Do those condemned to hell suffer forever?

Read the whole Gospel of Matthew and the many times Jesus says that people in hell are in "outer darkness" and live forever while weeping and gnashing their teeth. It is the forever-nature of God's just justice for their lifelong rebellion against him. There but by God's grace go I.

According to Paul in Ephesians 2:1-3, we are all born either actively or passively in rebellion against God, that is, dead to him, and worthy of eternal punishment. Only through faith and trust in Jesus Christ can we come alive (Ephesians 2:4-9) by grace through faith in order to do good works in his power (2:10).

There is no end to hell because God's just nature never ends.

The one who says there is no eternal Torment are saying Jesus is lying to us.

Jesus is the Authority on the topic, and human understanding and rational try to explain why the eternal condition of hell. Why?

It seems more like a hope than an explanation.

Jesus said: In context to hell:


Matt 25:31-46
Jesus said this after he told the Parable this is not a parable but a direct statement:
31“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.
32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. (Judgement)

33And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

37“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

41“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:

42for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

44“Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’

46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

FYI, EVERLASTING in Greek means Forever and without end.


Jesus is not Lying.

I can point you to luke chapter 16

Jesus taught Two sides of the Gulf.
Wicked on side of sheol, called hell. It's holding place for the spiritually dead and wicked until judgment Day.

Side of paradise. This is where righteous are. They repent and love and serve God.

Wicked won't repent and don't care. They are habitual sinners.

Galatians chapter 5
Downfall is walking in the flesh. Your supposed to be led by the Spirit.

Holy Spirit is the key.

Peace.

Forever/Eon

At the end there is two groups
Those written in the book of life and those not written...

The save will inherit the kingdom of God.
The unsaved will have eternal death
Life or death.
Eternal death does not mean that they burn in agony for ever

The result is eternal.

They will never wake up.

Will you perish or Not perish. Only 2 outcomes.
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

God doesn't enjoy seeing the lost suffering..

What is hell? Does anyone know? What we have shown in biblical passages is imagery as what hell is would only be depicted symbolically, it is with what is outside of our experience. God is fair, that does not mean any of us will be rewarded for doing things we should be doing, that is not good that should be rewarded but just what we are here to do. That would not pay for the bad things we do. Only Christ's righteousness that he bore suffering for all of us to apply to us with coming to him to be corporately in him will deliver us from the fair judgment of those wrong things we did, which are self-serving things in rebellion against God's will. With God being fair all sin is dealt with, and those outside of Christ will have it come to them, and beyond this life there is eternity they cannot get out from it. Certainly Christ did not want that for any, and warned us of the misery that we would turn from our ways and with repentance come in faith for the restoration that is provided.

I am glad to see a thread about this very important topic, which I have contemplated for fifty years.

A stumbling-block to belief in the NT God for some people is reconciling God’s power and love with the fact of evil and its consequence. A person—even a theist—might think that God would not permit evil, suffering and hell to exist. People who are mystified by evil and repulsed by its punishment do not realize that the essential aspect of being a human rather than a robot or subhuman creature is moral free will (MFW), which is what enables a person to experience love and meaning. This is what makes humans different from animals, whose behavior is governed mainly by instinct. This is what it means to be created in God’s image (GN 1:26-27). God could not force people to return His love without abrogating their humanity. If God were to zap ungodly souls, it would be tantamount to forcing conversions at gunpoint, which would not be free and genuine. If God were to prevent people from behaving hatefully, then He would need to prevent them from thinking evilly, which would make human souls programmed automatons.

Thus, for reasons we may understand only sufficiently rather than completely, God designed reality so that experiencing His presence is less than compelling, so that even Jesus (God the Son) on the cross cried out “My God [the Father], why have you forsaken [taken God the Spirit from] me?” (MT 27:46, PS 51:11) This phenomenon is sometimes called “distanciation”, because we experience God as distant from us and “unknown” (ACTS 17:23), even though He is close or immanent, “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (ACTS 17:28). Distanciation is experienced because God’s normative means of conversion is persuasion rather than coercion (MT 12:39, 24:24, 1CR 1:22-23). This is seen very clearly in Jesus’ lament over the obstinacy of Jerusalem (MT 23:37). Two unusual theophanies included when God appeared to Moses (in a burning bush per EX 3:2-6), whom God wanted to establish the Jewish lineage for the Messiah (OT), and to Saul/Paul (as the resurrected Jesus in ACTS 9:3-6), whom God chose to establish the NT church of Christ. Miracles are rare (not normative).

