· One exception: Some say there is an “age of accountability” where all will go to Heaven without the new birth if they die before they reach it. How can anyone even know that there is such an age, or how can anyone know what that age is when nothing is said about it in the Bible? It is added even by those who say they do not add to the Bible, and it puts many in Heaven without the new birth; world wide it would put more in Heaven than the new birth. It would put one in Heaven that died the day before reaching that age, and another in Hell that died the day after. This exception is nothing more than an attempt by those that believe in an immortal soul that is not subject to death to keep billons of children out of the fiery Hell and from being tormented by God. This exception put billons in Heaven without the death of Christ for it claims that the billons will be in Heaven because they have no sins and have no need to be saved by the blood and death of Christ.
· Another exception: Many believe it would be unjust of God to endlessly torment the billons and billons of the world that never know anything about Christ; therefore, never had a chance to believe in Christ and be born again. Even though most of this billions and billions worship other gods they will somehow end up saved in Heaven without the Bible, without the new birth, without having faith in Christ.
o This one makes it better to live in a part of the world where the Gospel is not known for many more from that part of the world will be in Heaven than will be from where it is well known.
· Perhaps the biggest exception: Universalism believes all that never heard the Gospel and all that did hear it and rejected it will be given another chance after death, a chance that will be so strong that none can reject it, all, even the soul that was in the most evil person will be made to be saved, not one soul will be able to continuer the unbelief of the person it was in, even Satan will be made to saved.
o This one makes it both (1) OK to do what ever you want to, you will be saved anyway. (2) Of not much if any use to take the Gospel to the lost for they will be saved if you do or if you do not.
§ All are an attempt to make the narrow way more broad (Matthew 7:13).
End Note
The Universalist teaching that all the spirits that were in all persons, without exception, will end up saved has had a negative effect on their membership, and they survived by many of the Universalist merging with the Unitarians and became the Unitarian Universalist Association Of Congregations.
Many in the Church of God and Congregation of God also teach there will be "an opportunity for salvation" after the resurrection, but unlike the Universalist, they believe some will reject it, and for those that do there will be the second death, not being eternal tormented by God.
CHAPTER TEN
The Results Of Attributing Evil Pagan Teachings
To God By Religious People
This God slandering Dark Age doctrine of Hell makes God evil, cruel, sadistic, and fiendish. By some unknown and twisted reasoning it is assumed that for God to be just He must forever torment the souls of the lost for His justice demands this; how does “God is a just God” demand that there is a Hell, or prove there is a Hell? From the first sin, God's sentence to Adam was not eternal torment but death. Throughout the Bible the sentence for sin is always death, not torment. "The wages of sin is death." That His justice demands that He must forever torment the souls that were in unbelievers is without any foundation in His word. To put it pure and simple, it is a doctrine of man and it makes God evil, cruel, and fiendish for if the punishment exceeds the crime by millions of times, it is injustice, not justice.
If a man should put a single person that had raped and killed his wife in a dark pit and torment him day and night for ten years, most would condemn him to the hottest part of "Hell." Yet, some teach that God made mankind knowing that most of them would be lost, and many millions would never hear His word; yet He knew before He made them that He was going to torment them worse than anything we can imagine, not for ten years, but time without end. It will be God doing the tormenting; God will be the one who makes the fire and keeps it burning forever. Satan or the evil ones will not be tormenting themselves. Many try to justify God for doing more than any man can do, and being more cruel and sadistic than the most evil man could ever be by saying we cannot understand the evil of sin. The God of the Bible is a God of love and justice, not as many make Him, sadistic, fiendish, cruel, evil, and in character much like Satan. It is a certainty (1) that in the Hell that is preached today no one will be corrected by the torment, (2) that no one in Hell will ever be corrected by Hell; therefore, it can only be sadistic and there is no way that endless sadistic torment of most of mankind by God would not make Him sadistic; much of today’s preaching makes God both evil and sadistic.
