Deadworm

From Feb. 23-26 a special global General UMC Conference was convened to settle a long festering dispute over gay/ lesbian marriage and ordination, which is prohibited in the denomination's Book of Discipline, which is the guidebook for UMC church polity and for UMC ethical and social values. New ordinands are required to read and promise to obey the Book of Discipline, but many in progressive U. S. regional conferences have defied its prohibitions and have sanctioned gay marriages and ordinations. Church judicial courts have then refused to discipline offending conferences and presiding ministers. There were 3 proposals for discussion that were in need of a vote: (1) the Simple Plan that would simply excise all restrictions on same-sex marriage and ordination from the Book; (2) the One Church Plan that would allow individual churches to decide whether to sanction same-sex marriage and to accept gay or lesbian clergy (the plan advanced by our Council of Bishops); (3) the Traditional Plan, which would maintain and even strengthen the Book's current prohibitions and enforce punitive discipline on offending conferences, bishops, and ministers. The stakes were high for American Chrisianity because the United Methodist Church is our second largest Protestant denomination and numbers almost 13 million globally. As a recently retired UMC pastor, I was riveted to the livestream of the proceedings because of their inevitable impact on the future of my former church. Same-sex marriage and ordination have been approved in other progressive American denominations: Episcopalian, Presbyterian USA, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran. But the UMC is a global denomination, and so, its policy-making conferences have delegates from around the world. While the American church is experiencing a slow, steady decline in membership, there the African church has been growing in leaps and bounds and is overwhelmingly conservative evangelical. Church growth ,means more delegates! In many of the countries represented, same-sex sexual relations are not only considered immoral; they are illegal and subject imprisonment. So the Traditional Plan won the day and seismic schism now seems inevitable as our progressive churches deal with the new ultimatum to comply. What bothered me were some of the immature snarly and insulting progrsssive speeches of the progressive speeches in the debates, points of order, and proposed amendments for each plan. The Conference had begun with a great worship service and with repeated subsequent speeches by bishops urging delegates to be orderly and respectful of opposing viewpoints. The bishops often led the delegates in prayer for harmony during the various legislative proposals. But as it slowly became apparent that the conservatives had the upper hand, the progressive delegates became haughty, snarly, and insulting, and their mikes sometimes had to be cut off by the presiding bishop to mute their offensive language. It became obvious that progressive delegates were trying to stall the vote on the Traditional Plan indefinitely with endless amendment proposals and points of order. One minister delegate stepped to a mike and helf up several sheets of amendment forms, shouting, "I have enough amendments to prevent you from voting until you have to vacate the Convention Center!" After the decisive vote, progressive delegates tried to sabotage the rest of the resolutions with their loud singing and chanting, but the meeting continued with loud mikes! Then conference ended with a worship service, but several police had to be sent to quell threatening violence by irate progressives. Some worship service! I am anxious but eager to see how the inevitable schism will now unfold.

(2) By the time I was 6 I had learned to hate church. There was no children's church or Sunday school for my age and Church bored me because I couldn't relate to much of the 1 1/2 hour services, especially the sermons. So I squirmed and protested in our pew and made myself a nuisance to my parents. My parents were weekly attenders, but one Sunday they stayed home for reasons I never understood. I suspect the nightmare of dealing with my hissyfits was part of the reason! I was so glad to escape church that sunny and clear July morning! God was the furthest thing from my mind. To celebrate I zoomed up and own the sidewalk to the ends of our block on my little tricycle. Then I noticed the big new blue Chevy with huge tailfins parked behind the Jewish shoe store salesman's building. Evidently he had just waxed and polished it and it just glistened as it reflected the brilliant sunlight. To me it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen; so I constantly road back to it to stare in wonder. Once, when I returned, I had my first life-changing God moment. For some strange reason, my attention was directed to a patch of blue near the sun. As I gazed at it, wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being. Suddenly I became acutely aware of the presence of a God who loved me and I just basked in that love! I told my parents about my experience, but they didn't seem very interested. That all changed a few days later when neighbors came over to tell my parents how impressed they were that I was excitedly sharing my embryonic new faith with my playmates. I knew little about God and the Bible and I have always wondered what I was saying about God and my experience to my little playmates. This experience didn't make me want to sit through church, though. Now Dad sang in the choir and my parents now let me sit by myself. This was fortunate because it allowed me to I sneak out of church to buy lifesavers at the little grocery store across the streets from the church. As I ate them, I browsed the comic books on the store shelves. The owner eventually got annoyed by my regular presence and shooed me out his store. So I ate my lifesavers outside and began to meditate on the meaning of my life.

