I have never thought that God created Hell for satan and his Yet somehow it is also a self-inflicted place of torment, not torture. I have always thought that man created Hell and it was a place of torment and also torture, a place where sometimes great learning can take place. I have always seen Hell as the lack of goodness or love, just as darkness if the absence of light.

As for Hell (or Heaven) being a real place, you are welcome to believe this, of course, but it does change the way you perceive your loving, forgiving God. A good parent does not provide a place of torment for its children, but rather learning experiences that are positive. The child creates the torment and the parent guides the child out of this. If you want your God to be a good parent, you might rethink the idea of Her creating Hell for anyone.

C.S Lewis Said that there are only two types of people in this world those like Jesus who say, "not my will but thine be done" or those like satan who say, " not thy will but mine be done." to those people when they fall into hell God will say to them not my will but thine be done. The doors of hell are locked from the inside. If there is no hell what did Christ die for? Many are in a certain mental state of hell here on earth, although there is a place, a real physical place that many are wondering to, like David said in the psalms "like ox's wondering to the slaughter." They are numbed by the sedative of sin to God' Truth about a place so terrible the "God gave his only begotten son" to die a brutal death to save us from this pit of destruction. Pain of every sense, sight of the revolting demons, smell of the rotted corpses piled one upon another, weeping and screamin despaired over their loss of the eternal Good and their eternity in everlasting pain, depression, madness, violence and noise. God will always forgive us, but what many do not understand that by the continuince of their sin they reject God's forgiveness, by their action and the evil one will be waiting for us to "devour us like a roaring lion." God bless you all

Hell yes it is a creation of the daemons, wee folk of God that think.

If you think hard without emotion it'll chill yer bones, but with some care you could be released. Can a daemon create love? Does it need collective action of collective conscious and unconscious factors (thoughts and emotions)? Weird concept eh?

Did a dam under a tree create love and deny it ... a shadow persoa? Is this a self-inflicted generation of image. Well isn't that an ugly step mother (grand mother clause) on Jacob's ladder here. For the story to go on in time is there an overriding factor like a fiddler working the upper rheum? Roue effemeral ... spiritual space of the indeterminate soul! Isn't that the place of the storm that can be calmed by compassion ... just Isis thought in t'Ruth forms a sign in the wandering as's in the desert? St Augustine couldn't stand such a sight in his youth ... he had to cammand them and then hated them when he got old enough to think about it. Funny, if must be a dirty joke like moth Eire, ear th' (firm word of a sign) a not so rare metaphor but, most do not believe in ambiguities especially in the form of word. Gees has anyone followed the history of Linguistics ... alien in the san (without, beyond, myth in short)?

Something had to divide the nonthing, noncaring soul from free space like scat, theology of endtimes scatology, where skett is reain deire chits in Nordic country, currency of the ancien Vi-king who made up the roots of the Celtic Spiritualism ... the English like the Romans hated a thinker that smelled ... Pagan thinkers who don't follow rules exactly. Then even light has a sarah ated edge ... Occum Razor it'll cut the dark like a' brae ham, a pig if there is none to put him in line like a sharp ephemeral tongue.

You don't want to mess up that relation do you?

Many years ago during a spiritual retreat, the leader tried to envision eternity in this way: "Imagine the Himalayan mountain range, the most massive range in the world, standing in places almost six miles high. Once every 100 years a butterfly wafts over them and strikes a rock with its wing. When those butterflies have worn the Himalayas down till they are as flat as Saskatchewan, then the first fraction of a second of eternity will have passed." Eternity is totally beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend! Now imagine a condemned soul suffering the most agonizing possible pain continuously for all eternity. Got the image? I certainly have! And it is an image that I find totally incompatible with the notion of a loving and compassionate God. A God who could inflict such a punishment on even the most vile and evil human being would not really be worthy of our respect, our worship or our love. I do, however, believe very strongly in God's justice but even more strongly in God's love and compassion. I will leave it with confidence in God's care.

