Only hell I have come across has been here on planet earth and no that was not eternal, as for the Hell you refer to I have no idea as I have not visited it yet
I would say that hell is a very earthly concept/creation that manifests the sum of human fears and was created by those that needed to threaten people with eternal damnation in order to scare them into believing the latest version of what "God" wanted them to do.
There is no Devil! You are living an Illusion child! The Bible was written by the True Children of God, WE the Souls, and this is a Game WE are playing to answer questions. I guess you believe God created the Universe in 6 days and took a nap? God has never taken a break! She goes 24/7/52 and never stops but you don't know that because you don't know the REAL God, you only know the fake God of the bible, which is WE the Souls. Ribbit
I never did say that God takes a break. I just believe that there is indeed a hell. And I think it is eternal.
Angie is correct. Scripture teaches us that a visit to Hell is eternal. The Scriptural witness also does not talk of human fears in Hell. It doesn't have a guy with a tail and a pitchfork, or giving us the things we feared most in life (so no, Moen, you won't become a member of the Bush family). Boiled down, all Scripture teaches us about Hell is that it is a place where we are seperated from God for eternity. As to HOW we get there, well, that's another debate entirely. I happen to be an active double-predestinarian myself.
Works for me. If I remember what I was taught, the early church tended toward the idea that the wages of sin and/or disbelief were literally death. You had lost your chance at eternal life and when you cast off this mortal coil you simply ceased to exist. That was punishment enough for them. The idea of Hell gained adherents as the Church became more authoritarian and more involved in the here than in the hereafter. Both St Augustine and St Jerome were big fans of the idea of unspeakable eternal torture. So much so that in translating the Bible into Latin the latter apparently put his own spin on certain words and passages to bring them into line with his views on the subject. It’s my understanding that the concept of Hell that many Christians have today and that came to a receptive Church largely via Jerome and the Vulgate was borrowed pretty much wholesale from Plato. He had cooked it up as a non-violent device for keeping the hoi polloi in line in his ideal philosopher-ruled society and he never intended for it to be taken as truth by those running the show.
The scary question is would you perfer a hell to nothingness. Nothingness can be an even scary thought. Sometimes it is best not to have free thought on this matter and just let nature take its course and hope for the best.
I'd say there are probably more people that would agree there is such a thing as a 'living hell' ...I mean, a lot of people get married right?
Ah, nothing else brings me closer to god or the spirit of the Universe then my love for my wife and children. but it is still a funny joke unless someone is trapped in a bad marriage.
...I mean, how many of you looked over your shoulder, hoping your spouse didn't see you reading that? That's a small corner of living hell brother!
Hell is not something I worry about because everything I've seen indicates that it's all made up. But if there were a Hell and I could chose that or nothingness, I'd go for nothingness hands down. I'm kind of pain averse. I already think that ceasing to exist as a discrete entity is what happens to us anyway and I'm okay with that.
