Biggest stumbling block for me - Hell

You are certainly entitled to your opinions.

This is not a matter of opinion, but of demonstrable fact. If you dispute the facts as I have stated them, all you need to do is give us the passage and verse which shows otherwise. Otherwise this is like saying that you are entitled to the opinion that the moon is made of green cheese and this is the same sort attitude behind YEC which insists on things contrary to the facts. People are simply tired of this nonsense and the more they hear this garbage the more convinced they become that Christian are simply irredeemably stupid and if they believe something then it must be wrong.

You Have Got to go here!!! http://rethinkinghell.com/
I saw a debate on hell and i eventually found my way there.
I also recommend the FB group Rethinking Hell.
Name is David Collins, tag me if you join!

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You have got to check out rethinkinghell.com
You are not alone!!! Don’t let traditionalists tell you otherwise. The doctrine is called conditional immortality.
Read John 3:16.
Check out there FB group as well.
Don’t let people make you feel like you "don’ believe God’
You can hold to Scripture as the authority and believe that hell or the second death is the final immediate and total destruction of all who are not saved.

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I think I may be willing to agree with you there. Note the date and time! (Maybe the year would be enough – month and year would be overkill. :grin:)

Yes you can let yourself be led down the garden path by another group people and believe in the annihilationism of the Jehovah Witnesses. OR… you can do your own rethinking of hell (for by all means LET’S RETHINK HELL) while reading the Bible honestly for yourself AND you can not only hold Scripture as authority but you even take Jesus at his word and still come to an understanding of hell that makes great deal more sense than the traditional one that makes God sound more like a devil or mafia godfather with a protection racket (demanding that you accept him as your savior from himself… for a price). One where…

  1. Hell is not a creation of God, but of sinful human beings.
  2. Hell is not a punishment for mistakes and infractions of divine law (which you can find a loophole by which escape), but a consequence of clinging to self-destructive habits of sin.
  3. Hell is not a fiery torture chamber for some sicko to entertain himself with, for the only torment is that which people do to themselves (and everyone around them, i.e. hell is the company not the scenery)… because that is what sin does to you eventually.
  4. Hell is not about punishment or the retribution of an angry God, but the natural logical consequence of sin, which will destroy of everything of value within you including your free will.
  5. Hell should not be use as a tool of rhetoric with which to frighten children and people into sacrificing their intellectual integrity so they accept whatever nonsensical dogma you want to shove down their throat. Used in this way, it is a lie, and Pascal’s wager is a cruel deception.

This goes more to the root of the problem than the band-aid fix of annihilationism (replacing an inhuman threat with one which is so mild it is ultimately empty). This way of rethinking hell tosses out the whole idea of threatening people into salvation altogether. What we should fear most is not a ā€œbig bad godā€ who will torture us or erase us, but our own sin which is tearing apart the very substance of our own being.

You’re not wrong there. Apart from sinful being redundant. Using meaningless Biblicism.

Ah how the meaning of words have changed. For some people ā€œBiblicismā€ has apparently changed from adherence to the letter of the Bible to using any words from the Bible at all or to understanding the Bible in any way different from the person using the word. Does the fine art of rhetoric accept any limitations of honesty any more? Nah… I guess it never has. Describing the killing fields of Cambodia or the atrocities in Kosovo by the word ā€œhellā€ is certainly not a Biblicism.

Where did you get that definition from?

Did that for 30 years. Then I began to catch up with the Enlightenment 300 late. After my Biblicist cult did.

A really great video that goes into the issue of hell and salvation that I found and has helped me deal with the issue of salvation, hell and the love of God. Y’all free to make your opinions on what to think of it but it (and a few other videos and articles from which I have read) has helped me deal with the issue and put my mind at ease and knowing that the Love of God will win out in the end. Peace and love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

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I actually joined that group a while back. I started forming these theological connections back in 2011. Then put it on the back burner and in 2016 begin to dig deeper into it and concluded it sometime last year.

Quinn, thank you so much for that video link. I too learned a lot from Robin Parry (whom I had never heard of before), and I went on to listen to his Part 1 and part 3 of the same series. I think it was part 2 that you linked to above - but I don’t at all regret listening to him in the order I did. [and it appears there may be more parts yet as more conveniently found here.]

A couple of takeaways (among the many things I learned) is that Universalism has enough historied and Patristic pedigree that it comes in and with many flavors (including Calvinist Universalists! - an animal I wouldn’t have imagined existing!) And typically when people think they have a problem with the whole concept, it’s usually the case that actually they are having problems with one of its associated flavors (which do come in both orthodox and heterodox varieties) and have mistaken that particular vein of universalism as being representative of the entire concept itself. Parry does a good job of teasing all that apart and giving a clearer picture of the simple, central essence of pure universalism itself.

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It was during my search for dealing with the issue of hell and God’s love that I stumbled upon Christian Universalism and Parry himself. I also had the misunderstanding of the term ā€œuniversalismā€ but upon seeing that it does have an orthodox background and a lot of early church figures held to it in some flavor I can safely say that Christian Universalism is a safe alternative to the other two (Calvinism and Arminianism) that can be embraced by Christians (including myself).

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Eternal Hell’s doctrine is NOT found in the Bible.

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The NT says hell is being eternally cut off from God. No one ends up there unjustly. What it means to be eternally cut off from God is open to debate, but no one really knows. I would imagine that it is being deprived of everything God has provided for us, so that may mean solitary confinement in eternal darkness, eternal silence and eternal boredom.

Or it may mean the total destruction of the soul, in which case there would be no consciousness and no suffering.

But what would I know …

Evangelical Universalism: oxymoron?

To be cut off from God is unjust.