Now my wife is a Evangelical Christian - even though I'm quite the different path, we get along and respect each other's beliefs - Sometimes my wife gets a little opinionated about what I believe to be true, and she often challenges me on my own Theology. For the most part, she was the typical church goer. But recently I found her nose buried in a book. This was quite the surprise because a) she doesn't enjoy reading and b) it was a spiritual book about Hell.
I've encouraged my wife to keep reading the work, because I think it best to encourage people in the path they are drawn to... but at a certain point she began to get a tad preachy with me. She began to quote the book, and the first thing she said immediately put me on guard. My wife read from the book how Mary Baxter had this "vision" of Hell, and that in her vision "Hell" was at the center of the Earth.... No, I'm not making an analogy here... that was her literal and certain premise.
As I looked into Mary Baxter, I discovered a woman who seems to be of kind demeanor - and possibly a compassionate soul, but someone who is so far down the rabbit hole of Fundamentalism... she possibly has some strong delusions going on.
Before getting to Mary's work, I'd like to mention that I myself do believe in spiritual visions and phenomena. From my perspective, these things are often very personal and subject and valuable only to the individual who receives them. Similar to a dream that has meaning to the dreamer, a vision holds a truth to the recipient, but what of everyone else? Is everyone else to follow Mary's vision? I hope not.
My main points of contempt with Mary Baxter's visions come down to:
- her repeated use of physical matter in her vision of spiritual realms.
- her depiction and description of people and Jesus
- her use of these Dante'eque terror visions to promote Christian by use of Fear.
- her lack of understanding of what Hell is.
Spiritual Realms and Physical Matter
Mary Baxter begins a tale of Jesus appearing unto her while she is praying. I'm fine with that. Plausible. I have an open mind. Then she is taken in spirit to see the Earth... She witnesses these funnels or tubes that are spiritual in nature and extend into the center of the Earth. Jesus explains to her that this is where Hell is.
Well that's my first problem. That's such a problem, that I tossed the book immediately. Why is it a problem, that Hell is at the center of the Earth? Because it's Oh So Convenient. This is "Dark Age Mentality." Back in the old dark ages of ignorance, man's mind didn't expound beyond his physical realm. He thought the Earth was flat, because it "looked that way," he thought the Sun rotated around the Earth (because it looked that way) and he thought the Earth must be the center of the Earth. Hell, if I'm not mistaken, was also conceived and visualized at that period in time, as being "part of the Earth."
Earth Centric Spirituality is almost always faulty. It's just so damn easy to think everything "resolves around the earth."
Further, if Hell is in the Center of the Earth - is Heaven then in the sky? I can remember stories of the Russian Scientists pondering a proof that Heaven doesn't exist if they could launch a manned space craft into orbit. Well that was ignorance. After all the concept of Heaven is not a Physical property. Heaven is no more in the sky, then Hell is in the Earth.
The idea that a spiritual realm is housed in physical matter just wars against my view of the spiritual. While Spiritual matter and beings can manifest into the physical world - they are not contained here. They are non corpreal and the physical nature of this world holds no boundaries for such spiritual matter.
But not only is her vision Earth Centric, Mary Baxter's visions of the torment in Hell is mostly physical in nature to. She describes boxes with holes in them, that people are forced into, then demons (who evidently look like shades with bat faces - I kid you not) thrust swords into the holes to harm and torment those inside.
We know that physical matter wouldn't exist in Hell... so why is she describing it as literal. These visions are not figurative in her speech. She isn't indicating that this is how her mind must be interpreting torments in hell... no, this is what she thinks is really going on down there. So where do they get the boxes? Do they make them? Buy them? Do they have some Global Economy of Scale down in Hell? Some guy makes the boxes, another makes the hinges, and someone drills the holes... another makes the swords... ???
When I was a child in the Christian Fundamental faith, I never considered the vision of Jesus with a sword out his mouth to be literal. It was figurative speech. It was a man's mind forming symbols to explain a vision.
Mary Baxter is sadly going down a road of believing these physical depictions are occurring.
