Many people (non-Christians and Christians alike) find it morally outrageous that God would consign people to an eternity in hell to pay for a finite number of sins committed here on Earth. As a result, some people reject Christianity, some deny that hell is eternal, and others choose to live with the theological tension. None of this is necessary, however, because this understanding of hell is based on false assumptions. It falsely assumes that the purpose of hell is only to pay for sins committed prior to death, which, in turn, falsely assumes that people stop sinning in hell. Neither is true.
Yes, hell is a place where people will be punished for their sins, but it is also a place where the sinners who are being punished for their sins will go on sinning for eternity. They sin on Earth and in heaven. Think about it. Does anyone believe that those in hell suddenly become good people? Do we really think that they undergo complete sanctification upon entering hell? Of course not. They will continue to sin against God for eternity. They will continue in their moral rebellion and rejection of God. And that is why they will continue to be punished by God for eternity.
Thinking to Believe 
February 18, 2021 at 4:46 pm
I agree with your comments about hell and the misconception so many have about it and God. but there is more to it. They seem unwilling to accept the FACT that God is sovereign, has ultimate rule, and all knowing, omniscient, and omnipotent, all powerful. And that He is the epitome of love, and he is THE CREATOR. These FACTS, place him beyond their jurisdiction as judges.
Isaiah 55:8-9, Job 38-40)
Many don’t like this and some hate it, but it is the fact. This fact makes them totally unqualified to challenge or condemn God or His actions. Any such challenge will only serve to back fire on them to their own shame.
I have one question Jason. What do you mean by
“They sin on Earth and in heaven”. It is not clear what you are referring to there. I know that “the shining one” and other angels sinned in heaven, but I understand that sin will never again be allowed in heaven (Rev. 21:4,27)
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February 19, 2021 at 9:43 am
First of all who cares about what people think. It is about what God thinks that matters. Also, people go down after death rather than up not so much because of their sins but more so because they are people who refuse to obey God in this world and as God knows will continue to refuse to obey Him in the dark afterwards that awaits them.
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February 19, 2021 at 2:57 pm
“Does anyone believe that those in hell suddenly become good people? Do we really think that they undergo complete sanctification upon entering hell? Of course not. They will continue to sin against God for eternity.”
Hmm, the problem here is that the vast majority of good people will end up in hell:
• 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—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
Notice that all those who merely do not believe the God of the Bible exists will be thrown into hell. That means the vast majority of humanity will burn in hell, since most people are not Christians. Most people believe in the religion they grew up with and only have a vague, inaccurate understanding of other religions (just think of your own knowledge of the Hindu gods, for example). Many of them are good people who want to do what’s right, who sincerely believe they are following the right religion.
So isn’t it reasonable for people to find it “morally outrageous” that God would send people to hell simply for having been born in a country that has little to no exposure to Christianity? No matter how much good they tried to do in life? No matter how much they tried to follow the “right” religion?
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February 21, 2021 at 10:48 am
derekmathias………. but like in your other posts on abortion you are making a faulty argument. the people that profess ETC (eternal conscious torment) are wrong. the bible clearly teaches the condemned are destroyed “body and soul.” so based on the correct biblical meaning of “hell” there is no problem for God to destroy/annihilate/obliterate the condemned.
you have fallen for satan’s big lie ……… “Ye shall not surely die:”
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February 21, 2021 at 2:20 pm
“but like in your other posts on abortion you are making a faulty argument. the people that profess ETC (eternal conscious torment) are wrong. the bible clearly teaches the condemned are destroyed “body and soul.” so based on the correct biblical meaning of “hell” there is no problem for God to destroy/annihilate/obliterate the condemned.”
I think you’ll find that literally hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide disagree with you. They point to passages like the following:
• Revelation 14:9-11 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise FOREVER. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”
• Revelation 20:10-15 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night FOR EVER AND EVER. … The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. … If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
• Matthew 25:41-46 Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, but the righteous to eternal life.