Thankyou for a comment that actually makes sense JRT. Although I must disagree with you.You are saying that God loves us too much to condemn us to a place of eternal  punishment. What is love? St. Thomas Aquinas said that love is " to will someones good, " and to will means to choose freely. God cannot force his love on us, because than it would not be love at all, we are by nature endowed as noble and rational creatures that have free will, free to choose to love God or not love God, in return to his love for us. God will love the damned for eternity but the reason they are in hell is because they do not love him in return,  if they did they would obey his commands and escape eternal fire. Another point I must disagree with, you say that a God that sends a creature to hell is not " worthy of our respect."  Do we breath oxygen right now? who breathed life into our lungs? Is there blood flowing through your veins? Who poured that blood into you? Our creator rightfully deserves our worship and respect, even if he condemns those to hell that he "formed out of the clay of the ground."(Gen2:7) Who is the clay to say to the potter, what have you made and what do you intend?" He wills that none of us perish, but we are turning our backs to him without even knowing it by disobediance. He will always love us! even satan himself God loves! but we dont love him in return, thats the road to hell. God love you!

For the vast majority of people who sin, God is not a factor in their actions at all. They are doing it for purely selfish reasons and if God enters the picture at all it is generally in retrospect. I am not saying that what was done was not wrong or evil and deserving of some form of correction. However I simply cannot concieve of a crime so great that it would involve placing a person in utmost agony for all eternity. The punishment is disproportionate to the crime. God is not a jealous, vindictive and cruel mid-eastern despot ready to fly into a rage. That is a very anthropomorphic portrait of our transcendant God. I regard it as unworthy of us to continue to hold such an image. It is  also worth noting that:

Before the Babylonian exile, the Jews had no concept of a Satan in the sense that most orthodox Christians today might envision Satan or the Devil. I have excluded Lucifer because those verses in Isaiah are in obvious reference to an earthly king with an immense ego. That is the reason that verses such as Isaiah 45:7 and 1 Sam 16:15 attribute both good and evil to YHWH. During the Babylonian exile they were exposed to and strongly influenced by the Zoroastrian religion. This faith envisioned a constant cosmic battle between a god of good (Ahura-Mazda) and a near divine force of evil (Ahrulman). The Jews were easily able to cast YHWH in the role of the God of good. It let YHWH off the hook for evil. They took the angel ha'shaitan from the mythology of Job and cast him/her/it into the role of Satan as the personification of evil. It was a far more satisfactory explanation for the presence of and problem of evil in the world. So it all depends whether you are looking at pre-exilic scripture or post-exilic. This means that the talking snake in the Genesis mythology was just a common garden variety talking snake (pun intended). It is also worth knowing that the concept of demons or devils along with the notion of hell proceeds out of this same source. The connection with Zoroastrianism extends into the New Testament with the story of the magi (Zoroastrian priests) coming to pay homage to the infant Jesus and also to the person of Simon Magus as found in Acts.

The best teachers I've ever had taught love not by punishing but by focusing on the potential and reinforcing the good in me. The love and respect for these teachers was genuine.

Some teachers prefer to focus on punishment and gain respect from ensuring consequences from bad behaviour. While you may still have a well behaved class, the end result is that you learn to "love" out of fear.

If hell exists to enforce punishment and deter us from being evil than perhaps its' only purpose  is to corrupt good teaching?

Heh Watrefall, dew come to whet a soul too full of love without balance of awareness.

Now how would we get there? 

Wiz dum of the ages, a love that is so automatic it doesn't need to think! Work on it people!

That aught to set those on either side of the medium in a spin!

Pics or it didn't happen.

Thankyou all for your comments. I ask If there is no hell, why did Jesus warn us of this place over and over? where is Adolf Hitler? where is Stalin? where are the people that raped infants, brutalized the elderly, oppressed the poor, the widows, murdered orphans? are they just returned to dust, and their soul extinguished. "The one who perseveres to the end will be saved." Jesus said. Saved from what? Why did he suffer and die a death so horrible, that he sweat blood the night before.Or is it that many of us are so proud that we think that we dont desereve hell, all Gods saints knew they deserved hell for the least of transgressions, because they were humble. What does it mean to be humble? simply to know the truth. Taking the name of God in vain just once is a sin worthy of hell, a sin commited against an eternal good, is deserving of an eternal punishment, it is justice, MY BROTHERS! we must see eternal hell is the just punishment for all mankind! But you all know that God has made a way for us by the sacrifice of his son. " Say not, I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? For the Most High is a patient rewarder." (ecclus v 4 ) "Be not be decieved. God is not mocked."(gal v 7 ) I take everyones comments in mind please take mine. God love you!

