Dear Rodger,

We are very sad to hear of your struggles. As a band we believe that only God knows the true details about life after death so it is dangerous for us to say what will or will not happen in great detail.

All we can say is that the Bible does say that if people do not accept God's grace then they will not be with Him eternally.

However, God is not evil as you have pointed out and He does not want anyone to perish and only He knows who will not be with Him in paradise.

I'm sure that you would agree that the only sure way of having everlasting peace about eternity is to accept God's grace and to accept that none of us have earnt our salvation but by the blood of God's son, perfect Jesus, by God's love we can have eternal life.

If there was not a hell to escape then surely God would not have allowed His son to suffer in such a tragic (hellish)way.

Rodger we believe that there is a hell and that Jesus was willing and determined to stop us having to go there by suffering pain that we cannot understand and this shows God's great love.

Please reply to this if you would like to. We respect the fact that you have thought about all of this deeply and are happy to hear your point of view.

I'm sorry if this sounds like we are preaching at you, that was not the intention. We just wanted you to hear our view.

My testimony contains information that, according to the many entries in my guest book, and the many positive emails in my email file folders, is helping many people. My guest book can be accessed towards the bottom of my front page at
http://greater-emmanuel.org/Hope4You/

Also see the testimonies at http://www.tentmaker.org/visitorcomments.htm

Also see http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/hells_fruit.html

My guest book only holds 150 messages. Then the oldest ones are automatically deleted to make room for the newest ones.

SO MUCH SUFFERING is caused by the horrific false doctrine of endless suffering in hell, that it gives me great pleasure to guide people to the evidence that a correctly (literally, not interpretively) translated Bible teaches universal salvation, not endless suffering in hell, or even annihilation.

We agree with fundamentalist Christians that we should not believe things that go against Biblical teaching. We don’t.
http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/universalism-is-not-in-the-bible.htm

I'm 70, and I am acquainted with many people who are, or were in various stages of nervous breakdown over their inability to love a god who would let anyone suffer forever. Even though they have embraced Christ and His gospel, they are afraid of what God might do to them after they are raised from the dead for not being able to love Him. The information in my testimony has helped many of these people.

I myself suffered a twelve year nervous breakdown (1966-78) because of my inability to love an endless-hell god. I’m 70 now.

If any member or surfer on forums is suffering because they are unable to successfully emotionally cope with the idea that God is going to let any creature suffer forever, they can Google up the search engine at the top of the TENTMAKER front page. Just type in a key word or phrase from each argument or scripture passages and ten articles will appear that refute the eternal hell and annihilationist doctrines.
Then click to the next page and ten more articles will appear, and so on and so on for many pages.
http://www.tentmaker.org/

Most fundamentalist Christians are not even aware that there are two sides to the argument about what the Bible teaches.
I have exhaustively studied both sides myself. This debate nearly always ends with the words, "My Greek scholars are more reliable than your Greek scholars," and the result is a stalemate.

If your readers think it glorifies God more to believe that He is going to let some of His creatures suffer forever, then they should keep believing that.
But if they think it glorifies God more to eventually meet everyone on the level of their greatest and deepest need, which is a change in their stubborn will, then I would like them to know that that is exactly what the Bible teaches that God is like.

I am a Concordant Christian. I have read and recorded gleanings into my more than four thousand page personal journal from most of the back issues of UNSEARCHABLE RICHES that has been published back to 1909. Every argument that I have ever heard against the Bible teaching universal salvation have been repeatedly dealt with in these magazines.

http://www.concordant.org/unsearchable/UnsearchableRiches.html

Largely, but not exclusively, because of the contents in these magazines, I am convinced that the evidence in support of the Bible teaching universal salvation is irrefutable. That is why the argument that we should teach endless suffering in hell just in case it might be true is unacceptable to me. IMHO the greatest of all manifestations of God's grace in action on this earth is that anyone can believe in "eternal suffering" for anyone and not have a nervous breakdown thinking about it.