I'm mean "salvation" in the traditional sense of receiving eternal life through Christ. But, as you will see, the NT vision of universalism can include those who live up to the limited spiritual light they have received.

As a boy, I actually heard Billy Graham say in a sermon what I quote! During Canada's centennial celebration in 1967, he came to Winnipeg for a week-long crusade at the Winnipeg Arena. I took the opportunity to go early and attend every night. I'm glad I did: hundreds came forward to accept Christ every night. The reason I went early was to drink in the atmosphere because I sensed God's gentle hovering presence there in a way I seldom did in church. About 8 years ago, a retired progressive pastor from the United of Church of Canada regularly drove down the 50 miles from Grand Forks, BC, to attend my services. He said he had been converted in that Winnipeg crusade.

(2) A friend (Roger) who is a HUD executive at the Federal government was given an old book by a fellow employee called "Lighted Passage" (1950), It's a book written by Presbyterian minister, Rev. Howell Vincent about the tragic death of his daughter Rea on her honeymoon. At one point Vincent's family had a shared ADC with his late wife, Nellie, a visit that has all the hallmarks of the most impressive of Jesus' resurrection appearances. Though an agnostic, Roger finds this testimony the most convincing ADC he has ever encountered, perhaps because he knows a member of Vincent's family: "On at least 2 occasions this radiant mother came to Rea in visible, tangible form and talked with her (Nellie). In 1933, I was privileged to be present at one of these heavenly visits by Mother Nellie. Together with Rea I talked with Nellie, fully recognizing her face and form and voice. I saw her place her hand on Rea's head in blessing. and I saw her give Rea a flower, a calendula. which we pressed and kept. At that time, 3 other members of our family were present, including Rea's second mother, Agnes, and they all saw Nellie and talked with her, as Rea and I did. We were wide awake and walked about the room with Nellie (p. 25)." The deceased spirit's sharing of a keepsake, the calendula, has precedent in my experience. I wonder what a microscopic examination of this flower from an etheric realm would find! I'll discuss other example of this phenomenon in another post.

This thread is intended to explore the possibility implied in the NT that all humanity, righteous and unrighteous alike, might ultimately be saved. The 6-point topical outline is offered neither because I want to lecture nor because I insist on sequentially following it, but rather to inform readers of the issues I hope to cover and to help readers decide when and whether they want to insert their points, objections, and questions in the discussion. How far we progress through these 6 issues will depend on the board's interest and response. I recognize that I'm a newbie, and so, I don't even assume that there is much interest here in this issue. The thread is thus my little experimental probe. (1) NT Texts that imply the possibility of salvation without a formal profession of faith in Christ in this life (2) Texts that imply a postmortem rescue or deliverance of the unredeemed dead (3) Texts that seem to imply that human resistance ultimately cannot prevent the fulfillment of God's desire and intention to save everyone (4) Texts that celebrate the vision of a cosmic restitution that locates everyone, including the unrighteous dead, in Heaven, worshiping God and confessing Christ as Lord (5) The Counter-argument: Texts that seem to imply that only a limited number, the elect, will be saved (6)The Synthesis: An Attempt to formulate coherent perspectives on universalism vs. particularism in the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John the Seer

This thread will present the many pivotal moments of my lifelong spiritual journey with special focus on my spiritual and paranormal experiences. (1) I was born and raised in the first Pentecostal church in Canada. I was born with congenital glaucoma in my right eye. My distraught parents were impressed by a famous faith healer named William Branham, who held healing crusades around North America. What set him apart was his clairvoyance. Before he laid hands on people, he accurately described one of their recent past experiences in awesome detail and he did the same for my parents. Mom and Dad were poor, but they spent their savings on a trip to Elgin, Illinois to bring me to a Branham crusade there. When I (age 3) finally made it onto the stage, Branham looked at my introductory note that said, "blind in the right eye," and shouted, "This boy is blind!" He then laid hands on my eyes and waved them in front of me. When I blinked, he yelled, "This little boy has been cured of blindness!" The huge crowd went wild but my parents were sick. Of course I blinked because I could see out of my good eye. This fraud devastated and disillusioned my parents. All this attention to getting me healed made me feel like they regretted my birth and ultimately created a deep desire in me to justify being born! It also sowed the seeds of a lifelong determination to discover whether miracles and divine healing were ever real and whether the Bible was trustworthy. God used those events to shape my calling in life.

