Brother Harry Hardwick Answers Your Questions

Q: Hey guys/girls, I got 2 questions for you:

1. In Revelation, I see there is "the lake of fire." I also see there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Is, therefore, "the lake of fire" also a new thing, or does "the lake of fire" currently exist and is the same "lake of fire" that will have certain ones cast into it?

2. I see in Matthew 5:34, Jesus giving commandment to "swear not at all." And I see in Jeremiah 22:5, the LORD says, "I swear by myself ...." Does this make the LORD God Himself a sinner, since Jesus, who is God, gave commandment NOT to swear at all?

When providing your answer, please use ONLY the Bible, not referencing to some pastor, "Christian writer," or other clergy. And please try to keep your reply as short as possible.

A: Dear Inquisitive Child,

Please accept my sincere apologies, but I am so full of the Spirit that I cannot write a short reply, as you requested. After all, we're supposed to be as Christlike as possible, and Jesus certainly wins the prize for long-windedness. Just read some of his sermons! Anyway, the Bible is silent as to whether Revelation's lake of fire will be a new creation. I suspect it will be, though. After all, the Lord has promised a marvelous celebration of surprises, come Judgment Day. Some of them will be brand new -- things we've never seen before -- like the horse-like locusts with human heads, women's hair, lion's teeth and scorpion's tails (Revelation 9:7-10). Now, that promises to be a sight! Some of it we've seen before, only not to this degree, like the earthquake He'll use to kill 7,000 people (Revelation 13:13). Others will rival even "Night of the Living Dead" sequels in terms of pure gore, like His inflicting of bodily sores, turning of seas and rivers to blood, scorching everyone with fire, causing people to consume their own tongues in pain and causing horrendous storms that will strike dead the (now speechless though sated) sinners (Revelation 16:1-21). Get out the popcorn. It promises to be quite a show.

Regarding Jesus and his cursing, of course, cursing is a sin when done by mere mortals but not when done by the Lord. There are countless Bible verses that Jesus and His Dad violated with impunity. "Thou shalt not kill" is one God ignored with regularity. Don't forget the disrespect with which Jesus treated his mother (saying, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?")(John 2:4), notwithstanding the Old Testament requirement that we stone to death those children who disobey (Deuteronomy 21:21) or curse (Leviticus 20:9) (and, by analogy, disrespect) their parents. Jesus was frequently caught violating His Dad's edicts, but typically He responded by just changing the rules (e.g., we can teach on the Sabbath after all). In fact, one could persuasively argue that His well-known admonition that only those free of sin should cast the first stone may very well have been motivated by self-preservation. We really shouldn't have expected much more from Jesus. After all, consider His Father's errors. For instance, after violently killing every man, woman, child and unborn child on the planet, God promised never to destroy the world again (Genesis 8:21). Apparently, He had a momentary lapse and completely forgot about the Book of Revelation, with the marvelous destruction described above.

Praying that our faith will remain strong despite the countless inconsistencies,

Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: Why is the bible so anit-women?

A: Dear Hell-bound Gender Equity Advocate,

A non-Christian philosopher will tell you it is because the Bible was written by male chauvinist pigs in Rome who, in the 4th Century, forged letters from Paul (that involve substantive statements and a writing style diametrically opposed to his previous writings) in an effort to solidify their power and put "uppity women" in their place.

Of course, as Christians, we know that women are just downright inferior. After all, Adam was completely innocent of wrongdoing. It was Eve who was inherently evil and just couldn't resist Satan's temptation (Genesis 3:12-16). (Of course, one might wonder, if Eve was created from Adam's rib and God is infallible, how Eve uniquely turned out so flawed--but that would involve questioning the Bible, which we are not allowed to do.) As a result of Eve's sin, God made childbirth painful and forced women to submit to men (Genesis 3:16).

