Posted on 04/06/2013 10:46:39 AM PDT by ReformationFan
Believing the truth about hell also motivates us to persuade people to be reconciled to God. By God’s grace those of us who are trusting Christ have been rescued from this horrible destiny. How can we love people and refuse to speak plainly to them about the realities of eternal damnation and God’s gracious provision of salvation? Clearer visions of hell will give us greater love for both God and people.
“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell.” So wrote the agnostic British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1967. The idea of eternal punishment for sin, he further notes, is “a doctrine that put cruelty in the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture.”
His views are at least more consistent than religious philosopher John Hick, who refers to hell as a “grim fantasy” that is not only “morally revolting” but also “a serious perversion of the Christian Gospel.” Worse yet was theologian Clark Pinnock who, despite having regarded himself as an evangelical, dismissed hell with a rhetorical question: “How can one imagine for a moment that the God who gave His Son to die for sinners because of His great love for them would install a torture chamber somewhere in the new creation in order to subject those who reject Him to everlasting pain?”
So, what should we think of hell? Is the idea of it really responsible for all the cruelty and torture in the world? Is the doctrine of hell incompatible with the way of Jesus Christ? Hardly. In fact, the most prolific teacher of hell in the Bible is Jesus, and He spoke more about it than He did about heaven.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaquilareport.com ...
“If so, then what is the purpose of witnessing? To what end do we spread the gospel?”
Ask Spurgeon, one of the greatest evangelists that ever lived, who believed the Gospel message as delivered to us by the Apostles, as believed by men like Augustine, and as held by all the reformers who fought and died to deliver us from the false doctrines of Rome. Every single one of them believed that salvation was the work of God from the beginning to the ending, according to His own plan of election before the foundation of the world.
For the Christian, what greater happiness is there but to serve God by spreading His truth as we are commanded? What greater joy for the Christian is there than to work together with God according to His plan of election? It is God who works through the preaching of His Word, and who are we to resist it? The faith which we receive from God is an effectual and living faith, which drives us towards the production of good fruit, though we are ourselves produce it not, but God who works in us.
You didn’t answer my question.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Yes I did. Is “because we are commanded to, and because we love to, and because it is the will of God” not good enough?
The epistemology in Scripture discerns between Body, Soul, Spirit. It also discerns Body from Flesh.
The brain and our neurological structures do influence our thinking.
Our thinking is a mental process, identified with the mind, which is part of our soul.
Recall or memory is also part of the soul.
There are portions of our brain which are identified with memory recall.
Our reasoning processes are identified with the mind, part of our soul.
Our thinking may be interrupted by physical senses of the Body, so the brain can influence our soul.
The soul is a common trait of all humans, believers, and nonbelievers.
The human spirit is a discernibly different facet providing just as lucid of perception as the soul or the body. Unbelievers do not understand this, because they do not have a regenerated human spirit. It is given to the believer at the moment of exercising saving faith.
Vivid dreams similar to that which you describe, may be a soulish exercise in the mind, but they also are likely to have been spiritually induced.
The next step is to check and test the spirits. One method of testing the veritablity of those experiences is by study of the Word of God and allowing God the Holy Spirit to sanctify your thinking in your soul, which He does through our human spirit. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
Your experience isn’t simply random electrical charges. That would be noise, like white noise on a TV tube. On the contrary, it had intelligence, and it is ignorantly arrogant to think somehow our insight is manifest only when we relax, because of only our thinking, and not the influence of others.
We can simply recognize, not ignore, such experience, then we can test the causes of the experience, recognizing they also are sentient beings, by the Word of God to glorify Christ. No matter what the situation, through faith in Christ, we remain on the right path.
Stress is not placing faith in and through Christ in all things.
Queue “Life of Brian”, Crucifix scene, Always look on the light side of life,..... 0;^)
rev 14 9-11 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.”
This is specifically a judgment on those who took the mark of the beast and worshipped him
What needs to be understood is meaning of aionios, the word generally translated as ‘eternal’. It is now recognized that this word may have both a qualitative and a quantitative aspect - thus ‘the age to come’ is a possible phrase to describe the concept
It’s not that it’s not good enough, it’s that it doesn’t answer my question.
I asked what is the purpose, and to what end.
I did not ask why. I’m well aware that we’re commanded to.
By your taking the position that we are preordained and make no choice in the matter, then it likewise makes no sense to command us to spread the gospel. The same number of people will be saved whether we leave the house or not, regardless of the life we live - unless all of that is preordained also.
If all of this is preordained, then Jesus died for nothing, because we would’ve gone to heaven anyway (those of us that were picked that is).
I agree that you can read the scripture that way, but reading it that way causes problems.
Eternal suffering, not removal from existence.
The reason relates back to a fundamental doctrine studying SUFFERING.
Some suffering is induced as discipline, some as punishment, some as providential testing. The testing is performed to further strengthen our souls with sanctified thinking. Our successes in those tests also merit eternal rewards at the bema seat. So their consequences may have eternal impact.
Somebody who endures suffering prior to the first death by remaining in fellowship with God also have additional crowns awaiting them in heaven.
What?
What the heck was that about?
Where does Christ fail me?
Christ doesn’t fail us, but we might slip out of fellowship with Him, relying on anything other than Him and then stressing, because anything but Him is inadequate.
