You crack me up 
Love you my friend 
I REALLY DO 
O.K. so, how do you people who believe in eternal torture in fire, how do you tuck your children in at night and explain to them that God loves you but if you don’t love Him He is going to torture you in fire, not for the length of your favorite video, not for the length of a day, not even for the length of a year but it will be unending. Mommy and Daddy will be in heaven while you writhe in unimaginable suffering because this is what God does to those who don’t love Him.
So how do you explain to your children about God’s love? Do you tell them the truth that you love your children more than God does and you would never harm your children even if they don’t love you?
There has to come a time when you tell them the truth, don’t you think?
This is not sarcasm. It is letting those who believe in eternal torment come to grips with their beliefs. If they are honest with themselves they have to tell their children these things. After all, we wouldn’t want to sugar coat something so serious as a loving God torturing people for billions and billions and billions and billions of years without end, those who do not love Him, now would we?
And if your children only love Him to escape such a fate, what kind of hypocritical love is that?
Yep. People who say that they believe in Hell aren’t remotely serious. If they were, they would be catatonic.
Actually, not only do I believe in it - I actually passed though it. Haven’t you been to Hell, Michigan? They even have a website at gotohellmi.com/
or
No, but I did pass Gas in Oregon.
(I have a town limit sign saved somewhere. Gas, Oregon)
Actually, not only do I believe in it - I actually passed though it. Haven’t you been to Hell, Michigan?
I’ve been there. Now when someone tells me to go to Hell, I tell them I’ve already been there.
As a child, camping out, I would ask my friends as we sat around the campfire and looking into it: “How can God burn people in fire for e–t--e–r--n–i--t–y?” No one would say a word. But it always bugged me. As I grew up and started visiting hell-fire churches, it was psychologically horrifying. It’s like the people that attend those churches do so for the thrill of having the begeebies scared out of them. Kind of like thrill seekers. I was so glad to leave that behind and find out about God’s love and plan for all mankind.
I truly understand!
That is indeed the seat of a LOT of mental health concerns many Christians who subscribe to it suffer; consequently, I can understand certain over-the-top reactions by some supposed non-believers.
Well, I think this statement is quite extreme and unrealistic. I genuinely believed in eternal torment in hell from the time I was 10 years old until I was 37. And I was totally serious and not catatonic. To this very day, I have close Christians friends and siblings who genuinely believe in ET and are not catatonic.
How it did affect me as a teenager, is that I was deeply concerned about friends who hadn’t “accepted Christ” because I thought they would be in hell forever if they failed to do so. I thought that anyone who taught that there was no eternal suffering in hell, did not believe the Bible, and were heretics. After all, we read in Revelation 20:10
and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
And just in case someone thinks that applies only to the devil, the beast, and the false prophet, John writes 5 verses later in Revelation 20:15
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
There you have it! If you don’t believe in eternal torment, you don’t believe the Bible!
Together with another Christian, I recall passing out “gospel tracts” in the town in which I attended high school, hoping that some of them would be led to “say the sinner’s prayer” and escape hell. At that time I had no concept that Jesus’ death and resurrection was to save us from our sinful selves to serve Christ in righteousness; it was just a matter of escaping hell.
I recall, as a teenager, when working as a section man for the Canadian National Railway, I used to go outside the bunkhouse and sit and read my Bible. One day when I did so, it started to sprinkle, but I stayed out and read. I happened to glance up toward the bunkhouse, and I noticed our aboriginal foreman looking at me out the window and laughing. I thought, "I’ve got to talk to this man about ‘accepting Christ’ or he’s going to suffer in hell forever. But I put it off. The following Friday, he jumped into his canoe and began to paddle home. I heard the next day, that he had drowned. I felt terribly guilty of my failure to witness to him, and felt responsible for his eternal state of suffering in hell. Though I wasn’t catatonic, I was overcome with guilt and shame.
There’s your catatonia http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g374/Paidion9/Emoticons/rotflmao.gif I’m only joking Paidion! 
On a more serious note… the guilt and shame of religious control is a curse and I’m glad I’ve been set free from it too.
I am embarrassed
I have love for those who like me need love. 
