Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Those in "hades" will rise....those in "gehenna" will not. Its that simple....and only God knows who is in which place.
Wow! Beautifully concise.
I have difficulty believing that souls will be damned to the Lake of Fire
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Those in "hades" will rise....those in "gehenna" will not. Its that simple....and only God knows who is in which place.
Wow! Beautifully concise.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Only God/Jesus makes that claim. What you are implying is that even God, The Great I AM, is not composed of thoughts or existed before His thoughts. Self awareness, is consciousness about oneself, which necessitates thoughts, reasoning ... "Who am I?" "Where am I?" "Where did I come from?" "What is my purpose?" "Where am I going?" These are all question one asks, they are thoughts that generate other thoughts. We are what we think! The Bible says that, "As a man thinks, so is he."
Besides all that, God told Moses (in Exodus 3:14) to tell the people, "I AM sent me to you". This was God's introduction to Moses and the Israelites that would be later completed when Jesus showed up. Jesus filled us in on who He was:
I AM the Bread of Life
I AM the Good Shepherd
I AM the Vine
I AM the Resurrection
I AM the Alpha and the Omega
I AM the Door
I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life
Jesus is God. You are one of His creations, made in His image, which means that we are given qualities that He possesses: a will, emotions, a rational mind, creativity, a spirit.
So you were just a thought in his mind before the foundation of the world, before time itself (a physical dimension) and everyone else, a thought, among thoughts that comprised a plan that He orchestrated to come into being. From the beginning, thousands of our earth years passes as mankind grew in numbers, as we descended from our original parents ( Adam and Eve, to Noah and his sons) and onward to one day, he created you and formed you in your mother's womb.
So you can say I am human, God created me and this universe for the purpose of reconciliation to God, through Christ and ultimately for an eternal life with Him. But you cannot make anybif thise above "I AM" claims that Jesus made.
Good, but where did you get these views?
Christians read the Bible. It's historical, but it is also experiencial. When we are born again, we experience God. His drawing power, guidance, love, grace brings to a place, a divine appointment that we experience and so we believe because we've experienced God's grace and love and actions in our lives and identify it with this reality (truth). We don't experience the Biblical events, but we believe they happened. If you don't believe tha they happened, what is your faith in Christ based on? Or do you know what faith is? It is a sureness, a confidence of thubgs hoped for yet not seen (experienced).
Exodus 21
23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
It is a question of what is greater justice: should someone be punished proportionate to their crimes, or in excess of them?
What is greater good: to kill an enemy or turn an enemy into a friend?
Is it greater freedom that dissenters be censored or that they be convinced of the wrongness of their opinions by witnessing the consequences of their own actions?
Is it greater glory to kill an enemy or to make an enemy your loyal servant?
Is God the enacter of the lesser justice or the greater justice? Is God a lesser good or the greater good? Does God give the lesser freedom or the greater freedom? Does God deserve the lesser glory or the greater glory? If God is all things in the highest then God wouldn't condemn a single soul to eternal torment.
Furthermore, the Bible very much states
Luke 15
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
If a man, who is a sinner, can care for a beast, then what lengths would God go through for a man made in His own image? Do you think it stops at one lifetime? Does God throw up His hands and say "bah, I tried for some years and now I don't care anymore!" What does life and death or any finite amount of time matter for one who exists outside of life and death and outside of time and space? Is God not the master of the soul who can bring any dead person back to life in any sort of form?
Luke 6:28
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
Do you think that God does not exercise the moral principles He lays out for us? Do you think your righteousness exceeds God's? Do you think God is a hypocrite? Of course not, God represents the highest benevolence, and therefore all moral principles which a man must obey, God upholds in the highest. Therefore, God holds no hatred but only loving kindness to those who oppose Him.
There are many ways to interpret the highly metaphorical scriptures of the Bible regarding the afterlife. When God sorts the wheat and tares, and throws the tares into the fire; does this mean the tares are sinners and sinners are thrown into the fire? Or that the Good a person does is sifted from the sin, and when a person enters the afterlife, the good they do is kept and the evil is forgotten, and thereby their nature is refined and uplifted? Is the evil man destroyed forever or is it the evil within the man that is destroyed, while the purified soul endures?
23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
It is a question of what is greater justice: should someone be punished proportionate to their crimes, or in excess of them?
What is greater good: to kill an enemy or turn an enemy into a friend?
Is it greater freedom that dissenters be censored or that they be convinced of the wrongness of their opinions by witnessing the consequences of their own actions?
Is it greater glory to kill an enemy or to make an enemy your loyal servant?
