Is Hell actually a more preferable destination than Heaven?

reply to post by DaleGribble


Dalegribble, you don't know what you're talking about.

there is no such thing as heaven or hell the sooner you realize that the sooner you can live your life to the fullist. religion was and is just a way to get people to do what the religion's leader wanted, maybe for reasons that one would believe to be good maybe for reasons not so good but none the less religion is just a lie

Originally posted by EverythingYouDespise

I'd much prefer to spend eternity in Hell

Be careful what you wish for. Jesus won't make you go to heaven if you don't want to.

True Biblical Christianity is not about church membership or ritual, but rather relationship. If you don't want a relationship with Jesus, you won't get one.

Salvation is based upon what Jesus did. If you reject a relationship with Him, you will get your wish.

Fine by me. I don't want anything to do with that holier-than-thou sissy.

Hell, as described by people who have been there, say it is the most horrible, left out, degraded, cut off of all love and attention feeling that being on earth (as a mortal state) cannot even begin to attempt to describe.

reply to post by EverythingYouDespise


Kinda hard to enjoy orgies and feasts whilsts your skin peels off in a lake of fire.

Does "weeping and gnashing of teeth" sound inviting to you?

I'd rather spend eternity on my knees is worship than 10 minutes on the surface of the sun. Figuratively speaking of course.

Originally posted by Tomis_Nexis
reply to post by EverythingYouDespise

 

I'm not a believer but when I pass away and if I'm at St.Peters gate (and I know I won't get access) I only have one question about hell? "So...I should wear shorts?"

It is not over until it's over, remember? Don't make that assumption.
I hope and pray that you will be there and that your name will be written in the Lamb's Book of Life!

In fact I have prayed so......therefore I believe that He will draw you into the Kingdom.

Bless you,
~Paula

the easiest way to describe 'hell' is a washing mashine.

every soul in existence is detined to go to heaven. it is simply a matter of how long ur in hell b4 hand.

there is a specific way of life, with specific rules formed about 5000 years ago that ensure a perfected life for each and every individual (in the long run!!!). however humans become subject to their bodies over a lifetime and when that life is fnished there is nothing left but the soul (the original form) and sould realises its wrongness and punishes itself instinctively by staying away from the place of origin (in christian religion = heaven) until it has realized its wrongness in full (acts on earth that praise any individual) and then the soul returns to heaven!
In the case of wreched ppl like hitler, among others, who actually realize the severity of their sins... this realization in life was their chance of letting it go.... but they usually dont and end up reliving the day they died over and over again for eternity... being chased by their own image!

By Jewish doctrine only heaven and earth exist (NOT hell)! the misinterpretation that is known as 'hell' is nothing more than the ABSENCE of heaven.... there is no fire, no devil, no pimps or orgies or BBQ's!!!! just you........ alone, wishing you were with the only thing that IS................ (GOD)!

So, to answer your question..... Hell doesnt exist only God exists and anything he creates... earth is here and us 2day, heaven is to be absorbed and one with god (this is also know as nirvana) when you die! when you have to wait for that interaction in the form of STILLNESS and NOTHINGNESS you realize 'hey....this is the absence of god'.....that is when you realize that god has infact been with you your entire life granting you the chance to better yourself (method i described above), that ABSENCE is as close to a "hell" as 99.9% of the people reading this thread are going to witness after death!

The origin of Hell is Viking Mythology.

If you died without valor you walked north to the goddess Hel who was half living and half dead.

There were two hells nifhel and helheim. Misty hell and rainy hell. A volcano in the ice, and freezing rain. There were seven levels within each of seven levels in each region of hell.

Seven levels withing seven levels. That proves we are talking about the biblical hell. The Vikings belief system was absorbed into the belief systems of the peoples they conquered, and spread throughout the middle east.

So which religion do you belong to again?

[edit on 26-7-2008 by Cyberbian]

reply to post by Cyberbian


Hi Cyberbian. That was an original theory!


This was written 1200 - 1400 years B.C. :

...a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell.

Deuteronomy 32:22 (Moses)


About 1000 B.C. :

Let death seize them; let them go down alive into hell.

Psalm 55:15a (David)


About 30 A.D. :

"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Christ in Matthew 10:28


I'm afraid the 'Viking' theory doesn't hold water. God has been speaking to man about these things for a very very long time. How we react to them is up to each one of us.

reply to post by pause4thought


You are good! Yes 14000 Years ago, At the end of the Ice Age, when the Vikings came down the coast of Europe and into the Middle East conquering, and being assimilated into the local cultures as leaders.

Not my theory, actual norse history.

Here is a little Wikipeda link about the Goddess. I read a book on the subject many years ago, I wish I had the reference.

en.wikipedia.org...(being)


The dating is inexact since that is about the limit of human history. Yes both these sources are from approximately the earliest times in documented human history at the end of the iceage.

You are well versed, but are you well read? You need to look at the origins if you would claim authority in your knowledge. You cannot so easily dismiss this. You can still choose to believe in Hel if you wish, after you learn it's origin.
www.godchecker.com...

