do you agree with this theory? Orthodox only

[davidthegreek]

I have got the following reply to my question about whether Hell is self imposed. And I would like you to share your thoughts about the post. Here it goes:
















[QUOTEFor my two cents worth, I would first of all have to know what "heaven" and "hell" actually are in order to make an assessment of this question.

Are they opposites as some are led to believe?

From my studies of various faiths, I can see that many have been taught that we have an inherent immortal soul that departs the body at death and is taken to a place of eternal happiness, if they have been "good", and the "wicked" to a place of punishment in terrible torment, in flames that are never quenched.

These beliefs come from sources outside the Bible. The scriptures do not teach about this concept at all, though attempts have been made to reconcile what the Bible teaches with these pagan notions. The churches are responsible for this situation by trying to combine paganism with Christianity. This is something God told us not to do. (2 Cor 6:14-18)

In the first place, God never offered humans a life in heaven for any reason. He placed material beings on a material earth in a material universe. God is a spirit and he was already surrounded by millions of spirit beings for eons before man was ever created.

When God placed man in a beautiful garden home, with every variety of delicious fruit to eat, he never intended for them to live anywhere else. These creatures he made 'in his own image and likeness' had free will to make choices in many areas of life.

There was only one prohibition for them; a small test of obedience was there in the garden...a fruit tree with with a big "DON"T TOUCH.....THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY. OFFENDERS WILL FORFEIT THEIR LIFE" sign on it (metaphorically speaking) Death is not mentioned for any other reason.

This prohibition posed no hardship on man at all. If it had not been for a rebellious spirit creature seeking to undermine God's authority and steal worshippers away for himself, we might not be having this conversation right now. But a powerful spirit 'son of God' wanted something that did not belong to him....he wanted to be 'like God' and have others worship him....he lied through his teeth to obtain it.

To cut a long story short....God allowed the devil to do his thing so that he could prove to all humanity and also to the other spirit sons what a lousy god and ruler he is. There is no place for rebels in God's arrangement. Getting rid of them all and starting again may have ended the same way. The issues had to be addressed.

God explained the process that would bring all thing back to their original condition. He would offer the life of his son to redeem mankind so that all things would take place according to God's law. (Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life) The perfect life Adam forfeited was paid by the only other perfect life available....Jesus Christ.

How God longs to have his first purpose realized.....and how humans long for the life that was stolen from them by beings who only thought of themselves.

Part of the process of restoration had to do with a governmental arrangement that God called "the kingdom". It was to be a 'king' with a 'dom'ain and subjects. The location of this kingdom was heaven...the domain was the earth and the subjects were to be redeemed humans. God chose only selected ones to go to heaven to be 'kings and priests' with Jesus for the thousand years it would take to "undo the works of the devil".

This is the only reason why God chose some to go to heaven...it was NOT to be the destination for the majority however. Kings need subjects and priests need sinners for whom to perform their priestly duties. Those taken to heaven are no longer sinful, having proven faithful to death and relinquished their sinful bodies, they have been rewarded with immortal spirit life in heaven. The majority of mankind, both those who are Christ's followers and those faithful ones of pre-Christian times will enjoy being taken back to human perfection by the rulership of this kingdom.

So everlasting life in paradise conditions will be enjoyed by the human race just as God intended at the start. His purpose never altered.

So where did the notion of eternal punishment in "hell" originate?

"Sheol" and "hades" are words that are mistranslated as "hell" in some Bibles. Both of these refer to the common grave of mankind, from which all will emerge because their lives were paid for by the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

What though of "Gehenna"? This is the place where 'the fire never goes out and the maggots go on consuming'.

If you were a Jew, living in first century Jerusalem, you would have known what 'gehenna' represented. It was the city's rubbish dump, where the city's refuse, the carcasses of dead animals, and the bodies of criminals were cast into the fires to be consumed. Nothing alive was ever consigned to gehenna.

To a Jew, a person's burial place served as a memorial to his life. If one had no memorial tomb, then it was believed that God would not remember that one in the resurrection. Ancient Jews had no belief in an immortal soul....they believed that all life would be restored by God in the resurrection on earth. (John 5:28, 29)

Every resurrection performed in the Bible (except Jesus) was back to life on earth, reunited with their families.