Gospel Resurrection reports can be linked with eyewitness testimony and I will demonstrate how in other posts. But at their best, modern NDEs and ADCs [= after-death communications] provide anecdotal evidence that is superior to the eyewitness connections with Jesus' resurrection appearances because the witnesses are often available for interviews. This thread will explore the most evidential NDEs and ADCs to demonstrate why I find them so compelling. Many of these testimonies are unpublished experiences of people I have personally encountered or known well. In the course of presenting these cases, I will survey their biblical precedents. (1) SHARED DEATH EXPERIENCES: Shared-Death experiences take the evidential merit of NDEs to a higher level because one or more witnesses are healthy spectators who share the dying patient's NDE, including variously the encounter with the Being of Light and deceased relatives and even the dying patient's past life review! Some of these testimonies rival Gospel resurrection stories in empirical and physical features. In a recent interview, Dr. Raymond Moody, the father of modern NDE research, mentions that he actually shared in features of his own mother's NDE. For a brief summary of these amazing experiences, watch the short YouTube video entitled "Dr. Raymond Moody on Shared Death Experiences." For a brief eyewitness account of a Shared-Death experience, watch Dr. Scott Taylor's brief YouTube testimony entitled "Present!- Scott Taylor: A Shared Near-Death" [I failed in my attempt to post the URL link directly!] Several more NDEs and ADCs to follow.

Can we post YouTube videos on this site? If so, how? I've tried and failed to do so.

I was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where I lived until I graduated from university (BA--Philosophy major) and then moved to the USA to attend Fuller Seminary. Fuller is one of the more liberal evangelical seminaries, but I found it too intellectually narrow and oppressive. I had enrolled there for 2 reasons: (1) to explore my interest in becoming a Theology professor; (2) to seek solutions to my many doubts about the Bible, God, and Christianity. My honest questions in class were not appreciated because of their skeptical tone; so after one year, I transferred to Princeton, where I got my MDiv, and then got a doctorate at Harvard in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman backgrounds. I was a Teaching Fellow for a couple of years for a Harvard Divinity Masters course in New Testament and for a Harvard undergraduate Classics course. Then for 12 years I became a tenured Theology professor at a Catholic University. I then decided to become a United Methodist pastor (with a 3 1/2 year interval as a UCC interim pastor) first in western New York and then in northeast Washington, where I wanted to live closer to my elderly (and now deceased) parents in Kelowna, BC, Canada. I retired from my UMC pastorate in July, 2015. Now a little on my spiritual journey. I was raised in the first Pentecostal church in Canada and my father was a TV Gospel singer. That church experience was both negative and positive, negative in the sense that I soon rebelled against their Fundamentalist legalism and uncritical attitude towards the Bible and, positive in the sense that it led me into powerful spiritual and paranormal experiences that kept my fragile faith quest alive (speaking in tongues, prophetic inspiration, "words of knowledge" [including premonitions], etc.) This mix of starkly different spiritual pit stops has made me a theologically odd duck! I consider myself a kind of walking theological zoo without a cage, who emits liberal charismatic evangelical vibes. I have explored various conservative Christian websites, but ultimately feel uncomfortable there because I no longer embrace a so-called "high view of Scripture. If I had to express a spiritual motto, it would probably be Billy Graham's maxim, "Theological understanding is the booby prize. Most believers have just enough spirituality tin inoculate them against the real thing." By "the real thing" he meant life-changing spiritual experiences as opposed to rigid doctrinal systems.

Aoexcone, we are both Canucks. I grew up in Winnipeg, which, as our weather man used to say, is in "the Red River Valley, the heart of the continent, the hub of the universe." Oh, Oh, I see that you're an Albertan. As a rabid Jets hockey fan, I hate the Oilers and Flames! 2 observations about Americans here in northeast Washington state: (1) They are hyper-patriotic: e. g. near Memorial weekend, someone in my church seriously asked me, "Do you feel we should sing the Canadian national anthem this Sunday?" They asked me that because they expected me, as their pastor, to have them sing American patriotic hymns on Memorial Sunday. I replied, "Sure, but not "O Canada;" that's too boring! How about "The Maple Leaf Forever," a song that celebrates the British victory over the French at Quebec. I wonder if Canadian kids still sing that in school like we did, even though several students in our class were French-Canadian! Sigh! I guess I grew up in a less politically correct era. And Roman, I wonder if we both live in the same Washington state town near the Canadian border. Oops! I guess I'm veering off the thread's subject. Well, it's late and I'm in a flaky mood.

