Friday, July 27, 2007

Is Hell Reasonable?

People seem to have a big problem with Hell. The question usually goes like this, "How can a loving God send people to Hell?" There are a few points one must understand in order to tackle this question. First, Hell was not created for man, but for Satan and the demons (Matthew 25:41, "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;). Secondly, God does not actively "send" anyone to Hell (Romans 9:22, "What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?"). The Greek word for "prepared" in this verse, katartizo, is used in a passive word voice. This means that the vessel is being acted upon. For example, passive word voice in a sentence would be used as, "The boy was hit by the ball." We would not blame the ball, but rather understand that the boy is just the receiver of the action. The same is true of those who are destined for Hell. God does not choose them for Hell (2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."), but rather they go willingly as God allows them their own choice in rejecting Him (Romans 1:28, "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper"). Lastly, Heaven is not somewhere that those destined for Hell would want to be anyway. What I mean here is that Heaven will be a place of continual worship of the Lord (Revelation 4:8-11, Revelation 5:11-14, and Revelation 7:9-12 are just some of the examples of angels, elders, beasts, creatures, and multitudes [essentially everything and everyone] continually worshipping God). It's not hard to make sense of the fact that if a man is not willing to worship God for his few years here on earth, there's no way he would ever be willing to worship Him forevermore. Considering these three points: Hell was created for Satan and the demons, God does not actively send people to Hell, and Heaven being an eternal place of worshipping God (a hell to those who are unwilling to even do that here on earth), it is a fair response to assess that Hell is reasonable as it relates to a loving God.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Josh. It is apparent that you have put some work in this site, and I know that God will bless you for it. I am having a little trouble with the site I mentioned on our discussion board, so it is not yet ready for production. Hopefully, I can get the intro page up some time in the near future. Again, yours looks great. I will bookmark it and check back for any interesting conversations to join. Later, G...

Josh said...

Thanks, Gary. I did try to look at your sites, but saw that they were not up yet. No problem. As far as putting this one together, Google does all the work for me. All I've done is typed my thoughts and added some pics. Anyway, I look forward to hearing your comments on my posts.