I used a simalar exercise with my religious ed kids back in the day. It is a very interesting topic. It was right after 9/11.
I remember being taught that one can never know of the possibility of repentant thought just at the moment of death. I don’t believe some of those people were capable of it...but only God knows..
from memory:
It is better for that man if he had never been born
straight is the way, narrow is the gate and few there be that find it
no one comes to the Father but by me
The guy who wrote that article is spewing garbage
For anyone to say, “This is how God handles the afterlife”, is the ultimate in hubris.
I completely disagree. Hell is for those who reject God in this life, and thus will live without Him in the next. We condemn ourselves to Hell by choosing to reject God’s will, in favor of our own, as well as our unwillingness to love our neighbor.
Fortunately, the Eternal Sacrifice of Jesus on the cross has redeemed all mankind, for eternity, but requires us to accept that gift, freely given.
I will save Purgatory for another day.
Quasi-Universalism from a New Republic hack. I’ll give it all the consideration it merits.
Total foolishness. Heaven for all? This is universalism. “IT IS A NARROW PATH”
And it is not the atrocities of Hitler and the betrayal of Judas which land them in hell, it is their suicide. Any crime can be forgiven, but a final act of evil without any space for repentance condemns one to hell.
...so the traitor, the thief, and the genocidal maniac all walk up to the Pearly Gates, and Saint Peter says to the bartender...
This is apparently a very theologically ignorant writer. The Bible is pretty clear about this. Salvation has nothing to do with you “doing good” or morality as we know it. Salvation is about what you do with Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for our sins. If you repent and accept his atoning sacrifice, you will be saved. If not, you won’t. And the Bible tells us that those who do NOT accept salvation by His grace and His blood, whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, will ultimately be cast into the Lake of Fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels, “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched”.
This author seems to believe that people are saved by their morality or good works, and are condemned by their immorality or evil works. Wrong. You are saved by turning to Christ and accepting HIS sacrifice. If you don’t, you are already condemned.
Now, if you turn to Christ and live for Him, then you will do good and shun evil, but that is an outcome of your salvation - it is not the reason for it.
“In certain schools of Christian thought, hell is not everlasting, but a more painful form of purgatory.”
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:41
Demon Linker is a leftist thinker. If you wonder how progressive thought has deformed and redefined Christianity, you can read Linker to see how it has come about.
Linker sees Christianity through the liberal prism: everything is false and distorted. The lens through which he looks is colored by liberal notions of racism, homosexuality, identity politics and progressive “social justice”. “Christian” liberals ignore what does not conform to their groupthink.
In this article, for example, Linker completely ignores what Jesus Christ and Christian scripture says repeatedly about life after death and who may enter Heaven and who may not. There will be a separation of wheat from chaff, of goats from sheep, and the weeds will burn for eternity.
God makes the rules. And from what the Holy Bible says, universalism is not what God has ordained for us.
As with all liberals (including this liberal in sheep’s clothing) his “truth” is based on false premise.
Don’t look for Hitler or Judas in Heaven.
I would substitute ‘monotheistic malice’ for Christian malice’.
While I can fully understand the purpose/need for the concept of hell, I don’t see how it can actually serve any purpose, unless we come back in another body, with the previous memories.
Myself, I don’t believe anything man can do for his 70-80 yrs on this planet would deserve any afterlife punishment, especially an eternity of it.
In certain schools of Christian thought, hell is not everlasting, but a more painful form of purgatory.
Um, hell is thrown into the lake of fire. And the fate of the damned is eternal. The question is, are they alive and feeling pain during that eternity. Some of us argue that the fate of the saved is everlasting life and its opposite would be everlasting death. That is, you die and stay dead, forever. Which is why the fate of the lost is called eternal, and called death, destruction, perish, etc.
Just pointing out that one thing...
Why would a man who rejected God in life begin to love Him in death while experiencing His pent-up wrath? Natural men alive on Earth have no ability to stop sinning, what evidence is there dead men in Hell have such an ability?
I believe the Bible clearly teaches Hell is forever. All those not in Christ will experience God’s wrath for their sin forever. What that really looks like I can only imagine. All I know is that the cup of His wrath will be perfectly measured and just in proportion with their sin and that all rebels will be made to drink the wine of His fury to the dregs.
“For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed,
and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.”
—Psalm 75:8
I am good with it.
If the worst can repent and be forgiven, maybe I can, too.
Interesting.
The most popular verse in the Christian world is John 3:16...yet very few "get it":
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
The choices are "perish"...and the greek means to destroy fully. To die. And everlasting life.
Paul makes the same point:
Rom_6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Death..or eternal life. Not ETERNAL LIFE and then torture.
Man, by default, without Christ, does not have eternal life. We are not immortal. That way was blocked:
Gen_3:24 So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
It is a Satanic lie that we have, or can have life, without Christ. That we are immortal without our Lord and Savior:
Gen 2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
Gen 2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
You will be mortal. You will die. You will not have eternal life. But what is the lie of Satan?
Gen 3:4 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.
It's a lie that we have eternal lie already. It's a lie that we are immortal without Christ. It's a Satanic lie that goes against what God expressly said.
Who is hellfire prepared for?
Mat 25:41 "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:
The eternal fire is prepared for the devil and his angels...demons. People thrown into it, people who reject Christ, people who don't have eternal life...SURELY DIE.