Chapter 8. 12
Hard Questions
Did
God create evil?
Is
the Omni-present God also in Hell?
How
can there be no bottom in Hell?
Can
Hell have fire & darkness at the same time?
Maybe there are HUNDREDS of ways to God;
maybe there are only TWO ways.
Maybe there’s just ONE way; maybe there’s NO
way.
To consider any of these
thoughts, your BS,
your Belief System requires an OPEN MIND.[1]
First
Word
Concerning the World
a)
The world came about by accident or evolution
apart from a Creator.
b)
It has always existed apart from a Creator.
c)
It was created by an unmoved mover.
This study embraces the un-moved mover
theory; there is a God who made the world and is still active in maintaining
its existence and balance. - (Note;
Evolution is an UNPROVEN THEORY)
Concerning God
a)
All the spokes in a wheel lead to the same hub.
There are many paths to the same God.
b)
Surely there is a path that is truer than the
others.
c)
God sets the rules, He can reveal Himself in a
number of ways; through an audible voice, feelings, visions, dreams, prophets
or none of the above.
Concerning Man
a)
We are all born into a cast of values that are
taught to us by our family.
b)
If I was born into a Muslim family, I would be
brought up to be a Muslim.
c)
If my family did not believe in God at all;
neither would I. In all probability, we
will follow in the same footsteps as our parents.
God Made Known
QUESTION: If there is a God; wouldn’t He make Himself
known to us in the clearest way possible?
Bible: From the beginning of time, what MAY[2] be known about God has been made plain to
us by Him; it is our own spirit that suppresses the truth.[3] Since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities, His eternal power and divine nature has been clearly seen, being understood from what
has been made, and He gave proof by raising His Son Jesus Christ from the dead,[4] so
that we are without excuse.[5]
The Book
QUESTION; why is the Bible the only True Book of
God? Certainly there are other books.
Bible:
Two of the writers of the Gospels (Matthew and John) were disciples
of Jesus Christ. They heard Him, saw Him
and touched Him[6]
and then proclaimed the good news so that others would have the opportunity to
have fellowship with Him. All the
Disciples proclaimed his resurrection and never recanted even unto their death.
Muslims:
Even the Qur’an
acknowledges the life and works of Jesus Christ.
Josephus the Jewish
Historian, lived at a time when he could have known some of the Original Twelve
Disciples. He was not a
Christian and in fact believed
that the Roman Emperor Vespasian was the Messiah.
As Josephus just mentioned Jesus in passing, we should take note of
all the things he spoke of; he said Jesus was the Christ; a worker of wonderful works and was
crucified and rose from the dead on the third day just as it was prophesized.
Fact:
It
is a historical Fact that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected from the
dead. If Christ has not been raised from
the dead then our faith is in vain.[7] There is just no
other hope.
I am
including a passage from “Josephus’s
Antiquity of the Jews”, I hope you will get your own personal copy. Even though he was NOT a
believer; his writings read like the Bible.
Josephus
18.3.63-64 - Wise, teacher, wonderful works, Christ
63 Now there was
about this time, JESUS, a wise man,
IF IT BE LAWFUL TO CALL HIM A MAN,
for he was a
doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such means received
the truth with
pleasure. He drew over to him both many
of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. HE WAS THE CHRIST.
64 And when Pilate,
at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross,
those that loved him at the first did
not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again
on the third day; as the divine
prophets had foretold these and
ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of CHRISTIANS,
so named from him are not extinct at this day.
Only One Way
QUESTION: Where did the concept come from that says
that belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah is the only way to God?
Bible: It was Jesus Christ Himself that said it;
“No one comes to the Father except through me”.[8] To go to heaven you must believe in Jesus Christ, there is no
other name under heaven that you can be saved.
The word Belief
in Greek (Pisteuo)
not only means to intellectually accept Jesus as the Messiah, but to walk in obedience
to His commands. Belief equals obedience; not intellectual gymnastics.