Here are several Concordant websites.
http://www.concordant.org/
http://www.saviourofall.org/
http://gtft.org/
http://www.tentmaker.org/

Regarding arguments against the Bible teaching universal salvation, see
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/BibleThreateningsExplained.html

Any hell that anyone will experience the Bible calls "kolasis aionian," which means age-during corrective chastisement.
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/asw/Chapter11.html

It is limited in duration, and corrective in purpose.
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Aion_lim.html

Regarding the most common argument that the same word for "punishment" is also used for "life" see the following:
http://www.savior-of-all.com/aionian.html

I also would like to leave you with one more link. I am going to guide you to the testimony of a man whose experience was almost identical to mine. Even t

Country: Toronto, Canada

I also would like to leave you with one more link. I am going to guide you to the testimony of a man whose experience was almost identical to mine. Even the thought processes that took him into, through, and out of his breakdown are the same as mine. Only he is more eloquent in telling his story than I am in telling mine. His name is Charles Slagle.
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Absolute-Assurance-in-Jesus-Christ.html

It may begin to change your thinking.

The url of my own site is
http://greater-emmanuel.org/Hope4You/

God bless you in your study!
From Rodger Tutt in Toronto, Canada

Country: Toronto, Canada

Anyone is welcome to believe anything they want to about what the Bible teaches. I posted on this forum to give people an alternate point of view. Had I known that one existed I never would have had a twelve year nervous breakdown 1966-78 over my inability to love a god who would allow anyone to WANT to or have to suffer forever rather than eventually reach out for the salvation that God has provided. I'm 70 years old now.

THE FOLLOWING HAS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE TRUE REGARDING THE DEBATE ABOUT ETERNAL TORMENT

The argument about “eternal hell” nearly always ends with the words, “My Greek scholars are more reliable than your Greek scholars,” and the result is nearly always a stalemate.
My Greek scholars are Louis Abbott and the Greek scholars he quotes in chapters three and twelve. Copy and paste into Google
AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF WORDS or click on
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/asw/index.html

If you think it glorifies God more to let some of His creatures suffer forever, or annihilate them, then you keep believing that.

But if you think it glorifies God more to eventually meet everyone on the level of their greatest and deepest need which is a change in their stubborn will, then know that there is plenty of evidence in the Bible that that is exactly what God is like.

ON THE BASIS OF HAVING STUDIED THE EVIDENCE AVAILABLE TO YOU CHOOSE ONE
Choose to believe that the Bible teaches that God will sustain people alive in an inescapable state of eternal suffering.
Or
Choose to believe that God will annihilate (cause them to cease to exist) anyone who does not become a Christian before they die.
Or
Choose to believe what the following expositors reveal about what the Bible teaches.
Copy and paste into Google
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD SERIES
http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/savior-of-the-world/index.htm
http://www.godfire.net/eby/saviour_of_the_world.html
Or
ABSOLUTE ASSURANCE IN JESUS CHRIST
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Absolute-Assurance-in-Jesus-Christ.html
http://www.sigler.org/slagle/absolute.htm
Or
UNIVERSAL SALVATION UNIVERSITY
http://richardwaynegarganta.com/universalsalvation.htm
Or
CHRISTIAN BIBLICAL UNIVERSALISM
http://www.christian-universalism.com/links.html
Or
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM
http://www.christianuniversalist.org
Or
ETERNAL DEATH ANNIHILATION?
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/EternalDeath.html
Or
THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION
http://hell-fact-or-fable.com/destruction3.html

I myself, along with many others with whom I am acquainted, simply cannot love a god who would let anyone choose themselves into an inescapable state of eternal suffering (Arminian), or suffer forever just because they were born into the human race (Calvinist). Neither can we love a god who would snuff us out of existence just because we didn’t hear about Jesus before we died.

But we CAN love a god Who, because of His Son’s death and resurrection, through the power in the blood of His cross, will sooner or later save all fallen creatures from everything from which they need to be saved (including their stubborn wills). That’s the God that the above expositors see in the Bible. And that’s the God to Whom I joyously yield my heart in complete and total abandonment.

SO FOR US THE CHOICE IS EASY

Country: Toronto, Canada