Is God the enacter of the lesser justice or the greater justice? Is God a lesser good or the greater good? Does God give the lesser freedom or the greater freedom? Does God deserve the lesser glory or the greater glory? If God is all things in the highest then God wouldn't condemn a single soul to eternal torment.
Furthermore, the Bible very much states
Luke 15
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
If a man, who is a sinner, can care for a beast, then what lengths would God go through for a man made in His own image? Do you think it stops at one lifetime? Does God throw up His hands and say "bah, I tried for some years and now I don't care anymore!" What does life and death or any finite amount of time matter for one who exists outside of life and death and outside of time and space? Is God not the master of the soul who can bring any dead person back to life in any sort of form?
Luke 6:28
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
Do you think that God does not exercise the moral principles He lays out for us? Do you think your righteousness exceeds God's? Do you think God is a hypocrite? Of course not, God represents the highest benevolence, and therefore all moral principles which a man must obey, God upholds in the highest. Therefore, God holds no hatred but only loving kindness to those who oppose Him.
There are many ways to interpret the highly metaphorical scriptures of the Bible regarding the afterlife. When God sorts the wheat and tares, and throws the tares into the fire; does this mean the tares are sinners and sinners are thrown into the fire? Or that the Good a person does is sifted from the sin, and when a person enters the afterlife, the good they do is kept and the evil is forgotten, and thereby their nature is refined and uplifted? Is the evil man destroyed forever or is it the evil within the man that is destroyed, while the purified soul endures?
It’s not possible that you are what you think, because that is, thoughts… which you are aware, of.
There is no “thinker”.
If you prefer to believe that only other than I am can make that claim, that is ok. There’s suggestion here that there is anything wrong with beliefs.
Before that story, I am!
The thoughts & beliefs you experience are, so to speak, yours and yours alone.
None of it defines me.
I am!
It’s not that I disagree, it’s that these are all thoughts, beliefs.
I don’t have any views, I experience views.
I just am.
This is blasphemy. To be born again is to never have been born in the first place.
Question the direct experience of ever having been born, if ye dare to.
I don’t have any issue with beliefs. But I don’t have beliefs. I simply just am.
amigo de christo
Well-Known Member
My advice is dont follow the carnal mind . its emnity against GOD .
I don’t know what a “carnal mind” is, other than a belief.
enmity
- Deep-seated, often mutual hatred.
- A feeling or state of hatred or animosity.
- The quality or state of being hostile; a feeling or condition of antagonism; ill will; variance; discord.
GRACE ambassador
Well-Known Member
Universalism salvation, Correct?
Why Would God force anyone to "live with Him in Eternal/Everlasting
Life," When, in UNbelief, in essence he/she says: "we WILL NOT have
This Man To RULE Over us"? All "Are Robots" with NO free will to choose?
Since "man's ways Are NOT God's (Righteous Judge) Ways," how exactly
then does the finite know "that God's Just Condemnation for the wicked
who, in UNbelief, Rejected His Gracious Offer Of The Infinite ONE
'Christ Died For sin,' is not Everlasting and Eternal torment"?
------------------------
Grace, Peace, And JOY In Christ, And In His Word Of Truth, Rightly
Divided!
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
I cannot understand how people can believe that a just and loving God could keep people alive only to make them suffer forever with no way out.
God’s justice was expressed in his laws to Israel....it was very clear that those who committed capital crimes, paid with their life...no ifs or buts. No one was ignorant of those laws.
Those who committed lesser crimes were punished accordingly, not with incarceration, (there were no prisons) but they were pressed into service until they had paid compensation to their victim, twice or more over.
Justice meant that the punishment was always in accord with the severity of the crime. The lesser crimes were meant to teach a lesson leading to repentance and forgiveness. And the capital crimes were to teach lessons to others not to repeat those crimes themselves.
“Hell” as Christendom teaches it, is completely out of harmony with God’s perfect justice. There is no way to repent or to gain forgiveness. Punishment for its own sake achieves nothing.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Because not everyone thinks everything through. Indeed, most don't have the time or inclination.
God doesn't force anyone, God mentors.
So tell me, if two people get into an argument, is the winner of the argument the one who throws his opponent in prison? Or is it the one who convinces his enemy of his wrongfulness?
So God could cause a murderer to suffer eternally, but why? God could also cause the murderer to forget their past life, and incarnate them as the family member of a murdered person, then as a murder victim, and do this enough so that the soul can understand the evil of their actions and repent.