Rpman: "What's the difference between a miracle and something we don't understand?" The difference is often blurred because of our ignorance of the mind's latent psychic talents and where the line should be drawn between divine intervention and poorly understood laws of Nature; But I think patterns of answers to prayer with clear paranormal aspects are justifiably termed a "miracle: e. g. The malignant brain tumors of 2 people--one Rhonda, an elderly lady and the other Shane, a young skeptic, both of whom were healed in the same week after our prayer group prayed for them. As a result, Shane converted to the faith, was recently baptized, and posted before and after photos of his tumor on Facebook. More obvious examples like the local healing of the blind, sending a local nurse into hysteria can be given. I may start a thread on our prayer group to provide more examples. Some of the miracles associated with ADCs (after-death communication) and NDEs are as stunning as any of Jesus' resurrection appearances. I may start a thread documenting some of these.

Paul, I'll respond to your more general question about Jesus' "missing years" in my next planned post and will confine myself to your list of questions here. "As a teenager, was he ever rebellious to his parents?"During Jesus' family's return from a Passover trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem, a 12-year-old Jesus left the family entourage without permission and returned to Jerusalem to spend time learning from the Temple rabbis. His family traveled a day's journey before discovering His absence and had to launch an anxious 3-day search to track Him down. Mary rightly scolds Jesus for His inconsiderateness in failing to tell them where He was going: "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety (2:48)!" Instead of apologizing as He should, Jesus replies, "Don't you know I must be in my Father's house?" Luke saves face for Jesus by noting that after that Jesus "was obedient to them (2:51); i. e. after that He heeded his parents' plea to inform them of His whereabouts in distant places. Luke infers from this immature act, "Jesus increased in wisdom...and in divine and human favor (2:52)." In other words, earlier Jesus lacked wisdom and full favor with God! Jesus had to mature and learn by trial and error just like the rest of us: "He learned obedience from the things He suffered (5:8)." Hebrews acknowledges that Jesus shared all our human temptations without sin (4:15) because a child's learning curve is not sin; sin is a condition that separates us from God and, despite His mistakes, Jesus never lost that union. w "Did Jesus ever lose his cool?" Well, Jesus seemed pretty pissed off when in John 2:15 He played the role of bouncer, violently overturning tables and using a whip to drive the merchants and money-changers from the Temple, even if it was a symbolic action to protest Temple corruption. Jesus definitely had a temper: e. g. "He [Jesus] looked at them with anger; He was grieved by their hardness of heart (Mark 3:5)." "Did he ever get drunk?" Well, Jesus waited to turn the water into wine until the wedding guests were "smashed," and so, could no longer tell the difference between the best and worst wines Isee John 2:9-20)! And Jesus confesses His reputation as a party animal: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking', and THEY say. "Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 11:19)! So... On the other hand, that reputation may be just another false stereotype created by uptight progressive vegans who just don't know how to have fun. "Was he ever keen on a girl?" Jewish custom at the time dictated that young boys and girls were encouraged to mix at a maypole dance when they reached puberty. The idea was to sexually arouse the children so they would begin to think about marriage. A Jewish man was expected to get married by the time he was 30. So the fact that Jesus defied that expectation and never married is revelatory but puzzling. During "the missing years," did Jesus explore Essene monastic life in a group that required celibacy? "Did Jesus masturbate?" Well, a masturbating Onan "spilled his on the ground" to avoid impregnating his late brother's wife (Genesis 38:9). It's Onan's failure to perform his duty to provide his late brother a family heir that is condemned, not his masturbation. But Jesus never married; so I suspect that, like you, Paul, He was too sexually repressed to masturbate.

Hope that thread title got your attention! I intend this thread to focus on these 2 issues: (1) Many progressives dismiss the effectiveness of petitionary prayer without even investigating the biblical conditions for a successful prayer life. In the Gospels, Jesus often wanders away outdoors from the daily grind of crowd demanding His attention, forcing His disciples to search for Him. Once when they track Him down and witness His intense focus on prayer, the ask Him to teach them how to pray. How well do you know biblical prayer principles and how often do you practice them? How many types of prayer can you identify and have you practiced? In his excellent book "Prayer," Quaker scholar Richard Foster identifies and discusses 22 types! Since my retirement as a UMC pastor in July, 2015, I have been part of a small weekly Monday prayer group (5 or 6 members) that has seen many healing miracles and other answers to prayer. I my well share some of these on this thread. But I'm not trying to win an apologetic argument here. Rather, I want readers to learn by doing, by applying these prayer principles to their lives, so that they have their own testimonies. (2) Of course if you've never experienced a miracle, it will be harder for you to accept Gospel miracle stories. Being brain-washed by so-called progressive NT scholars like Borg and Spong, many progressives blindly embrace the dogma that our Gospels are so far removed from the events that their miracle stories are full of myths and legends. They drink this Kool-Aid because they lack the intellectual integrity to examine both sides of the question. To demonstrate this claim I'm issuing this challenge: Do you even know how evangelicals establish a connection between our Gospels and eyewitness testimony? Why do I think I'll only receive facile straw man arguments that are easily refuted?

