Since I’m fairly new to the EU debate, I’m wondering what your thoughts are on these questions…
Do you believe unsaved people go to hell to be purged of sins?
Do the unsaved go to suffer for their wrongs?
Do the unsaved go to hell?
Do you believe hell even exists?
Is hell torment-less and more like a re-education on proper behavior?
I need your synopsis on hell.
Thanks
Good questions, I’ll give you 2 cents worth 
A qualified yes. I don’t believe hell takes away sin or pays for it in any way, only Christ does that. However, I do believe hell is a place where God sustains people & works by the Holy Spirit to bring people (by intense methods akin to purging iron ore of it’s impurities!) to understand their sin & repent of it.
Depends what you mean by “for”… Because they have sinned (& rejected Christ) they suffer. They don’t make-up for their wrongs, or save themselves, by just suffering for awhile.
Yes, but they also come back out again when they repent.
Yes, I think it’s the sad reality (for a time) of our rejection of God.
I think from the perspective of the person experiencing it, it will feel like torment/punishment, however, afterwards when they look back, they will realise it was educative discipline.
An intensely unpleasant place resulting from our rejection of God, where God works patiently to bring about repentance of all.
That funny Alex how our views differ so much from each other 
No I do not, I believe that there is a judgment on the wicked, but it is not in a place called hell, it is outside the New Jerusalem (figuratively of course). I believe there will be a physical Kingdom on Earth and that the evil will not inherit that Kingdom, the result will be the wicked cast away from God’s presence for a season.
I believe the unsaved experience ‘the lake of divine fire’ and are purged of all darkness, but I would not say this is a physical purging, more like a spiritual one (kinda like the purging Christians go through, a.k.a. dying to self)
All will be judged according to their wrongs, but Jesus paid the penalty of sin & saved us from sin (trust me there is a difference). Death was the penalty of sin, and Jesus tasted death for everyone.
The unsaved go to the grave, then they are judged just like the rest of us at the Great Judgment.
The passages that speak of torment all use the word ‘touch-stone’( a rock used to test precious metals). So a better interpretation of those passages (i.e. Revelation 14) would be that they speak of testing not torment. So yes it is like the tests Christians go through in this life.
I don’t believe in hell, I believe in the lake of fire, a place of judgment. It is being tossed into the Consuming Fire that is God. At first it will hurt, but just as the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost as tongues of fire, bring with him the fruits of justness (Galatians 5:22), so will this divine fire produce repentance and fruit worthy of repentance. Remember judgment is to teach justness, and when God’s judgments are in the earth (the place where I think physically they will happen), the wickedness of the wicked will cease to be and only what is of Heaven will exist.
I hope not
I agree.
What is the place called?
I agree with all of that, but isn’t the traditional word for the place where “the wicked cast away from God’s presence” called hell?
I agree, although I suspect it will also involve the physical (because the people will have been resurrected by then?).
I agree.
I agree.
I agree.
I agree, except I’m still puzzled about why you don’t call the “lake of fire, a place of judgment” hell?
I would assume because death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, it’s important not to conflate them.
Doesn’t that depend on if Hades & Hell are interchangeable terms? If they are then you’re obviously right, however, in my mind I thought Hades/Sheol/the-grave only existed between now & Judgment Day? i.e. Hell appears after that?? (I’m thinking on my feet here, and it’s embarrassing that I can’t remember these details 
I really need to read TEU again!)
I didn’t mean to contradict eveyrthing, you and I Alex are probably just looking at the same thing from different points-of-view (something that always lead my dad and I to clash heads, until we finally stop and say “Oh wait we’re talking about the same thing!”)
We could definitely say that the great after-life punishment is hell, but as Nottirbd pointed out Hades and Death are thrown into the Lake of Fire. That is why I refrain from using the word. I get the point of keeping the word, however, since people are so easily confused when this new idea of the Reconciliation of all people. Normally whenever I speak to someone about the gospel I talk about how everyone must answer for every act they do and word they speak (this is quite sobering if people are honest with themselves). The measuring line of judgment is love, how short do we fall of it? Love God, love others. I look at it this way, the judgment that Jesus pronounces in John 3:18-20 is pretty much what the unsaved go through,
**“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” **
Do you see what the judgment is? It is that the wicked do not come to the Light, they hurt themselves by staying in the darkness. The Lake of Fire destroys all darkness.
that’s what I expect is happening
I totally agree with your views on judgment & the Lake of Fire. My concern is that non-EUers think we just throw out hell (& therefore all judgement!). I’ll ponder the pros/cons of the use of the word “hell” for a few days…
I hope we can catch up one day for a drink (which continent are you on? Are u on FB?), I think it would be great fun 
I do not believe in Hell, ECT. Paul said that Jesus gave Himself for ous sins to rescue us from “this present evil age”. In “this present evil age” people are separated from God, bound in sin and death, oppressed by evil from within and without. People exist in this state, caught in this evil, until they are rescued, saved, delivered. When people die physically having not yet been saved, they come into the full reality of this present evil age, experiencing fully the pervasiveness of evil, the full reality of thier own evil and the evil they are in bondage to. They experience this bondage until they cry out to God and are saved, delivered, set free, translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.
I also believe that we shall all face judgment, “all” as in everyone, believer and unbeliever alike. And judgment can be terrible as we face the absolute truth concerning out lives. Frankly, the fire of truth will burn the hell out of us! Depending on how we’ve lived our lives, this could be unbearable. If we’ve given our lives over to selfishness, then we might find that most of what we’ve given our lives to is burnt up, revealed to be worthless, nothing but hay and stubble. There will be plenty of weeping and grinding of teeth. In fact, most of the passages on judgment are spoken to the children of God, warning us to live right so that we will not be ashamed when all in made known.
Sherman, what is your take on the severe punishment passages like those in Revelation. I’m still fuzzy on folks who say they don’t believe in any hell and yet there are lots of clear, harsh passages that talk about severe punishment such as the wrath of the lamb on the wicked. How do you interpret, for example, Rev. 14:9ff which is speaking only of those who take the mark, not believers:
9 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, 10 they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever.
also in Rev. 20:
**10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. **
I believe in UR and I also believe everyone will be salted with fire, but there seems to be a very specific punishment for those who reject messiah, for the “wicked” where God’s wrath is poured out on them and they are thrown in the lake of fire. How do you interpret this?
Chris
Haha I’m in the US of A. And yes I am on facebook, though I think we are already friends (my real name is Daniel Bussey, I wrote the “God, the Father of all” article). Sadly I think you live pretty far away, is that correct?