EVIL
QUESTION: If God created
everything, then He must have created EVIL.
Bible: God created Angels and man with Free Will and with
that, He opened the door for Him to CHOOSE to do the greatest Good or the possibility to do the greatest Evil; Satan had this same choice.[9]
You may then ponder that if God is omniscience; that He knows everything, then He
must have known that Adam would mess up.
You are right; Satan had already exercised
his Free Will and
rebelled before Adam was ever created. God did know Adam would sin and had
already put into effect the plan of salvation so man could find “THE WAY”[10]
back to God.[11]
Adam’s Sins
QUESTION: Why would a loving God punish someone for
mistakes or sins that were committed by someone else in his past; like the
first man ADAM for instance? Why should I pay for his sins?
Bible: Scriptures bares out that in all
probability, children will follow in the same footsteps as their Father; Sin
requires punishment. It is true that the
one man ADAM sinned and now ALL have
been separated from God because of his mistake,[12]
and on our own we are NOT ABLE to even seek
God. BUT God reached out and sent His
only begotten Son to provide THE WAY[13] to unite us once
again to Himself and enabled us to SEEK
Him through the power and working
of the Holy Spirit.
Good News; you need not have to pay for Adam’s sins;
Christ has already paid the price for THE
WAY
of escape;[14] IF you want it. The Christian movement was known as THE WAY because there is
just NO other
way back to God.[15]
God has provided
not just A way, but THE ONLY WAY back to Him and since we now know THE WAY; it’s not Adam’s bad choices that
condemns us,[16]
it’s our own choices;[17] it’s in the Book.
A Life Sentence
QUESTION; Why would a
God of love sentence someone to be TORMENTED in HELL FIRE FOREVER just because he mistakenly chose
to worship the god he had always been taught to worship, which turned out to be
the wrong god?
Bible; Love does not exclude wrath; God has
given us FREE WILL[18] and with that
privilege comes responsibilities. God
has lovingly given us an entire lifetime to SEEK and FEEL OUR
WAY and
FIND
Him[19]
and to accept or reject His Son Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
When I taught Electronics at Atlanta
Technical School, I would mention something only once and on the test only
the brightest students would get it; I wanted some to NOT
get it.
It was Jesus,
the very embodiment of love who warned again
and again and again about
the wrath of God;
the punishment
and torment
of Hell. HE WANTS US TO GET IT.[20]
Babies, Handicapped people
QUESTION: Will a new
born baby or a child or a mentally challenged person or someone who has never
heard of Jesus Christ go to Hell?
Bible: YES and NO;
in my Belief
System, I believe that a
glimpse into scriptures indicates that God will judge people according to what
they would have done had they heard and understood the message.[21] There are those who do not know right from
wrong and therefore do not sin; they WILL enter into the kingdom of God.[22]
A Question of HELL
QUESTION; why would a
loving God create a place of torment for man such as HELL?
Bible: Hell was NOT created for
man, but was prepared for Satan and his followers who were the Angels that
rebelled against God.[23] It’s
by our Free Will
CHOICE that we rebel
against God and that lumps us in with Satan and his gang of demons and fallen
angels. Hell’s dreadful torment is for
those that knew THE WAY to God, and rejected it.
At Death the
wicked, not the righteous descent into a place known as Sheol or Hell.[24] Understand this; Satan is
not in charge of Hell, he’s just one of the boys in torment where everyone still does the same old
thing that they always did on earth before their death.
Hell is the lower
parts of the earth holding the wicked dead till the end of the millennium; you
are NOT instantly annihilated, but
are tormented in the unquenchable fires that go on endlessly, and it gets worse. At the return of Christ, Hell and
its contents will be thrown into the burning Lake of Fire and Sulfur where the
wicked will be tormented forever. [25]
This is an un-seen world of disembodied spirits that are full of
remorse, fear, and despair; with memories of what they should have done and
didn’t; full of sorrow for their bad examples, and with a hopelessness of
escape and in a state of regret over doing evil deeds that cannot be
recalled. They are in deep despair that they did not listen to God’s
word, and are aware of their families on earth, and have this hopeless desire
to warn them somehow.