The Ultimate Evil: “The idea of never-ending conscious agony is so completely revolting to our instinctive moral and judicial senses that we could fittingly call it the ultimate evil. If we’re honest about the matter, this is exactly what it is. After all, is it possible to come up with a worse notion than perpetual fiery conscious misery – with no merciful respite or end to the suffering? The mere idea is so disturbing that it makes it a very hard subject to discuss calmly. How can anyone with an ounce of human compassion contemplate the idea dispassionately when the view of ceaseless torture is so profoundly disturbing?” From chapter eight of: www.hell-know.net/
The Deprived, Revolting Evil: "To torment a child that dies without ever knowing anything about God or His word forever day and night with a torment worse than any pain we can have on this earth would not be 'justice,' but sadistic. What kind of a person could love a God who was tormenting his wife and children with more pain than anyone has ever had in this life? When we are in Heaven, do you think we will be singing of God's love and mercy while He is cruelly tormenting most of mankind and many you now love, your wife or husband, your father and mother, your child, your friend? Is there a greater perversion of Scripture than to attribute such characteristics to God? Is it reasonable to believe that the righteous in their glorified state can be indifferent to, and unaffected by, the endless sufferings of countless millions of their fellow beings, among who would probably be found parents, children, husbands, wives, etc.? Is it possible that they will be destitute of deprived of qualities which are considered most lovely and godlike in this life; viz., piety, sympathy, compassion, commiseration for others' woes, etc.? Will insensibility to the woes of the wretched ever become a virtue? Will that which is a vice in this life, become a grace in the glorious future life?" From a web page by "Ron" which is no longer on the net.
Today, many think that the electric chair or hanging of a person who has killed many is inhumane though it takes only a few seconds; but these same people see no inconsistency in believing it is just for God to torment the same person, even if that person has never heard His word, with a torment which they say is much worse than the few seconds would be, and this torment by God will not last only for a few seconds, but for an endless eternity.
More Cruel And Sadistic Than Any Heathen God: The Calvin God that is believed in and worshiped by many is a God many times more evil, more cruel, and sadistic than any heathen god. Before the Calvin god made the world, he rigged the outcome and chose to make most of mankind to be lost before he made them. According to Calvin his god even made it impossible for most to believe, but will torment them forever for not believing. The torment by the worshipers of heathen gods soon ended with death of the ones being tormented; but Calvinism teaches their god made most men, many millions, just so he could torment them without end for eternity "for his good pleasure." According to Hell fire Calvin teachers, this torment will be many times worse than any torment by the worshipers of heathen gods; and will never end in the death of those being tormented. How could any person who has an ounce of compassion love and worship such a god?
Those who believe in the Calvin god say this god chose you to be saved, or to be lost before he made the world. If you are one of the few chosen by this evil god to be saved, even if you live in the most out of the way place in the world and never know of God or Christ, when the time comes for you to be saved you will be. You can do nothing about it, and you cannot say no. If you are one of the many he chose before you were born to torment forever, there is no use to send preachers to you; there is no use for you to read the Bible or do anything; there is nothing you or anyone can do. According to Calvin this god made you just because he wants to torment you forever, and he will. Such a god is like a very rich ruler who torments a thousand people "for his good pleasure" and enjoyment, and chose you to make rich and happy. He would not be worthily of your love, but only your contempt. To destroy those who chose to be evil is one thing; but to make them be evil before they were born, and then torment them without end with more pain than they can know in this lifetime for being what he made them to be is not justice. He would be an unjust and evil god. He made them evil and gave them no chance not to be, and then torments them for being what He made them to be. If you put a person who worked in a store in the electric chair for unknowingly short changing a person one cent, your injustice would not equal that of a god that made one person just so he could torment that person for endless ages. Many say he did this with most of mankind. Most are filled with grief when a loved one or friend has some sickness that makes them suffer, even when they know the suffering will soon end with death. Yet, they worship a god who they believe will take pleasure in the suffering of billions without end; and not only will he take pleasure in it, he will be the one that is tormenting them and making them suffer, and he made them just so he could torment and make them suffer. Calvin did not get his doctrine from the heathens for the heathens had no doctrine as cruel, as fiendish, as black, or as unjust as his god is.
