The Biography of Satan E-Book

Kersey Graves

• Herausgeber: E-BOOKARAMA
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"The Biography of Satan" is an essential collection of lore, logic, and philosophy, dating to the middle of the rational days of the 19th century. 

Within this work, Kersey Graves lays waste to the doctrine of eternal Hell and the very concept of a Satan, claiming that it is, within proper tradition, the Christian god himself who is the architect of evil and suffering.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

THE BIOGRAPHY OF SATAN

Preface

Introduction. "Fear Hath Torment"

Chapter 1. Evils And Demoralizing Effects Of The Doctrine Op Endless Punishment

Chapter 2. Ancient Traditions Respecting The Origin Of Evil And The Devil

Chapter 3. A Wicked Devil And An Endless Hell Not Taught In The Old Testament

Chapter 4. Explanation Of The Words 'Devil' And 'Hell' In The Old Testament

Chapter 5. God (And Not The Devil) The Author Of Evil According To The Christian Bible

Chapter 6. God And The Devil Originally Twin-Brothers, And Known By The Same Titles

Chapter 7. Origin Of The Terms “Kingdom Of Heaven,” “Gates Of Hell,” Also Of Traditions Of The Dragon Chasing The Woman, The Woman Clothed With The Sun, Etc.

Chapter 8. Hell First Instituted In The Skies—Its Origin And Descent From Above

Chapter 9. Origin Of The Tradition Respecting “The Bottomless Pit”

Chapter 10. Origin Of The Belief In A “Lake Of Fire And Brimstone”

Chapter 11. Where Is Hell?—Ancient Traditions Respecting Its Character And Location

Chapter 12. Origin Of The Notion Of Man's Evil Thoughts Being Prompted By A Devil—Satanic Agency Having Been Restricted To The Phenomena Of The External World

Chapter 13. The Christian's Devil—Whence Imported Or Borrowed

Chapter 14. The Various After-Death Punitive Terms Of The New Testament, Of Oriental Origin

Chapter 15. The Doctrine Of Future Punishment Of Heathen And Priestly Origin, Invented By Pagan Priests

Chapter 16. Explanation Of Hell, Hades, Tartarus, Infernus, Gehenna, And Tophet

Chapter 17. One Hundred And Sixty-Three Questions For Believers In Post Mortem Punishment

Appendix. The War In Heaven

THE BIOGRAPHY OF SATAN

Kersey Graves

Preface

In presenting the present edition of this work to the public the author deems it necessary only to add in the preface that it has been thoroughly revised and corrected, and that the numerous responses from those who availed themselves of a copy of the previous edition of the book, leaves the author no reason to doubt that the motive which actuated him in the publication of it will be fully realized. That motive was to expose and arrest the progress of the most terror-inciting superstition that ever nestled in the bosom of the ignorant, or that ever prostrated the energies of the human mind, and reduced its possessor to the condition of an abject, groveling and trembling slave!

It is common in the prefatory exegesis of a work to explain the motives which lead to its authorship or compilation. But as the motives which prompted this work are already partially disclosed in the initiatory chapter, headed "Address to the Reader," and the succeeding chapter which sets forth some of the practical evils which spring legitimately from the doctrine of future or post mortem punishment, we will only add to the explanation thus furnished, so far, as to state:

1. That notwithstanding many ages have rolled away since the after-death penalty was first originated and promulgated to the world, yet no work designed to furnish to the general reader a full, and at the same time, brief exposition of the origin and design of this mischievous doctrine, with all its various and multifarious terms, dogmas, and childish traditions, has ever before been presented to the public since an extensive inquiry has been awakened on the subject.

2. We deem it a matter of the greatest moment, that some one should make the effort to arrest the almost boundless tide of terror and misery, of which the practical dissemination of the doctrine of endless damnation has ever been and still is, a truly prolific source. For no person who has not scrutinizingly investigated the matter, can form any just or proximate conception of the extent to which the Heathen and Christian worlds have been demoralized and flooded with misery and unhappiness, by the propagation of this doctrine. These facts, wedded to the hope of checking this widespread river—this shoreless current of mischief, constitute our principal reason for publishing this work.