Denizens of Hell & Jesus' Interaction with Them
I was watching an interesting Youtube.com video of Mary Baxter in a church, where she was going over her Book, A Divine Revelation of Hell, and she got to a point where she told a story about a woman she remembered... her story was about a woman that Jesus brought Mary Baxter to see. This woman was once a Christian minister (which is odd, because you can count on a few hands how many Female Christian Ministers ever existed, and most likely narrow this down to who it was) who's husband had cheated on her with another woman. Terrible emotional problem. Well this woman minister didn't like the fact everyone forgave her husband, so she took justice into her own hands, and shot him and his mistress dead... then turned the gun on herself. It was at this point in the Video at this church, that Mary Baxter describes Jesus:
Jesus evidently confronts this tormented woman with, "If you only practiced what you preached, you wouldn't be here!" or something similar.
I mean, come on! So Jesus goes down to Hell to kick it and taunt the tormented? It's like a child who played with fire and burned their ears off their head in some terrible accident and the father saying to the child throughout his life, "Well you're screwed now son! Look at you. You think any woman will have you? All you had to do is listen to Daddy and you'd still have ears and skin." Yeah Real nice. This description she gave, made Jesus sound like a real mean guy.
Back to the physical bodies ... in Mary Baxter's depiction of Hell, she continues to see the denizens of hell has having Physical form... of being "skeletons" with "dripping flesh" and "worms crawling through their bones."
That's right. She thinks real worms are digging through the bones of these people in hell... and the people in hell have the forms of skeletons, or other monstrous creatures. She mentions that these tormented skeletons of people feel the worms burrowing into their bones, and they cry out in agony.
Terror Visions For Jesus
My main issue with Mary Baxter is her use of these Fear Tactics to scare people into Christianity. Life is so scary in Hell, you better become a Christian OR ELSE! At least that's Mary Baxter's attitude - and I dare say, the attitude of most Christian Fundamentalists.
Mary's depiction of the torment rolls off her pen line by line. After listening to her preaching, I began to realize she sounds like a woman vexed with the initial stages of Alzheimer's. Her descriptions roll from one atrocious act to the next... you just about expect her to sensationalize up to, "And then the giant metal robot with the head of a gorilla came out and sodomized the men...." No she doesn't say that, but I almost expected it. She leaps from one idea to the next as an elderly man might do who is in a stage of delirium. In her defense, she does seem quite alert... but it's just that jump from one to the next... it's odd. Quite odd.
She constantly cries out about how these people are the lost who didn't find Jesus, or who rejected him. She has stories of every kind of backslider - from those who turned a deaf ear, to those who willfully disobeyed God. Even a story of a Hindu who was cast into Hell for not listening to the Missionaries.
What's Hell Anyways?
Many spiritualists don't believe in a Hell. Possibly there is a Hell, possibly not. Possibly those who believe in Hell, create one when they die... and those who don't believe in hell, possibly do not experience in death.
To the Buddhist, there are Hell realms. Realms based on the collective Karma of the individual. But these hellish realms are really the perceptions of the individual that form terrible realms to the recipient.
Each religion has their own ideas on the subject.
To me, Hell would most likely be the absence of Divine Light. I look at Life from a Kabalistic view... That on one extreme we have the Existence of God (as Pure Light Energy), and the other, the absence of Light. In between the areas of greater or lesser degrees of Light - The Qlippoth at the end of pure darkness... and then the demonic realms, then the physical universe, and then the angelic realms, and ultimately God.
But as with all Light, if one sits long enough in a dark room, and light has no decay, it will eventually overcome and fill the entire darkness of the room. In other words, in time, all things reach heaven.
But my view, is just that - a view. It's something that works for my personal perceptions. It's not something I should run out and spout as gospel.
Whether Hell exists or does not is up to you to decide. But make an informed and logical choice. Not a choice based on fear and emotion... that is evidently making Mary Baxter some good $$$.... I smell a movie in the making... I bet by year's end we'll all hear about a movie about Mary's vision.
