Tag Archives: Hells fire

Just what it SAYS/NO-thing more:

A Heretics Thoughts, Just what it says, ,

(What Revelation 20:15 Says)

 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was

cast into the lake of fire.

(What Revelation 20:15 Says/NOT)

And whosoever did not during their lifetime

confess that they are sinners with no hope

and deserving of Hell at birth

and confess Jesus as their

Personal Savior

and ask Him into their Hearts

and agree that He is God

the third

Person in the Trinity

and therefore not found in

The Lambs Book of Life will be

cast into the lake of fire.

ANZAHOLYMAN

Six Questions from the Hell Debate by Morgan Guyton

Hell, Hells Fire, Other Bloggers, Questions are a good thing, QUESTIONS ARE GOOD, , ,

2011 will always be remembered as the year of the “hell debate” because of the explosion of Christian writing that rattled the popular evangelical conception of hell. What has become clear is that it’s not a debate between those “for” and “against” hell, but rather a debate between different possible hells. The following six questions are my attempt to explore the theological presumptions that explain how we come up with such different hells.

1) Is God’s being independent of the universe or is God the source of the universe’s being?

The modern imagination pictures God as another person like we are people. He’s invisible, omnipotent, and omnipresent but His being is seen as completely independent from ours. This is very different from the ancient Christian view that God was the source of all being, expressed most  succinctly in Colossians 1:17: ”In Him all things hold together.”

If all things depend on God for existence and hell is eternal separation from God, then hell is the non-existence that results from rejecting the source of our being. The punitive nature of hell becomes literal rather than metaphorical only in modernity when it becomes possible to imagine existence independent of the presence of God.

2) Is God’s primary agenda to love creation or defend His glory?

If God’s love is the underlying motive for everything He does, then hell must have a loving purpose such as solidarity or protection for the victims of sin. If God never stops loving the people who suffer in hell, then hell must be the product of their choice to reject God’s love rather than God’s rejection of them.

But if everything God does is out of defense of His glory rather than love, and His glory is not defined in terms of His love, then hell has nothing to do with love. In this conception of hell, God punishes people in hell not because they hurt people He loves but simply because His honor has been offended. If God is invested in His honor rather than in seeking communion, He would be indifferent to whether He is glorified through salvation or damnation.

3) Is God’s justice primarily retributive or restorative?

Our modern capitalist world depends upon the assumption that every debt will be paid in full. Without this assurance, our entire economic order would collapse. I think this is why in modernity we equate justice with retribution. Modern justice concerns itself exclusively with ensuring that criminals “pay” fully for their crime, as opposed to restoring the well-being of crime victims or repairing the damage crime does to a community. Restorative justice concerns itself instead with healing, repentance, and reconciliation.

If hell serves the purpose of retributive justice, it exists simply to make sinners pay for their sins. Under this view of hell, some people might question whether eternal torment is an appropriate retribution for a mildly sinful life. The response is usually to say that God is such a perfectionist that sins we consider to be mild are infinitely offensive to God.

On the other hand, if hell serves the purpose of restorative justice, then it isn’t a punishment measured out in proportion to the offensiveness of sin, but the denial of eternal communion to sinners who have refused the means by which God offers to heal and reconcile them with the people hurt by their sin.

4) Is God’s holiness an intolerance for imperfection or an intolerable perfection?

It’s a common formulation in pop evangelical speech to say that God’s holiness means that He “can have no fellowship with sin” and that God has to send people to hell because He can’t tolerate their imperfection. On the other hand, Jesus did choose to fellowship with sinners without compromising His holiness. His holiness could tolerate sinners, but the sinners could not tolerate His holiness, so they crucified Him.

If holiness is God’s intolerance for imperfection, then hell serves the purpose of protecting God from exposure to our sin. If on the other hand, holiness is God’s intolerable perfection, then hell is the torture experienced by sinners who face God’s holiness without atonement.

5) When we escape hell, is it because God changed His mind about us or because we changed our minds about God?

