Are most people going to Hell?

[Fr_Ambrose]

## Unless God is posting on this thread, there is no way of knowing

Why should it matter ? ##

I believe that God, who knows all things from before eternity, would not have created the human race if He foreknew that the fate of the majority of us is to spend eternity in eternal torment.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Fr Ambrose:

I believe that God, who knows all things from before eternity, would not have created the human race if He foreknew that the fate of the majority of us is to spend eternity in eternal torment.

Exactly: and why go to such immense trouble to redeem the human race, if the majority - especially, the vast majority - are to be damned ?​

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Paris Blues:

I’ve just finished reading most of the comments that reply to this topic. It’s interesting to see how most of your guys’ thoughts, fears, struggles, etc. are pretty much exactly how I feel, think, etc. My question is, are we losing hope (and I can say that to myself too!)? No doubt that we tend to be more worried about going to Hell than Heaven…yes, in the past, I was sooo discouraged and beaten up by my sins, that I TOTALLY lost ALL hope and was to the point of despair! Believe me, DON’T GET THERE!!! But there was a time when I was in total despair and yet prayed to God to give me hope! I guess you can look at that like I had hope deep down inside when I was in despair thinking I had no hope! So yes, please, pray for hope!

I also understand that it does seem impossible to live a “holy” life (well, as holy as a human being can live on earth!) when we are terrible sinners (me, oh my, I was soooo bad, I was almost to the point of killing myself! But knew that was NOT going to make things better!) but with the Grace of God, we can do it! It takes lots of hope and faith (and yes, again, I can speak for myself more than anyone else in the world!).

I WANT to give my whole life to Christ but somehow, don’t know quite how. Does anyone else have a clue what I’m talking about? I think, Christ gave up His life for us, now I want to give my life to Him! But don’t know how to do it! How?

“Let go, and let God” is pretty good advice, IMO ​

 

[4t1]

Hermione:

It just doesn’t seem just to put people into a state of eternal punishment for finite sins. This is especially true if the sins aren’t like those of Hitler. Is it fair to put users of birth control, people who masturbate, people who deliberately miss Mass into Hell?.

At times I struggle briefly with similar questions and must remind myself that God’s ways are not our ways…

*Sins are forgiveable, but not necessarily finite as they affect all. The sins mentioned are not God’s ways (which is why they *are *sins). *

*We are free to choose for or against what we are taught by the Church He established to help acclimate us to His ways through the Sacraments that we might spend eternity with Him. *

He wants all of us to be with Him forever, but ultimately we decide where we will spend eternity. He sends noone to* Hell. We choose for ourselves. *

(UKcatholicguy’s post (#13) spoke to me as being particularly sound.)

 

[Caldera]

“He wants all of us to be with Him forever, but ultimately we decide where we will spend eternity. He sends noone to Hell. We choose for ourselves”
**
Yet, he knew from the beginning what our lives would be like even before we we’re created and put on this earth?

We were created weak and have to deal with this evil spirit called “Satan” who tempts us in our weakness, and beats us down when we try to be good.

How fair is that!?

Some people are weaker than others… everyone is different. Some people can’t fight against their weaknesses, but others can.

Is there such a thing as predestination?

Are you sure we decide our own destination?

Put your hope in what Christ did on the cross and it’s all good, right?

 

[Frankie]

UKcatholicGuy:

I think Hermione and others are missing an essential point in this discussion, a point which I made earlier: we are not in this life alone!

Hermione, you say it seems near impossible to be saved and live a “good” life and obey all Jesus’ commandments. You know what? You’re right! It’s absolutely impossible to live up to God’s standards when we try to ourselves.

That’s why God, through Jesus Christ, gives us grace to enable us to live Christian lives. Grace is amazing (to quote the old spiritual)! Grace literally enables us to do things we could never do on our own, like forgive someone who really hurt you, or like saying no to sexual desires, no to birth control, and yes to church.