Of course, lots of folks like to say, "OK, the Old Testament is kinda mean-spirited. But Jesus is all love and equality, and Jesus wrote the New Testament." Consider what "Jesus" wrote about women in the New Testament through the apostles. The "natural use" of a woman is to serve the physical needs of men (Romans 1:27). "The head of the woman is the man" (1 Corinthians 11:3). "For the husband is the head of the wife" (Ephesians 5:22-24; see also Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1). Even old women must be "obedient to their husbands" (Titus 2:3, 5). Women are to be silent in church, for they're all stupid and therefore must listen to men. "If they [women] will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in church" (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). In fact, women are NEVER to hold positions of authority over men and are never to teach, but rather must "learn in silence with all subjection" (1 Timothy 2:9). Women are subordinate to men because of the sin of Eve for which all women must be punished (1 Timothy 2:14-15).

Because women are inherently sinful, they must dress modestly, "with shamefacedness" and "not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array" (1 Timothy 2:9). And women are of little value. Despite the fact that Lot offered his two daughters to a group of men for gang rape as a substitute for the strangers the gang sought (the same two daughters Lot later impregnated), Lot is described in the New Testament as a "righteous man" (2 Peter 2:8). So inferior are women that only 144,000 celibate men will be saved in the end to the outer reaches of Heaven. These are the men who never contaminated themselves with women (Revelation 14:3-4). And, of course, the great sign of evil, come Judgment Day, will be a great female harlot, described as being "full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication" (Revelation 17:1-16).

In the end, the women of Christianity are viewed as perhaps being only slightly above the orangutan (at least, the female orangutan) in the pecking order. And since True Christians believe all of the New Testament was inspired by Jesus, Himself, the Bible must be so anti-women because God is anti-women.

Praying that all will recognize that liberal notions of equality are antithetical to the Bible,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: I have been personally attacked in this forum. Is that what a "good" christian does?

PS
How do you get blood stains out of carpet?

A: Dear Fellow Persecuted Child of God,

I'm afraid being attacked by the unsaved is precisely what God warned all of us True Christians would happen to us if we followed Him. Whether we're burning witches (Exodus 22:18), beating to death disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:21), razing villages and raping their virgins (Deuteronomy 20:13-16), sacrificing rams at the altar (Numbers 29:36), locking up our wives during their time of the month (Leviticus 15:19), or any of the other countless Biblically-mandated acts, it seems there is no shortage of people to persecute us. That is just the cross we'll have to bear (no pun intended).

Praying for a return to the no-nonsense retribution of yesteryear,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: In the 2000 years since Jesus died, has the human race become any more holy? In other words, did Jesus die in vain?

A: Dear Obviously Unsaved Skeptic,

Undeniably, there have been modest improvements in humanity. After all, people were routinely executed back then, whereas today, this is rarely the case (except for China and Texas). Hundreds of years ago, Christians killed thousands upon thousands of people in the name of God, the Catholics through the Crusades and the Protestants through the Inquisition. Today, more may be killed in a single episode because the technology is more efficient (and far more available, thanks to the Godly NRA) but they are killed less frequently. A few hundred years ago, homosexuals and witches faced imminent death by the state. Today, they are only killed when fundamentalist preachers whip their congregations into a frenzy of hate that trickles down to bashing and murder.

But you asked whether the human race is more "holy." I'm uncertain what that means. Given the countless Bible verses ordering people to kill adulterers, disobedient children, nonbelievers and every living being in towns they invade, one could make an argument that contemporary carnage IS holy.

In any event, the HUMANITY of humanity has not appreciably improved. Of course, quite frankly, Jesus has only Himself to blame for the lack of holiness in the world for His carelessness in inspiring the New Testament. After all, even though countless New Testament verses condemn people to Hell for sin, Jesus allowed one verse -- John 3:16 -- to provide hope for even the most depraved and mean-spirited beings that they can go to Heaven. Some of the most hate-filled and evil among us -- the Fred Phelpses, Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons -- and their followers latch onto John 3:16 as though it trumps every other verse in the Bible. They believe that just because one time in their lives, they said, "Jesus, I accept you as my Lord" that they are now destined for Heaven no matter what they do. They can be hateful, judgmental and real stone throwers, and it matters not because they said the magic words that are the password to Heaven. However, rest assured that even though all these real anus-orifices think they're saved by John 3:16, there are other verses they cannot reconcile, like Matthew 7:21: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." I'm not aware of any passage that says John trumps Matthew. However, because John 3:16 is all the rage, appearing on more banners at football games than even Coca-Cola products, is it any wonder there is so much hate? After all, why not be a jackass if once saved, always saved?

