Is Hell Forever?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Apr 28 2006, 10:48 AM) [snapback]246600[/snapback]</div>

Wow...look at this version:

Title: The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language
Edition: Third
Copyright: © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.
Author: Peterson, Eugene H.
Publisher: NavPress Publishing
Publisher Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado

Isaiah 28:10 (TMSG)
‘Da, da, da, da,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
That’s a good little girl,
that’s a good little boy.’”

===================

Title: The Holy Bible, New King James Version
Edition: Third
Copyright: Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers
Publisher Location: Nashville, Tennessee

Isaiah 28:10 (NKJV)
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,
Line upon line, line upon line,
Here a little, there a little.”


===================


Sorry; I was just amused as to the way the Message worded it.


As to hell? Hell is for children, said the great theologian Pat Benatar.


Hell is what you make of it. Hell could be no A/C at all; or for my wife, Hell will be cold.

I think that when the Bible was being written, they needed a way to scare the new believers into behaving; to make them followers of the new religion.

It's not even mentioned but 46 times in the KJV of the Bible; some versions don't even mention hell at all.

Hell is just the absence of God, really, in it's simplest form...

In many peoples view.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 03:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

Perhaps someone doesn't care to be remembered. Why do you have to be remembered? Seriously, I see you as a very sad individual. So, what do you live for? To be remembered? That's sad.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 03:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

Are you the decider which parts of the bible are open to interpretations and which ones are not?
Does it boost your ego calling people pathetic cowards because they don't think the way you do?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 03:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

for some your dribble is not any better.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 12:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

Further on in your post, you call me a coward. I'll turn that around: I do not need the crutch of religion to give my life meaning. Yes, there's no afterlife. Some people are so terrified by that thought that they cannot live without the fairy tale of a wonderful land in the sky where there are only "good" people, and a pit of fire where all the "bad" people go.

How many people are remembered half a century after they die? A few generals and a few criminals and a few national leaders. I'll be remembered a little while by a few people, and then forgotten, just like you, my friend. But I don't bother myself about that. I live life for its own sake. I try to do a bit of good. And I try to have a bit of fun.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 12:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

Yes, the thousand warring factions of Christianity are proof that everyone who reads the Bible draws different conclusions from it. If only believers can understand it, does that mean that only those people who interpret it as you do are "real" believers?

While I have a few passages I interpret my own way, my view of Jesus comes from the most scholarly study ever undertaken of all extant sources on the subject: The Jesus Seminar: a multi-national, inter-disciplinary project by scholars from a variety of different fields. They leave no doubt that Jesus was a Jewish apocalypticist, following in the tradition of John the Baptist, and that he believed the end of the world was imminent and predicated all his teachings upon that belief. (The statement that he was crazy is my own interpretation.)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 12:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

The above dogma was invented by Paul. The "religion" taught by Jesus was a set of guidelines for how to live your life in order to be saved at the end of the world. Paul discarded all those guidelines (perhaps because they were too difficult) and created, out of whole cloth, a new religion whose basis was the worship of Jesus as a god.

When the world did not end as Jesus predicted, a new dogma was invented: In every generation there have been some Christians (like Windstrings) who have insisted that their own generation was the one refered to by Jesus, and these people have always backed up their claim with quotes from the Bible, as Windstrings does.

Christians do not have a monopoly on apocalypticism, however: Many religions throughout history have claimed that the end was at hand. Religion is bunk. All religion is bunk. No religion has ever provided any useful information about the real world. Every religion springs from the fantasy of someone whose only claim to authority is that, since he lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, he understood absolutely nothing about the real, physical world, and therefore had nothing to draw from other than the rantings of a deranged mind.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 12:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

I find it amusing when the word "coward" is thrown around for anyone someone disagrees with. W calls suicide bombers "cowards." They are vile pathological murderers, but certainly not cowards.

I've been called a coward before, but never by anyone who knows me or who knows much about my life. I was cowardly as a child, but as an adult I have done things that terrified me. The charge of cowardice only shows that you have no real arguments to use against me, so that you must invent a fictitious life history you can attack.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 12:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

I stand up for what I believe. Is this your definition of cowardice? When my opinions are unpopular I make sure that everyone around me knows what I believe. Is this cowardice?

