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Author
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Topic: Is torment God's torture of the soul?
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Carol Swenson
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Member # 6929
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posted
God is life, God is love, peace, joy, goodness. God is order. God is beauty.
A person who has rejected Christ has also rejected God. So to be separated from God - not separated from His omnipresence, but separated from His goodness - means he has chosen to exist without all the attributes and gifts of God.
No order, but chaos. No beauty, but deformed shrieking horrors. No love, but hate. No peace, but pain. No joy, but grief. No good thing of any kind because all good things are gifts from God.
IMHO it isn't that God causes torment, but being separated from Him is hell. On Earth, even the wicked still enjoy the goodness of God in His sunshine and the natural order and beauty and bounty of this world, even in its fallen state. But in Hell, they won't have that. They won't enjoy healthy bodies, or sane minds, or their favorite pleasures.
Or hope.
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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WildB
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Member # 2917
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Definition of TORTURE
1
a : anguish of body or mind : agony
b : something that causes agony or pain
2
: the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
Revelation 14:6-12
By Paul M. Sadler
When was the last time you heard a sermon on the perils of hell? You will probably have to search long and hard in the archives of your memory to find one occurrence. Sadly it is a forbidden subject in the Church today, although historically this has not always been the case. The Lord, more than any other, warned His hearers about the perils of hell, where the fire shall never be quenched (Mark 9:43-48). With the soul of Felix hanging in the balance, Paul did not shrink from his responsibility to tell the Governor about the judgment to come. Jonathan Edwards preached one message on the subject and sparked the Great Awakening in America. Robert Morgan gives us this account of that memorable day:
America's greatest theologian is often identified as Jonathan Edwards, a New England pastor of the 1700s. Edwards was brilliant. At the age of six he studied Latin. He entered Yale when not quite thirteen and graduated when barely fifteen. He was ordained at age nineteen, taught at Yale at twenty, and later became president of Princeton. Harvard granted him both a Bachelor's and Master's Degree on the same day.
But he is best known for Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God—the most famous sermon in American history. He preached it on Sunday, July 8, 1741, while ministering in tiny Enfield, Connecticut. A group of women had spent the previous night praying for revival. When Edwards rose to speak, he quietly announced his text was Deuteronomy 32:35, "...their foot shall slide in due time...." Edwards neither gestured nor raised his voice. He spoke softly and simply, warning the unconverted that they were dangling over hell like a spider over the fire.
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger. The unconverted are now walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that it will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.
Edward's voice was suddenly lost amid the cries and commotion from the crowd. He paused, appealing for calm. Then he concluded: Let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of the Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom.
Strong men held to pews and posts, feeling they were sliding into hell....Throughout the night cries of men and women were heard throughout the village, begging God to save them. Five hundred were converted that evening, sparking a revival that swept thousands into...[glory].1
The so-called conventional wisdom today is that someone might be offended if such a thing was preached publicly. But isn't it a dereliction of duty to not sound the alarm? Suppose a house is burning and the occupants are sound asleep—what would your response be? Would you casually walk away, fearing you may disturb them from their slumber? We assure you the consensus of the five hundred who heard Jonathan Edwards on July 8, 1741, was this: Thank God he had the courage to tell us we were sinners and in danger of the hellfire judgment to come!
If the unbeliever refuses to receive God's gracious offer of reconciliation and blatantly rejects Christ as his personal Savior he must be warned as to what lies ahead. We do a great disservice to the unsaved by allowing them to leave this life thinking that death is the end. Death is merely the entryway either into everlasting life with Christ or everlasting condemnation with the Devil and his angels.
THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL
"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters" (Rev. 14:6,7).
As the events of the Great Tribulation run their course, the Mark of the Beast will be a major turning point in the affairs of mankind, as we have seen. Shortly after its introduction an angel is seen flying through heaven proclaiming the everlasting gospel. A chilling sight to say the least! The everlasting gospel is a gospel of judgment. In that day it will be good news for those of the household of faith that God's wrath is about to be poured out without mixture on His enemies. It will no longer be tempered with mercy and grace.
The hour of decision has come! The choice is clear, believe God and worship Him or worship the image of the beast and suffer the eternal consequences. This will be the last opportunity for the inhabitants of the Tribulation to be saved, as they dangle precariously over the fires of hell by one thin thread of human existence. If there is any question whether or not God wants His servants to warn the unsaved about the danger of hell, this should settle the matter. The warning of the messenger of God is indisputable:
"If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image" (Rev. 14:9-11).
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INFERNAL REGION BEYOND
The Lord said of those who offend a little one who believed on Him that it would be better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and be cast into the sea. He then added: "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:43,44).
The term hell here is the Greek word gehenna, defined as a place of burnings. According to Thayer, "Hell is the place of the future punishment called `Gehenna' or `Gehenna of fire.' This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and their future destruction." Hell is a place—not a state of mind! It is an everlasting fire that was originally created by God for the Devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). This passage indicates that hell came into existence shortly after the fall of Satan but before the fall of man. When man followed Satan in his rebellion against God, he placed himself in jeopardy of the horrors of this region.
Although the fires of hell have been raging since the beginning of creation, this infernal realm will remain unoccupied until the Great White Throne Judgment. Before the unsaved are cast into the Lake of Fire, it must first be determined what degree of punishment they will suffer for their evil deeds (Matt. 11:20-24). There is, however, one exception: the Anti-Christ and false prophet who deliberately lead multitudes to perdition. They will be judged at the Second Coming of Christ when the Lord returns in a flaming fire of vengeance (II Thes. 1:8). They will be the first to be cast into this inferno. One shudders to think that after one thousand years they are still suffering in this flame (Rev. 19:20 cf. 20:1,10). Beloved, one thousand years will be but a grain of sand on the eternal shores of this judgment.
There are some who are convinced that the fires of hell are merely symbolic. However, if God prepared this everlasting fire, then it has to be real. This is confirmed by our Lord when He delivered the parable of the Wheat and Tares to His disciples. A parable is brought alongside a truth to illustrate it by comparison, as demonstrated in the mysteries of the kingdom:
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That is all.....
Posts: 8775 | From: USA, MICHIGAN | Registered: Mar 2004
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