I am no scholar, but I agree with your stated interpretation.  God wants us to make a decision one way or the other.  Without any actual context, that is how I would interpret it.  But then, the bible is open for so much interpretation,it could mean that he likes peanuts... I guess it would depend on who you talk to.

So atheists go to heaven? We'll really be surprised when we wake up there!

wait wait wait, now you guys expect me to create a heaven too...this whole supreme being schtick is more work than it should be...is there some kind of supreme being delagatory commitee...I think I'll create one... 

Well of course this is why Rev 3:16 can be difficult. It seems god is saying he doesn't want people who have not made their mind up, or he doesn't like moderates, but this would imply he either wans fundies or atheists. And that doesnt seem right lol.

 That said, I remember an interview with a Catholic preist who says the official Catholic doctrine states that people can go to heaven if tey are sincere in their belief, including atheists.

Wishkah, do believe god is omnimax? Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, Omnipresent, etc.?  If so, why would he/she/it care whether or not finite beings believed in him/her/it? 

Obligatory Spinal Tap quote:

It's a letter to one of the 7 churches. Don't ask me which one. Obviously, Jesus thought their commitment was lacking. That said, in this particular part, Jesus had a sword for a tongue, so one has to wonder who would want to be in his mouth at that point. That would be living and dying by the sword at once. 

Well, that and bibles aren't quite as good as peanuts when crushed into a paste and spread on bread...just saying...

I think it was hinted at already, but guidelines for when altar boys should swallow?

I contribute so little.

But I guess I can play the game and say that there is no time or space or a middle ground, and that you are either with or against, playing both sides warrants rejection.

See this essay by todangst: http://www.rationalresponders.com/would_you_torture_your_own_children

But we like you anyway. 

The Dogma of Hell is the most terrible truth of our faith. Hell exists.  We are sure of it as of the existence of God. Nothing, in fact, is more clearly revealed than the dogma of hell, and Jesus Christ proclaims it as many as fifteen times in the Gospel. The existence of a hell is in harmony with the immutable notions of justice engraved in the human heart. Revealed to men from the beginning, and conformable to natural reason, this dreadful truth has always been, and is still known, by all nations not plunged by barbarism in complete ignorance. Hell never has been denied by heretics, Jews or Muslims. It is only modern and contemporaneous atheism that outdoes the impiety of all ages by denying the existence of hell.

Millions laugh at, question, or openly deny the reality of hell. But a matter affecting the everlasting destiny of man is not laughable; there is no fun, when the question is of enduring for eternity the punishment of fire. "Which of you," demands the prophet, "can dwell with devouring fire? Which of you shall bear everlasting burnings?" -- Isaiah xxxiii., 54.

Will hell exist any the less, because one does not believe in it? Suppose for a moment, the existence of eternal torments is only probable, and that perhaps there is no hell; I ask any man of sound reason, would he not be the silliest of men who, upon such a "perhaps", should expose himself to the punishment of an everlasting fire?

This is how the Son of God speaks to us of hell:

"If, then, thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; it is better for thee, having one eye, to enter into life, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire." -- (Matt. xviii, 7; compare v., 29.)

Natural reason confirms the dogma of hell. An atheist was boasting that he did not believe in hell. Among his hearers, there was a sensible young man, modest, but who thought that he ought to shut the silly speaker's mouth. He put him a single question: "Sir," he said, "the kings of the earth have prisons to punish their refractory subjects; how can God, the King of the Universe, be without a prison for those who outrage His majesty?" The sinner had not a word to answer. The appeal was presented to the light of his own reason, which proclaims that, if kings have prisons, God must have a hell. 

In Revelation 20:10, we read:

"And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever." This should live no doubt as to to the existence of hell, the nature of the torments therein, and the eternity of it all. 

Many are often ready to except that heaven is eternal, yet they do not so readily except that Hell is like wise eternal which is not only illogical but contrary to the justice of God who rewards all according to their deeds. Further it is not a matter of God loving us or not but whether or not we love Him. Thus by our sins we send ourselves to Hell, since by our sinful life we have already made the choice as to with whom we shall spend eternity.

