Dear Antony:

We do not have any accommodations for you here. I live in a small hermitage, a bungalow-size house less than 600 square feet. You can come to visit, but you would have to make arrangements at a local motel. June or up to around July 15th is a good time.

In terms of preaching, you need to preach the Good News of Christ. The Good News is that Christ died for us to save us from the penalty of sin (which is spiritual death). We are all sinners. Hell is a place for people who reject God's free gift of saving grace. Hell is eternal separation from God. Those who go to hell have decided themselves to go there by their rejection of God grace. Thus, people really send themselves to hell. We all have the freedom to choose or to reject God. God will never force anyone into His heaven. It is our choice.

The best approach in evangelizing people is to focus on the fact that God loves us so much that he became a man, Jesus, and voluntarily died on the Cross for our Sins. Of course Hell is part of the message in that Hell is what we are being saved from; and it is a place we do not want to be. But the Good News is that we do not have to go to hell. Christ has opened the way for us to spend eternity in heaven if we will only choose it.

You have to remember all the imagery of fire and brimstone and "physical torture such as rats eating out the person's eyes" is given only to try to describe how terrible it is to be totally separated from God. These images are not meant to be taken literally. To begin with, until the final resurrection, those in hell have no bodies to physically torture. Our souls are separated from our bodies at physical death. It will not be until the end of time, at the Great White Throne Judgment that our souls will be re-united with our bodies, which will be resurrected.

Talking about this imagery can be helpful with some people, but our goal should not be to scare people into heaven. In fact, I used that method with some people when I was a Baptist evangelist. I used the scare technique when I could not convince them otherwise. Most of the people I scared into conversion, fell away from the faith.

Remember, it is not our job to convince anyone. The job of convincing belongs to the Holy Spirit. And we can save no one. Only God saves. We do not need "tricks" and "techniques" to try to convince people. Just express our faith and the reason for our faith.

Our job is to be messengers of the Good News. We need to give that message to others. We certainly should explain the faith as persuasively as possible, but we must stop short in thinking that we "convince" the person. When we begin to think that it is up to us to convince a person is when we tend to get into argument, or even become abusive to the person who will not be convinced. Leave the convincing to the Holy Spirit. You just give the message.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary