Does hell exist?

uh matthew chapter 25 reveals how the son of man will come in all his glory surrounded by the holy angels and will divide the nations of the world as a shepherd divideth his sheep from his goats the sheep will go to heaven the goats are destined for hell at the place of everlasting fire and eternal punishment designed by god for satan and his demons does hell exist liz weston you say yes the pope pope benedict actually the soon to be ex-pope said that it is a physical place of burning and suffering and torment and punishment for for sinners you believe in some sense it does exist absolutely it definitely exists yeah whether it's physical like this room we're sitting in today is a a matter we don't know it's a moot point yeah but it definitely exists yes what what why why does it exist because there is definitely evil in this universe and to i believe in a god um who is loving and just and for there to not be a hell where evil can be punished um it is impossible so um the only way to avoid hell is what is to accept jesus as your savior and accept his death on the cross as payment for your personal sins so those are the terms and conditions yeah if you if you accept jesus you you can avoid hell did god create hell yeah he created everything so he he must have created hell as the place he created the means of torture um it's a punishment for evil i think we'd all agree that it wouldn't be a loving and just god if there was no punishment if you could do anything you wanted to and we've been hearing some horrible things this morning about torturing um pensioners and people in care and we all get this sense of moral outrage that such things can happen and god would not be loving and just if he allowed that to go unpunished uh muhammad you believe obviously the in the quran what the quran says it's quite specific about hell it talks about boiling water and smoke and searing wind the fire of hell is fueled by the bodies of the condemned who receive new skins to burn as soon as the old ones are burned and there are various uh pretty gruesome punishments it's all there not fun it's it's it's reality is it one of the things that we've lost i think in in recent times in this kind of um post-industrial and particularly in the 20th century is is the concept of what's unseen we've become very rationalistic and one of the things that religion particularly does is keeps that door open to to issues of the spiritual realm and different realms of existence the prophet muhammad peace be upon him likened the realm of the unseen to as if somebody dipped their finger into an ocean and having taken your finger out the water that clings to the finger is the the experience the scene well according to liz you're gonna need all the water you can get because you're not but but there's a clear difference between the islamic view of hell and the christian view of hell as muslims we don't believe that um hell is a place of eternal damnation of uh of fire and brimstone of a place where you that sounds pretty nasty right i'm not i'm not saying there aren't not nice things that happen in hell but what i'm saying is that from the islamic theological perspective and this is the islamic narrative it's somewhere where people would go essentially it's like a penitentiary you would go you would you would serve out a term there you would become spiritually cleansed and then you move to a place of final abode but it's certainly and it's and it's far more i think the model that islam have is is i think far more um inclusive far more understanding more inclusive hell that's great yeah listen but everybody forgets one question maybe for both of you this is the thing i don't get say you accept jesus into your life and you go to in your terms right and you you go to heaven but some people that you love very much and very much want to be with are in hell is not being in heaven then going to be a torment no it won't because i will be with jesus no but the people that you love but the person i love the most is jesus but what about the people that you love in your life i don't love them as much as i love jesus so do you become insensible and uncaring about them if they're in hell do you say what what the hell my my no i don't say that can you not see that being in heaven would then be a torment no i can't see that because when i'm here i love the risk option the islamic deal isn't it well there we go yeah is there a child is there a chance they'll get out of hell no it's it's um definitely there's so you stop caring about those that you love no you don't stop coming i care about them now the people i care about now i tell about jesus now because i know that when they die it's too late so you'll stop caring i don't stop caring they'll be awful for you thinking about them no because it won't be off of me thinking about them i'll be so happy where i am but they'll be miserable but they have chosen that path that's their choice i think it's i think okay i don't become the audience and i'll come to you yes sir back there it seems to me very much that religion always reflects what man wants so for example if you think you've done good or you think other people have done good then they're going to go to heaven if you think someone's done bad then they're going to go to hell like i i hear a lot of people saying well i i believe in hell because there's evil and people can't accept that hitler and mao aren't going straight to hell and the problem is when when when you start to teach your children about a place where they will burn or the people they love will burn for the rest of eternity you are then teaching someone a principle that really is quite damaging to them hello um i'm not religious so whether there's a hell spiritually doesn't really concern me but what i can say is how can we say that there's not as a hell on earth with