You are in the gloom of darkness, away from the face of God, with a
bunch of demons, Satan and his fallen angels, and the entire unbelieving bunch
of wicked folks, plus you have the ordinary run of the mill burning fire,
brimstone and sulfur to walk around in.
There’s not very much love in Hell.
–
Muslims believe in
error; “Allah sends to
hell whomever he wants. He created a
multitude of spirits and men specifically for the purpose of sending them to
hell”. (Sura 32:13)
The Bible teaches; Life is Choice
Driven, no one is created to go to hell, it’s your choice. You cannot be neutral on this subject; being
neutral is a choice to reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
To be perfectly clear, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God[26]
and are on the highway to hell, but God in His mercy, gave us the Holy Spirit to make it possible for us to seek God
and it is through His only son Jesus Christ that
we can find THE
WAY back to Him, BUT YOU MUST CHOOSE IT. In the movie trilogy THE MATRIX, Leo is shown the
door and is told, “I can only show you the door Leo; you must CHOOSE to walk through it”. (The movie the
Matrix is the Gospel Message disguised
as a science fiction futuristic movie.)
Time out
If someone is breaking into
our homes, stealing and killing people, we would surely all agree that
we would want that person to be put in prison, not only for his past crimes,
but to protect the community from future crimes. That’s what Hell is;
it’s a prison for those who break the law. It’s an everlasting wasteland of discarded worthless people who seek to answer only to themselves.
The act of rejecting your own country is called treason and in most countries this
carries the death
penalty, thus the rejection of the love of God carries this same
extreme penalty. God cannot be God
unless His attributes including His justice be maintained. It was this justice that nailed His only begotten
Son to the cross.
We can conclude
that a just
and loving
God
will separate
the Evil from
the Good
and will hold
people accountable. SELAH
Names for Hell
QUESTION: I’m confused with all the names concerning the
afterlife of the wicked. How many places
are there?
Bible: Sheol
is mention some 60 times in the OT and in the NT it is translated as Hades
(10x), Gehenna
(12x), Tartarus
(1x) which all are rendered as Hell. With that said, you can with certain believe
there is such a place as Hell.
Gehenna (Greek) - Hell (Hebrew) - Hades (Greek) - Sheol (Hebrew for Hades); all symbolize
the same thing. Gehenna was a valley just outside
of Jerusalem where garbage and dead bodies were thrown with gnawing worms
eating the rotting putrid flesh. It burned
and smoked day and night; it is symbolic of what Hades is like.
FYI: There is only one place of everlasting
punishment. Before the Day of Judgment, Hell is referred to as Hades
which is the abode of the SOULS of the wicked. After
the Day of
Judgment it is called Gehenna which is the abode of the BODY and SOUL of the wicked.
God in Hell
QUESTION: If God is Omni-present,
truly everywhere, then is He also present in Hell?
Bible: YES, but it
is not the LOVE of God that is present there, it’s the
flip side; it’s His wrath.
Heaven is Heaven because God’s LOVE is there; the righteous are blessed
forever.[27]
Hell is Hell because God’s WRATH is there; [28] those
in Hell are doomed forever, eternally
separated from God’s LOVE.[29]
Separated from the light, anything that is pure,
and holy; away from the blessed redeemed saints.
Together with all that is
pure darkness; with all the evil and hatred there is in man, angels and demons, ALL balled up into one place.
SIDE BAR: If I didn’t
know anything else but about Hell, I would at once try to find God while I
still had a CHOICE.
There
is no such thing as reincarnation or a place called purgatory. (These are lies borne out of the pit of hell to steal
your life.) We are appointed ONCE to die and then the judgment.[30]
Did you see it?
The moment you die, judgment takes place,
you are just waiting for your sentence; there is no more chances.
