(April 5, 2014 at 10:54 pm)Lek Wrote: I do believe in hell. I think the bible is very clear about the existence of hell. It's also not a pleasant place since Jesus said it would be better to gouge yor eye out or cutoff your arm than to go there, but it seems the bible is not completely clear concerning the length of time spent there. I've been looking more deeply into what the bible says about the duration of hell and I'm not sure that it's forever. I'm more convinced that the time there is more proportionate to the severity of sinfulness. The dominant belief in the church today is that it's eternal, but the early church fathers were more likely to support punishment in hell followed by either total destruction of the individual or the person coming to faith and then gong to heaven. The latter would seem to make a hell a place of correction as well as punishment.
OR
Hell is make-believe.
Hmmmm, being that nearly every organized religion has some version of hell, I'm leaning towards the latter.