Posted on 06/20/2014 5:29:48 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Other people.
Worshipping only a God of “love” is worshipping an idol.
God is also a God of JUSTICE. The old and new covenants are crystal clear.
Those who deny this on this thread and others are appealing to EMOTION, not the Bible OR logic.
Trust the Bible (as you do) and not man. If you go to the link, Sproul has other articles that adequately address the concerns of those who object to the reality of Hell.
God bless.
People choose to either acknowledge God as supreme or else they choose to be their own god. (e.g. "I Did It My Way" - Frank Sinatra)
Heaven is the result of the former choice.
Hell is the result of the latter choice.
People make unreasonable choices every day, some with more severe and permanent consequences than others. They do so even when they understand those consequences, although usually with the attitude of "Hey, I can beat the odds!"
My wife had cancer a number of years ago. The surgeon cut away part of her body and destroyed the cancerous part. Perfectly reasonable once you understand that the goal of the cancer was to take over the entire body and consume it.
Lucifer decided to "Do it his way".
"How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! 13"But you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' Isaiah 14:12-14
Lucifer (Satan - the word means "adversary") rebelled against God and brought Sin, which God will deal with on His timetable, not mine or yours. God will deal with Lucifer's rebellion and the rebellion of individual people.
People do have a choice. As the Knight Templar told Indiana Jones, "Choose wisely!"
My Dad was an atheist. He and I used to have these discussion before he died a few years ago. He thought the lights went out and that was that.
I wish I could ask him now.
Thank you, SoFloFreeper! God bless you.
No, I didn’t say the suffering was for an infinite amount of time. It was more about the grief of being so far from God. I certainly hope no one in finite reality suffers for eternity. That would be obscenely cruel.
Not the God I worship either.
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Sure they choose it, because they haven't experienced God yet. And that is because they reject even the mention of God, of truth, goodness, mercy and all the other attributes of Divine life. So they never give God a chance - or they experience God as foul because they are addicted to their own foulness.
But God, to me, must be the sweetest, most perfect experience possible. Therefore even those who recoil because God feels like foulness to them, will be purified by the experience, and eventually their own foulness will be cleansed by them from Grace, and then they will choose God.
So it's just a matter of time for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people take... a lot... more time than others...
"But I [Jesus] say this to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly. To anyone who slaps you on one cheek, present the other cheek as well; to anyone who takes your cloak from you, do not refuse your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your property back from someone who takes it. Treat others as you would like people to treat you... You will have a great reward, and you will be children of the Most High for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." Luke 6:27-31,35
In other words, Jesus commands us to do exactly opposite of God - Love, do good to, bless, and pray for our enemies... or else God will see us as an enemy and... torture us forever in hell.
Right?
Oh and you saw that last part? "...the Most High [is] he himself ... kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." Now that's strange - I thought he hated the ungrateful and wicked in burning fire forever?
Care to explain?
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I read this book a couple of years or so ago.
It in one of the most frightening books I've read on subject of hell.
I don't think I can reread it because even now it still affects me.
I also read Heaven is for Real - I think that is the title - and as frightening as 23 Minutes is, Heaven is for Real is hopeful. Not sure I should reread 23 Minutes.
23 is frightening beyond words and I guess that is how it should be.
What is Hell?
Bipolar Disorder. I know because I have it.
Summer in Florida.
You are not a ‘rotten sinner’. Neither is anyone else (with a few exceptions).
You Christians are your own worse enemy. No one created by God is a rotten sinner deserving of burning in an eternal hellfire. That is an affront to God, who created us to be His partners in Tikkun Olam, or ‘repairing the world’.
Yes, we can overcome sin and not be slaves to it.
Why is your religion so fear-based?
It becomes easier to see the former rottenness once a Christian has actually gotten a life well absorbed into the Lord (as opposed to being a biblicist in his own power). There is a strong mystical and spiritual side to this.
Suddenly, love and grace and caring spring forth that was, in fact, the norm that God had wanted from the beginning. Man went more or less AWOL. Even the Hebrew scriptures say so.
Yes it IS possible to over-concentrate on hell. A constant scare game is not the name of the game in Christian faith. Not even the Christian bible reads that way.
Another way to look at hell is that it is where the refuseniks go. Perpetually disdaining God and not wanting to have their lives absorbed in His (and paradoxically then imbued with a new distinctiveness, not a monotonous sameness) they go to a place that God will accommodate their hate. If you refuse to be forgiven, then you won’t be forgiven. People’s choice, not God’s.
What you call tikkun olam is a witness of God’s saving power, but can’t ever be complete in this mortal coil and God doesn’t expect it to be complete. A new, totally re-created world is coming. We have to die in the old one before being fit for the new one.
If someone will accept the Lord’s superabounding grace to the end of forgiveness and reconciliation (the result being the thing the bible calls repentance, or metanoia which is a makeover of the mind) then he or she will observe firsthand what this means.
God isn’t the one with the grudges here. It’s people.
I attempted, more or less successfully, to sum the concept up in a humorous, yet I believe accurate song. There is too much grimness in Christian faith in the name of avoiding vanity. But God never said that the grimness of the Lord our strength. It is the joy of the Lord.
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-levy-6/a-humble-redneck-i-was-born
Good song - it's from the heart.
And I very much like this: God never said that the grimness of the Lord our strength - it is the joy of the Lord.
All devils (fallen angels) and some people will end up in hell, because angels were never made with the capability to repent and some people will refuse salvation no matter what they might be presented with. That is an empirical observation that the Lord is entitled to make; it does not equate to forcing people’s hands. You may come across opposing views in the theology called Calvinism, but on my way to faith I have found that both it and Arminianism are oversimplifications. There is room for both choice and destiny and the Lord supernaturally integrates it all. It operates on a level that is higher than our thoughts. And I am glad He does that, because we are woefully incompetent.
And the Lord asks us to be kind even to people who are evil now. One characteristic of devils is rage and because we are fallen, we find ourselves raging in accordance with the desire of devils. Kindness militates against raging. Kindness (and meekness) sounds like an odd thing to be on the side of strength; but there Jesus is saying that the meek shall inherit the earth. Devils would like us to speak of hell in the manner of a cruel threat by which we bludgeon others into certain kinds of “religion.” When hell is more the danger of devils cruelly hijacking our souls and swallowing us up.
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