3. The single and serious fact, that the superstitious fear of after-death punishment furnishes the primary motive-power by which more than a million of sermons are annually dealt out from the Christian pulpits of the United States alone, at a cost of many millions of dollars, levied mainly upon the pockets of the poor, which have the effect of exciting in the minds of the religious classes the most agonizing emotions and the most torturing fears, often producing, temporarily, the ruin of health and happiness, even among the most virtuous; and the people (and most of the priests, too) being ignorant of the origin of these alarming superstitious doctrines, the author considers as ample warrant, upon moral grounds, for attempting the task of aiding in checking the evil and demoralizing effects of this barbarous, anti-civilizing and terrifying heathen superstition.

Whether these reasons furnish a sufficient justification for such an enterprise, is left for the candid reader to judge.

It is gratifying to learn that the superstitious fear, which in every age and country in which it has prevailed and enslaved the minds of thousands, and still holds millions in its iron grasp, is likely to be better understood in its real nature, its pernicious effects and in its origin.

Kersey Graves

Introduction. "Fear Hath Torment"

Friendly Reader: Are you, or have you ever been a believer in the doctrine of future endless punishment? And did you ever tremble with fearful apprehension that you might be irrevocably doomed to a life of interminable woe beyond the tomb? Did you ever shudder at the horrible thought, that either yourself or some of your dearest friends might possibly, in “the day of accounts,” be numbered among those who are to receive the terrible sentence, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels?” Matt, xxv: 41. Were you ever tormented and goaded with such fearful forebodings as these, and haunted with them day and night, for weeks and months together, if not during long and tedious years, as thousands upon thousands of the most devout believers in the Christian faith have been in all ages of the Church? Or were you ever present during a “religious revival,” to witness the priest remove (in imagination) the cover from Hells burning mouth (that blazing, “bottomless pit,” whose lurid flames of fire “ascendeth up forever and ever”), and did you hear him depict to a terror-stricken audience the awful fate of the countless millions of the “doomed, damned souls” of the underground world 1? Did you ever listen as he portrayed their agonizing sufferings, and spoke of their loud, terror-inspiring, heart-rending wailings of anguish, their woeful groans, their doleful yells and soul-bursting shrieks of despair, which, like a thousand commingling thunders, reverberating along the great archway of their murky prison, shook “ Heaven, and Earth, and Hell?” And did a shuddering fear steal over your nerveless frame, and chill the blood in your very hearts in spite of your efforts to resist it and stave it off, as the “pulpit orator,” in glowing eloquence, depicted the wretched inhabitants of this world of woe, as being tossed to and fro with their naked souls upon a fathomless sea of flame; a shoreless ocean of boiling, blazing, sulphurous fire, lashed into furious, dashing mountainous billows, by the ever thundering, ever bursting, never-ceasing storms of divine wrath ? And as they essay to quench their parching thirst with this liquid fire, “the worm that never dies,” robed in burning brimstone, we are told, makes his eternal feasts upon the vitals of their bleeding hearts, lacerated by the swift-sped thunderbolts of Jehovah’s direful vengeance —aye, the barbed arrows, fresh drawn from God’s own quiver! An old grim Lucifer, the deputed executor (in part) of God’s vengeful wrath, heedless of their doleful yells and maddening cries,, culminates the awful drama as he “woods up the fires and keeps them burning,’’ and pours the red-hot, blistering embers down their shrieking throats!

A popular Christian clergyman, the Rev. Mr. D------, in a fit of inspirational turgescence and mental explosion, which recently came off in Xenia, Ohio, as he collapsed, let off the following: “Fathers and sons, pastors [mark this, ye preachers!] and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in unquenchable fire, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, strain toward each other’s throats and hearts, reprobate men and women, devils in form and features, hideous to behold. As God’s vengeance is in his heart, and he delights to execute it, he will tread them in his wrath and trample them in his fury, and he will stain all his garments with their blood! [Wonder if he will then reascend his burnished and beautiful “emerald throne” with these bloody clothes on.] My head grows dizzy, as it bends over the gulf!” [Quite likely, brother; lofty climbing always has the effect to make men with small brains giddy-headed. Empty vessels float easily. And we Humbly suggest that you should have been cupped, blistered, bled, and put to bed instanter, and opiates and cooling powders administered ad infinitum after such an exhausting, moonstruck effort to scare sinners into Heaven.]

