Why torturing people for eternity is wrong

Originally posted by @sonship
So your heart felt plea for help is a sham and you're really only interested in winning a debate point.

It’s both. If you tell me before the Lord that your doctrines on the trinity and eternal suffering are salvation based issues if I reject them then I promise I will fully research them both again and also sincerely pray about them. That’s the plea.

But you won’t, because you don’t believe it yourself. Instead you hem and haw and obfuscate because you are too vain to admit they are not salvation based teachings and are therefore not critical. That’s the debating point.

So...what’s it to be?

Originally posted by @divegeester
Your obfuscating.

Your doctrines on the trinity and eternal suffering are either something you personally believe are issues for salvation or you don’t. You cannot (comfortably) sit on the fence, it makes you look dishonest.

You're avoiding the crucial issue.
If Jesus didn't teach certain things, identify what imperfect person who pretended that He did for nefarious motives of their own. Show how they inserted their thoughts into the mouth of Christ in the original text.

You can't or you won't.
And you haven't the courage to tell the world that Jesus was wrong and you need to teach Jesus.

As for the supposed ace of spades you THINK you have on me about the Father - Son - Holy Spirit and assurance of salvation ? Its flimsy.

Deal with what Jesus said about the One God and He and His Father.

"We will come to him and make an abode with him." (John 14:23)

Divegeester, you've gotten nowhere. You're like a gerbil running on a spinning wheel thinking that you've made some impressive mileage.

You're still back where you were five years ago. You haven't budged forward an inch in your complaint against Christians who preach the Gospel and teach about the Triune God.

Originally posted by @sonship
Divegeester, you've gotten nowhere. You're like a gerbil running on a spinning wheel thinking that you made some impressive mileage.

You're still back where you were five years ago. You haven't budged forward an inch in your complaint against Christians who preach the Gospel and teach about the Triune God.

More obfuscation.

I’m not complaining about anying at all; I’m pointing out your vanity and rank dishonesty.

Originally posted by @sonship
You're avoiding the crucial issue.

Haha! The irony.

Sonship...if you tell me before the Lord that your doctrines on the trinity and eternal suffering are salvation based issues if I reject them then I promise I will fully research them both again and also sincerely pray about them. That’s the plea.

But you won’t, because you don’t believe it yourself. Instead you hem and haw and obfuscate because you are too vain to admit they are not salvation based teachings and are therefore not critical. That’s the debating point.

So...what’s it to be?

Here’s another one for you sonship..

Tell me now before the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that you honestly don’t know the answer to my yes or no question, and I’ll leave it right here.

Originally posted by @divegeester
It’s both. If you tell me before the Lord that your doctrines on the trinity and eternal suffering are salvation based issues if I reject them then I promise I will fully research them both again and also sincerely pray about them. That’s the plea.

But you won’t, because you don’t believe it yourself. Instead you hem and haw and obfuscate because yo ...[text shortened]... ed teachings and are therefore not critical. That’s the debating point.

So...what’s it to be?

Quote a post written by me where I made agreement with eternal punishment critical to being saved from it.

Years ago I wrote - you get on the plane and the plane takes you out of one place and to the other. As long as you're on the plane you have the transportation regardless of what you feel about where you came from and where you end up.

The Trinity is a Person for experience and not a doctrine to argue over.

If you HAVE the Son you HAVE the Father too, Don't argue with me. That's what John said.

" Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who confesses the Son has the Father also." (1 John 5:23)

Don't argue with me about what points about the Trinity you HAVE to believe. Ask yourself if you have the Son. If you do you know you have the Father also.

He said "WE ... will come to him and make an abode with him." (John 14:23) .

You know if He has or not. You know if the Divine "WE" has or not.

Originally posted by @divegeester
Here’s another one for you sonship..

Tell me now before the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that you honestly don’t know the answer to my yes or no question, and I’ll leave it right here.

Another one Divegeester ??

The first two were no devastating knock outs to me.

And I went further to oblige you then you have towards me on questions I asked you.

If you don't have assurance of your salvation in that Unitarian or pseudo Unitarian thing you're in, its not my fault.

If you have to beg to be assured you're "in the gang" that's your lack of assurance in the Holy Spirit. Don't blame that on my teaching about Father - Son - Holy Spirit being One God.

Question: Why do Unitarians make such bad singers?

Answer: They keep reading ahead to see if they agree with the words.

Hello all. I would like to present as much of an traditional Christian perspective on this as I can.

Why we believe in hell.

I. Hell is referenced in very familiar terms in Revelation 21:8:

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

II. But, much more importantly than this, it is referenced by Christ in several places, in a more figurative manner but insistent on its eternity, as in Matthew 25:46:

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

And in a more direct manner and in reference into a more physical manner in Matthew 13:50:

and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mark 9:43 has Christ talking about Hell as the place where the fire 'never goes out.' Matthew 25:41 has Christ using a parable of goats and sheep, talking about some segment of the people being sent to hell.

III. St. Peter and others give us developed ideas of hell as well. St. Peter even talks about the fallen angels being chained to hell by God. This is a concept of ideas that is not even dealt with that much in the Old Testament, but it really is a glimpse into the ideas that early Christians had about hell -- there is a very rich amount of largely unwritten concepts & traditions about hell, the angels, Satan, and others.

2 Peter 2:4:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;

Do note that Matthew 25:41 also invovles hell as the place for the Devil and his angels. Again, words of Christ.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 has Paul talking about hell as an eternal event as well.