There is no 'heaven or hell' as Christendom teaches it. The Bible has no such notion.

"Heaven" is the place from which a selected number of humans, who have been chosen to be "kings and priests", will rule with Jesus. (Rev 20:6)

"Hell" is the place where all life ends up. It is simply the grave. There is no conscious existence there....just restful sleep. (Eccl 9:5, 6, 10) "Rest in Peace" means exactly what it says. Time stands still.

Solomon made this simple statement....

"For there is an eventuality as respects the sons of mankind and an eventuality as respects the beast, and they have the same eventuality. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit, so that there is no superiority of the man over the beast, for everything is vanity. All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust." (Eccl 3:19, 20)

Nowhere in the Bible are animals promised everlasting life, but they die exactly the same death we do. We all end up in the same place.

The worst thing that can happen to a wicked person is that God will leave them in the grave, never to see life again....forever cut off from God and from life, which was a gift.

God is not a fiend who enjoys torturing people in an eternal hell to punish them for a short lifetime of sin. How is that justice? :no:][/quote]















Thanks guys.

 

[Shiranui117]

I have an exam in 45 mins that I need to do some last-minute studying for, but I will get to this, I assure you...

 

[davidthegreek]

I have an exam in 45 mins that I need to do some last-minute studying for, but I will get to this, I assure you...

ok thanks buddy.

 

[Shiranui117]

For my two cents worth, I would first of all have to know what "heaven" and "hell" actually are in order to make an assessment of this question.

And as I noted earlier in that topic, Heaven and Hell are states in how we react to God's eternal Presence and love--Heaven is when we have a positive reaction. Hell is when we have a negative reaction. If need be, I can repost what I wrote in the other thread for anyone who's interested. I can even post some Scriptural support if anyone would like.

Are they opposites as some are led to believe?

Well, pleasure and pain kinda are opposites, so yeah.

From my studies of various faiths, I can see that many have been taught that we have an inherent immortal soul that departs the body at death and is taken to a place of eternal happiness, if they have been "good", and the "wicked" to a place of punishment in terrible torment, in flames that are never quenched.

These beliefs come from sources outside the Bible. The scriptures do not teach about this concept at all, though attempts have been made to reconcile what the Bible teaches with these pagan notions.

This is... basically true? You can make an argument that Hades is a place and not a state, though.

The churches are responsible for this situation by trying to combine paganism with Christianity. This is something God told us not to do. (2 Cor 6:14-18)

<--That's my only reaction to the above statement.

In the first place, God never offered humans a life in heaven for any reason. He placed material beings on a material earth in a material universe. God is a spirit and he was already surrounded by millions of spirit beings for eons before man was ever created.

Uhh... What? What about John 3:16, or any other passage that talks about eternal life?

Also, the way this guy's arguing makes it seem like God doesn't need us. That may be true, but still, kinda disregarding His love for mankind, don'tcha think?

When God placed man in a beautiful garden home, with every variety of delicious fruit to eat, he never intended for them to live anywhere else. These creatures he made 'in his own image and likeness' had free will to make choices in many areas of life.

This is true. We will live on Earth after the Last Judgment.

To cut a long story short....God allowed the devil to do his thing so that he could prove to all humanity and also to the other spirit sons what a lousy god and ruler he is. There is no place for rebels in God's arrangement. Getting rid of them all and starting again may have ended the same way. The issues had to be addressed.

So, IOW, God is toying with all of human life, letting billions of souls fall into danger of eternal death, just to prove a point?

God chose only selected ones to go to heaven to be 'kings and priests' with Jesus for the thousand years it would take to "undo the works of the devil".

This gets into end-times theology, which I ain't getting into now.

This is the only reason why God chose some to go to heaven...it was NOT to be the destination for the majority however. Kings need subjects and priests need sinners for whom to perform their priestly duties. Those taken to heaven are no longer sinful, having proven faithful to death and relinquished their sinful bodies, they have been rewarded with immortal spirit life in heaven. The majority of mankind, both those who are Christ's followers and those faithful ones of pre-Christian times will enjoy being taken back to human perfection by the rulership of this kingdom.

