Don't mean to make light of such a deep subject that we really know very little about. But my reaction in reading this ... is ... what if a person chooses to suffer? We hear a lot about choice. If people are told they have a choice to live in the big house or live outside and they choose outside who am I to judge :-) Of course the deeper problem is there are people - past, present, future - who really aren't clearly presented with this choice. so I find that part of the doctrine to be difficult. Where I come out is ... I don't know what happens to those people. All I know is they are not with God.
No one is condemned to hell that has not heard the story and had the chance to accept or reject. Says so right there in the book.
I’m sure we can trust God knows those people who have not the ability nor have heard the Gospel....should they die...He will surely make the right call concerning them. He made them, he assuredly knows them far more then we.
I think , though, the question really is about if God is good or not...not so much what about the people. After all He is the creator...so the question really is how and who do we see God as.
My guess is that hell will be like Detroit: what you have when all the nice folks are gone.
[[Don’t mean to make light of such a deep subject that we really know very little about]]
I actually ‘went there’ with an NDE- Near Death Experience (although I wasn’t ‘pronounced dead’) I don’t beleive I was actualyl there- and rather think it was a hallucination caused by the high fever (thankfully was in hospital awaitign operastion for the issue so they reacted quickly) but lemme tell ya- it was ‘real enough’ for me and soemthign I can tell folks that they DO NOT want to experrience- especially since it’s goign to be even worse than what I experienced- I was so shaken fro mthe experience that I grabbed the doc by his shirt and tried to explain what had just happened- (he didn’t weant to hear it) and I relayed the experience to many folks for awhile afterwards- I had the ‘whole experience’ experiencing ‘passing away’ then isnteasd of ‘headign toward the light’ I felt myself descend into Hell- and all the terrors that go with it-
That was ‘close enough for me-’ I NEVER want to expwerience thsi again- It was absoltuely terrifying-