psychoslice
Veteran Member
For me no one goes to hell, its all in your head, in fact you could be living a life right now in hell.
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Do innocent sinful people go to hell?
- Thread starter The Transcended Omniverse
- Start date
We are all free to choose our own path and where it leads.....no one will be able to complain because the destination was their choice.
NO! The Bible teaches that "hell" (hades) is simply the grave. We all go there. No one is tormented in there...it is a place of restful sleep. (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; John 11:11-14)
"Gehenna" is the "other hell" but it isn't a place of eternal conscious torment either. The reward God gives to faithful ones is everlasting life...."gehenna" is the opposite....it is everlasting death. God is not a fiend, nor does his justice demand something so heinous. He rewards only the righteous with life, so how can he torture the wicked unless he grants them life too?
ThorirTheHound
Member
You don't have free will as a monotheist. Your free will is an illusion considering you teach that your God is all knowing.We are all free to choose our own path and where it leads.....no one will be able to complain because the destination was their choice.
I absolutely do. I can choose whether to remain faithful to my God or not. My destiny is entirely my own choice.
I am afraid that the illusion is yours. You have heard the saying..."a little knowledge is a dangerous thing"? Well, when applied to the Bible, it can be the most dangerous knowledge there is. People make decisions about God based on widely disseminated misinformation, not genuine truth.
I know what free will is (according to what the Bible teaches)....and it isn't the freedom to do whatever you like. It is the freedom to choose within the parameters set by the Creator.
There are limits to what you can choose and remain in God's favor.
What the churches teach is a warped version of events at best. Only those who discard those ideas will ever come to an accurate knowledge of the way it really is.
ThorirTheHound
Member
Please, tell me.. How is it you have free will if your creator already knows the future? That makes no sense.. Your fate is written before you're even born.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Make of these what you will.
Matthew 18:6-9
Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Matthew 25:31-46
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” . . . Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . . .
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Jude 7
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 13
[These people are] wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
Revelation 14:9-11
If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.
Revelation 20:10, 14-15
And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. . . . Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
2 Thessalonians 1:5-10
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.
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Thief
Rogue Theologian
note the Prodigal Son.....
I suspect....going to hell is one's own making
if no one in heaven will stand beside you......
Thief
Rogue Theologian
kinda like......
dropping a seed where it cannot flourish
you know the outcome
unlike seeds that must take root....we can do something about ourselves
that's when the freewill takes hold
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The Transcended Omniverse
Well-Known Member
But all of that is just things being stated. I myself could state anything. I could state that there is a hell and that it is only temporary. That a sinner will remain there until he/she changes. Or I could state that there is no hell at all and that God has created a blissful paradise for us all. So that is why we cannot rely on things that are just simply stated.
We need actual evidence. So where is the actual evidence for those things being stated?
Skwim
Veteran Member
As I said: Make of these what you will.
You asked "Is there any evidence at all that sinners go to hell for eternity?" I presented what I thought is evidence within the Christian framework of belief. If you don't consider it to be sufficient evidence, so be it. But if you're a Christian I'm curious as to how you apply the logic you use here to reject these passages while evidently not using it with others in the Bible---if this happens to be the case.
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The Transcended Omniverse
Well-Known Member
I am not Christian. I am agnostic and am open to any possibility. I am open to the possibility that the brain produces consciousness and that once you die, you are gone for good (materialism). I am also open to the possibility that you are a soul that survives death and that there is a heaven and hell.
Just because God can know the future, doesn't mean that he always chooses to. If there were no free will, then everything would be boringly predictable.
If I had a key that could unlock every lock in existence, would I have to unlock every lock just because I could? God doesn't have to know everything either.
Some things he leaves to our choice. Our decision to love and serve the interests of the Creator are ours to make. You have chosen a different course to mine....are you saying that this choice was made for you? If so, then who made it?
ThorirTheHound
Member
That still doesn't answer my question.
Your God is all encompassing, all power, all knowing and omnipresent. He's always been and always will be.. If he already knows everything that will happen and he is your creator, your will giver, then you actually don't have any true free will.
