Heaven, hell and religion?

You cannot read the Bible and think there is no Heaven and no Hell. Jesus warned more on Hell than He ever taught on Heaven.

PS Remember, Ecclesiastes was written from the standpoint of earthly wisdom, not godly wisdom. That is why life was meaningless.

You know, there are different views on hell. In the entire Old Testament, you won't find any mention of the afterlife. There is, I think, one scene where Saul calls up the spirit of the departed prophet. That's pretty much it. In the Old Testament you will see the afterlife described over and over as a place where there is no light or dark, where there is no sensation, thought or memory. We only start hearing about the afterlife in the intertestamental books such as the Wisdom of Sirach.

It's a novel idea in the New Testament. One branch of Judaism maintains there is no resurrection (no afterlife), and they are mainline priests of the Temple.

Many religious people worry about going to heaven or hell because they don't believe so much in the Bible, as they do in what some cult leader tells them that the Bible SHOULD have said.

Bro, there's levels to this ****. You don't just open a bible right before the rapture and go to heaven AND KNOW you are there. Everyone goes to heaven. Those who are sinful will go to heaven, and wait for their earth body to wake them up like it did every day of their lives. ...Eternal Slumber.

Why do religious people worry? = Because they have their faces buried in the KJV of the bible.

‘christ-based’ religions worship, live by, and quote from the King James bible

and have suddenly become monumentally aware of the implications of doing so.

King James is known throughout history to have been a drunk, a coward, a pedophile, and a homosexual.

You would think that those who believe in christ would instantly, and without question,

dump the KJV of the bible and burn every copy ... but their resolve in keeping it, speaks volumes.

Conclusion: Believers in christ will rebuke `an innocent child` of non-believing parents,

but will longingly follow the words & interpretations of a pervert, with total abandon .... go figure.

People know hell Exists

Correct with regard to your comment of heaven and hell.

Incorrect with regard to your comment on the KJV.

What a shame you stopped at Ecclesiastes chapter 9. Chapter 12 gives the conclusion of the writer's investigations. He advised young people to remember their Creator before old age and death afflicted them, for at death "the spirit returns to God who gave it" and then they will have to account to God for how they lived in the flesh.

Ecclesiastes majors on the pointlessness of a life lived 'under the sun' without God. It is futile and vain, for a merely physical life is unfair and ends with your corpse rotting in the grave. But there's more to this than meets the eye, so you have to read right through to the conclusion of his observations, not sticking three-quarters of the way through his report!

The bit in Daniel also reflects ancient Hebrew thinking (long before Jesus arrived to enlighten us further). Daniel believed in a day of resurrection of the dead, when God would judge - Christians also believe that. But in light of what Jesus told us about hell, we now know that the spirits of the dead wait for the day of resurrection and judgment in what is called Sheol (or Hades in Greek). In Luke 16, Jesus told us that it has two compartments, separated by a huge, uncrossable chasm. There is the place of bliss (the Bosom of Abraham), and the place of torments (hell). The Bible shows that the grave (Hebrew qe'ver) is the entrance into sheol.

So Ecclesiastes deals with the entrance into sheol, which is the grave (qe'ver) but it concludes that the spirit moves on elsewhere. Sadly, those who disbelieve what the Bible says about an invisible, aware part that lives on after physical death refuse to face up to Ecclesiastes chapter 12, stopping at chapter 9.

Jesus' death and resurrection delivers sinners from ending up in torments, eternally, if they will trust only in what He did to secure God's free pardon. That is GOOD news for sinners, and you are a sinner, are you not? Yet as you are an agnostic, why are you even trying to cherry-pick bits out of the Bible?

I became a Christian through discovering the love of God, in Christ. I was drawn through love, not fear. The Bible states that Christians do not fear death or hell, because they have experienced the free pardon of God and they know they are accepted in the beloved - Jesus Christ - not because they deserve it but because God is pleased to accept those who put their faith in what Jesus suffered to save them.