Letters From Hell - Whitehead, Tony

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Résumé :
Letters From Hell is a book and personal study guide designed to encourage reflection on either one's personal spiritual life, or help recognize another person's life problems that could cause their spiritual demise. The book contains personal antidotes from the author's encounters with school friends, neighbors, customers, and people from all walks of life that he has known. Many have passed away many years ago due to choices they had made and the lifestyle they lived. These stories written as letters are completely true leading up to the peoples' deaths. Only their journey into the torment of Hell is fiction because we do not know if a person goes to Heaven or Hell upon their departure from this life. However, we can make an educated guess based on the lifestyle he or she lived while alive and well. As an example, one of the stories is about the author's friend Billy. They were best friends from the seventh grade through High School. Several people invited Billy to attend church and Sunday School all through those school years but were always fiercely rejected. Billy was adamant that preachers and churches were only after money so they wouldn't have to get a real job and work for a living. Over the years, Billy got married and had a child but continually rejected spirituality for himself and strongly discouraged all things religious for his wife and family. Eventually, Billy devolved to throwing away a family bible his wife's family had kept for generations and even destroying other bibles his wife tried to replace it with. When his wife filed for divorce, she was granted 100% custody of their child, leaving Billy with no visitation rights. Having no interpersonal relationship with God and Jesus for spiritual support, he became distraught and promptly committed suicide. The author hopes that as you read these stories about real people and their lifestyles and descent into oblivion, please give some honest thought and self-reflection to see if your life or someone you may know compares to any of these people. And, if you do see a little of yourself in one of these stores by chance, what are you going to do about it? This book and study guide also contains discussion questions after each chapter and biblical references to help in self-evaluation and make the right choices in your (and possibly others') life. The author suspects that you have not heard much about Hell from most pulpits in today's churches other than perhaps an occasional reading of Luke 16:19-31; because most preachers are afraid of scaring the congregation and losing membership and revenue-or so they say. Is it better to keep silent on the subject and let people continue to feel good about themselves, or would it be better to make a few people uncomfortable and cause them to repent of their sins and go to heaven upon their passing? The author hopes this book and study guide will help answer that question.