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Why is scripture so fuzzy about heaven and hell?

iwbswiaihl

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Maybe it just your view that the wrath of God has done all of this! God doesn't make mistakes! So that would or should tell you something.
 
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Jamdoc

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On the contrary. Did Jesus succeed or fail his mission?

1 John 4:14 NIV
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

Yes, Salvation is available to all but it requires one thing, belief.
That's the one thing all scripture regarding salvation requires, the lowest common denominator if you will and some verses about salvation and eternal life ONLY require belief on the Son of God, so.. that's it, that's sufficient. Nothing else you can add to that.

Jesus Himself said the following:

Matthew 7

Matthew 22

The offer of salvation IS to the entire world, but only a minority of people actually take the gift.

Jesus would not use such language if it was universal.
He didn't fail at His mission, you just don't understand the scope of His mission.
Here, Here is where Jesus states His mission:

John 6

This is not everyone, this is an elected group of people.
 
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Jamdoc

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Maybe it just your view that the wrath of God has done all of this! God doesn't make mistakes! So that would or should tell you something.

Well, I mean... it's scripture

Revelation 16

During the wrath of God, all sea life is killed.
Now.. I mean, a lot of things die during the wrath of God. and His judgements are right.
But, for most things, there is a restoration.

Revelation 21
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

Except, the sea is not restored

again Revelation 21
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

So it is our fault, from our sin that brought the wrath of God on Earth that killed all sea life. I am just saddened that God will not restore the seas and the sea life when all things are made new except apparently the seas.

I look at Genesis 1 and 2 as what God intended the Earth to be like.
Because God does not restore Earth to be like Genesis 1 and 2, it seems that He has changed His mind.
Were oceans a mistake then?
Were sea otters and dolphins and whales and coral, and sea turtles mistakes? I wouldn't think so, because Genesis 1


God created seas and they were good, God created life in the seas, and it was good..
why then, in the new earth, is there no place for these things? Are they not good? They did not sin, and yet they are extinct because of our sin... and they are not restored.
That makes me sad.
 
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iwbswiaihl

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Just because we do not know all the why's and what for's is no reason to question the word of God. Of course that is only my view, every tub sets on its own bottom.
 
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Saint Steven

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We are mostly in agreement here.
As you probably know, no one can come to God unless the Spirit draws them. What about those whom the Spirit does not draw? Eternal conscious torment?

And if the Elect are those drawn and predestined for eternal life, everyone else was predestined for "hell". Will they never have the opportunity to be drawn?
 
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iwbswiaihl

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Saint Steven

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You are neglecting the scriptures that will show this point of view is your misunderstanding of scripture. Such as when you say, no one can come to God unless the Spirit draws them.
John 6:44 NIV
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.
 
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Der Alte

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Rubbish. If the Jew's understanding of Gehenna, and Hades was from paganism and was wrong Jesus would not have used the same words but unfortunately for your false narrative Jesus used the same words and never said that their understanding was wrong. When Jesus used gehenna and hades when talking to Jews they would have understood it as supporting their belief. Would Jesus teach lies?
 
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Der Alte

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Nonsense. Rubbish. No, zero, none credible, verifiable, etc evidence for any of this fairy tale. Jesus would NOT use lies or anything pagan to spread HIs gospel. As for Gehenna there was never a burning garbage dump in the Gehenna. People searching for the truth would know that. You don't, ergo, you don't look for the truth you look for anything from anywhere, anybody the only requirement is it must support you assumption/presuppositions.
The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. A.D. 1200). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources (Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 5 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-56], 4:2:1030). Also a more recent author holds a similar view (Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," Biblical Archeologist 49 [1986]: 189.
Source, Bibliotheca Sacra / July–September 1992
http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted...Articles/BSac-NT/Scharen-GenenaSyn-Pt1-BS.htm
…..Note: There is no “archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, [that Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump] in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources” If Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump there should be broken pottery, tools, utensils, bones, etc. but there is no, zero, none such evidence.
“Gehenna is presented as diametrically opposed to ‘life’: it is better to enter life than to go to Gehenna. . .It is common practice, both in scholarly and less technical works, to associate the description of Gehenna with the supposedly contemporary garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom. This association often leads scholars to emphasize the destructive aspects of the judgment here depicted: fire burns until the object is completely consumed. Two particular problems may be noted in connection with this approach. First, there is no convincing evidence in the primary sources for the existence of a fiery rubbish dump in this location … Secondly, the significant background to this passage more probably lies in Jesus’ allusion to Isaiah 66:24.”
(“The Duration of Divine Judgment in the New Testament” in The Reader Must Understand edited by K. Brower and M. W. Ellion, p. 223, emphasis mine)
G. R. Beasley-Murray in Jesus and the Kingdom of God:
“Ge-Hinnom (Aramaic Ge-hinnam, hence the Greek Geenna), ‘The Valley of Hinnom,’ lay south of Jerusalem, immediately outside its walls. The notion, still referred to by some commentators, that the city’s rubbish was burned in this valley, has no further basis than a statement by the Jewish scholar Kimchi (sic) made about A.D. 1200; it is not attested in any ancient source.” (p. 376n.92)
http://www.btdf.org/forums/topic/20113-the-burning-garbage-dump-of-gehenna-is-a-myth/

Miqweh of Second Temple Period. ......Jerusalem City-Dump in the Late Second Temple Period, ZDPV, 119/1 (2003),
The chance discovery of an Early Roman city dump (1st century CE) in Jerusalem has yielded for the first time ever quantitative data on garbage components that introduce us to the mundane daily life Jerusalemites led and the kind of animals that were featured in their diet. Most of the garbage consists of pottery shards, all common tableware, while prestige objects are entirely absent. Other significant garbage components include numerous fragments of cooking ovens, wall plaster, animal bones and plant remains. Of the pottery vessels, cooking pots are the most abundant type.

