Which is worse, one lost soul in hell or war on earth?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steven_Merten
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Steven_Merten

Guest
Jesus tells us that if our faith is great enough, we can move mountains. There was a time in my life when I decided to devote my life to prayer to attain faith great enough to cause the mountainous threat of nuclear war to be cast into the sea.
Moving Mountains

As I prayed, I read and contemplated our Lord’s life. What I found to be missing in our Lord’s life were all the sermons, condemnations and priority focus on Caesar’s wars and politics. What I did see was Jesus continual overwhealming focus to teach individuals to repent and turn back to love and obey God.

After some time of intense prayer and contemplation, I came to an understanding. The reason God allows free will to man, which allows war, is so that individual hearts can choose obedience and love for God which builds an eternal Kingdom of love for God.

If you added up all the years of life cut short from all the wars in human history, it would still not equal the tremendous amount of life lost to one person who goes to hell. There is superiority in Christ’s example of teaching individuals to love and obey God over Church priority preoccupation with what the pagan world is up to.

In the time of Noah there were no weapons of mass destruction. Yet, in the time of Noah the whole world was destroyed due to the fact that most individuals had turned away from obedience and love for God. Any preaching Noah would have done against worldly wars would have had no effect on impending world destruction. In Old Testament, when people turned away from God to sin, God allowed them to be destroyed. When people of the Old Testament returned to God, God delivered them from disaster. If billions of Christian individuals return to greater obedience to God will not God protect the world from destruction no matter what pagan world leaders are up to?

The real threat which will bring down an apocalypse upon us is not the decisions of world leaders. It is decisions of billions of Christians to individually refuse to love and obey God which will surely bring the Apocalypse upon us. With so many of our one billion Catholics having abortions, divorces and breaking God’s commandments, it seems futile for Church leaders to focus attention away from disobedient Catholics in order to focus on what the pagan world is doing.

Catholics converting individual hearts to repentance, love and obedience to God is infinitely more important than Church leader condemnations upon world leaders. If the world is destroyed, it will be due to the failure of the Church (billions of Christians) to love and obey God and not what the world has done.

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
The Church holds that it were better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in the extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul…should commit a single venial sin, or tell one willful untruth. - Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman
Click to expand...
You have your priorities straight; but can’t Catholics love God with all their hearts while at the same time involve themselves in keeping checks on the pagan world?
 
Actually, what Jesus said was: “And Jesus answering, said to them: Amen, I say to you, if you shall have faith, and stagger not, not only this of the fig tree shall you do, but also if you shall say to *this * mountain, Take up and cast thyself into the sea, it shall be done.”

Keep in mind the context of what Jesus was preaching at this time. This occurred during the Olivet Discourse, or the so-called mini-apolocalypse. He did not say generically that faith moves mountains. He said it of *THIS * mountain - and what mountain was that? The place where he was looking was the mountain upon which the city of Jerusalem sat. He was speaking of the coming destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
 
40.png
Madaglan:
You have your priorities straight; but can’t Catholics love God with all their hearts while at the same time involve themselves in keeping checks on the pagan world?
Click to expand...
My thoughts as well. There is no need to be either/or, although the virtue of prudence dictates when we should exercise each.
 
40.png
Madaglan:
You have your priorities straight; but can’t Catholics love God with all their hearts while at the same time involve themselves in keeping checks on the pagan world?
Click to expand...
Hello Madaglan,

It is good for American Catholics to vote against and speak out against injustices in our land. This is true.

Shortly after the Boston Globe opened up the clergy abuse scandal, a bishop made a statment to the effect that we have to get this abuse situation behind us so we can focus our efforts against the up coming Iraq war. What on earth could be more important to the body of the Church than to make sure that decades of bishops knowingly moving clergy child molesters from one unsuspecting group of children to the next, will never happen again? I cannot even think of a more devilish way to drive children away from Christ than to knowingly secretly move confirmed child molester clergy from one parish to the next. Yet this seemed very unimportant to this bishop compared to war.

When I think of all the world mass media statments made by Pope John Paul II over the last decades, they are almost always directed at the world and a great many times directed at the issue of war. Rarely do I hear the Pope using his world mass media to tell Catholics to obey the commandments of God. If the Pope is making it absolutely clear that individual Catholics obeying God’s commandments is of infinitely greater importance than preaching against world leaders and war, I am just not hearing it.

