Today's Journal
HELL III
This is the third Journal entry on Hell in this series. The last two days we have broadly given ideas about hell, and by so doing, the Biblical opposite… heaven, or being in the presence of the Father.N.T. Wright, scholar and author wrote:
“Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire...decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.”
Many believe that ‘A God who is love, would never allow anyone to go to hell,’ and therefore everyone will be ‘saved’ or ‘in heaven’ in the end. That is what is called ‘Universal Reconciliation,’ or universalists. There are some strong arguments for this view. It is not my view. My view is more of an idea like this one from C.S. Lewis: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” That is much more the way I understand hell.
“Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Jesus