I Have A Question About Hell

The Bible did not invent hell or the devil. Sorry bible haters.

I find it troubling that there are so many people out there gleefully triumphant with ignorance. Because they get to assume fear, greed, pain, suffering etc were all made up by the bible so therefore do not exist.

Ask someone who has experienced genocide if Hell is real.

Ok so can we agree that suffering beyond anything we want to imagine can, does and has existed throughout history? Have you lost a loved one? Suffered extreme guilt or shame over something you've done?

Did the Bible invent heaven as well? What about ecstasy, bliss and truth? Can i suggest getting over assumptions that everything in the bible is fictitious and baseless because of the Catholic Church? I am not a Christian but i can tell you that reading the bible, Gnostic and Catholic versions are full of accurate and detailed descriptions/parables for human experience, science, universal wisdom. And yes there is bound to be some useless crap that you may not be interested in as well.

Hell is real. And like others have said, is existence without hope/Love/Truth. And in the case of the bible separated from "God's Love". It's the dissolving of delusion, the burning away of what is NOT real.

What are you afraid of in this life? Nothing? What is the absolute worse situation you can imagine being in? Use your imagination. No limits. Maybe you are lucky and can't or don't want to do this kind of thing..

You can experience Hell now. 2 seconds living in total horror without hope can be experienced as an eternity and that is hellish. Go to a mental institute and observe people living in ABSOLUTE horror and pain for 10, 20, 30 years. Visit a prison full of demented murderers and rapists. This is earthly hell...

You may think you are tuff and cool and while you may not have experienced these kinds of things in your life but are full of ego you will be extremely susceptible to a hellish experience when your ego is forcefully dissolved.. like when you die. If you are an evil person.. meaning someone without empathy, full of hate, greed etc. the mirror of afterlife may reflect some very horrific and hope destroying experiences.

Who is the Devil? You are the devil.. everything that is evil in you is yours. Is this Love's fault? Should you say "f" God because you deny truth and Love in yourself? God is Love. I don't mean the emotion of Love. But any fiber of you that denies Love can be imagined to be part of what is evil. And since evil cannot exist in Love, this evil will need to be destroyed before the rest of you(non love denying) is able to be reclaimed by Love (heaven).

You can pretend that you can freeze a flame, or mix oil and water... Just like you can pretend hell doesn't exist because an all Loving God wouldn't be mean to you.. But the reality is what cannot exist in Love must be destroyed before your soul returns to source(God, Truth, Love). How is it "destroyed"? Hell.

You can try and fully associate with Love while you are alive. But i imagine very very very few people have actually done this. The more full of crap you are the more hell you will experience before the part of you that can suffer is eliminated. Love does not suffer. Love does not exist in hell.

Hell isn't real.. but that doesn't stop lots of spirits from going there, on earth and after death.

And you know you may be right in not subscribing to fear, but if you are just lying to yourself (that you are not scared of anything) YOU will have to come to terms with Reality. Whatever you fear will be shown to you. Only when you have fully associated with Love can you live without fear, even if you were in hell you wouldn't know it because your conscious mind would not be bound to what was being burnt away in hell.

You will not get away with anything in this life. Nothing. You will not get away from yourself. You need honesty in your life. When you are honest with yourself it is easier to associate with what is Real(Love) and less with delusion(hell).

This message is not directly at anyone in particular. I guess there is some judgment in here which comes out of my own shame for times i have denied Love in my own life.

reply to post by autowrench


No I am in full agreement my friend.
I think I worded it incorrectly. Chaos destroys what is ordered so the order can create new order from the chaos. It is an endless and interconnected cycle that cannot be without the other. Before existence as we know it there was only order and it was eternal, AKA God and Heaven. But yes you are 100% correct, order cannot exist without chaos and chaos cannot exist without order. Our universe and its workings are the greatest example of this.

reply to post by AQuestion

Please explain how you know when the bible was written, you say 70 years later, what do you base this on? LMAO. That means that you believe that the oldest "copies" are 70 years old. Hmmm, how does that explain how the original is?

Here is a couple of site with a timeline, if you want to look:
www.newtestamenthistorytimeline.com...
www.maplenet.net...

The first Christian text that did not become canonized but was respected as authentic is the first epistle of Clement of Rome, reasonably dated to 95 A.D. (M 40), and contained in many ancient Bibles and frequently read and regarded as scripture in many churches (M 187-8). This is relevant because even at this late date two things are observed: Clement never refers to any Gospel, but frequently refers to various epistles of Paul. Yet he calls them wise counsel, not scripture--he reserves this authority for the OT ("Old Testament"), which he cites over a hundred times (M 41-3). On a few occasions he quotes Jesus, without referring to any written source. But his quotations do not correspond to anything in any known written text, although they resemble sayings in the Gospels close enough to have derived from the same oral tradition. This suggests that the Gospels were not known to Clement. Yet he was a prominent leader of the Church in Rome. If they had been written by then, they must have not made it to Rome before 95. It is possible that they had not been written at all. In the case of Mark, for example, it is often thought that he was writing for an audience in Rome, thus it is most remarkable that Clement would not know of this, supposedly the earliest, Gospel. But it is also possible that he simply chose not to quote Mark, though knew the book--although why he would ignore Mark (even in his quotations of Jesus) and yet refer to numerous epistles of Paul is difficult to explain. The next such text is the collection of letters by Ignatius. However, these were added to and redacted in later centuries, making the reliability of even the "authentic" letters uncertain. Ignatius wrote while on the road to his trial in 110 A.D. and it is important to note that he appears not to have had references with him, thus any allusions or quotations in his work come from memory alone (M 43-4). Thus, he borrows phrases and paraphrases from many Pauline epistles, yet never tells us this is what he is doing (he probably could not recall which letters he was drawing from at the time). Likewise, he borrows phrases or ideas which are found in Matthew and John, and on one occasion something that appears to be from Luke, but again he never names his sources or even tells us that he is drawing from a source at all (M 45-7). In no case does he name or precisely quote any NT ("New Testament") book, but again this may be due to the unusual circumstances in which he was writing. Despite the difficulties, it seems plausible that the Gospels had been written by this date, although it is remotely possible that Ignatius is simply quoting oral traditions which eventually became recorded in writing, and also possible that this material was added or dressed up by later editors. Of greatest note is that in his letter to the Philadelphians, Ignatius recounts a debate he held with Judaizing Christians in which it is clear that only the OT was regarded as an authority (M 48-9). Instead of referring to any NT writings as evidence, he simply says that Jesus Christ is the witness to the authority of the tradition. This suggests that none of the NT was regarded even then as an authority. Like Clement, Ignatius and other Christians probably regarded these texts as wise counsel or useful collections of their oral traditions, and not as "scripture" per se.

