You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
Do you literally believe that Jesus did not say that, or that he meant his hearers not to believe it literally?
I am not sure whether you are joking around or not. But when the Bible quotes Jesus then I think Jesus said it. But Jesus speaks in parables and expects people to understand that not everything He says is to be taken literally. In this case it doesnât much affect what he intends here which is to get the scribes and Pharisees to compare themselves with those who murdered the prophets and question whether they might be in danger of going to hell. But it is going too far to take this to absolutely mean there will literally be some kind of trial in which they will be sentenced.
You know it is easy to see why you get confused with this determination you are displaying to attack every little difference from your own beliefs. When you did this earlier in the thread you lost track of the actual topic so when you got back on topic you simply assumed everyone you were arguing with about anything must be on the opposite side of that issue.
That does not deserve a reply.
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I feel there are a few main topics that keep resurfacing. Does God punish the wicked? What is the punishment of the wicked? What happens if your a good person or never heard the gospel.
Does God punish the wicked? I would say itâs obvious he does.
- Was Adam and Eve really thet terrible? Yet God banished them from eternal life. What about with Noah when a god destroyed a lot of humanity, including those who were probably decent people but rejected God? With Moses and Aaron God wanted them Egyptians of what he would do and he ended up killing the first born kids and drowning all the soldiers. He used a bear to maul those who mocked Elijah. He gave Sampson the strength to destroy all his enemies by crushing them and himself. So we routinely see God destroying the wicked. All of those people were not probably totally evil.
Michelle also answered many questions and brought up many verses in the first few comments.
So does God resurrect both the righteous and the wicked? Yes he does.
Acts 24:14-15 â A hope in God that the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected.
John 5:29 â the good will be resurrected to life, and the wicked to judgement.
So whatâs the judgement?
Psalm 1:6 â Lords knows the ways of the righteous and that the wicked will perish. â
Psalm 37:38 â But transgressors will be altogether destroyed.â
Matthew 10:28 â Donât fear those that can destroy just the body but He who can destroy both body and soul.â
Matthew 25:41-45 â He will say depart from me into eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and angels.â
Luke 3:17 â His will gather the righteous into his barn but the unrighteous gathered and burned in unquenchable fire.â
Rev 21:8 â But for the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, or ⌠murders will be in the lake of fire which is the second deathâ.
So it seems like God will definitely do mass destruction which potentially includes those who were not that bad. It seems that God had a standard and is willing to work with people through it if they want to be called in the book of life. It seems like the judgement be passes on the wicked is a second death, a eternal death from which there is no resurrection from, and that eternal death d summarized up as the unquenchable fire that destroys the body and soul. Someone can love their family and community and still hate and reject a Jesus.
You miss out the bearable and more bearable judgements. Why is that?
and @NickolaosPappas here is another verse that is encouraging, about Godâs patience:
2 Peter 3
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
and further down in that same passage, Peter reiterates:
15 Bear in mind that our Lordâs patience means salvation
with these verses in mind, I pray for the salvation of my family and friends who do not yet know God. God knows them better than I do. I trust that God loves them and will open their eyes to the truth, if they are willing to see.
Of course, you should read the whole chapter for context, but within that context I find those two verses encouraging about Godâs love and patience.
I have a hard time reading these warnings about being ready for the day of the Lord and the destruction of the heavens and earth and squaring that with Universalism. Earlier in the passage, it states:
7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
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A judgement occurs when a judge makes the pronouncement; until then we would contemplate a number of possibilities, ie., is he a murderer, than the sentence should be appropriate, or is he innocent of murder, that the judge makes the appropriate judgment of innocence, and so on. The Gospel complicates this by including repentance - and God is able to judge if the repentance is real or an attempt to deceive, something that is beyond us to come to such a judgement. Scripture outlines various possibilities and leaves the actual judgement to God.
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Because the purpose of the post is not to focus on it. But to show that he does and is willing to destroy entire nations and that he talks about the wages of death is eternal destruction.
What we donât see are the wicked that disbelieves ever being given a chance to repent in hades of their sin after Christ ascended and we donât ever read of a purgatory that cleanses anyone of their sins.
What we see throughout the Bible in addition to grace and mercy , is also justice wrath. We see eternal life and eternal death. We see resurrection into heaven and into the lake of fire.
Iâve lapsed but would repent for the opportunity to watch this. Great, now Iâll have to figure out how to watch a past episode on whatever station its on. Oh well Groening never said it would be easy.
No one here thinks anyone but God makes that judgement. Just seem we disagree on if God is going to do the judgements he said or not. I personally believe heâs going to keep his promise and destroy the wicked with eternal fire in the lake of fire along with the devil.
I donât see any promise to satan, or to the wicked, that they will be sent through a purgatory and brought to repentance and then given eternal life. They will be destroyed along with death and hades.
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I am puzzled - who has said that a promise has been given to satan or the irredeemably wicked?
Universalism in itself is pushing the idea that everyone, universally, across the board ultimately ends up saved and brought to repentance.