A Scandal Against The Almighty: "For were a woman to commit a crime against her husband, and he punishes her by holding her hand in the fire until the flesh burned off the bones, he would be pronounced one of the most cruel beings in the world; and if he were to escape justice, he would be hunted as a wild beast; and when brought to trial and condemned, he would be pronounced worthy of thrice the punishment that the law could inflict. And he would have been tried and condemned by men, most of whom, perhaps, believed that God would take that same woman, for that same crime that she had committed against her husband, and put-not only her hand, but her whole self into a Lake of Fire and Brimstone; -not for half an hour-not for a day-not for a year-nor for ten thousand years only, but for all Eternity. Also, that this Burning of her in a Blazing Hell would be so agreeable to the determination of the Almighty that no pity could be excited, no mercy shown; but that there, in that Lake of Fire she should gnash, and groan, and wail Eternally. Oh! How horrid the picture! And what a terrible crime, even in the light of their own actions, to charge God with such cruelty!" John Kent, "Eternal Burning, A Scandal Against The Almighty," 1879.
A God Of Infinite Horror: "That God would rise the wicked and give them immortality only to torment them in a devil's hell unendingly is both gross and vulgar, even blasphemous. Such a God is not the one described in the Bible...If the God of heaven subjects innumerable billions to unending and indescribable torment, it can only be seen as the one infinite horror." Leroy Garrett, Restoration Review, November 1990.
A Mockery Of Truth And A Blasphemy Against Deity: "My opponent will make an effort to try and demonstrate that our loving, compassionate, merciful God will be content with nothing less than the perpetual, never diminishing, horrific torture of the vast majority of mankind. Not only is that not what the Scriptures teach, it has the distinct disadvantage of portraying our God as a Monster the likes of which the human mind cannot even conceive. It is to proclaim a God foreign to the inspired revelation. Thus, it is a mockery of Truth and a blasphemy against Deity." Al Maxey, Maxey-Thrasher Debate on the Eternal Destiny of the Wicked by two ministers of the church of Christ at: http://www.zianet.com/maxey/MxThrshr.htm - I recommend this debate to all members of the church of Christ of which he is a member, and to all who want the truth.
Worst Than Gods Of Paganism: "Paganism in its worst forms has never surpassed, if it has equaled, the savage and terrible descriptions which have been given by Christians of their God. The character ascribed to Him; the dreadful wrath and vengeance with which He is moved; the cold and malignant purpose of creation in regard to million of souls; the stern severity and gloom of His government; the horrible and never-ceasing tortures which He will inflict on His helpless, children-all this, and much more of like character, defies the power of language to set it forth in its true light, or to present it in a manner adequate to its shocking revolting reality." Thomas Thayer, "The Origin And History Of The Doctrine Of Endless Punishment."
Makes The Universe A Theater Of Cursing And Blasphemy: "What, then, is the doctrine of endless misery? Stripped of all its drapery, it is no more or less than this: That a large part of the human family are doomed to suffer the most intense and indescribable torments as long as God shall exist, without the least hope or possibility of being benefited by their sufferings. In some part of this beautiful universe, God has prepared an awful, dismal, burning hell, and there countless myriads of human beings shall weep and groan, unpitied and unrelieved, while ceaseless ages shall roll; and when ten thousand times ten thousand years shall have passed, they shall have as long to suffer as if their sufferings had but just began. And, then, to think of the number of the lost to remember that there are on this earth not less than eight hundred millions of human beings, and that out of these there are not more than fifty millions that can be saved, upon the broadest system of partialism; and that, by consequence, there must be more than seventy thousand souls going down to hell every day; and, then, to think of generations that have past, and reflect upon the vast and countless multitudes that must be congregated in that huge reservoir of tears and woe; the very thought bears the lie upon its front. The degree of the punishment outrages all ideas of proportion between guilt and punishment, and the number of the victims shocks all feelings of humanity or mercy. It makes the universe a theater of cursing and blasphemy, rather than a field for the display of the boundless perfections of a merciful and benevolent Creator." I. D. Williamson, An Examination Of The Doctrine Of Endless Punishment, 1860.
God The Tormentor: Spurgeon, one of the best known of Baptist preachers, said, "When thou driest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it; but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth, thy body will lie, asbestos like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable lament." From his sermon "The Resurrection of the Dead." Like most who believe God will forever torment many billions, he must have some revelation that is not in the Bible to tell him about their suffering. In his day most orthodox Protestants believed the Devil would be doing the tormenting, but today most orthodox Protestants think he was wrong, that God is the one who will be doing the tormenting. The man made "Hell" is forever changing. What was orthodox in his day is no longer orthodox. For many Baptists his truth is no longer truth.
