(February 17, 2015 at 7:11 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: I'm loving that we have 2 people, LEK and Godschild, both call themselves 'Christians', both get their beliefs from the same texts, both believe in the same deity, yet they both have differing views of one of the most important tenets of their religion.
Doesn't this say a lot about the god that created their text, the most important document in the history of the universe (according to them), so badly that no 2 believers get the same message?
My view of hell seems to tie all the scripture verses together, I may be wrong about part of it, but not all. On eternal punishment I see this as the verse that confirms. Matt. 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. This is a simple straight forward statement from Jesus, in this He left no getting around eternal punishment. Everything else about hell has to fit with this straight forward statement. God did not leave a confused Bible, it's the people that get confused when we do not allow Him to teach us and all Christians are guilty of this.
With that said, Lek and I do not worry about hell it's not a part of our lives now, so it really doesn't matter how we interpret the scriptures on hell. It doesn't actually matter if any Christian gets it right, it's not something we worry about. Hell is far from being an important part of Christianity, it does however fall right into the laps of those who refuse to believe in Christ. Hell has been a reason for people to come to Christ and rightly so, it want be pleasant, love however should be the greater part of the Christians life.
GC
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
