If you reject Jesus as son of God and saviour then hell is were you will end up. Also when you blaspheme againt the Holy Spirit .When you have accepted Jesus and become born again (spiritually) you have to seek sanctification. But for a even better guide read the Bible. It will answer your questions.
I need a person to answer my questions. I have red the bible whan I was a cristian
If god were to send someone to hell for rejecting him and never giving you another chance that would be childish and wrong. Dosen't sound like somthing a perfict god would do. Morlike somthing a little kid would do.
It is not about rejecting God but Jesus as savior. If you reject him now it is not too late, you can still be accept Him into your life at any point in time. You must just hope that it will be before you get to stand before God.
Sorry I was wrong, the Bible will never give you the answers you seek as you dont want them. You want to hear the answers you want to hear. And those you wont find in the Bible.
Does Jesus rilly need us to accept him? will he run off and cry if we don't
will it hert his feelings. If he is perfict than he wouldin't send someone to hell for not accepting him. That still sounds like a kid.
If you don't accept me into your life you are going to hell...... Somthing a Kid with too much power would say.
IMPORTANT FACTS
Gehenna was a well-known locality near Jerusalem, and ought no more to be translated Hell, than should Sodom or Gomorrah. See Josh. 15: 8; II Kings 17: 10; II Chron. 28: 3; Jer. 7: 31, 32; 19: 2.
Gehenna is never employed in the Old Testament to mean anything else than the place with which every Jew was familiar.
The word should have been left untranslated as it is in some versions, and it would not be misunderstood. It was not misunderstood by the Jews to whom Jesus addressed it. Walter Balfour well says: "What meaning would the Jews who were familiar with this word, and knew it to signify the valley of Hinnom, be likely to attach to it when they heard it used by our Lord? Would they, contrary to all former usage, transfer its meaning from a place with whose locality and history they had been familiar from their infancy, to a place of misery in another world? This conclusion is certainly inadmissible. By what rule of interpretation, then, can we arrive at the conclusion that this word means a place of misery and death?"
The French Bible, the Emphatic Diaglott, Improved Version, Wakefield's Translation and Newcomb's retain the proper noun, Gehenna, the name of a place as well-known as Babylon.
Gehenna is never mentioned in the Apocrypha as a place of future punishment as it would have been had such been its meaning before and at the time of Christ.
No Jewish writer, such as Josephus or Philo, ever uses it as the name of a place of future punishment, as they would have done had such then been its meaning.
No classic Greek author ever alludes to it and therefore it was a Jewish locality, purely.
The first Jewish writer who ever names it as a place of future punishment is Jonathan Ben Uzziel who wrote, according to various authorities, from the second to the eighth century, A. D.
The first Christian writer who calls Hell Gehenna is Justin Martyr who wrote about A. D. 150.
Neither Christ nor his apostles ever named it to Gentiles, but only to Jews which proves it a locality only known to Jews, whereas, if it were a place of punishment after death for sinners, it would have been preached to Gentiles as well as Jews.
It was only referred to twelve times on eight occasions in all the ministry of Christ and the apostles, and in the Gospels and Epistles. Were they faithful to their mission to say no more than this on so vital a theme as an endless Hell, if they intended to teach it?
Only Jesus and James ever named it. Neither Paul, John, Peter nor Jude ever employ it. Would they not have warned sinners concerning it, if there were a Gehenna of torment after death?
Paul says he "shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God," and yet though he was the great preacher of the Gospel to the Gentiles he never told them that Gehenna is a place of after-death punishment. Would he not have repeatedly warned sinners against it were there such a place?