Yes, her name gives us the word 'Hell', but her domain is almost the complete opposite of SATAN's abode: it's cold, damp, and populated by the kind of apathetic souls most devils would hardly feel worth the trouble of roasting. In fact most souls go to HELHEIM because they've spent their lives sitting on their asses instead of killing, pillaging and then singing rude songs about it.

An excerpt from Wikipedia on "Hell".

[edit] Etymology

[edit] Germanic paganism and Christian vocabulary
The modern English word Hell is derived from Old English hel, helle (about 725 AD to refer to a nether world of the dead) reaching into the Anglo-Saxon pagan period, and ultimately from Proto-Germanic *halja, meaning "one who covers up or hides something".[3] The word has cognates in related Germanic languages such as Old Frisian helle, hille, Old Saxon hellja, Middle Dutch helle (modern Dutch hel), Old High German helle (Modern German Hölle), and Gothic halja.[3] Subsequently, the word was used to transfer a pagan concept to Christian theology and its vocabulary.[3]

The English word hell has been theorized as being derived from Old Norse Hel.[3] Amongst other sources, the Poetic Edda, compiled from earlier traditional sources in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, provide information regarding the beliefs of the Norse pagans, including a female being named Hel, who is described as ruling over an underworld location of the same name.

[edit on 27-7-2008 by Cyberbian]

reply to post by Cyberbian


Sir, you are a worthy opponent in this debate!

Forgive me, I assumed you were referring to the legends being taken around the world by the Vikings in the 9th to the 11th centuries.

My first point is that most of what you have argued relates to the etymology of the English word 'hell'. I am aware of these things, but they are irrelevant. The derivation of a word is not the same as the origin of a concept. There are, for example, numerous words for 'Heaven' ('Paradise', 'glory', 'Zion', 'the city of God', 'the skies', etc.). If, for argument's sake, you could demonstrate that the word 'Paradise' originated from the language of a tribe that believed in pink fairies and their eternal abode, it would have no bearing on the existence of another place which the word later came to denote, namely the dwelling place of the Maker of Heaven and earth. The question is, where did the concept, the idea of 'hell' originate?

You have argued that the Vikings wrote of such things at the end of the Ice Age, at the limit of human history. That is a good argument. However I held back an argument which trumps it. Those of us who believe the Bible have evidence that goes back even further. We believe the Ice Age was the result of a global flood. Thus if we had literature predating the flood which speaks of hell it would suggest that the Vikings had obtained their ideas on the subject from elsewhere.

I have in my hands a book some of whose words may well be positively primordial. It is, I believe, unparalleled in this sense. It could be argued that - with respect to antiquity - these passages make the Rosetta Stone look like a treatise of the post-modern era. The book is not counted among the canonical books of the Bible, but has always been highly respected, along with the other works which are collectively known as the 'Apocrypha'. (They are regarded by Protestants as profitable for reading, but not infallible as to their teaching. Some R. Catholics regard them as having equal weight as the Bible. I will come back to this in brief, later.)

The book in question is 1 Enoch. Although it may only have been written down a couple of centuries before Christ, at least some elements are the result of oral tradition handed down from time immemorial. (As I'm sure you're aware ancient cultures to some degree valued such oral passing down of history as highly as written accounts, and each successive generation committed the sayings to memory verbatum.) The book claims to be a collection of the sayings of Enoch, great-grandfather of Noah. It has much to say about hell.

From there I travelled to another place... and I saw terrible things - a great fire burning and flaming there. And the place had a narrow cleft (extending) to the abyss, full of great pillars of fire, borne downward...

Then I said, "How terrible is this place and fearful to look at!" Then Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and said to me, "Enoch, why are you so frightened and shaken?" And I replied, "Because of this terrible place and because of the fearful sight." And he said, This place is a prison for the angels. Here they will be confined forever."

1 Enoch 21:7-10

But is this really referring to 'hell', the destination of people who according to the Bible have left this life in rebellion against their Maker?

Then He will also say to those on His left, "Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels!"

Jesus in Matthew 25:41

Anyone who thinks this is some kind of joke would do well to at least take five minutes of their life and read the whole passage in which this is found (-Matthew 25:31-46).

But is there any way of knowing that Enoch, Noah's great-grandfather, believed these things? As it happens, there is. In an unusual quirk of the Bible, Enoch is specifically quoted as a prophet who spoke of the future judgement of all the ungodly, and the quote matches what he says in 1 Enoch 1:9.

Look! The Lord comes with thousands of his holy ones
to execute judgement on all,
and to convict them of all their ungodly deeds
that they have done in an ungodly way,
and of all the harsh things ungodly sinners have said against Him.

Jude 14&15

The concept of hell originates in Jewish teaching so ancient it predates the flood, and thus the Ice Age. The fact that other cultures later displayed knowledge of these things is the result of knowledge that spread throughout the inhabited earth from the ancient Middle East, which was the crucible in which civilization was born.