the holocaust and when it comes to like hiv aids and things like that there are plenty of glimpses of health yeah that's a very good point yeah i'd just like to add that there's been a couple of points so um and and i think it's important to kind of understand that all religions don't have the same perspectives and you know um and uh so in terms of the seek perspective um it's not life isn't seen as a linear process it's not that you're born and you die and there's an end it's a cyclic process so there's a there's an unlimited uh number of lives that you may go through um and and hell is is considered to be more of a state of mind a state of being that you may experience while you uh live here on this earth which is a very short amount of time and this and the suffering that you experience um through your through your lives is is the process of um somebody reference kind of spiritual regeneration um so it's not it's not um it's not that there's a there's an end point necessarily um a constant yeah is it there's a constant cycle chris hugdon uh of course you believe that unless they embrace jesus they're there for them they're for hell well i think what we've got to do is is ask the question what are the grounds on which people are received by jesus into his great future that he that he's there waiting to welcome us in you need to listen to this very closely and it seems to me in the bible as a whole you have the the way that abraham was received through faith and paul after jesus says that's the way through faith in what god has done and it seems to me that uh if that is the pattern that abraham believed god and it was reckoned that he was in the right with god then those who live according to god's way but see it's a gift it's grace through jesus through jesus uh and there are many people who in the in in the annals of mission history hear about jesus and said i always knew that i never knew his name that there will be people i'm sure who will represent the faith of abraham and his receiving it of grace it's not to do with anything we've done because we're all under the same condemnation that's what the scripture so we can do that we can do it altruistic as we like to do the wonderful things that elaine did we heard about earlier on we can do good we can help people and if we don't accept jesus liz i'm horrified to tell and the great news i've got for you here and the people watching is there is no such place as hell hell does not exist wait a minute let him finish what i think is and what i think is that hell is a human construct of social control it was invented by people it was invented by people to terrorize their citizenry i i did an exercise and this is an absolutely true i did an exercise with a group of professionals a few years ago and we started off and we said build your paradise island roll around in teams build your paradise island and they each produce five teams their paradise island one team slap in the middle of their island was a prison so i think that's really important because what i think that we use health for is exclusion when you go to the catholic faith and what how does the catholics define how the roman catholic church defines hell as exclusion for the presence of god we've heard about the plymouth brethren we exclude people from our communion the exclusion is a key bit what is that about for exclusion from the presence of god is that a reality well because the true nature of god is awesome love and an awesome mercy yeah so to be excluded from awesome mercy from all time would be terrible it's a physical experience well it's a physical experience but but to to emphasize the eternal dimension seems to me to run away from things that we know about you can be in church loving jesus and let your brothers and sisters be shot to pieces by the military dictatorship you can be in church loving jesus and let people go to the prison camps in srebrenica and in auschwitz and that's not good enough there are glimpses of hell today an abuse victim whose pope has failed them systemically and is going to go and get replaced by a bunch of cardinals who have failed them systemically on child abuse is living through a living hell systemically and in that sense there's a middle class those those things you're talking about they are indeed not meant to be part of this world that's why you're calling them living hell they're not meant to be part and it's the consequence of sin and it's the consequence of sin that we have things like that unless you don't but hell provides help provides i mean in that sense of you know jesus as a contract lawyer do me a deal in church and i'll sit in church whilst the world suffers ain't good enough listen i know you you came in the hands about that and you're desperate i am absolutely i'm disgusted by lizzy's interpretation this is just glorified as we know other great dictators such as hitler you are projecting your views and beliefs and you're saying if you don't stick to that and go with me on it then you're going to hell how dare you sit there and and put these profanities into this she knows arena she's using that language she is i'll tell you let's come back in a minute because other hands we're not yes sir quick one i think i the problem that i have with health is the condition for um entering it um as you said um it's about accepting jesus christ as your lord and savior and there are plenty of people who do not accept jesus christ as their lord and savior that are good people and it seems unfair that no you could exactly um it seems unfair that you can live your whole life doing bad things and still get into heaven simply because you accept jesus christ i accept and understand peter's professional competency but i would rather believe the words of jesus about the future and what else the one has to do about it than the word the words of peter um