Originally posted by lil bitchiness
I am not sure how the Christian theology works, absolutely, but I assume Satan doesn't want to be forgiven.Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Im presuming thats true for all other religion - although I could be wrong.
Satan does not rule hell. Satan hates hell. It was made for Satan and his angels to suffer.
Perhaps, but since god made them....God chose for Satan to be satan...he made hell to make people suffer.
He's like a small child who is all powerful, and even though all is predestined, wants people to "choose" him, so he creates an alternative to give the illision of choice...even though the choice has already been made.
Originally posted by Bardock42I believe it stems from the old misunderstood view of opposites........lol
I don't get this logic, why would there have to be an equal opposing force. If God created everything like he wanted it and we assume (for a second, and falsely) that he is all good then he could have made something that is all good without there being evil.
People didn't understand how the world worked just as lightening, the seasons and good and evil, so they named them...Gave them diety names and such.
Originally posted by Alliance
Perhaps, but since god made them....God chose for Satan to be satan...he made hell to make people suffer.He's like a small child who is all powerful, and even though all is predestined, wants people to "choose" him, so he creates an alternative to give the illision of choice...even though the choice has already been made.
Jesus went to hell. Why would God allow everyone into heaven when he allowed Jesus to go to hell?
Originally posted by crazy
Yea ESB I have never heard of that either, would like to see some scripture too.
Matthew 12:40
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Ephesians 4:8-10
Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended firty in the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.
1 Peter 3:18-19
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in the prison;
Originally posted by ESB -1138
Matthew 12:40
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.Ephesians 4:8-10
Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended firty in the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.1 Peter 3:18-19
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in the prison;
That is a stretch. If I worked on it really hard, I could come up with at least one or two other interpretations of those verses.
Originally posted by ESB -1138It says [I]He decended into hell in the Apostles Creed
Jesus went to hell. Why would God allow everyone into heaven when he allowed Jesus to go to hell?
The Apostles' Creed reads:
"I believe in God, the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen."
This particular creed, known since the Third Century in the Western Church, draws reliably from the New Testament in general. However the phrase "He descended into hell" was evidently derived from an unusually-worded portion of Peter's First Epistle which says:
"He (Jesus) was put to death in the flesh death of the body, but he was raised to life in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the disobedient spirits who were in prison in the days of Noah when God waited patiently while the ark was being built...For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead so that, although they have already been judged in the flesh like men, they might have life in the Spirit like God." (1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:6)
The first thing to note in this passage is that the Greek word "Hades"---translated "hell" in the Apostles' Creed---is the underworld of Greek mythology.
It really means decended to the dead....
There are two perspectives necessary to understand this issue, one cultural and historical and the other exegetical. In the old King James Version, the English word “hell” actually was used to translate two different words and two very different concepts. One term was the word gehenna, (e.g., Matt 5:22). This was adapted from the name of a valley to the south of the Temple in Jerusalem where the city garbage was burned, the “Valley of Hinnom.” Because of the perpetual fires, and also because there had been idols to the Canaanite god Molech erected there to which were offered human sacrifices (2 Kings 23:10), ge hinnom (“valley of Hinnom” in Hebrew) became a symbol for the judgment of God. The fires also came to symbolize that punishment and destruction, and became the more common way to conceptualize “hell” in later Christian tradition.
Another term, and one more relevant to our topic, is the Greek term Hades (e.g., Matt 11:23). This term comes from Greek mythology in which it was the abode of the dead. It was used to translate into Greek the Hebrew concept of Sheol. While in the Old Testament this term was not mythological, it was a metaphorical way to talk about what happened to people when they died. Sheol was simply the place where dead people go. It was almost synonymous with death and especially “grave,” and indeed is used that way in several Old Testament passages, e.g., Psa 49:14:
Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd; straight to the grave they descend, and their form shall waste away; Sheol shall be their home.
This confusion of the concept may already have been at work in the early church, and may even have influenced the passages in 1 Peter, recognized by most scholars to be some of the latest in the New Testament written near the end of the first century. We cannot be sure of that, but in any case there is more to be gained in looking exegetically at those passages.
That was why the gospel was preached even to the dead: in order that, although in the body they were condemned to die as everyone else dies, yet in the spirit they might live as God lives.??
This means that the gospel "was preached" in the past to people who are now dead, not that it was preached now by Christ to those who are in the realm of the dead. The NRSV seems to render it along the same lines. This is also more obviously the meaning in 3:19 that gives an example from the past. In other words, preaching euaggelizo to those who are now dead was made in the past to call them to repentance and eternal life, while the death of Jesus is a proclamation kyrusso of condemnation to those who are now dead who had earlier refused to respond to that preaching.
This strongly suggests that we cannot on the basis of 1 Peter make a case for the proposition that the dead may still respond to the gospel and be saved. In light of this evidence, there does not seem to be any biblical support, and very little support in early Christian tradition beyond the later highly questionable concept of purgatory, that Jesus descended into hell and preached to those who had already died with the goal of calling them to repentance beyond the grave.
Which means that the OT is not worth reading because there is not promise there of a redemer know matter how much faith was placed in him.