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I posed this question a dozen times in the Christian forum and no Christian has ever been able to answer.
Please give us logical explanation why God simply has to have us burning in fire in hell eternally or He's really pissed. The Bible gives no origin or explanation for fire in hell. Why couldn't God have created a twilight zone where sinners just exist in darkness or gray mist. Why explicitly does a soul have to burn in fire in order to satisfy God? What's the purpose? Just to make a sinner suffer the most extreme pain God can inflict on them? Isn't God able to devise pain that's 10x's worse than the most painful punishment fire can inflict? Please explain.
The only alternative is that this "fire in hell" thing was an invention of the early Church to scare pagans into joining Christianity.
I posed this question a dozen times in the Christian forum and no Christian has ever been able to answer.
Please give us logical explanation why God simply has to have us burning in fire in hell eternally or He's really pissed. The Bible gives no origin or explanation for fire in hell. Why couldn't God have created a twilight zone where sinners just exist in darkness or gray mist. Why explicitly does a soul have to burn in fire in order to satisfy God? What's the purpose? Just to make a sinner suffer the most extreme pain God can inflict on them? Isn't God able to devise pain that's 10x's worse than the most painful punishment fire can inflict? Please explain.
The only alternative is that this "fire in hell" thing was an invention of the early Church to scare pagans into joining Christianity.
Why do you think we'd know? We didn't make it up. We can only tell you what the Bible says.
Probably because it was the worst type of death that whoever invented the notion of hell could imagine.
This is what I think. Figure that the early church Fathers needed some sort of sledgehammer to brain these dumb-as-posts pagans into believing what they were teaching about Christianity and when the pagans said, "Nah, we're not buying it" the Fathers could say, "Just you wait! At the end of the world our God is going to....say, what's the scariest death you can think of?" Pagans: "Duhh...I don't know. Burning by fire?"
Fathers: "Just you wait! At the end of the world our God is going to burn you in fire for eternity!"
Pagans: "Where do we sign?"
I posed this question a dozen times in the Christian forum and no Christian has ever been able to answer.
Please give us logical explanation why God simply has to have us burning in fire in hell eternally or He's really pissed. The Bible gives no origin or explanation for fire in hell. Why couldn't God have created a twilight zone where sinners just exist in darkness or gray mist. Why explicitly does a soul have to burn in fire in order to satisfy God? What's the purpose? Just to make a sinner suffer the most extreme pain God can inflict on them? Isn't God able to devise pain that's 10x's worse than the most painful punishment fire can inflict? Please explain.
The only alternative is that this "fire in hell" thing was an invention of the early Church to scare pagans into joining Christianity.
Isn't it mostly the fundies who still believe in a literal lake of fire? I figured most Christians didn't believe this any more. I don't even believe the pain anyone's going to feel will be physical at all. I believe it will be more along the lines of deep remorse and mental anguish, and I don't see it as being eternal in nature. Maybe I'm the odd one out; I don't know.
I posed this question a dozen times in the Christian forum and no Christian has ever been able to answer.
Please give us logical explanation why God simply has to have us burning in fire in hell eternally or He's really pissed. The Bible gives no origin or explanation for fire in hell. Why couldn't God have created a twilight zone where sinners just exist in darkness or gray mist. Why explicitly does a soul have to burn in fire in order to satisfy God? What's the purpose? Just to make a sinner suffer the most extreme pain God can inflict on them? Isn't God able to devise pain that's 10x's worse than the most painful punishment fire can inflict? Please explain.
The only alternative is that this "fire in hell" thing was an invention of the early Church to scare pagans into joining Christianity.
No, the ''''fire in hell'' thing'' was not an invention of the early Church. The fire imagery in the Bible is straight out of the book of Enoch which is Jewish apocryphal literature, most of which was written during the intertestamental period after the last of the Old Testament books were written, and before the New Testament period. The book of Enoch itself, at least the older sections of the book, is estimated to have been written around 300 BC.
Some examples of the fire imagery.
Chapter 10:9 And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire.
10:16 Then shall they be taken away into the lowest depths of the fire in torments; and in confinement shall they be shut up for ever. 17 Immediately after this shall he, (14) together with them, burn and perish; they shall be bound until the consummation of many generations.
Chapter 21:5 Where I beheld the operation of a great fire blazing and glittering, in the midst of which there was a division. Columns of fire struggled together to the end of the abyss, and deep was their descent. But neither its measurement nor magnitude was I able to discover; neither could I perceive its origin. Then I exclaimed, How terrible is this place, and how difficult to explore! 6 Uriel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered and said: Enoch, why are you alarmed and amazed at this terrific place, at the sight of this place of suffering? This, he said, is the prison of the angels; and here they are kept for ever.
The New Testament writers could read, and they read the book of Enoch which expands on Genesis 6 and the account of the angels which co-habited with human women resulting in the birth of the Nephilim, and they considered it appropriate to use in expressing what they had to say concerning the punishment of the angels and men who rebel against God.
Compare Enoch 21:5,6 with Matthew 25:41.
Old Testament scholar Michael Heiser addresses the fire imagery and how it relates to the book of Enoch in the following podcast.
Now you'll have to excuse me. I'm not going to get involved in a conversation about this. I was taking a break from what I was doing and saw this thread, and decided to provide the above information, but I'm busy studying about the Universe and string theory and want to get back to it. I'm listening to a fascinating lecture by Lawrence Krauss on the beginning of the Universe.
There was also the whole "fire and brimstone" thing on Earth with the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah. So we haven't always had to leave the planet to get a dose of that.
Personally, my view of hell is sufficient enough with the absence of God to be undesirable. It doesn't matter whether there is fire there or not (or something symbolic). That's sort of irrelevant compared to being separated from God.
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