jesus is the one who speaks most about uh the kingdom of god that is coming the new heavenly new earth where justice and righteousness will be so gandhi is getting tortured right now no i'm what i'm saying jesus christ it is not up to us it is not first of all it's not up to us secondly i think you've got to look at the other other way around on this you hear many people when they've been victims of terrible injustice terrible wrongdoing you know say we must have justice done and you know that becomes uh not only through the courts but it becomes violence it becomes all sorts of things the lord says vengeance is mine i will repay says the lord in other words if you remove the possibility that there is any final you know sorting out then you do leave it all down to the the justice that people would seek to meet out in this life and none of us is good good enough your group is anglican mainstream right there was a there was there was a report there was an email sent to alan wilson the bishop of buckingham who's been very supportive of gay marriage from from a member of your group saying he's beyond reach give him up to satan for sifting is that what you mean well it's not that's not necessarily from a member of our group that's somebody who has really real concerns about those issues reported as a member of your group well that's a maybe a misreport um the the point is that the scripture tells us that jesus says there's a new world coming and he's waiting for us there right so it's the good news make the point kevin made a reference to the exclusive presbyter now i was brought up in this set frankly i left i'd rather take the risk of going to hell than going back into that kind of sect the preaching hell and damnation i think it's very difficult for us to determine if there is a hell as everyone here in this discussion we're still alive yeah not wrong haven't been to the afterlife but i think as a christian i believe that jesus christ rose from the dead and if jesus christ did rest in the dead he's the only person in humankind to experience afterlife therefore i trust his his testimony yeah and i find it totally nonsensical that we can um define god as both omnipotent and nominally benevolent how can we have an all loving god who in his powerful nature creates a hell yeah i think that i don't think enough attention is really given to um more indic perspectives of of life after death first of all we're defining life as something that is is current and and only of this world that's that's just an assumption that we've made based on our uh our kind of um uh more christian perspective i'm not saying one is better than the other all i'm saying is that there's other there's there are other um thoughts thoughts out there and um that actually uh from the seat perspective is that actually we're spiritual beings and similar to the analogy of um say somebody mentioned hitler that we are uh breathing the we still breathe the air of hitler and we share that i kind of like moe's idea that you know if you do wrong and you go there there's a there's a sort of there's an appeal system you pay your juice you pay your changes you're you're chris you're saying that you know that's it yeah well that's there ain't no way out yeah it's it's it's a one-time yeah final european culture justice not nothing but anything at the importance of peterborough the important point that chris was making is that god doesn't want people to go there he the reason he sent jesus is so that we don't have to go what if you misbehave in heaven if you're in heaven there is there is no synonym well what's important is that it it challenges people yeah to to live in a better way in the society that we have while we're in this in this in this life you don't need god and jesus for that you need jean paul jean-paul who said hell is other people and he and he also and he also said we are condemned to be free and that's what you need you need in in our one existence to be free to make good choices you don't need help ladybug there hello hi um it's quite hard to believe that hell's not a religious device to control people when in the middle ages people could pay to have their sins taken away from them that that happened that happened because people did not properly understand uh the work of jesus christ uh coming to us to to bear our sin for us you made the point nicky about sort of deathbed conversion that's a very important part of the good friday story which we're coming up to is that the thief on the cross said lord remember me when you come in your kingdom and that thief was jesus said today you'll be with me in paradise that is the immense understandable grace and mercy and immense love of god we haven't got a lot of time is it only muslims in in heaven and and whatever not at all not at all but one one of the things from the islamic tradition is that um there has been a chain of revelations come through different prophets and messages and the quran and the prophet muhammad peace be upon him are the final part of that jigsaw puzzle but not the whole jigsaw puzzle all right phew there we are thank you all very much for taking part as ever debates continue online and on twitter next week said albans thanks to everybody here have a heavenly sunday

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Id: 6IQnh5TmI3w

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/KingHarald1066]

It both amazes and terrifies me that there are religious people who are willing to love someone who is made up more than they love there own families and friends who are actually there for them and who actually care about them.

[u/[deleted]]

Why does he ask the woman a question and then not let her speak?! She can't get two words out! I'm actually more interested in what she has to say just because she wasn't allowed to talk. (Still agree with you though).