cultBgone: Totally agree, it's scary...
How many here (believers) believe in the Hell fire doctrine and why??
by jam 154 Replies latest jw friends
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Vanderhoven7
Chalam:
Let's put Revelation 14:10 - 11 in context (starting from verse 6 to verse and ending at verse 12)
6 Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth--to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water." 8 A second angel followed and said, "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries." 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." 12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. 13 Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them."
What is figuratively being described here is the judgment/destruction/torment of Babylon the Great. This is not about hell or eternal punishment. This is not even the final judgment. This scene is not taking place in hell, but earth and in the presence of the Lamb. The torment is orchestrated by the Lord Himself. Note also that this destruction/torment figuratively lasts only "one hour" (See Revelation 18:10, 19) While Bablylon is being burned (Rev.18:18), her worshippers weep and wail "for in one hour she is made desolate". Babylon, with violence is "thrown down and shall no longer be found at all" . And yet, the smoke of Babylon's one hour torment rises forever (Revelation 19:3). While she is being destroyed, the worshippers have no rest day and night, similar to the experience of the apostle Paul in Macedonia. 2Co 7:5 For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears.
Revelation is not a book to make literal hay from. It's important to look at where the Apostle John drew his imagery from. David Chilton writes:"The imagery of their permanent doom is taken from the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone, when "the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace" (Gen.19:28)"
We get an even better insight to the symbolism used in Revelation when we read Isa.34:5-10 describing the fall of Edom.
(5) My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; see it descends
in judgment on Edom, THE PEOPLE I HAVE TOTALLY DESTROYED.
(6) The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood, it is covered
with fat - the blood of lambs and goats, fat from the
kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah
and a great slaughter in Edom.
(7) And the wild oxen will fall with them, the bulls and the
calves and the great bulls. Their land will be drenched
with blood, and the dust will be soaked with fat.
(8) For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution
to uphold Zion's cause.
(9) EDOM'S STREAMS WILL BE TURNED INTO PITCH, HER DUST INTO
BURNING SULPHUR; HER LAND WILL BECOME BLAZING PITCH!
(10) IT WILL NOT BE QUENCHED NIGHT AND DAY; ITS SMOKE WILL
RISE FOREVER. FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, IT WILL LIE
DESOLATE; NO ONE WILL EVER PASS THROUGH IT AGAIN.
Edom's doom is vividly described for us in this Isaiah 34 passage. Her land was to be turned into a veritable lake of unquenchable fire and burning sulphur, much like that pictured in Revelation 14.
Is Edom's destruction an example of eternal torment? (9, 10)
- Is Edom still a land of blazing pitch and burning sulphur?
- Was there ever any burning pitch?
- If Edom wasn't to be tormented by unquenchable blazing
pitch, day and night, forever and ever, what is this
passage saying then?
- Is it possible that this Isaiah 34 passage is symbolic;
that one would have to decode these verses - to de-image
them to make any real sense out of them? AND...
- Is it possible that the active torment imagery in this
passage is really symbolism for - complete destruction?
What destructive judgment actually befell Edom?
NOTE: Subsequent to Isaiah's prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar's army, "which took pride in shedding blood and laying countries waste" swept into Edom and slaughtered the inhabitants of Bozrah and other cities. According to Matthew Henry's commentary on this passage, "Quite beyond his (Nebuchadnezzar) design, he was fulfilling what God here threatened against His and His people's enemies".
Eternal torment of human beings, however wicked, is extra-biblical. The predominant judgment terminology in both OT and NT does not appear to even suggest "never-ending-conscious-experience" (perish, death, cut off, consume, destroy etc.) by any stretch of the imagination.
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cofty
You are a nasty sadist just like your imaginary deity.
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designs
cofty- Stephen, like millions of his group, are proud of their beliefs. They like the concepts that dance in their heads.
Years ago as a teenager I was out in Service and talked with a Fundamentalist like Stephen and we got on the subject of Hell. I used an illustration of a rabid dog who bit a child would need to be put down but you wouldn't put the dog on a BBQ and torture it to wit the Fundi replied "oh yes I would!"