Ebenezer Erskine in "The Judgment," "How shall the adulterer satisfy lust when he lies on a bed of flames? The swearer shall have enough of wounds and blood when the devil shall torture his body and rack his soul in hell. The drunkard shall have plenty of his cups when scalding lead shall be poured down his throat, and his breath draw flames of fire instead of air."
An Atrocious Slander On God: Henry Ward Beeches speaking of Michael Angelo's painting, The Last Judgment said, "Let anyone see the enormous gigantic coils of fiends and man; let anyone look at the defiant Christ that stands like a superb athlete at the front, hurling his enemies from him and calling his friends toward him as Hercules might have done; let anyone look upon that hideous wriggling mass that goes plunging down through the air-serpents and man and beasts of every nauseous kind, mixed together; let him look at the lower parts of the picture, where with the pitchforks men are by devils being cast into cauldrons and into burning fires, where hateful fiends are gnawing the skulls of suffering sinners, and where there is hellish cannibalism going on-let a man look at that picture and scenes which it depicts, and he sees what were the ideas which man once had of Hell and of divine justice. It was a night-mare as hideous as was ever begotten by the hellish brood it-self; and it was an atrocious slander on God...I do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors."
Jonathan Edwards: "The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves and billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins and their vitals, shall forever be full of a flowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and, also, they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, not for ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but for forever and ever, without an end at all, and never to be delivered."
Benson: "He will exert all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of their nature will admit...They must be perpetually swelling their enormous sums of guilt, and still running deeper, immensely deeper, in debt to divine and infinite justice. Hence after the longest imaginable period, they will be so far from having discharged their debt that they will find more due than when they first began to suffer." He has God charging interest on the debt of the suffering sinner owes Him at such a high rate that the sinner gets more behind as time goes on. If the punishment exceeds the crime by billions of times would it be justice or injustice?
Dr. E. Beech: "Involves God, his whole administration, and his eternal kingdom in the deepest dishonor that the mind of man or angel can conceive, by the violation of the highest and most sacred principles of honor and right, and on the scale of infinity and eternity" page 225. "The human mind cannot be held back from abhorring such a theory, except by the most unnatural violence to its divinely inspired convictions of honor and right" page 306, Conflict of the Ages.
Troy B. Channing: “The devil must make hell look like a VERY torturous place so that our view of God is altered into a view that is NOT merciful”
What kind of justice is this? To fill many books with the most harrowing descriptions of torment would not equal the torment we are told that God will give to the soul that was in just one person for all eternity. After a soul was in someone who never knows of God in their lifetime on earth, when that soul has been in torment in for trillions times trillions of years because the person it was in did not believe in God, we are told that soul will still have eternity with not one second less time to suffer. Those who believe in Hell say, "It is justice." My question to them is how do they know it to be justice, where did God tell this to them? It being justice is something they had to make up to try to justify the heathen Hell, even when it make God be much more evil than Satan. They are saying, “Stepping on a person’s lawn may get you a disapproving look, but stepping on God’s lawn will get the soul that is in you eternal torment by God.” No one could know this without a revelation from God, and there is no such revelation, it is an addition, it is making God evil just to justify their evil teaching.
Do you wonder where in the Bible they found things like the devil pouring scalding lead down the throat of a soul, and many thousands of like things? The answer is that they are in the same passage where they found Hell, and the same passage where they found the name of Hell. They found them in the teaching of men, not the Bible.
