How can a good God send people to Hell

[Jan]

I have friends who cannot believe in a God who sends decent people, maybe any
people, to hell.

Any ideas of what I can say?

[sandra v villamero]

GOD's plan is to PROSPER us and not to HARM us, togive us HOPE and a FUTURE"...so all HIS PLANS is for to be in a "blessed state" so it is our own doing why we are send there in a raging fire ...

[Safoa]

God does not send people to hell. it is a matter of choice for the individual where you want to spend eternity. choose ye this day whom you have believed

[Winston James Blanke]

GOD does send sinful people to Hell. Read about THE WHITE THRONE JUGEMENT.Satan is not the one who does. But don't worry. It's over when the worm eats the worm. Eternal Life is the gift of GOD.

[maggie hancox]

Does this sound loving to you??

Do you really think God sends good people to hell?
Did you feel the tug on your heart from God?. indeed showing you his great love.

Our feet are walking there to hell all ready, it is the mercy of the act of Jeusus Christ that saves us!
It is God reaching out to us to guide us from the path to destruction, not willing us and pushing us or even leading us into hell...we know who it is that does this and it is not God!!

Like a child about to cross the road in traffic he stands arms outstreached calling to us to turn from our sin!!

In everything measure your thoughts against love, GODS TRUE NATURE.

God bless and uplift your soul because God is the God of love and mercy!!! Amen

[Winston James Blanke]

Yes, GOD sends sinful people to Hell after THE WHITE THRONE JUGMENT. That is the way it is.

[gone away]

Hi Jan,
This charge of "God is cruel for sending people to hell therefore I will not believe in him" was a stumbling block for me before I became a believer and was a point of doubt in my faith once I believed until I got it sorted. I found the writings of CS Lewis very helpful in understanding how God can be both Kind and Just
The question is: How can a God who cruelly tortures beings in a lake of fire for eternity be truly called merciful? Would not a description of cruel and vengeful be more true than kind and merciful?
For those who don’t know the book
the Landlord represents God
the free tenants are people
Mountain apple is sin
Vermiculate will is sinful nature
The black hole is hell
An Excerpt from THE PILGRIMS REGRESS by C S Lewis
'But what about the charge of cruelty?'
The Landlord has taken the
risk of working the country with free tenants instead of
slaves in chain gangs: and as they are free there is no
way of making it impossible for them to go into forbidden
places and eat forbidden fruits. Up to a certain point he
can doctor them even when they have done so, and break
them of the habit. But beyond that point - you can see for
yourself. A man can go on eating mountain-apple so long
that nothing will cure his craving for it: and the very
worms it breeds inside him will make him more certain
to eat more. You must not try to fix the point after which
a return is impossible, but you can see that there will be
such a point somewhere:
'But surely the Landlord can do anything?'
'He cannot do what is contradictory: or, in other words,
a meaningless sentence will not gain meaning simply because
'Someone chooses to prefix to it the words "the Landlord
can". And it is meaningless to talk of forcing a man
to do freely what a man has freely made impossible for
himself:
'I see. But at least these poor creatures are unhappy
enough: there is no. need to add a black hole:
'The Landlord does not make the blackness. The blackness
is there already wherever the taste of mountain-apple
has created the vermiculate will. What do you mean by
a hole? Something that ends. A black hole is blackness enclosed,
limited. And in that sense the Landlord has made
the black hole. He has put into the world a Worst Thing.
But evil of itself would never reach a worst: for evil is
fissiparous and could never in a thousand eternities find
any way to arrest its own reproduction. If it could, it
would be no longer evil: for Form and Limit belong to the
good. The walls of the black hole are the tourniquet on the
wound through which the lost soul else would bleed to a
death she never reached. It is the Landlord's last service to
those who will let him do nothing better for them:
excerpt finished

I do not think you can explain this idea of hell to a non believer .
But I do think that it is important that we as Christians have a true
understanding of God as far as we are able.
God is merciful and just at the same time.
Hell truly is a place of immense suffering and many will spend eternity there
(broad is the way and many there are that follow it)

The only practical way to explain to a non-believer God’s nature in this
matter is to tell of how God in Jesus was tortured to death on a cross
to save from hell and the power of the enemy any who will turn to him.
Other lucid books from C S Lewis on this matter are “The great divorce”
about the final and absolute separation of the Kingdom of light
from the Kingdom of darkness and “God in the Dock” where the case
for God being cruel is put and refuted.

cheers

JohnO

[Winston James Blanke]

No mountain apples are not sin. Figs are evil. Read your Old Testament and be careful if you eat figs. Flys lay their larva in them.
And don't forget, everyone in GOD'S PARDISE HEAVEN will have a fig tree. But HE may have one condition. Don't eat the fig?
What do you think about that?

[Jared Wells]

The Master Musician uses both high and low notes in His Musical Masterpiece

[Winston James Blanke]

More than one musical mastepiece in Heaven.

[Roxliverpoolfan]

Does that include all my tutors and myfriends atcollege??? willthey go to Hell??/ I want Mike Swaits, Anne Timmis, and Jacki Greogry and Sophie Dixon,and Lewis and Nathan to go to Heaven to be with God please pray for this

[edmun09]

will do. but most importantly, you should pray the most ;)

[edmun09]

You can say this to them: "God didn't make Hell for us. It was originally made for Satan and his cohorts. But those who follow the steps of Satan will also go to Hell with him."