Priest says Hell is an invention of the church to control people with fear

How could you one star this? Are you expressing your belief that if you don't recycle your pizza box that there is a hot place under the earth's crust waiting for you for all eternity?

I've been sayin' this for years. Religion was "invented" to control the masses, to give them hope of a better future, to control their behavior. Nothing more, nothing less.

Have a nice day.

Truther :-)

Multiple atheists, while having near death experiences, confirm that an eternal hell is indeed real.

so you one star the thread? Maybe alot of Christians in Merica don't want to hear it from you or from me, or anybody else who is not "in the know". Maybe they need to hear it from someone of authority from the church. Kind of like people not believing anything until they see it on the nightly news.

I've been to hell and back.

But you shall find out soon enough.

;)

The problem with that, is that IF true, then God is evil by our standards. He demands followers based on fear.

Does that sound like a good thing? Don't get me wrong, if God is truly throwing "unbelievers" into eternal torment(think about what ETERNAL means) because they are either ignorant or uninterested in him, then I will get with His program, because I don't want to burn forever...but I can't ever honestly believe that this is a good thing, or that He is a good being. He's just super powerful.

Choosing Jesus you get heaven yes.

But you don't go to hell because Jesus is mad at you.

Hell is where your father lives. The father of lies, murder, deceit, sexual lust, envy, anger, hate, pride, abuse, neglect, denial, etc...

Whether you realize it or not... We are worshiping the devil through living our lives devoted to his characteristics and turning a blind eye to God.

So God doesn't punish us. He sends us to our father to live forever under his powerful might. Just as God makes sure that all His children can't get snatched up by devil. It's very simple.

/\/\This

He saved a worthless atheist from hell who tried to pray but couldn't so he said random things using the word God. Not evil.

So from God's perspective, again, either worship him, or burn. I'm a Universalist. That seems evil. Evil in a way that the purely transitory evils of lust/greed/etc can't even begin to touch, because they are not eternal.

By there's several more accounts of people confirming the existence of a hell, in their near death experiences.

People, will now say, it was merely based on their imaginations, or subconscious beliefs.

However

There's been case after case, of people, while having their NDE, will come across information that was previously unknown to them, but, was later proven to be true down to the exact details after the NDE. Meaning, what was experienced in the NDE couldn't have been merely imagined, but, an actual reality.

Hell yea it is true....fear rules!!!!

Sounds like a priest who doesn't realize he's risking a one-way ticket.

I agree with the priest.

A few questions. And I hope we can keep this civil...

1. What makes an atheist worthless? Many atheists are really just confused. They're people, no different from me and you. And they're people created by God. How could something created by God be worthless?

2. Yes, if God were to take the time to speak to everyone after they die, and make it clear what was going on, and the consequences of their choices for or against him, then that arguable would not be evil. Is that what you're saying He does? If so, cool. If not, you've still got people committing purely transitory sins, or ignorance, being punished horribly forever. That equals evil.

I figured that much out on my own. In 3rd grade.

F**K that line of reasoning.

This

Exactly

Oh, I agree. I believe in NDE's...what's intriguing and confusing IS that you also have atheist's and people from different religions who experience really positive NDE's, and later get confirmation. Not hell like at all, but heaven like experiences. Those actually seem to be more common than hell experiences. They generally say they feel comfortable with all religions, after their experience.

So their's the rub. And I'm certainly not saying that Hell isn't real. I don't know. It could absolutely be real. These NDE hell experiences disturb me. I am however forced to continue to say that eternal conscious torment is basically EVIL by definition, and that a God who does that is EVIL by our standards. I'll still bow down, for sure. I don't want to burn. But I'm worshiping out of fear. I HOPE it's not true, and live my life as a Universalist, believing in Christ, but believing that his death paid the price for everyone.

I agree with him but is it not mentioned in the Bible by Jesus himself for those that do believe?
Isn't it called the fiery pit?

You have it wrong people.

