I'm enjoying your answers. Okay so let me ask you this. If there was no hell, would any of us really want to follow God?
I can honestly say i do not follow God because of fear of hell.. And if there are people out there who think they are following God and there reason is because of fear of hell then they are not following God.. Because coming to understand the full revelation of Gods will removes all fear because once a person understand the extent of the Love of God for us ( He suffered death to save us from the lake of fire).. That Love removes fear .. This is revealed in the scriptures..
1 John 4 KJV
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 19 We love him, because he first loved us.
So i Love God because i read the entire message of the Bible.. I realize that God loves me.. It's the knowledge of Hius love for me that keeps me glued to Him willingly with Great Hope and peace of mind.. Yes there are Hell fire and brimstone preachers who do ranting sermons to people and have little kids terrified in their congregations but we have thousands of these kids that grow up to become unbelievers.. So fear has a bad record at keeping people believing God.. fear is not an emotion that can be maintained for a life time it destroys peoples minds.. But the Love and wisdom of God.. Now that creates real Love for God in ones heart and great admiration for God so that one has no problem believing God and holding on to God with a loving embrace for ones entire life time.. When one discovers the Love of God then ones fear is totally removed...
Because a lot of God's rules are annoying to follow and I'm sure if there was no punishment of hell a lot of us wouldn't be Christians right now.
Indeed they are impossible for us humans to follow without failure,, in trying to follow them one will be failing in their attempts each and every day because the rules of God are there to show us that we Cannot successfully follow the rules of God . You may then say then why have rules if we cannot follow them without failure?? Because the LAW's job is to show us our problem that we are imperfect beings needing God to save us ..
So while it is hard to
obey the rules of God it is not hard to
Believe That rules of God are truth and Good... Bible reveals to us that we are saved through
BELIEF and
TRUST Believing God's message and trusting (having Faith) in the way God has made for us to be saved.. That being through the Atonement that Jesus secured for us on the cross... NO one is saved by succeeding to
obey Gods Laws without failure..
What I'm saying is, what's the point of having God in your life if your life was fine the way it was before it was ruined by your own sin? It seems like sin and the fear of being thrown in hell is the only reason I have anything to do with God.
Then discover the Love of God which casts out all fear.. Understand what God did by demonstration (Jesus death and Resurrection ) that won me and most of the Heavenly Host over to joyful recognition of how absolutely justified God is to being the One and Only God of all existence and how absolutely wrong it is for people and satan and his fallen angels to reject His perfect will.
Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom.. It is not the end of Wisdom.. The end of the journey of Wisdom is the discovery of the love of God which casts out all fear within us..