A considerable body of scholarship over the last two or three centuries has concluded that this story was written in about the sixth century B.C. That was after Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. And at a time when the Hebrews were faced with exile in Babylon.
The Jewish Temples: The, following standard Mesopotamian practice, deported the Jews after they had conquered in 597 BC. The deportations were large, but certainly didn't involve the entire nation. Somewhere around 10,000 people were forced to relocate to the city of, the capital of the Chaldean empire.
In 586 BC, Judah itself ceased to be an independent kingdom, and the earlier deportees found themselves without a homeland, without a state, and without a nation. This period, which actually begins in 597 but is traditionally dated at 586, is called the Exile in Jewish history; it ends with an accident in 538 when the Persians overthrow the Chaldeans. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Chaldeans, only deported the most prominent citizens of Judah: professionals, priests, craftsmen, and the wealthy. The 'people of the land' ( am-hares ) were allowed to stay. So Jewish history, then, has two poles during the exile: the Jew in Babylon and the Jews who remain in Judah. We know almost nothing of the Jews in Judah after 586.
Judah seems to have been wracked by famine, according the biblical book, which was written in during the exile. The entire situation seemed to be one of infinite despair. Some people were better off; when Nebuchadnezzar deported the wealthy citizens, he redistributed the land among the poor. So some people were better off.
In addition, there were rivalries between the two groups of Jews. It is clear that the wealthy and professional Jews in Babylon regarded themselves as the true Jewish people. The salient feature of the exile, however, was that the Jews were settled in a single place by Nebuchadnezzar. While the Assyrian deportation of Israelites in 722 BC resulted in the complete disappearance of the Israelites, the deported Jews formed their own community in Babylon and retained their religion, practices, and philosophies. Some, it would seem, adopted the Chaldean religion (for they name their offspring after Chaldean gods), but for the most part, the community remained united in its common faith in Yahweh.
They called themselves the 'gola,' ('exiles'), or the 'bene gola' ('the children of the exiles'), and within the crucible of despair and hopelessness, they forged a new national identity and a new religion. The exile was unexplainable; Hebrew history was built on the promise of Yahweh to protect the Hebrews and use them for his purposes in human history. Their defeat and the loss of the land promised to them by Yahweh seemed to imply that their faith in this promise was misplaced. This crisis, a form of cognitive dissonance (when your view of reality and reality itself do not match one another), can precipitate the most profound despair or the most profound reworking of a world view. For the Jews in Babylon, it did both.
From texts such as Lamentations, which was probably written in, and, written after the exile, as well as many of the, Hebrew literature takes on a despairing quality. The subject of Job is human suffering itself. Undeserving of suffering, Job, an upright man, is made to suffer the worst series of calamities possible because of an arbitrary test. When he finally despairs that there is no cosmic justice, the only answer he receives is that humans shouldn't question God's will. Many of the psalms written in this period betray an equal hopelessness.
But the Jews in Babylon also creatively remade themselves and their world view. In particular, they blamed the disaster of the Exile on their own impurity.
They had betrayed Yahweh and allowed the Mosaic laws and cultic practices to become corrupt; the Babylonian Exile was proof of Yahweh's displeasure. During this period, Jewish leaders no longer spoke about a theology of judgment, but a theology of salvation. In texts such as and, there is talk that the Israelites would be gathered together once more, their society and religion purified, and the unified Davidic kingdom be re-established. So this period is marked by a resurgence in Jewish tradition, as the exiles looked back to their Mosaic origins in an effort to revive their original religion. It is most likely that the took its final shape during this period or shortly afterward, and that it became the central text of the Jewish faith at this time as well. This fervent revival of religious tradition was aided by another accident in history: when Cyrus the Persian conquered Mesopotamia, he allowed the Jews to return home. This was no ordinary event, though.
The Bride of Christ must build a natural yearning, a natural desire, to have spiritual children! That desire, however, must come from God. Remember, spiritually we are the woman; we must be building this spiritual yearning within us, where we feel we must have spiritual children. The real family is the God Family! That’s the family God wants us to really get passionate about. The physical family is here only to help us get into the spiritual family. This God Family vision really stretches your mind.
It is unnatural for us, but it is the way Christ, our Husband, thinks! We must think that way too if we are to marry Him! (Philippians 2:5). Imagine what Christ would say if we married Him and then told Him that we didn’t really want children. Of course, this is hypothetical; we would not even be Christ’s wife if we thought that way.
