Is this God’s way of doing things?
Jesus seems to think so:
Luk_12:5 But I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, He’s the One to fear.
God must be just. Mercy is at his discretion, he does not have to be merciful.
As much as you don’t like it. GOD MUST BE JUST, HE IS HOLY.
Until one understands what we deserve, we can never fully understand His mercy.
The very nature of your question states you want to define God because you want to decide what is right and wrong (familiar?), instead of letting him tell you who HE IS.
And nothing there about any kind of prayer, much less a Sinner’s prayer.
Luk_12:5 But I’ll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, He’s the One to fear.
Thing is, believers are born again. This is the birth of the spirit. The lost don’t get that. They are destroyed, first the tent they occupy (the body) and then they are destroyed (the soul).
It’s why the gift is described as “eternal life” or “immortality”. It is only offered to one side of the equation.
BTW, The word translated “hell” is actually “gehenna”. The Greek lexicon calls it “Gehenna, a valley W. and S. of Jerusalem.”
It’s a garbage dump. And that is the fate of the lost. They are thrown out like garbage. Or, in other analogies he uses, they are burned up like weeds. They are simply removed from existence.
The very nature of your question states you want to define God because you want to decide what is right and wrong (familiar?), instead of letting him tell you who HE IS.
I get this from His word.
And over and over again it points out, regarding the fate of the lost, that their fate is eternal. They’re not coming back.
A lot of people get hung up on the word, “punishment”. It means many things, one of which is consequences. It can also mean suffering, but that is to teach the sufferer a lesson. In the case of the lost after the GWTJ, that time has passed.