If people would just research the words Sheol and Hades which mean the grave it would clear the matter up.
Because from those two words comes the English translation hell which still means the grave.
Job prayed to go to hell.
Jesus went to hell.
I would never discipline my Son by holding his little hand in a pot of boiling water !!!
When God destroys something it's gone period !!!
It doesn't continue on.
Ecc 9:5 tells us the condition of the dead.
Agape my Dear Brother.
Greetings from Brother and Sister Weeks
Lakewood Cong. Ca.
2007-10-11 08:10:49
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answer #1
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answered by Jason W 4
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Matthew 25:46
And these will depart into everlasting cutting-off, but the righteous ones into everlasting life.
2 Thess. 1:9
These very ones will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction from before the Lord and from the glory of his strength
These scriptures support the view that no people are being tormented in hell. As a matter of fact, they don't even support the idea of a hell fire, but rather explain that certain people will be cut-off or destroyed. This destruction is for all eternity. Compare Jude 7:
Jude 7
So too Sod′om and Go·mor′rah and the cities about them, after they in the same manner as the foregoing ones had committed fornication excessively and gone out after flesh for unnatural use, are placed before [us] as a [warning] example by undergoing the judicial punishment of everlasting fire
This scripture is a good example which explains what is meant by eternal destruction. It simply states that once someone is destroyed or cut-off by Jehovah, there will never be a returning for this person in the future. Remember, falling asleep in death is a different condition.
2007-10-12 00:19:32
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answer #2
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answered by ? 3
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Since hell is the common grave of all mankind, it is a very cold place. But no matter what the temperature, those in hell are not suffering since, as you point out from the Bible, they are "conscious of nothing at all".
Contrary to popular belief, Satan and his demons are not presiding over some place of torment and torture. The Bible tells us that they were hurled down "to the earth" where they continue to mislead mankind and misrepresent Jehovah as an unjust God who tortures people forever for a relatively few years of sin or even for simply not knowing his son in order to confess him. (Revealtion 12:9)
2007-10-15 02:38:39
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answer #3
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answered by babydoll 7
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For once someone agrees with me! I have been debating this forever and people constantly tell me its about free will and all that. But if God truly, truly loved us, don't you think he would do everything in his power to keep us from eternal suffering? I believe that hell exists on Earth and that heaven is available to everyone
2007-10-11 08:21:22
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answer #4
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answered by skoda_pop 2
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The most famous text in the bible tells the truth but unfortunately people have become convinced otherwise.
John 3:16 (King James Version)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The options are that you will either perish or have everlasting life. Not both.
2007-10-11 07:08:53
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answer #5
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answered by Mr. E 7
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Got_air said it all with a few words, two options, perish or everlasting life. Although the bible is full of episodes where people were killed by God, nowhere does it show him to be a God of torture.
2007-10-11 12:46:26
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answer #6
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answered by ? 4
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If you are thinking Jesus was God, how can he torment people in hell fire because he only preached LOVE. If Jesus was God himself, he would have killed all Jewish High Priests and Romans too. But he couldn't even protect himself because he is/was not God. He was merely a human and Prophet of God who was warning people to stop doing wrong things. God saved him and took him to heaven alive. Jesus didn't get killed. It is written in Quran. Your problem is that you believe in man made Bible which keep changing. But you don't care to read the real Book revealed by real God Al-Quran. You reject to read because of what you hear others saying about Quran. Is that a wise decision to reject Quran without first reading yourself and finding the truth?
Real God is more kind than humans, loves more than hundreds of mothers' love combined. But God has to be hard also to destroy all evil people for the consequences of their evil crimes in this world. God warns people in when they are live in this world, but either they don't believe on God or they think Jesus has already forgiven them so they will not be punished.
Look at Born Again Christian President of USA. He most probably also believes he will get to go to heaven for Jesus has already forgiven his sins. So he is killing as many Muslims as he is pleases and getting young American soldiers also killed and disabled for life in thousands. So far it is estimated that he has managed to kill nearly million people in Africa, Palestine, Afghanistan and now very likely will kill Iranians also before he leaves his office.