Yeah, no. EVERYONE will be resurrected into their bodies. No exceptions, not even for the Saints, not even for Mary. Nothing wrong with that.

"Sheol" and "hades" are words that are mistranslated as "hell" in some Bibles. Both of these refer to the common grave of mankind, from which all will emerge because their lives were paid for by the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

This is basically correct.

What though of "Gehenna"? This is the place where 'the fire never goes out and the maggots go on consuming'.

If you were a Jew, living in first century Jerusalem, you would have known what 'gehenna' represented. It was the city's rubbish dump, where the city's refuse, the carcasses of dead animals, and the bodies of criminals were cast into the fires to be consumed. Nothing alive was ever consigned to gehenna.

And Gehenna is a metaphor for Hell.

To a Jew, a person's burial place served as a memorial to his life. If one had no memorial tomb, then it was believed that God would not remember that one in the resurrection.

So an omniscient God can forget people just because they don't have a fancy tomb?

Ancient Jews had no belief in an immortal soul....

BS.

they believed that all life would be restored by God in the resurrection on earth. (John 5:28, 29)

Yep.

(to be continued)

 

[Shiranui117]

(continued)

There is no 'heaven or hell' as Christendom teaches it. The Bible has no such notion.

Depends on how you define them. John 5:28 and 5:29 alone point to Heaven and Hell as states.

"Heaven" is the place from which a selected number of humans, who have been chosen to be "kings and priests", will rule with Jesus. (Rev 20:6)

"Hell" is the place where all life ends up. It is simply the grave. There is no conscious existence there....just restful sleep. (Eccl 9:5, 6, 10) "Rest in Peace" means exactly what it says. Time stands still.

Both Judaism and Christianity beg to differ.


From Wikipedia's entry on Sheol:

She'ol (

/&#712;&#643;i&#720;o&#650;l/ SHEE-ohl or /&#712;&#643;i&#720;&#601;l/ SHEE-&#601;l; Hebrew &#1513;&#1456;&#1473;&#1488;&#1493;&#1465;&#1500; &#352;&#702;ôl), translated as "grave", "pit", or "abode of the dead", is the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible's underworld, a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from God.[1]
The inhabitants of Sheol were the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength.[2] Under some circumstances they could be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:10).[3] While the Old Testament writings describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BCE-70 CE) a more diverse set of ideas evolved: in some texts, Sheol is the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone.[4] When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC the word "Hades" (underworld) was substituted for Sheol, and this is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.[5]

And especially note the Eastern Orthodox position on Hades, as noted in Wikipedia's entry on Hades in Christianity, provided up above:

Eastern Orthodox

The teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church is that, "after the soul leaves the body, it journeys to the abode of the dead (Hades). There are exceptions, such as the Theotokos, who was borne by the angels directly into heaven. As for the rest, we must remain in this condition of waiting. Because some have a prevision of the glory to come and others foretaste their suffering, the state of waiting is called "Particular Judgment". When Christ returns, the soul rejoins its risen body to be judged by Him in the Last judgment. The 'good and faithful servant' will inherit eternal life, the unfaithful with the unbeliever will spend eternity in hell. Their sins and their unbelief will torture them as fire."[11]
The Assyrian Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, hold that a final Universal Judgment will be pronounced on all human beings when soul and body are reunited in the resurrection of the dead. They also believe that the fate of those in the abode of the dead differs, even while awaiting resurrection: "The souls of the righteous are in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness; but the souls of the wicked are in a state the reverse of this."[12]

Nowhere in the Bible are animals promised everlasting life, but they die exactly the same death we do. We all end up in the same place.

The worst thing that can happen to a wicked person is that God will leave them in the grave, never to see life again....forever cut off from God and from life, which was a gift.

This may be true. But this is not what we are taught in the Scriptures.

God is not a fiend who enjoys torturing people in an eternal hell to punish them for a short lifetime of sin. How is that justice? :no:]

Agreed on this part.