Church leaders focusing their emphasis on war and what the world is doing gives Catholics the idea that the real problem in our era is war and what the world is doing and not what they as individuals should be doing for God. I feel that this misinturpitation must be reversed. Free willed Christians loving and obeying God is infinitely more important than worrying about what Caesar is up to. If even one person converts to love and serve God and is then brought into eternal life through Jesus, an infinitly greater amount of life has been saved than stopping a nuclear war.

Producing the everlasting fruit of love for God through free will is why God allows war. If stoping war, which is an outcome of free will, was of more importance to God than free willed individuals choosing to produce the fruit of love and obedience to God, God would not allow free will. The Church must stay on target. The Church must focus on building the Kingdom of God through individual’s choices to love and obey God.

What do you think?

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
In Today’s Gospel, we are told by Jesus to expect wars. We will save our souls by how we respond to difficult times. The war that needs most attention today is the war against the unborn.

Deacon Tony
 
Deacon Tony560:
In Today’s Gospel, we are told by Jesus to expect wars. We will save our souls by how we respond to difficult times. The war that needs most attention today is the war against the unborn.

Deacon Tony
Click to expand...
Amen Deacon!

It is sin which puts people at war with God. Many people, even people in the Church, see peace as an absence of physical war. True peace is attained through Jesus blood by people’s repentance from sin, return to obedience and prayer.

Peace Be With You

**NAB WIS 14:22 **
**Then it was not enough for them to err in their knowledge of God; but even though they lived in a great war of ignorance, they called such evils peace. **for while they celebrate either childslaying sacrifices or clandestine mysteries, or frenzied carousals in unheard of rites, They no longer safeguard either lives or pure wedlock; but each either waylays and kills his neighbor, or aggrieves him by adultery. And all is confusion-- blood and murder, theft and guile, corruption, faithlessness, turmoil, perjury,…

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
I chose war just because I figured that more lost souls go into eternity during war & so more souls are lost that way.

I’m glad that this is a hypothetical question… 😦
 
Church Militant:
I chose war just because I figured that more lost souls go into eternity during war & so more souls are lost that way.

I’m glad that this is a hypothetical question… 😦
Click to expand...
Hello Church Militant,

I have heard, and I believe, that there are more prayers and conversions in foxholes than in any other situation. Jesus tells us that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. 400,000 Americans laying down their lives to protect the world from the atrocities of Hitler is certianly a lot of love for one’s neighbors being accomplished. British, Canadian, Russian and all Allied forces who fought and those who laid down their lives for all the world, allong with America should never be forgotten for their tremendous gift of sacrifice and love for fellow man. A love that we all still benifite from today.

Certianly the fact that the WWII 1940’s era had more people obeying God’s commandments than our era, cannot be disputed. Not that war is good or that we need one to get people to pray. It is only that a nation at war or at peace has far less impact on how many individual Catholics are obeying God’s commandments and loving God with all their hearts than other things like, for example, our present era of prosperity and imoral sex.

I am assuming that you do not feel that killing in war is a sin when it is done for just cause. I do not even think that Pope Pius X warned German or Italian soldiers of loosing their souls for killing for Hitler in a situation where their side of the war was an evil cause. I know of no Pope since Pope Pius X who has condemned of sin, those who killed in war for Hitler or that those who killed for Hitler are somehow in danger of damnation for killing for Hitler. The Nazis smuggled to Brazil through the Vatican were no doubt guilty of evil attrocities in need of repentance, justice too if you ask me.

Pope John Paul II himself has guards with automatic weapons capable of laying down 700 rounds a minuet if his life or Church possessions are threatened. Certianly our Pope would not lead his guards into a condition in which they could loose their souls, which is the loss of far greater life (eternal life) than the loss of a Pope’s life or Church possessions. I am not being sarcastic. Dose anyone think that Vatican guards killing to protect the Pope should be considered as “lost souls”.

War is not pretty. This should not be seen as an opportunity for religious pacifists to promote thier individual political opinions upon the world. Especially when doing so is quite possibly causing deception in Catholics minds as to what truly causes an infintely greater amount of loss of life (eternal life), which is sin.

Peace in Christ,
Steven Merten
www.ILOVEYOUGOD.com
 
I have a question to ask those who voted for war on earth.

