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originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: SeaWorthy
I have faith in God, I have a conscience and yet I’m not Christian. I guess it’s eternal hellfire for me.
Religious dogma supported by fiction, even if it was epic poetry, it still wrong. Hell is a myth, a very bad myth. Dante got it wrong. Milton got it wrong. Mary K Baxter got it wrong. Most of what used to be known as Christendom got it wrong.
1. There is no mention of Hell in God’s Creation of the Cosmos – therefore, Hell is uncreated by God or anyone else. See Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 65:17, Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5. John 1:3 explicitly states that God made all, and that no other person or agency made anything. The Bible contains many instances of “heaven and earth” paired together as a term…without “hell” being involved, i.e., no “hell and earth” or “heaven and hell.”
2. In the first chapter of Genesis, it is stated six times that God saw that what He had made was good, excluding Hell as being possible, as the Creation could not have been wholly good had Hell been in existence. See Genesis 1:10,12,18,21,25,31.
3. The Creation is properly a hierarchy, not a dualistic Heaven versus Hell, with the Earth and humans as a contested prize, fought over by God and Satan. See Genesis 1:1, Job 1 & 2, John 1:3, Philippians 2:10, Revelation 5:13.
4. God made both good and evil, for the same Hand that planted the Tree of Life also planted the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, Satan did not make or create evil. See Genesis 2:9, Isaiah 45:7, Lamentations 3:38, Amos 3:6.
5. The Bible makes no connection between Satan and Hell, so Satan is NOT the Prince of Hell, but is bound to the Earth. See Job 1:6-7, 2:1-2, Zechariah 3:1-2, Revelation 2:13, 12:9.
6. The Law that God gave to Moses warned of death, but did not specify punishment in Hell, or warn of it. Punishments were delivered in the real world, and the most severe was simple death. See Genesis 2:17, Exodus through Deuteronomy, Romans 6:23.
7. All the consequences of human disobedience to God are worked out in the real, here-and-now world – not in Hell. This includes death, destruction, perishing, God’s wrath and His cursings. See Deuteronomy 28:15-68, 30:19, Ezekiel 32:32, Romans 13:4.
8. All people die, but none of them go to Eternal Conscious Torment – only to the grave or pit...and non-existence. See every instance of personal death in the Bible, with “hell” (if present) properly replaced with “sheol” or “hades,” as so often noted in the center or marginal reference column.
9. For the Hebrews, “sheol,” (hidden, covered and unknown), was the state, condition or place of the dead. It was where the body returned to dust and the spirit returned to God (Who gave it). See Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 12:7.
10. Eternal Conscious Torment depends on the concept of the Immortality of the Soul, and that comes, not from the Bible, but from Greek philosophy, from Socrates and Plato.
11. Hell, by definition, opposes the Gospel (the Good News) because Hell can only be Bad News for those who are thought to be sent there – and thus, for most of living (and dead) humanity.
12. Hell violates God’s Law, specifically the Law of the Jubilee, which sets all those in servitude free. Those who die are freed from sin, as prophesied by the Law of the Jubilee. See Leviticus 25:8-13, Isaiah 1:18, Romans 6:7,16.
13. The idea of damnation of people to Hell is at least absurd, and possibly blasphemous, due to the presence of God’s Spirit of Life in each of us. See Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7,3:19, Ecclesiastes 12:7.
14. Hell, like Babylon, is confusion. Hell is hot, but it’s also cold as…Hell. Hell is bright with fire, but it is dark. Hell is separation from God, but Mary K Baxter depicts Jesus touring Hell, chiding the damned. To go to Hell, you must be dead, but to be in ECT, you must be alive, but you’re dead, and on and on… Literary descriptions of Hell, especially as seen in the works of Dante, Milton and Baxter, are clearly fictional and un-Biblical.
15. God’s plan for the wicked is to destroy their wickedness, not to annihilate them or send them to Hell. See Psalm 1:6, 7:9, Isaiah 1:18, Jeremiah 3:12, Habakkuk 1:12, Philippians 3:21, Hebrews 10:26-27.
16. God speaks of ransoming/redeeming ALL from death and the grave – without exception. See Psalm 49:15, Ezekiel 16:55, Romans 6:23, Ephesians 1:10.
17. God is both willing AND able to save all – something denied by both Calvinists and Arminians. Given that He is omnipotent, we can ALL look forward with confidence to our eventual salvation. See Psalm 49:15, 86:13, 103:8-14, 136, Isaiah 1:18, 6:7, 25:7-8, 26:19, 33:24, 43:25, 44:22, 45:8, 55:8-9, 57:16, 64:6-9, Jeremiah 3:12. Lamentations 3:26-32, Ezekiel 11:19, 16:55, Hosea 13:14, Micah 4:5, 7:18-19, Ephesians 1:10, Philipians 3:21, Colossians 1:19-20, I Thessalonians 1:10, I Timothy 1:15, 2:4-6, 4:10, 6:13, II Peter 3:9.
18. God compares Himself to a cleansing or refining agent – usually as fire, but sometimes as soap. Therefore, all instances of supernatural fire should be interpreted as being for refining and/or purification, not damnation. Fire in the Bible is never Hellfire, but natural fire or God’s Fire...or as I like to call it, Godfire. See Malachi 3:2-3, Matthew 3:10-12, I Corinthians 3:15.
19. If God’s Fire is for refining, and for baptism as John the Baptist stated in Matthew 3:11, then that which is burned up must be our carnal, sinful nature. It is symbolized by unfruitful trees, tares, chaff, wood, hay and stubble – by anything unable to endure the Fire. See Matthew 3:10-12, I Corinthians 3:11-15.
20. “Hell” is used in the King James Version (and others) to replace four other words: “Sheol,” “Hades,” “Gehenna” and “Tartarus.” None of these four refer to a place of damnation or Eternal Conscious Torment. Two of the terms come from pagan Greek mythology. See any decent dictionary, especially the Oxford English Dictionary.
21. When we dig out mistranslations and peel away misinterpretations, we find that Hell is an overlay, an imposition, an insertion into the text. With Hell so deconstructed, the Bible and God are both silent on Hell. See Numbers 23:19, John 14:2.
22. Christians should not follow the Hell of the ancient, pagan religions, such as the “Hel” we find in Norse mythology, but follow the truth of God’s Word, which does not contain either the concept of Hell or even the word “hell,” except in imperfect translations.