Think about it for a moment first. Hell is a subject not spoken of frequently in these days, but God does not give each generation a new set of doctrines or a new bible. Further, it is important for us to reflect on this truth in order to realize how grave sin is. Is it a comfortable subject? No. But who said that everything in Religion is meant to be comforting?

A salutary fear of damnation is necessary in order for us to avoid sin (Mark 9:43). How many saints are now in Heaven because they meditated on the awful truth of Hell? We can be sure that there are quite a few.

In the end, we shall either go to Heaven or to Hell (Rev. 20:12-15). The choice is ours, we make that choice by our own actions. If we chose to live according to our wishes ignoring the will of The Lord our God, then we shall reap what we sow in this life and also in the next. Let us then briefly consider the nature of Hell. 

Hell is eternal (Matt. 25:41). And what will it be like?

Think of all the diseases in the world; those that affect the eyes, the teeth, the chest, the neck. To all these diseases of the body add the mental torments of Hell: despair, gloom, sadness, hatred...

And to these continuos torments, add the lack of sympathy from others. No-one will care, everyone in Hell will be full of hatred for the others. Not a moment of comfort. There is no rest, there is no sleep... every moment is an agony from which there is no escape - the worst of torments; and this for eternity. St. Anthony Mary Claret writes:

"The sensation of pain in hell is essentially very dreadful. Picture yourself, my soul, on a dark night on the summit of a high mountain. Beneath you is a deep valley, and the earth opens so that with your gaze you can see hell in the cavity of it. Picture it as a prison situated in the center of the earth, many leagues down, all full of fire, hemmed in so impenetrably that for all eternity not even the smoke can escape.

In this prison the damned are packed so tightly one on the other like bricks in a kiln....Consider the quality of the fire in which they burn. First, the fire is all-extensive and tortures the whole body and the whole soul. A damned person lies in hell forever in the same spot which he was assigned by divine justice, without being able to move, as a prisoner in stocks. The fire in which he is totally enveloped, as a fish in water, burns around him, on his left, his right, above and below (Mt 18:. His head, his breast, his shoulders, his arms, his hands, and his feet are all penetrated with fire, so that he completely resembles a glowing hot piece of iron which has just been withdrawn from an oven. The roof beneath which the damned person dwells is fire; the food he takes is fire; the drink he tastes is fire; the air he breathes is fire; whatever he sees and touches is all fire (Mark 9:42).

But this fire is not merely outside him; it also passes within the condemned person. It penetrates his brain, his teeth, his tongue, his throat, his liver, his lungs, his bowels, his belly his heart, his veins, his nerves, his bones, even to the marrow, and even his blood... A most terrible thing about hell is its duration (Mat 3:12) . The condemned person loses God and loses Him for all eternity. Now, what is eternity? Eternity never ends. This is the truth that has made even the great saints tremble. It is an essential misfortune of hell that everything will be without relief, without remedy, without interruption, without end, eternal."

The pain of loss, the consequence of final impenitence, consists in an immense void which will never be filled, in an eternal contradiction which is the fruit of the hatred of God, in despair, in perpetual remorse without repentance, in hate of one's neighbor, in envy, in a grudge against God which is expressed by blasphemy.

Perpetual remorse comes from the voice of conscience, which repeats that they refused to listen while there was yet time. They cannot indeed erase from their mind the first principles of the moral order, a distinction between good and evil. But conscience recalls sin after sin: "I was hungry, and you gave Me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me not to drink."

Eternally rebellious against everything, they long for annihilation, not in itself, but as cessation of suffering. In this sense Jesus says of Judas: "It were better for him if that man had not been born."

No sin shall be without its punishment. The evil men do must be atoned for either in this world by penance or in the world to come in purgatory or hell, according as the sin that stains the soul, and is not repented of, is mortal or venial, and merits eternal or temporal punishment.

This is the Truth that most would prefer to deny to their eternal detriment. Better to assent to the truth and seek how to avoid ending up in that most unfortunate place called Hell. It is only in sincerely seeking the means to avoiding this terrible place that God will manifest His mercy, the mercy everybody loves to take for granted.

