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To: hope_dies_last
The Truth is that the fire and brimstone eternally for the damned is NOT a Biblical teaching. It was invented sometime around the time of the legalization of Christianity in Rome, for precisely the purpose of gaining converts through scare tactics.

Revisionist history.

"And there came down fire from God out of heaven, and devoured them; and the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast And the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." Apocalypse 20:9-10

The Bible talks only about Heaven

Only if you skip large portions of Scripture.

hell

8 posted on 01/12/2012 10:13:51 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: A.A. Cunningham; hfr; Lucas McCain
Hell - Sheol - Hades - Gehenna - Tartaroo - Lake Of Fire - Outer Darkness ... Gehenna is the Greek form of two Hebrew words ge hinnom meaning Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.

In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba'als and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6).

In both Jewish and Christian writing, Gehenna was a destination of the wicked... The King James version of the Bible translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word Hell.

I think you are really stretching the meaning of Hell when you refer to it as a present and future place of eternal torment. By the above definition, if you don’t put on your preconcieved notion and are honest to the text; “hell” simply means the outer darkness and the site of the ancient burial ground in Israel.

It literally means – the grave.

By this definition, how do you read into the text eternal suffering through fire?

The Greek words used in Jude 1:7 – to describe the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, which suffered the “Eternal Fire” you are referring to have been misconstrued by Romish ideaologies that gave birth to this notion of a God of passionate Mercy is also a God of passionate punishment.

I think that is distorting God’s true character and making out to be somewhat bipolar… and it is all owed thanks to distorted Romish, heretical non-christian philosophies of immortal existence outside of God and ancient pagan and death cult ideas about the afterlife.

The word – aiōnios is the greek word for “eternal” in your sense… but by definition it is: Definition : without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be without beginning without end, never to cease, everlasting…

Notice eternal means without beginning and without end. Is Sodom and Gomorrah still burning? Has it been burning since all eternity before judgement was cast as recorded in Genesis? You can't pick and choose and call something ETERNAL if it hasn't been occurring forever, see my point?

If you read the text correctly, in Jude 1:7, it is simply saying the consequences are ETERNAL, just as the consequences of FIRE, are ETERNAL. This is the same verbiage used in Revelation when referring to the Lake of Fire and its consequences.

People believe what they choose to read into the Word of God. I would rather err on the side of what the text is saying, than what so-called Bible-thumping “fire and brimstone” preachers preach, not knowing the true source of their errant teachings.

I believed like you for many years, but discovered the error of my ways. So you are telling me that for a life of constant sinning for 70 or 80 years, if you are robust, according to Psalms, you will be punished by God for ever, and ever, and ever and ever? …And on the same breath you preach a God of Love? I find your doctrine to be found wanting and chockful of irreconcilable differences.

Shalom.

Baruch Hashem Adonai for His Enduring ETERNAL Mercy

13 posted on 01/12/2012 3:54:45 PM PST by hope_dies_last
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