J. W. McGarvery and E. D. Slough: “’It has been very vehemently argued and insisted upon, that such punishment for sin would be unjust on the part of God, because the penalty would be far beyond the demerits of the sin for which it was inflicted. To inflict punishment such as is described in the Bible upon a human being, and that continuing without end, for the sins which he committed during the brief stay which he experienced here on earth, is out of all proportion, when viewed as a matter of justice. Justice demands that the penalty shall be proportioned to the crime. Well it does look that way; it undoubtedly does. No father would inflict that kind of punishment upon his son for any conceivable offense against the father, it is argued, and I believe that is true. I would hate to see the man that would. He would not be my friend. It would show not only a want of justice, but an audacious rebellion against all sense of the goodness and mercy and love, of which we have already spoken. But now then, whilst it does appear that way; and if I were the Judge I would not give that sentence; if I had the trial of the matter, I am sure that I would not allow that sentence to be passed’ McGarvey’s Sermons, page 31. I would like to fill two chapters on that extract from McGarvey’s sermons. Here is material for a whole volume. Never was a more formidable argument uttered against the theory we are opposing than this pathetic confession. I wish I had space to demonstrate that God is as good as McGarvey tried to believe him to be. I would that I could cause you to see that McGarvey felt his whole nature revolting against the notion he was defending…McGarvey has used his powers of reason, and his mature judgment, upon this theory of retribution, and he found it repulsive to his soul. That it was, to his judgment, out of all proportion when viewed as a matter of justice. Watts was not infallible, but if that principle he introduced is correct, ‘that God himself has never given revelation contrary to our sense of right or reason,’ then here is one of the ablest defenders of that system who has entered the pulpit in a century, with his fingers emphasizing with emotional gestures to a great audience, in Louisville, Ky., that it is out of all proportion when viewed as a matter justice—and if any one else but God, he would hate to see him, etc. That it would be a rebellion against all we know of the word justice. This coming from so great a scholar as McGarvery makes it the most pathetic and serious. And it makes it more obviously false when presented with a touch of the poet’s brush. McGarvery offers an apology for it. How? ‘Well, who am I? I am a sinner.’ And therefore the sinner has never learned what justice is, and cannot judge between what would be right and what would be grossly unjust. No. But here, God has not left us in the dark as to the meaning justice, when He has taught it with untiring patience to His weak creatures, and now He asks us to judge if He has not dealt justly with us. McGarvey counted himself no greater sinner than other Christians. The Church of God is supposed to be a holy temple, a righteous people, loving justice and mercy—A fit habitation of God through the spirit, filled with God’s thoughts, full of knowledge of God, to which McGarvey has attained a reasonably high degree. And it is to such men as he, as well as all degrees below him, that this punishment, such as he believe the Bible to teach, if executed by a father against a son for any conceivable offence, would be an audacious rebellion against the goodness and mercy of love, And it is to such men, who are capable of sound judgment, that God challenges to show where He is unjust and to use their own power to test Him. Then there must be something out of joint with the theory, charging God with such principles of conduct toward His own creatures, utterly repugnant and audacious to the intelligence of man, when viewed as matters of justice. Surely, that which rebels against the common sense of man could not become a virtue in Heaven. For however frail we may be, there is an inhered sense of right in us, cultivated by our education and associations. And between that sense of right and the idea of endless misery the chasm is so vast and unfathomable that even the mind of McGarvey saw it as span less as eternity. And his judgment crumpled up into that of a defenseless child, saying I don’t know how it can be.” E. D. Slough, "Indictment Of Eternal Torment—The Self-negation of a Monstrous Doctrine," pages 218-200, 1914, church of Christ. On line at: www.robertwr.com/EternalTorment.htm
E. Petavel, D. D.: "The lamentable results of the Platonic doctrine may be seen in the theology of a Tertullian and an Augustine, –theology called orthodox, –which makes the God of love an Executioner whom innumerable victims will curse eternally. Such a doctrine is a burden even to its adherents. It has drawn from them admissions, which we are bound to record. Henry Rogers declared that 'for his part he would not be sorry to see every child die at the age of four years.' Albert Barnes admits, with a soul full of anguish that he cannot understand why there are men destined to suffer forever. 'The Gospel,' says Isaac Taylor, 'fills us with a universal sympathy which sometimes make us regret that it must be true in all its teaching.' Calvin himself cannot refrain from confessing that the decree of God concerning sinners seems to him horrible…In a word, the traditional dogma conducts to pessimism by making evil eternal. What has been the result? Extremes meeting, the doctrine of eternal suffering has led to Universalism. More or less secretly many of the partisans of the traditional dogma, unable to hold it any longer, have quitted their position, to embrac