Hi Stacy,

In defense of Marhorse, he believes (and has Biblical right to believe) in hell as eternal, and so therefore he would be rightly passionate about preserving this belief because the consequences of ignoring it would be too great - ie, if he is correct in what he believes, we would be doing humanity a SEVERE injustice by trying to sugar coat the whole thing.

In defense of you, I agree that it perhaps is also ‘debatable,’ but certainly I wouldn’t say that it is ‘not plausible.’ It’s exact plausibility is what makes it so frightening, and ought to make us a little more eager to see the lost saved.

Now, personally I would have to say that perhaps the traditionalists have come across as way too confident in knowing the ‘biblical’ truth of hell- but, let’s be honest, so have the annihilationists, and the universalists, and the whatever else-alists (dare I say, some emergenists as well?) I think that’s the real problem, everyone is pretending to know more about what the Bible says about hell.

I think we should never pretend to know more than what we ought : the Bible doesn’t really say, for sure, this way or that - so we should bring all truth to men and let them know that they are definately under God’s judgement if they ignore the truth of the Lamb, and outright reject Him. We know THAT for sure. What God is going to do EXACTLY with those that reject Him, the Bible doesn’t say. It doesn’t fully explain what ‘seperation’ means, or what ‘death’ means, or what ‘lake of fire’ means. It says as much about hell as it does about heaven, if you ask me. The truth is that we probably wouldn’t understand if we were told everything, as is evident that we don’t really understand what we have been told. You can’t really explain an apple to someone who has never seen one, except that it’s ‘a fruit.’ Hell and Heaven are pretty much the same, I think. Who can explain it to us? It’s unlike anything we know. Hell we know is ‘eternal’ but we don’t know it’s exact nature, where it is, what it looks like, and exactly what it feels like. Any attempt to do more than that is actually just interesting guesswork - so we should appreciate all views, and ensure that what we DO tell people is that they ARE under God’s judgement if they reject Christ. (Note, that those that have never heard of Christ are probably under judgement according to their conscience, which I get from Romans. The calvinistic view, in my opinion, can be fully supported - even logically - while still affirming that only those that REJECT Christ would be under a hell-judgement, not those that didn’t know anything about him. That’s for another interesting debate though. I’m not calvinist, or Arminian, but believe that both are perfectly valid in their content - not necessarily their logic.)

Personally, I very much believe in an eternal hell- but ‘hell’ for me means more like annihilationism mixed with a traditional view. I don’t really accept Andrew’s view (or what I understand of it) as final, although I do accept it as prophetical or eschatological. I mean, I think that prophecy is fulfilled on different levels, sometimes one prophecy is fulfilled in three different ways (take how many OT prophecy’s were about the time of writing, and also referred to Jesus at the same time.)

Ok, but I’m rambling on here, I just wanted to caution that neither your side (which I presume is universalist in some degree) or Marhorse’s side ought to claim complete knowledge as to the nature of hell : we ought to not just respect each others views, but actually ACCEPT each others views as plausible and therefore understand better how we should relate to our fellow man - because both views actually do help us relate better to those who ‘are perishing.’ And that’s the whole point of the gospel - relationship!

Ryan