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Timi_Celcer
Guest
Is hell a physical place of fire, suffering,… or just an expression used in the Bible for eternal death, eternal “sleep”, eternal seperation from God?
Is hell a physical place, a place of eternat suferring, or is it just being eternally seperated from God trough death?
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TK421
Guest
A person is in a state of awareness in Hell, and is in torment. Hell is not a synonym for oblivion.
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svid2
Guest
Pax Christi.
The place is real; the pain is real.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy.
God bless and save you from hell.
The place is real; the pain is real.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy.
God bless and save you from hell.
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svid2
Guest
Pax Christi.
The place is real; the pain is real.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy.
God bless and save you from hell.
The place is real; the pain is real.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy.
God bless and save you from hell.
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Jon_S_1
Guest
Seems clear.
Revelation 21:8
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Matthew 25:41
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Romans 2:6-8
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
Matthew 25:46
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Revelation 20:15
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
2 Thessalonians 1:9
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
Mark 9:43
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
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mikekle
Guest
That cannot be correct, The bible tells us our souls enter heaven or hell, not our bodies, in fact the only people that entered heaven in bodily form was Jesus, Enoch, and I believe Ezekiel. Spirits cannot experience what we consider to be pleasure or pain, as there is no body anymore.
Furthermore, Hell is said to be just a separation from God, so essentially, hell will be exactly like the life these people had been living, since in life, they choose to live life without God in it, so hell will the exact same thing…a separation from God, to a devout christian, that kind of place would be very bad, but for someone who lived a life without God in it previously, it would be no different.
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Jon_S_1
Guest
Source for “Spirits cannot experience what we consider to be pleasure or pain, as there is no body anymore.”
Source for “but for someone who lived a life without God in it previously, it would be no different.” The Saints, and Christ himself disagree with this.
Also what about the Final Judgement where our bodies are raised??? The evil bodies are raised too, what do you say about that? That they just go on living as they always had with no consequence??
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Robertanthony
Guest
St. faustina, in her vision of hell, stated that there were, going from memory, 7 pains in hell, the first pain, which is worse than all other pains, is the pain of loss (i.e. eternal and irrevocable separation from and loss of God). As we speak there are only souls in hell, after the Last Judgment, souls in Heaven will have glorified bodies, souls in hell will also have bodies, though not glorified. Imagine pitch darkness, bleak surroundings, horrible stench, hatred, total absence of good will and love, in the company of Satan and his demons, horrible despair, horrible imprecations against God etc.
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Judas_Thaddeus
Guest
From what I’ve been taught, Hell is LITERAL.
So with that, I’ll go with all the physical description; nevertheless,
I am still terrified by the concept of that ETERNAL SEPARATION,
because that also is a true aspect of Hell. In some ways, I am ac-
tually MORE terrified by that separation aspect.
Fire bad too, but loss of God forever . . .
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cornbread_r2
Guest
Hell as a physical place with eternal physical torments would seem to negate the notion that Hell is entirely a freely made choice. The Hellbound might freely choose to separate themselves from God, but who would freely choose to be physically tortured for eternity? It would also seem, therefore, that that torture is either actively accomplished or passively permitted by God. I don’t know how any of that can be reconciled with the notion of an omni-benevolent being.
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Jon_S_1
Guest
Well for one. We don’t choose it after we die. We make our choices now, not when standing before the abyss watching the flames fly out. That is how we show true love of God.
Think of it this way.
Who is righteous?
The child who obeys his parents rules regarding underage drinking because he loves his parents and respects them.
Or
The child who obeys his parents rules only because their parents will punish them if they don’t.
Or worse
The person who ignores their parents rules and then once caught and sees imminent punishment decided that they will choose to follow the rules.
Would any of these parents be called “not benevolent” ?
Think of it this way.
Who is righteous?
The child who obeys his parents rules regarding underage drinking because he loves his parents and respects them.
Or
The child who obeys his parents rules only because their parents will punish them if they don’t.
Or worse
The person who ignores their parents rules and then once caught and sees imminent punishment decided that they will choose to follow the rules.
Would any of these parents be called “not benevolent” ?
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cornbread_r2
Guest
That depends on what punishment the parent chooses. I can’t imagine any parent who supposedly loves his children “more than we can ever imagine” physically torturing them – for all of eternity – no matter what they’ve done. It makes even less sense to me since the torment isn’t even administered to teach the child a lesson, but rather as an act of pure vengeance.
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Jon_S_1
Guest
No not at all.
Imagine an all loving parent who tells his kids not to shoot heroine.
The child disobeys and chooses to shoot heroine anyway.
The parents open arms of love are waiting for the child to return, but as long as he chooses heroine he can’t live in the parents house.
The child has tremendous torment and anguish. Pain and suffering sickness disease, poverty abuse etc.
All of which are punishment for his free choice to shoot heroine unrepentantly. The only punishment the parent gave was say “you choose not to live with me” or “you cannot live with me while choosing this lifestyle”
Eventually the child knows he is certain to die at done point but continues to choose his lifestyle, perhaps addiction plays a role, but nonetheless despite the potential consequences
He continues on.
So too people in hell.
As for justice, where is the justice in having such a person living in heaven alongside the saint?
Is it just to have Hitler look out in the flames if hell and say" guess I screwed up" and God welcomes him into paradise alongside the Saint he had burned or gassed?
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clem456
Guest
An imperfect analogy might be as follows.
You have met a person who loves you and wants to be married to you. That person has obvious merits and pursues you for marriage, but you decide to do foolish things and choose not to reciprocate, because you are selfish and have other interests that are incompatible with marriage. You cannot see the merits of this person because you are blinded by your own agenda.
