'Hellfire' is supposed to be TORTURE....FOREVER.
Not a chance. Not biblical, and not in line with the love that Christ taught us by word and example.
Tammy
Do any of you still believe in 'Hellfire'? heh
by theMadJW 277 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Palimpsest
There's no "still" for me...I was born-in, so I never believed in Hell growing up, and then I never believed in it after.
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mindmelda
I hates to tell you, but Armageddon is not "mankind destroying himself".
Unless you believe that black people lynched themselves in the sense that they deserved it for being uppity.
It's explicitly stated that it is Jehovah, using angelic minions or forces of nature or whatever, who is destroying everyone who does not worship him, which to JWs is defined as anyone who is not a JW in good standing.
To believe that and be scared of it you'd have to:
1. Believe that everything in the Bible is literally true--I don't
2. Believe what the Witnesses teach about Armageddon and who is to be saved through it is true--I don't
3. Believe that I'm unrepentantly ungodly and deserve to die at God's hand--I don't
Therefore..not scared of Armageddon, hell, gehenna, boogey men or Freddie Kruger.
I am, however, afraid of terrorists, rapists, serial killers and psychopaths. In other words....real things.
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BurnTheShips
I hates to tell you, but Armageddon is not "mankind destroying himself".
It is however. Har-Mageddon, or Megiddo, was a real battlefield where many times, real armies fought decisive battles. Armageddon represents the time that all the powers of the earth battle each other in a manner that would destroy humankind. It will happen during evil times, as is metaphorically described:
'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'Hellfire' is supposed to be TORTURE....FOREVER.
Not a chance. Not biblical, and not in line with the love that Christ taught us by word and example.
Hell is a place/state that some will choose for themselves. Hell is real. Tom Cabeen described it very well in this thread. I have not seen anyone on this board describe Hell better than Tom:
....following the teachings of the earliest Christians, believe that it is impossible for God not to love us, his earthly children. Love is his very essence and he made us expressly so that he could love us. God loves us so much that he sent his only-begotten son to save us and demonstrate the length he would go to to show us he loves us.
Out of love for us, he made us in such a way that our deepest longings, our most profound needs, are satisfied in Him. He made us to find our fulfillment in the best he had, Himself. He made us to be his lovers; thus we will never be satisfied until we are in perfect relationship with him. When that happens, we will also be in the correct relationship with all other creatures who are in relationship with him, a huge loving family of giving and shared experiences. That is why he made us, so that he could love us and share his life with us.
Love, by its very nature, must be spontaneous. It cannot be forced or coerced and still be love. In order to meet that condition, God had to give us free will, along with the qualities of character we would need to exercise that free will, including intelligence, curiosity, and the capacity for faith and love. As a consequence, we must make a free choice to obey God; we must come to him in pure loving response to what he has done for us. God would never try to force us into obeying him, even though He knows we will never be completely happy until we conform our thoughts and actions to His.
But free will also has a downside. Since we have the God-given capacity for choice, He must also give us the right to reject Him. If that were not true, we would not truly have free will. If we choose to go down that path away from our Creator, God will use every means at his disposal, short of violating our free will, to call us to repentance. He offers free forgiveness and He demonstrates his love for us over and over again, in hope that we might come to realize that only in full, complete relationship with him will we ever realize our potential as his children, made in his own image. But ultimately, we have the right to reject him, even to hate him, to substitute love we ought to have for Him and give it to other, lesser things.
In the words of C.S. Lewis on this subject, it boils down to this: "In the end, we either say to God: 'Thy will be done' or God will say to us 'Thy will be done.'" God knows (because he made us) that once we get to that point, despite all his efforts to demonstrate his love for us, that our hatred will grow until we hate Him with all our heart (just as Satan does). Those who ultimately will end up hating God will seek to be away from his presence, even if they would be welcome there.
God will abandon such creatures to their own devices, and thus, they will be in what Jesus called "outer darkness". Just "where" that will be is not the point at all. Even if God were to allow such people full access to his presence, they would hate to be there. Like a Rock & Roll fan at an opera, or an opera fan at a Heavy Metal concert, the same "place", God’s presence, would be heaven for one and hell for the other. Imagery like fire is used in Scripture to represent the pain of separation from God (which is the Catholic definition of hell, by the way).
