JESUS TAUGHT HELL WAS A TORTURE CHAMBER
The Bible indicates that Hell is a place for the damned will be raised from the dead for all eternity and bodies need to go to places. When it says that why is it so crazy to imagine it being a fiery place? The doctrine is that Jesus came to keep us out of Hell so no Hell means Jesus' mission was just nonsense.
Belief in things that are true should be allowed to develop naturally and the person's right to believe differently should be respected. But God supposedly COMMANDS you to believe in Hell. He just asks for belief in it but does not command you to believe the damned are there freely and won't leave or does not command you to believe it is not as terrible as traditionally depicted. Belief in Hell is based on disrespect for yourself and others. So don't pretend you care about those in Hell. Don't pretend it cannot be a torture chamber.
A popular lie among Christians is that poor God does all he can to keep us from going to Hell, that is to live forever in sin and misery if we die in sin. They blame the victims. People who blame the victims cannot admit it.
A being who is supposed to be all-good deserves bigger suspicion of blame than a bad one. Why? You need an explanation from a good being why it is letting evil happen. With a bad being you don't. This principle applies when innocent suffering takes place or when somebody goes to suffer punishment forever. It is absolute proof that Hell is a doctrine not of hate but HATE for nobody even wants an explanation.
Jesus spared the legion of demons he had cast out of a man for a little while. He spared them Hell. They did not want to be sent back to Hell so they go into pigs and the pigs drown which must mean they went back to Hell then? Yes - they would go to any extreme before they would endure a second of their torment. 2 Peter 2:3 uses the word apoleia which means utter extreme ruin. It is often translated destruction. It says their destruction does not slumber. What does that mean? Apoleia means ruining a person and destroying them but not as in annihilation. Their torment never slumbers.
In Matthew 13:41-42 Jesus says that if you are a sinner and not forgiven then angels will throw you into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels so they will torment you. Throwing somebody into a torture chamber is torturing. Jesus said that those who do not show compassion to others will be delivered to the torturers by God until they pay God what they owe him. He is very clear that Hell is not just where you put yourself but where you go to pay a debt of justice to God. The modern idea that it is a place where you put yourself and where you suffer but not where you suffer punishment is heresy.
In Matthew 18:34-35 Jesus warns that you will be tortured by God through torturers he employs if you don't forgive your brother sincerely. If you are threatened to forgive the end result will be a very unsatisfying forgiveness. It will be passive aggression in the cloak of mercy. Jesus' gospel spreads torture and if you don't embrace the torture worse will wait for you in the afterlife!
If you do wrong the judge having a relationship with you will make your pain worse when you are given your punishment. Thus it can be the most loving thing to NOT have a relationship. God torments the damned by offering them a relationship. That is passive aggression on steriods.
Notice how the angels put them in the blazing furnace. Jesus means a literal furnace for he could mean it. And people those days took all that stuff at face value. They did not try to pretend that blazing furnace was a symbol. And the apostles who were not theologians but ordinary people said they understood meaning they would have taken the straightforward interpretation. Also, the parable is about fish being thrown away. It will not be burnt. In fact it is the good fish that will be burnt! Jesus had the perfect chance to just say the wicked would be thrown away and there would be weeping and grinding of teeth and say no more. But no he added an unnecessary detail about the blazing furnace because he believed there really would be a furnace.
The Bible speaks of Hell as torment by eternal fire.
Nothing indicates that this fire is a symbol. The mention of Hell being a
place of darkness does not necessarily imply the fire is not real for it could
work a different way from fire as we know it. The fire could burn within
the damned person and not be visible. Darkness happened at Mount Sinai when God
came down to give the commandments EVEN though there was fire (Hebrews 12:18).
Read Exodus 19 and Deuteronomy 4-5. The Bible may call Hell a place of darkness
or fire but that does not mean it has to be darkness all the time.
The fire and darkness are manifestations of the justice executed by God and they
are indications that God is present and judging. The notion that hellfire
is a symbol is just us reading our modern ideas back into the Bible writings.
In the days the Bible was written nobody would have seen the idea of suffering
in real fire after death as silly. So the cause of the Hellfire darkness
and burning is the presence of God! The damned cannot bear him being
present for they hate him.