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Dr. Thayer significantly remarks: "The Savior and James are the only persons in all the New Testament who use the word. John Baptist, who preached to the most wicked of men did not use it once. Paul wrote fourteen epistles and yet never once mentions it. Peter does not name it, nor Jude; and John, who wrote the gospel, three epistles, and the Book of Revelations, never employs it in a single instance. Now if Gehenna or Hell really reveals the terrible fact of endless woe, how can we account for this strange silence? How is it possible, if they knew its meaning and believed it a part of Christ's teaching that they should not have used it a hundred or a thousand times, instead of never using it at all; especially when we consider the infinite interests involved? The Book of Acts contains the record of the apostolic preaching,and the history of the first planting of the church among the Jews and Gentiles, and embraces a period of thirty years from the ascension of Christ. In all this history, in all this preaching of the disciples and apostles of Jesus there is no mention of Gehenna. In thirty years of missionary effort these men of God, addressing people of all characters and nations never under any circumstances threaten them with the torments of Gehenna or allude to it in the most distant manner! In the face of such a fact as this can any man believe that Gehenna signifies endless punishment and that this is part of divine revelation, a part of the Gospel message to the world? These considerations show how impossible it is to establish the doctrine in review on the word Gehenna. All the facts are against the supposition that the term was used by Christ or his disciples in the sense of endless punishment. There is not the least hint of any such meaning attached to it, nor the slightest preparatory notice that any such new revelation was to be looked for in this old familiar word."
Jesus never uttered it to unbelieving Jews, nor to anybody but his disciples, but twice (Matt. 23: 15-33) during his entire ministry, nor but four times in all. If it were the final abode of unhappy millions, would not his warnings abound with exhortations to avoid it?
Jesus never warned unbelievers against it but once in all his ministry (Matt. 23: 33) and he immediately explained it as about to come in this life.
If Gehenna is the name of Hell then men's bodies are burned there as well as their souls. Matt. 5: 29; 18: 9.
If it be the name of endless torment, then literal fire is the sinner's punishment. Mark 9: 43-48.
Salvation is never said to be from Gehenna.
Gehenna is never said to be of endless duration nor spoken of as destined to last forever, so that even admitting the popular ideas of its existence after death it gives no support to the idea of endless torment.
Clement, a Universalist, used Gehenna to describe his ideas of punishment. He was one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers. The word did not then denote endless punishment.
A shameful death or severe punishment in this life was at the time of Christ denominated Gehenna (Schleusner, Canon Farrar and others), and there is no evidence that Gehenna meant anything else at the time of Christ.
Last edited by debbiejo on Jun 2nd, 2005 at 05:34 AM
Most liberals feel that hell is neither a place of eternal punishment or annihilation, as much as a concept: the separation from god. In addition, many liberal Christians feel that god would not punish someone for petty sins, oversights, or errors - to do so would be unjust and is not the true nature of god. Further, liberals generally feel that one would not be held accountable for not having the opportunity to hear the gospel or the Christian viewpoint. This applies to both children who are too young to understand it and third world countries where the Christian faith has yet to penetrate.
Fundamentalist Christians would label hell as a place of eternal suffering and torture without any chance of relief.
Most Christian faiths hold central the belief that hell is the absence of god, although there are many disagreements as to whether hell is a concept, or a place of endless suffering.
With the many different offshoots of Christianity and their different interpretations of the passages in both the Old and New Testament, it becomes clear that differences between (and even within) denominational groups teach different paths to eternal salvation.
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I posted this in another thread, but it answers the question perfectly of why it is not childish to end up in Hell. And also, we are debating if Hell is real in the other thread, so don't respond to it here I'm just answering the question if you want to talk about Hell keep it in the other one please
God did know that Satan (Lucifer is NOT the correct term and is very, very mistakenly taken to be the name of Satan) was going to turn against Him. He knew you were going to do the same. Satan was allowed to turn against God out of Love, as were you. It is a purely human expression to say that if you really love someone you will love them enough to let them go, and it is true. God wants us to be able to do what we want and to have freedom.
