- 30 - 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. 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 f a l s i f i c a t i o n . The original text read: ‘into the fire of hell’ and not ‘into the eternal fire’. S i m i l a r s p u r i o u s a l t e r a t i o n s 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 ‘ e t e r n a l l i f e ’ 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
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