IV. The Book of Daniel, in the Old Testament, speaks also of heaven and hell.

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

(Daniel 12:2)

The book of Daniel is particularly rich for its prophecies, and indeed, one could say that this was a very important foreshadowing of the far more cultivated concepts of heaven and hell that we saw above in the NT.


What is hell?

I was taught by an Orthodox Christian sister, who has dedicated her life to Christ and taught me so much directly from the very rich Greek tradition and fills in for the role of one of the only former deaconesses, that a lot of things like heaven and hell cannot be explained in earthly terms.

Just as how an Amazonian tribesman would have no idea what to say and how to describe downtown New York City to his fellows if he was shortly shown it and brought back withotu robust explanation, so, too, is heaven & hell, and thus it is not necessarily appropriate for us to think of it in the most literal of terms and explanations that are provided to us. However, there are reasons why i tis described as fire, sulfur, a furnace, etc.

We have visions of what hell is like from some of the Saints. The most common ideas that we hear is that the real punishment of hell is being cut off from God (this is directly referenced in the Bible), and, moreover, we hear this advanced concept of the Final Judgment where God comes to Earth and his light & love shines forth, and to those who have done well it is a light of joy and radiating love, and to those who have rejected God, it is the fire of shame and burns through them.

We have also heard consistently from Saints and others that hell is defeined not just by being cut off from God but also by being cut off from all other entities; a vision we are given is one where no matter what direction you turn you only see the backs of other weepers & sufferers.

Spirits

Traidtional Christians believe in demons, angels, and the eternal soul, and believe that th ewhole of the world around us is impregnated with all of that.

Indeed, there is a cloud of witnesses around us -- this is said in Hebrews 12:1.

Christians believe in "occasionalism," that God is in everything, that the Holy spirit is in us, that the spirits abound, and that God is in our communion.

We believe that our prayers bring us graces and our faith animates our life. We believe that nefarious influences tempt us, and prayer is a weapon for us to do "spiritual warfare" -- see Ephesians 6:10-17:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Note that here "heavenly realms" literally just refers to the skies of the earth and nto to heaven specifically, or else it would have been Heaven. Thus, the world is thought of as pregnant with eivl, the skies themselves full of it; there are scholarly works that discuss how this concept was present even in Greek pagan thought.

CONCLUSION:

There's so much more that goes into this...

But, the gist of it is clear:

- Christians believe in Heaven & Hell;
- Christians believe in good & evil angels and spirits;
- Christians believe in a "cloud of witnesses" around us and literal evil forces that are in the heavens.
- Christians believe in demonic possession as Christ cast out demons just as such.

Christian traditions have always beleived these things, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, and only until recently have heresies been developed which reject these fundamental truths.

Indeed, very FEW heresies ever existed before now that dealt with these terms of dismissing all of this.

A traditional Christian recognizes evil and evil's affects, recognizes heaven and hell as real thing, and is waging spiritual warfare to keep himself aright.

I do not think other interpretations are correct, and I am very happy that Christians of many sects all share these basic beliefs.

Originally posted by @divegeester
Here’s another one for you sonship..

Tell me now before the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that you honestly don’t know the answer to my yes or no question, and I’ll leave it right here.

I told you years ago that Jesus told His servants that they would not always be able to tell who are the real believers from the false ones. (Matthew 13 - the wheat and tares parable)

YEARS, YEARS AGO!

You want me to demonstrate that He was WRONG when it comes to fine and nuanced arguments about the nature of the relationship of the Father - Son - Holy Spirit.

Essentially your supposedly clever challenge boils down to -

"Sonship - how much can I NOT believe about God's nature and still be saved ?"

And you THINK this is some knock down point for your anti Tritheism kind of Unitarian Modalism.

Seeing you try to insist there is some kind of shame on me for not going along with you is silly.

Divetgeester, you wont be able to meet this challenge, I suspect

Quote a post written by me where I made agreement with eternal punishment critical to being saved from it.

And I am going to continue to refer people wanting to know the basics of receiving salvation in Christ to a good place to start - Romans 10:9.

On the other hand, you probably won't furnish textural critical evidence that the words attributed to Christ about the severity of rejecting Him were the invention of mean people who fictitiously amended the NT documents to portray THEIR mean thoughts as Christ's words.

There is no other alternative I can see for you except to just say before the Lord and the world that Jesus has to come to YOU to learn about the OUGHTS of eternal destinies.

So when are you going to start giving the Son of God lessons ?

Originally posted by @philokalia
Hello all. I would like to present as much of an traditional Christian perspective on this as I can.

[b]Why we believe in hell.

I. Hell is referenced in very familiar terms in Revelation 21:8:

[quote] But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars— ...[text shortened]... ns are correct, and I am very happy that Christians of many sects all share these basic beliefs.[/b]

Divegeester is fiercely sectarian and attempts to project HIS ill onto others he disagrees with.

He's been on this kick for as long as I have seen him on this Forum.

Originally posted by @divegeester
It’s both. If you tell me before the Lord that your doctrines on the trinity and eternal suffering are salvation based issues if I reject them then I promise I will fully research them both again and also sincerely pray about them. That’s the plea.

But you won’t, because you don’t believe it yourself. Instead you hem and haw and obfuscate because yo ...[text shortened]... ed teachings and are therefore not critical. That’s the debating point.

So...what’s it to be?

“But you won’t, because you don’t believe it yourself. Instead you hem and haw and obfuscate because you are too vain to admit they are not salvation based teachings and are therefore not critical. That’s the debating point.

Is it the debating point? Is there any Bible teaching that is not survival based? Is there a Bible teaching to the effect that this is the debating point? and is or is it not, itself survival based? Does your brain cry out for relief yet?