One more point about eternity. Eternity does not mean an endless succession of days; millions, billions or trillions of them. Eternity means being outside of time, timeless (that is the literal meaning of the word). All of our linear, sequential time is included in timelessness. One way to envision that is to think about the relationship of our linear time to the "time" in storybooks on a shelf. We can open a book and enter a particular "time", the succession of events found in that story. Then we can close the book and be completely outside of that "time", then later reopen it and be right back in it. That is how some orthodox thinkers have compared the linear time we live in to the eternity in which God dwells.
Those who reject God will end up living in timelessness also, but without the one thing they need to be happy: God. But it will be their own choice about the matter. They will not just be sent somewhere because they inadvertently broke some little rule or other. It will be because they have made a fully informed choice, of their own free will, knowing full well the consequences of their choice, to live without God, and, when offered the chance to change their mind and repent, will refuse. Those who do that will be, completely as a result of their own choice, in hell.BTS
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theMadJW
"I hates to tell you, but Armageddon is not "mankind destroying himself".
Jesus said (Matt 24) that unless those days were cut short, NO FLESH WOULD BE SAVED. Thus marks the time when God's Day of Fury arrives!
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glenster
Step right up. Take your pick of Hells. Have we got a Hell for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_of_Fire -
tec
BTS - From the bible, I do believe in the state of mind hell... but I think we suffer this in the here and now. Spiritual death equals 'hell.' Faith in Jesus equals life (spiritual life). The Pharisees had the kingdom of God taken away from them because they did not produce its fruit or recognize Christ- loss of the kingdom being equal to loss of God. Hell.
As for exactly what happens after physical death, this I am not as sure about. Still studying and searching. Still praying.
Tammy
Edited to add: But as for eternal torture, such as hellfire - not a chance.
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Chalam
Hello Tammy,
'Hellfire' is supposed to be TORTURE....FOREVER.
Not a chance. Not biblical, and not in line with the love that Christ taught us by word and example.
Just wondering what you make of these?
Luke 16:23 (New International Version)
23 In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
Luke 16:28 (New International Version)
28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
Mark 9:47-48 (New International Version)
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where
" 'their worm does not die,
and the fire is not quenched.'Jude 1:7 (New International Version)
7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
2 Thessalonians 1:6-9 (New International Version)
6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power
Revelation 14:9-11 (New International Version)
9 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name."
Revelation 20:10-15 (New International Version)
10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
The Dead Are Judged
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Blessings, Stephen -
theMadJW
So, Chalam, do you believe God gives Eternal life to those worms, so that they can eternally gnaw on those screaming their lungs out (men, women, and children) as incessantly being burned alive- while God, Christ, and angels watch?
HOO-HA!
Rich man & Lazarus- sarcastic illustration (OBVIOUS from the details, more so from all the scriptures!)
The Jews threw garbage into the Lake of Fire EACH DAY (Gehenna) and kept the fires going with sulphur. The worms and maggots would finish off any foodstuffs caught on the ledges on the way down.
So EVERYONE knew what Jesus meant when he referred to a future lake of fire.
Church Demensia perverted that shortly after the apostles died off...
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Chalam
So, Chalam, do you believe God gives Eternal life to those worms, so that they can eternally gnaw on those screaming their lungs out (men, women, and children) as incessantly being burned alive- while God, Christ, and angels watch?
I just read the scriptures and believe them.
Rich man & Lazarus- sarcastic illustration (OBVIOUS from the details, more so from all the scriptures!)
The Jews threw garbage into the Lake of Fire EACH DAY (Gehenna) and kept the fires going with sulphur. The worms and maggots would finish off any foodstuffs caught on the ledges on the way down.
So EVERYONE knew what Jesus meant when he referred to a future lake of fire.
The metaphor of Gehenna is fine but the teaching of annihilationism is clearly contrary to the scriptures
Luke 16:23 (New International Version)
23 In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
Luke 16:28 (New International Version)
28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
Mark 9:47-48 (New International Version)
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where
" 'their worm does not die,
and the fire is not quenched.'Jude 1:7 (New International Version)
7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
2 Thessalonians 1:6-9 (New International Version)
6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power
Revelation 14:9-11 (New International Version)
9 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name."
Revelation 20:10-15 (New International Version)
10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
The Dead Are Judged
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. The warning to us all is the same as the rich man's brothersLuke 16:27-31 (New International Version)
27 "He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
29 "Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'
30 " 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
31 "He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "
Are you listening to the warnings of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus and the Apostles?
Blessings,
Stephen