The message of Fred Phelps

[CreedIsChrist]

7. And now, if you Gentiles will be persuaded by these motives, and leave your vain imaginations about your pedigrees, and gaining of riches, and philosophy, and will not spend your time about subtleties of words, and thereby lead your minds into error, and if you will apply your ears to the hearing of the inspired prophets, the interpreters both of God and of his word, and will believe in God, you shall both be partakers of these things, and obtain the good things that are to come; you shall see the ascent unto the immense heaven plainly, and that kingdom which is there. For what God hath now concealed in silence [will be then made manifest] what neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.
8. In whatsoever ways I shall find you, in them shall I judge you entirely; so cries the end of all things. And he who hath at first lived a virtuous life, but towards the latter end falls into vice, these labors by him before endured shall be altogether vain and unprofitable, even as in a play, brought to an ill catastrophe. Whosoever shall have lived wickedly and luxuriously may repent; however, there will be need of much time to conquer an evil habit, and even after repentance his whole life must be guarded with great care and diligence, after the manner of a body, which, after it hath been a long time afflicted with a distemper, requires a stricter diet and method of living; for though it may be possible, perhaps, to break off the chain of our irregular affections at once,--yet our amendment cannot be secured without the grace of God, the prayers of good men, the help of the brethren, and our own sincere repentance and constant care. It is a good thing not to sin at all; it is also good, having sinned, to repent,--as it is best to have health always, but it is a good thing to recover from a distemper. To God be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Discourse_to_the_Greeks_concerning_Hades"

 

[Soul Searcher]

Your telling me your "common sense" has more wisdom than God? What pride..Your common sense is a tiny speck in the sand compared to the plan of God. Please don't assume you know the answers. Since you provide a few vague verses I will go through with them with you

There you go again saying that I am telling you somethign that I am not. What I said was use some common sense man. Think about it. God did not write the bible, men did. God did not create this eternal hell, men did.

Of course, but what does this have to do with hell? God dosen't want people to goto hell. Why do you think he is so patient with this world?

There is no such place as eternal hell and no one will go there. What the statement says is that God will have all to be saved, which means that it is the will of God that this happen and no man can twart the will of God.

Yes Jesus is the savior of the world. Dosen't mean everyone is going to choose him. Theres a thing called free will. A while its possible that everyone could be saved we see that there are people that God condemns and God saves. There are people that God always knew would be reprobate and reject him. And nothing impure can enter heaven. Only these redeemed by Christ through his blood.

Nonsense. If even one person is not saved then Jesus is not the saviour of the world but would be the saviour of most of the world. If it is as many Christains will tell us that most of the world will burn in hell for eternity while only a few are saved then Jesus is certianly not the savior of the world nor even most of the world but a little bit of the world and since his mission was to save the world that would mean he was a misserable failure and certianly could not be God as God does not fail.

Yes the lake of fire is also called the "second death". And is the lake of fire eternal? What exactly is the lake of fire? Well we must examine the bible to find out

No it is not eternal, and to get a good idea of what it is we must look at the meaning of the word torment [to test the purity of gold and silver] we must look at the writings of Paul where he talks of our works [deeds] being tried by fire. We must understand that brimstone was taught by the authors to be a purifing agent. We must also understand that it does not indicate that even one person will not take part in the lake of fire, instead it states that those who have overcome, endured to the end will not be harm by it. If we compare to Pauls writings we see that if they have no hay or stubble and only gold and silver no harm woudl come of them, yet they will still be tried by the fire.

As for the foreever and ever does that make any sense to you. How long is eternity and eternity anyway? Is that even a valid word? Did you consider that this was from a vision that lasted a very short time? John certianly did not see anything forever, Also how can they be tormented night and day if there is no more night? The book of revelation is filled with symbols and must be understood in that manner.

Oh and btw the lake of fire IS NOT HELL. So if you want to insist on an eternal hell don't use the LOF or other references to fire that do not speak of hell. Show me any verse that says hell is eternal or that those who go to this hell remain there forever. Keeping in mind of course that the bible does say that hell will give up its dead.

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 1: 7)

Is the city of sodom still burning? No. nuff said.

What we must remeber is that hell is not eternal, it is the holding place of the damned until judegement. At which they will be thrown into the lake of fire with the devil and his angels. This is where they will be eternally

Nope. what we must remember is that it is EVIL to torture helpless creatures, and extremely EVIL to continue to do so. There is no eternal fire. It is not even possible that there can be an eternal fire. Again use some common sense rather than cherry picking verses to support your false doctorine.

No, Jesus says we should love our enemys and pray for those that hurt you. Why does Jesus tell us this? Because Christians must make an effort to love everyone, including their enemys. As Christ says if you love only your neighbor what reward is there in that?

Read the sermon. He says that we should do this to be like the father which is in heaven, perhaps it goes over your head as worded so I will clearify. He tells them multiple things which we have already touched on then near the end of these things he says be ye therefore perfect as the father in heaven is perfect. Now many preachers tell us that this means that God demands perfection and that is why we need Jesus but that is not even close to the point Jesus was making. The thing that almost all of them ignore is that all these things that he said for us to do he indicates is the way of the father, the way the father is and it totally destroys the doctorines they preach. Perhaps it is a willfull oversight on thier part as the coffers would not be as full in thier church if they were honest.

