Hell.....

vinsight4u said:

Jonah would not have been alive in
a fish, then waited three days to pray.
He prayed first from hell.

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That's not in Scripture. It never said he died. It said he prayed from within the whale or fish or whatever it was. I'm not going to add to Scripture or try to rationalize what it says away. If I did that I wouldn't be a Trinitarian.

sculleywr said:

There is nothing just about an infinite punishment for a finite action. The problem is whether Scripture was talking about the NATURE of God OR our PERCEPTION of God's actions. If Scripture says to us "be angry, and do not sin", then God must, by requirement that He is perfect, follow that same rule in regards to His anger. When it says to parents to not overly burden your children, since God is perfect,He will not overly burden His children, either, which includes all of mankind.

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Well, there are a few misunderstandings in what you've written here. For starters, our sin is always ultimately against God Himself. He is the Creator and Sustainer of All Things, the Lord God of the Universe who is from everlasting to everlasting. Break your parents rules and you may get grounded; break the laws of your society and you will spend time in prison; break the laws of God Himself and Hell is the consequence. The higher the power or authority, the greater the consequences when you contravene the laws of that authority. That is true when breaking human laws and true also when breaking God's laws. Break the laws of the Ultimate Authority and you suffer ultimate consequences.

God's anger and ours are two very different things. Our anger however righteously intended is corrupted by our sinful nature, by our selfish inclinations, and by our finite understanding. Not so with God. He labors under none of the failings that you and I do. It does not work, then, to try to reason to God from yourself. You are far more unlike God than you are like Him.

Finally, God is not Father to all those He has made. He is Father only to those whom He has adopted into His family by their faith in His Son. And God regularly overburdens His children that they might learn to depend more completely upon Him. The Christian life is quite impossible without the power of the Spirit of God working in us. God gives us plenty of opportunity to experience this truth by letting us get in over our heads and encounter the failure of trying to do for God what He intends He should do for us.

sculleywr said:

Justice gives punishment that matches the action. Finite punishment for finite actions.

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But our sin is ultimately against an infinite Creator-God.

sculleywr said:

There is no way in which a finite being can cause an infinite consequence.

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And on what basis do you presume to define the fundamental character of your sin? Do you think you see your sin better than God does? Or could it be that God who sees all as it truly is and who is utterly without sin is a better judge of the full scope of your sin?

sculleywr said:

Infinite begets infinite. Finite begets finite.

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Quite obviously that is not true. Did not the infinite God beget we finite human beings?

sculleywr said:

However, it never says in Scripture that God intends for people to feel pain. It says pain is in hell. But it does not say that God is the Cause of the pain.

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Come now, you can't possibly actually believe this. Ask a leper if pain is not a good thing. Pain is often a very necessary and positive thing. Ask a bodybuilder or strength athlete. Ask anyone who works to attain the highest level of mastery in any area and they will tell you of the effort - and often pain - involved in doing so.

Selah.

/

aiki said:

Well, there are a few misunderstandings in what you've written here. For starters, our sin is always ultimately against God Himself. He is the Creator and Sustainer of All Things, the Lord God of the Universe who is from everlasting to everlasting. Break your parents rules and you may get grounded; break the laws of your society and you will spend time in prison; break the laws of God Himself and Hell is the consequence. The higher the power or authority, the greater the consequences when you contravene the laws of that authority. That is true when breaking human laws and true also when breaking God's laws. And when you break the laws of the Ultimate Authority, you suffer ultimate consequences.

God's anger and ours are two very different things. Our anger however righteously intended is corrupted by our sinful nature, by our selfish inclinations, and by our finite understanding. Not so with God. He labors under none of the failings that you and I do. It does not work, then, to try to reason to God from yourself. You are far more unlike God than you are like Him.

Finally, God is not Father to all those He has made. He is Father only to those whom He has adopted into His family by their faith in His Son. And God regularly overburdens His children that they might learn to depend more completely upon Him. The Christian life is quite impossible without the power of the Spirit of God working in us. God gives us plenty of opportunity to experience this truth by letting us get in over our heads and encounter the failure of trying to do for God what He intends He should do for us.

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God is the Father of Adam, making Him Father of all who come from Adam. The fact that the prodigal was a prodigal did not change that he was the son. It changed whether he could call upon the authorities and responsibilities of sonship. Before we came to our senses, we were the prodigal. This is why God runs to us when we come to Christ even on the first time. The Father in the Prodigal Son story doesn't run out into the distance to a stranger who was not His son. He runs out for His son.

But our sin is ultimately against an infinite Creator-God.

