Ancient Mysteries
Solved Today

Did you know that Superman was created in 1933 by two Jewish writers named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. This fictional character is about a baby boy sent from the heavens to Earth: who grew up having superhuman powers, and whose destiny is to save the people on this planet. Yes, Superman can fly; has incredible strength; able to leap tall buildings with a single bound; and gives the bad guys the justice that they deserve. Wikipedia reminds us that this character has many epithets: such as the Man of Steel, Big Blue Boy Scout, the Man of Tomorrow, the Last Son of Krypton, and of course the Greatest Hero of All Time…

My daughter came back from her young adult’s group meeting asking me again my thoughts on the subject “Hell”. She knew I had a particular bent on the term, and wanted to be reminded seeing as it’s not taught in Church anymore (there was a time when the Church would preach “hell, fire and brimstone”, but now this is seen as a ‘scaremonger’ approach, which conflicts with today’s Hippie Jesus model of ‘love’). I reminded her of my early Christian years, where I would discuss “hell” to non-believers as a way of encouraging salvation. But I must admit that my ‘evangelical’ approach was not very successful, as many would retort back saying “Hell sounds like a fun place!” and… “Well, at least I’ll be partying with my friends!!!”... which to be honest, is actually a fair-enough argument. But over the years, I have learnt that just like there are three heavens and earths within biblical literature, there are in fact two hells… which means that the “hell” they taught me in Church is not the correct picture…

Occasionally I’m asked to speak to larger groups (which is a nice change from the often smaller home group models), where recently I had the privilege of speaking at the NZ Christian Writers Retreat 2019… held at Flaxmill Conference Centre in the Coromandel.