Jesus is not God. The real one and only God who created the entire world, whom Jesus himself worshipped will burn in hell to such mass murderers.
2007-10-11 07:24:50
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answer #7
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answered by majeed3245 7
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It's true that He hates suffering, but the Scripture also says, "For what communion (relationship) hath light (God) with darkness (evil)? What concord (contract) hath Christ with Belial (False gods/idols/ sin in general)?" He doesn't torment us in Hell, WE SEND OURSELVES there by disobedience! Hell was intended for the devil and his angels, but because NO SIN can enter into heaven, we end up putting OURSELVES in Hell by default!
2007-10-11 07:58:06
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answer #8
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answered by bigvol662004 6
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You've discovered that God does not do such things to his children of time and space.
Quote: Chp. 5: "ERRONEOUS IDEAS OF GOD"
Religious tradition is the imperfectly preserved record of the experiences of the God-knowing men of past ages, but such records are untrustworthy as guides for religious living or as the source of true information about the Universal Father. Such ancient beliefs have been invariably altered by the fact that primitive man was a mythmaker.
One of the greatest sources of confusion on [Earth] concerning the nature of God grows out of the failure of your sacred books clearly to distinguish between the personalities of the Paradise Trinity and between Paradise Deity and the local universe creators and administrators. During the past dispensations of partial understanding, your priests and prophets failed clearly to differentiate between Planetary Princes, System Sovereigns, Constellation Fathers, Creator Sons, Superuniverse Rulers, the Supreme Being, and the Universal Father. Many of the messages of subordinate personalities, such as Life Carriers and various orders of angels, have been, in your records, presented as coming from God himself. [sic] Religious thought still confuses the associate personalities of Deity with the Universal Father himself, so that all are included under one appellation.
The people of [Earth] continue to suffer from the influence of primitive concepts of God. The gods who go on a rampage in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood--these are the gods of primitive religion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the universes. Such concepts are a relic of the times when men supposed that the universe was under the guidance and domination of the whims of such imaginary gods. But mortal man is beginning to realize that he lives in a realm of comparative law and order as far as concerns the administrative policies and conduct of the Supreme Creators and the Supreme Controllers.
The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.
The Hebrews believed that "without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sin." They had not found deliverance from the old and pagan idea that the Gods could not be appeased except by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a distinct advance when he forbade human sacrifices and substituted therefor, in the primitive minds of his childlike Bedouin followers, the ceremonial sacrifice of animals.
The bestowal of a Paradise Son [Jesus] on your world was inherent in the situation of closing a planetary age; it was inescapable, and it was not made necessary for the purpose of winning the favor of God. This bestowal also happened to be the final personal act of a Creator Son [Jesus] in the long adventure of earning the experiential sovereignty of his universe. What a travesty upon the infinite character of God! this teaching that his fatherly heart in all its austere coldness and hardness was so untouched by the misfortunes and sorrows of his creatures that his tender mercies were not forthcoming until he saw his blameless Son bleeding and dying upon the cross of Calvary!
But the inhabitants of [Earth] are to find deliverance from these ancient errors and pagan superstitions respecting the nature of the Universal Father. The revelation of the truth about God is appearing, and the human race is destined to know the Universal Father in all that beauty of character and loveliness of attributes so magnificently portrayed by the [Jesus] who sojourned on [Earth] as the Son of Man and the Son of God."
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Therefore, there is no real fiery hell as a real place; it is fictitious in reality but it can be a figurative "state" in which a person may have made enough bad choices in life to have created their own symbolic hell on Earth.
What happens in actuality is whether a person chooses reality. God created all reality and is Spirit. Spirit is more real than the passing of things physical and material. Everything physical and material is really a transient existence. That which is Spirit is eternal and everlasting.
If a person was to become wholly identified with sin as reality then, when all the courses of mercy and love have been offered and still rejected, this soul of potential eternal value, may very well cease to exist. They would become as if they never were. And all this would be in the final judgment of the Ancients of Days ~ one's eternal fate is really not ours to judge, but it is a choice between the individual and God.