Praying that John will learn to be a bit more careful in his phrasing,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: Jesse Jackson? What's up with that?

A: Dear Fellow Republican/Christian,

We, Christians, attack Jesse Jackson for his infidelity because he has the audacity to suggest that Jesus may have actually meant all those things he said about feeding and clothing the poor, camels having an easier time entering the eye of a needle than the rich entering Heaven, etc. Jackson must be attacked because his views suggest God is not committed to ensuring that rich people pay less taxes, poor people get less aid and health care be reserved for the upper tier. We simply cannot allow such a view as his to take hold, lest the delicate but vital link between fundamentalism and the Republican Party be severed. Hence, we are looking for anything to pin on Jackson, just as we were looking for any way to discredit Clinton (though Clinton provided so much material, we didn't have to look far).

We are, of course, quite willing to turn a blind eye to our Godly Republican President's past alcohol and cocaine problems, drunk driving conviction, AWOL military status (not to mention the rumored paying of his underaged girl friend's abortion) because, after all, he stands for Christian compassion/big business. And, of course, we turn a blind eye to the errors of the countless Republican lawmakers who've been caught with their pants down recently. Whether it's Bob Livingstone (the Republican's choice for speaker of the House) who banged every other female south of the Mason Dixon line, or Newt Gingrich, Helen Chenoweth or Dan Burton, all of whom had illicit affairs, or, of course, Henry Hyde, the man who chaired the campaign for Clinton's impeachment despite impregnating his mistress and fathering a child out of wedlock -- an act he described as a youthful indiscretion (even though he was in his mid-40's at the time--guess he plans to live as long as Moses) -- we always look the other way. This will be easy for you to understand if you remember this very simple standard: when a Republican cheats on his spouse, impregnates a young woman, pays for an abortion, etc., we call that an "indiscretion." When a Democrat engages in similar (though typically lesser) conduct, it is because of his race, lack of religion or just generally perverted nature.

Praying that elitism will always thrive in our faith,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: how could noah possibly live to be 600 yrs?
how come noone has ever found the ark?

A: Dear Inquisitive (a/k/a Hellbound) One,

God must have made the ark disappear. That is the only explanation. Bear in mind that there were more than 50 million species of animals on the Earth (there were more than 500,000 species of beetles, alone). Yet, Noah managed to get at least two (and sometimes more) of each specie on the ark (Genesis 6:14-15). That's over 100 million animals, some of them the size of elephants, many of them carnivorous (and thus requiring isolation) and many of them requiring special housing arrangements for their environmental needs. And this still doesn't take into account the need for food storage (different food for different species), waste storage and/or removal and the like. An ark capable of accomodating all of this would be the size of a dozen Rhode Islands and would certainly have been located by now

Of course, the Bible says the ark was 450 feet long (even though the oldest ships built in that time, by expert shipbuilders, were 300 feet, and they required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly they had to be pumped constantly by countless men). If the ark was only 450 feet long, to house all those animals, it would have to be about 100 miles wide. That's a mighty big ship (Genesis 6:14-15).

Regarding Noah's age, this, too, must have been a miracle. But, then again, Noah HAD to live to be at least 600. After all, he had to travel to all different continents of the world to collect the 50 million plus species of animals (Genesis 7:8). Some of them were deep in the African and Amazonian jungles, yet Noah found them all. Then, after the Great Flood, he had to disperse the 100 million plus animals (minus those he sacrificed to God) back to their natural habitats deep within the seven continents. All of this would take hundreds of years for hundreds of men today with the benefit of modern technology. Yet, Noah did it all by his lonesome when technology consisted of wood and nails.