MFW only exists when there is the possibility of choosing between two qualitatively opposite moral options that we call good and evil. These options are opposites because of essentially different consequences for choosing them. Choosing good results in blessing, life and heaven; and choosing evil results in cursing, death and hell (DT 30:19). This is why hell as well as heaven exists. It is the just consequence for choosing evil rather than God. The Spirit of God is good: love, peace and joy (GL 5:22-23). Therefore, whoever rejects the Lord is spiritually separated from Him (IS 59:2) and thereby chooses the evil or satanic spirit of hatred, strife and misery and reaps the just consequence called “hell” in the afterlife (GL 6:7-9, HB 9:27-28). These options were presented by Moses to the Israelites (DT 30:19), and Jesus referred to this fundamental choice in terms of a fish or egg versus a snake or scorpion (LK 11:11-13, cf. GN 3:24, RV 22:1-2).

God created theoretical evil or the possibility of rejecting Him as an option that actualizes MFW/free human personality. As such it is necessary and even good (GN 1:31). Of course, it was wrong for Satan (1JN 3:8) and humanity (RM 5:12) to make evil actual by choosing to Sin or reject Faith in God’s Lordship. Sin: ignoring God/God’s Word. God loves a cheerful giver (2CR 9:7), which means He desires people to cooperate with Him happily because of love and gratitude for His grace rather than to cower before Him because of fear of hell. Love must be evoked; it cannot be coerced. And again, when souls sin or do NOT choose to love God freely, it is perfectly just (loving and logical) for them to reap the appropriate consequence (GL 6:7-9) or hell.

God is just (2THS 1:6a, cf. RM 3:25-26 & 9:14, DT 32:4, PS 36:6, LK 11:42, RV 15:3). All explanations of reality and interpretations of Scripture should conform to this certitude: “The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.” (PS 145:17) The Judge is just. It would be better not to attempt an explanation of God’s Word than to state one that impugns God’s justice and love for all people (JL 2:13, JN 3:16). Even the wrath of God is an expression of His love. Hebrews 12:4-11 offers the clue for harmonizing these two themes. This passage indicates that divine wrath is intended as discipline: to teach people to repent of their hatefulness or faithlessness (PR 3:12, IS 33:14-15 RV 3:19) before they die, after which divine wrath will be experienced justly without the opportunity for repentance.

If a righteous explanation cannot be found for a passage, then it should be considered as historical or descriptive of what occurred rather than as pedagogical or prescriptive of how people should behave. Of course, because God is loving and just, He does not tempt, trick, confuse or otherwise contribute to anyone’s sinfulness. On the contrary, God must be doing all that He can do without abrogating justice or volition (MFW) to influence people not to be deceived and become self-condemned (JM 1:13-17, TIT 3:11, IS 45:19). This realization should steer us away from the problematic opinion (a la Augustine via John Calvin) that God predestines most people for hell and lead us to affirm free will as a paradoxical fact (DT 30:19). It is paradoxical, because it affirms both that God is sovereign and that God chooses not to control moral thinking, because doing so would nullify human responsibility for sin, making the biblical revelation of salvation based on repentance irrelevant and absurd.

Evil people punish/torture themselves by experiencing delayed karma, just as those who experience appropriate justice during this earthly existence also punish themselves or reap what they have sown and send themselves to jail. This view makes souls responsible for breaking the rules rather than blaming evil on the judges (or Judge) who enforce the rules. The purpose of earthly punishment is to promote repentance, but the reason for retribution in hell is to attain justice. It is difficult to imagine, but somehow even someone as evil as Hitler will receive perfect justice, perhaps experiencing the agony of the millions of deaths he caused in accordance with the principal of “eye for eye” (MT 5:38), after which their souls are destroyed forever (per JN 17:12, RM 9:22, GL 6:8, PHP 3:19, 2THS 1:9, 2PT 3:7 & RV 20:13-14).

