Questions for Christians about Hell.

Okay, what happens to chaff/weeds when you throw them in the fire? Do the chaff/weeds burn forever? Do you think that the chaff/weeds are conscious and feel any pain?

How can destruction or annihilation be forever? Well aren't destruction and annihilation pretty much permanent conditions, I mean once you destroy or annihilate something doesn't that pretty much take care of it for the rest of eternity?

Oh, you mean like Eccl. 9:5, 10 or Ps. 146:4.

I find the claims (by Christians) that "hellfire" exists to be unfounded and wrapped up in bad interpretation and a complete lack of knowledge of who God is.

 

So what you are saying is hell is real but we just can't experience and when we die, although something happens- we aren't conscious of it? Aside from being typically ambiguous, that sounds like another way of explaining the obvious, yet still putting the fear of God in people!

I guess the only way anyone will ever know is the day we die. It's the one thing that mystifies me beyond belief. Every person will share the experience of death, it's the most feared and the only unavoidable occurrence of ones life- yet no one can explain it.

As for the bible, I do believe much of it. It's obvious Jesus existed for example, but miracles? I believe he was probably just a great illusionist of his time. But it's the misgivings, Adam and Eve as the example which I am not convinced by. The parts in error are the parts that ultimately decide a persons faith, otherwise everyone would believe it.

End of the day, even though I can't help thinking scientifically about it, and thus becoming an non-believer, I do wish that one day I can be proved incorrect about everything and anything. I have so many religious friends that I often ponder such topics, all though they all feel I am beyond redemption lol.

 

This seems to indicate that all people will be dead and nothing ever will happen to them. So much for the resurrection of the dead

Also, Jesus says that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Are these men dead awaiting the final resurrection, or are they alive?

Well I am glad we can agree that each other is entirely unable to acurately read the Holy Scriptures.

What then is the "lake of fire" in Revelation 20? If the wicked hope for "rest" why then will they weep and gnash their teeth? Why will they cry out? If the final destination is essentially neutral, why then do the dead seek to be free of it?

 

NB: "miracles" are something Jesus is never said to have done in the Holy Scriptures, a better translation is "deeds/works of power". In John, they are called "Signs" and there are seven major ones beginning with the Water/Wine at Cana and ending with the Raising of Lazarus.

 

Let's use the word Sheol, which is the original language word used in the Bible, since word hell is fraught with pagan ideas such as "hellfire".

Sheol, simply means the common grave of mankind and since dust you are to dust you shall return, death is just nonexistence, like a deep dreamless sleep.

I believe the Bible explains it.

Yes, otherwise everyone would believe it.

Deciding one way or another is your choice and no one else's.

 

And that would be true if there were no God and no resurrection of the dead. But there is a God and there is a resurrection of the dead.

To God they are as alive but yet are awaiting the resurrection.

I only agree that it's you.

First, the book of Revelations is almost entirely symbolic.

The Bible says the lake of fire is the second death. To me that would indicate a death just like the first one only without the possibility of a resurrection or ever existing agian. If you'll notice death is thrown into the lake of fire and right after that it says death will be no more, so I would assume that means that things thrown into the lake of fire are things that will be no more, gone for ever.

 

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matt 25:46)

This verse would seem to support never ending punishing. The word "Kolasis" is mainly translated as punishment although it can also mean penalty and as Paul said the penalty for sin is death.

 

Are the 144,000 Jewish virgins also symbolic?

It seems to me that such a highly stylized and important number in Biblical motifs would be literal while a punishment for a lifetime of wickedness is merely non-existence.

Why do those who worship the beast get burn and then their smoke rise for ever and ever (Revelation 14)? Even the NWT says this...

PS- Of all people I think you'd have more sense than to call the final book of the NT Revelation not RevelationS

 

Doesn't Peter 3:19-20 talk about consciousness in the grave?

 

I understand that verse as eternal nonexistence. So never ending punishment, would be neverending nonexistence.

 

That's what I'm leaning toward, but I need to study more on it. I enjoyed your earlier post btw.

 

Me too, and I am wondering about the verse that you brought up atm.

Thanks.

 

There are two ways of understanding the term eternal punishment.

