Hell: Eternal suffering or eternal nothingness?

[Enahs4Him]

Hell is eternal punishment for the unbeliever. That's why God sent His Son Jesus to die for us. God does not want anyone to go there, but He will not force anyone to accept the pardon we have with Jesus Christ. The punishment Jesus suffered shows us how serious sin is and what price was paid for our souls. Accept Jesus today and live for Him. Sadly, many will reject God's free gift of salvation through Christ.

 

[jessehove04]

definetely eternal suffering and temporal hear and now suffereing. hence the use of both the greek Gehenna and Hades.

 

[gasman64]

definetely eternal suffering and temporal hear and now suffereing. hence the use of both the greek Gehenna and Hades.

Gehenna is not Greek, but hebrew...It comes from the valley of ge-hinnom which was the rubbish tip of Jerusalem. It isn't hell. Both hades and sheol mean the state of the body in the grave. Not hell. Tartarus is an egyptian myth and was quoted from the book of enoch. Again, not hell. Hell, when first used and translated in 1611 in the KJV bible in english just meant to cover and conceal. Not a place of eternal torment. In fact, eternity is not a concept shared by either the hebrews or the early christians. There is judgement and there is a purging by fire, but the hebrew scriptures state that it is 'olam' or for a time. The hebrews never believed in punishment after death. The word torment in the greek is the word 'basanos' and it means 'a touchstone' or a form of testing purity. If you people are going to be so certain in your belief in a doctrine, then it would behoove you to at least know what you are talking about in the first place. The pattern of God is to have ages, or yowms or aions. Each age is different and as eternity means 'unchanging' then there can be no eternity because each age is different. According to biblical scholars, there have been 5 different ages since Adam. Still to come as written in scripture are 2 more. After that, only God knows.

 

[jessehove04]

Gehenna may be originally Hebrew but in the New Testament it is Greek. Just as in the arabic its jahannah.

 

[Davidz777]

Obviously there are vast numbers people on Earth who have lived in the last two milenium before Christian missionaries ever visited those lands. And there have always been vast numbers of young children and babies of non-Christians that die. What are their fates? Only the two choices of Heaven or Hell? Obviously that cannot be. One of several probabilities is that they die returning to dust they came from just like every other living creature God does not intervene with.


If God can bring back we who are to receive salvation from dust of grave then he can obviously do the same for everyone else who has ever lived that he chose to do so. Thus for some he may choose to let them remain dust while others whose sins are great enough, he may raise them for punishment. God may punish some briefly and some for a long time and some forever. He may punish some mildly and may punish some strongly. He may punish some evil people in distant lands who have never known about Him because they did such evil against their basic God given nature. He may punish some for awhile and then bring them into Heaven. And he may punish some for awhile and return them to dust. He is a just God and He will decide what to do. That is unlikely to solely be based on a few simple verses in the Bible. What the Bible does tell us is all that we people really need to understand to make choices of being saved or not. We should not be so arrogant to treat the Bible as the whole book on what God does nor the way he thinks.


As for the eternal fire? Some wild speculation as a possibility from this person. It could be that Satan and his evil angels came down to Earth to hide before God made man because it was the one place God would not choose to destroy them as doing so would also destroy the planet Earth God had put so much wonderful work into. But on the day of judgement after God is ready, a new earth has been prepared, and all to be saved have risen, he might send a large comet into the earth returning the whole planet into a seething molten primordial hell that even spirit entities can never escape from, and all those who remained in the dust are forever lost.

 

[gasman64]

Obviously there are vast numbers people on Earth who have lived in the last two milenium before Christian missionaries ever visited those lands. And there have always been vast numbers of young children and babies of non-Christians that die. What are their fates? Only the two choices of Heaven or Hell? Obviously that cannot be. One of several probabilities is that they die returning to dust they came from just like every other living creature God does not intervene with.


If God can bring back we who are to receive salvation from dust of grave then he can obviously do the same for everyone else who has ever lived that he chose to do so. Thus for some he may choose to let them remain dust while others whose sins are great enough, he may raise them for punishment. God may punish some briefly and some for a long time and some forever. He may punish some mildly and may punish some strongly. He may punish some evil people in distant lands who have never known about Him because they did such evil against their basic God given nature. He may punish some for awhile and then bring them into Heaven. And he may punish some for awhile and return them to dust. He is a just God and He will decide what to do. That is unlikely to solely be based on a few simple verses in the Bible. What the Bible does tell us is all that we people really need to understand to make choices of being saved or not. We should not be so arrogant to treat the Bible as the whole book on what God does nor the way he thinks.


As for the eternal fire? Some wild speculation as a possibility from this person. It could be that Satan and his evil angels came down to Earth to hide before God made man because it was the one place God would not choose to destroy them as doing so would also destroy the planet Earth God had put so much wonderful work into. But on the day of judgement after God is ready, a new earth has been prepared, and all to be saved have risen, he might send a large comet into the earth returning the whole planet into a seething molten primordial hell that even spirit entities can never escape from, and all those who remained in the dust are forever lost.

That's quite insightful David. Not that Satan ever fell to earth as he was made wicked from the beginning but you are going down the right path.
God judges righteously and does not punish us needlessly. Most of the people that preach hellfire and brimstone are just serving their own carnal desire for vengence on all of those who have slighted them or rejected them. Completely contrary to the nature of a God who did not create us to simply destroy us. And God uses fire to cleanse and purge us. We are baptised in fire, salted in fire. Not once in scripture is fire ever associated with the Devil. Only God.