If we don’t want children, then we are in the wrong spiritual family! And we won’t be the Bride of Christ. Christ is determining now if you want to have a lot of children; and by a lot, He means all of humanity. Multiple billions of people will be given the opportunity to be a part of the God Family before this is over. Rather than reinvent the wheel of my own views on 'Is There a Real Hell Fire' I'd like to share the thoughts of John Wright, whose perspectives are my own. I realize that in the COGs and Fundamentalist views, 'It's in the Bible' is the ultimate answer to every question about is there a real Hell or Lake of Fire awaiting those who aren't with whatever the program is.
I have been cast headlong and often into the Lake of Fire by the faith filled here. Some seem to resent and wish me ill because I have not only evolved out of the World Wide Church of God and not picked a splinter or denomination to continue belief in, but that I no longer take the Bible as literally or authoritative as I once did. It seems to be something they can't wait to see happen as I am sure it will confirm to themselves that they, not I, was more correct in their views about all things theological and real. That being said, there is liberation being able to say 'I don't care what the Bible says' about this or that topic or that it doesn't matter what the Bible says, we know better now, or should. I know those are words that most would choke on. But for me, after years of experience in ministry, all things church, study of origins and theology as well as quick to notice 'that just doesn't seem right to me' perspective, I personally can say that on this topic of Hell or the Lake of Fire, it does not matter what the Bible says.
The myth of Hell or the Lake of Fire is a concept that should not exist, could not exist and does not exist. Not only because it clearly has evolved over time in the scriptures and the minds of Bible literalists but also that it simply is lame and shows a God to be less than all powerful, loving and just. You'd think that would be Good News, but it is not to most. Many here just can't stand it if I am not going to be sorry and 'think different when you are thrown in it.' It, like all doctrines and beliefs, has evolved from other cultures before the Bible (Mainly Egyptian) and is not an original truth to the Bible.
It fills our need to know what happens to the wicked since I am trying so hard to be nice and go to heaven or be worthy of the Wonderful World Tomorrow and they can't get away with not being like me. I certainly don't want to do this for nothing.
Religion itself flows naturally from our conscious fear of death and the question of 'what is going to happen to me when I die.' To answer it, we make stuff up that comforts us. ' John Wright's work shares a broad focus on what people believe and why.
His most recent feature-length documentary focuses on the famous evangelical preacher Tony Campolo and his son Bart Campolo, who stopped believing in God at the age of 50 and stepped away from Christian ministry ( ). The film revolves around an in-depth conversation between the father and his son resulting from Bart’s departure from faith. As the son of a Presbyterian minister, John has long been interested in the questions answered by religion'.
Deceitfulness, selfishness, coveting, idolatry, masturbation, hubris, boastfulness, hatred, lust, envy and many more ‘sins’ have one thing in common: most people do them, because they’re within the range of normal human behavior and easily explained by our biology as expressed in our genes. What supreme being creates life with a set of attributes and then demands it stop exhibiting those attributes under pain of eternal torture? (Even the less common, more reprehensible sins of humankind – murder, rape, child abuse, etc. – have roots we can often understand and explanations in the social sciences.).
The doctrine of original sin states that all humans are born sinful, because their ancestors sinned and brought the rest of humanity down with them. But think about that. If our government arrested one of its citizens, tried them and executed them for a crime their parent or, worse, grandparent or, worse, some great- great- ancestor committed, everybody would swiftly cry injustice. We would immediately, instinctively and rightly object that the crime wasn’t committed by the arrested party at all, but by someone they’d never met and who merely happened to pass along their genes to the new, unwitting generation.
What kind of God allows the punishment of the wrong person and calls it justice? (Some Christians do not hold to the most drastic forms of this doctrine, that we are collectively guilty because of the sins of our ancestors, or the one known as ‘total depravity’, but instead say that the sins of our ancestors gives us a tendency toward sin. This is little better. No deity I believe in is so cruel as to allow damnation for his creations because they have a baked-in tendency to do things this deity calls ‘bad’. Evangelicals believe that salvation from Hell is tied directly to belief in God. But people disbelieve for a variety of reasons that are easy to understand.
Sometimes people lack belief because they are predisposed to analytical thinking and have not been able to become convinced of God’s existence. Sometimes it’s because they lack the ability to sufficiently grasp the abstract. Sometimes they haven’t landed upon the ‘right belief’ among the jungle of ideas around them. Sometimes it’s because their personalities predispose them to find peace and happiness in other religious or nonreligious movements and ideas, or because they were born in a country with another religion entirely and taught the falsehood of the Christian one their entire lives.
Whatever the reason, what divine entity would make the truth of his existence as ambiguous as it is and then demand that people believe it under pain of eternal torture? (Or, just as bad, demand intellectual dishonesty from people who simply haven’t been convinced? What should they do?
Feign belief as though they held it? Fake it till they – somehow – make it?). The bible speaks of the broad road that leads to ‘destruction’, interpreted by most Christians as Hell, and the narrow road that leads to ‘life’, interpreted by most Christians as Heaven.