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TheWonderofYou
Dear Vanderhofen,
you want save the honor of our loving God and the Bible by some very fine but complicated arguments that are along the watchtower-line. Your arguments have much depht and substance. I feel your real pleasure to understand each single passage. I whish you sucess in commenting all the scriptures in the greek scriptures (i.e. New Testmanent) in your book. And if you allow, this is now my attempt of an answer to your bible study. But as you now only very few people will be interested in such a matter.
The hell is togehter with thoughts about the personal eternal future an unpopular issue, I answer merely because I have been a witness for over 10 years and I wanted to know the real catolic teaching for myself. Should the witnesses not better know what the catolics realy belief if they are permantly making house calls? I cannot accept the uncritical biblicism of the watchtower. Would not be the watchtower-sect then it would not be necessary at all to speak about that in our time.
Dear Lisa Rose, The hell is nothing to be afraid of if you are not a very bad guy. Thus catolics are not debating about the hell at all, but the witnesses permanently threaten the true and ancient church with pictures of annihilation in their “Armageddon Fata Morgana” dont they? The church never believed in eternal sentence or eternal punishmnt for persons that were born in the wrong countries, in an other religion, or for heretics that fight against the church, that have the wrong flavor of christiany or of thous who found the evidence for god not compelling or believable. Jesus did not teach such complicated things and the church does not teach such a stuff. The church has to love even their enemies, even the witnesses that condemn, defame it since 100 years and more. (especially since 1914 the kingdom came) The catolic church has been asked if the witnesses should be an approved religion in our country. And the church accepted it. And now the witness have the same rights in our country as the catolic church has. That is our attitude towards other religions and we hope that the witnesses will change someday their attitude too!The church is in permant contact with the Jews, the Muslims and the other religions. But the witness dont want a contact to the oldest church in the world, instead they contacted the United Nations. (their are wonderful texts and publications of the church which show the catolic attidute towards other religions). Are you interested?
God does not damn/condem anybody but i am deciding myself for communion with god or against it. This is meant with judgment: that the sinners is confronted with the reality or perhaps a final rightousness if you want name it so. Furthermore Jesus is judge and we need not be afraid of being jugded by him, he is our best friend.
That was longtime untold, it is no new light but the truth, that I, TWOY, tell you and
that all saints of the church and all christian proclaim today on 5/5/2014:
The judgement day is the day when our Lord returns, when we see him again a second time.
The judgment day is a day of joy.
The jugdment day is the day when everything will become good again.
Please Lord Jesus come soon.Dear Vanderhofen,
Preface:What you addressed:
You addressed already some bible passages like
Pauls words to the Romans 6:23 “For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life”. Your point is that another further punishment is not thinkable and that eternal suffering or existence is not the penalty for sin.
Torment and eternal are only cominbed or juxtaposed in high symbolic texts
if torment or suffering is used as image, it can mean in reality only punishment to death
Punishment could merely be a annihilation or destruction shortly: the death
- you mention the traditional few of intermediate state of the sole.I. Imagery and reality at witnesses and at catolics
I am studing the catolic answers as I think it is impossble that all the christian teachers beginning with Origenes have understood the matter incorrect and I believe too that Jesus Christ would not have founded a church at all, if it could totally error in the fundamental beliefs about the final judgment of each individual. My present understanding is that in catolic faith, hell is not a real place of torment, but only a description of the bad consequence in which I can bring myself, by totally refusing the loving hand.
The catolic church does not teach that God is the one that punishes, but the words and pictures of punishment (“sentence”, “vengeance”, “anger”, “suffering” “getting lost eternally”, “eternal ruin” “weeping and gnashing of teeth”,”eternal fire”, “torment” or e.g. “unquenchable fire” in Luke 3:17) are interpreted by the catolic church as “visualisation” of the sinners selfdecision, thus not merely as unmeaningful symbols, for as you see the eternal fate of the sinner is in image and reality the same.God does not damn/condem anybody but i am deciding myself for communion with god or against it. This is meant with judgment: that the sinners is confronted with the reality or perhaps a final rightousness if you want name it so. Furthermore Jesus is judge and we need not be afraid of being jugded by him, he is our best friend. So the
The catolic church and the “churchfathers” did not adopt pagan ideas (i.e. Body of thought) but words of Jesus himself and the apostels were the foundation for a hell doctrine, the picture of the gehenna is the most used to describe the eternal fate. [[In Islam too]] These picture were not pagan influenced phantasies or false speculations but solely visualisations that were common known in the mindset in Judea of the 1 st cent. A.D. (e.g. Demotic usage of the words “sheol”, “gehenna”, tartarus”). The bible has not been translated false, the hell pictures did not come trough a false undertanding of the hebrew or greek words. That is an erroneur tought of the watchtower. It was not that that resulted in to catolic hell, the pictures are all in the bible. The NT took up the tradition of the old testament. And the Gehenna idea of a future place of punishment overlays the idea of the sheol and replaced it.