¬_¬ 

HumanisticJones,

bse you show interest and are genuinely interested in knowing these things, I will endeavour to explain.

Immediately after death the particular judgment takes place, in which, by a Divine Sentence of Judgment, the eternal fate of the deceased person is decided. The souls of those who die in the condition of personal grievous sin enter Hell, a place or state of eternal punishment inhabited by those rejected by God. 

THERE is in Hell, a double pain the pain of loss and the pain of sense. The pain of loss consists in being deprived for all eternity of the sight of God, who is the Supreme Good, the beatific and for which our souls are made, as our eyes are for the light. It is a moral thirst which torments the soul. The pain of sense, or sensible suffering, is the same as that which we experience in our flesh. God, supplying the want of corporal organs, makes the soul experience such sensations. Pain, is deeper and more acute when it directly
attacks the soul and the mind than when it reaches them only through the medium of the body. The mortal body, and the senses themselves, absorb and intercept a part of the physical, and even of moral pain.

The dammed in hell are torment in many ways as forever will they have imprinted on their memories the results of their sins; forever will they repeat the words ascribed to them in the book of Wisdom : "We have erred from the way of truth, we wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction and walked through hard ways. What hath pride profited us? 

But to speak of the pain of sense alone, we know what a terrible thing fire is, how feeble so ever the flame which we enkindle in our houses, and what pain is caused by the slightest burn ; how much more terrible must be that fire which is fed neither with wood
nor oil, and which can never be extinguished. Enkindled by the breath of God to be the instrument of His Justice, it seizes upon souls and torments them with incomparable activity. In hell, there will be a fire that cannot be put out, a worm which cannot die, a stench one cannot bear, a darkness one can feel, a scourging by savage hands, with those present despairing of anything good.

And you know this for a fact because some person wrote this down somewhere a long, long time ago, somebody else found it and still someone else decided to include it in a book with other people's stories? 

Spaxx. Evidently you know your bible, and in order to know anything thoroughly you at least need a bit of intelligence, so let me ask you this... How do you know the bible is true? When it really comes down to asking yourself these things, there is no way you possibly can.

Also, you yourself will have an interpretation of the bible different to other interpretations of the bible, and the authors of the bible, the men who wrote it, would've had a different interpretation to anyone alive today. Now, personally I feel, and many Christians feel that there are things in the bible that are abysmal, details of stonings for minor offences and all sorts of things. If "God" wrote the Bible, then he's a pretty piss-poor ethicist - Harold Shipman (serial killer doctor from in this country) was a better ethicist!!

That's what I keep telling this fundy on the music forum I frequent.

"The Bible is Bullshit." - Corporate Avenger

Quoting the Bible at atheists doesn't help your case one bit. We consider it a book of fiction and most of us don't believe Jebus ever existed.

Sorry, souls don't exist either, nor does the Abyss (unless you're talking about the 1980s movie.) Consciousness is impossible without a brain/ nervous system. All you are going to accomplish is having us laugh at you.

Ah yes, but your description clearly states that "It penetrates his brain, his teeth, his tongue, his throat, his liver, his lungs, his bowels, his belly his heart, his veins, his nerves, his bones, even to the marrow, and even his blood..."  The description you have now given to answer my question contradicts this by responding that God makes up for the lack of those parts by burning our souls.  Now I looked into those verses that you placed in the descriptors and found that they did not mention anything about burning my organs, nor did they mention anything about hell except for the fire.

Now give the current state of this discussion I have more questions.  Feel free to address them individually.

1) Given the prior description, how would this fire affect my organs if my soul is parted from them.

2) As I am not well versed in the locations of all biblical verses, but that I am aware that the only true things about the world from the perspective of Christians are contained within said book, where in the bible is the description of said organ or soul burning hell? 

3) Is the soul a critical component to the motor-response action to pain.

4) If the soul does infact burn in hell, what kind of combustion reaction takes place for the soul (rapid, slow, complete, incomplete, turbulent, smouldering .