Ana.J
Active Member
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” ― Oscar Wilde
I personally this there is no such thing as hell the way we portray it. There is no such thing as sin as I see it. We saw love, we reap love. If we saw hate, - we reap hate. That is it. If you is a homosexual and live your life loving yourself and others was it a sin? And what if you had a wife and beat the heck out of her every day and she killed herself?
I personally this there is no such thing as hell the way we portray it. There is no such thing as sin as I see it. We saw love, we reap love. If we saw hate, - we reap hate. That is it. If you is a homosexual and live your life loving yourself and others was it a sin? And what if you had a wife and beat the heck out of her every day and she killed herself?
The Bible says that God is omniscient and omnipotent but "all encompassing" and "omnipresent"....that is not in the scriptures. God is given a location ("Our Father who art in heaven") and his omniscience means that he can know what is going on anywhere he chooses. He doesn't have to be omnipresent.
God has free will and so do we. We can align our will to his and benefit from his wisdom, or we can choose to enact our own will in defiance of his.
The Bible is a record of people who did both so that we can evaluate the outcome of our own choices. He forces no one to do anything against their will, but simply tells them about the consequences of their choices. Sounds fair to me.
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
I think morons, which would be people who screw up but whose hearts aren't OMG EVULZ, get a pass, maybe some extra homework in Heaven or something. God was fairly clear (most of the time) He looks at motive, not what's on the surface (the sins themselves).
Have a hard time imagining the latter one. It's an oxymoron, really.
Narcissistic sociopaths are mentally ill, perhaps even spiritually ill. They lack fully functioning mirror neurons. That puts it squarely in God's court, as how you're born is up to Him. You can, after all, only play with the cards you're dealt, and God chose not to give you 52 cards. It's up to Him how He wants to play that, then.
Neglect is only another type of abuse. It's like saying you don't run over kids but you didn't feed them, either. Still, as you're clearly incapable of any kind of empathetic thought, it's most likely biologically derived and you've already had issues with this, so, per Jesus, it's already dealt with and no need to get into it in the afterlife. I'm not saying to expect a parade or anything, but I think God has no problem with biological malfunctions.
It can't be a matter of lack of information, as it is the 21st century and you can read up all you want about ethics and behavior, even for free. Thus, if you just simply CAN'T give a crap about others, it's biologically derived and while it may not make too many self-righteous people very happy, God will certainly grade on a curve for things which are technically His fault. It's like why Adam, Eve, and Cain aren't killed ... they were MORONS, not evil people, acting like impulsive brats rather than rational adult mature human beings.
Jesus will be there too, per his own words. He said anyone who calls another a fool will go to hell. I guess he forgot he called Pharisees fools. Whoops.
Not really. Time may not be synced with how we experience it on earth, but a vague time still kinda exists (or else you'd be little more than a still photo, as doing ANYTHING in heaven or hell requires the concept of time), so "character progression" can still be a thing.
If you aren't born with functioning mirror neurons it is NOT a choice to lack empathy. It literally just simply cannot happen.
One wonders what is so heavenly about heaven's inhabitants if they refuse to help the downtrodden, though.
Gyrannon
Agnostic Necromancer
How can anyone be sinful & innocent at the same time? How can anyone be selfish but somehow kind & respectful to others?
From a Biblical view, you can't. From a common sense view, you can't.
You are innocent if you have not done anything wrong ever in your life & you are severely naive of everything around you. But if you are fully aware of the difference between right & wrong and you are sinfully aware, then you are not innocent.
Sinning (according to the bible/s) is just like committing a crime, if you have not committed a crime, then you are innocent & thus not sinful.
But seriously from what I experienced, its impossible to live a life without sinning. Add that with the Seven Deadly Sins and your goal towards not ever sinning becomes that much harder.
From a Biblical view, you can't. From a common sense view, you can't.
You are innocent if you have not done anything wrong ever in your life & you are severely naive of everything around you. But if you are fully aware of the difference between right & wrong and you are sinfully aware, then you are not innocent.
Sinning (according to the bible/s) is just like committing a crime, if you have not committed a crime, then you are innocent & thus not sinful.
But seriously from what I experienced, its impossible to live a life without sinning. Add that with the Seven Deadly Sins and your goal towards not ever sinning becomes that much harder.
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
But your were saying the destination was your choice. Clearly not, if you cannot make a choice.