So catolic dogma derived from sheol and gehenna. The dogma means that that our future life is threatened of the real possiblity of eternal failure by the reason of our own free decision. [catechism: Hell's principal punishment consists of eternal separation from God in whom alone man can have the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.] You see the catolic dogma of hell is liable to our interpretation.
The hell is nothing to be afraid of if you are not a murder or a Hitler. Thus catolics are not debating about the hell at all, but the witnesses permanently threaten the true and ancient church with pictures of annihilation in their “Armageddon Fata Morgana” dont they?
The hell is unfortunatle a sad issue, I answer merely because I have been a witness for over 10 years and I wanted to know the real catolic teaching for myself. I cannot accept the uncritical biblicism of the watchtower. Would not be the watchtower-sect then it would not be necessary at all to speak about that in our time.
Thus short: As you see the imagery stands for a real possibilty of personal failure [the images were mainly 1) idea of “sheol” - grave death, darkness, loneliness and
2) idea of “gehenna” - place of punishment, absolute absence of Gods communion by selfdecision and freewill]But we should not visualize and speculate to much. We must not create fear of the hell in little children least of all.
And we should not creat fear of armageddon in little children least of all! In the middle age the state of the church was so horrible that it was necessary to visualize really much. The meanders of the catolic church in the middle age, the big errors of its leaders, encouraged a Dante Alegieri to write an epos “the Divine comedy”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy In the carriage of the church sits the babylon whore. Wasn't he afraid of the pope, would be interested to know? He used the common middleage ideas and specualtions about the afterlife, you find the ideas in Islam and Judaism too, it were demotic or popular pictures in his time like the biblical pictures represent the mindset of the 1st century A.D.Examples for Imagery and real consequences are the same:
Example 1 : “His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clean up his threshing floor completely and to gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.” (NWT 2013, Luke 3:17) (in the greek text τὸ δὲ ἄχυρον κατακαύσει πυρὶ ἀσβέστῳ (as'-bes-tos = inextinguishable, unquenchable – Strongs NT 762 - http://biblehub.com/greek/762.htm)
Example 2: “And he will pay back to each one according to his works: everlasting life to those who are seeking glory and honor and incorruptibleness by endurance in work that is good; however, for those who are contentious and who disobey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and anger. There will be tribulation and distress on every person who works what is harmful, on the Jew first and also on the Greek; but glory and honor and peace for everyone who works what is good, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. (NWT 2013, Romans 2:6-10)
If you are heatresistable :-) you may read Jesus words:Matt. 5:21-22,Matt. 10:28,see also Luke 12:5 , Matt. 23:15, Matt. 23:29-
So much for today, now let me dring my hot coffee. :-)
In my next attempt i would like to write about, if you are interested at all.
II. Is there punishment after death (catolic) or is death the punishment (JW)you make a great plan to define the biblical terms.
Dear Vanderhofen, Dear LisaRose
you want save the honor of our loving God and the Bible by some very fine but complicated arguments that are along the watchtower-line. Your arguments have much depht and substance. I feel your real pleasure to understand each single passage. I whish you sucess in commenting all the scriptures in the greek scriptures (i.e. New Testmanent) in your book. And if you allow, this is now my attempt of an answer to your bible study. But as you now only very few people will be interested in such a matter.
The hell is togehter with thoughts about the personal eternal future an unpopular issue, I answer merely because I have been a witness for over 10 years and I wanted to know the real catolic teaching for myself. Should the witnesses not better know what the catolics realy belief if they are permantly making house calls? I cannot accept the uncritical biblicism of the watchtower. Would not be the watchtower-sect then it would not be necessary at all to speak about that in our time.
