One final question...

[Aquila 04]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

 

[Lukaris]

Nowhere is something like this scriptural though. It is only in this world that the Lord in His human nature said on the cross:

Luke 23:34-35 New King James Version (NKJV)

34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

And they divided His garments and cast lots. 35 And the people stood looking on. But even the rulers with them sneered, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ, the chosen of God.”

St. Stephen echoed our Lord at his stoning:

Acts 7:59-60 New King James Version (NKJV)

59 And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

In this world St. Paul offered himself for his countrymen but fully aware of limitations.

Romans 9:3 New King James Version (NKJV)

3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,

It is God Who declares His sovereignty in Romans 9:14-18; our salvation is by grace through faith & a gift from God as per Ephesians 2:8-10. How many of us can truly be as forgiving (although we must try) unto death like our Lord, Saints Stephen & Paul & countless Christian martyrs over the centuries? If we are saintly in this life we can pray for the earthly departed since they live ( Matthew 22:32 ). Still, this is just living out the 2 great commands ( Matthew 22:36-40 & the golden rule per Matthew 7:12 ). We can go no further as far as I understand.

 

[Lukaris]

 

[AvgJoe]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

I'm not sure that it's a good idea to ponder things that will never happen. How do we know that this will not happen? Acts 4:11-12(NLT) says,

11 For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says,

‘The stone that you builders rejected
has now become the cornerstone.’

12 There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
​

And, John 14:6(NLT) says,

6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
​

Salvation is found only in Jesus, therefore, none of us can save anyone, not even ourselves, so God will never put us in the scenario you described.

 

[paul1149]

right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless

This hypothetical is completely antithetical to the Gospel. It gives one fallen man sufficient merit to save all of mankind, never mind even himself. That is, he somehow has the ability to bring all of mankind up to God's perfect standard. It places all the weight of salvation upon a man rather than on God, who alone can save. It gives this man merit to save even those who have rejected the grace of God available through Jesus Christ. Thus, it elevates this fallen man's sacrifice above that of Christ. I would consider this a vain imagination to be avoided.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

Aquila,

[What I say below, I say as someone who has earned a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, so please, don't take it as rhetoric from the unlearned. I'm trying to help you see that you can simply dismiss the question altogether. ]

On a philosophical level, I think it is incoherent to pursue questions which borrow their conceptual substance from a source, such as the Bible, but then do not comport with the very paradigm of that same source to which they allude.

If, as Christians, we already know (and we do ...!) that a hypothetical scenario, such as the one represented by your inquiry above, is conceptually precluded by the existing thought forms in the Bible, then it isn't to anyone's benefit to ask these questions. These questions do not open up other possibilities for truth, nor do they help us understand any reality that is in the Christian faith and the Bible. Trying to answer them also does not solve any latent mysteries or ethical dilemmas.

For instance, it would be legitimate to ask how the theory of evolution may or may not be compatible with the biblical account of creation, but it wouldn't be legitimate to ask something like, "Why didn't God sacrifice Lucifer and penalize him for all of humanities' sins, rather than pinning them on Jesus?" See the difference? The theory of evolution comes from OUTSIDE of the Bible, and can be pondered in relation to the Bible itself. Evolution is not an embedded part of the biblical paradigm. However, the notion of Lucifer as a being comes from WITHIN the biblical paradigm, and since we already know from the message of Scripture why Lucifer couldn't, and can't, die on behalf of humanity, there's no need to ask if Lucifer could have replaced Jesus as an atonement for sin.

So, save your time and emotional equilibrium by discerning which questions have philosophical substance from those that don't.

I say this not as a scolding, but as a recommendation for your peace of mind.

Peace
2PhiloVoid

 

[bling]

God and Christ have already done all that can be done to save everyone, so there is nothing for you to do. The rest is up to them to through faith accept or reject God’s Love in the form of forgiveness.

It would not be “loving” on your part nor would Love have been received if you force someone to take God’s Love.

 

[Jeremy J]

When it comes to judgment, God is not going to review our ups and downs. He is going to check for the blood of the lamb, that is, Jesus Christ. When our sins are cleansed by the sacrifice, God no longer looks at them. In fact, he forgets all about them.

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43: 25 NIV)

This also means that we do not gain access to the kingdom of God based on our actions. If salvation was based on our actions, then that would be bad news for all of us (it only took one sin for Adam and Eve to get ejected from Eden). It would completely negate the sacrifice of Jesus. Here is the good news: it is not by action, but by faith that we are saved. What did Jesus say whenever he healed some one? He said, “your faith has healed you.” We cannot earn our place in heaven, but it is being offered to us mercifully by God our Father.

“However, to the one who does not work but trust God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.” (Romans 4: 5 NIV)

You see, Jesus already paid the price of death for the sins of God’s children. The best part about it is that he also resurrected, conquering death. Sin is completely powerless in the presence of God. Jesus already accomplished more than what you’re asking. However, God will not recognize those who have not surrendered themselves to him as his children.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive our demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!’” (Matthew 7: 21-23 NIV)

 

[Soyeong]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

Do you think it would be right to force people to spend eternity with a God that they wanted nothing to do with?

 

[Winken]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

It isn't going to happen --- why invent it?

 

[dhh712]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

I would categorize this as a vain question not worth the mental exercise. All answers will be matters of speculation. If you answer yes, you delude yourself into thinking you're the epitomy of what it means to be self-sacrificing, forfeiting your eternal happiness for the benefit of the rest of creation. If you answer no, you delude yourself into thinking you are an inadequate Christian, quite self-centered in that you'd rather look to your own interests when you could have saved the rest of the world from agony. The reality is that you won't know how you'll answer until you're in the situation. The further reality is that it will never happen.