source

So you see, many years went by before anything was canonized that could even be called a "bible." And remember, in those days, most people were illiterate, and only the High Priest could read and write. If you believe in what the NT says, then you certainly have read what Jesus thought of the High Priests and the organized religion of the time.
Believe it or not, I have actually had a few Christians say to me that Jesus wrote the NT himself! And many think the read letter are the actual words spoken by a man who lived all those years ago, before there were TV cameras or any kind of recording devices, and the NT does not say Jesus had a secretary.

Further Research on Bible Authors and Origins

WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT?

Who wrote the Bible?

Guys, the "Devil" does not reign in Hell and torture/poke people with a red trident.

Hell was created FOR HIS PUNISHMENT and then his followers/minions go along with him, as many pointed out, into punishment as separation from God. He does not, in fact, inflict the punishing - he suffers from it.

In addition, Satan also does not live in Hell at the moment. Contrary to stereotype/movies, Hell is not his abode.

reply to post by autowrench


Dear autowrench,

You are free to believe what you will. The fact is that the "discoveries" you believe in were not said by the people who were alive at the time or by the people who were putting Christians to death. The claim that Jesus never existed didn't occur till 500 years after he died. It is actually quite simple, when did the Romans begin persecuting the Christians? Persecution of Christians. If you bother you will see that it began immediately and by 41 AD, Agrippa was given authority to persecute them. Hey, that is before 70 AD, do you think there were any people in Jerusalem that were around when he died, I bet they lived to be 41 (the earliest date).

The point is that when the persecution began, Christianity was already established, that means your sources are wrong. Believe what you will about God; but, your sources contradict the history we know. Consider it the Christian Big Bang theory, thousands of people who were alive at the time were willing to die in horrible ways because they said that they saw him crucified. Every lie that there is about Christianity is not new. We have occultists who say that Jesus had children with Mary Magdeline, we have others who say he was gay, we have others who say he never existed and others who say his apostles stole his body and hid it. Pick the lie you like; but, they don't hold up to Jewish or Roman history and they don't hold up to church history.

Lets talk about Paul for a moment, he was educated and could write, he wrote his own letters and was a Roman citizen, that is fact. Wait, lets consider the alternative. 200 years after nobody died on the cross, some tricky Roman wrote false stories and the people in Jerusalem accepted these stories even though they were contrary to the history that they knew. Huh? They didn't bother asking the people around them if they had ever heard these stories before, no, they were complete idiots willing to be thrown to lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

You have found some nice sources for the same old stuff that has been discredited in the past. Perhaps you don't believe the Romans ever persecuted Christians and maybe the Holocaust never happened. This thread is because a person asked believers about hell, I don't wish to hijack it or have you hijack it and change the purpose of the thread. You don't need to believe the bible, you don't have to believe in God and I could still be friends with you; but, I know my history also. That is best left to a separate thread or U2U messaging. I am saying this about both of us and apologize to the OP.

Dear autowrench, it is a wonderful discussion and I don't want you to think that I don't respect the questions, I just think we have moved away from the OPs question. Be well.

reply to post by R3N3G4D3


We all take it for granted that we have to die before heaven and hell will be known.
Heaven and Hell are states of being. Life can either feel like heaven or hell.
Hell is what most people experience. People wouldn't want to admit it, even to themselves, but the incessant mind tortures them. The world is actually ok, it is the way our minds see it that makes it Hell.
When the mind is understood it can be a good servant, a tool for you to use. But it can be a very scary (hellish) world when the mind is believed to be the master.
Heaven will be known if the illusions of mind are seen through. The mind casts a veil over reality.
Reality is god, this moment is god, it is real.
You are never really ever away from this ever present now.
When you choose consciously to be conscious that you are here now, you choose to be in the presence of god.
This is Heaven.

Originally posted by Firefly_
The idea of hell as you present it is a disturbing fantasy, made up by some very nasty people in order to control and manipulate people through fear. Its been very effective too unfortunately.

The inevitable truth is that the doctrine of Hell is questionable. The doctrine of Hell is useful to make proselytes and, subsequently, profit. It's mostly used by Pentecostals and the non-denominational Christians.

Let us not forget the alternative idea...

Jehovah's Witnesses substitute the archaic doctrine of Hell with an "eminent" Armageddon which, they insist, is going to literally destroy the mundanes and believers of false religions (that is, ALL people, except Jehovah's Witnesses, the "true" Christians). The only ones who they are able to convert to the religion of the Watchtower (the Vatican of the Jehovah's Witnesses, you could say) are the already wavering, faltering ones of other religions. People with a sound mind, solid faith or vast knowledge in the Bible actually PREACH to he JW's...