Thoughts on Hell II
“As a child, Robert Ingersoll heard a preacher proclaim the doctrine that God subjects sinners to unending torment in hell. Ingersoll decided that if God was like that, then he hated Him. Later he wrote of this belief that it “makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go.” There are substantial moral and logical difficulties in believing in a God who tortures His enemies forever. Like Ingersoll, thousands of thinking men have turned away from such a God.”—Tim Crosby in Ministry
Since I very much agree with Leroy Garrett, who once edited a fine little journal called Restoration Review, I’m going to let him do the heavy lifting here. You can find his excellent article, “Is Hell Fire Endless?” at
http://www.leroygarrett.org/restorationreview/article.htm?rr32_09a.htm8328981990
Look under Author Index
Not sure how you get around Revelation 20:15 (indeed all of Revelation 20). From my limited knowledge, Hell is temporary until the end of the age. The Lake of Fire is limitless and forever, conscious torment.
I can’t say that I “like” this…however, theological ponderings can obscure the most simple understanding of the Scripture. I am not sure why God the Father would ordain God the Son for such awful and undeserved suffering unless Christ was truly saving a people for Himself.
We misunderstand love. We think love means unconditional support for all that we do and all that we are. When people speak of the unconditional love of God, I have to question if this is biblically honest. God’s love is highly conditional…it is through Christ, and the grace and mercy the Trinity of God extends by Christ to undeserving mankind, that we are loved.
And, we misread our own miserable condition if we think that we can earn or merit such favor. So, in that sense it is unconditional. I think that the Bible does teach that we are held accountable for what we do and do not understand that can be attributed to our willful disobedience to the clear teaching of the Scripture.
And if someone has received a clear teaching about the realities of Heaven, Hell, and the Lake of Fire, and does not receive Christ, their soul…the Scripture teaches…is indeed in eternal danger. We cannot go further than this for there is much we do not understand. The secret counsels of God are beyond our purview. Yet, we cannot fail to attain this point of understanding which God has made within our ability and inclination to understand.
Eric,
I certainly agree with you about the true “unconditional” nature of God’s love. You’re right. We can’t earn that favor. As for accountability, we’re certainly agreed on that as well. So, as the old hymn my father loved so well goes, “Let the lower lights be burning. Send a gleam across the wave. Some poor struggling, fainting seaman you may rescue, you may save.”
All blessings,
Gary Robinson