McCain discontinues cancer treatment

The article at the Treehouse features a photo of McCain with Chris Stevens showing McCain striding toward the camera smiling with everyone surrounding him apparently concerned about their movement through a residential area with photos of men such as seen elsewhere for martyrs and of missing loved ones, hanging outside windows and all over exterior walls.

There's nothing else to the Treehouse article except a link to the originating article at NBC. Treehouse commenters who followed the link remark only on the tweets within the article, from Ryan, Romney and Jan Brewer.

I do not understand the comments at the Treehouse to the notification.

They baffle me. The commenters there are seething with hatred. Bubbling, boiling over. And they're ostensible Christians.They write praise of the lord and prayers to the hurting and condemnation in the same sentence.  Half of them talk about McCain going to hell. Others about facing his maker, the same as themselves, and others, many others, about hoping he repents.

One commenter said his mother told him not to speak ill of the dead (nearly dead), and then that became another discussion. People are citing scripture. The book of Revelation (ugh). Others post videos of McCain in session coming unglued in his obstructing an investigating committee that looked into Vietnam records on prisoners and missing in action. Another video about Vietnam vets remarking how McCain blocked their efforts at getting to government records, and halting the search for MIAs.

Their hatred is visceral, and I suspect most of the commenters voted for him. They're saying he treated his own voters like he treated his first wife.

They're talking about three planes he crashed, then another said six, and about him nearly destroying a carrier, and about him being directly responsible for the deaths of sailors, some 130 or so .

They come up with suggestions who the WH should send to represent them, Pence, not Melania, because the anticipated eulogies would be too much to sit through. They're anticipating eulogies, anticipating guests. They're agreeing the only people eulogizing will be people who didn't vote for him. They're anticipating days on end of all his friends on the left speaking highly of his service while the people who actually voted for him glad that he's gone. All this in near future. Will be relieved that he's gone.

Why does a Christian express hope that someone repents? Sanctimonious people feel no need themselves for that, thinking they've been behaving righteously all along. It's the people demanding repenting who need repenting themselves for making such insistence. The God they are praying to is a lot more forgiving than they are themselves.

One commenter says they should re-read their bible. The lake of fire is not for the condemned. Such mythology. They have it wrong. Then subsequent commenters tell him, no, he should re-read it himself.

Fine. [bible, lake of fire] If this goes to Revelation then you're all just flat full of shit.

UGH!

Revelation 19:20 - 21:8 It's about second death.

Okay, that does it. Nobody knows what they're talking about. They cite Revelation so that means they talk nonsense.

Brimstone is the key. The Zebedee brothers were the fire and brimstone obsessed apostles. They were the two most fierce and spiteful toward enemies and wanted Jesus to bring down brimstone on everyone who opposed them. They were very easily excited, very eager for Jesus to make damage brought down on their antagonists. You read "brimstone" you think, John Zebedee. Revelation is a bad dream of overly excited John Zebedee. The words of Jesus in Revelation are John's words for Jesus in his dream. And John had remarkably bizarre symbol-ridden particularly excitable dreams, so far remote from Jesus' actual teaching that it's not even funny.  How John's bad dream made it to scripture can be ascribed to the meanness of early assemblers. So that the collection concludes, believe all we've shown you or go  to hell.

In one of the McCain videos, McCain is shown traducing a woman who wants the investigative committee to continue. He is unbearable to listen to because he begins by demanding he not be interrupted like the previous speaker was, then lists the service record of another admiral or general and his conclusion that supported McCain's decision. I'm watching and thinking a sitting Senator is relying heavily on argumentum verecundiam. Instead of his own authority. McCain says, 40 years of service, highest of  rank, this medal, that medal, and I say, "we try not to hold all that against him." All that is who he was then, and this is now. (Back then)  Then he contrasts that with the woman's lack of such illustrious record in argumentum ad hominem, "even such a lady as you." He is literally impossible to listen to for his rhetorical violations.

Then Treehouse commenters cite Revelation. Making themselves impossible to read further. If they knew the voice that they've studied so long and cite so often, then they'd recognize the words printed in red in Revelation denoting the voice of Jesus is definitely not Jesus speaking. His voice is consistent and then at the very end it suddenly changes dramatically. How John can change the voice so strangely contrary to Jesus' genuine teaching, to suit his own vision, is just bizarre. The whole book is straight up affront to all that precedes it. It violates all of the new teaching presuming the voice of the teacher. When readers cannot see that then there is no point in even discussing anything with them.

But then.

Imagine the art it inspired. Dante's Divine Comedy (where he places everyone he dislikes in their unique spots in Hell, the center being ice, not fire, to Hieronymus Bosch whose plagues are much like Hell, to a show that I watched on Netflix last night staring Kenau Reeves called Constantine wherein the visions of hell and of demons are impressively imaginative and well executed.

But just that. Imagination.

God doesn't do such things.

The teaching of Jesus that precedes John imagining Jesus speaking is brilliantly clear on this. It's remarkable reading from Old Testament to New Testament, it's a light that goes on that fills the whole room with lightness and life. Suddenly the religious voice changes from drudgery to beauty. God can be understood as your father. Who loves you. As earthly fathers love their own children. That is the analogy Jesus taught consistently.

He doesn't condemn people to hell.

The whole point of your spiritual evolution is for you to keep getting better so that eventually you can join God, pure enough to take such an awesome event wherein all of the decisions made by your unique personality align with the way of God, to fuse with your inner God fragment so that you can actually encounter God. God wouldn't waste that just because you messed up while developing as spiritual infant on Earth.

<<<Anecdote>>>

I was invited to a party of strangers. We're outside in summer under a tent cover with open sides. We're having backyard grill fare, hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, coleslaw and the like. Paper plates. Plastic utensils. Beer and cocktails for thee, Coca-Cola for me. A lull fell on the group. Silence under the tent.

"Say. I have a bizarre question."

That got everyone's attention. The people I don't know suddenly interested in this stranger.

Apparently they were eager to answer a bizarre question.

"If Hitler went to heaven and came face to face with his maker, would God say, 'Go straight to hell' or  would God say, 'I think we can work with this.'"

Not a single person said that God would say "Go straight to hell." Everyone agreed, all strangers to me and apparently eager to assure me, drawing on their Christian training as they understand it, that God would allow Hitler his second life, and work to make Hitler a better spirit.

<<</Anecdote>>>

And if God would do that for Hitler then God would do that for me. No matter what. And God will do that for McCain no matter how we view McCain's mistakes.