So I don’t think anyone can definitively claim that hell isn’t eternal without ignoring or “creatively interpreting” passages like the above.
“you have fallen for satan’s big lie ……… “Ye shall not surely die:””
Well, in Genesis 2:17 God says, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for IN THE DAY THAT THOU EATEST thereof thou shalt surely die.” Clearly Adam and Eve didn’t die until hundreds of years later. To avoid this contradiction, many claim that God meant they would die spiritually, but the passage doesn’t say that at all. Regardless, the serpent (not necessarily Satan) saying, “Ye shall not surely die,” wasn’t a lie because A&E didn’t die on that day, at least not in the most commonly assumed way: physically.
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February 21, 2021 at 2:21 pm
“but like in your other posts on abortion you are making a faulty argument.”
Oh, and I have to ask…how was my abortion argument in any way faulty? I’ve yet to hear a reasonable refutation of it.
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February 22, 2021 at 10:07 am
“Then Death and Hades (Hell) were thrown into the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. Hell is an invention of mankind. Sheol to the early Israelites was a place to which ALL deceased went both good and bad. Believers in Heaven and Earth believe in eternal life with Jesus or Eternal Death with the Devil. Beings in the like of fire are heartless and without souls. Souls came into being after God created mankind with His Spirit. After death God will take back His soul filled spirits and those souls left without the spirit will return to a soulless heartless existence in the Lake of Fire. Earth contains earthly things including decaying bodies and where too many think Hell is. The Lake of Fire is beyond earthly confines where there is nothing but Deep Darkness without LIGHT as it was before the beginning.
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February 22, 2021 at 12:02 pm
very simple ……….. you deny the difference between what God would allow and not allow. you make a faulty argument saying since God will allow “abortion” in case A …… He has no problem with “abortion” in case B with different circumstances. also you refuse you admit your error in giving legal protection to a premature baby in an artificial incubator but allowing the same baby to be terminated in a natural incubator …. the womb.
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February 22, 2021 at 12:05 pm
of course they do because they are wrong. our proof proving ECT is false is irrefutable. their evidence proving ECT is easily explained as false because it’s context is non-literal language. don’t worry many people make your error ……….. it all about seeing what you want to see and not exploring the evidence to it’s logical conclusion as we do.
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February 28, 2021 at 5:49 pm
“you deny the difference between what God would allow and not allow. you make a faulty argument saying since God will allow “abortion” in case A …… He has no problem with “abortion” in case B with different circumstances.”
Well, it’s clear God has no problem with abortion in at least SOME cases, such as the following:
• Numbers 5:24-27 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her … he is to have the woman drink the water. If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: WHEN SHE IS MADE TO DRINK THE WATER THAT BRINGS A CURSE AND CAUSES BITTER SUFFERING, IT WILL ENTER HER, HER ABDOMEN WILL SWELL AND HER WOMB WILL MISCARRY, and she will become a curse.
And NOWHERE in the Bible does it say abortion is wrong (even though abortion was practiced in biblical times). Even born babies less than one month old are also assigned NO value and they are NOT counted as a person on a census at all:
• Leviticus 27:3-7 “Set the value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty at fifty shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel; for a female, set her value at thirty shekels; for a person between the ages of five and twenty, set the value of a male at twenty shekels and of a female at ten shekels; FOR A PERSON BETWEEN ONE MONTH AND FIVE YEARS, set the value of a male at five shekels of silver and that of a female at three shekels of silver; for a person sixty years old or more, set the value of a male at fifteen shekels and of a female at ten shekels.”
• Numbers 3:15 “Number the sons of Levi by their fathers’ households, by their families; every male FROM A MONTH OLD AND UPWARD you shall number.” So Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD, just as he had been commanded.