Again this has to do with living the path of Christ and nothing to do about hell or judgement. You still have yet provide me no verses that says the lake of fire is not eternal or just for a set amount of time.

So now it is not hell that is eternal, it is the lake of fire, why did you not say so in the first place? You are still wrong but at least you have a string case as there is no verse that explicitly states that the lake of fire has and end. However if we read Paul and understand what he is talking about when he speaks of the fires of judgment we will see that those subjected to the fire shall be saved. We also see from Paul that those turned over to satan are done so with the expressed purpose of saving thier spirits.

There is so much more to it that the traditional doctorines of turn or burn will say. Those doctorines portray a God is is vengeful and evil at the core, one who displays traits that no human would ever aspire to be and we would condemn in any man. We would and have condemned much less than the things that God is falsely accused of by religion and they praise him not because of these deplorable actions but because they thing they will be saved. Basically it is a mindset of to hell with everyone else so long as I am saved it's all good. It shows no thought to the concept or no caring in the heart or a bit of both. It certianly in no way portrays a loving God nor a caring Christain spirit and is not something that anyone should ever hope to become.

And before you say I'm telling you that I am more ..... than God. I am not sayign any such thing. I am saying that you are not God and you do not know what you are talking about. Use your head for a change.

 

[Soul Searcher]

What we must remeber is that hell is not eternal, it is the holding place of the damned until judegement. At which they will be thrown into the lake of fire with the devil and his angels. This is where they will be eternally

Another thought on this statement. The bible states that all who die go to hell not just those who you call the damned. It also states that once hell gives up its dead then they shall be judged. In other words they have not been damned yet as that is the result of judgment not the precursor to it. Then as I pointed out before it says that they shall suffer loss and/or gain reward but they each and every one shall be saved which is the will of God.

On another note freewill is not a concept supported by the bible. It is a concept thought up by the church to somehow rationalize the doctorine of eternal torment rather than the obovious answer e.g. the doctorine is false.

 

[Soul Searcher]

The definition of "eternal" is up for grabs anyway. It's hardly the most comprehensible concept at the best of times.

For a start: does it mean "forever" or does it mean "outside time"?

IMO those who try and define it as outside of time are grasping at straws. To the best of our knowledge there is nothing outside of time. Yet we do see these words used in the bible to describe things that had a very limited time frame though at the time the exact amount of time was unknown.

I pointed out that Jonah was int he whale for 3 days and nights. The bible says forever. This same word is translated as such many times in many different cases many are clearly not forever and the others can only be assumed to mean forever if we ignore the way it is used in the verses where we do know that it was not forever. Was it an exageration or is it just an error in translation that has breeded a whole new doctorine of eternal suffering?

If we look at the Greek translations of the old testament then we will see the Greek words also translated as forever, eternal, everlasting and such are the very same words they used to translate the Hebrew words which clearly did not mean forever. In fact as I understand the Hebrews did not even have a word which meant forever.

If we look at the concordances and lexicons now we will see as part of the defintion for both the Hebrew and Greek words meaning without end, eternal. Where do you think this part of the definition came from? Religion of course. It was not the meaning of the word when used by those Hebrew authors but due to the doctorines and the way it is translated in books like the KJV they have added to the definition. It is in error that they have done so.

I agree that eternity is an incomprehensible concept it is also one that is often very missused. It seems that the words translated as eternal, forever, everlasting and so on are used in much the same way we use the word forever in common everyday language.

"I was stuck in traffic forever this morning on my way to work."

We know that I was not in traffic literally forever. We do not know how long it actually was but we can infer that it seemed like a long time, more than what we would accept as normal anyway. This is the way the word is most commonly used in our language. It is almost never used to mean literally forever [outside of religion] but is used to make a point. It is sad that so many people look at things like this in the bible, interpret it literally and then build a doctorine around it.

 

[cantata]

IMO those who try and define it as outside of time are grasping at straws.

Well, I actually feel that unless you put God outside time, it gets very tricky to attribute many of the other characteristics to her that a lot of people would like her to have. Can she be truly omnipotent if she is subject to time (and if she didn't create time)? Can she be immutable if she is temporal? &c.

I would add that, in my estimation, the majority of contemporary and historical Christian theologians have placed God outside of time.

 

[Soul Searcher]

Well, I actually feel that unless you put God outside time, it gets very tricky to attribute many of the other characteristics to her that a lot of people would like her to have. Can she be truly omnipotent if she is subject to time (and if she didn't create time)? Can she be immutable if she is temporal? &c.

I would add that, in my estimation, the majority of contemporary and historical Christian theologians have placed God outside of time.

I have heard the concept many times to be sure but it still doesn't make any sense to me. Everything we know of has a begining and an end, time is simply the way we measure this period. Of course there is no way to assign a begining nor and end to that which is truly eternal but still to me that does not say that it is outside of time, nor does not being outside of time mean that anyone or anything is actually subject to time. Time simply is and it passes by at a constant rate or so it seems.

Perhaps [even likely] there is much more to time than I understand but from my point of view the notion of being outside of time is quite a reach and I certianly have never saw anything to make me think that anything is beyond time or space.