> The assertion that God is Love on one hand and the assertion on the hand > that people who dipelase God will go to hell, is yet another example of > bamboozling.
OK, well this is hard to try to explain, but I suppose I will try. It all comes from the assumption (which I believe to be true), that there is good and there is evil. Now, if you believe (as you have said) that there is some kind of higher good or power (which I call God), then you have to believe that there is also some kind of a greater evil (which I call Satan, or the devil). One cannot exist without the other. The devil would love you to believe that he doesn't exist, but where there is a black, there is a white - where there is day there is night. Even Satanists believe in God! They steal the blessed bread and wine from our Catholic churches and mistreat it - mixing the wine with urine, offering up the bread on the "alter" of a naked woman for their black masses. If you believe we have a spirit, then it must come from somewhere and go somewhere when we die. God is good. There is no evil in him, no blackness, nor can there ever be. The opposite is true of Satan. God does not want anyone to go to hell, but anything that is not pure and "good" cannot exist with Him. After Adam and Eve seperated us from God by their sin, there was no way that we could really be good enough to come to God. In the old Jewish law, they used to place all their sins on a perfect lamb with no spots - it had to be pure white, then they would slaughter the lamb as a sacrifice in order to be purified. As you can see, this is probably not very practical today....lol So God sent his only son Jesus to earth. He was perfect and without sin (He was God). He was to be the last sacrifice for us - the Lamb of God. God placed ALL the sins ever commited and that ever will be committed onto Jesus, your sins and my sins - like Jesus had done them - and Jesus took our place - and for a short time at Calvary, God punished him, his only son for those sins. And boy did he take a lot of punishment at the cross. All we have to do is believe in Him. When God looks at us, he see through the blood of his son - and sees us as blameless. BUT...Even though we are forgiven through CHrist's blood, if a person is genuinely evil and rejects God - God is pure love and cannot recieve evil into himself (heaven). There is only Hell left (although, I, as a Catholic, believe in a purgatory where souls go who are not intrinsically evil, but they are not pure enough for Heaven. Here they must stay until they are purified through time and people praying for them etc. On the walls of the catacombes of the early Christians are inscribed things like "pray for so-and-so who died at such-a-date". If they are in Heaven, they do not need our prayers anyway, and if they are in Hell, prayers will do no good - so the early church did believe in this purgatory, or place of waiting). Sure, there are people who do not even know about God or Christianity, but live good lives, and I don't believe people like that would go to Hell. Jesus did say, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father, except through me." (by the way - I read somewhere that in the Jewish tradition, the temple or "holy of holies" where the tabernacle was, was seperated by 3 curtains. These 3 curtains were called "the Way", "the Truth", "the Life" - so the Jews knew *exactly* what Jesus meant when he said that). I know I am not perfect - as do all Christians. The church is not "a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners" (as I think Chesterton said). Sorry, for the long post, but you asked :) Joseph http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Movies - What's on at your local cinema?