The ending of Mark in the KJV (16-9-20) is a later fabrication that is missing in the 2 most important early manuscripts of the NT, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, 2 manuscripts that ever not available in the early 1600s and thus could not be considered in determining the original NT text for the KJV. In one manuscript containing Mark 16:9-20 the forger is identified as Aristo of Pella who wrote around 165 AD..

Yeah, it's really dead on this site in stark contrast to more theologically conservative sites that a re a beehive of constant posts. I guess Progressives just aren't very excited about their faith. I'm thinking of starting some controversial threads here in an effort to spark more dialogue. Otherwise, I'll just have to stick with the much more active evangelical sites. That reminds me of a delicious irony I see in common Progressive attitudes. John Shelby Spong, the closest thing to a Christian Progressive Guru, wrote a book "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Yet :mostly under Spong's leadership (bishop of the Diocese of Newark from 1979-2000) the diocese over which he presided has declined by 24,000 of its congregants or 46% of its membership since 1972. That's nearly 3 times the average decline in the Episcopal Church nationwide." And that's by this diocese's own admission in their recent report! Worse, the progressive Episcopal church in general is itself experiencing steady steep decline Indeed, young people are jumping out of the windows to leave spiritually dead and irrelevant Progressive churches. Meanwhile, the Fundamentalist Global Pentecostal Charismatic movement that Spong disdains is growing in leaps and bounds and now numbers by some estimates 600 million or a quarter of the world's Christians! Part of their phenomenal growth is their appeal to young people because of their stress on life-changing spiritual experience and the power of the Holy Spirit. For Progressives like Spong who disparage the power of petitionary prayer evangelical charismatics would remind them of 1 Corinthians 4:19-20: "I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out about not the [religious ] talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk, but on power."