If I'm not mistaken the Devil will be cast into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet are to be tormented day and night, so presumably the beast and the false prophet will be tormented forever and ever too... so I think it's a safe assumption that all whose names are not found written in the book of life will be tormented forever in the lake of fire.

Yes, but the question needing to be answered is how to resolve eternal torment with God's love and justness, and Paul seems to do that by teaching that souls are destroyed (JN 17:12, RM 9:22, GL 6:8, PHP 3:19, 2THS 1:9, 2PT 3:7 & RV 20:13-14), presumably after justice is achieved. Thus, the teenager in Mongolia who had no opportunity to hear the Gospel, did not seek God and murdered no one will be punished less than Hitler in Germany who usurped God and murdered millions.

if God is about eternity then it would make sense that eternal torment would be eternal wouldn't it?

God is also about eternal love and justice, and Paul indicated how to make those truths jibe by teaching that souls are destroyed (JN 17:12, RM 9:22, GL 6:8, PHP 3:19, 2THS 1:9, 2PT 3:7 & RV 20:13-14), presumably after justice is achieved.

Thus, the teenager in Mongolia who had no opportunity to hear the Gospel, did not seek God and murdered no one will be punished less than Hitler in Germany who usurped God and murdered millions, which might take close to eternity to be avenged per the principle of "eye for eye", especially when even one minute in hell might seem like an eternity!

Well that would make sense I suppose at least his mercy extends even in death

Glad we agree. :^)

If I may, I find many of us tend to forget or overlook the root of our tradition. Judaism. And for whatever reason.

However, ours is a Judeo-Christian path. And being our Savior was the prophesied Messiah in what is now called Judaism, I think the roots of our new covenant belief in Messiah have importance in this matter.

Therefore, careful study assures us an eternal consuming fire Hell is not in the root of our faith.

https://www.thetorah.com/article/no-heaven-or-hell-only-sheol

No. You should do a study of the Greek phrases that are used in scripture and are translated as forever and eternal. If you do, you will find that there are several different phrases, not distinguished by many translators. These are -

eis ton aiOna: into the age εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (aiOn being a period of indeterminate length; translated as an age, and eon or a lifetime). Heb. 5:6

aiOnios: an adjective formed from aiOn. Aqueous is an adjective formed from water (aqua) and means watery, having characteristics that pertain to water. Spidery is an adjective formed from spider, and means having characteristic that pertain to spiders. This is why I prefer to translate aiOnios as aeonous, and regard it as meaning "having characteristics that pertain to a particular aeon, such as enduring for an indeterminate period of time", or "the kind of life in which one lives in fellowship with God", which will be characteritic of the age to come.

aiOnion αἰώνιον forever, eternal Ph'm 1:15 Mark 10:17

eis aiOnas: into ages εἰς αἰῶνας Heb. 13:8

eis tous aiOnas: εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας into the ages Matt. 6:13

eis aiOnas tOn aiOnas: εἰς αἰῶνας αἰώνων into ages of ages. Rev. 14:11

eis ton aiOna tou aiOnos εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος into the age of the age. Heb. 1:8

eis tous aiOnas tOn aiOnOn: εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων into the ages of the ages Heb. 13:21

eis to diEnekes: into the carried through, i.e. continuously εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς Heb 10:12, 14

Is it reasonable to assume that all of these expressions refer to exactly the same duration of endless time? Very few characters are threatened with being tormented eis tous aiOnas tOn aiOnOn: εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων into the ages of the ages.

So is it safe to assume that eternal is not used in any translation of torment or is it just greek

It is safe to assume that the NT folks did not explain clearly enough to obviate discussion on CC about how eternal torment jibes with omnilove, which is why some attempt to do so by applying God-given reasoning ability aka the gift of logic to discern this.