes to the question,
32:53do you believe in life after death?
32:55But liberals tend to ignore hell.
32:57They just don't think it's part of the afterlife.
33:00Whereas evangelicals and fundamentalists believe in the reality of torment for people who are not like them.
33:06For those who do believe in hell, the fundamental question remains, who goes there?
33:15We don't really know who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
33:18Some Christians, for example, in the Russian Orthodox tradition,
33:21nourish the hope that in the end all people will be saved, including the devil, including Satan.
33:28But that's one of the great mysteries.
33:30It's one of those questions that we really don't know the answer to.
33:39Even if God's will is unknowable, it seems beyond comprehension for mass murderers like Hitler, Pol Pot, and Jeffrey Dahmer
33:47to escape damnation.
33:48I can sleep at night only because I do believe that the good get their reward and the bad get
33:55their punishment.
33:56If you don't believe that there is a hell, then you are saying that Hitler does not have any different
34:04fate from Mother Teresa.
34:07That the most vile, cruel human being has the same fate as the kindest.
34:16The logic of our mind suggests that if God is just, if there's righteousness, if there's some sort of basic
34:24fairness in life,
34:26then there needs to be judgment as well as reward.
34:31Even those who agree on a day of judgment differ on what it means to go to hell.
34:36It's really not very good theology to say that God punishes us, that God sends people to hell.
34:42If people go to hell, it's because they have somewhere along in the course of their lives made a decision
34:48that they will not, need not, do not have to live in relationship with God.
34:53The reality of a final judgment in which there will be a parting of the sheep and goats is simply
34:59basic Christian truth, Christianity 101.
35:03And that implies a hell.
35:06But as to what specific content you can give to that, what that means, that's been open to debate since
35:12the first century.
35:16If you ask me, do you want to believe in hell, I would say, no, I don't want to believe
35:20in hell, I want everybody to go to heaven.
35:23But to deny hell is to deny God, he said it in the Bible, to deny Jesus, the one who
35:29I follow, to deny scripture.
35:33Wide is a gate, and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many may enter through it.
35:38But small is the gate, and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few will find it.
35:44Matthew chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.
35:50Fundamentalists read Jesus' words as a sobering reminder that most souls are headed for damnation.
35:56They believe that anyone who has not accepted Christ as their personal savior is doomed.
36:01Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
36:08Jesus is it. On judgment day, the one who's going to be the judge is Jesus Christ.
36:13So here's the question. At that point, when you see it's Jesus as the judge, what religion would you wish
36:19you were part of?
36:21In recent decades, Catholics and many Protestant denominations have revised their interpretations of scripture in a less restrictive fashion,
36:28opening the gates of heaven to a wider audience.
36:31Vatican II says very clearly that those who practice the other great religions of the world,
36:36and even those who have no religion at all, but who strive to live according to the graces that God
36:41offers to all people, can be saved.
36:44The great religions of the world do agree that the very essence of hell and the core of its suffering
36:50is utter separation from God.
36:52And the sacred texts of each faith invite even the most wicked among us to join in redemption.
36:58Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts.
37:02Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will
37:07freely pardon.
37:08Isaiah chapter 55, verse 7.
37:11So it doesn't matter if you're a murderer on death row, it doesn't matter if you've committed multiple murders, if
37:19you've stolen, if you've raped all sin.
37:21Any sin can be forgiven when you come to the cross and claim the death of Jesus as God's forgiveness
37:27for your sin.
37:32All faiths hold that on your deathbed you can repent sincerely and somehow God will forgive you.
37:42I am not a big fan of the notion that you can torture children your whole life and then repent
37:51a minute before you die.
37:53I believe that if you've spent your life doing evil, engaging in cruelty, then you will pay the price for
38:03it.
38:06No matter one's beliefs, humankind faces one inescapable truth. We all will die.
38:13But after our loved ones have said their final goodbyes, and our earthly bodies are retired, none of us knows
38:19our ultimate fate.
38:21None of us knows what's on the other side.
38:24Robert Frost's poet says, the strong are saying nothing until they see. We don't know.
38:28Everyone would like a simple answer about hell or the devil or goodness or badness.
38:33There is no simple answer to a great deal of life. Most of it happens in shades of grey.
38:38But uncertainty does not preclude our constant speculation about hell and Satan.
38:48Hell is the ultimate affirmation of free will. And if there was no hell, then God would ultimately be saying,
38:54I don't care what you want, I don't care if you hate me, you're going to be with me forever,
38:57so deal with it.
38:58But the idea of hell seems to make sense for the souls who say, look God, I'm sure heaven's really
39:03nice, but I don't want any part of it and I don't want any part of you.
39:08Satan could run for office and be elected, which is really troubling. He's very charismatic. He's a natural leader. The
39:15problem is, is that he always leads in the wrong direction.
39:22Penned over centuries, the history of Satan at hell seems to be rewritten every generation.
39:28Hell is a shared construction project. It's based on stories that have been told by some of the greatest storytellers
39:34in the world.
39:37Satan is here to stay. The idea of God, man and the devil will be around for as long as
39:42people have longings that they can't realize and things that they fear.
39:46A lot of Americans are willing to say that hell is a simple delusion. If you look at the history
39:51of hell, you find out it might be a delusion, but there's nothing simple about it.
39:55It has an immense, long, important and very telling history.
40:17HOMEL CARRIFOUS
40:19HOMEL CARRIFOUS
40:39Transcription by CastingWords
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