Here are 4 quotes I find amusing: (1) An evangelical Christian wanted to witness to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). So he asked him, "Where do you hope to go when you die?" Twin replied dryly, "Well, I'd choose Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company." (2) A Sunday school teacher was teaching on the Parable of the Prodigal Son to her 3rd graders. At one point she asked the class: "Who was sorry when the prodigal son came home?" A little boy at once replied, "The fatted calf!" Now for 2 bloopers from my boyhood pastor's sermons. I found his bloopers particularly funny because he never told jokes and had no sense of humor: (3) In the midst of an otherwise forgettable sermon on John the Baptist, our pastor bellowed, "Then Jordan baptized Jesus in the John!" (4) In a later sermon on David's conflict with King Saul, our pastor declared, "And there David stood in the gates of the sanctuary, breathless and pantless." What made these bloopers especially hysterical to me was that the congregation just sat there stone-faced, as the pastor moved on, unaware of what he had just said. I thought to myself, "Is any one listening to this sermon carefully or are they all dozing off?" Now for my 2 favorite spiritually profound quotes: (1) G. K. Chesterton wrote an essay entitled "Twelve Men" to criticize British politicians who were advocating the replacement of juries of ordinary people with 12 lawyers. Chesterton summed up his objections to this proposal with this unforgettable pithy remark: "the more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it; and the more a man learns a thing, the less he knows it." I think this remark has profound relevance to the spirituality of many theologians and pastors. )2) Here is my favorite Billy Graham quote: "Theological understanding is the booby prize because it provides just enough spirituality to inoculate one against the real thing." By "the real thing", Billy meant self-authenticating spiritual experience, especially a life-changing mystical encounter that leads to a vibrant personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Joseph, I find this quotation fascinating because, as a newbie here, I wouldn't have expected this from a Global Moderator of a Progressive Christian site. I don't really consider myself Progressive, but online evangelical Christian boards seem too conservative for me. I intend to start a thread entitled "My Life Journey: A Focus on Paranormal and Supernatural Events" and I'd be interested in your (indeed, anyone's) reaction to my experiences. As for this thread, I had an interesting paranormal experience with a card reader at the Boston Flower Show. I was a Harvard doctoral student in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman backgrounds at the time. Unlike my date, I quickly got tired of all the flower displays and noticed 2 women sitting at a table, one a regular deck card reader (charging $5) and other a Tarot cared reader (charging $25). I didn't believe in this, but I was bored, so I sat down in front of the attractive cheaper card reader just for fun. She asked me to draw 3 cards from a deck; so I drew 3 unremarkable middle number cards. She studied them,, stared intently at me, and said 3 things: (1) First, she told me I should dump my date because she wasn't right for me. This proved to be true, but she had noticed my date discouraging me from getting a card reading. So I smiled and dismissed the reader's comments as revenge! (2) Then she told me I would be good with children and would soon get very involved in serving them. I protested that I was a very busy single grad student and had neither the time nor the interest in working with children. But she was adamant that I would soon be working with children. (3) Then she told me that in a couple of days I would get a job offer from an exotic locate, but that I should turn it down. I told her that because I was still a grad student, such an offer was highly unlikely, especially since I hadn't applied for any job! I left the table thinking I'd wasted my $5. But predictions (2) and (3) almost immediately came true in a remarkable way. (2) A couple of days later, I received a call from my thesis advisor, wanting to know why I was taking so long to submit my first dissertation chapter. I made excuses, but soon realized that my tardiness wasn't the main purpose of his cal.. He then told me that he was the president of the Arlington Youth Soccer Association and that he needed another coach for an under-12 boys' team. He reminded me of my comment at a Harvard social that I'd played high school soccer in Canada. I resented the pressure, but felt it was expedient to accept this coaching role to stay in my advisor's good graces. I coached for 31/2 years and this became one of my most treasured memories. It felt like these young boys were my sons and I became very emotionally involved in their excitement and performance. In my second season with them, we made it to the county championship game of greater Boston, where we suffered our only loss 2-1. (3) The card reader's 3rd prediction came true in a more bizarre way. A couple of days after the reading, I received a call from the chair of the Religious 'Studies department at Memorial University in St. Johns, Newfoundland. He said he was looking for a visiting scholar to teach Scripture in their summer Master's program and a professor at the University of Toronto had recommended me for the position. I turned down the offer, explaining that I needed to make more progress on my dissertation before accepting any such position. But I was absolutely stunned by this job offer. The reader had predicted that I'd get a job offer from an "exotic" place and to me Newfoundland seems so remote that I'd consider it a very exotic place to teach. And the reader was also correct that it was advisable for me to turn down the job offer. I wondered why some unknown Toronto professor had recommend me for that job, for which I hadn't even applied.

The question of the reality of "Hell" needs to be distinguished from the question of whether biblical writers believed in "Hell." The more interesting and important question is this: Is there a biblically sound way of interpreting NT terms like Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, and the lake of fire that protect the NT God from the charge of being morally monstrous and unjust? I think there is and will explain why in future posts. For now, I want to note that one way to gain new insights into controversial biblical issues is to apply the concept of deafening silence, i. e. points that biblical writers never make that we might expect them to make. Of my 6 examples below, only (1) is relevant to the OP. (1) For the postmortem fate of the unrighteous, Paul uses terms like "destruction" and "wrath," but he never uses any of the terms deemed circumlocutions for "Hell" --Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, outer darkness, and the lake of fire. (2) (2) Apart from Daniel 12:1-2, there is no clear OT allusion to a belief in continuous postmortem survival. The story of the medium of Endor comes the closest to being an exception. But here Samuel is raised from sleep in Sheol; he is not consciously living on. (3) The Bible nowhere explicitly says that the righteous go to Heaven when they die. Instead, the Bible implies that we enter the kingdom (= rein or realm) of heaven or go to Paradise or to be with Christ. (4) The Bible nowhere says the Satan is (was) an angel or fallen angel, though it does put him in charge of fallen angels.Nowhere in the NT Gospels does Jesus claim to be "God, though Thomas acknowledges Him as "God." Instead, Jesus claims to be "the Son of God." (5) Apart from the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, the New Testament never claims that Jesus had a virgin birth. (6) In Luke and Acts, nowhere is the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (a doctrine so import to Luke's travel companion, Paul) mentioned, though there are several mentions of powerful manifestations of the Holy Spirit (e. g. speaking in tongues and ecstatic prophecy).