Fire,
Darkness, Bottomless
QUESTION; How can you have fire
in Hell and it yet be dark? That makes
no sense, the Bible contradicts itself, how can Hell be bottomless, that too makes
no sense?
Bible: Hell is lit up with unquenchable fire; it devours forever and ever.
Moses saw a bush that was on fire, but it was never consumed, it just kept
burning.[31]
The LOVE
of God is LIGHT where the redeemed stand blessed in His brilliance forever.[32]
The WRATH of God
is the GLOOM of outer darkness far from the LIGHT of God. The darkness of Hell is
the total absence of God’s light.[33]
Hell is bottomless; in my BS, my Belief System Hell is in the shape of a ball located in
the center of the earth and no matter which way you go and how far you go to
escape, it just keeps going and going, round and round.
There’s
NO beginning, NO end, NO escape and NO HOPE… for eternity.
Good Works
QUESTION: As the Mormon’s and Jehovah
Witnesses go from door to door
witnessing, why do people throw rocks at their works of “missionary endeavors”?
Bible: The Doctrine of
salvation is not achieved through WORKS. Works exists because you have been saved; believing
that your works as a missionary saves you is a false teaching. The work of Jesus Christ on the cross was
final; Salvation is Jesus Christ plus nothing else.
You do not have to be a missionary in
order to be saved. NOTE: (They use starting a Bible Study in your home as a recruitment tool and when
they see no hope of recruiting you to their church, they will stop the Bible
Study.)
NOTE: Disproving
another religion does not prove Christianity, but it does plant a fence post to
see what’s lining up with the rest of the Bible Scriptures. The
Book says that many Christians, are trusting in their works and not walking in
obedience.[34]
We don’t do good works in order to be
saved, we do good works because we are saved; works do not save.
Sadly to say, God will say He never knew them. It’s in the
book.
The Jews are basically a
nation of Humanism;
a nation of Works
as they have rejected the New Covenant and continue to embrace the Old Covenant which God rendered inoperative when Jesus the
Christ fulfilled the Law. However in my BS, I believe this rejection will
change; probably right after the rapture of the believers: the Jew’s will turn
to Jesus in droves; they will see the light. [35]
Think about it… you go into work and find
a number of people missing and there is talk about something called the RAPTURE of the church folks; what’s the next thing you would do?
Knowledge
QUESTION: My dad is
the Preacher in the church and my Mother teaches Sunday school therefore I know
a lot about God, so am I not surely saved?
Maybe, maybe NOT.
Bible: Good for your mom and dad; but although as a PK (preachers kid),
you
know about God unless you glorify and give thanks to Him, your heart is
dark, [36]
therefore God will give you over to the sinful desires of your own heart.[37] You
have knowledge,
but not TRUTH; it’s not about
knowledge;
it’s about obedience.
A young man was applying for a job with me
and gave glowing testimonies of what his momma was doing in the church and
community. I listened for some time,
then I asked him for his own personal testimony; he did not have one.
God does not have
any step children; only children.
You can’t get to heaven on your
mama and daddy’s coat tail.
Scripture – You
will know them by their fruit;[38] the saved are obedient
and bear fruit.
Hope
We
are all BORN sinners by nature, BUT we remain sinners by CHOICE. We know naturally what is right or wrong
because the laws of morality have already been clearly written on our hearts,[39]
but because our works are already dark & evil, we can resist the light and
choose darkness instead. [40]
We CAN fix how we were born by choosing to become BORN AGAIN.[41] If we seek God, we will find Him;[42]
He is not far from us.[43]
Our choices on this side of death have eternal consequences.
[1] Acts 17:11-12 - The people of Berea were more OPEN-MINDED and searched the Scriptures
day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth
[2] Romans 1:18-19 – What MAY
be known about God is made plain and clear
[3] 1 John 3:24 - Whoever keeps God commandments abides in Him
[4] Acts 17:31 – God gave proof when He Raised Jesus from the dead
[5] Romans 1:20 – Since the creation God’s invisible qualities, eternal
power, divine nature was revealed, now
we are without excuse
[6] 1 John 1:1-3 – We have heard, seen and touched Jesus.
