How many here (believers) believe in the Hell fire doctrine and why??

by jam 154 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  TheWonderofYou

  Dear LisaRose

  1) you wrote: Really? An eternity of pain?
  
  The dogmas of the church are only approximations too, the theologians and historians have to explain who the pain came into the hell.

  The church can only follow Jesus Christ and what we have received in the scriptures. The modern teachers say that Jesus words are merely warnings of the consequences of loosing gods friendship, loosing gods mercy and love, by choise and free will, to constantly black-hearted denial of gods loving hands, by choosing deliberatly a way of wilfully sinning maybe.

  Reading the bible we often meet Jesus saysings and phrases or figure of speeches in parabels that indicate severe consequences of going the broad way. I remember at the moment the words "the broad way into destruction" or "eternal fire" or "gehenna" or "jugement day" or "eternal judgment", "baest and goasts" and even the "poor lazarus and the rich man" and "certainly Armageddon too.

  All these phrases are only giving emphazise to the subject of seriousness , but there is not a literal fire or a literal punishment or any pain in Jesus words (i read about his matter in abook of Pope Benedikt)

  Jesus used evidently the common phrases and that were used by the normal people in Judea at that time and not aloofed words or complicated theology.
  He spoke this sayings mostly to uneducated people. So all the saysing of judgment day an so on where already common known in the Jewish community.
  There were the apocalytic sects, Essens..., and reform movements, something like the great awakeing in the 19th centeruy in america, perhaps jesus even had contact with Essens, and John the baptist was a pupil of them, because many words in the new testament have been found in the sciriputers of the essens. Why i am saying this? Because the sayings of the apocalyptic sects where well known like the preaching work of Jehovas witnesses today John said "repent and get batized in the jordan": Maybe Jesus even put up and overtook most of Essens sayings, and so it came into the Bible too. The saysing have it source in a completety other religious and social and educational background as today.

  2. You wrote: yet some believe that God will do this for eternity, because a person was born in the wrong country, so worshipped another God, or chose the wrong flavor of Christianity or simply didn't find the evidence for God compelling or believable.

  I am preparing an answer.

  Greetings
• 

  TheWonderofYou

  Two addtional links for theologians here:
  
  1) This links is a catolic information side mentioning even Jehovahs witnesses in the beginnin:

  http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-hell-there-is

  Overview and important Pope says

  In his 1994 book, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”, Pope John Paul II wrote that too often "preachers, catechists, teachers . . . no longer have the courage to preach the threat of hell" (p. 183).

  Concerning the reality of hell, the pope says, "In point of fact, the ancient councils rejected the theory . . . according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction, and every creature would be saved; a theory which abolished hell. . . . [T]he words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matt. 25:46). [But] who will these be? The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard" (pp. 185–6).]]

  This book is in my bookshelf and I find it very interesting. I found it in a church for free.

  2) this is a link to the online catolic catechism in the vatican library:
  about the classical traditional school theology, the classic dogma about

  1) particular judgment
  2) heaven'
  3) final purification
  4) hell
  5) last judgment
  6) hte hope of a new heaven and a new earth
  7) in brief and
  8)Amen

  http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm
• 

  Chalam

  Conditional immortality and annihilationism are minority views amongst "protestants".

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_in_Christian_beliefs

  Eternal torment view [ edit ]

  One historic Protestant view of hell is expressed in the Westminster Confession (1646):

  "but the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. " (Chapter XXXIII, Of the Last Judgment)

  According to the Alliance Commission on Unity & Truth among Evangelicals (ACUTE) the majority of Protestants have held that hell will be a place of unending conscious torment, both physical and spiritual, [25] although some recent writers such as Anglo-Catholic C. S. Lewis [86] and J.P. Moreland [87] have cast hell in terms of "eternal separation" from God. Certain biblical texts have led some theologians [who?] to the conclusion that punishment in hell, though eternal and irrevocable, will be proportional to the deeds of each soul (e.g., Matthew 10:15 , Luke 12:46-48 ). [88]

  Another area of debate is the fate of the unevangelized (i.e.,those who have never had an opportunity to hear the Christian gospel), those who die in infancy, and the mentally disabled. According to ACUTE some Protestants [who?] agree withAugustine that people in these categories will be damned to hell for original sin, while others believe that God will make an exception in these cases. [25]

  View of conditional immortality and annihilationism [ edit ]

  A minority of Protestants believe in the doctrine of conditional immortality, [89] which teaches that those sent to hell will not experience eternal conscious punishment, but instead will be extinguished or annihilated after a period of "limited conscious punishment". [19] [90]

  Prominent evangelical theologians who have adopted conditionalist beliefs include John Wenham, Edward Fudge, Clark Pinnock and John Stott (although the last has described himself as an "agnostic" on the issue of annihilationism). [25] Conditionalists typically reject the traditional concept of the immortality of the soul.

  The Seventh-day Adventist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians teach the annihilationist viewpoint.
• 

  designs

  Isn't it facinating that Christians (the Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, others) all reading from one supposedly inspired Holy Book come up with vastly different beliefs...
• 

  Vanderhoven7

  Chalam: I am not swayed by majority opinion, but by the word of God.

  You quote the following from the Westminster Confession (1646):

  "but the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. " (Chapter XXXIII, Of the Last Judgment)

  Please note the verse the authors of this confession take this from...and what they have added to it.

  "They will be PUNISHED WITH EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION AND SHUT OUT FROM THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD AND FROM THE MAJESTY OF HIS POWER." II Thes:1:9

  Does eternal exclusion from God's presence, power and majesty denote endless torment? It is interesting to note that this description of final punishment is preceded by the phrase, "PUNISHED BY EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION". This destruction both originates or proceeds from God's fiery presence and "it will remove the wicked away from that presence forever". Certainly, no sinner can dwell for long in God's holy presence (Is.33:10-17) without being consumed. But even though the nature of final destruction excludes the possibility of the wicked ever entering God's presence, nothing in the language requires unending conscious experience.
• 

  designs

  And yet to the Orthodox the punished exist in sight of god but are eternally cut off from his love....sort of like my cat waiting for us to finish dinner and thinking maybe he gets the scraps :D

  To Stephens crowd its- turn up the heat Baby!

  The Westminster Confession also declared the Pope to be the Antichrist and the Mass idolatry.

  Godly men all, where politics played no favors.
• 

  Chalam

  Agreed Van. It is not about the majority but what the text and the Spirit say.

  Revelation 14:9-11

  English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK)

  9 And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, theseworshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

  Stephen
• 

  jam

  So Adam and Eve will miss out on the fun. God says to Adam,

  "you shall return to dust". So the first man committed the

  orignal sin and olny return to dust, while the entire human race

  suffer eternal puniishment....Hummm.....
• 

  designs

  Some Protestants and most Evangelicals skip through the passages that says- symbols and signs.
• 

  cultBgone

  I don't find any of the concepts of hell nearly as disturbing as the eagerness of those who wish to condemn others to that fate.