Jesus’ death on the cross is often presented as the reason Jesus’ wrathful Father changes His mind about damning all humanity to hell. The objection to this is to point out that it breaks the Son and Father into two separate gods, rather than one single triune God. If God is truly both Son and Father, then He does not need to be persuaded by His own actions, which would seem to indicate that the cross is supposed to change our minds about God instead.

If God is the one whose mind needs to be changed, then we experience heaven or hell according to where God chooses to send us. If we are the ones whose minds need to be changed, then God’s attitude toward us is constant, but we experience heaven or hell depending upon whether we receive God’s fiery embrace as love or wrath.

6) Are we saved by proving something to God or does God save us from having something to prove?

Evangelical Christianity describes salvation as justification by faith rather than works. This means that we are saved by believing something but not by doing something. But if salvation describes God’s evaluative response to something we have proven about ourselves, then it would seem that whatever proof we have given God is our “works-righteousness,” whether it’s a decision or sinner’s prayer or adherence to the right doctrine. Alternatively, salvation could mean being liberated from the need to prove our worth to God because we trust instead in Jesus’ sacrifice.

If salvation describes God’s approval of our demonstrated “faith,” then hell is God’s reaction to those whom He disapproves. If on the other hand, salvation describes how God liberates us from thinking that we need to earn His approval, then hell could be our delusional imprisonment to the need to prove our worth to God, which would mean that many evangelicals who think they’re saved are actually suffering through hell

by Morgan Guyton

I’m the associate pastor of Burke United Methodist Church and lead pastor for our Lifesign contemporary service

Jesus Saves From Hell?

A Heretics Thoughts, ASK THE ANZAHOLYMAN, Eternal Life, Hell, JESUS, JESUS THEOLOGY, Jesusology, John Calvin, Love Wins, Mercy, Rob Bell, Salvation, Satan, The Christ, The faith of Jesus, The Gospel, , , , , ,

A local Pastor asked a question on his face book page, if there is no hell then what are we saved from?  The first thing I have to say is that the question itself assumes Hell is mankind’s destiny unless saved.  Rather than seeing Hell at least the one made for the devil and his angels as a destiny for a very few wicked beings.  Some mix the Augustinian view of Original Sin with a little Calvinism, Arminianism, Dante and that’s how Jesus saves you from the Hell we are all destined for.

The reason why this Pastor has this assumption has nothing to do with what Jesus or Paul taught, but rather what the Doctrines of Men teach.  Jesus tells us why he came, “to seek and save that which is lost” not bound for Hell.  Further He teaches in

Luke 4:18  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
      for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
   He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
      that the blind will see,
   that the oppressed will be set free,
      19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come. 

Not to save us from Hell but to save us from the effects of the fall on Mankind and the Creation.  Hell is for a very few and those that find themselves there walk in with eyes wide open, and a life committed to Evil.  This kind of Hell focus though is a distraction away from the true reason for the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Or as Rob Bell calls it a “Goat Gospel” as he says “The Good News is much bigger than that.

Jesus saves us from sin and death, He saves us for a Future time and a Future world. His saving work is not even about Heaven but as my Catholic friends would say “worlds without end amen.”  Jesus Christ paid the price for all who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, which is everyone.  No where that I am aware of does Jesus say I have come to save you from Hell, but rather I have come that you may have Life.  You see Jesus has come to save us and the creation from the rule of Satan, whose future is Hell.

All will stand before The God who is love, justice and full of Mercy.  God alone shall judge the quick and the dead, because Jesus Christ has saved us all from the Power of Death and the Grave (Hell). Jesus does not save us from Hell or from God, but rather from the Power of Sin, Death and the Grave.

“I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” ( Revelations 1:18 )

It is God who sent The Word in order to save the World He loved, to all who will believe.  The when, where and how of that faith in Jesus, is to be determined by God and not some narrow man-made doctrines.

Jesus; John teaches is the price paid to ransom us from sin and death and not us alone but the whole world. 1 John 2:2  Jesus as the Last Adam is now the head of all mankind as Adam was before Christ’s death and resurrection. God created Hell as an abode for the wicked, not your next store neighbor who happens not to believe in your version and interpretation of scattered verses.

