Hello everyone, am just making this thread to tell you about my views on the lake of fire and if you think they are wrong a debate is welcomed. Of course if i am wrong or misunderstood something please correct me. The lake of fire: I think that when we die and we are judged, the sinners will be put into the lake of fire so that the sins can be burnt and the human can be purified, because heaven has no sin and such the sin needs to be purified from humans before they can enter heaven. what do you guys think? do you agree or disagree? what are your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing?
you can't return from the lake of fire. it is eternal. forever and ever.. but the judgement doesn't happen until the end of the thousand year reign. that means unless you were part of the first ressurection then you are going to spend a thousand years in death. i'd say that is a pretty severe consequence for your sins. also i believe there will be an amount of purification in the next age as well. just, the more we are purified now, the less we are going to be purified in the next age. even after the new jerusalem is ushered in there is still the tree of life for the healing of the nations. rev 20-22
but perhaps they mean eternal in the sense of life For example our life on earth is eternal until death, so maby we burn for the amount of years we have sinned (how ever much years we lived) and once we have been burned and purified we are able to go to heaven.
i think that what you are thinking of is your conscience reaffirming something that is true but you aren't quite getting all the facts. then i could be wrong too. i don't view things in such a black and white way as heaven and hell. there seem to be several places that people go when they die until the final judgement if you look close enough. in luke 16:22-23 it talks about a beggar and a rich man. when the beggar died he went to a place called abrahams bosom. when the rich man died he went to a place called hades. also in rev 20:13 it mentions several places where the dead have been residing. the sea, and Death and Hades. hades seems to be a place of torment, and abrahams bosom seems to be a nice place. but these are totally seperate entities from the lake of fire, and "heaven." perhaps what you are talking about could happen in hades, or abrahams bosom. but not in the lake of fire. that is eternal, forever and ever. also i find it interesting that it makes mention of healing that will occur in "heaven" in rev 22:2.
Those are interesting points you have mentioned, i shall read the parts you have mentioned and get back on to you! i am interested in rev 22:22 so i should check that one out.
Is there anything anybody could do in our limited lifetimes to merit the fate of eternal torment in a Lake of Fire, taken literally? I don't think so. I think the passage has to be considered metaphorically. Eternity is beyond time. Beauty, truth, and justice are eternal values. Hell is a hypothetical type in which humans reject the grace which they need to save themselves from themselves. Hell is a bad attitude. We don't see it in pure form, but it is a tendency or potential we encounter daily, beckoning us to give in to it. Dante's Inferno is a brilliant exposition of this point. The souls in the various levels of Hell, including Satan himself are prisoners of their own attachments to one vice or another, and would like to get out but can't bring themselves to do that because they misdiagnose the problem as caused by somebody else, like God. Satan is depicted as captured in a block of ice in the middle of an Inferno. What caused the ice? The flapping of his own huge wings. Why is he flapping? To get away from God. Why doesn't he stop flapping? He can't bring himself to do so. Poor Satan
I recently have come to believe in universal salvation. Really long article, but HIGHLY recommend reading this: http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/ever-been-to-hell-and-back.html
While I do not subscribe to the Christian religion, I always thought eternal meant forever, not just this lifetime. - JKHolman