 

[ViaCrucis]

So this is something that has run through my mind for a while. I don't know what made it pop into my head but I think I have an idea. Anyway, this is a question that I have found very difficult to answer and even some of my family I have presented it too had no idea what they'd say. So here is the question, I'll present it the same way as I did for my family, kind of a story fashion. So here goes...

"So we'll say you have passed away and of course in spirit you rise up and are standing before God at your judgement. God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven. Now right before you enter God stops you and says he has one final question for you. He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead. This includes all of your family, friends and even enemies. The faithful and unfaithful. People such as Hitler, Bin Laden and even Satan himself would be redeemed and given a place in Heaven. You alone would be cast into Hell but will be immortalized by God as a true Martyr, not as great as Christ but similar to him nonetheless. Which path if those were your options would you choose?"

I have wanted to start a discussion with Christians about this for a while but being in the military I don't really know anyone in my unit or anything that I could talk seriously about it with. So anyway, what is your answer and why?

It's a great sentiment, but it has some flaws.

Firstly this idea tends to assume a dynamic between Heaven and Hell as fundamentally about reward and punishment, so in the hypothetical one is forsaking their deserved reward in order that others might not have to be punished. This has its own problems, namely, not only is "Heaven" perceived as reward but that there is a sense of it being deserved or as an entitlement.

Intrinsically within Christian thought is the idea of grace, that God's bestowal to us of His gifts is not on account of personal merit, but out of His own goodness and kindness. We have not merited a place with God, as such there is no sense of entitlement to be had, to is solely the good and kind God condescending to take us and place us with Him. When the king says, "Come sit at my right hand" He is speaking not to nobles whose rightful place is beside the king, but to criminals and beggars, the sorts we should expect to be cast outside into the darkness away from the light of the king's palace. Those He invites to sit at the Table and to partake in the feast are not the great, the mighty, and the deserving, but the least of these, the sinners and the wretches who are granted clean new clothes and told to join the great feast by His invitation and call.

Further, the Christian faith is not about "rewards and punishments", it's not about the good getting theirs and the bad getting theirs; it's about God setting the world right, God renewing, restoring, and healing all creation. Our salvation is God drawing us and bringing us into that work of new creation. So the end is not about some people going off to a place called "heaven" and some people going off to a place called "hell", it's about God taking the entirety of creation and redeeming it and bringing it to that place of newness and refreshment that is spoken about continually throughout the Scriptures, "a new heavens and a new earth", such that there is peace and justice for and in the whole world. Ultimately "hell" is not some place where icky bad sinners go because they don't deserve the good things of God, it is instead an ultimate rejection of all that is good and right, a rejection of creation, of everything that has meaning, including one's own humanity and dignity as the image bearing creature of God.

In Christ God became man, united Himself with our very humanity and took it even into death, and rising from the dead He destroyed the power of death, and so in Him there is new creation, renewal, redemption, healing, for the whole world. And it really is for the whole world, there is nothing and no one outside of what God is doing. But there may be, at the conclusion of it all, still those who vehemently refuse God, reject and oppose love, mercy, justice, kindness, and all that is good and beautiful--to be in that place, or that position, of a total rejection of all that is good and real can only be described in the most horrific of language: Hell.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[com7fy8]

God reviews your life, your ups and your downs, and ultimately decides he is pleased with what you have done and he says that you have earned your place in Heaven.

I understand your question, I offer, but we no way have earned our own place in heaven. We have desperately needed how grace has changed us to become like Jesus so we can do well in Heaven > 1 John 4:17. So, let's say God has fully prepared us so we are ready to spend eternity with Him, being pleasing to Him like His own Son Jesus in us makes us pleasing to our Father. And then >

He asks you if you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your place in Heaven to let everyone who has ever existed enter Heaven instead.

You alone would be cast into Hell

Our Apostle Paul says,

"For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh," (Romans 9:3)

So, I would say Paul has given you the answer that he would say to your question > he does mean, then, I would consider, how he could accept hell if it meant all Jews would be saved. And I consider how there were Jews who maybe made more trouble for Paul, than anyone, including torturing him by whipping him. Yet, he "could" wish to be accursed from Jesus, for the sake of even those Jews, so they could be saved. And so, this possibly indirectly answers if he "could" do this also for all Gentiles . . . if he could be willing to be accursed from Jesus for the sake of Jews who had been so hateful against him.

By the way . . . if a Christian were to go to hell . . . the person would be in the image of Jesus. I do not think that Jesus can suffer in hell, nor a child of God who is like Christ. Because we would not have the nature which is capable of being tormented in that "fire" > "For our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:29) God is good for us, not burning us. So, it would be impossible, "maybe", for a genuinely Christian person to suffer in hell for any and all others.

Plus, Satan has been in Heaven, already; he couldn't stand it, what with everything being perfectly loving and unselfish. So, likewise, some "number" of evil people in Heaven might be screaming with agony and would "need" to go where they would not be going berserk about everything being worship and praise of God and loving as family.

And I consider that the fire of hell is for control, not only for making souls suffer. Ones of Satan are so contrary like he is, not able to reason about all so good. They have been so stubborn against God; so there is no way to reason with them > only fire can control them, since they will not submit willingly. And they would hate Heaven; so fire keeps them in their place.

So, like Paul our example, we "could" accept being in hell for any and all souls, but . . . how long would it be before some number were screaming their way out of Heaven to us. And they "might" not want us around where they will be. So, they might come and kick us out!!

But in case God is the "fire" of hell . . . we who are like Jesus would not be suffering, to be with our own Father!!! Fire can burn trash or cook a chicken, but the same fire can warm us who are around the fire and warmly and affectionately sharing as family. It depends on the nature of the person and how he or she is relating with the fire.