Dear Lisa Rose, The hell is nothing to be afraid of if you are not a murder or a Hitler. Thus catolics are not debating about the hell at all, but the witnesses permanently threaten the true and ancient church with pictures of annihilation in their “Armageddon Fata Morgana” dont they? The church never believed in eternal sentence or eternal punishmnt for persons that were born in the wrong countries, in an other religion, or for heretics that fight against the church, that have the wrong flavor of christiany or of thous who found the evidence for god not compelling or believable. Jesus did not teach such complicated things and the church does not teach such a stuff. The church has to love even their enemies, even the witnesses that condemn, defame it since 100 years and more. (especially since 1914 the kingdom came) The catolic church has been asked if the witnesses should be an approved religion in our country. And the church accepted it. And now the witness have the same rights in our country as the catolic church has. That is our attitude towards other religions and we hope that the witnesses will change someday their attitude too!The church is in permant contact with the Jews, the Muslims and the other religions. But the witness dont want a contact to the oldest church in the world, instead they contacted the United Nations. (their are wonderful texts and publications of the church which show the catolic attidute towards other religions). Are you interested?
God does not damn/condem anybody but i am deciding myself for communion with god or against it. This is meant with judgment: that the sinners is confronted with the reality or perhaps a final rightousness if you want name it so. Furthermore Jesus is judge and we need not be afraid of being jugded by him, he is our best friend.
That was longtime untold, it is no new light but the truth, that I, TWOY tell you and
that all saints of the church and all christian proclaim:
The judgement day is the day when our Lord returns, when we see him again a second time.
The judgment day is a day of joy.
The jugdment day is the day when everything will become good again.Dear Vanderhofen,
Preface:What you addressed:
You addressed already some bible passages like
Pauls words to the Romans 6:23 “For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life”. Your point is that another further punishment is not thinkable and that eternal suffering or existence is not the penalty for sin.- Torment and eternal are only cominbed or juxtaposed in high symbolic texts
- if torment or suffering is used as image, it can mean in reality only punishment to death
Punishment could merely be a annihilation or destruction shortly: the death
- you mention the traditional few of intermediate state of the sole.I. Imagery and reality at witnesses and at catolics
I am studing the catolic answers as I think it is impossble that all the christian teachers beginning with Origenes have understood the matter incorrect and I believe too that Jesus Christ would not have founded a church at all, if it could totally error in the fundamental beliefs about the final judgment of each individual. My present understanding is that in catolic faith, hell is not a real place of torment, but only a description of the bad consequence in which I can bring myself, by totally refusing the loving hand.
The catolic church does not teach that God is the one that punishes, but the words and pictures of punishment (“sentence”, “vengeance”, “anger”, “suffering” “getting lost eternally”, “eternal ruin” “weeping and gnashing of teeth”,”eternal fire”, “torment” or e.g. “unquenchable fire” in Luke 3:17) are interpreted by the catolic church as “visualisation” of the sinners selfdecision, thus not merely as unmeaningful symbols, for as you see the eternal fate of the sinner is in image and reality the same.God does not damn/condem anybody but i am deciding myself for communion with god or against it. This is meant with judgment: that the sinners is confronted with the reality or perhaps a final rightousness if you want name it so. Furthermore Jesus is judge and we need not be afraid of being jugded by him, he is our best friend. So the
The catolic church and the “churchfathers” did not adopt pagan ideas (i.e. Body of thought) but words of Jesus himself and the apostels were the foundation for a hell doctrine, the picture of the gehenna is the most used to describe the eternal fate. [[In Islam too]] These picture were not pagan influenced phantasies or false speculations but solely visualisations that were common known in the mindset in Judea of the 1 st cent. A.D. (e.g. Demotic usage of the words “sheol”, “gehenna”, tartarus”). The bible has not been translated false, the hell pictures did not come trough a false undertanding of the hebrew or greek words. That is an erroneur tought of the watchtower. It was not that that resulted in to catolic hell, the pictures are all in the bible. The NT took up the tradition of the old testament. And the Gehenna idea of a future place of punishment overlays the idea of the sheol and replaced it.
So catolic dogma derived from sheol and gehenna. The dogma means that that our future life is threatened of the real possiblity of eternal failure by the reason of our own free decision. [catechism: Hell's principal punishment consists of eternal separation from God in whom alone man can have the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.] You see the catolic dogma of hell is liable to our interpretation.