You’re living in fear because you’re trying to do it alone! Stop! Accept God’s grace through Jesus Christ and take a deep breath. Put your trust in His ability to bring you through. Go to confession and receive the Eucharist as often as you can. Through the sacraments, Jesus will give you the strength to resist sin and temptation.

Truly, we can “do all things through Christ, who gives [us] the strength.”

And I stress again, please pray! You cannot get anywhere without prayer. I promise you that. Please please pray!

God bless, Hermione. You’re in my prayers! Don’t give up the fight! The reward is worth it!

 

[Frankie]

Oh man, I am really interested in this thread. I confess I have lived a pretty bad life and am now trying to turn around. What gives me enormous hope is the Divine Mercy devotion. In this Christ says He wants to press aching mankind to His heart. He encourages even the worst sinner to trust in His mercy. I think this is the essence: Of myself I can do absolutely nothing and have not a hope of salvation by my own efforts. I must abandon myself to Jesus, asking Him to “take over” my whole being and keep me on the straight and narrow.

Daily Mass, weekly confession, the rosary, practising being still and quiet interiorily, having all trust in Christ and not in myself… this means living in a state of tension, but not huge anxiety; it’s a matter of trying, but mostly trusting. Hope this helps… seems to be working for me.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Hermione:

It just doesn’t seem just to put people into a state of eternal punishment for finite sins. This is especially true if the sins aren’t like those of Hitler. Is it fair to put users of birth control, people who masturbate, people who deliberately miss Mass into Hell?

What sort of Justice is that? That’s like taking your child, raping him, and cutting his body into little pieces for stealing a cookie from the cookie jar when you told him not to.

I think part of the problem is that the Church authorities have been too ready to call things mortal sins - how can eating meat on Fridays possibly be the same sort of sin as committing serial murder ?Something is skewed, when the masturbator and the and the satanist both get the chop.​

What is really odd, is that murder is a sin of itself - eating flesh meat on a day of abstinence is a sin, only because the Church so decrees: in itself, flesh meat is good: which is exactly the point of the abstinence: one is abstaining from the use of something which is in itself perfectly good and accaptable. But there is a big difference between doing something which is wrong in itself, and doing somethng which is wrong purely because the Church rules that in certain circumstances it is wrong.

Besides - Church law regarding abstinence changes: there was a time when eating milk products on days of abstinence was wrong, just as there was a time when all Fridays were days of abstinence. It was a mortal sin to eat milk products on certain days, and no longer is; just as it was a mortal sin to eat meat on any Friday, and no longer is. Therefore, we are now free to do what would at time have been mortal sins - purely because the law of the Church so ruled. The problem is, that making these things mortal sins, when they are not of themselves mortal sins, risks blurring the difference between things that are always mortal sins, and things that are mortal sins because it is decided they qualify as such.

The answer to some of this, is that sin lies in the intention, more than in the act which shows the intention - but things still look rather skewed, when eating a steak on Friday, & raping and murdering a child on Saturday, are theoretically both damnable. ##

 

[4t1]

Caldera:

We were created weak and have to deal with this evil spirit called “Satan” who tempts us in our weakness, and beats us down when we try to be good.

How fair is that!?

Some people are weaker than others… everyone is different. Some people can’t fight against their weaknesses, but others can.

Is there such a thing as predestination?

Are you sure we decide our own destination?

Put your hope in what Christ did on the cross and it’s all good, right?

Scripture shows us that God’s ways are far from our ways. It is through His sacrifice that we might hope to live eternally with Him. We cannot get there on our own. It is through His grace that we are able to grow in understanding and imitating His ways. It can be a struggle, no doubt, but it is also very rewarding, even exciting as the discovery of who God is becomes known to us.

Predestination would negate our free will. It is by our free will that we choose for or against Him.

It is in our hoping and truly desiring His way that He will lead us through all of the trappings that trip us up along the way; sin, satan, etc. if we are willing to follow.