…..Most of the refuse turns out to be “household garbage” originating in the domestic areas of the city, while large numbers of cooking pots may point to the presence of pilgrims. Significantly, the faunal assemblage, which is dominated by kosher species and the clear absence of pigs, set Jerusalem during its peak historical period apart from all other contemporaneous Roman urban centers.
...
Recently, the contemporaneous city-dump was identified on the eastern slope of the south-eastern hill of Jerusalem in the form of a thick mantle (up to 10 m, 200,000 m3 ) (Reich and Shukron 2003). The dump is located roughly 100 m outside and south-east of the Temple Mount on the eastern slope of the Kidron Valley (fig. 1), and extends at least 400 m and is 50–70 m wide. Large amounts of pottery and coins date the dump to the Early Roman period (the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE up to the destruction of the city by the Romans in 70 CE). A preliminary study of the garbage (Bouchnik, Bar-Oz and Reich 2004; Bouchnik et al. 2005) showed the presence of animal bones.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...udy_of_the_City-Dump_of_Early_Roman_Jerusalem
Jerusalem’s Garbage

The Myth of the Burning Garbage Dump of Gehenna – BiblePlaces.com
 
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Hmm

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Do you never get tired of being offensive?

I couldn't care less what your answer is and I doubt I'll even read it but, as some friendly advice, you'd do well to consider why you always feel the need to preface your constantly copy and pasted text wall comments with "Rubbish!" and "Wrong!" and think about what that says about you and your life.
 
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ozso

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Rubbish. It's not my narrative. It's been around even since before FDR. There's more than one interpretation of Luke 16:19-31. And I'm certainly not insisting the one I presented is the only correct way to interpret it. I agree that when Jesus used gehenna and hades when talking to Jews they would have understood it. But he obviously didn't support their beliefs. It's a fact that Hades and the conditions of it Jesus described, first came from the Greeks. It's a fact that after the Babylonian captivity the scribes and Pharisees made up all kinds of things, which is probably why the ones in Jesus' time didn't recognize him as the Messiah. They were totally out of touch.

The crux of the story is: “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

If they [the scribes and Pharisees] do not listen to Moses and the Prophets [but rather make up their own stuff] they will not be convinced even if someone [Jesus] rises from the dead.’”

Which they weren't. They stuck to their Babylonian Talmud.

Would Jesus teach lies?

No, but he would use symbolism they were familiar with when telling a parable.
 
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Der Alte

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"Copy pasted" implies dishonestly copy someone else's work and using it without proper citation.
I post my own work. When I started on this forum 3+ decades ago I quickly realized that the same arguments and the same out-of-context proof texts are posted over and over ad infinitum. So I started saving my responses and updated them when I found additional information.
Some such information includes purchasing the digital editions of Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich Greek lexicon and Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew lexicon about $60 per.
I also purchased Origen's commentary on John books 13-32. also about $60.
The reason for Origen's commentary was because some UR-ite claimed that in that commentary Origen supposedly mentioned "'after aionios life' many times."
All this so I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time some UR-ite posts the same specious arguments and out-of-context proof texts.
Don't want the same responses don't post the same specious arguments over and over.
 
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iwbswiaihl

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John 6:44 NIV
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.

The invitation is to those whoever will call on the name of the Lord: Romans 10:8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” 12For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. 13For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

John 6:39-40 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
 
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ozso

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If you look for the origin of Hades and the way Jesus described it, you'll find it in Greek myology. I already said I think Jesus was using Gehenna symbolically based on whatever the scribes and Pharisees made up about Gehenna and put in their Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud is not sacred scripture in any way. If you're going to claim it is in any way, then the whole thing is sacred scripture like the Bible, including what it says about Jesus and Christians, which means you and I are in big trouble.
 
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Der Alte

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"But he [Jesus] obviously didn't support their beliefs" Show me some scriptural evidence that Jesus did not support the Jewish belief in Gehenna/Sheol as a place of eternal punishment?
Would Jesus tell lies , i.e. something pagan, without informing His Jewish audience that they were false? You flunk. I do not need your UR biased commentary. I have the Eastern Greek Orthodox NT. Which you will not accept because they translated "aionios" as "eternal."
 
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ozso

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Old bad habits are hard to break.
 
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ozso

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Jesus didn't support their non-scriptural beliefs and teachings period. Either that or Jesus supports the Talmud, even though it condemns Him and us.
 
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