A Fundamentalist View of Hell

[exOBCstudent]

(I saw another thread out there on Heaven but wanted to bring this subject up too)

While sitting in the Easter service yesterday the preacher said some things that really got me thinking about the IFB views of Hell and what things they claim will/will not be like.

My wife and I had a discussion about it yesterday and I'll ask some of the questions I had and what general things we covered as I'm still learning what to and what not to believe about this subject of an eternal Hell.

Fundy teachings:

• If you reject Jesus Christ you will go there
• Hell is in the center of the earth where Paradise used to be
• In the end, Hell will be dumped into the Lake of Fire which isn't in the center of the earth
• Once your loved ones go to Hell you'll never see them again
• Once a person goes to Hell, they are forever lost, unredeemable, forever seperated from God
• Satan and his demons will be there too
• There will be real 8ft worms that don't burn up eating on you
• The torture will never end for all eternity
  

The more I actually list these teachings I had growing up, the more ridiculous the teaching of Hell becomes to me...at least from a Biblical standpoint. I'm not arguing whether or not it exists as a holding place for Satan and his rebels from the first (known) war in Heaven.

Some discussion points we came to:

• If Hell was actually a created idea of religious powers it could've easily been added to the Bible during translation
• It would be EXTREMELY convenient for religious powers to threaten non-members with
• God would essentially have created some of us for Satan's company for all eternity
• God wouldn't be powerful engouh to ever redeem those who didn't "pray the prayer"
• Why would God create us for eternal destruction? Wouldn't it be better to not exist rather than exist in torments?
• Would God truly set us up for failure of the worst kind by creating a Hell for us and allowing some to ignorantly go there for eternity?
• If God's love is so great, why wouldn't He make a way to keep EVERYONE He created from destruction?
  

Also, if you take the penalty of Hell out of the biblical equation for non-believers, you still get a good solid theology of Christ who loved us through redemption, cares about what we do in this life, and will through all eternity as well.

I'm just hoping to get some thoughts here as well since I'm just getting to question all this for the first time and really would like some outside input on the whole matter.

What do you guys think?