Do you believe in a 'firey hell'? John 3:16 says the alternative to Eternal life is to 'perish'....

Question

so what does the would perish mean? does it mean we become nonexistent if we dont choose eternal life? your opinion plz, THX!!

*word*............

Answer 1

My religion does not have a hell. But to answer your question, you must remember that all the people in the bible (Jesus and crew) were all Jewish. In the Jewish belief to perish after death was to mean that your soul would cease to exist thus perish in the eyes of god. It is believed in the jewish faith that when you die you either go to "heaven" if you lived according to gods laws (all 654 of them) or if you were not righteous enough your soul would be destroyed and will no longer exist because it would not be worthy to be in the presence of god. "Hell" as christians believe it to be is not the Jewish "hell". Ghenna was a place where the soul would dwell in eternal slumber, no punishment, no fire/brimstone, no devil. Although Satan is an angel doing the job set for him by god in the Jewish religion.

Answer 2

I don't believe in the bible thank goodness. It sounds terrible,, a life time of guilt, worry and effort to meet an impossible standard (perfection and life without sin) all to bask in the glory of someone else for all of eternity (God).

Thanks but no thanks, I love my life, I enjoy spending Sundays with my family, weekend adventures, and really LIVING. I do not claim to know what lies beyond death. But, the bible provides only two options 1. eternal damnation. 2. All eternity basking in the glory of something you will never attain, or in the Mormon View 3 levels of heaven and eventually becoming a god.

Any way you turn it I feel life is to LIVE! right here right now. Enjoy the little moments and plan for the future.
I really don't need or want the pressure of A. eternal glory, or B. Fire pain and torment forever.

Answer 3

I am Austin 3:16!

Answer 4

I really don't want to believe in that. If god loves us then he knows that how we act is 99% circumstance and 1% awareness. Why would he want to send us to hell? He would bring us all to Heaven because we are all his children and he loves us all the same, right? Did the cavemen go to hell because they didn't know to worship god, I don't think so.

Answer 5

heaven hell..god.. its all a FAIRY TALE.. like santa, the easter bunny, and AAAAAA!! A MONSTER

Answer 6

I don't believe in hell at all.

Answer 7

Even as human flesh survived the destruction of the ungodly human society, or world, in the Deluge, so Jesus showed that human flesh is to survive the great tribulation that he likened to that Flood. (Matthew 24:21, 22, 36-39; compare Revelation 7:9-17.)

The word “hell” is found in many Bible translations. In the same verses other translations read “the grave,” “the world of the dead,” and so forth. Other Bibles simply transliterate the original-language words that are sometimes rendered “hell”; that is, they express them with the letters of our alphabet but leave the words untranslated. What are those words? The Hebrew she’ohl′ and its Greek equivalent hai′des, which refer, not to an individual burial place, but to the common grave of dead mankind; also the Greek ge′en·na, which is used as a symbol of eternal destruction.

Does the Bible indicate whether the dead experience pain?

Eccl. 9:5, 10: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all . . . All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol,* the place to which you are going.” (If they are conscious of nothing, they obviously feel no pain.) (*“Sheol,” AS, RS, NE, JB; “the grave,” KJ, Kx; “hell,” Dy; “the world of the dead,” TEV.)

Psalms 146:4: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts* do perish.” (*“Thoughts,” KJ, 145:4 in Dy; “schemes,” JB; “plans,” RS, TEV.)

Does the Bible indicate that the soul survives the death of the body?

Ezekiel 18:4: “The soul* that is sinning—it itself will die.” (*“Soul,” KJ, Dy, RS, NE, Kx; “the man,” JB; “the person,” TEV.)

“The concept of ‘soul,’ meaning a purely spiritual, immaterial reality, separate from the ‘body,’ . . . does not exist in the Bible.”—La Parole de Dieu (Paris, 1960), Georges Auzou, professor of Sacred Scripture, Rouen Seminary, France, p. 128.

“Although the Hebrew word nefesh [in the Hebrew Scriptures] is frequently translated as ‘soul,’ it would be inaccurate to read into it a Greek meaning. Nefesh . . . is never conceived of as operating separately from the body. In the New Testament the Greek word psyche is often translated as ‘soul’ but again should not be readily understood to have the meaning the word had for the Greek philosophers. It usually means ‘life,’ or ‘vitality,’ or, at times, ‘the self.’”—The Encyclopedia Americana (1977), Vol. 25, p. 236.

Why is there confusion as to what the Bible says about hell?

“Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.”—The Encyclopedia Americana (1942), Vol. XIV, p. 81.

Translators have allowed their personal beliefs to color their work instead of being consistent in their rendering of the original-language words. For example: (1) The King James Version rendered she’ohl′ as “hell,” “the grave,” and “the pit”; hai′des is therein rendered both “hell” and “grave”; ge′en·na is also translated “hell.” (2) Today’s English Version transliterates hai′des as “Hades” and also renders it as “hell” and “the world of the dead.” But besides rendering “hell” from hai′des it uses that same translation for ge′en·na. (3) The Jerusalem Bible transliterates hai′des six times, but in other passages it translates it as “hell” and as “the underworld.” It also translates ge′en·na as “hell,” as it does hai′des in two instances. Thus the exact meanings of the original-language words have been obscured.

Is there eternal punishment for the wicked?

Matthew 25:46, KJ: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment [“lopping off,” Int; Greek, ko′la·sin]: but the righteous into life eternal.” (The Emphatic Diaglott reads “cutting-off” instead of “punishment.” A footnote states: “Kolasin . . . is derived from kolazoo, which signifies, 1. To cut off; as lopping off branches of trees, to prune. 2. To restrain, to repress. . . . 3. To chastise, to punish. To cut off an individual from life, or society, or even to restrain, is esteemed as punishment;—hence has arisen this third metaphorical use of the word. The primary signification has been adopted, because it agrees better with the second member of the sentence, thus preserving the force and beauty of the antithesis. The righteous go to life, the wicked to the cutting off from life, or death.")

What does the Bible say the penalty for sin is?

Romans 6:23: “The wages sin pays is death.”

After one’s death, is he still subject to further punishment for his sins?

Romans 6:7: “He who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”

Is Eternal torment of the wicked compatible with God’s personality?

Jeremiah 7:31: “They [apostate Judeans] have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.” (If it never came into God’s heart, surely he does not have and use such a thing on a larger scale.)

Illustration: What would you think of a parent who held his child’s hand over a fire to punish the child for wrongdoing? “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Would he do what no right-minded human parent would do? Certainly not!

What is the origin of the teaching of hellfire?

In ancient Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs the “nether world . . . is pictured as a place full of horrors, and is presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness.” (The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, Morris Jastrow, Jr., p. 581) Early evidence of the fiery aspect of Christendom’s hell is found in the religion of ancient Egypt. (The Book of the Dead, New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1960, with introduction by E. A. Wallis Budge, pp. 144, 149, 151, 153, 161) Buddhism, which dates back to the 6th century B.C.E., in time came to feature both hot and cold hells. (The Encyclopedia Americana, 1977, Vol. 14, p. 68) Depictions of hell portrayed in Catholic churches in Italy have been traced to Etruscan roots.—La civiltà etrusca (Milan, 1979), Werner Keller, p. 389.

But the real roots of this God-dishonoring doctrine go much deeper. The fiendish concepts associated with a hell of torment slander God and originate with the chief slanderer of God (the Devil, which name means “Slanderer”), the one whom Jesus Christ called “the father of the lie.”—John 8:44.

If you would like further information or a free home Bible study, please contact Jehovah's Witnesses at the local Kingdom Hall. Or visit http://www.watchtower.org