But if you cannot resist replying, that is not a cause for either pride or shame on my part. Perhaps you need to work on your own self control: If you really feel that replying to me is a waste of time, then why do you do it? Most people come to Fred's House of Pancakes because they want to discuss topics unrelated to the Prius. Speaking for myself, I only open those threads I find interesting, and if a thread ceases to interest me, I leave it to those who remain interested. You have free will, my friend. If you are wasting your time, that is your concern.

 

Daniel,
Well said !!!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 4 2007, 11:16 PM) [snapback]400169[/snapback]</div>

Well Daniel, you can can play mental gymnastics all you want, but I must be insane too as I have experienced, witnessed many of the things he claims as you see as "delusional".

I have seen compound fractures where bones are sticking out of the body instantly restored "I guess the several hundred other people that saw it were delusional too?, I seen crippled healed, and I personally have been involved with people who were cripple for years instantly restored... sicknesses etc etc.....

Maybe you are the delusional one not to believe so much evidence?

Hundreds of accounts of UFO's have also been reported..... although I have an open mind as to the possiblities, I will not believe till I see or experience in some fashion myself. My daughter swears she saw one when we used to live in a lonely canyon in washington state.
If I were truely delusional... I'm sure I would have seem a few hundred of UFO's by now too and even got invited up for dinner!.... LOL!

Does that put me on the same ground as you?.. maybe, but maybe not either...... I once didn't believe in Jesus, but saw so many that did and could feel something tugging at my heart strings, I opened my heart and mind up to "being receptive" just in case he was real and I asked him to reveal himself to me.

Try not to be so boring and guarding... some of the best things in life are "free" !!!

 

There is a bar in Chapel Hill, NC called "Hell". You can go there and return unscathed if you don't drink too much. They have portraits of Satan, Jesse Helms and Ozzy Osborne on the walls.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 5 2007, 09:22 AM) [snapback]400291[/snapback]</div>

Killing all the infidels "us" as the Koran teaches is one thing, its quite another to kill yourself on purpose premeditated in order to "kill" the infidels.

They consider us cowards for flying at 30000 ft and dropping bombs on them when they cannot fight back, or launching from a safe aircraft carrier hundreds of miles away.

I guess none us want to die if we don't have to in the act of war......
And they don't want to fight us either on our terms... be it face to face or otherwise because we greatly outgun them.

I don't see the Japanese as a cowardice people either, yet they did the same thing.

So I'm not going to judge whether they are a coward or noble fullfilling thier beliefs, but I will say I greatly saddned at such deception and trickery for them to believe that such acts are rewareded by Ala and the way Ala rewards is to give them virgins!... "Poor Virgins!".. I wonder what they did wrong to by punished so, or is it supposed to be an honor to be part of a harem?

Their whole religion is based around lust, hate, lies, and deciet.
Christianity is based around love, giving, truth, and integrity.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ May 8 2006, 11:08 PM) [snapback]251969[/snapback]</div>

Yes, I want proof by means other than the bible. The bible is NOT proof, it is the writings of men, translated and copied for thousands of years.

If I kill myself I have a lot to lose, LIFE. For some of us life is a purpose unto itself. For us life is not a means to prepare for an afterlife that has been promised by those we give money to.

If you really believe, you kill yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain right?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(stealth @ Mar 5 2007, 03:05 AM) [snapback]400202[/snapback]</div>

some people are able to place value on life itself, experience, walking outside and watching the sun set, whatever.

how ridiculous is it that you are walking around all self-righteous waiting for life to END? if that's the only reason you get up, because you're going to die one day, why get out of bed?

 

windstrings
Believe what you want, that doesn't make it reality.
[/quote]

blather blather blather...finally, some sense. Goes both ways Mr. Windstrings. Your deep belief in the writings of rich men from the past based on whishes and control has nothing to do with reality. Thanks for saying it first.

 

Hmmm, my version of hell? Hmm I guess I would be surrounded by nothing but close minded liberals, that will all gang up on me because I do not share the same beliefs as they do....

Oh wait I already have that here on PC!! :lol:

But I believe in HELL...

 

I tried to explain to him it was where my hangman should go - not a Final Request!

