Hellbound Train not just any Hellbound Train The OBLIVION EXPRESS

You see God made a real nice cozy world for us to live in oh, but someone messed that all up.

Does that pizz you off too. It's when I think about the youth or the innocent getting slapped in the face or worse.

By the way scripture says every creature will Praise Jesus in the end.

Yeah we're talking about God's creation here in this rant..thread.

Then it says every knee shall bow so does the devil have knees and in the end will he Praise Jesus' name....

God created evil I don't know but is evil just there to form our character, in the end will the devil say haha it's all been a charade we're all Brothers. If not then we get back to the title of this thread.

So my plan is to confront any demon or the evil one himself Lucifer face-to-face and just ask him one question they get one chance.

Will they quit their evil ways and be my brother.

If not I want to put him on the Hellbound train. Or I'll help Michael the Archangel.

Not just any Hellbound train where to find the Hellbound train and has the name on the front of it you know the name plate all backlit and everything.

Nap, put him on the Hellbound train that"s labeled
...OBLIVION EXPRESS

I kinda like being a sinner. Only the good die yoing after all...

All I got for you is one of Dad's (RIP) favorite poems he used to read to us kids way back when. It was unusual Dad wasn't very scholarly but just one from that generation that never complained about anything really was always optimistic. The internet is great I found it immediately. He enjoyed this one and read to us often throughout the years and your title made me think of it and him.

A Texas cowboy lay down on a barroom floor,
Having drunk so much he could drink no more;
So he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on a hell-bound train.

The engine with murderous blood was damp
And was brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp;
An imp, for fuel, was shoveling bones,
While the furnace rang with a thousand groans.

The boiler was filled with lager beer
And the devil himself was the engineer;
The passengers were a most motly crew-
Church member, atheist, Gentile, and Jew,

Rich men in broadcloth, beggers in rags,
Handsome young ladies, and withered old hags,
Yellow and black men, red, brown, and white,
All chained together-O God, what a site!

While the train rushed on at an awful pace-
The sulphurous fumes scorched their hands and face;
Wider and wider the country grew,
As faster and faster the engine flew.

Louder and louder the thunder crashed
And brighter and brighter the lightning flashed;
Hotter and hotter the air became
Till the clothes were burned from each quivering frame.

And out of the distance there arose a yell,
'Ha, ha,' said the devil, 'we're nearing hell!'
Then oh, how the passengers all shrieked with pain
And begged the devil to stop the train.

But he capered about and danced for glee,
And laughed and joked at their misery.
'My faithful friends, you have done the work
And the devil never can a payday shirk.

'You've bullied the weak, you've robbed the poor,
The starving brother you've turned from the door;
You've laid up gold where the canker rust,
And have given free vent to your beastly lust.

'You've justice scorned, and corruption sown,
And trampled the laws of nature down.
You have drunk, rioted, cheated, plundered, and lied,
And mocked at God in your hell-born pride.

'You have paid full fair, so I'll carry you through,
For it's only right you should have your due.
Why, the laborer always expects his hire,
So I'll land you safe in the lake of fire,

'Where your flesh will waste in the flames that roar,
And my imps torment you forevermore.'
Then the cowboy awoke with an anguished cry,
His clothes wet with sweat and his hair standing high

Then he prayed as he never had prayed till that hour
To be saved from his sin and the demon's power;
And his prayers and his vows were not in vain,
For he never road the hell-bound train.

a reply to: putnam6

Gotta give some attribution:
Tom Gray's Dream
by Retta M. Brown or J. W. Pruitt or No Attribution.

Now that is a very interesting poem.

originally posted by: pthena
a reply to: putnam6

Gotta give some attribution:
Tom Gray's Dream
by Retta M. Brown or J. W. Pruitt or No Attribution.

Now that is a very interesting poem.

Thank you for that all these years literally 50 or so I didn't know who wrote it. It was just in a book labeled "American Poems" when we were moving Dad's stuff after he passed I was trying to find it. LOL found out later my older sister snatched it years earlier. It always puzzled me a bit why my Dad was reading this to kids between 5-12 years of age, but we all remembered it. Dad wasn't much of a drinker even though he enjoyed his Wild Turkey and the occasional gin and tonic with a twist of lime. I guess it was just a poem that stuck in his head, along with the Don't Quit which we found where he had withered and worn decades-old handwritten copy folded up in some of his papers. That too made me wonder cause he recited that one so much that my brother and both independently had copied it later and carried in our wallets for years. Funny how stuff sticks in your brain

a reply to: GBP/JPY

You see God made a real nice cozy world for us to live in oh, but someone messed that all up.

The first humans may not have seen the World as so cozy, nor their lives as so cozy.
Rather something like what Thomas Hobbes referred to in Leviathan Chapter VIII, as "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

That poem is along the lines of that famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Seriously folks, there is NO connection in the Bible between Lucifer/Satan and Hell. He gets tossed into the Lake of Fire later on, but that is not Hell - not even the KJV says so. Early in the book of Job, God asks Satan where he has come from, being assembled before God with the other Sons of God. Satan does not state that he came from Hell, but form the Earth. How about that?

For that matter, I find Hell to be a mis-translation at best, and a pagan insertion at worst. It was invented to keep pews and offering plates full.

a reply to: Lazarus Short

That poem is great!
The implication being that what it takes to avoid that train is giving up drinking oneself into oblivion.

But hey, if the worse comes to worst,
A proper mental attitude can take you far.

Far as in The Far Side.

a reply to: putnam6

Thanks for the poem Mr. Nam. I enjoyed reading it al lot.

a reply to: pthena


For me, it brought Robert Service to mind, though he wrote a while later than this is attributed to.

originally posted by: pthena
a reply to: Lazarus Short

That poem is great!
The implication being that what it takes to avoid that train is giving up drinking oneself into oblivion.

But hey, if the worse comes to worst,
A proper mental attitude can take you far.
Far as in The Far Side.

I'm not saying there are no consequences to sin, I am saying that Hell is not among them. I have seen that almost all the "evidence" for Hell is fiction, such as the poem quoted in this very thread. Epic poetry, such as that written by Dante and Milton. don't cut it any more than the cartoons of Gary Larson.

a reply to: pthena

Larson took his art form to a whole new level. He had a way of looking at the world that offered him the ability to consider all manner of comedic commentary.

One of my favorites was of a metropolitan intersection. On each corner the buildings stood tall and abrupt from the sidewalks. Along the sidewalks walked those little ''drudges'' that he was so fond of, each marching along woefully in their paths of apathetic stupor.

From the back of their belts around their waists protruded long sticks which stuck up over their heads. Each stick held at the end of a string, a carrot so that each ''drudge'' was following his own carrot to meaninglessness.

That would have been enough for me but then I saw the rest of the illustration. As I focused on the intersection at the center of the cartoon I saw protruding from behind one of the buildings on the corner of the intersection what appeared to be the front part of a giant boot. Then looking far up the side of the building above the boot was the top of another stick, sticking out from behind the building. And hanging from THAT stick by a piece of rope was a very large hunk of meat.

Larson had a way of making huge comments from very understated images.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Well now;
If we were to bring Robert W. Service and the Larson picture together, we can see a glimpse of the proper mental attitude.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
and he said, "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
you'll let in the cold and storm--
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
it's the first time I've been warm".

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
The Cremation of Sam McGee

a reply to: Lazarus Short

Just today, I have discovered a heretofore unknown cult.

The Cult of the Missing Link

I haven't finished all the research required for a proper presentation to the World, but there is this hymn.

"And in that glorious day
when we join our beloved source
let it be that none will say
we could have changed our course
if only we knew to pray."