When I was younger, we had a dog. He was inherited to my family, and they did not dislike him but he was more a burden than anything, and they did not love him. I did. They required him to spend his life chained up on a 6 foot leash, chained to a chair his entire life, other than when we walked him. This is not love. They took care of him, fed him, took him to the vet, and had him groomed, but they clearly did not love him.
When I was MUCH younger, too young to remember, my family had another dog that was not inherited and was their own. He was allowed to roam the house, and was not on a leash. They loved him. Now it made it so that he could harm them (by chewing stuff up, urinating on the carpet, etc.), or that he could get harmed (by going somewhere unsafe due to his lack of restraint). He eventually did get hurt; he escaped and got hit by a car and died.
The fact is, however, that the first dog was kept tied up out of a lack of love, whereas the second was let free out of love. This is the same with God. He lets us be free, and have free will. He lets us do this, even though we can hurt ourselves (by killing one another, by letting ourselves or others wind up in poverty, by making choices that send us to hell), and we can hurt Him (by rejecting Him, by persecuting those who believe in Him).
This is why suffering exists. Additionally, it exists because it doesn't matter! In the end the suffering of this earth does not matter one bit. We do not suffer on this earth out of punishment from God (other than those times He does choose to punish us), but the following example holds true. When a parent punishes a child, the parent knows the child is suffering. The parent does not stop the child's suffering because of this, because the parent knows that the suffering does not matter in the end. In the end, the child will learn something which will help it be safer and more succesful in life. The parent knows that the child will be better off in the end and that the suffering doesn't matter. God lets us suffer because it doesn't matter at all; only what comes after life truly matters.
Furthermore, it is not God that makes us suffer, but ourselves and Satan. We make choices to lead to our suffering, and Satan encourages us to make these choices. God cannot stop it because he is a righteous and faithful God. He has promised us all free will. If God chooses to keep people safe from the suffering caused by terrorists, then he is not following His promise to the terrorists that they may have free will. To do anything else requires God to play favorites, and to treat some different from others. He cannot because it is not righteous to do so, and it is not fair to treat me one way and you another. It is not right to promise Saddam Hussein free will and then go back on that promise because He does not like what Saddam is doing. That would be like a parent telling a young child that she can spend her $5 in birthday money on anything she wants, and then not letting her buy something because ithe parent does not like it, only much worse. You may say that the parent is only doing that because he or she is wiser than the child and is trying to protect the child, but that is a HUMAN reaction, one that is still wrong, and one that still requires the breaking of a promise. God is perfect and cannot break a promise as this would be imperfection and it would be wrong. Even the most minor wronghood is something God cannot do because He cannot do any wronghood, not matter how small.
Hell was not made for us. It was not made for humans. It was made for Satan and his demons (other fallen angels). The only way we can end up there is by telling God that we want to go there. By rejecting God, that is what we are telling Him. He made Heaven for us. This is the key. God has made two places.... Heaven, for us, and Hell, for Satan. Once we die we must go to one or the other. When we reject God, we reject His gift of Heaven. Why?
We can choose to be one of two things: dependant on God, or independant of Him. When we believe, we accept what He is, and we know that we are dependant on Him. When we choose not to believe, for whatever reason, whether we are mad at Him, or just belive He does not exist, we are saying that we are fine on our own. We are saying that we can take care of ourselves and don't need anyone to do it for us. Now some parents are different and cut children off earlier, but for most people, we reach the age where we are old enough to support ourselves, but our parents still want to pay for our haircuts and provide us with health insurance, and especially clothing and food. Most of the time we accept these things. Some teenagers become so set on being independant, and refuse to accept food, clothing, anything from their parents.
Even though these parents are forever standing with their hands out, food and clothing being offered freely, the children want to support themseleves. Why? Perhaps they don't want to feel bound to their rules. Perhaps they just want to feel like they are not dependant on them. Either way, the food is there, the clothes are there, but it is simply not taken.
