He did, however, send me what is perhaps the greatest letter I have ever received. The programme was examining religious belief among politicians and I sent Norman a letter asking if he believed in a literal hell.
His reply, beautiful in its brevity, was this: “Dear Liddle. I do not know if Hell exists. But if it does, I trust that you will burn in it for eternity.”
Oh, to have another Tebbit now.
Sadly missed. The quality of the politicians we have now is so depressingly awful…
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Oh, Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.
Hell does exist btw.
Traditionally, the “problem of evil” is one of those midwit arguments against God.
But they got it back to front.
What we’ve seen in just the last few years proves the existence of Satanic evil as a hideously powerful force in our world.
There’s no other, plausible, way to explain why a society would start chemically and physically castrating its children, encouraging girls to cut off their breasts and sending boys to school in “drag”. This is demonic. Hell rejoices when a child is corrupted, or else why would our friend Jesus have warned them about millstones?
So we know Evil exists, and that it’s a personal force bent on the destruction of our souls. The existence of Evil also proves the existence of Good. God is, by definition, what is Good. We must follow His standing orders until further notice. QED.
This was revealed to me in a dream.
“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Oh, Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.”
Very much the same thing happened to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Tebbitt! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
A merciful God has an eternal fire to burn the souls of those who refuse to repent even after they are shown heaven and hell and Judgement Day – BUT while the fire is eternal each unrepentant soul is consumed in an instant.
Christianity believes in a merciful God, not a vengeful one – there is no Prometheus having his (? liver) being pecked by an eagle every day.
John – And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
@ Steve
You are assuming that, firstly, the translation from which you quote is a perfect translation from Hebrew/Aramaic into Greek and from that into English and secondly that “eternal punishment” differs from my description.
Neither of us will know which is correct until we die but my opinion is less far-fetched in that it requires fewer unproven personal assumptions than yours.
Long time since I looked at this but it is something along the lines of :
St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas argue that evil is a result of God granting humans Free Will.
As such Evil is not a ‘thing’ in its own right but the result of wrong ( morally bad ) choices or abuse of their own cognitive ability.
As such people go to Hell, but it is a Hell of their own making.
This is a Western slant on the idea of Evil and is at odd with Eastern ideass that the devil and thus Hell are the antithesis of God and Heaven. Someone who embraces Jesus and makes ‘good’ choices or deeds will go to Heaven.
John – but my opinion is less far-fetched in that it requires fewer unproven personal assumptions than yours.
My opinion is that Jesus was telling the truth when he told us about Hell, a subject he spoke of often.
Jesus doesn’t give us any reason to think Hell is a termination of suffering, but a place where their worm does not die and the fire is never quenched, and where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Like London.
@ Steve,
just off the top of my head I associate “weeping and gnashing of teeth” with “cast into the outer darkness”
The weeping and gnashing of teeth is a result of being cast out
Luther “Do they even have a hell?”
Heydrich “They do now, we provide it.”
Luther “Do they even have a hell?”
Heydrich “They do now, we provide it.”
John – the biblical context is Matthew 13. I prefer the King James translation, not for accuracy, but because it’s the English language at its most scintillating and sublime:
The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth
The more accurate translations make it even clearer that the wailing, gnashing is to take place in the lake of fire (“in this place”)
Of course, nobody is burning in Hell right now, our King, Jesus, has not yet returned in glory to judge the living and the dead.
But it’s in the post. Never doubt it. I find as I get older and approach my own death that the burden of my sins gets heavier. They weigh down the soul, which is why Anubis cynocephalactically weighed human hearts on a scale, against a feather. All the rotten things I’ve done, all the lies I’ve told, all the times I should have acted and did not. How can a man like me hope to be clean enough to enter the kingdom of Heaven? Only through Christ’s forgiveness, because it’s certainly something I could never “deserve”. He will forgive us if we are truly remorseful, but we have to ask. Or beg. Praying is just begging.
“We all have it coming, kid.” – Clint Eastwood
john77 said:
“each unrepentant soul is consumed in an instant”
Jesus is pretty definite that we will feel the pain across all time. Luke 16:23-24
“In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham from afar, with Lazarus by his side. So he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. For I am in agony in this fire.’”
And Abraham says that it is right that the sinner should suffer, and that he is going to suffer those agonies for all time, and know it for all time, because:
“a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that even those who wish cannot cross from here to you, nor can anyone cross from there to us”
FFS, who let the god botherers take over this blog?
FFS, who let the god botherers take over this blog?
Nemo inquisitionem Anglicam expectat. ✝
Jim @ 10.14, there are some excellent, reasoned, cogent arguments posted here everyday, yet once in a while a topic comes along which gives the believers an opportunity to show their
sanctimonybrainwashing and lecture the rest of us that we’re all sinners.I don’t mind that there might be a God, I just wish they’d make up their minds which one it is so we know who to pray to.
As Ricky Gervais said of the devout, ‘there are 3000 Gods and you don’t believe in 2999. I only don’t believe in one more God than you’.
Hell is other people.
SirTerryP had it right in Eric when he had the Chief Devil advising his minions to learn from humans who are far better at inventing nastiness.
As Ricky Gervais said
Lol
@ Adolff
By definition of God a logician (or mathematician) can only believe there is one – even Mohammed believed in the same God as Peter, James and Paul: he just believed different things about him.
If you don’t want “God-botherers” don’t log on to posts about theology: I have umpteen other opportunities to argue with Steve.
Follow-up – anyone who believes the premises that lead up to “there is no God but Richard Dawkins” invites contempt. One of the few things where I agree with Steve
“If God wishes to stop evil, but is unable to do so, he is not omnipotent.
If he can stop evil, but wishes not to do so, he is not benevolent.
If he can stop evil, and chooses to do do, then whence comes evil today?
If he can neither stop evil, or wishes to do so, then why call him God?”
“If God is omnipotent, can he create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?”
Schoolboy metaphysics, but all it tells us is that ‘omnipotent’ is not a well-defined term.