It is especially helpful to humbly bring any concerns/questions to the Lord in prayer.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

“He wants all of us to be with Him forever, but ultimately we decide where we will spend eternity. He sends noone to Hell. We choose for ourselves”

Yet, he knew from the beginning what our lives would be like even before we we’re created and put on this earth?

We were created weak and have to deal with this evil spirit called “Satan” who tempts us in our weakness, and beats us down when we try to be good.

How fair is that!?

Some people are weaker than others… everyone is different. Some people can’t fight against their weaknesses, but others can.

Is there such a thing as predestination?

St.Paul thought so - see Romans 8.29,30​

Rom 8:27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what [is] the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to [the will of] God.

Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to [his] purpose.

Rom 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Rom 8:30 Moreover whom He did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

Rom 8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God [be] for us, who [can be] against us?

Rom 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Rom 8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? [It is] God that justifieth.

Rom 8:34 Who [is] he that condemneth? [It is] Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? [shall] tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.. ##

Are you sure we decide our own destination?

Put your hope in what Christ did on the cross and it’s all good, right?

 

[stevejosem]

Only God knows the answer to that. We will all find out eventually.

 

[Skip]

*
We were created weak and have to deal with this evil spirit called “Satan” who tempts us in our weakness, and beats us down when we try to be good.

How fair is that!?

Some people are weaker than others… everyone is different. Some people can’t fight against their weaknesses, but others can.

Is there such a thing as predestination?

Are you sure we decide our own destination?

Put your hope in what Christ did on the cross and it’s all good, right?

*

Okay, this thread started with someone blaming emotional stress on the judgement of God, someone worried about going to hell. Then the thread turned into asking whether or not eternal damnation is fair. Those two issues are not very different (from a person-centric view). Let me, God-willing, add some thoughts. My approach is more direct than many; we all have different gifts, mine includes candor.

No one ever went to hell just for missing Mass. That’s a serious sin, grave matter, but not per se mortal. To commit a mortal sin I need to know it’s serious sin and voluntarily do so anyway. So the damnable part is not the objectively grave matter (which, by the way, is disobeying Church law, not missing Mass) but the willful disobedience. So our damnation would be for the same cause as Eve and Adam’s deaths.

As to fairness, if we willfully choose to do wrong when we have full knowledge that to do so will send us to an unimaginable hell, then how could it possibly be unfair to provide the understood consequence? Rather it is manifestly unfair to offer mercy. Especially when we have repeatedly chosen to disobey and repeatedly asked for forgiveness for the exact same things, both in the actual repeated sins and more in the deliberate choosing to sin. And we get forgiveness? That is so not fair!

Enough. Back to the base question: Are most people going to hell? This is Luke 13:23’s question. Let us answer it as did the Christ: “Strive …” [RSV]. In my poor understanding of this passage, the Lord shifted the focus of the conversation from quantities of souls to what the questioner should do. “Many” neither implies nor excludes “most.” Without meaning to be unkind, “are most people going to hell” is the wrong question. The right question may be " Am I and those whose lives I touch going to heaven?" We must “strive” which, in the words of Mother Teresa, would mean: “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.”

Read back through the thread to see that the original question “Are most people going to hell” was counterfeit for “Am I going to hell?” And the answer is this: “Try to be good, and trust God for mercy and justice.” We can go to confession because we’re afraid of hell or because we love God (and most of the time for both reasons). The contrition, perfect or imperfect, is present either way!

To Hermione, let me offer the following: if you are stressed about sinning, first say an act of contrition. Then go to confession. Absolution will relieve the guilt, the cause of your stress. With peace and the sacramental grace comes the ability to resist temptation for just a little longer than last time. God doesn’t cook up saints with a microwave; we take time, and He is patient beyond all time. Keep trying. If you die on the way to confession after a good act of contrition, the mercy of God will protect you. If you die refusing to be contrite and confess, you may really go to hell. It’s almost as simple as “be sorry go to confession or be obstinate and go to hell.”