You are going on the wrong premise:

Yes....Hell as "percieved" by most of the church world and started by the catholics is

"A place of burning torment...and endless torment of fire"

This is not what hell is........

Think of hell as the place where one realizes at the Judgement Thrown of God that they will never have the eternal life they could have had.....and they will see the beauty and life of Heaven but realize they are going to the
Execution Chamber of hell.

The fiery torment is the realization that that person has lost out on eternal life and the final punishment that is coming as the Angels cast that person into "the lake of fire"

It is an Execution process........not some torture chamber for people to live in agony for trillions of years onto infinity

It is called the Second Death.....

The punishment is eternal in hell........only because it is FINAL..a person that goes to hell can never be brought back to life.

This priest is a jewish freemason who sold himself to the devil. Hell is where you go to be with lucifer,the devil and the jewish freemason who brought you there after you deny Jesus Christ is God your maker to his face when you see him when you die. If you don't believe then look up jewish seances where they talk to damned souls. Remember God is Our Lady,Christ and the Holy Ghost. If you don't know that Christ was,is and will always be the only God atleast then you go to hell. That is why the lucifer,the devil has taken over the Catholic church because of ass holes like him. So what are you going to believe him and be controlled by him? I'm the hell not going to be suckered by a jerk like him.

Well, I think implicit in what he's saying is that the Church has translated and/or modified the text and interpretation of the Bible in such a way as to make Hell what they want it to be. Go check out the tentmaker website. It has plausible explanations for why Hell is actually not really in the bible, at least the concept of Hell pushed by the church. I'm not saying it's true, just that their interpretations seem easily as valid as the "traditional" ones.

That is just silly..... People make their own "hell" by way of their own thoughts.

Protestant opinions on religion don't count.

1. And how do you know this?

2. That still seems quite horrible and evil. So many people don't believe because of ignorance and confusion. It's much better than a "hell". However, it would also go against pretty much every NDE I've ever heard of.

You listed some very specific details about something you couldn't possibly know anything about.

Now Ive got an idea a lot like yours...

Hell is a place where you go to sit on a jury of 666 peers (that all look like a really ugly dude in red with pointy ears). Then everyone plays kickball for ten days and each time teams are picked, you are picked last. Then you die after the game. Then you get up and suddenly die agian. This is called the "Third Death".

I dont think you people understand this

I assume this man is a priest of the Christian religion. If so, I would like to ask him, "why is it then that Jesus spoke more of Hell than He did of Heaven in the scriptures? (And no, you cannot do a word search to find this out. You MUST read the scriptures completely and in context to discover this).

You are right there indeed many positive NDEs. But, if we only study postive NDEs, we will then mistakenly have universalist attitude, which I once had as well, thinking every single person will indeed have a wonderful afterlife.

But, I believe it's important to study both the postive NDEs, but also the negative NDE's as well, to get the bigger picture.

"I'm a surgical nurse at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. We have lots of near-death cases there, and almost all of them are the negative kind. You know what I mean people who wind up in hell!"

Source: P.M.H. Atwater - 92 Journal of Near-Death Studies Vol.10, No.3

“A heart specialist from Chattanooga, Tennessee, has just finished a study of more than 100 patients brought back to life after being clinically dead. The Good News, he said, is that some of them had a blissful encounter with a being of light. The bad news, however, is that over half of the patients had a perfectly appalling time, walking through dimly-lit caverns and seeing fiendish figures brandishing pitchforks beside a smoking, sulphurous lake surrounded by moaning bodies. The doctor now firmly believes hell exists. Reluctantly, he said, I have come to the conclusion it may not be safe to die.’

Soure: May | June 1979 issue of Parapsychology Review


Also, the very latest research and book, by the International Association of Near Death Studies, recently released a book. In this book 'Dancing Past the Dark: distressing near-death experiences', it talks about two negative NDEs. One by an atheist and a Jewish person. Both people saw hell, and then Jesus in their NDE.