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To: Bellflower
You wrote: "David, no I am not comfortable with the fact that many, many people are in hell and going to go there. But you know what? It doesn't change the fact. It does motivate me to reach as many people as I possibly can though. If more people had taken God seriously there would not be nearly as many people in hell. Again, it is not God's fault. We are all fit for hell due to our sinful nature. It is he who gives us the opportunity to escape. " But God created hell! No-one forced him to do that - he could have, for example, created a place where non-beleivers go that was not a place of suffering. As a good being, to create a place of infinite suffering should be an impossibility and yet he still did it...What good is being served through the eternal suffering of billions of people, many of whom did not get the chance to search for the truth (for example, tribes on Borneo in 13 BC.) Do they go to hell for the simple reason that they were born in a time and place that made it impossible for them to know Christ?
208 posted on 11/20/2001 1:40:27 PM PST by David Gould
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To: David Gould
God did create Hell, but only because he allowed Man to have freewill (a gracious gift from an all-powerful being, wouldn't you agree?), and Man chose to exercise this freewill against God. Therefore, Man necessitated the creation of Hell. When you think of Hell, understand that Hell is place of complete and utter seperation of Man from God. It's not a mideival torture chamber run by Demons as you seem to envision (true?). It's a place of complete and utter seperation, and isn't that what the atheists strive for? By going to Hell you might actually be gaining the reward you seek through your efforts to be atheistic. The monkey-wrench in the machine, however, is that once you die and are judged and know the truth and beauty of God's existence and the joy of union with him, there will be nothing more torturous to you than the thought of being seperated from Him. And, of course, that instant of realization happens too late. You will gnash your teeth in eternal torment. Good and Evil, we all reap what we sow. Take care in what you sow.

Of course you still have time. And you seem to at least have an interest. I pray you will devote some real study to this. Instead of trying to rationalize and disprove the contents of the Bible, try a new approach and focus on the truths that that you do find in there. Expound upon them. I do this for myself, because I am only a Man as well. I am a sinner and deserve the seperation myself. But through study I have an inkling of what that entails. I'll do my best not to fall into that trap myself or to allow those I love through my faults to do the same. (I ramble ... sorry).

PS. I am not a Calvanist; I am a follower of Christ and a student of the Bible.
217 posted on 11/20/2001 7:54:30 PM PST by so_real
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