Unbelievable! All winter St. Louis has been getting snow when I'm there while Chicago gets none. This week I'm home in Chicago and we're getting 7 to 9 inches. God must have a sense of humor, because he loves playing practical jokes on me.
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I finished reading "Inferno" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. As some people know, they are Science Fiction writers. The book was written in the mid 70's and is an update of Dante's Inferno. It chronicles the death of a writer and his adventures through the nine circles of Dante's Hell. He is committed to Hell because he so recklessly loses his life via a drinking game that it borders on suicide. He travels from the upper regions of Hell, the vestibule and circle one, down through the mid-circles and finally to the ninth circle. He has a benefactor who is trying to help him escape Hell and the only way to escape is by going down. They pass by the virtuous pagans in the first circle, people who led a virtuous life without knowing God, and past the gluttons, the hoarders and wasters, the bureaucrats, the herectics, the wrathful and sullen, the military who thought that they fought just wars, miscellaneous other scoundrels and murderers, and finally the traitors of country and family in the ninth circle. They have to endure winds, cliffs, swamps, lakes of boiling blood, hot pitch, wastelands, fiery deserts, and the freezing landscape in lower Hell. Of course, they can not die because they are already dead, but they can feel incredible pain. They encounter Minotaurs, demons from 10 to 20 feet high with whips and spears, and eventually Satan himself. When the writer finally reaches the lowest reaches of Hell and is about to escape, he has an epiphany that if he is able to escape then perhaps everyone in Hell can escape. Given that this is eternity, he deduces that this is God's final testing ground to allow everyone a final chance at redemption. It seems like a shakey concept. If someone can't find God on Earth, how are they to find him in Hell?
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Personally, I don't believe in Hell. The Bible promises eternal life thru God's grace for everyone who accepts Jesus Christ. There are no promises for eternity for those who don't. Those who don't accept him during life will probably be given a last chance sometime after they die. I think that those who reject God will either cease to exist or will forever be separated from God, but I don't feel that they will be eternally punished. It doesn't fit the loving character of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and he is his Father's son.