But why would God allow a future where many billions of souls suffer forever in anguish while the relatively few celebrate in Heaven? What kind of celebration could that possibly be? Christian theology asserts that God wins in the end. But no victory would be more hollow than managing to hold on to the faithful few while the beloved, unbelieving many spend eternity in great suffering. In any analogous circumstance, nobody would consider it any victory at all. In summary: it’s difficult to celebrate over the sounds of screaming.
(You may say that victory cannot be measured in numbers. But the eternal states of individuals are important, if they will exist for eternity as religious people believe. Given this, the only number that makes sense – of humans suffering in Hell for all eternity while a loving, just God exists – is zero. Even if we did decide that retribution is a valid form of divine justice, it cannot be disproportionate and also just.(Note: Forever and ever is a long time) Evangelicals believe that the least of their sins would warrant Hell, all by itself. So a child who lies about doing their homework, for example, would be deserving of eternal torment just for that alone, rather than the punishment being, say, merely to be lied to in return. Not even those most committed to retributive justice would accept this utterly disproportional form of it if they didn’t feel they had to.
Moreover, when we see disproportional punishment within human societies, we instinctively and rightly consider it injustice. (Take Hitler, for an oft-cited example. He brutally slaughtered millions, out of what seemed like pure evil. But he didn’t do it forever!
His ovens have long been cold, his guns silent. His actions lasted a finite time.
So, even eye-for-eye retribution against Hitler would only allow us to ‘kill him back’ a finite number of times. Hell for eternity – even for Hitler – would be disproportionate punishment for his sins.). Modern biblical scholars generally agree that the words translated as ‘Hell’ in the English versions of the bible started in ancient Jewish belief not as a place where punishment was dispensed, but as a subterranean underworld of forgetfulness, a place of unconscious, silent existence for everybody who had ever died.
Sheol was the original word that referred to this concept in Hebrew, later translated into the Greek word Hades, which brought with it an entire mythology to the concept of the underworld. This was distinct from the Greek concept of Tarturus, which was a place of punishment distinct from Hades. The originators of these ideas believed they were physical places under the earth. By tracing the concepts through history, it is easy to see that they have been misappropriated and conflated together to create what became the evangelical Christian doctrine of Hell, but that doesn’t give much confidence in the idea of it being true. ‘Eternal fire’, ‘Lake of fire’ and other terms are thrown around in metaphor in the New Testament, before Hades itself is thrown into the lake of fire after all the dead people are emptied out of it (Revelation 20).
How can Hell be sent to Hell? It seems obvious that these terms have been dubiously utilized.
Christians often say that people have a choice to make between accepting Jesus’ offer of salvation or rejecting it. If they ‘reject’ it, they are thus ‘choosing Hell’ as their permanent future. The existence of this choice may be obvious to them, but most people do not conceive that there is such a choice to make.
For the vast majority of people who live and have ever lived, the details, consequences and existence of such a choice is extremely ambiguous, obscure or even completely imperceptible. They either haven’t been rationally convinced that they must consider the matter seriously, or they have barely heard of it. Everyone, upon having the truth of such a choice miraculously and unambiguously revealed to them, would immediately choose eternal reward over eternal suffering. Nobody in a functional frame of mind would actively choose pain and suffering in the manner that is claimed; that is an obvious truth.
It is a falsehood, then, to imagine that accepting the reality of this choice ‘by faith’, out of ignorance rather than knowledge, is a virtue. What would God be testing for, if this is how it works? Why would blind faith in the unseen be the value God wants to reward? What’s so important about blind belief?
It doesn’t make sense, so it’s very likely to be wrong. The central tenet of Christianity is that God sent his son Jesus to suffer and die for the sins of the world so the people of the world wouldn’t have to.
Is this ‘grace’ enough to accomplish the transformative feat of bringing salvation to humankind? Or does the story end with, ‘If only humankind had accepted it!’ Ironically, therefore, Christians who believe in eternal Hell for the unbelieving are minimizing their own Savior’s sacrifice and his power to save. Salvation of the few by blind faith would not be even remotely as powerful as salvation of the many by grace. Pollcode.com Which Church of God Do You Belong To? WCG/GCI (Tkach) LCG (Meredith) UCG (Kubik) PCG (Flurry) COGWA (Franks) RCG (Pack) CBCG (Coulter) COGAIC (Hulme) 'Christian' Churches of God (Cox) Other Sabbatarian COG Mainline Protestant Catholicism Charasmatic Agnostic Athiest pollcode.com How Long Was/Is Your Connection With the WCG or Related Groups?
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