Yet Jesus said
Luke 12:10 - And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven
Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of man, yet he says right here, he will forgive those that spoke out against him. More than half the world have no idea of Jesus having no exposure to Christian teachings. Is it right for them to suffer because of ignorance? If it were so, then this turns Christianity into a kind of Gnosticism, where a person's own life and actions have no meaning but it is only by a certain kind of knowledge that you are saved.
No, that would be another belief.
I’m suggesting inspecting reality “&” yourself to discover the Truth.
GRACE ambassador
Well-Known Member
I only go According To Scriptures; I suppose we will finally "know all about it" on
the final Judgment Day? The LORD Says:
Isa 55:8-9 "For My Thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My Ways, Saith The LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My Ways Higher Than your ways, and My Thoughts Than your thoughts."
The finite Will have to take it up with HIM! Amen.
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
Good point....punishment for its own sake accomplishes nothing. Punishment was meant to educate and to learn a lesson from.....to lead to repentance and forgiveness.
Ezekiel 33:11. (ASV)
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
So if God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, how would he take pleasure in torturing them for all eternity?
“Every sort of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. For example, whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy spirit, it will not be forgiven him, no, not in the present system of things nor in that to come.”......
We know that in the trinity doctrine that all are supposedly equal....but here it is clear that this is not true.
What makes sinning against the Holy Spirit so serious? Why can blasphemy against the Son be forgivable but not the Holy Spirit, If all are equally “God”?
Regarding the Pharisees, Jesus condemned them to “Gehenna” (eternal death).....these religious leaders were rotten in their hearts, to their core, and Jesus knew it. Unlike the common people, they had a considerable knowledge of God’s Word. Now they had seen an evident demonstration of God’s spirit in the miracles Jesus performed. Nevertheless, they completely rejected what was accomplished by Jehovah’s spirit and blasphemously credited those miracles to Satan’s power. What a slap in the face to the God they claimed to worship!
We also get the import with Judas and his actions with regard to Jesus’ betrayal.....along with the other apostles, he was granted use of the Holy Spirit by the authority of Jesus’ name......he would have experienced the power of God’s spirit and yet his greed got the better of him and he betrayed the son of God.....truly unforgivable.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Do not eat the bread of a selfish man,
Or desire his delicacies;
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he [in behavior—one who manipulates].
He says to you, “Eat and drink,”
Yet his heart is not with you [but it is begrudging the cost]. Prov. 23:6-7
Of course this is referring to an evil person, whom we have all been at one time.
But you can turn this around and say a person who thinks good thoughts is good. We are to think God's thoughts and be like Jesus.
No, you didn't exist yet, you were only a thought in God's mind.
God defines you. Of course he made everyone a bit different but all in His image. Generally the Bible defines us as all sinners, in need of a Savior. Btw, He saves us from the Lake of Fire!
Nicodemus thought is was kind of strange, the conceptbif being born again.(see John 3:3). It really sounds like you are not familiar with the major doctrines of the Bible.
I think you have more in common with Sadhguru. You guys should meet.
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Good & bad people is a belief based on personal biases.
Infinite can not know finite.
Question the direct experience of ever having been born, if ye dare to.
thelord's_pearl
Well-Known Member
in the bible it says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in Hell, but what I don't understand is, if you're in a fire, how can you even weep and gnash your teeth? wouldn't you be screaming or out of it???
Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
In order to be punished, and to "weep" and to" gnash their teeth", the wicked must be alive....and to suffer eternally means that God has to grant them eternal life, otherwise they could not suffer in pain unless they felt it.
Where this notion disagrees with the Bible is that only the righteous are granted eternal life.....the wicked go to "gehenna" which is another name for the "lake of fire".....a place of no return. Jesus says that body and soul are "destroyed" in that place....not tortured. (Matt 10:28)
Hell in the Bible is a place where the dead "sleep". Hades is not Gehenna.
Even death and hades are thrown into this lake along with wicked humanity and eventually the place that is reserved for satan and his angels.....but God is not finished with him just yet...(Revelation 20)
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Infinite is usually an adjective that requires a noun. The word itself does not contain knowledge. An infinite God knows because He has a mind. Every physical thing He created is finite and had a begining and God knows exactly what He created. Man had a beginning and is offered eternal life (without end) if he believes in and follows Jesus.
I asked my Mom, she was there when it happened.
Phil, the best advice I can give you is to memorize scripture and whenever you write or speak, say nothing more or less, live by, practicr and meditate on the WORD as much as possible, pray without ceasing, love God and love your neighbor.
God Bless, Bye
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