Frankly, the Bible would be far more realistic if it pegged Noah's age at 60,000 years. However, as always, the Bible has an explanation for the relatively short time span required to do all of this. There was plenty of time for collection and later dispersion because all of the 100 million plus animals boarded the ark "in the selfsame day" (Genesis 7:13-14). That means they would have boarded the ark at the rate of thousands a second. Pity, Continental and Delta don't have any Noahs working for them.

We shouldn't be surprised that God removed the ark. After all, God was depressed after killing every man, woman, child, infant and unborn child on the planet (except Noah and his kin). He even created the rainbow as a promise to the world that He would never destroy it again (Genesis 9:13). (Guess He forgot He was going to inspire the Book of Revelation a few thousand years later.) The ark was probably a painful reminder of this unfortunate mood swing and was hence destroyed.

Praying that we will all learn to accept the Bible by blind faith, notwithstanding its scientific impossibilities,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: I think I am a prophet of God's word....Is there any way I can find out for sure???

A: Dear Child of God,

Glad to hear you are probably yet another prophet! To determine if this is truly your lot in life, see if you meet the following requirements. First, your statements must be inconsistent with, if not downright contradictory to, what other "prophets" have said. After all, inconsistency is what made the apostles the apostles. Whether they contradicted each other about what Jesus' last words were (Matthew 27:46-50; Luke 23:46), where the Sermon on the Mount was held (Matthew 5:1-2; Luke 6:17-20), who first came to the tomb after Jesus' death (John 20:1; Matthew 28:1; mark 16:1: Luke 24:10), etc., the bottom line is that consistency was out of the question.

Second, check and see if there are times when you are completely incoherent, that is, when nothing you say makes any sense to anyone. This is called "speaking in tongues" and occurs when the Holy Spirit has entered a person's body. (Bet you never knew the greatest prophets of our time are the schizophrenic homeless, drunks, and speech therapy drop-outs.)

Third, make sure what you say is completely inconsistent with scientific truth. A true prophet makes certain that what he says about nature simply cannot be true. For instance, the prophets of the New Testament told us the Earth is flat (Daniel 4:10-11--there was once a tree tall enough to see "to the end of the Earth"; Matthew 4:-8; Luke 4:5--the devil took Jesus to a mountain tall enough to see "all the kingdoms of the world"; Revelation 7:1--come Judgment Day, there will be "four angels standing on the four corners of the earth"), pi is equal to 3 (2 Chronicles 4:2; 1 Kings 7:23) and, contrary to that silly notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun, the Earth is actually stable and does not move (1 Samuel 2:8; 1 Chronicles 16:30; Job 9:6; 38:4-6; Psalms 96:10; 104:5; Isaiah 13:10).

Finally, make sure your sermons are chock full of passages that put lesser people in their place. Like women, for instance. By all means, you must be a prophet if you've mentioned that women must keep their mouths shut in church and ask their husbands what the preacher was talking about (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), women are never to teach or have any role in which they lead men (1 Timothy 2:11-14), women must do precisely what their husbands tell them to do (Ephesians 5:22-24; 1 Corinthians 11:3; Colossians 3:18), women are worth less money than men (Leviticus 27:1-7), etc.

If you've met all these requirements, congratulations! You may now preach in the name of Christianity!

Praying that you will do a better job than the countless others who purport to speak for God,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: I use my bible to prop up a shelf on my plant stand. Do you think I could find a better use for this book? PS I can't read.

A: Dear Perceptive Person,

Frankly, I think that is probably the best place for your Bible, especially if the plant stand is heavy enough that no children can get to that appalling book. As devout Christians, we all, of course, must emphasize family values. That includes protecting our children from smut, violence and other obscene matters. Unfortunately, the Lord's Book is among the most pornographic and obscene that can be found anywhere. If the Bible were ever made into an (unabridged) movie, it would be rated XXX. If it were recorded on a CD, there would be stringent warning labels. And were it not for the fact that the Book came from God, it would be the first hurled into the flames during weekly book burnings.