This is further supported by the Babylonian Talmud (a rabbinical discussion of the meaning of the first five books of the Old Testament), which states that the early embryo is not considered human life:
• Yevamot 69b If she is pregnant, until forty days from conception the fetus is merely water. It is not yet considered a living being.
More directly, abortions are acceptable if the mother’s life is in danger. And the fetus isn’t even considered a person until it is half-way emerged from its mother:
• Ohalot 7:6 If a woman is having trouble giving birth, they cut up the child in her womb and brings it forth limb by limb, because her life comes before the life of the child. But if the greater part has come out, one may not touch it, for one may not set aside one person’s life for that of another.
Since Christians follow the same God and the same Old Testament books as those rabbinical scholars, those passages shouldn’t be ignored.
What all this means is that the burden of proof that God is anti-abortion rests on those who claim he is.
“also you refuse you admit your error in giving legal protection to a premature baby in an artificial incubator but allowing the same baby to be terminated in a natural incubator …. the womb.”
It’s not an error…it’s a simple fact: once a baby is born–regardless of whether it’s premature–it’s legally considered a full human being with the rights of a human being. The baby is no longer dependent on its mother’s body, and thus her bodily integrity rights no longer supersede the infant’s.
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February 28, 2021 at 9:21 pm
and that’s one of your many errors …………. because God will allow the water of separation to cause a miscarriage does not mean he allows another to cause a miscarriage when the father wants the child.
the other is you are intellectual dishonest is saying it’s okay to legally protect a preemie out side of the womb but not in the womb. because the location is irrelevant …… because if the woman wants to terminate the pregnancy at that point it’s actually safer to deliver the baby.
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March 8, 2021 at 5:52 pm
“and that’s one of your many errors …………. because God will allow the water of separation to cause a miscarriage does not mean he allows another to cause a miscarriage when the father wants the child.”
How is that an error? I said “Well, it’s clear God has no problem with abortion in at least SOME cases,” and I provided the biblical evidence for it. I used the term “some” to make it clear the passage doesn’t necessarily mean God supports ALL abortions. Clearly it’s not abortions per se that God objects to. Indeed, if you are claiming God believes abortions are wrong, it’s incumbent upon you to provide at least some credible evidence to support that. Otherwise you can’t conclude God is against abortion.
“the other is you are intellectual dishonest is saying it’s okay to legally protect a preemie out side of the womb but not in the womb.”
How is it intellectually dishonest? I think I clearly laid out the significant differences between the two cases. A premie is a baby that is already born, and thus not dependent on the mother’s body to survive. In fact, that child could be raised by somebody else who is not the mother–or even a woman, for that matter–and end up living a normal life.
But the fetus that is still in the womb is 100% dependent on the mother for its survival. THAT is the profound difference between the two. Just a BORN person’s right to live does NOT give him the right to take blood, nutrients or organs from another person who doesn’t want to provide that–even if that person’s life depends on it–why should a fetus have the right to take blood and nutrients from its mother?
What’s intellectually dishonest is to insist that bodily integrity rights matter in one case but not in the other.
“because if the woman wants to terminate the pregnancy at that point it’s actually safer to deliver the baby.”
Only 1.4% of abortions occur after 20 weeks, and almost no abortions occur in the final trimester. The exceptions are when the fetus is found to have significant birth defects or the mother’s life is in danger. Why limit abortion rights for a problem that essentially doesn’t exist? Objection to late-term abortions is primarily just a political argument.
If you want to cut down on abortions, it doesn’t help to make abortion illegal. That just leads to more ILLEGAL abortions and the high health risks to women associated with it. The only method that has been shown to actually work is to provide sex education and birth control before children become sexually active (https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2016/03/new-clarity-us-abortion-debate-steep-drop-unintended-pregnancy-driving-recent-abortion). And yet the people who are against abortion rights are mostly the same people who are against sex education and easy access to birth control.
In any event, I don’t think you’ve provided a convincing argument that God is against abortion or that there’s no moral distinction between a born baby and a fetus still in the womb.
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