if the devil ( whatever name you give him ) take those who have sinned to a place where they are punished for their wrong doing ... in a sense is he not doing work for god ? because i ask myself if there wasnt a devil .. who would deal with those that have sinned ??
( please know i ask this theoretically as it is not my belief that there is an hell although i am wishing to hear thoughts on this )
2006-07-09 09:14:36 · 16 answers · asked by Peace 7 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
God will deal with those who have sinned, and in the end, the devil will not rule Hell, but be part of it, punished like all the rest there, equally.
2006-07-09 09:17:40 · answer #1 · answered by sweetie_baby 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I would have to agree with you that there is no special 'hell' place. This is because the hebrew and greek words translated 'hell' actually translate into the word 'gravedom'. So, the devil doesn't take people to a special place and punish them. What actually happens is that when we die we die. The Bible says those who are dead are actually...dead. They don't go to heaven or hell, but to the grave. However, when Christ returns then those who are born of God will meet him in the clouds and the revelation period will come into effect. During this, near the very end, there will be a ressurection of the just and unjust. Then everyone will be judged. Those who are judged as righteous will join the born again believers (who will have received their rewards, being exempt from the other judgement) and will go to paradise. Those who are judged unrighteous will join the devil and his cohorts in the lake of fire (A symbolic place representeing the burning of refuse - gehenna, the fires of refuse). This means they will all be burned up and will suffer the second death from which there is no resurrection. They will be no more and all memory of them will be lost. They will cease to exist. This is how the sinners will be punished. It is what all those who think they can cheat God will receive. God is not mocked. He gets them in the end. However, the devil really does do God's work a lot of the time (though he doesn't actually realise it, and when he finds out it really tees him off). He often makes the mistake of setting up circumstances that work to God's good pleasure as God takes advantage of what he does to work his will.
2006-07-10 09:56:44 · answer #2 · answered by ManoGod 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are correct there is no hell, there is no heaven either. God is imaginary and was created to help those who fear death. The idea being that if people believe that they are going to a better place when they die, then this fear of death will lessen, and in some cases even subside.
In fact if you believe in religion from a very early age then you may never fear death at all.
Before my wife died religion to me was something that some believe in and some don't. I never really thought about it, but if push came to shove, I would have probably said I would like to think that there is a God, a heaven etc...
When I was 28 years old my wife died. This affected me big time. I am still on medication nearly 10 years later. As time has passed, if one thing has become absolutely crystal clear to me, I mean so clear I would stake my own life on it. It is that there is no God, no heaven and no hell. When you die, you die and that is it, end of story.
I don't mean to offend any religous people by what I am saying, but just as how religous people can give their opinion, it seems only fair that I should be able to give mine.
2006-07-09 11:16:07 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The devil is just another version of the boogey man that a parent warns a child will come and get them if they don't behave. Its all the same form of control. Don't do this don't do that or you will go to hell. What a lot of nonsense.
Besides, I would rather go to hell with my friends and family and all the other good people who are not deemed worthy because they didn't go to church, rather than go to a heaven filled with murderers, rapists and peadophiles that "repented" and asked God for forgivness.
2006-07-09 10:23:38 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If there was not a devil, there would not be this mess of a world that we live in. The devil does not take anyone to hell. The persons choices send them to hell. Satan just knows the weaknesses to use against us so that we choose to go to hell.
2006-07-09 09:28:09 · answer #5 · answered by caedmonscall99 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
IN Christian belief, God doesn't want the sinners to be lost, he wants them to be saved, to repent by dealing with their wrongdoings to make things right and try to sin no more. If all the people who sinned went to hell, there wouldn't be anybody left, because we're all sinners! Some say there isn't really a hell as such, there is just a point after death when we come face to face with all our sins and shortcomings and bad choices. Sounds like hell to me!
2006-07-09 09:22:35 · answer #6 · answered by Karen J 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The devil is within us all, God deals with sinners, and we make our own hell, we end up punishing ourselves for the bad things we have done.
2006-07-09 09:43:35 · answer #7 · answered by ringo711 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The concept of the devil and hell changed over time.
The original devil was God's helper, not his adversary. Christianity is based on the Zoroastrian concept of heaven & hell.
But, it is a book of mythology and none of it actually exists. God, Satan, heaven & hell are all figments of people's imaginations.
2006-07-09 09:23:16 · answer #8 · answered by Left the building 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Material world is, to put it as simple as possible, a "multilevel" place. It is created by the Supreme in order to enable those souls who wanted to enjoy without Him, to do so... As it is not soul's natural position to be withou the Lord, the whole material world is full of suffering, based on the cycle of birth and death. For death is inevitable even in those levels of material world that are called "heavenly". As opposed to those levels that are full of apparent bliss, there are lower levels of material creation - hellish planets, places for those soles who have almost completely forgotten about God. And there are 'middle" worlds like Earth - here you can find both heavenly and hellish life conditions.
I had to describe this in very simplifyed way in order to answer your question. Humans have "images" of heaven and hell because a soul can vagely remember living noumerous lifes on all the levels of material world. But there IS NOT ETERNAL hell - a soul can leave a lower planets when its bad karma is "spent", so called "punisment" is terminal, because God would never abandon even those who have abandoned Him. And of course there are souls in the lower levels that rule those worlds, and some of them are on so high levels of conciousness that they absolytely remember God, but are put in material world in order to serve Him directly, to "run the place". However, there are very few pure souls like that in the lower levels, and there are many of those "demonic" creatures that hell is so famous for... They also do their job, and by doing it their karma is also being cleared, and those souls can move to higher realms of existence.
If you had the patience to read this up to this point - here are the good news: there is a world beyond the whole material creation where souls are again in the company of the Supreme and there is no death in that place. Once a soul reaches this destination, it never again fails to a cycle of life and death. This is the outmost purpose of our existence.
2006-07-11 20:54:23 · answer #9 · answered by Lalasamayi 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Revelation says Satan will be sent to Hell along with all those who chose to reject Jesus, so Satan does not 'take' sinners, God sends them. God says in the Bible it his wish that none should perish, which is why we all have the chance to turn to him, it must break his heart that so many don't.
2006-07-09 23:24:59 · answer #10 · answered by good tree 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