Would you be willing to go to hell for eternity to prevent war on earth?
 
War on earth is worse because if MANY people die and DO NOT KNOW Christ, His Church or His Love, More than ONE soul will be in Hell.
Also if a war on earth starts, those who start the war would be possibly in Hell too.
 
The person stuck in hell has no hope. In a war, there is hope, hope for every last person involved, including the bums who started it.
 
Steven Merten:
Hello Church Militant,

Jesus tells us that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. 400,000 Americans laying down their lives to protect the world from the atrocities of Hitler is certianly a lot of love for one’s neighbors being accomplished.
Click to expand...
Didnt Our Lady say that most of the souls in WW1 fell into hell.

There is a difference between defending someone and laying down their life and actively trying to kill others.

Im guessing that they were following the latter plan and so, died trying to kill others, notably condemned by God?

Of course they may have repented while they lay bleeding to death, but hey, law of averages says otherwise.

I’ll trust the Mother Of God.
 
40.png
Magicsilence:
Didnt Our Lady say that most of the souls in WW1 fell into hell.

There is a difference between defending someone and laying down their life and actively trying to kill others.

Im guessing that they were following the latter plan and so, died trying to kill others, notably condemned by God?

Of course they may have repented while they lay bleeding to death, but hey, law of averages says otherwise.

I’ll trust the Mother Of God.
Click to expand...
Killing others is not necessarily a sin. One soul in hell is much worse than any war.
 
I did not vote since neither is worse but each is as it should be. Every soul that is in hell is punished justly so that is good, not bad. And it is God who permits war and moves kingdoms in accordance with his providence.
 
Which is worse, one lost soul in hell or war on earth?
One lost soul in hell.
War on earth.

Hi Steve,

I think this is a false dichotomy.

God bless
 
40.png
Edwin1961:
War on earth is worse because if MANY people die and DO NOT KNOW Christ, His Church or His Love, More than ONE soul will be in Hell.
Also if a war on earth starts, those who start the war would be possibly in Hell too.
Click to expand...
Good points.
 
40.png
Magicsilence:
Didnt Our Lady say that most of the souls in WW1 fell into hell.

There is a difference between defending someone and laying down their life and actively trying to kill others.

Im guessing that they were following the latter plan and so, died trying to kill others, notably condemned by God?

Of course they may have repented while they lay bleeding to death, but hey, law of averages says otherwise.

I’ll trust the Mother Of God.
Click to expand...
It definitely urges caution whe considering our support of any war, even if it may be deemed a just war according to the Catechism.
 
40.png
jimmy:
I have a question to ask those who voted for war on earth
Click to expand...
Which is worse?

One lost soul in hell? That is to say: an expression of God’s infinite justice?

Or war on earth? That is to say: certain suffering of innocent people?

So, which is worse, an expression of God’s infinite justice, or the certain suffering of innocent people?
 
Questions such as this suggest a lack of confidence in God’s providence. Christ said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” Wars will happen and are in God’s plan for human history. God did not call the Church to transform the earth into a utopia. God called the Church to preach the Gospel and to save those souls He has willed to save in his providence through the Word and Sacraments of the Church. We are a counter-cultural lifeboat in a cruel, wicked world which will remain cruel and wicked and at war until Christ returns to destroy the antichrist and set up his eternal Kingdom.

All of the calls for world peace, support for the UN, and so forth are just bad political maneuvers by the Vatican. Our leaders should be focused on saving souls, not promoting the agenda of the world that wants a false peace without God in Christ Jesus.

Questions of war and peace are outside the purvue of the Church. The Church can lay down moral principles of what constitutes a just war in terms of natural law, but the state is its own autonomous order and must do what it must to preserve safety and justice as best as possible. We know that Scripture teaches that before the end, antichrist will come and will rally the world into a one world government and religious system against Christ’s church. So why is the Church trying to promote harmony among religions and peoples when this is exactly the agenda of Satan? Perhaps, the Cardinals in the Vatican are smarter than we think and perhaps by promoting the UN, the European Union, and our late Holy Father’s semi-pacifist policies, they are speeding up the return of Christ. If that’s the case, then amen. But if its the case that the Church thinks that we are going to bring about the kingdom of Christ on earth through politics and diplomacy and ecumenism and papal trips, then the Vatican is fooling itself.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top