The truth about "evil, sin and iniquity":
Quote: 4. EVIL, SIN, AND INIQUITY
It was the habit of Jesus two evenings each week to hold special converse with individuals who desired to talk with him, in a certain secluded and sheltered corner of the Zebedee garden. At one of these evening conversations in private Thomas asked the Master this question: "Why is it necessary for men to be born of the spirit in order to enter the kingdom? Is rebirth necessary to escape the control of the evil one? Master, what is evil?" When Jesus heard these questions, he said to Thomas:
"Do not make the mistake of confusing evil with the evil one, more correctly the iniquitous one. He whom you call the evil one is the son of self-love, the high administrator who knowingly went into deliberate rebellion against the rule of my Father and his loyal Sons. But I have already vanquished these sinful rebels. Make clear in your mind these different attitudes toward the Father and his universe. Never forget these laws of relation to the Father's will:
"Evil is the unconscious or unintended transgression of the divine law, the Father's will. Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of obedience to the Father's will.
"Sin is the conscious, knowing, and deliberate transgression of the divine law, the Father's will. Sin is the measure of unwillingness to be divinely led and spiritually directed.
"Iniquity is the willful, determined, and persistent transgression of the divine law, the Father's will. Iniquity is the measure of the continued rejection of the Father's loving plan of personality survival and the Sons' merciful ministry of salvation.
"By nature, before the rebirth of the spirit, mortal man is subject to inherent evil tendencies, but such natural imperfections of behavior are neither sin nor iniquity. Mortal man is just beginning his long ascent to the perfection of the Father in Paradise. To be imperfect or partial in natural endowment is not sinful. Man is indeed subject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one unless he has knowingly and deliberately chosen the paths of sin and the life of iniquity. Evil is inherent in the natural order of this world, but sin is an attitude of conscious rebellion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spiritual light into gross darkness.
"You are confused, Thomas, by the doctrines of the Greeks and the errors of the Persians. You do not understand the relationships of evil and sin because you view mankind as beginning on earth with a perfect Adam and rapidly degenerating, through sin, to man's present deplorable estate. But why do you refuse to comprehend the meaning of the record which discloses how Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got himself a wife? And why do you refuse to interpret the meaning of the record which portrays the sons of God finding wives for themselves among the daughters of men?
"Men are, indeed, by nature evil, but not necessarily sinful. The new birth--the baptism of the spirit--is essential to deliverance from evil and necessary for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but none of this detracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Neither does this inherent presence of potential evil mean that man is in some mysterious way estranged from the Father in heaven so that, as an alien, foreigner, or stepchild, he must in some manner seek for legal adoption by the Father. All such notions are born, first, of your misunderstanding of the Father and, second, of your ignorance of the origin, nature, and destiny of man.
"The Greeks and others have taught you that man is descending from godly perfection steadily down toward oblivion or destruction; I have come to show that man, by entrance into the kingdom, is ascending certainly and surely up to God and divine perfection. Any being who in any manner falls short of the divine and spiritual ideals of the eternal Father's will is potentially evil, but such beings are in no sense sinful, much less iniquitous.
"Thomas, have you not read about this in the Scriptures, where it is written: `You are the children of the Lord your God.' `I will be his Father and he shall be my son.' `I have chosen him to be my son--I will be his Father.' `Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth; even every one who is called by my name, for I have created them for my glory.' `You are the sons of the living God.' `They who have the spirit of God are indeed the sons of God.' While there is a material part of the human father in the natural child, there is a spiritual part of the heavenly Father in every faith son of the kingdom."
All this and much more Jesus said to Thomas, and much of it the apostle comprehended, although Jesus admonished him to "speak not to the others concerning these matters until after I shall have returned to the Father." And Thomas did not mention this interview until after the Master had departed from this world.
2007-10-11 07:14:15
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answer #9
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answered by Holly Carmichael 4
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