JF Ptak Science Books Post Post 271
Oscar Lowry attempts to answer the question in the subject line of this post in a very red book of 46 shouty pages. What he's really concerned with, in Where are the Dead (1930), and what he maintains is of "universal interest to the saved and unsaved, the hearers and nonhearers", is what happens to people after they die; more particularly though, Mr. Lowry is interested in differentiations in eternal damnations versus eternal doom. And there is evidently a very wide difference here, as people in Hades are just in "prison", waiting for their final judgment which will fling them into Mr. Cash's ring of fire (well,"lake" of fire, actually). There's also little chance that the snakey charms of Orpheus' poetry will ever change anyone's mind at the gates of Sheol-Hades, leading anyone away from the firey pit. The discussion of Hades and Hell and Sheol is interesting if not scary in Mr. Lowry's hands, describing "Sheol-Hades" as a "prison", its occupants waiting for final disposition to Hell. Strong's Hebrew opens the possibilities of definition with a number of translations for Sheol: the underworld, the abode of the dead, place of no return; without praise of God; wicked sent there for punishment; righteous not abandoned to it; of the place of exile; of extreme degradation in sin. The most troubling of these in my book is the definition of what it is not, as in "when the righteous are not abandoned to it", which seems both reassuring and really terrifying..
Millions now Living May Never Die (1939) is a great title which leads ultimately to a not terribly interesting pamphlet about The Rapture. Its also very badly timed for such a title--1939--as 20 or 30 million extra people would die who shouldn't've by 1945. I'm not sure why capitalization is required for the rapture, as it will probably not be confused with Another Rapture, or the Pseudo Rapture or even the Pre-Rapture--I must admit though that the mechanics of the rapture are not obvious to me, coming as it does after the Advent and Second Advent (which comes after seven years of Tribulation, or something like that). The author, another Lowry , this one a Cecil from the Southwestern Bible School of Enid, Oklahoma, writes with an abundance of capitalization about the impending "return of Jesus for His Bride", and how the rapture will take you where you are, leaving the righteous to live on the earth, and others, well, not. The word "doom" appears more often than a semi-colon. "Because the world is round, it will be night on one side of the earth and day on the other. So many will be translated [i.e. "terminated"] that the great newspapers of the earth will carry in their headlines words similar to these: 'Millions have mysteriously disappeared from the earth'. I am told that a certain large newspaper already have their type for for that event." The rapture will take you from "Satan's slime pits" wherever they are, "at beach bathing and beer parlors " to name a few, though I think that one can stop reading at being sucked into oblivion for sitting in the sand at Tybee Island, particularly if you're five years old. Be that as it may, probably everyone who read these the works when they were first published are now probably dead, enraptured or not.
Comments