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Doesn't make our sin infinite. Without God ADDING to our sin that which we could never add, there is no infinite nature to our sin. Our sins have distinct beginnings and ends. God does not. In and of themselves, there is nothing infinite about our sins. They are finite failings, and not infinite by the very fact that we are the SOLE contributors. Unless, of course, you're going to say that God willingly participated in our sin. That He encouraged the sin of man and enabled it. That He contributed to the sin. I'm not going to say this is what you believe, but if you believe that God is incapable of sin, then you must, by that belief, logically believe that the only infinite being in the world will not contribute to the magnitude of our sin. Saying that God gets infinitely offended is no different than saying the speed of light is a variable instead of a constant. In the E=Mc^2 equation, using it as a metaphor, God is the c. The c will never change. The only things that change are E and M. The only thing c does is function to translate mass to energy, and it will never translate a finite number to infinity. It doesn't contribute to the equation. Our sin, no matter how bad it is, is finite. God is the only One Who can make something infinite. So therefore God is the ultimate contributor to the awfulness of the sin if He is the one changing it, because no matter how bad the sin was, there is no way in which you could sin more than the infinite contribution which God adds to your sin.

And on what basis do you presume to define the fundamental character of your sin? Do you think you see your sin better than God does? Or could it be that God who sees all as it truly is and who is utterly without sin is a better judge of the full scope of your sin?

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How does finite beget infinite? It doesn't. Infinity has to be begotten by infinity. Sure, God is the judge of my sin, but if my sin were infinite, then it would be equal to God. How could my sin become the equal to God. Infinity=infinity. There is no such thing as a "greater" infinity. All infinities are equal to each other, because infinity goes off into infinity.

Quite obviously that is not true. Did not the infinite God beget we finite human beings?

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I never argued that God didn't create finite beings. I argued that finite beings can't create something equal to God. That is what you're saying I did. You're saying that I created an amount of sin that was equal to God, because as I said before, infinity=infinity.

Come now, you can't possibly actually believe this. Ask a leper if pain is not a good thing. Pain is often a very necessary and positive thing. Ask a bodybuilder or strength athlete. Ask anyone who works to attain the highest level of mastery in any area and they will tell you of the effort and often pain involved in doing so.

Selah.

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Considering that I have a miniature pharmacy in my bedroom with enough drowsy drugs to knock most people out for a week that I have to take every day, on top of the lesions of psoriasis and stricture in my colon combined with bleeding in my intestines, I'm pretty well accustomed to pain. I used to be able to lift a good 40 pound weight in hammers and curls, but now I'm struggling doing twenty reps with a five pound weight.

Pain that is borne out of love is not truly pain. Not in the same way as the pain of torture. Why am I sick? Probably because God wishes for me to learn to trust Him more, or else for some other way in which my spiritual life will see gain. But there is no such justification from the pain of hell. If it is caused by God, then God is nothing more than a sadistic torturer, and I could not bring myself to compliment, much less worship, such a being.

vinsight4u said:

He cried from hell first and God heard him. This prayer time in the fish recalls how he
had the waters even to his soul and this is showing he drowned before his body was eaten.

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It doesn't say that in Scriptures. That's from First Hezekiah verse twenty. Sorry, I'm not buying that considering just how many times I've read that book of Scripture in both translations of the Hebrew and the Greek.

/

/

Hell will be destroyed.

2 Peter 3:10 (WEB):
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.
11 Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness,
12 looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, which will cause the burning heavens to be dissolved, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

vinsight4u said:

If you were inside of a fish...or even cast into the sea...why would you wait
three days to pray?

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It doesn't say he waited. It said he was in the whale and that he prayed. It doesn't say when. But it does not say he died. For one, the only one who ever died and was resurrected without a prophet around that wasn't dead is Christ. Prophets never resurrected of their own volition.

On another thread it was asked if one would have a child, if they knew there was a chance that it might burn in hell forever? I say why not ask God that? If He knew most would suffer agony forever, why did He create them? I interpret God's word through the lens of God's love. If it isn't love, then there's something wrong with my understanding. Because if God really did make people knowing they would suffer forever, then He is no different than the islamic god. Or satan, for that matter. BTW - God is my Father and He loves me very much and I love Him because He loved me first. This is true for everyone, but do YOU know it?

sculleywr said:

If epistemological certainty is not guaranteed in Scripture,

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Our treasures are in Heaven.
This is stated.
Belief is proof of the things yet unseen, is also stated.
John 3:16 is also a clear statement.

topcare said:

No, you have a lack of understanding.

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I'd say we disagree.

Hell is real

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I never said it isn't.
Conditionalism: Belief in Christ is the condition for eternal life.

vinsight4u said:

The wicked die now, but the soul does not.

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It does with the 2nd death.
Moreover, "Fear God, because He can kill both flesh and soul".

Isaiah 66 ends with events as to the new earth and
the wicked dead are noted as their worm dieth not.

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Isaiah 66:24
And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.
To all flesh indicates this is on earth though.

aiki said:

Why the sarcasm? I'm not being sarcastic with you. I don't like the doctrine of eternal punishment. But it is there in the Bible regardless.