One day your eyes are opened and you discover the incredible beauty of this person, who is loving, kind, considerate, beautiful, would do anything for you, and can do anything for you. You discover this person was the only way you could have been complete in life. And you have lost this opportunity to be with her, someone else is united to her.
By your own foolish choice, you chose not to marry this person. You chose all the other stuff life offered you instead of this person. And now you can see her/his beauty, and cannot have her. You have all the things you wanted in life, but are full of regret and a burning longing for the person you foolishly gave up.
Many of the saints say this unrequited burning is what hell is. Does it really matter what the place looks like, when your soul is burned by longing and regret, and self loathing anger at your stupidity?
You have met a person who loves you and wants to be married to you. That person has obvious merits and pursues you for marriage, but you decide to do foolish things and choose not to reciprocate, because you are selfish and have other interests that are incompatible with marriage. You cannot see the merits of this person because you are blinded by your own agenda.
One day your eyes are opened and you discover the incredible beauty of this person, who is loving, kind, considerate, beautiful, would do anything for you, and can do anything for you. You discover this person was the only way you could have been complete in life. And you have lost this opportunity to be with her, someone else is united to her.
By your own foolish choice, you chose not to marry this person. You chose all the other stuff life offered you instead of this person. And now you can see her/his beauty, and cannot have her. You have all the things you wanted in life, but are full of regret and a burning longing for the person you foolishly gave up.
Many of the saints say this unrequited burning is what hell is. Does it really matter what the place looks like, when your soul is burned by longing and regret, and self loathing anger at your stupidity?
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Oren
Guest
From what I’ve read of the saints they do say that Hell is a place of torture. The Bible seems to concur. I don’t know what the answer is about a good and loving God sending people there. Why can’t God just send them to a place of natural happiness at least, like the babies who went to limbo or the limbo of the fathers before Jesus came? Or else annihilate them. I think we could all agree that we’d rather be annihilated than suffer for all eternity. It seems contradictory. Maybe there is no answer. All the analogies really fail because no one would be tortured for all eternity just because they disobeyed their parents or didn’t marry the right girl or even if they had a drug problem. If you gave them enough time they’d probably get over it eventually or be healed. Not so with hell.
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clem456
Guest
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Jon_S_1
Guest
I think we need to stop viewing it as God actively torturing is or punishing us. That is just not the case.
God resides in heaven. The universe and hell are where Satan and his demons roam. So if you choose in this life not to be with God. Then when you die you won’t be. You will be out of heaven which is to be under the dominion of Satan who enjoys destroying people.
Another imperfect analogy.
There is a story of a priceless diamond buried in the forest. This diamond is salvation.
You spend your life searching and seeking the diamond and one day you find it. You keep the reward and enjoy the glory of the diamond.
Another man has the same priceless diamond in the forest nearby. He hears the stories, sees the evidence, but thinks it’s all false. He needs to see proof before he looks for it. He never seeks to find it and maybe even builds on the site making future searching difficult. One day someone comes and digs up the diamond and shows him it is really there. The man now decides he wants it. Why should the man now take the diamond or share it with the seeker? Is it not extremely lazy and insincere and selfish to only want something after you see it?
Such lack of faith in God and faith in only oneself will result in one being left poor sad and alone. In this life and the next.
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TRH1292
Guest
Those that are in Hell will be conscious. The torment that they endure will be primarily spiritual through lack of Goodness and separation from God, but as is often the case even here on earth, this will spill over into intense physical suffering.
For those that asked about why God does not allow them to have natural happiness or something of that nature, It’s like this: In this life, most of us are a mixture of Good and Evil. By God’s grace given through the sacraments we can overcome evil by definitely choosing the Good. God will then purify us so that not an inch of evil or badness remains, so that we are wholly purified. In the same way, those that choose badness by rejecting God the source of all good, will eventually be left with only Evil because they have rejected all good.
There is a battle between good and evil that we have to decided between, and we will end up either wholly good with God or wholly evil apart from him.
For those that asked about why God does not allow them to have natural happiness or something of that nature, It’s like this: In this life, most of us are a mixture of Good and Evil. By God’s grace given through the sacraments we can overcome evil by definitely choosing the Good. God will then purify us so that not an inch of evil or badness remains, so that we are wholly purified. In the same way, those that choose badness by rejecting God the source of all good, will eventually be left with only Evil because they have rejected all good.
There is a battle between good and evil that we have to decided between, and we will end up either wholly good with God or wholly evil apart from him.
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cornbread_r2
Guest
Your analogy doesn’t seem to go far enough. In order for the two scenarios to be truly analogous: At some point in the distant future the parent would also have to raise her child from the dead; reassemble all of his rotted body parts back into a conscious, sensitive human body; confine him to a place that the parent has constructed and sustains; and then physically torture the child for the rest of eternity – ensuring all along the way that the last bit of torture is just as horrible as the bit before. And none of this is done so that the child will learn from his mistakes and become a better person.
Of course, one doesn’t have to kill six million people to be condemned to Hell. All it takes is one unrepented sin.
As a matter of fact though, as I understand it, if Hitler (a baptized Catholic) confessed before his death, he would gain Heaven and escape Hell whereas any or all of his Jewish victims who had obstinately refused to accept Jesus – but who might have lived otherwise exemplary lives – would not. Where would be the justice in that?
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cornbread_r2
Guest
Not only did God create Hell, he sustains its existence. Not only can Satan not do anything without God’s permission (CCC #395), he doesn’t raise sinners from the grave or restore their physical bodies to be tortured.
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