I do take your comments in mind, but it is difficult to see that the God you describe is the one Jesus preached about. Christians  believe  that God is love incarnate, that God is grace freely given to even the worst, before they are even aware of needing it. At least, that's the God I believe in. Heaven and hell are here and now - they are what we make of this world.

Did not Jesus say that if you hand causes you to sin cut it off? better for you to live life with one hand than be cast into hell with both. He clearly makes the distinction with this earth and hell. I agree that people can be in a mental state of hell here on earth, but is this the hell that our Lord spoke of in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? it is a seperate place than earth. "the rich man also died and was buried and from hell, he was in torment." I know that " God is love," but we must not commit the sin of idolatry, and create a God to suit ourselves and our proud views! He is also Holy, he is just, he is merciful, powerful, beautiful, and yes love. "If we acknowledge or sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins. If we say, We have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."(John 1 v 9 ) God bless you all!

I know what you're saying -  too many people are not comfortable with the idea of Hell, so they try to dismiss it all together.  But I don't for a second believe that God didn't offer forgiveness to Hitler, to Stalin, to those who committed terrible, terrible sins.  If there's anything that we shouldn't be able to fully understand, it's Grace, not Hell.

Humans as stardust from the heavens (form of light) ... did they create hell all by them's elph?

One has to question why they were Biff'd, Cast out of the high places ... unacceptable dirt in the sans ... beyond or outside chance ... myth?

You have to know the words to the story! Then the end of Gos. of John says its a big story. Have patience ... Idyll end in a timeless state! Odd eh?

Did Jesus actually say that? Just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean he really did - we have no original texts, only later ones written almost a century after he died. - and most of his words had dual meanings, and it is important to look at all the dual meanings (and even bad translations).

Jesus was also clearly a person of his time, exposed to other cultures - the notion of heaven and hell is clearly from the Greeks. The ancient Hebrew cultures didn't see anything the way we interpret it in the Christian church, and Jesus would not likely have seen it the way we do either. He was, first and foremost, a Hebrew - a Jew, someone of a different faith. He wasn't a Christian. If we try to take our understandings two thousand years later, and put them into Jesus' mouth as being exactly the same understanding as we have, we do Jesus a disservice.

Jesus' major message, always, was one of God's love and grace. If you dismiss grace and God's love and forgiveness, you dismiss God.

Thankyou for the comments. In response to faerenach  Stalin, and Hitler of course God offered them forgiveness, but forgiveness is a reciprocal action and "IF" they are in hell it was due to their rejection of the Most High and his love. We see this every day, so many people cannot accept forgiveness from others, or even forgive themselves! We underestimate the effect that sin has on our souls. You all may disagree with me when I say, I truly believe that anyone including christians who do not believe their sins merit an eternal hell, have no chance of salvation. because that is evidence of the most dark sin, PRIDE. God love you!

Thankyou for your comments. In response to franota If we cannot accept the authenticity and divine inspiration of the holy scriptures than we have no religion. I am a roman catholic and believe strongly in the magistiral teaching of the true church of our Lord and the bible is a primarily a catholic book. Does not the blood of those that defended this book prove its truth? Does not the phrophecies of Isaiah, jerimiah, David, Malachi....prove its truth. If Christ is God and our knowledge of him is essential to our salvation would he not protect the gospel for us? God bless you.

Me, I believe in spirit ... in a fixed and hateful world ... it has to be somewhere beyond here out of the hands of authorities that are corrupted by nature of possession (ain't that the devil?). Have you ever heard that old proverb about authority corrupting?

How about extra dimensions!

We need leaders with light ... thin strings instead of fat cats that don't care.