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There is a difference between eternal punisment and eternal punishing.
In Greek the difference is bigger than in English.

Sultan Of Swing said:

Why does this bother you so much?

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You have to ask? Really?
How little do you care about your fellow humans?

Do you not think us sinners are deserving of Hell?

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No, in Christ we "deserve" LIFE.
Christ is the condition for Life Eternal.

BobRyan said: ↑
True - but in Rev 14:10 it is not just the omnipresent God - but the "not-at-all-omnipresent" angels of God. The wicked are right there -- in their presence for all of the suffering and torment. So also in Rev 14:1-6 are the saints with Christ.

Rev 10:10
10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

sculleywr said:

Not disagreed here. But a good question is why would God cause their pain? Why would an all-loving God cause eternal torture, as many westerners believe (I have an SDA friend from school who said she had never been taught that God is the cause, so I'm not sure if this is something I'm simply talking at from a different angle and we're both saying the same thing)? Isn't it more likely that the pain is a result of their hatred for God? could they not hate God in such a way that they couldn't stand His presence?

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1. Far be it from me to argue that it is eternal torture - that would mean that in Rev 14:10 God and the angels are stuck at the brink of hell for all eternity -- which I think would be "hell" for God and the Angels - not just the wicked - having to watch that for all eternity. I leave those who wish to argue that case - to argue it themselves. (So also are all the saints of Rev 14:1-6 stuck there because it says they go with Christ -"wherever He goes")

2. As for SDA teaching - we say that the wicked choose to reject the gospel and by so doing choose to go to that lake-of-fire "hell". But God causes the event. In Rev 20 He supernaturally raises the wicked from the dead. They do not "raise themselves from the dead" so we have to admit this is God doing it - not the wicked. Secondly it is the same fires that burn and cleanse the earth (in preparation for the New Earth) that punishes and destroys the wicked. Clearly the wicked cannot be doing that to themselves either.

Thirdly Great Controversy 673 and Early Writings 294 (Since you asked - I will quote it)

Great Controversy - 673

Fire comes down from God out of heaven. The earth is broken up. The weapons concealed in its depths are drawn forth. Devouring flames burst from every yawning chasm. The very rocks are on fire. The day has come that shall burn as an oven. The elements melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein are burned up. Malachi 4:1; 2 Peter 3:10. The earth's surface seems one molten mass--a vast, seething lake of fire. It is the time of the judgement and perdition of ungodly men--"the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion." Isaiah 34:8. {GC 672.2}

Some are destroyed as in a moment, while others suffer many days. All are punished “according to their deeds."
...
His (Satan's) punishment is to be far greater than that of those whom he has deceived. After all have perished who fell by his deceptions, he is still to live and suffer on. In the cleansing flames the wicked are at last destroyed, root and branch--Satan the root, his followers the branches. The full penalty of the law has been visited; the demands of justice have been met; and heaven and earth, beholding, declare the righteousness of Jehovah. {GC 673.1}
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Early Writings 294

The Second Death

Satan rushes into the midst of his followers and tries to stir up the multitude to action. But fire from God out of heaven is rained upon them, and the great men, and mighty men, the noble, the poor and miserable, are all consumed together.

I saw that some were quickly destroyed, while others suffered longer. They were punished according to the deeds done in the body. Some were many days consuming, and just as long as there was a portion of them unconsumed, all the sense of suffering remained. Said the angel, "The worm of life shall not die; their fire shall not be quenched as long as there is the least particle for it to prey upon." {EW 294.1}

Said the angel, "Satan is the root, his children are the branches. They are now consumed root and branch. They have died an everlasting death. They are never to have a resurrection, and God will have a clean universe." I then looked and saw the fire which had consumed the wicked, burning up the rubbish and purifying the earth. Again I looked and saw the earth purified. There was not a single sign of the curse. The broken, uneven surface of the earth now looked like a level, extensive plain.

Satan will go to hell and be punished -
Ez 28

“...You were the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering:
The sardius, topaz, and diamond,
Beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
Was prepared for you on the day you were created.

14 “You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.

16 “By the abundance of your trading
You became filled with violence within,
And you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing
Out of the mountain of God;
And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the fiery stones


18 “You defiled your sanctuaries
By the multitude of your iniquities,
By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst;
It devoured you,
And I turned you to ashes upon the earth
In the sight of all who saw you.
19 All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you;
You have become a horror,
And shall be no more forever.



The wicked will go to hell
Ezek 18

4"Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine The soul who sins will die.

/

vinsight4u said:

It says that He can kill both, but will He ever do that?

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Yes, it's the 2nd death.

You can see why the prophets were always getting in trouble with the priestly moderators. They would say things publically that were at odds with conventional belief. Isaiah would not be allowed to post here.