“By your taking the position that we are preordained and make no choice in the matter, then it likewise makes no sense to command us to spread the gospel. “
How do you come to that conclusion? Look at the Gentiles who heard the preaching of the Apostles:
Act_13:48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
They HEARD the Word of God, and as a result of HEARING they believed “as many as were ordained.” They were ordained to salvation, yet they heard the call in the PREACHING of the Gospel.
No one is saved by election. Election is simply God’s plan, predestinated before the foundation of the world, of how we WOULD be called, and WOULD be justified and WOULD be glorified. But we are not “justified” in eternity, we are merely elected from eternity. We are not “called” from eternity, we are KNOWN from eternity. Therefore justification occurs in time, but God’s plan for us occurs in eternity. It was God’s plan that Jeremiah, for example, would serve Him and be His prophet BEFORE the foundation of the world:
Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
It was God’s plan that Paul would be CALLED on the road to Damascus, a decision made before the foundation of the world, before He was in the womb:
Gal 1:15-16 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, (16) To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:
It is GOD who draws each of us, in His own good time, using His own methods and instruments, to salvation:
Joh_6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
But you say, “I don’t get it! Why bother doing anything?” The question is an absurd one. If you yourself don’t “do anything,” nor feel the least bit concern for the damned or the commandments of God, it is more likely that you “do nothing” because you are a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction:
Rom 9:16-24 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. (17) For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. (18) Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. (19) Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? (20) Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (21) Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? (22) What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: (23) And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, (24) Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
“This is specifically a judgment on those who took the mark of the beast and worshipped him”
How is it logical that only SOME people burn for all eternity, forever and ever in the lake of fire, but others are not? Aren’t they all made of the SAME stuff?
Rev 20:10-15 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (11) And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. (12) And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (13) And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. (14) And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. (15) And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Why would you presume that only Satan and his false prophet, and all those who worship the Beast specifically during the times of Revelation, burn forever, but not those who are risen up in the second resurrection and cast into the eternal fires right along with them? Can you explain this?
According to Christ, their worm “dieth not,” and their punishment is EVERLASTING:
Mar 9:43-44 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: (44) Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
Mat_25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
It can’t be EVERLASTING if it ENDS at some point, and it is illogical to presume that it is everlasting only for SOME, and not for ALL. Otherwise, even our own everlasting LIFE after death is at risk, since if their punishment is not EVERLASTING, our REWARD can be just as finite.
“I agree that you can read the scripture that way, but reading it that way causes problems.”
Problems for you, but not, eventually, for the elect, and certainly not for God.
It is true, that all whom God calls WILL come:
Joh_6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
So, you COULD stay inside all day, and never do anything, and God’s plans will not be thwarted.
But you yourself (if you did nothing), I would have to say, are likely damned, and have no place in God’s plan except to be hardened, like Pharaoh, and serve as a sad example of the fate of man without God.
Body, Soul, Spirit.....
As human beings, we live eternally as a Spirit, we have a Soul, and we dwell in a Body.
I pray God your whole ...’spirit and soul and body’... be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of “soul and Spirit”, and of the joints and marrow (body), and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the HEART. (Hebrews 4:12).
The soul and spirit can be divided — and that it is ‘the Word of God’ that pierces our heart to bring the division of soul and spirit, something that only God can do.
“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
As human beings, we live eternally as a spirit, we have a soul, and we dwell in a body.
I pray God “your whole spirit and soul and body” be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
“My ‘soul’ doth magnify the Lord, And my ‘spirit’ hath rejoiced in God my Saviour” (Luke 1:46, 47).
She could not extol the Lord in her soul until she had recognized God in her spirit as her Saviour.
The initial triumph is in the spirit when Jesus Christ is acknowledged as personal.
David says: “He restoreth my soul” (Psalm 23:3).
... The Hebrew word translated “restoreth” is said to mean quite literally “turneth back.” ....At no time had David lost his salvation, but there were times when his affections and desires were turned from the Lord, as in the case of his sin with Bathsheba.
Having become one of the Divine Shepherd’s flock, he testified:
“The Lord turneth back ‘my soul’.
The Christian who is enjoying unbroken communion with his Lord will then be able to say, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name” (Psalm 103:1).
wow that was intense. thanks so much for sharing.
well bring it on, there are plenty that deserve to die
we don’t know the percentage if who will go to heaven and who will not. But for the sake of discussion let’s go with your statements that very few will go to heaven. The ‘default’ condition for man is hell or separation from God. Without God’s intervention separation from God is the natural state of what happens to every man. So God intervenes in some fashion and as a result some are allowed to go to heaven. It’s His rules and His game. Is the glass half empty or half full?
I would say that even if only one human being was allowed to go to heaven and live forever with God that that is an incredible miracle. I also think some of this comes down to perspective - God-centered vs man-centered. A man-centered view often seems to be that man somehow deserves to go to heaven or that it is not fair if all men do not go to heaven etc. It is impossible to really know a God-centered view but when I try I can imagine that a perfect God would have greater concerns that ensuring every sinful creature is in Heaven. we all should be thankful we were even born and not aborted.
True. but what has not happened yet is any one of us viewing a replay of our lives with Christ standing right next to us. Such a viewing might be instructive.
It is not my statement that “few will go to heaven,” it is Christ himself that said that fact. Most of us are going to hell then shall be destroyed(The Second Death) irrespective of ones “deep convictions” and “true beliefs.” It appears that the predestianarians have the day. Most of us were chosen for Hell long before we were even born.
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