One more thing: what if we don’t want to pray and go to confession? Do it anyway. We aren’t going to hurt God or His Church by being honest. We will hurt ourselves by not addressing the issues.

As for the final question about predestination, I cannot say… except to look at the Blessed Virgin and Her Son. Immaculate conception would seem to argue in favor of predestination, but if Mary had been predestined (or “predestinated” as some of my friends say) by God to serve as the Mother of God, her fiat would have been meaningless. God gave us all, especially Mary, full of grace, and even Jesus “the right to do wrong” and she chose to “let it be done” according to the will of God. If Christ could not have sinned, He could not have saved. “If predestination means everything, Gethsemane means nothing.” Predestination cannot mean abrogating free will. Free will, married to God’s mercy in the hypostatic union, is what saved us once for all and now by each.

Peace be with you!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Skip:

Okay, this thread started with someone blaming emotional stress on the judgement of God, someone worried about going to hell. Then the thread turned into asking whether or not eternal damnation is fair. Those two issues are not very different (from a person-centric view). Let me, God-willing, add some thoughts. My approach is more direct than many; we all have different gifts, mine includes candor.

No one ever went to hell just for missing Mass. That’s a serious sin, grave matter, but not per se mortal. To commit a mortal sin I need to know it’s serious sin and voluntarily do so anyway. So the damnable part is not the objectively grave matter (which, by the way, is disobeying Church law, not missing Mass) but the willful disobedience. So our damnation would be for the same cause as Eve and Adam’s deaths.

As to fairness, if we willfully choose to do wrong when we have full knowledge that to do so will send us to an unimaginable hell, then how could it possibly be unfair to provide the understood consequence? Rather it is manifestly unfair to offer mercy.

Agreed - mercy is not fair, because it comes from something profounder than justice (so C.S. Lewis): in fact, the Redemption is not fair - God loved us “while we were yet sinners”; not because we were not sinners.​

Especially when we have repeatedly chosen to disobey and repeatedly asked for forgiveness for the exact same things, both in the actual repeated sins and more in the deliberate choosing to sin. And we get forgiveness? That is so not fair!

Enough. Back to the base question: Are most people going to hell? This is Luke 13:23’s question. Let us answer it as did the Christ: “Strive …” [RSV]. In my poor understanding of this passage, the Lord shifted the focus of the conversation from quantities of souls to what the questioner should do. “Many” neither implies nor excludes “most.” Without meaning to be unkind, “are most people going to hell” is the wrong question. The right question may be " Am I and those whose lives I touch going to heaven?" We must “strive” which, in the words of Mother Teresa, would mean: “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.”

Read back through the thread to see that the original question “Are most people going to hell” was counterfeit for “Am I going to hell?” And the answer is this: “Try to be good, and trust God for mercy and justice.” We can go to confession because we’re afraid of hell or because we love God (and most of the time for both reasons). The contrition, perfect or imperfect, is present either way!

To Hermione, let me offer the following: if you are stressed about sinning, first say an act of contrition. Then go to confession. Absolution will relieve the guilt, the cause of your stress. With peace and the sacramental grace comes the ability to resist temptation for just a little longer than last time. God doesn’t cook up saints with a microwave; we take time, and He is patient beyond all time. Keep trying. If you die on the way to confession after a good act of contrition, the mercy of God will protect you. If you die refusing to be contrite and confess, you may really go to hell. It’s almost as simple as “be sorry go to confession or be obstinate and go to hell.”

One more thing: what if we don’t want to pray and go to confession? Do it anyway. We aren’t going to hurt God or His Church by being honest. We will hurt ourselves by not addressing the issues.