Take another example: A Rev. Mr. Clawson, a Methodist Episcopal clergyman, as “it came to pass,” being once pregnant with the spirit of eternal damnation, and not knowing, as we suspect, “whether he was in the body or out of the body” (2 Cor ii:4), blew up the unconverted portion of his audience in the following spasmodic style: “God will heap the red-hot cinders of black damnation upon your naked souls as high as the pyramids of Egypt.” We suggest that Mrs. Partington would have considered this as rather a dangerous case of “information of the brain,” or of “a rush of brains to the head.”

Now, kind reader, let me ask you, have you had any practical experience in listening to such frightful and frightening ebullitions of folly and fanaticism as the foregoing, which we have presented here as mere specimens of the kind of priestly flummery which are continually rolling out from the pulpit upon tthe recurrence of every Sabbath, in every part of Christendom? Though it is true such pompous and foolish language is not always used as is found in the examples we have here presented, yet the spirit manifested is the same. And have you ever calculated or reflected upon the vast, untold and almost inconceivable amount of terror, fright, misery and despair, and consequent destruction of happiness it has brought to millions of minds and millions of families of the present era, as well as those of the remotely past superstitious ages? If so, you can understand our object and appreciate our motive in throwing this book before the public. For certain we are, that “in fear there is torment,” and consequently unhappiness; and certain we are, too, that if the two hundred millions of people called Christians could be made acquainted with the historical facts which will be found in this work, and which go to prove most conclusively, that the doctrine of future endless punishment was originated and concocted by designing priests, and that a benevolent and beneficent God had nothing to do -with their origination, as is claimed by the devout disciples of every primitive religion in the world, it would have the effect to dissipate a fathomless and shoreless ocean of fear and misery from the religious world. For it is now well known to every intelligent person, that the fear of endless damnation has been, and still is, a powerful engine in the hands of the priests for “converting souls to God”— i.e., for grinding (or scaring) sinners into saints, and that there has always been at least ten devil-dreading, hell-fearing Christians to one that is made practically righteous by the natural love of virtue and truth. It is the fear of the Devil, and not the love of God, which extorts from them a reluctant and tardy conformity to the principles of justice and the rules of practical honesty. That is, the Devil is virtually set upon their track as a hound dog to scare them into Heaven. And thus, they are nothing less, properly speaking, than drafted saints, or rather pious sinners—Christians by practice, but villains at heart. And if they shall receive the final benediction of “well done,” it will, we opine, have to be attributed more to a pair of fleet legs than to a virtuous mind, for the former achieve the work enabling them to out-run “the grand adversary of souls,” who howls upon every Christian’s track, “like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. ’ ’ And here we may note it as a remarkable fact, that as momentous and solemnly important as this subject must be admitted to be, involving as it does our fate to all eternity, yet not one pious Christian in a thousand is able, when interrogated upon the subject, to give an intelligent answer as to the origin of the doctrine of post mortem punishment. (I have never found one that could). They know nothing about how, when or where it first started, and this ignorance is sufficient to account for their blind and tenacious adherence to the superstition. It is generally believed and assumed, that its primary source is the Christian Bible. And does not, we ask, this lamentable ignorance greatly enhance the necessity and importance of publishing and circulating a work of this character, that by virtue of superior knowledge, the people may be undeceived in supposing that it is of divine institution, instead of being, as history proves, of mundane priestly origin, and that they may thereby be delivered from the agonizing thraldom of fear and fright which have in all past ages beset the votaries of the various fear-fraught religions. If it were ever a wise policy to try to frighten men into the path of virtue by “the fear of Hell torments,’’ as was ingeniously argued by the Grecian Poly-archists (300 B.C.), that policy is now superseded by the substitution of more honorable, more laudable, and more enduring motives.