One is, as you seem to think, that punishment is being doled out every day anew to those being punished, for the rest of eternity. Such as being burnt everyday.

Two is that it is a punishment that the effects last for eternity. Such as being burnt once, which completely destroys forever.

To me the second way seems to fit the Bible better than the first one.

 

Which part? The 144,000 part, that they were Jewish or that they were virgins?

Is this what you meant to say?

Just as a house when it burns down can smoke for days after, showing what had happened to that house, the symbolic smoke rising from the death of these ones shows that the fate of those ones, complete destruction, will be known for the rest of eternity.

My, my, you're getting touchy in your old age. Ever hear of a typo?

 

TARTARUS
A prisonlike, abased condition into which God cast disobedient angels in Noah’s day.

This word is found but once in the inspired Scriptures, at 2 Peter 2:4. The apostle writes: “God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tartarus, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.” The expression “throwing them into Tartarus” is from the Greek verb tar·ta·ro′o and so includes within itself the word “Tartarus.”

A parallel text is found at Jude 6: “And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Showing when it was that these angels “forsook their own proper dwelling place,” Peter speaks of “the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient when the patience of God was waiting in Noah’s days, while the ark was being constructed.” (1Pe 3:19, 20) This directly links the matter to the account at Genesis 6:1-4 concerning “the sons of the true God” who abandoned their heavenly abode to cohabit with women in pre-Flood times and produced children by them, such offspring being designated as Nephilim.

From these texts it is evident that Tartarus is a condition rather than a particular location, inasmuch as Peter, on the one hand, speaks of these disobedient spirits as being in “pits of dense darkness,” while Paul speaks of them as being in “heavenly places” from which they exercise a rule of darkness as wicked spirit forces. (2Pe 2:4; Eph 6:10-12) The dense darkness similarly is not literally a lack of light but results from their being cut off from illumination by God as renegades and outcasts from his family, with only a dark outlook as to their eternal destiny.

Tartarus is, therefore, not the same as the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, both of which refer to the common earthly grave of mankind. This is evident from the fact that, while the apostle Peter shows that Jesus Christ preached to these “spirits in prison,” he also shows that Jesus did so, not during the three days while buried in Hades (Sheol), but after his resurrection out of Hades.—1Pe 3:18-20.

Likewise the abased condition represented by Tartarus should not be confused with “the abyss” into which Satan and his demons are eventually to be cast for the thousand years of Christ’s rule. (Re 20:1-3) Apparently the disobedient angels were cast into Tartarus in “Noah’s days” (1Pe 3:20), but some 2,000 years later we find them entreating Jesus “not to order them to go away into the abyss.”—Lu 8:26-31; see ABYSS.

The word “Tartarus” is also used in pre-Christian heathen mythologies. In Homer’s Iliad this mythological Tartarus is represented as an underground prison ‘as far below Hades as earth is below heaven.’ In it were imprisoned the lesser gods, Cronus and the other Titan spirits. As we have seen, the Tartarus of the Bible is not a place but a condition and, therefore, is not the same as this Tartarus of Greek mythology. However, it is worth noting that the mythological Tartarus was presented not as a place for humans but as a place for superhuman creatures. So, in that regard there is a similarity, since the Scriptural Tartarus is clearly not for the detention of human souls (compare Mt 11:23) but is only for wicked superhuman spirits who are rebels against God.

The condition of utter debasement represented by Tartarus is a precursor of the abyssing that Satan and his demons are to experience prior to the start of the Thousand Year Reign of Christ. This, in turn, is to be followed after the end of the thousand years by their utter destruction in “the second death.”—Mt 25:41; Re 20:1-3, 7-10, 14.

 

That was meant to be friendly jest

 

I didn't say this at all. I'm actually leaning toward your reasoning where the word "kolasis" used here as punishment actually means more like separation from God leading to death or destruction. The word "kolasis" is also used in 1 John 4:16-18 and is compared to being incomplete in love not completely connected to God. The word "kolasis" can also mean torment, restrainment, cutting off, chastise.

 

Likewise old friend.

 

Well, there goes my job as a mind reader.

Actually the NWT says; "And these will depart into everlasting cutting-off, but the righteous ones into everlasting life."
Which agrees with the Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson

 

Perhaps it's because my mind's not made up yet.