Since you live in the West, as I, you grew up with the concept of God which went something like this: God is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, All-wise, All-knowing, All-Powerful, Creator, unchangeable, unmovable, and Vengeful. Hating mankind's sins and holding for eternal punishment the fires of Hell and unimaginable suffering for the humans who don't measure up to His standards. He is vengeful, unaccepting of anything other than holy perfection, punishing, distant, separated from us humans, and unapproachable and unable to look upon sin. I could go on and on about this OMNI-GOD, OR "OGRE GOD" as some refer to him as, but I won't. What I have just described to you , and you can check it out on the Internet or in books, is the God of the Greeks touted by Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and other ancient philosophers such as Kant, Descartes, and other famous Greeks. So do YOUR homework if you doubt what I say here. That god out of the minds of the pagan philosophers simply DOES NOT EXIST.
What is missing in the description above? Well for one thing that god is totally one who wants and needs to be SERVED, WORSHIPED, PRAISED, PATRONIZED, PANDERED TO, and one who is the unknowable Potentate. If he existed at all, he is there to be exalted from vainglorious self seeking exultation. Wait!!! He does NOT exist!!
And that is GOOD NEWS!!! So what is God like? Who is God? How is God? Now we get to the really good part.
God is and has forever been , FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT in a LOVE Relationship. He is the ONE Triune God. He is love and He loves you and me. He accepts us and LIKES us. He does not always approve everything we do. He is the one in Gen.1:26-27 who said let us make man in our image and likeness. God had never experienced humanness and by creating humans now would be able to adopt mankind into His life and love forever made possible by the Incarnation and life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. God wanted to share the Holy relationship He had had within the Trinity with now His human family. God simply loved all of His creation BEFORE anything was ever created and wanted to live with all of us forever.
There are several powerful scriptures that make this plain. Notice: II Tim.1:9, God saved us BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. Eph.1:4-7, "He chose us in Him to be blameless IN HIS SIGHT, (not ours), adopted, Included, and predetermined it so IN Jesus according to His pleasure and His will."
We read Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world, in Rev.13:8. The all time Saviour IN PERPETUITY. God has always had relationship with His family, with Him, in the forefront of His thinking since He devised the plan originally. He gives us LIFE in His Son forever and assures our being with Him and IN Him.
Finally, in Ephesians 2:6-9, we read that God IN Christ has taken all of humanity and raised all of us up with Jesus and seated us all at the right hand of the Father in the Heavenly Realms. Quite different from the Ogre God of the pagans. ( Who does NOT exist.)
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit want to live in RELATIONSHIP based on LOVE with all of their family FOREVER. YOU ARE INCLUDED. You are Adopted. You are loved, You are wanted, You are the child God has always wanted since before time began.. Can you believe this or are you still cowering under the false concept of the Ogre, Pagan , nameless, Omni God who really doesn't like you and only loves you when you PERFORM to His standard?
Lord, Help our darkened minds to See who YOU really are and who we really are in You.
Jesus, Light of the World, come and shine upon us all and let us see. ( John 8:12).
God bless all,
Pastor Paul Kurts
www.newlifewcg.org
Madison, AL
256-468-8081
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5 comments:
Good post, and much needed! Not wild about the title, but it's as true a statement as one can make.
Good one, Paul! Your title is shocking, but I think we can say that it is literally true. The one thing that the Triune God damns to the fires of hell is the lie that he has not loved and accepted humanity.
What else can be said of anyhthing that is a LIE or false? The only thing is that it MUST be Obliterated or extinguished, or removed, or removed. Scripture allows us to use the term , Damn something to none existence , or Hell, when the elements require such action.
Gof will damn all lies into non existence in His time and only truth and righteousness will remain.
Thank you Father that you can damn the lie into non influence.
Pastor Paul.
sorry for the typos.
Paul
You make some excellent points to show that there can be no Hell, not if what Jesus originally taught about God is true!
I've actually written an entire book on this topic--Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There's No Such Place As Hell, (for anyone interested, you can get a free ecopy of Did Jesus Believe in Hell?, one of the most compelling chapters in my book at www.thereisnohell.com), but if I may, I'd just like to share one of the points made in my book to add to the many good points you've made--that there's substantial evidence contained in the gospels to show that Jesus opposed the idea of Hell.
For example, in Luke 9:51-56, is a story about his great disappointment with his disciples when they actually suggested imploring God to rain FIRE on a village just because they had rejected him. His response: "You don't know what spirit is inspiring this kind of talk!" Presumably, it was NOT the Holy Spirit. He went on, trying to explain how he had come to save, heal and relieve suffering, not be the CAUSE of it.
So it only stands to reason that this same Jesus, who was appalled at the very idea of burning a few people, for a few horrific minutes until they were dead, could never, ever burn BILLIONS of people for an ETERNITY!
True, there are a few statements that made their way into the copies of copies of copies of the gospel texts which place “Hell” on Jesus’ lips, but these adulterations came along many decades after his death, most likely due to the Church filling up with Greeks who imported their belief in Hades with them when they converted.
Bear in mind that the historical Protestant doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures applies only to the original autographs, not the copies. But sadly, the interpolations that made their way into those copies have provided a convenient excuse for a lot of people to get around following Jesus’ real message.
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