Well said! I think we are actually in agreement upon the history.

You of course are free to interpret in accordance with the predispositions of your belief system. However I am not simply referring to the origin of a word or even words. The origin of the concepts cannot be disassociated from their words so easily as that.

The similarity between valkerie and angels says enough for me. We are discussing the self same root origin seen through the filter of two cultures which merged belief systems later. The merge is also undeniable.

We can only view this from our perspective of after the merge, so we will never know how they differed. But hell came from the Norse.

Were they in basic agreement before the merge? No one can now know, but I believe they carried their respective historys from a time long before the beginning of the ice age, where they perhaps shared the same heritage.

Consider the possability that they recognized the same heritage when they once again met so much later.

As for the apochripha, I give them more credability than the "selected texts" I have no respect for anything of that religious heritage beyond the very few actual quotes of Christ. Even these, it must be remembered have been filtered, his other words censored. After the first three hundred years from Christ no serious scholar believes that christianity and it's practicies did not mutate to fit the market.

If the Christianity of the time of Christ existed today, I might choose to practice that. I sorely wish I knew what it truly was.

reply to post by Cyberbian


I enjoyed your sober response. It appears we've found some common ground.

What you say about the similarity between the valkerie and angels is actually not unique to the Norsemen. Tribes that have been contacted throughout the world over the last century possess certain knowledge handed down through the generations which accords with the Biblical world-view. It is such a regular phenomenon it staggers belief, from the Amazonian rainforest to the hinterland of Irian Jaya. A peaceful world whose original inhabitants became corrupt, a one, all-powerful God over all who decided to destroy all he had made in anger, a family that survived the ensuing flood, the need for the life of an animal to be offered in exchange for personal guilt, the coming of one who would turn the world back to its original state, and the need to prepare for an afterlife, whereupon each person would be judged and assigned an abode with God or with the demons.

There is much more that could be said. But suffice it to say I believe all this goes back to a time before the inhabitants of the world spread throughout the earth and developed distinctive national cultures and traits. You seem to have an interest in such things, and even in the ancient apocryphal writings. This is indeed a fascinating topic.

As to the accuracy of the extant words of Christ, I can only suggest we might discuss that further elsewhere, as it would take us off-topic. Be my guest, however, have a read of the following thread on that very subject here:

New Testament Documents - are they Reliable?

and by all means revive the discussion.

Just to round things off by addressing the specific question posed in the title of this thread, I challenge anyone to maintain that this issue is a laughing matter after watching the following videos:

Google Video Link

Google Video Link

Originally posted by Southbound
If God is love then why would he make us live in a world full of evil where our hearts get hardened.

I have struggled with this in the past. The truth of the matter is this: God gave us FREE WILL. WE are the ones that are effen up the world and since we do have free will God allows it to happen. This doesn't mean that he likes it or that it makes him happy. I just mean we humans have made our own bed.

What will come is unknown to all, some video means nothing - to me it might as well be as stupid as that lizard race, god could be a divine being he could be a alien he could be blimming george bush , why cause stress upon yourselfs with such matters, and as for sin, jesus died for ALL mankinds sins

Going back to the original question: Is Hell actually a more preferable destination than Heaven?...for some people (perhaps many people) it would be.

There are many different ideas of what hell is, and I think most of the scriptural descriptions are primarily symbolic. After all, what kind of effect would eternal fire have on you without a physical body? Hell is described in terms we can relate to physically and we probably cannot truly conceive of conditions there during this mortal period.

Likewise with heaven, it is likely inconceivable to us in our current state.

But one issue that seems certain: heaven is a place where god dwells or at least where his presence is felt, whereas in hell there is a separation from god.

In god's presence, his laws would be in effect. Someone who did not wish to follow god's laws on earth would not want to follow them after death. It would be contrary to their nature. It would not be a blessing to force someone to dwell in that kind of environment where they would feel so out of place and uncomfortable. Furthermore, how would you feel facing your creator with guilt knowing that you had rebelled against him and scorned him all your life?

Those who have chosen other paths would be much more comfortable in hell, away from the presence of God. I don't think that means, though, that they will find happiness there. The types of selfish and unholy acts that many people that many people commit in the pursuit of happiness can result in temporary pleasure but not lasting joy. Peace, fulfillment, contentment, and joy can only result from selflessly giving yourself to good causes and the betterment of others.

Mosiah 2:36-38 "36 And now, I say unto you, my brethren, that after ye have known and have been taught all these things, if ye should transgress and go contrary to that which has been spoken, that ye do withdraw yourselves from the Spirit of the Lord, that it may have no place in you to guide you in wisdom’s paths that ye may be blessed, prospered, and preserved—

37 I say unto you, that the man that doeth this, the same cometh out in open rebellion against God; therefore he listeth to obey the evil spirit, and becometh an enemy to all righteousness; therefore, the Lord has no place in him, for he dwelleth not in unholy temples.

38 Therefore if that man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and epain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever.