Originally posted by Bob:
The only good news about hell is, we don't have to go there. Everything else about hell is bad. And to assume that people will reject Christ because they hate God for creating hell is too far off the chart to even count. One preacher once said that if you emptied out hell and gave everyone there a second chance, they would still reject Christ.
Well Let me tell you something. First of all, my ex- father in law who was a Baptist believed two things about God, heaven and hell that ended in tragedy. So what a person believes about God, heaven and hell does matter tremendously.
My father in law believed that all he had to do to be a Christian is to "believe" in Jesus. He did not think it mattered how he behaved. He also believed that as soon as a person died, if a believer, he would go straight to heaven. Consequently, what he did was this... he started having an affair with a neighbor's wife, when she finally rejected him, he went over to her house and murdered her, and after that he committed suicide. In his suicide note he said that he knew since he was a Christian that he would go to heaven no matter what, and that he was looking forward to going straight to heaven immediately after killing himself.
It wasnt much fun that day turning on the television and seeing all of that on the news, which is where I first learned about it.
Many many people to whom the doctrine of eternal torment is revolting are driven to the opposite error. They see that the Scriptures represent God as a being of love and compassion, and they cannot believe that He will consign His creatures to the fires of an eternally burning hell. But holding that error that the soul is
naturally immortal, they see no alternative but to conclude that all mankind will finally be saved.
Many regard the threatenings of the Bible as designed merely to frighten men into obedience, and not to be literally fulfilled. And so they believe that they can live in selfish pleasure and disregard the requirements of God, and yet expect to be finally received into His favor. Such a doctrine, emboldens the wicked in their iniquity.
Secondly, there was a man who was a co-worker with my husband. This man was a Christian, who had gone often to the psychiatrist because he was absolutely terrified at the thought that God would torture him eternally in hell for his sins. Every time I saw him, he was chain-smoking, his hands shook, he was a nervous wreck of a man. I have known people who this false doctrine of eternally burning hell has driven to madness. Which is especially "BAD NEWS" since it is a lie... a terrible LIE about God, who is love.
I have been to so many Christian chat rooms in which unbelievers have expressed their determination never to become a Christian because of the fact that the Christian God torments people in Hell forever and ever.
After the Fall, Satan was already making special effort to inventthe belief in man's natural immortality; and having induced the people to receive this error, they were to lead them on to conclude that the sinner would live in eternal misery. Satan, working through misguided Christians, represents God as a revengeful tyrant, declaring that He plunges into hell all those who do not please Him, and causes them forever experience His wrath, suffering unutterable anguish in the eternal flames of hell, and that while this is happening, God looks down upon them with satisfaction.
And so the Devil clothes with his own attributes the Creator and Benefactor of mankind. Cruelty is satanic. God is love.
Satan himself is the one who tempts man to sin, and then he exults in the ruin of his victim.
Satan is seeking just as he did Adam and Eve, to shake their confidence in God and to lead them to doubt the wisdom of His government and the justice of His laws.
Satan loves to represent God as even worse than himself, and that way many are led to justify their own rebellion against God. Thus he succeeds in luring souls away from their allegiance to God.
It is repulsive to human thoughts of love and mercy and eve to our sense of justice that the wicked are tormented with fire and brimstone in an eternally burning hell; that for the sins of a brief earthly life they are to suffer torture as long as God shall live.
Yet the exceedingly BAD NEWS is tha this false doctrine has been widely taught and is still embodied in many of the creeds of Christendom.
"As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" Ezekiel 33:11.
God does not delight in witnessing unceasing tortures; in hearing the groans and shrieks of the suffering creatures whom He holds in the flames of hell.
Sin and sinners will be destroyed forever. They are not going to pour out their rage in curses and blasphemy against God forever in Hell. God is not going to forever perpetuate sin through ceaseless ages.
It is beyond the power of the human mind to estimate the evil which has been wrought by the heresy of eternal torment. With these false horrid views of God being taught by the Christian world, can we wonder that our merciful Creator is feared, dreaded, and even hated? The appalling views of God which have spread over the world from the teachings of the pulpit have made thousands, yes, millions, of skeptics and infidels.
...and so I would say that the TRUTH about God and what really takes place in "Hell" is indeed GOOD NEWS. The truth is that the time will come when sin and sinners will be destroyed forever and ever. There will be bo more death, no more sadness, no more tears, no more pain. The rebellion against God will cease.
Before God sent the flood in Noah's day, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. . . . The earth also was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with violence." God had given men His commandments as a rule of life, but His law was transgressed, and every conceivable sin was the result.
Cain had by his crimes merited the sentence of death, a merciful Creator still spared his life, and granted him opportunity for repentance. But Cain lived only to harden his heart, to encourage rebellion against the divine authority, and to become the head of a line of bold, abandoned sinners. This one apostate, led on by Satan, became a tempter to others; and his example and influence exerted their demoralizing power, until the earth became so corrupt and filled with violence as to call for its destruction.
In sparing the life of the first murderer, God presented before the whole universe a lesson bearing upon the great controversy. The dark history of Cain and his descendants was an illustration of what would have been the result of permitting the sinner to live on forever, to carry out his rebellion against God. The forbearance of God only rendered the wicked more bold and defiant in their iniquity. Fifteen centuries after the sentence pronounced upon Cain, the universe witnessed the fruition of his influence and example, in the crime and pollution that flooded the earth. It was made manifest that the sentence of death pronounced upon the fallen race for the transgression of God's law was both just and merciful. The longer men lived in sin, the more abandoned they became. The divine sentence cutting short a career of unbridled iniquity, and freeing the world from the influence of those who had become hardened in rebellion, was a blessing rather than a curse.
Every single attribute of God is GOOD NEWS. Every single thing God does is GOOD. The truth about what God does with Hellfire is GOOD NEWS.
