Mormon~JW:How does the idea of a literal place of eternal torment, invalidate the "love" of the Father?

You asked and I quote:

"How does the idea of a literal place of eternal torment, invalidate the "love" of the Father?"

It does on MANY levels, but I'll just give you two.

# 1)

It's a flat out, bold faced and blattant God dishonoring LIE which VIOLATES the following principals of Scripture:

(A) Leviticus 19:12:

"And YOU must not swear in my name to A LIE, so that you do PROFANE the name of your God. I am Jehovah"

(B) 1 Corinthians 13:4, 6:

"Love... DOES NOT rejoice over UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, but rejoices with THE TRUTH."

(C) Revelation 21:8:

"But as for the cowards... AND ALL THE LIARS, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This means the second death.”

# 2)

Almighty God DID NOT create such a cruel place of torment... The distorted imagination of imperfect men did. What was God’s view when the Israelites, following the example of peoples who lived nearby, began to burn their children in fire? Jehovah explains in his Word @ Jeremiah 7:31... and I quote:

“They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.”

THINK about it dude, if the IDEA itself of roasting people in fire had NEVER come into God’s heart, does it seem reasonable to you that he actually created a fiery hell for those who do not serve him?

The Bible says @ 1 John 4:8 that “God is love” (NOT that God HAS love) and 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a defines the very definition of love. Would a LOVING God really torment people FOREVER? Would you do so? Would you take your child who turned bad and rebelled against ALL of his / her upbringing based on your teachings, guidance, councel, tie him / her to a stove, turn on the burners and watch as the child screamed out in agony as he / she burned before your eyes?!

If you say YES, you need help. That is exactly what people think that God does and it's SICK! I would NEVER, EVER serve a god who would and or could do such a thing as that, I would PROUDLY burn forever rather than serve a callous hearted super-being such as that. Thankfully, I don't serve a god such as that, I serve almighty JEHOVAH through His Son Jesus Christ.

It was Satan the Devil who told Eve: “You positively will not die” (Genesis 3:4; Revelation 12:9). But she did die; absolutely, positively NO part of her lived on.

That the soul lives on after death IS A LIE started by Satan the Devil, the father of ALL lies and liars. And it is also A LIE, which the Devil has had spread, that the souls of the wicked are tormented in a hell or a purgatory.

Since the Bible BEYOND crystal clearly shows that the dead are UNCONCIOUS (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10), these teachings could not be true. Actually, neither the word “purgatory” nor the idea of a purgatory is found in the Bible whatsoever.

Hell (Sheol, or Hades) is a place of REST in hope for the dead. Both good and bad persons go there, to await THE RESURRECTION. Gehenna does not mean a place of torment, but is used in the Bible as a symbol of everlasting destruction. In the same way, “the lake of fire” IS NOT a literal place of fire, but represents the “second death” from which there will be NO resurrection. Hell could not be a place of torment because such an idea NEVER came into the mind or heart of God.

Additionally, to torment a person ETERNALLY because he did wrong on earth for a few years is contrary to justice on any scale! If Adam and Eve who were PERFECT and deliberately rebelled against God DID NOT go to some so called eternal fiery place of conscious suffering (Genesis 3:19, 2:7), how in the holy name of God almighty do YOU suppose that we IMPERFECT humans who may choose to defy and rebel against God are somehow sent to such a place for all eternity?!

I am beyond thankful to actually KNOW THE TRUTH about the dead! It has set me free from fear and superstition.—John 8:32.

If YOU choose to believe that God almighty sends people to a burning place of fiery eternal torment, that's YOUR prerogative, just KNOW that if THAT'S what you choose to believe, we most DEFINITELY DO NOT serve and or worship the same God and to say that JEHOVAH / YAHWEH does such a thing will cause YOU to someday answer to Him through His Son for profaning Him with blatant LIES.

One does not LIE about someone they truly LOVE.

Ciao

There is a place for everyone, and ironically everyone will have a choice where they will go.

Think about grade school, and everyone graded their own test. Would you feel good 'giving' yourself an A if you really received an F, knowing everyone knew the correct grades? No, you would feel terrible and would shrink to be in the presence of God, and would want nothing to do with it.

Well we will all look back on our lives and everything will be revealed that has not been sincerely repented off... and then we will choose our eternal destiny! And as those who 'choose' hell go, God weeps.

The torment of the wicked will be the thought that they will live with people... just like themselves. And that they gave up a place of peace and joy, you don't have to burn on a rotisserie to understand how this would feel.

The very Scripture you quote in John says that those that DON'T put faith in Christ will PERISH, DIE, it doesn't say they will be TORMENTED for eternity.