Now on the matter of Hitler and heaven. In the end when the forces were bearing down on him do you think the thought hit him finally:

"Oh my God I've made a miistake ... I'm getting out of here!"

Perhaps why we have that song about ghost writers in the sky and bewitching spelling of the spectral images of power. The genteel power was predicted to grasp all in the end ... bottoms up theology ... reciprocal images from a Roman roues that hates love making like A'dam. When asked even he wouldn't own up to such a thing .... God ashamed? It is spelled shem in the old Hebrew! Will a modern person ever understand? The book say no ... without the gift of dead tongues ... old ones that were corrupted with youthful Ur ... a form of bull ... like water buffalo ... strong as an OX ... KISS principle with full embrace!

Peter II. You say, "If we cannot accept the authenticity and divine inspiration of the holy scriptures than we have no religion." Just WHICH Holy Scriptures are you talking about? Just the Catholic ones? We have religions all over the world which are considered 'true religions' without your holy scriptures. Such claptrap.

Franota has it framed correctly. Jesus was not a "Christian" and he followed the Jewish Torah. Likely because of a few years of traveling through Eithiopia and India, etc., he was influenced by other "Religions" like Zoroastrosim, Hinduism, Buddhism and such. When he returned to his Jewish land and decided he would take on the Messiah challenge, he had a NEW message to say to his people. God was a compassionate, forgiving God. Our sins were to be forgiven. Now much of what Jesus really said was likely played with over time, translation and politics, so we really don't know if he meant to "die for our sins", but this is the message.

In truth, all we can rely on is not the Christian Bible, for it only contains a part of the immense history of great Religions that mostly speak to us of the SAME God. One of the most important things Jesus likely said is that his GOD, the JEWISH God is the God of ALL of mankind. So if you want to study the nature of God, you should study to Koran as well. Indeed the Koran is more instructive on "loving your enemy" in some cases.

But we are talking about Hell. I think that the idea of Hell goes against most of what Jesus was talking about, but in those days it does fit with their kind of thinking, so if there is to be a Heaven, there is likely a Hell. That was for then. This is for now. We are in the post-modern era. We have scholars who have debated and studied the scriptures and are critical of most fundamentalism. Most would say that Hell is a state of mind - an absense of Love. Most would say that even Heaven is not a certain PLACE we go after we die. None of this is clear at all. We just know that God will prepare a place for us. It may be a long sleep. So let's make sure, as Eckhart Tolle extorts, that we work on the NOW and make sure we appreciate each moment that we are now alive.

PS. JRT: I love the pig-kissing, having been raised on a pig farm as a child. What is the significance in choosing this for your wonder.ca face presentation?

Primary scientific observation (excuse the redundant language), most people do not know science is about observational experience ... not to close the eyes:

• You cannot make something out of nothing without making something just the opposite like man and woman, light and dark, proton and electrons and on and on it goes ad inifinitum!
• Now if creation makes something in the heavens a mythological space of many metaphysical thoughts ... would there be some physical fallout? Perhaps Dante could address that as a devil of a thought, to those that care only about heaven, a state of mind and don't worry about what's around them (environmnet). Did you notice this world is pure hell to over 99% of the medium, the paradigm of God's people. Majority will rule given time to wake up to what's happening. Is cognizance important in an authoritarian world that prefers sacred secrecy? It is like a stone in the eye of the heavens ... good point eh a minor projection in all that thinking space of the infinite case ... good odds for something rising out of it!
• Have you heard of Higgs Boson and the gravitron ... opposing particles of light essence that none has been able to identify ... mysteries that drive the mind with the dark stuff of emotional possession and light rejection of the body of matter. Would a naked spirit see whats wrong without the kidskyn, or is that Pigskyn that would like to swallow everything. I wonder which one is physical and which is metaphysical ... will the K'ID within us grow with gathered intelligence in a hollow deck ... theO?
• Were you born with a thought of just emotions? Something has to give in the end!
• Now is that the devil when he meets his brother in a desert, or was that a sister and they won't know what to do with themselves because they were taught nothing? Joe and an array of kyn!
• It's a fine line between thought and emotion if you can't balance the medium ... you!