[7] 1 Corinthians 15:14 – If Jesus was not raised from the dead then our
faith is in vain
[8] John 14:6 - No one comes to the Father God
except through me -- John 3:36 -
Whoever believes in God’s Son, Jesus the Christ, has eternal life -- John 3:3 – Jesus said; unless one is born
again, he cannot enter the Kingdom -- John 14:8-10 – Jesus said; whoever has seen me has seen the Father God
[9] Isaiah 14:13-14 – Satan’s
FREE
WILL; the
five I wills of self
[11] 1 John 3 -8 – The Plan of
Salvation was placed in effect before Adam and Eve, so they would have THE WAY back to Him
[12] Romans 5:18-19 - One man’s disobedience (Adam) made us all sinners
and subject to the Wrath of God
[13] Acts 19:23 – Christianity; the sect followers of Jesus Christ were called
THE WAY
[14] 1 Corinthians 10:13 – God has provided THE
WAY of
escape
[15] John 6:65- No one can come to me unless granted by the Father
[16] Deuteronomy 24:16 - You will be punished for only your choices, not
Adams.
[17] Romans 6:5 – Every Believer will be united with Christ at the
Resurrection
[18] 2 Corinthians 8:3 – Man has the gift of FREE WILL
[19] Acts 17:27 – His purpose was for us to SEEK and FIND
Him. -- Hebrews 9:27 – God has given us
a lifetime to seek and choose Him before we die and the judgment
[20] John 3:16-17 - Whoever believes on Jesus Christ will have eternal life.
[21] Romans 2:15-16 – God judges the secrets of men’s hearts -- Luke 12:47-48 – He that did not know receives
a light sentence
[23] Matthew 25:41 – Hell was
not created for man, but for Satan and those who choose to follow him
[24] 2 Thessalonians 1:9 – The
Unbeliever will be removed from the presence of God forever.
[25] Revelations 20:10 –
Unrepentant before you die will receive Tormented day and night
[26]
Romans 3:23 - For
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
[27] Romans 8:38-39 – The SAVED
can’t be separated from His Love.
[28] Psalm 139:7-8 – If you make your bed in Hell; God is there -- Isaiah 13:9
– For the Wicked; God’s WRATH
and anger comes on Judgment day.
[29] Deuteronomy 32:22 – God’s anger and wrath burns in Hell fire.
[30] Hebrews 9:27 – We die ONCE
then JUDGED awaiting sentence on
the Day of the Lord.
[31] Exodus 3:2 - Though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up
[32] 1 Peter 2:9 – God has called you out of darkness into his
wonderful light -- 1 John 1:7 - If
we live in God’s light; we have fellowship with each other -- 1 John 2:9-10 - The one who loves his
brother abides in God’s Light
[33] Matthew 22:13 – The Make-believer will be
thrown into Outer Darkness -- Jude 1:13 – The Make-believer
is Doomed forever to the blackest darkness -- Jude 1:6 – The fallen angels are in chains
of darkness waiting for the Day of Judgment.
[34] Matthew 7:21-23 – It’s not your WORKS
that saves you, its your OBEDIENCE
[35] Zechariah 8:23 - Ten people will take firm hold of one Jew by the
hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is
with you.’
[36] Romans 1:21-23 – Although they knew God, they neither glorified
him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their
foolish hearts were darkened.
[37] Romans 1:21-32 - God gave them over in the sinful desires
[38] Matthew 7:16 – You will know them by their fruit;
obedience, their actions.
[39] Romans 2:14-15 – The Law is written on our hearts and our conscience
also bears witness
[40] John 3:19 – It’s a Choice - Men loved the darkness rather than light
[41] 2 Corinthians 5:17 - Anyone that is in Christ is a new creation
[42] Jeremiah 29:13 - You will seek me and find me
[43] Acts 17:27 - God is actually not far from each one of us
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