QUOTE (Mustafah @ Mar 22 2009, 12:29 PM)
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Greetings,I don't understand the concept of a
ALL loving God who willing fully sends people to hell if they don't believe in Him. How does it make sense that the god of the bible can hang onto his all loving attribute yet still scare people by saying he will send them to hell unless they seek salvation. - Regards.
God is loving and merciful. He did not create sin and suffering. It came into the world when he us gave free will. You can choose to do it God's way or not. One path leads to suffering and the other happiness. God does not want to take away free will because love must be freely given. So he has to allow us to return to him and to acknowledge that his way is the best and only way. All of this takes time and many people will suffer along the way, but God in the end knows that he will have to end it at the best possible moment. Only he knows that time. However, he wants people to see that he has been infinitely patient so that nobody will repeat Satan's lie in Genesis 3: 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Implicit in this is that God is afraid. He cannot allow that to stand, but he has to show that he has given every opportunity to those who reject him so that nobody can say that he is acting out of fear or to silence opposition.Everybody must take a side. You cannot sit on the fence. To try to sit on the fence is to say no to God. If you can't agree that God's way is right then you do not belong in Heaven where sin and suffering cannot exist. It is all a matter of choice. It comes down to free will.Nobody knows for sure what Hell is. There is much symbolism in Revelation. Some people think that it says that Satan and his followers will be destroyed. Others think that Hell is just being separated from God and his love forever. Death would be preferable than to not have love. It is the one thing that we cannot do without because God made us to love and receive love.In the end it should not matter. God is not choosing their fate; they are. That is what free will means. He is just telling you what happens if you make the wrong choice. God takes no pleasure in our suffering. It pains him, but he cannot make that choice for us. Otherwise he would have made us like robots and spared us. But then love would not exist for us and God wants to love us because that is his nature. We are the objects of his love.The concept of Hell does not exist to act as a deterrent and scare people into obedience. That does not work because people are not coming to God because they love him, but because they fear the consequences. We are not made Heaven ready by being fearful, but by taking on the character of Jesus Christ who was loving to the point of dying for sinners. Romans 5: 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.This is also the reason why Jesus is the only path to Heaven. God came into the world to demonstrate his love for us. We must acknowledge that or he has wasted his time. Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of God's love.