Jesus did not come save us from Hell unless you mean the Grave, because scripture doesn’t teach I was born destined for the Devils Hell.  It’s Men that teach that and they I believe are dead wrong, and have brought a lot of Hell where it doesn’t belong.  I am quite sure however they are as forgiven and covered by the blood of Lamb as we all are.

ANZAHOLYMAN

Romans 5:18
Therefore, as through one man’s (Adam’s) offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s (Jesus’) righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

2 Kings 14:6, But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin.“

Exceptions to the Rule.

A Heretics Thoughts, A Reflection, Eternal Life, Hell, , ,

First before I begin let me say I believe with all my soul that Jesus is the way truth and life, in this life and the one to come.  Now some see salvation as an equation that goes something like this,

1st Hear that Jesus died for your sins.

2nd Accept that fact and believe with all your heart.

3rd Confess what you now believe out loud to someone else.

Now to be certain this way of encountering God through Jesus can be found in the scriptures, the problem I have is when people say this is a hard a fast rule.  Further they add that if this particular equation is not followed sometime in a person’s lifetime, they are bound for Hell.

So I want to ask can you find a place in your heart for any Exceptions to The Rule?

How about babies before they are born?

How about babies that die in child-birth?

How about young children who die before they are old enough to understand matters of destiny?

How about mentally handicapped people?

How about people who died before Jesus came to earth?

How about people who were born after the death of Christ but lived outside the gospel message?

So I think you get my point Jesus is the way truth and the life in this life and the next age, and that little phrase “next age” is the key to this problem.  For in the world to come every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess Jesus is Lord.  Then comes the Judgment of God the Father of Lights and the seer of our souls.

So share Jesus and the love of God to every soul the Spirit sends your way, but never make a Hard and Fast Rule that has so many Exceptions.  If you really believed that souls would be in Hell and Torment for billions of years without end.  Then would it not be your duty to share Jesus with tears all the days of your life?

But instead O modern evangelical you spend vast sums of money and time on things that are a waste of time.  You see driving your Cadillac Escalade with a Jesus Saves bumper sticker, is not going to fly with God if there are no exceptions to The Rule as you say.

I am glad That Jesus is Lord of this age and the age to come and all shall see him.

I am glad that in pre-time Christ died for world.

I am glad the cross is a cosmic event and not just a verbal confession, of a few lucky enough to be born in the right place and time.

ANZAHOLYMAN

The Threat of HELL…

A Heretics Thoughts, A RANT!, Hell, LAW, LEGALISM, Musings, ,

I am not sure we are going about sharing the Love of God in the right way.

So I wonder when the idea that threatening people with HELL was the best way to share Gods love.

I get the feeling we are stuck with certain images and methods that date themselves back to the Dark Ages.

There was a time in when people showed up for Burnings at the stake and what a good picture that provided the minister for next Sundays pulpit message.

When JESUS used the threat of HELL or the City Dump, it was never to unbelievers but rather to believers that where living in an unloving way.  Never and I mean never did JESUS use the imagery of HELL because people had wrong thinking concerning a belief system. What some of done to the teachings of Jesus is a great travesty, a misuse of His words and their actual Jewish meanings.

How many Pastors would have a job Monday, if they threatened their people with the threat of HELL on Sunday for being unloving?.

The Apostle Paul never once uses the threat of HELL in all his writings, rather he tells us that its the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

I believe the reason that some of the church uses the threat of HELL is because they are Law based and not Grace based.

Under Law you see it is fear of punishment that is the unseen motivation of obedience and not Love.

This crept into the church because of a covenants  based theology that mixed old and new covenant ideas.   This is not to say dispensationalism has done better job by any means.

Listen the threat of death and punishment is a Law based way of sharing God with other,s and quite frankly it’s not working people nor did it ever.

I heard a good description of stupid ” its continuing to do the same thing a expecting a different result.”

I don’t think the threat of HELL to people who are disconnected from God is the biblical method at all.

People it time to rethink some of the junk in our theological trunk if we truly love what God Loves.

ANZAHOLYMAN