“To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can be aware of only in the results; for our consciousness is to the extent of our being but as the flame of the volcano to the world-gulf whence it issues: in the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness. With his holy influence, with his own presence, the one thing for which most earnestly we cry, he may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that he is answering our request–has answered it, and is visiting his child.”
–from George MacDonald’s “Man’s Difficulty Concerned Prayer”, in his second volume of Unspoken Sermons
Using MacDonald’s analogy above, I have no doubt that a great many people “believe” in Hell in their consciousness, with “the flame of the volcano”. I deny, however, that anyone believes in Hell behind his consciousness, within “the world-gulf” from which issues the volcano’s comparatively little flame.
Every time (with one exception) I’ve spoken of Hell with a “believer” in it, it swiftly became apparent that he believed in Hell only for other people. Certainly not for himself. Hell was regarded as a post-mortem proving of himself as right plus sweet vengeance on those who dared to disagree with his beliefs. This is so obviously juvenile and solipsistic that I must be forgiven for thinking that all these people have never given serious thought to Hell. (Treating Hell as a debating topic and studying-up on the bullet points that “prove” Hell, of course, is miles away from serious thought.)
The one exception to the above paragraph was a sensitive Assemblies of God woman who worried about herself going to Hell, but even then her worry could not have sunk very deep. After all, she got in a car every day. If a person really and deeply believed that Hell might await him at the moment of his death, he would not dare do anything the least bit dangerous. After all, if I thought that on my way to the grocery store, Soviets might nab me and subject me to all the horrors of the gulag, I would stay home and order pizza instead! And that is to avoid finite and temporary torments. If anyone believed that driving to the grocery store ran the risk of infinite and never-ending torments, he’d throw his car keys away.
In contrast to all of the above, we have a whole host of martyrs who went to their physical deaths joyful and unafraid. They truly and deeply believed that death meant Heaven for them. Their actions proved the sincerity of their belief in Heaven. I’ve never heard of someone whose actions showed that he just as truly and deeply believed in Hell. I suppose such a person might have existed, but he would scream himself hoarse and then fall into catatonia.
In short, actions speak louder than words. 
Addendum:
Basically Hell is a component in an intellectual construct that many people toy with in their minds. Nobody believes in Hell in the same way that I believe that I love my daughter, that my mother loves me, that the sky is blue, etc.
Amen to that davo! It is a wonderful thing to be set free!
I strongly disagree with this statement. I wish I knew how to express just how strongly!
There are millions of people who are 100% confident that most people will end up in hell suffering there for eternity. I know that when I believed in eternal torment for most people, I believed it just as surely as I believed the sky is blue, etc.—even more surely, since the sky isn’t always blue.
Would not you say that it (the idea of hell) would be contingent on the upbringing of a person? Thus both views, IMHO may be valid! And , if we look at our place (in a theological sense) today, could we not be a part of something that would change that view? Just an observation
Could well be! That view was changed in me.
As an adult, I came into a group that believed in the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God. But initially, I didn’t know that they held that belief. My first exposure to it was hearing a brother who at the group’s summer camp, casually said at the dinner table, “I never could believe in an eternal hell.” I WAS SHOCKED! I asked myself, “What have I gotten myself into? I have gotten myself into a cult!” I walked around those camp grounds deeply disturbed.Then, to my amazement, I felt God speaking to my heart (or “mind” if you prefer). I thought He said, “Relax. All will become clear.” So I was able to relax, and enjoy the rest of the camp. When I got home, to my amazement, wherever I turned in my Bible, I seemed to see statements that affirmed the reconciliation of all people to God. On that basis I came to accept ultimate reconciliation of all, as true. It was a total paradigm change for me! And a very sudden one.
1 Timothy 4:10 says “God is the Saviour of all mankind, especially them that believe.”
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Gal.6:10)
2Ti_4:13 When you come, bring the traveling cloak which I left in Troas with Carpus, and the scrolls, especially the vellums."
This 9 minute Martin Zender video comments on the verses above:
The Special Salvation of Believers
youtube.com/watch?v=ExnzRBj9_Yc