Consider the smut in that Book. For goodness sake, God commands people to eat their own children (Lev26:29; Dt28:53,57; 2Kg6:28-29; Is9:19-20; Jer19:9; Ezek5:10), discusses people consuming their own excrement and urine (2Kg18:27, Is36:12; Ezek4:12,15), mentions wives touching other man's genitals during their husband's fights (Dt25:11-12), extensively analyzes masturbation, and not just from the "unclean" standpoint, but also describes people spilling their semen on the ground (Gen38:9-10) and seems infatuated with the whole issue (pardon the pun) of semen (Lev15:16-18), describing even wet dreams (Dt23:10-11), repeatedly expounds on menstruating women, going into great detail about the act and atonement (Lev15:19-30; 20:38), advocates murdering one's own children (Ps137:9; Ex21:15, 17; Dt21:21), describes the killing of unborn infants as punishment for sin (Hosea9:14,16; 13:16), orders slaves to obey masters (Eph6:5, Col3:22), praises men like Lot (2Pet2:8) who tried to give his daughters to a group of men to rape (Gen19:8) and later impregnated them (Gen19:31,36), etc. Why, God even discusses men with large tallywackers who ejaculate large loads (Ezek23:20). Now I ask you, is any of that fit for children (or any member of the family, for that matter) to read?

My dear friend, Betty Bowers, says the solution is to blacken out all the obscene parts of the Bible. My experience attempting that has been that the few words remaining really make no sense. So you leave that copy of the Bible right where it is and make sure your children know the importance of not ever touching it (better than Eve knew the importance of not touching that fruit).

Praying for emphasis on family values instead of the Bible,
Brother Harry Hardwick

Q: If you were born in, let's say India or China. Do you think you would be a christian right now?

A: Dear CC,

I doubt it, and therein lies the dilemma for us, True Christians. You see, the Bible says those who fail to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior are going straight to Hell. This sort of seems unfair, since we were exposed to Christianity from birth and had it ingrained in our psyches since before we could shout, "Turn or burn!" People in third world countries were typically raised with a different religion, which was pounded into their heads with equal intensity. Needless to say, a single missionary with a few Jesus tracts isn't going to overcome a lifetime of parental lecturing. What a shame these folks are going to fry in a flaming Hell for eternity.

Now, some folks would say God will make allowances for people who never had the opportunity to accept His son. Aside from the fact this claim finds no support in the Bible, it really makes the situation even worse for the victims of missionaries. For if this claim is true, then those foreigners who have never heard of Christ will go to Heaven, whereas those who heard a 10-minute spiel from a missionary, but chose to remain in the religion in which their parents raised them, will fry in Hell. I guess that means that, to really save people abroad, missionaries should keep their mouths shut.

Praying that, thanks to the support of Christian institutions, children abroad will learn to accept Christ right before they die of starvation,
Brother Harry Hardwick
Landover Baptist Church (www.landoverbaptist.org)

Q: Isn't "the devil made me do it" just a christian excuse to sin?

A: Dear CC,

Not necessarily. It really depends upon the nature of the sin. Devil/demon possession sometimes makes one's acts uncontrollable. For instance, the demons inside a fellow have been known to force him to attack and strip others of their clothes (Acts 19:15-16). If sin were committed pursuant to an epileptic seizure, we know it is a devil who is responsible. Doctors, Lucifer's chief allies, will tell you epilepsy is a disease of the nervous system caused by an imbalance in the electrical activity of the brain. The Bible (which always trumps modern medicine) says epilepsy is the product of devils. Indeed, Jesus cured epilepsy by casting devils out of the sufferers (Matthew 17:15). And if a sin was the product of blindness or being dumb? Possession by devils is again the cause (Matthew 12:22). In fact, a myriad of physiological conditions for which doctors have numerous Satanic and false explanations are, in reality, caused by possession of the person by devils (See also Matthew 9:32; Mark 9:17-29; Luke 9:39-42; 11:14). So it really is often the devil (or devils) that make you do something. Just look at Jesse Helms. (No one could voluntarily choose to be that mean and hateful.)

Praying that medical schools will one day emphasize exorcism over surgery,
Brother Harry Hardwick
Landover Baptist Church (www.landoverbaptist.org)