The very definition of the word "ἀπόλλυμι" (apollumi) means "to destroy, destroy utterly".

The very idea of an eternal torment does not harmonize with God's Justice.

Deuteronomy 32: 4 speaks of The Creator as : "...perfect is his activity/For all his ways are justice./A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice/Righteous and upright is he."

To burn someone eternally without hope of redemption or escape, for sins committed for 70 or 80 years defies justice and logic, but rather indicates an evil and perverted pleasure of inflicting pain. This is totally out of character with a God of LOVE and not a biblical teaching (see 1 John 4:8. ). While punishment is sometimes necessary and God does deem some unworthy of the live he has given them, oblivion in non-existence is the ultimate punishment that the bible says evildoers risk facing. No good can be derived from torturing individuals for all eternity and the God of the bible only acts when doing so is for the ultimate good of his creatures.

(Revelation 21:5-8) 5 And the One seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new.” Also, he says: “Write, because these words are faithful and true.” 6 And he said to me: “They have come to pass! I am the Al′pha and the O‧me′ga, the beginning and the end. To anyone thirsting I will give from the fountain of the water of life free. 7 Anyone conquering will inherit these things, and I shall be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and fornicators and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This means the second death.”

“The fiery lake that burns with sulphur,”is a SYMBOL of complete destruction.

PERISH = NO MORE or DESTROYED

*** Bible Citations ***

(John 3:16) “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.

YES Believe in him and gain Everlasting Life or The Second Death will be yours.

“Hellfire” has been a basic teaching in Christendom for many centuries. It is understandable why The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. XIV, p. 81) said: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.” Nevertheless, such transliteration and consistent rendering does enable the Bible student to make an accurate comparison of the texts in which these original words appear and, with open mind, thereby to arrive at a correct understanding of their true significance.—See GEHENNA; GRAVE; HADES; SHEOL; TARTARUS.

"Eternal" is one of the names of God, so it does not necessarily indicate unending, permanent punishment. The same goes for "Endless." If you have read the Revelation of John, you should know by know that Hell is destroyed. Its captive spirits are redeemed and set free for the resurrection. Then Hell is destroyed right along with death. Hell, then, is much more like Purgatory than what people have imagined about it. It is a second chance to be purified of the sins that we were too proud or stubborn to repent of during our lives. In the end, though, the vast majority of God's human children will receive glorious and peaceful rewards. Nobody is going to complain about the accommmodations. But those who worked against their own best interests (and the best interests of others, naturally) will most likely not get the same rewards as the voluntarily repentant. (There are at least five glorious rewards mentioned in the Bible.) God cannot want any of his children to be lost to him forever. There is no credit to him for such a failure. "God is love."

What does the Bible say? “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, . . . for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”—Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, Revised Standard Version.

The Hebrew word Sheol, which referred to the “abode of the dead,” is translated “hell” in some versions of the Bible. What does this passage reveal about the condition of the dead? Do they suffer in Sheol in order to atone for their errors? No, for they “know nothing.” That is why the patriarch Job, when suffering terribly because of a severe illness, begged God: “Protect me in hell [Hebrew, Sheol].” (Job 14:13; Douay-Rheims Version) What meaning would his request have had if Sheol was a place of eternal torment? Hell, in the Biblical sense, is simply the common grave of mankind, where all activity has ceased.

Is not this definition of hell more logical and in harmony with Scripture? What crime, however horrible, could cause Jehovah, a God of love to torture a person endlessly? (1 John 4:8)

Jehovah’s justice is perfectly balanced. He is never too lenient, never too harsh

Psalm37:28

Psalm 103:8-10

Do you personally think it is just & merciful to punish someone eternally for a short lifetime of sins?

True, the Bible shows that he will eliminate the wicked, for the sake of the righteous, as he did back in Noah's day..... but even then, it was after repeated warnings [Noah was a preacher of righteousness- 2 Peter 2:5]

Matthew 24:37-39

Would you punish someone for a prolonged period of time for something that they did to you?

Do you suppose that God is less just than you?

God loves His children. But He does not force His children to love Him.

If you don't want to go to Heaven, then God won't force you to go to Heaven. Heaven is a choice, just like anything else. God who is perfectly just, will allow those who would prefer drugs, premarital sex, adultery, alcohol, being the bully, and other forms of wickedness and sin, to go to someplace other than Heaven, which is rightly called Hell.

Hell is the Devils Kingdom in the after-life. It is the kingdom of Perfect Grace. Any and all kinds of wickedness can be done there, and that is the Devil's main selling point for getting people to go there for eternity.

