Re: A Scientific View Of Hell?
Date: January 15, 2008 10:29PM
If I may add some comments to this discussion;
First of all, Hell is not in time, else it would have a terminus.
Secondly, Hell is not a "place", as such. It is a state of existence
charactarized by the absence of God, and therefore the antithesis
of His glory and blessed presence.
We must understand that God is absolute, and He exists in the eternal
state, which is also absolute. The reason souls are doomed to reside
apart from His presence is that they cross the barrier of time, where
all things are temporal and everchanging, into the province of the eternal,
where all things are static and unchanging.
Thus, whatever status their soul is in at the moment of this transition, it
will remain constant, and cannot be altered. For example, an over-
simplification perhaps, if we carry a glass of milk into eternity it will
never change temperature, never sour, or change in any way, FOREVER.
There are two prerequisites to being accepted into God's Kingdom;
that we share His Righteousness, and His Eternal Life. These are imputed
to us at the moment of salvation, along with 37 other factors. The one
critical necessity is that we recieve these attributes in time, where we
exist in an environment of alterable conditions. This is, in fact, why the
infinite genius of God engineered time, and built into it the element of
change.
In essence, those who end up in Heaven only differ from those who end
up in The Lake of Fire in that the former have aquired the attributes of +R
and +EL prior to crossing the frontier between time and eternity.
It is a serious error to assume that God condemns souls to hell merely
because they have not met an arbitrary standard. He is infinite Love,
and He loves the damned just as much as He loves the saved, however,
He cannot come into contact with, or condone sin, or He is not God.
This is the "season" in which God permits sin to exist, but even now He
has placed the stellar Universe in position as the buffer between Himself
and corruption. Therefore, when a soul fails to accept the saving work of
Jesus Christ, and thereby recieve the two essential attributes of God before
leaving this life, God has no recourse but to separate from them entirely.
If it were possible, God would configure hell much like this Earth, where
life is at least tolerable, with many moments of pleasure and relative
contentment. But even the environment in which we exist requires to
presence and management of the Creator. I suggest that there is no
scientific explanation, nor any other arguement, which satisfies the
puzzle; how is it that the other planets and moons in our immediate
solar system are piles of rocks, or spheres of gas, where it is not
possible for life to exist, and yet the Earth is an exception? The more
we learn about the intricate forces that govern our world, the more
evidence there is that a genius beyond our comprehension devied it,
and expressly to sustain life.