 

[davidthegreek]

(continued)
Depends on how you define them. John 5:28 and 5:29 alone point to Heaven and Hell as states.

"Heaven" is the place from which a selected number of humans, who have been chosen to be "kings and priests", will rule with Jesus. (Rev 20:6)

Both Judaism and Christianity beg to differ.


From Wikipedia's entry on Sheol:
And especially note the Eastern Orthodox position on Hades, as noted in Wikipedia's entry on Hades in Christianity, provided up above:

Nowhere in the Bible are animals promised everlasting life, but they die exactly the same death we do. We all end up in the same place.

This may be true. But this is not what we are taught in the Scriptures.

Agreed on this part.

"This may be true. But this is not what we are taught in the Scriptures."

How can it be true then? if it isn't what the scriptures teach?

 

[Shiranui117]

"This may be true. But this is not what we are taught in the Scriptures."

How can it be true then? if it isn't what the scriptures teach?

Actually, it's not. The wicked are resurrected as well. When they are faced with the eternal Presence of God, it results in much suffering for them, since they have permanently rejected Him.

John 5:25-29 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, 27 and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth&#8212;those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

Revelation 14:9-11 Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, &#8220;If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.&#8221; 12 Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Revelation 20:10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Psalm 20 (21 if you don't use the Septuagint) 8 Let thy hand be found by all thine enemies: let thy right hand find all that hate thee. 9 Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven at the time of thy presence: the Lord shall trouble them in his anger, and fire shall devour them.

By saying "this may be true," I meant that it may be true that being left to eternal oblivion may be a worse punishment than being resurrected to a state of Hell.

 

[davidthegreek]

Actually, it's not. The wicked are resurrected as well. When they are faced with the eternal Presence of God, it results in much suffering for them, since they have permanently rejected Him.

John 5:25-29 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, 27 and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

Revelation 14:9-11 Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” 12 Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

Revelation 20:10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Psalm 20 (21 if you don't use the Septuagint) 8 Let thy hand be found by all thine enemies: let thy right hand find all that hate thee. 9 Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven at the time of thy presence: the Lord shall trouble them in his anger, and fire shall devour them.

By saying "this may be true," I meant that it may be true that being left to eternal oblivion may be a worse punishment than being resurrected to a state of Hell.

so suffering eternally is better than not existing at all? Then I have mental health issues.

 

[Shiranui117]

so suffering eternally is better than not existing at all? Then I have mental health issues.

I know some hold the belief that people only suffer Hell for as long as they hate God and reject Him, which is what taking the mark of the Beast and worshiping the Beast and his image ultimately is about. I personally agree with them.

 

[davidthegreek]

I know some hold the belief that people only suffer Hell for as long as they hate God and reject Him, which is what taking the mark of the Beast and worshiping the Beast and his image ultimately is about. I personally agree with them.

So, the beast and its mark, is a figurative speech. Not something that will litterally happen at some point?

 

[davidthegreek]

I know some hold the belief that people only suffer Hell for as long as they hate God and reject Him, which is what taking the mark of the Beast and worshiping the Beast and his image ultimately is about. I personally agree with them.

Me too.
But does the official stance of the Church, agree with that? Just curious. I am not one that follows everything related to Church. But I don't want to dismiss it compeletely.

 

[Shiranui117]

Me too.
But does the official stance of the Church, agree with that? Just curious. I am not one that follows everything related to Church. But I don't want to dismiss it compeletely.

TBH, I think this is one of the things that the Church doesn't have an explicit official stance on. The reality of the Resurrection of the Dead, the Final Judgement, Heaven and Hell, and Christ's Kingdom having no end is about as far as the Church ventures to go, as far as I'm aware; anything beyond that is speculation. Everything else is beyond our pale, though that doesn't stop many ideas from becoming popular (such as what exactly Heaven and Hell are, the possibility for all to be saved in the end, etc.)

However, what I have posted in regards to Heaven and Hell being states in how we react to God is in accordance with at least one Church Father, and I myself learned of this idea from several other Orthodox, including a priest. This idea was also taught by Fr. David Anderson, who has done voluminous explanations of the faith of the Orthodox Church. I see no reason to doubt those people, or the idea.