Bad analogy. Your example only works if the woman was already on death row about to be executed for a series of gruesome crimes, a person who deserved the death penalty 100 times over. And God gives that person a chance at Heaven or allows them to continue on their way to go to the hell they deserve. God has no obligation to save anyone from the Hell they deserve and ask for. That he saves some as a result of their own choice to be with him is pure grace and perfect love. Perfect because God himself had to die to accomplish it.
Exactly, thank you.
But what is hell? The bible is very clear that it exists in eternity. It does not say people suffer for time unending. I think of it more like an event frozen in a piece of lucite, or a photograph. That is, the person may be destroyed, but their destruction does not “happen” for eternity. Rather, it is “final” and preserved for all eternity. They do not survive the second death and they “stay dead”. The rest of us go on to eternal LIFE, which is the opposite of death.
First, I cannot take credit for the analogy. Second, I think it’s pretty good. Third, I know people who think they are being really good people and they really are. They are not Christian because they simply do not take the plunge away from modern intellectual perspective. Now, I know this means that according to the bible they will not receive eternal life, but just allowing them to die and “come to an end” as described in Ecclesiastes seems reasonable - and by reasonable, I mean according to what I see in scripture. They will not be protected from the second death. And the word “death” means, uh, death. The opposite of life.