5) Given the soul does burn in hell this implies that there is a large supply of oxygen in hell.  Is hell a closed system that recieves no extra material or is there an external source of oxygen beign supplied to the flame?

6) What is the enthalpy of combustion for the soul?

7) What are the oxidization products of the soul? 

Isn't that sodomy? LOL!!!! The Catholic Church is hated by rational people because of it's hateful and idiotic stances. Oh yeah, and for the priests buggering little boys!

Jesus didn't create the catholic church, the Romans did, hence why it is based in Rome and not in Jerusalem.

Faith is belief without proof. How do you know God exists? You don't, you believe God exists, which is not the same as knowing. The bible was written by men, and is actually extremely inconsistant. Compare the fire and brimstone of the old testament to the peace-loving hippydom of the new testament. And even despite that, both testaments have vast inconsistencies within themselves.

Bad argument - simply relying on the wisdom of ancient people. Could ancient people build computers, or even generate electricity (except the ancient Babylonians apparantly), or study the world with the vigour and know-how we have today. We are the most advanced generation of human beings ever to exist and we have much more wisdom than some dead guys. 

Again, the Catholic Church was created by a Roman Emperor who decided that Christianity would suit the political establishment of the Empire more than their old pagan Gods. You only believe it to be the one true church because you're a member of it. Muslims believe theirs is the one true religion, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists believe theirs is the one true religion, the Westboro Baptist Church believe theirs is the one true church.

As for the bible, it is a complex book, there is no doubt about that, but why does that complexity mean it comes from God? The Lord of the Rings is a complex book, but we know it was written by a bloke called John "Ronald" Tolkien, just as we know the bible was written by men. I could easily say Ronald was divinely inspired and that accounts for his consistency (evidently much more consistant than the bible), but actually he was just massively inspired. Interesting that I'm using the works of a devout Catholic to bring your Catholic arguments down.

You're not alone Wishka, even the bible argues your point that God is inclusive (Shepherd running off to find lost lamb), so I never understood the dogma of separatism in churches, myself. And I agree it doesn't make a lick of sense for an all-loving God to also be an elitist bastard at the same time. It's one or the other, surely, and I'm fairly certain if God actually exists he's just not that confused so somebody "down here" has got one of those arse-ways-up.

To the original question, every thought system going is a bit lukewarm in my opinion. You'd need to refer to other things in the bible itself to get what I am on about though, but a simple example would be the statement 'what you do to the least of all my creatures you do to me' says God. Just about everyone is lukewarm about that part, something is always, not great or unworthy in some way, exclusion is a pretty universal dogma, though I am not against the applications of exclusion in the abstract, those are useful, but whenever some living thing is renounced absolutely in some form in some communal system of thought, the approach to this revelation about God is lukewarm. You either permit all life sanctity and reverence or you don't, middle ground is basically that you don't.

But that is also a really harsh thought, as is often the case with analysing the bible, like walking through a minefield with all your ideas about good and evil, if you're actually walking chances are you'll step on a mine and bang there goes your ideas. What follows this thought is that by going to the butcher and buying the legs of ten chickens to eat (ie giving regard only to meat and money), you're being lukewarm to God and you're going to get spat. Doesn't sound fair at all does it? some keen theists stewed it all up and came up with remedies such as halal, or saying grace. Native americans have a corresponding ritual thanksgiving in their culture but they take the reverence for the beast quite a way further. When you get down to it the essence of the thing is reverence for life itself, if you're lukewarm about it, say for example just saying grace and not being interested in the welfare of the living animal prior to eating it, then you're probably in living in the 'church' mindset that this revelation letter would be addressing. That said, reverence for life is probably not the only lukewarm mindset that this letter would be addressing and even if it were there are vast complications in a 6 billion population human society's need for life sustaining food making it seem an unfair ask overall to be anything but lukewarm about it. And moreover, if there's no realistic remedy in the eyes of such a God that 6 billion people could adopt together or if he's not going to offer any help in that regard then he either isn't an all loving God, or he isn't at all and it doesn't matter what the text says.