Got to take something for my neck!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:15 AM) [snapback]400313[/snapback]</div>

"Experience" is notoriously deceptive. Just as eyewitness testimony in court is the least reliable form of evidence.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:15 AM) [snapback]400313[/snapback]</div>

Any competent stage magician can make you think you've seen things that never really happened. I have "seen" a Bengal tiger transformed into a pure white tiger. I have "seen" a woman squashed into a box six inches high. I have "seen" many impossible things. But those things didn't actually happen. They were performed on stage at Las Vegas. They were extraordinarily impressive, but they were illusions performed for entertainment.

Those same performers would have had little difficulty performing the "miracles" you witnessed. And had they been as dishonest as most successful evangelists, they could have passed these off as evidence of a supernatural god.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:15 AM) [snapback]400313[/snapback]</div>

Different people have different sorts of delusions. Since I do not know you I cannot judge whether you are delusional or deluded. Based on what little I know of you from reading your posts, I am convinced that you are not intentionally lying, but much of the anecdotal evidence for miracles is lying. My best guess is that you have been deluded by some very sharp mountebanks.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:15 AM) [snapback]400313[/snapback]</div>

The human mind has the extraordinarily capacity to make itself believe things that have no basis in reality. If it were not so, religion could never have been invented.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:31 AM) [snapback]400323[/snapback]</div>

The Quran does not teach the killing of infidels. A few madmen, who happen to consider themselves Muslims, pervert the Quran to justify killing, just as Christians have done with the Bible.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:31 AM) [snapback]400323[/snapback]</div>

They are neither cowards nor noble. Suicide bombers are vile and disgusting pathological murderers. But they are brave beyond measure. Is it so hard to accept that a vile person can be brave?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:31 AM) [snapback]400323[/snapback]</div>

Not true at all. Their whole religion is based around fairy tales, just as all religions are. And they believe the OT and the NT, but they believe that the Quran is the final book of a trilogy.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(windstrings @ Mar 5 2007, 08:31 AM) [snapback]400323[/snapback]</div>

Oh, you mean like the crusades, and the inquisition, and the destruction of the New World civilizations, and slavery, and war and murdering each other over minor points of dogma?

Both religions have scriptures advocating the living of a good and noble life. Both religions were spread through violence. Bother religions have vile proponents who kill and advocate killing. But the majority of followers of both religions are just ordinary people trying to get by in the world under difficult circumstances.

And both religions are bunk, as are all religions.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Mar 5 2007, 09:29 AM) [snapback]400379[/snapback]</div>

Sorry about that. I didn't realize there were so many links to be found.

From Amazon, but also available at many bookstores: The Five Gospels, by Robert W. Funk and others.

A Wikipedia article.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jhinton @ Mar 5 2007, 10:38 AM) [snapback]400329[/snapback]</div>

Your right.. the written pages alone are nothing more than paper.. there has to be some "power" behind any authority to make it more than just a bluff and a fairy tale.
Thats why Paul didn't limit his preaching to mans words alone.
If you are in a church and "never" see the power of God demonstrated... God is not wrong.. just the church... get out and go find a church where God "confirms" his word.

(1 Cor 2:4 NKJV) And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
(1 Cor 2:5 NKJV) that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

I have never witnessed any devils tremble, or get cast out in the name of any other than Jesus.. for that matter.. I've never heard of it either...

If the devil is divided against himself, he cannot stand.

(Mark 3:22 NKJV) And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebub," and, "By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons."
(Mark 3:23 NKJV) So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: "How can Satan cast out Satan?
(Mark 3:24 NKJV) "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
(Mark 3:25 NKJV) "And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
(Mark 3:26 NKJV) "And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 5 2007, 02:57 PM) [snapback]400408[/snapback]</div>

I happen to love that book. Makes one think. Makes one think that if even 18% of what Christ said is true, as written in the Bible, that is remarkable.

I should get that book again...I gave my last one away.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Mar 5 2007, 11:30 AM) [snapback]400477[/snapback]</div>

How much of what Jesus said is true; and how many of his quotes in the Bible were actually spoken by him, are two very different questions. The Jesus Seminar sets out to discover what Jesus actually said and believed. It makes no claim to determine if what he said was true.

If you want Truth ™ you must be touched by the noodly appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. For only He built a beer volcano and a stripper factory in heaven. RAmen.