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Question for Christians

seashale76

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God is Love and His presence is like fire. How one endures this fire has everything to do with how they were tempered in this life, just like the three righteous youths in the fiery furnace were able to joyfully walk around unharmed in the fire, yet others perished just being near the fire. The fire didn't change. The light of Christ illumines all (even when they hate God and didn't prepare themselves in this life for that reality).

Here is a quote from an old Wikipedia article on the topic (that doesn’t seem to be around anymore) that I thought explained it pretty well: "For many ancient Christians, Hell was the same "place" as Heaven: living in the presence of God and directly experiencing God's love. Whether this was experienced as pleasure or torment depended on one's disposition towards God. St. Isaac of Syria wrote in Mystic Treatises: "... those who find themselves in Hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in Hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" This ancient view is still the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church."
 
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E.C.

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God's love is unconditional, but where things go wrong is the idea that merely not believing means going to Hell. This is wrong because the salvation of man's soul before it is based on belief, works or anything else depends entirely upon God's grace. God alone knows the circumstances of our lives and thus knows how much grace to allow for people.

If a Communist rejects Christ and entices others to do so than he would most likely go to Hell unless he repented. If somebody lives on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and has never heard the Gospel than that is completely different. How can you punish somebody for something they did not know? If we travel to another country and break a law, but didn't know the law and explained to the cop "I'm from another country and I did not know this was a law" than the cop is more likely to let you go with a warning a most than a fine (unless it was some heinous thing like murder).

Christians do not have the job of judging who goes where. That is God's job. He is the judge and He alone is the judge. He knows how much grace to give somebody, we do not. Any Christian who says "you automatically are going to Hell because you do not believe in Christ" is committing a greater sin than the unbeliever, and that Christian is also not a good Christian.
 
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Emmy

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Dear leftrightleftrightleft. You had quite a few replies, and I am surprised that our God, who is LOVE, is thought by some of us as insisting on conditions. How can Love have conditions? that would make Love impure and would NOT be LOVE. The Bible has been written by God-inspired men and women, and could easily have been translated slightly questionable. Instead of God did not approve of Esau`s deeds, it became: God hated Esau. God does NOT hate, God disapproves and abhors. And as for throwing into Hell, we had quite a few good explanations. God is Love, and we are on Earth to learn to love as God wants us to love. God with all our beings, and our neighbour, ( all others, friends or not friends) as ourselves. I say this humbly and with love. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.
 
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bling

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