Atheists rant and bluster about how awful a place hell is. “You’re tortured forever,” “You’ll be burned forever.”
And yet, and YET hell is exactly what atheists choose. “Hell? Yep. That’s for me. I will not allow God to bring me into heaven. I demand that I spend my eternity in hell, forever separated from God’s love.”
Now, either atheists really don’t believe that hell is as bad as they say, or, well, you decide.
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12 comments:
You're missing the point, my dear. Atheists don't actually believe in hell, any more than you believe in Zeus. What we "bluster" or "rant" or whatever about, is the willingness of a great many people to embrace a philosophy that we find incalcuably cruel and rather wantonly ridiculous.
Ditto. Mak, you can't fear what you don't believe in.
What other things that you don't believe in do you write about virtually on a daily basis?
Mak, I'll bet youre amazed at the sheer number of accounts by people who have been clinically dead, revived and have come back to describe their encounter with Zeus or Mithras as opposed to Jesus or the devil.
When I say "Love YHWH or He will torture you!" it's hypothetical. I'm taking YOUR worldview to its natural conclusion as a comment on your worldview.
Flute.... Where in the Bible does it state that God is torturing people?
JD, you would be surprised by the number of Hindu/Hari people who have near death experiences and see Krishna.
These near death experiences are mostly likely the large ammounts of dimethyltryptamine that your brain releases when completely starved of oxygen.
JD, He's the one casting people into a lake of fire.
Maybe I should say "Love YHWH or He'll throw you into a fiery pit!"
Still wrong. Love YHWH and He will bring you safely home to paradise, a place for which you were created and can only miss by rejected His love.
Hell is conscious. No sleeping here, where “there is no rest day or night” (Revelation 14:11). Notice the rich man’s pleadings in Luke 16:19-31. Hell’s victims are conscious.
Hell is punishment. It’s not “just what happens” to people. It is punishment at the hands of God. It is God’s contempt of people (Daniel 12:2), it is being “condemned” by God, like in a court (John 5:29). It is God’s just “payback” for sins (2 Thessalonians 1:6), when Jesus “will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel.... They will be punished.” (v.8-9).
Hell is painful. Jesus described it as “the fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:40-42)
God is in hell and punishes people there. The guilty “will be tormented in burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever” (Revelation 14:10-11). The Lamb in Revelation is Jesus. Hell is not so much eternal separation from God as it is the eternal presence of God in unmitigated wrath and fury.
Hell is both physical and spiritual. It follows the resurrection of the dead (John 5:28-29), so those who suffer in hell will suffer bodily as well as in spirit. Jesus said it was “better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:30). Hell will be a place for our bodies as well as a condition of our souls. Beware those who make hell sound too ethereal and spiritual.
From:
http://www.new-testament-christian.com/hell.html
I've responded with another post.
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