When we say we are independant from God, this is what we are doing. He is literally standing there offering to us all He has to give, and we simply say we don't want it. Maybe we don't want to follow his rules. Do we say that a parent does not love us because they want us to folow rules? Of course not. We know that (other than a few crazy parents here and there) their rules are designed because they know what is best for us and their rules are for our own good, even if we don't understand why. [Did you know that God required the Jews to be circumcised on the 8th day of life? They did not know why, to the ancient people it seemed like a random rule; this does not mean it was not for their own good. Today, we know that the blood in a baby coagulates best on the 8th day. Not the 7 days before, none of the days after, but on the 8th day. God's rule was for their own good.] Nobody would say a parent does not love a child because the parent has rules. Maybe we are saying that we want to be independant from God. Either way, He is standing there, even more so He is walking up to us and asking us to take what He is offering and we are simply saying no!
God Loves you even now. You can say the most horrible things about Him and He still loves. There is nothing you can do that will turn him away from you. It is never too late, no matter what you have done. If you are stubborn, or won't turn to God because you have not for so long, it doesn't matter. He Loves you.... He Loves you.
God Loves you even now. You can say the most horrible things about Him and He still loves. There is nothing you can do that will turn him away from you. It is never too late, no matter what you have done. If you are stubborn, or won't turn to God because you have not for so long, it doesn't matter. He Loves you.... He Loves you.
That's funney because my sister said that the only way you will go to hell is to see crist than still deny him. So he must not love you if he would send you to hell.
He would think of a far better way to teach you a lesson.
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God Himself never sends you to Hell, we only send ourselves. It will make more sense if you understand this:
Hell is not a place that we go. It is simply a total disconnection from God. We cannot be sent there by Him, we simply choose not to be connected and in "fellowship" with Him.
People like the throw hell around..Some churches even say that you don't have the holy spirit unless you talk in tongues. And if you don't have the holy spirit you're going to hell.
As I've said in another post. Our spirit goes back to god who gave it...Our spirit does not go to hell..
God created us with the spark or part of himself to give us life, he would not throw part of himself into hell.
Job said that there is no place where god is not...So if we're going to hell, god is there also.
I would have to look it up in my concordence, but it says something like.
" Where is a place where you are not, though I go into the /sheol/grave/pit (?), you are there, if I go....etc.."
THOUGHT THIS WAS INTERESTING BACKGROUND.
Matthew 5:21-22:
In Mt. 5.21-22, Jesus used Gehenna for the first time in inspired speech:
Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire (Gehenna--SGD).
As we mentioned earlier in this study, Jesus actually used the Greek word Gehenna for the first time in inspired writing. The word had never occurred in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. When we read the word hell, all kinds of sermon outlines, illustrations, and ideas come to the fore of our minds. None of these came to the minds of Jesus' listeners, for they had never heard the word before in inspired speech. It is very significant that the word did not occur even once in the Septuagint, quoted by Jesus and his apostles.
I suggest that to the Jews in Jesus' audience, Jesus' words referred merely to the valley southeast of Jerusalem. In their Old Testament background, Gehenna meant a place of burning, a valley where rebellious Jews had been slaughtered before and would be again if they didn't repent, as Malachi, John the Baptist, and Jesus urged them to do. Jesus didn't have to say what Gehenna was, as it was a well-known place to the people of that area, but his teaching was at least consistent with the national judgment announced by Malachi and John the Baptist. The closest fire in the context is Mt. 3.10-12, where John announced imminent fiery judgment on the nation of Israel.
Let's notice the other Gehenna passages to ascertain more about Jesus' use of Gehenna. As we do so, let's analyze each passage thus: Does the passage teach things we don't believe about an unending fiery hell, but which fit national judgment in Gehenna?
Matthew 5:29-30
The next passage is Mt. 5.29-30, where Jesus used Gehenna twice when he said:
And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell (Gehenna--SGD). And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell (Gehenna--SGD).
