Our God claims to be loving, merciful and omnipotent. So what can it mean that He says that unbelievers shall go to Hell?
If punishment in Hell means to be sentenced for eternity into a "Lake of Fire," and to be forever separated from the Love of God, is that supposed to be sufficient to inspire fear into unbelievers?
For an eternal threat to be effective, one must assume that there will be no end to one's existence, so that one shall be forced to endure the punishment. But ...
1. Pain is the body's warning that harm is threatening to debilitate one's capacity to survive and maintain consciousness.
2. Suffering can be reinterpreted as an affirmation that one continues to exist, that consciousness has not been extinguished.
3. One's concern for personal effectiveness is due to the knowledge that one must work to insure survival of the body in this world.
If those worries are removed by the evidence of eternal conscious existence, where is the point of being anxious about pain? If there is no doubt of one's continuance in existence, that there need be no concern for sustenance, one may be at rest.
4. An unbeliever already insists on the assumption that God does not exist, and so presumes there is no all-encompassing love in which to be enfolded.
5. Many persons perceive this existence as primarily consisting of suffering, but only as compared to occasional intervals of relief.
Only the discovery that there actually is a real God, and that one was mistaken, can have any meaning or consequence. But one might wonder why God would insist on faith, rather than make his existence obvious.
6. The knowledge that one has been sentenced to ultimate punishment, such that there could be nothing worse, nor any prospect of anything better, there is no point in complaining.
7. If one comes to question why it was deemed good that one should exist only to be exiled into suffering, one could feel justified in resentment.
But there could be an alternative. By the merciful removal of the temporal everlasting aspect of eternal punishment. God can show both his power and his love.
8. If instead, one's existence remains temporary, and subject to being sustained by God, to having one's suffering prolonged, then resentment would indeed be justified, because God would have known that such would be inevitable.
9. But, if one knows that one's existence will be some time extinguished, then there will be anticipation of relief, and no need for concern about eternity.
10. Only the promise that one may be granted future happiness, and an eternal existence of bliss, can be an effective motivation, but one must believe in the power of the person making the promise to fulfill it.
Several times, in both the Jewish Bible and the Christian Gospels, it is recorded that God can and occasionally does restore life to a person who has died. God clearly has power over Life and Death in this world and beyond.
11. The unique fact, that only one person in history has ever had the power to raise Himself from the dead shows that Jesus has the divine power to overcome the material world and the temporal order that binds it.
12. The discovery that one has failed to deserve eternal reward can only lead to resentment against such a person who established one's nature in a way that made it inevitable that failure would follow.
Predestination is not Freedom. Thus, if there is an absolutely good and omnipotent God, then Heaven must be granted to all who believe, and extinguishment allowed for all who desire it. Eternal punishment is relevant only to the anguish that mocks one's failure to accept unending happiness.
However, if one has deliberately chosen to pronounce a deceptive message, or tried to selfishly defy God, or otherwise chosen to serve the Adversary, then one may find that such service may never end, and that its conditions include suffering with enough variability to cause a desire for extinguishment that can be denied for eternity.
If God is love, then choose Love, and desire Heaven, for it may be assured. But do not choose to be hard hearted in defiance, lest you deserve to be left to the merciless torments of the Adversary.
The unbelievers get only what they expect, an end to the daily concerns and suffering of existence in this world. There is no further need for the holding place of shadows where the ancients awaited their opportunity to hear the Gospel from the lips of the Saviour Himself, unless they may be given one last chance to repent of unbelief.
But will they find the capacity in their unregenerated characters, to hear that final summons and respond with gratitude? Perhaps some will find the humility to lay aside their resentment, and accept the Truth so that they can follow the Way of Life.
For God loved the world and all of its people. In His pity He chose to send his beloved and only Child to be begotten by a human woman, who distinguished herself by her love and devotion to Him. He did this so that whoever might listen and believe in her child, the Son of God, would be rightly guided into the path of Love, Truth, Wisdom and Freedom in the pursuit of God and his righteousness, and so be given eternal life.
God did not judge us harshly with the spiritual death that we deserve for our sins, but gave us the opportunity to seek his Face and find forgiveness. As He said to the followers of Moses so long ago, "Seek Me, and live." Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, and offered us the opportunity to become friends with God. No longer must we be burdened with guilt for our failures to observe every minutia of the old Law, for we are promised forgiveness. We need only try to follow Him, and his example, and Love one another as He has loved us.
Won't you ask Jesus to let you follow Him now, so that you might be granted Heaven after this life? You don't want to be one of those cast into the Lake of Fire because you refused to believe in God's Love. Do you?