Heaven is for those who repent. Hell is for those who refuse to repent, even if they have all knowledge, and are spirits in the spirit World, in the life after this life when their body has died, but they still choose not to love God, but prefer to choose Satan, and Satan's sins, and therefor go with Satan for eternity instead of God.

Your eternal destiny is about choice. What kind of choices are you making now that is getting you closer to Jesus Christ and to the Heaven that Jesus Christ dwells in?

Have your repented? Are you committed to being the Good Samaritan?

I will support what I just wrote by citing the entire Bible, both the New and the Old Testament. It all says the same thing.

Go thy way and sin more. That has always been the commandment, and it always will be.

"Ionios" or "Aionios" is the Greek word that is translated as everlasting, in John chapter 3. According to Strong's concordance it means "without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be". Ionios is also one of the names of God; the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. As tempting as it is to believe that "everlasting" life, describes the length of life, it actually describes the type of life; God's life.

Jesus taught that "in my father's house are many mansions...", a place for almost everyone.

There are many different degrees of glory in the resurrection, some like the sun, some like the stars (1 Corinthians 15:40).

Between death and ressurection lies Paradise or Sheol. "To day thou shalt be with me in paradise..." (Luke 23:43)

Jesus himself went to Sheol to preach to the spirits of men.

"By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;..." (1 Peter 3:19) who had been there since the days of Noah, when but eight souls were saved.

Jesus taught about the spirit world in his parable of Abraham's bosum.

"22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;

23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom."

(Luke 16)

The wicked will experience "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth...", all things common to a Jewish funeral, ie. signs of great sorrow. Not torture, but sorrow.

Certainly the wicked will experience sorrow and suffering after death. The only question is whether this torment is natural, or caused by God.

"24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." (Jeremiah 9:24)

So the question becomes, Is God the type of person to have joy in someone else's sorrow? Or is he the type of person to warn people away from the sorrow that is a natural consequence of sin? As for myself, I believe the latter.

God does not torment anyone forever. It contradicts his love which he has for mankind which is shown by his own son coming to the earth to die for us. God is a God of love.

How can someone be in a place for eternal torment when God says we die? God told Adam and Eve they would die if they disobeyed him, and they did. They did not go to a place of eternal torment.

Eccl. 9:5, 10: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all . . . All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol,* the place to which you are going.” (If they are conscious of nothing, they obviously feel no pain.) (*“Sheol,” AS, RS, NE, JB; “the grave,” KJ, Kx; “hell,” Dy; “the world of the dead,” TEV.)

Ps. 146:4: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts* do perish.” (*“Thoughts,” KJ, 145:4 in Dy; “schemes,” JB; “plans,” RS, TEV.)

Ezek. 18:4: “The soul* that is sinning—it itself will die.” (*“Soul,” KJ, Dy, RS, NE, Kx; “the man,” JB; “the person,” TEV.)

“The concept of ‘soul,’ meaning a purely spiritual, immaterial reality, separate from the ‘body,’ . . . does not exist in the Bible.”—La Parole de Dieu (Paris, 1960), Georges Auzou, professor of Sacred Scripture, Rouen Seminary, France, p. 128.

“Although the Hebrew word nefesh [in the Hebrew Scriptures] is frequently translated as ‘soul,’ it would be inaccurate to read into it a Greek meaning. Nefesh . . . is never conceived of as operating separately from the body. In the New Testament the Greek word psyche is often translated as ‘soul’ but again should not be readily understood to have the meaning the word had for the Greek philosophers. It usually means ‘life,’ or ‘vitality,’ or, at times, ‘the self.’”—The Encyclopedia Americana (1977), Vol. 25, p. 236.

Jesus Christ spoke about the condition of the dead. He did so with regard to Lazarus, a man whom he knew well and who had died. Jesus told his disciples: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest.” The disciples thought that Jesus meant that Lazarus was resting in sleep, recovering from an illness.

They were wrong. Jesus explained: “Lazarus has died.” (John 11:11-14) Notice that Jesus compared death to rest and sleep. Lazarus was neither in heaven nor in a burning hell. He was not meeting angels or ancestors. Lazarus was not being reborn as another human. He was at rest in death, as though in a deep sleep without dreams. Other scriptures also compare death to sleep. For example, when the disciple Stephen was stoned to death, the Bible says that he “fell asleep.” (Acts 7:60) Similarly, the apostle Paul wrote about some in his day who had “fallen asleep” in death.—1 Corinthians 15:6.

John 3:16.... The speaker of those words was no one else but that only-begotten Son of God himself. An only-begotten son of a father would naturally appreciate and love such a father as his source of life and of all the good things provided for his enjoyment of life. But God’s love was not confined to this one Son alone. To extend such a gift to others of his creatures would manifest God’s exercising of love to an extraordinary degree.