In our traditional idea of hell, unending fire after the end of time, we normally don't think of people having their physical limbs at that time. This is not an argument, but just the realization that we don't think in terms of some people being in heaven with missing eyes and limbs, and some in hell with all of theirs. However, these words do fit a national judgment. It would be better to go into the kingdom of the Messiah missing some members, than to go into an imminent national judgment of unquenchable fire with all our members. This was equivalent to John's demand that his Jewish audience bring forth fruits worthy of repentance or receive imminent unquenchable fire. The whole body of a Jew could be cast into the valley of Gehenna in the fiery judgment of which John spoke.
Matthew 10:28
The fourth time Jesus used Gehenna was when he said:
And be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Gehenna--SGD).
Again, Jesus spoke of Gehenna consistently with imminent national judgment on Israel. The whole body of a Jew would be cast into the imminent fiery national judgment of which John spoke.
Lk. 12.4-5
This is the fifth time Jesus used Gehenna, when he said:
And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell (Gehenna-SGD): yea, I say unto you, Fear him.
Here Jesus taught the same thing John taught in Mt. 3.10-12, that only a divine being has the power to cast someone into unquenchable fire. A human can kill you. A divine being can imminently bring an unstoppable national judgment in which a divinely ordained religion would be brought to an end. Notice also that Jesus said that one would be cast into Gehenna after he has been killed (Lk. 12.4-5) and that God can destroy both the soul and body in Gehenna.
Notice also in verse 49 that Jesus said:
I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what do I desire, if it is already kindled?
The fiery judgment of which Jesus spoke was not far off in time and place, but imminent and earthly. In verse 56, Jesus noted that the judgment of which he spoke was imminent, for he said:
Ye hypocrites, ye know how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that ye know not how to interpret this time?
The word for earth in both these verses is gen, the standard word for land or ground, not necessarily the planet, which we might think. Thayer defined the word as:
1. arable land, 2. the ground, the earth as a standing place, 3. land, as opposed to sea or water, 4. the earth as a whole, the world. (p. 114)
This is the word used in Mt. 2.6 (the land of Judea), Mt. 2.20 (the land of Israel), Mt. 10.15 (the land of Sodom and Gomorrah), Mt. 11.24 (the land of Sodom), Mt. 14.34 (the land of Gennesaret), Jn. 3.22 (the land of Judea), Ac. 7.3 (into the land which I shall show thee), Ac. 7.6 (seed should sojourn in a strange land), Ac. 7.11 (a dearth over all the land of Egypt), etc. Thus, Jesus again spoke of imminent fiery destruction on the land of Israel, just as Malachi and John the Baptist said he would announce.
Mt. 18.9, Mk. 9.43-45
These verses contain the sixth, seventh, eight, and ninth times Jesus used the word Gehenna. These are verses like Mt. 5.29-30, which speak of it being better to enter life or the kingdom without some members of one's body rather than going into Gehenna with a whole body. However, we want to pay special attention to Mark's account, because in it, Jesus further described Gehenna:
And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good for thee to enter into life maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire [emphasis mine-SGD].
Notice that Jesus specifically said what's coming in Gehenna-unquenchable fire. John the Baptist said he would baptize with unquenchable fire, not necessarily fire that would burn unendingly, but which would not be quenched. Unquenchable fire is unstoppable! It's fiery destruction brought about by a divine being. In Ezk. 20.47-48, God promised such a national judgment on Judah:
Last edited by debbiejo on Jun 7th, 2005 at 11:32 PM
One early Christian philosopher called Hell "A improving myth".
In one Nag Hammadi text Jesus is stated as saying that their is a Hell,but no one will spend eternity their.He claims they will all be released at the end of time due to Gods love.It's easy to see why Revelations would be chosen as the Bibles final book because it says not everyone will be redeemed.It would be crazy for the church to say otherwise.
Most myths about a christian hell predate Christianity.
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Last edited by mr.smiley on Jun 8th, 2005 at 01:05 AM