The Bible speaks of worms in Hell which is way of indicating that the person in Hell is waste and rubbish just like the rotting and smelling body matter of animals that flowed out from the Temple every day that was live with worms.
Those who say it is absurd to
think the fire is literal are forgetting that the absurdity of it does not mean
the Bible did not teach it. Many say that it is not really as absurd as
liberal Christian liars say for there is no logical disproof of Hell.
If the believers are right to call Hell a mystery then there is no problem if it
is eternal fire. It is odd how they argue that a baby being tormented by viruses
made by God is a mystery and how some believers like CS Lewis want to make out
that there is no pain in Hell only the loneliness without God. It is as if
they think punishment is wrong or the damned do not deserve suffering.
Whoever wants innocent suffering to be a mystery and non-innocent suffering not
to be is clearly not a believer in justice but a wishy-washy liberal.
The notion that Hell is what happens to you if you won't let yourself love God in the afterlife tries to make out it is purely self-inflicted and that God does not decree anybody must go to Hell. Hell is refusal to enter the presence of God. But the book of Revelation makes it clear that Hell is not any kind of absence of God. They are tormented day and night in THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY ANGELS AND JESUS THE LAMB. Read Revelation 14:10-11.
The same book of Revelation says that the evil will
suffer in a lake of fire and brimstone. The doctrine of creation suggests
that God can make such a lake. If there is such a lake then God is the
tormenter. If you think the lake is a metaphor it is still representing
something God has made to torment the damned.
These hideous doctrines are from the Bible - supposedly authored by God - and the Church - which God gifted with infallibility so that it gives his teaching without error.
Hell is about punishment not
about reform. But even if it is not about reform it has to keep the door open so
that the person can reform if they want to. But it does not. A God
that does not leave that door open is pure evil. The doctrine denies that he
leaves the door open. Thus Hell leaves us adoring an evil God and condoning and
celebrating his evil.
Hell is not about putting you
off sinning right now. It depends entirely on your disposition in your last
moments of life. Earthly justice is far superior despite its stupid side than
all that nonsense. At least it makes you think twice before doing wrong. You
would need to want there to be a Hell when you follow such a useless futile
doctrine. Religion may respond that it is not futile if it keeps you out of
Hell. But that assumes there is a Hell in the first place. If there is not, then
it is a very despicable doctrine indeed. And religion makes no real effort to
verify the existence of Hell. It uses it to scare people. It does not care that
it stoops so low to risk saying that the doctrine is true when it is not.
Not a single verse in the Bible says that Hell is not a prison but your own creation. If it is all your fault, then why did Jesus talk about it being a prison and a fire like Gehenna and a place where body and soul can be destroyed? Why didn't he simply say, "Repent. If you die in sin, you will not repent and you will lose God and your friends for all eternity". Simple! He didn't say it because he seen Hell as more than that! And how can anybody say Hell is not a torture chamber when God raises the bodies of the dead to life to endure its pains? Why not just let the soul suffer its loneliness?
Dave Hunt in his book, In Defence of the Faith, page 241, thinks that physical punishment of the damned is not much of a punishment no matter how terrible it is for the right and natural punishment for somebody who refuses a relationship of love with God is thirst for God and frustration and loneliness. This does not alter the fact that the loneliness of the damned and their crave for God is totally unbiblical. The texts only care about the physical agonies. That is all they speak of. There are no warnings about the awful loneliness of Hell. It is not mentioned at all and nobody sane would think that the Bible would outline physical torments and dwell on them for that would be akin to saying prison is about bread and water without mentioning being locked up.
The believers want to be at peace in Heaven and one of the things they want to be at peace with is the agony of the damned. Loneliness is allegedly the greatest pain of Hell for the damned has lost the God he needs. But it is a fact that no justice system can remain just and want people to be lonely. Nobody can deserve that. And you cannot inflict it on yourself directly. It is possible that a person should be lonely and are not. Recluses can be very happy. Loneliness is down to your genes not down to the lack of company. So if the damned are all lonely God is making them that way. Thus even if the damned suffer in Hell you cannot be at peace with their loneliness.
Hell is a place of psychological torture and also physical torture.
