Does An All-loving God Send His Creation To Eternal Torment In Hell?

The subject of redemption by grace or works alone has been a controversial one in our class recently. We have discussed: does an all-loving God send His creation to eternal torment in Hell? This controversy has been going around our school for weeks, has been debated by Christians for thousands of years, and is now the subject of this paper.

The traditional view of Hell held by Catholicism and Protestantism is that most humanity goes straight to Hell and eternal torment. However, early church writings and the earliest New Testament manuscripts indicate something completely different. For example, the word "Hell" never appears in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament nor in the Greek of the New Testament. There are, however, four words that get translated Hell in the King James Version of the Bible. They are Sheol, Gehenna, Tartartoo, and Hades.

"For just as in Adam all people died, so also shall all in Christ be made alive!" (1 Corinthians 15:22) This verse brings up a very good point, Adam vs. Jesus. The verse says; that through Adam we all became sinners and all died. Also in the verse it says through Christ we all become righteous and all lived. If people have to accept and believe in Him; they are pretty much saying what Adam did was more important than what Jesus did on the cross. Because you don’t have to believe in Adam to become a sinner.

The concept of eternal punishment for the vast majority of God’s human creatures has no basis in the Jewish Bible, which Jesus called, "the Scriptures." The idea of "Hell" is actually Greek mythology. "Hades" is, of course, Greek Paganism’s torture chamber. Strabo said that, "Plato and the Brahmins of India invented fables concerning the future judgment of Hell." (Hades) (found at www.tentmaker.org)

I think deep down in people’s hearts they believe that all people go to Heaven because if they truly did believe that people go to Hell, they would be doing more about it. How can people go to the movies, how can they sleep at night, and how can people go on with their daily lives knowing that people go to such a horrible place as Hell. Obviously, a huge subject like this can have, and has had, many books written about it. On the surface believing in Christ as the ticket to Heaven seems true. But when you go beyond the surface, and begin to really study this truth, you realize Jesus is Lord of all. That is why I believe that redemption is not by our good deeds, but Jesus’ great deed and his blood on the cross that saves all mankind.  (Joe Klein)