That concept is what sets it apart from the two other beliefs systems that dominate the scene which is the wicked ends up in eternal torment forever and ever or the wicked ends up completely destroyed.
If someone is a universalist but still believes that the wicked will be eternally tortured or destroyed then they are not universalists and fall into one of the other two camps.
I guess im kinda in the middle. I do believe that some good unbelievers will be saved either because they didnt get to know God or they werent interested in him either way some will be saved.
This absolute distinction between believers and unbelievers is absurd. Everyone believes some things and also does not believe other things â all are believers and unbelievers in that sense. But there are people who scoff at all the ideas of love and goodness as well as gods, spirits, and angels⌠nearly everything they cannot touch, see, measure, or control â people who see no reason not to do whatever they want. Now that is the sort of unbeliever that I can believe might be condemned to hell.
But⌠just because I donât believe in someoneâs particular version of âgodâ or the devil, I should go to hell because of that? That is a type of arrogance that I find rather difficult to comprehend â it looks to me most like a childish sort of vindictive wishful thinking. Furthermore, it is a Gnostic gospel of salvation by knowledge not the Christian gospel of salvation by the grace of God taught by Jesus and Paul in the Bible. Also⌠I am reminded of Jesusâ admonition that as you judge other so shall you be judged yourselves. Doesnât this mean that by consigning others to hell for not believing in your opinions, you are setting yourself up to be condemned for any mistake you have made in your own beliefs? Sounds like a foolâs bet to me and not one that I would take.
But also I would warn against setting up this strawman argument that we must choose between the above and some sort of universalism. One can reject both universalism and annihilationism as well as the sort of damnationalism that consigns everyone who doesnât agree with your belief system to an eternal hell. And one can believe in a God of love who doesnât have a need to eternally torture people for not going along with some plan of salvation which frankly sound far more like the sort of petty thing that would be cooked up by religious nutters than an all knowing God who is the standard of love and goodness. Such a being sounds more like a devil to me and I wouldnât worship the thing no matter what name you choose to plaster on it. Yes I expect a great deal more from the God that I would worship and sing praises and glory to. I will never sell out my integrity and self-respect in a Pascalâs wager like that.
BINGO!!! and a Kewpie doll. I think this is the biggest problem we have in theology. People pick and choose the words they want to believe on all sorts of issues and then say, God wouldnât do this or that and when a verse is shown them they claim that the normal reading is not meant to be taken literally.
I have heard that one definition of an idol is a god fashioned after our own imagination. Idols donât have to be of wood and stone but can be a caricature in our minds of a God whose characteristics we have chosen. I know people wonât like this, but when we pick and chose what characteristics of God we think the Bible meant to be taken as real and what characteristics of God are not to be taken as real, then I see no difference between what is fashioned as a wooden god for worship and what is fashioned conceptually in our minds as an artificial God.
So when we disagree with what Scripture says God will and wonât do; what judgments He will and wonât do, we are making up a God, but it isnât the God displayed in scripture. it is something else.
So you believe that the whole style of writing in the bible is literal?
Thankfully the only thing we have to believe for salvation is that Jesus died for our sins, rose again and is offering us forgiveness if we accept it. I think God knew that we humans would not be able to believe a long list or requirements for salvation and thus we have been given a minimum set of beliefs. But that said, it doesnât mean we have freedom to go willy nilly on all sorts of strange systems of belief and still have our theology considered correct. Salvation is one thing; theology another. We should all have some humility that we might have the wrong theology on certain issues.
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I didnât say that and never have. People always try to force that âall-is-meant-to-be-literalâ view upon me. It doesnât fit. Psalms is obviously poetry. Genesis 1-11 does not read like poetry or a song and it doesnât have music to go along with it like Psalms does. The parables are all things that could have happened
The miracles are often said to be so out of the ordinary they canât be real history. If Jesus couldnât do miracles (water to wine, walk on water, raise the dead, heal the sick), then he becomes a very good magician, or a conman who hired shills to play the parts of the sick and dead, and to testify to his water strolling abilities. So if we claim that miracles are not meant to be taken literally, then we are not left with much of a reason to believe. Belief alone wonât save us. It must be belief in the corrrect religion, not just in any old religion.
I have spent my life trying to find a way to make Gen 1-11 historically true-- I have found the way to do it. No one likes it, but in my mind, if a Scriptural passage reads like a straight history, we should first try to see if there is a way to make it conform to our knowledge.
People pick and chose what they will call mythological/ not meant to be read as real (although when you ask for a critieron for that judgement most people canât tell you why they think it shouldnât be taken as real, just that it shouldnât be.) This is the issue with punishments. The bible clearly says there will be some. People donât like it and so, claim that there is to be no literal meaning to those verses. When we do that we are just making up a new Bible after our own imagination. We are tickling our own ears. If one doesnât like what Scripture says, then reject it.Go join another religion.Donât change what the bible says!
Yes but there are no accounts of adam and eve or the miracles(expect the Talmud,and i believe they were real as well)
I am not sure I understand. The Bible has accounts of Adam and Eve and other miracles. Why do you say there are no accounts of them?