As for the final question about predestination, I cannot say… except to look at the Blessed Virgin and Her Son. Immaculate conception would seem to argue in favor of predestination, but if Mary had been predestined (or “predestinated” as some of my friends say) by God to serve as the Mother of God, her fiat would have been meaningless.

Predestination is:​

1. Taught in the Bible
2. Part of Tradition - see St. Augustine and St. Thomas in particular.
3. Not incompatible with liberty of choice (unless one comes up with a form of it that is - but that is not called for)
4. Not synonymous with its Lutheran or Calvinist forms.
5. In no way an abrogation of free will - it may even be one of its preconditions.

The danger in ignoring predestination and stressing free will instead, is that one will end up with Pelagianism. Predestination underlines our inability to be saved by our own native ability - it is wholly from God’s grace, and emphasises our need of grace.

Christ was predestined to suffer: He is “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world” - therefore, Gethsemane means everything.

[continue…]

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

…continuation, ended]

The relation between predestination, and liberty to choose, seems to be like the question whether light - or is it sound ? - is a wave or a particle: it’s both, though we can’t see how; yet both descriptions, particle and wave, are necessary, and both are valid.

Very thought-provoking post though ##

God gave us all, especially Mary, full of grace, and even Jesus “the right to do wrong” and she chose to “let it be done” according to the will of God. If Christ could not have sinned, He could not have saved. “If predestination means everything, Gethsemane means nothing.” Predestination cannot mean abrogating free will. Free will, married to God’s mercy in the hypostatic union, is what saved us once for all and now by each.

Peace be with you!

Maybe predestination needs a thread to itself - so that this one stays firmly on topic (even though predestination is certainly relevant, as your post shows)​

 

[4t1]

What I initially posted regarding predestination was in haste, and well, ignorance (see below)

"Predestination would negate our free will. It is by our free will that we choose for or against Him. "

---

Interesting. I realize the need for grace (boy do I ever). I apologize for keeping the thread somewhat off topic with this post, but I’d like to learn more. Is it St. Thomas Aquinas that you recommended?

 

[tennman1275]

Is that last gentleman really a priest? If you are, aren’t you supposed to teach us to fear hell? Doesn’t Jesus mention hell twice as much as Heaven in the Gospels? Jesus never said anything like what you said. He told us to worry because hell is real. He also told us that God the Father loves us. I see people wanting a Heavenly Grandfather these days and not a Heavenly Father. A Father punishes us when we disobey. A grandfather is a lot less strict and lets us get away with more with only a slap on the wrist. Hell is real and forever and we should fear the reality of hell. I’m going to choose to worry. When I’m worried I think a lot more about what I’m doing. I do love God because He has given us a way to avoid the “eternal fire’s of Hell”

 

[tennman1275]

My last response was to Fr Ambrose.

 

[OFTHEANGELS]

Lived on a Pillar for forty years??? how the heck do you do that???

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

tennman1275:

Is that last gentleman really a priest? If you are, aren’t you supposed to teach us to fear hell.

Dear tennman, Yes, I am a schismatic priest by your book ansd according to Pope Pius XII I have no hope of salvation. Remembr his prayer for heretics and schismatics? Hell is my eternal fate.

I am afraid of hell for myself. There are also people I know whom I fear may be on the path to hell and they are remembered in my evening prayers. One or two even bring tears. But this thread is not about the fear of hell but about whether or not the majority of humans are going there. I was addressing the topic of this thread.

We do not know if hell will be full or empty. Who is the Catholic mystic who had a vision of hell and there was no one there? We can pray of course that nobody will be in hell but it is impossible to state this with certainty. One thing which we do know is that God is a loving God who “desires that all men should be saved.”

PS: If anyone knows the name of that Catholic mystic who had the vision of an empty hell, could you please post it.

 

[Mickey]

Fr Ambrose:

PS: If anyone knows the name of that Catholic mystic who had the vision of an empty hell, could you please post it.

Not aware of that one. Where did you hear this? Sounds like neo-universalism.