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Forum Member
 
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 03 September 2010 14:53
Posts: 115,
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Mini: "But i will admit I used to believe n purgatory but now I do not believe in heaven or hell."
If heaven is supposed to be a walled city with pearly gates and big throne room, and hell a place of burning sulphur and possibly burning sinners, I agree with you!
However, the Bible uses picture language to speak of spiritual realities beyond this world. Taking it too literally is a great a heresy as dismissing it. The Hebrew word for heaven is simply "shamayim" = "presences" - to be in the presence of God is to be in heaven. Hell is variously imagined - the oldest idea is the Hebrew Sheol, which is no more than the place of the dead (they had no idea of afterlife). By he NT, when there as a more developed idea of salvation or eternal loss, the word which usually translated the Hebrew 'shamayim' was the Greek "gehenna", which is really a transliteration og the Hebrew 'ge-hinnom' = "the valley of Hinnom". That was the valley in Jerusalem where rubbish was burned, and fires were more or less permanent. It became a metaphor for permanent destruction (and of course the lake of fire in Rev.19:20 is a development of that), but the underlying idea is not so much permanent fire as the discarding of rubbish.
So, as far as I am concerned, heaven is being with God, hell is being without him. Life here can be a foretaste of that, but there will be an eternal dimension to it, depending on our response to God and our relationship with him - it isn't so much whether he accepts us, as whether we accept him.
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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 28 May 2010 18:16
Posts: 1,
Visits: 6
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Mini (13/01/2010)
But then we learn we have to declare our faith in him before we die to go to heaven or spend eternity in hell.
Hell - Wonderful concept where souls are pertetually punished.
Up until quite recently I accepted that, without really thinking about it, to my shame. I am now coming to a Christian Universalist belief, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15:22: "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ ALL will be made alive." (Capitals mine.)
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