The hell is nothing to be afraid of if you are not a murder or a Hitler. Thus catolics are not debating about the hell at all, but the witnesses permanently threaten the true and ancient church with pictures of annihilation in their “Armageddon Fata Morgana” dont they?
The hell is unfortunatle a sad issue, I answer merely because I have been a witness for over 10 years and I wanted to know the real catolic teaching for myself. I cannot accept the uncritical biblicism of the watchtower. Would not be the watchtower-sect then it would not be necessary at all to speak about that in our time.
Thus short: As you see the imagery stands for a real possibilty of personal failure [the images were mainly 1) idea of “sheol” - grave death, darkness, loneliness and
2) idea of “gehenna” - place of punishment, absolute absence of Gods communion by selfdecision and freewill]But we should not visualize and speculate to much. We must not create fear of the hell in little children least of all.
And we should not creat fear of armageddon in little children least of all! In the middle age the state of the church was so horrible that it was necessary to visualize really much. The meanders of the catolic church in the middle age, the big errors of its leaders, encouraged a Dante Alegieri to write an epos “the Divine comedy”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy In the carriage of the church sits the babylon whore. Wasn't he afraid of the pope, would be interested to know? He used the common middleage ideas and specualtions about the afterlife, you find the ideas in Islam and Judaism too, it were demotic or popular pictures in his time like the biblical pictures represent the mindset of the 1st century A.D.
Imagery and real consequences are the same:Example 1 : “His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clean up his threshing floor completely and to gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.” (NWT 2013, Luke 3:17) (in the greek text τὸ δὲ ἄχυρον κατακαύσει πυρὶ ἀσβέστῳ (as'-bes-tos = inextinguishable, unquenchable – Strongs NT 762 - http://biblehub.com/greek/762.htm)
Example 2: “And he will pay back to each one according to his works: everlasting life to those who are seeking glory and honor and incorruptibleness by endurance in work that is good; however, for those who are contentious and who disobey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and anger. There will be tribulation and distress on every person who works what is harmful, on the Jew first and also on the Greek; but glory and honor and peace for everyone who works what is good, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. (NWT 2013, Romans 2:6-10)
If you are heatresistable :-) you may read Jesus words:Matt. 5:21-22,Matt. 10:28,see also Luke 12:5 , Matt. 23:15, Matt. 23:29-
So much for today, now let me dring my hot coffee. :-)In my next attempt i would like to write about,
II. Is there punishment after death (catolic) or is death the punishment (JW)
if you like at all.
Greetings TWOY
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TheWonderofYou
I'm sorry that I inserted the text 2 times. There was a hang-up. The text arrangement can be better too. Can you feel with me. I am writing hours and hours and then that.
Should I better insert hot pictures? Perhaps they would get more popular, and could better demonstrate what a live-like imagenery is?
Greetings TWOY -
Vanderhoven7
Hi Stephen,
Yes Jude keeps it literal. He is referring to a literal destruction where there was literal fire and brimstone. Eternal destruction, not eternal torment is what the passage in Jude conveys. Sodom serves as an example which the apostle John draws on to describe Babylon's one-hour destruction. The prophet Isaiah uses identical terminology to describe Edom's destruction as well....both instances involving no real brimstone or literal smoke assending eternally.
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Chalam
Hi Van,
I do not see it that way. To myself it is clear Jude is saying the destruction that was momentary at Sodom & Gomorrah is an example of what with be the eternal destruction that follows. Isaiah and Jesus concurr IMHO.
I find it interesting that many ex JWs who have come to the conclusion that nothing the Watchtower have to say was true still cling so tightly to the doctrines of annaliationism, soul sleep and antitrinitarianism.
All the best,
Stephen
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Vanderhoven7
Hi Stephen,
It is interesting to note that the Pharisees had a well developed view of the afterlife in Sheol (hell) They compartmentalized hell into 2 regions separated by an impassible gulf; the one on the right being a place of comfort and feasting that they actually referred to as Abraham's Bosom; the one on the left being a place of torment where souls of the deceased were tortured by demons while awaiting final judgment of eternal torment.
Do you have any idea as to how this view of the afterlife developed...or what scriptures would support their conclusions?
Why do you think God didn't level with Adam about the real consequences of sin?