21
The statements ascribed to Pope Francis by that article are not true. It is a hoax.
See:
Don’t fall for this Pope Francis hoax: 5 things to know and share
Pope Francis Declares All Religions are True : Facts (Hoax or Fact)
21
Technically, a couple of different terms are being confused in the question.
Conditionalism is the teaching that immortality / eternal life is conditional upon a right standing with God.
Annihilationism is the teaching that anyone who is ultimately unrepentant will cease to exist, usually after a period of torment that accommodates to the amount of evil ...
18
Did Jesus actually ever say if you don't believe in me you go to Hell?
Yes, He did say this directly, without mincing words. Bolded in the passage below.
John, Chapter 3 (KJV)
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.
17 For God sent not ...
17
Romans 3:23 (NIV) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God
No one is righteous. Better is not enough. God demands 100% holiness. No one can achieve that. Therefore, we need the Blood of Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus, can we have salvation.
Romans 5:12 (NIV) Therefore, just as sin
entered the world through one man, and death through sin, ...
13
These two lines of reasoning are, as you've presented them, problematic as you suggest. Ideally, they'd be used together and be founded in the true message of the gospel.
First, the few details to be cleared up:
I don't understand how can someone venerate Jesus for his act of ultimate selflessnes and love (the crucifixion) but at the same time try to ...
13
According to Peter Binsfeld, you've got the list right. He made the list in 1589; there was no support for that theory before then, and there has been very little support for that theory since.
As far as I know, there is no Christian tradition which adheres to there being seven princes of Hell. More than that, at least the names "Lucifer" and "Satan" ...
12
Short answer: We don't know for sure. The rest of this answer explores various "Christian answers", but the conclusion is "we don't know for sure".
This is a question that I struggled with when I was an atheist, and it's a question that Christians have grappled with and that has never been answered in a way that would have been intellectually satisfying to ...
11
According to the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus being the Son of God means that He is fully God made manifest in human form (John 1:14). Jesus is simultaneously both fully God and fully man. As such, Jesus being crucified wasn't God sending someone else to be pusnished, but instead God taking the punishment Himself.
This, therefore, does not compromise God'...
10
We do not know exactly where heaven or hell is. However, in Scripture, the word "up" is commonly used in association with the location of heaven and "down" is typically associated with the location of hell, either figuratively or literally. Also, from the vantage point of heaven, earth is down.
The "up" and "down" ...
10
There is no biblical support for Satan or any of his demons torturing people in Hell. Rather, the adversary, Satan is said to travel around the world (Job 1:7) and even to have access to God's presence (Job 1:6). In the gospel and Acts accounts, we find demonic figures not in Hell but on earth, dwelling in men (Matthew 12:22). Interestingly, in Matthew 12:43-...
10
Introduction
I intend to show that the concept of a universal realm for all, outside Heaven, where all await the resurrection (Waiting in the Grave, WitG hereafter) is united against other beliefs such as the belief we go Straight to Heaven (StH), that we cease to exist entirely with no afterlife or others such as purgatory/limbo.
While there are variations ...
10
Those who believe in Apokatastasis believe Revelation 20:10 is grossly misunderstood. The Greek says:
καὶ ὁ διάβολος ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου, ὅπου καὶ τὸ θηρίον καὶ ὁ ψευδοπροφήτης, καὶ βασανισθήσονται ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,...
9
I cannot comment on that particular series, but I can assuredly say the following:
It seems quite clear to me that you need to intimately know Jesus to be accepted by Him.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘...
9
I think the misunderstanding here is that the wicked are resurrected and then killed. I'm not sure there's a Biblical backing for the idea that those who rejected Christ will again be separated from their bodies. Their souls will be in bodies when they are cast into the lake of fire. Therefore, the punishment is eternal, physical, punishment in the ...
9
Yes, those in hell can remember their past life; no, I know for a fact (according to the Bible; if you don't consider the Bible a valid source, then I got nothin :) ) that it doesn't apply in either. (Didn't want to just say "yes" or "no" because that would have been ambiguous.)
In Luke 16:19-31, the rich man in hell pleads for Abraham to allow Lazarus, a ...
9
I can't do any better than C. S. Lewis's sermon The Weight of Glory (my apologies for basically simply quoting this and moving on, but this is at the crux of the matter). This is expounding on what Thomas Shields has already said, but I do love the way Lewis says it.
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of
the virtues, ...
9
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church statement on hell, we find the following:
The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal ...
9
For the larger context of the authorship and development of the creed, please see my answer to this question: Did the Apostles' Creed originate with the Apostles?
Church historian Philip Schaff provides a summary of the development of the Apostles' Creed in his book, The Creeds of Christendom. A helpful table, showing the creed's gradual formation in the ...
answered Jul 17 '15 at 3:44
Nathaniel is protesting
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9
This quote does come from Augustine, but its application to the doctrine of purgatory seems to be the work of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas (who mistakenly attributes it to Gregory the Great) quotes similar language in his second article on purgatory from the appendices of the Summa, saying:
On the contrary, Gregory says, "Even as in the same fire gold ...
answered Sep 10 '18 at 0:27
Nathaniel is protesting
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8
Q. "Do Jehovah's Witnesses believe in annihilation?"
A. Yes.
We whole heartedly believe in what is stated under divine inspiration of God's holy spirit found at 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 and 2 Peter 3:7... and I quote:
"This takes into account that it is righteous on God’s part to repay tribulation to those who make tribulation for YOU, 7 but, to YOU who ...
8
It happened before in the Bible, so I don't see why it cannot happen again. In 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, Paul the Apostle tells about a time when he is taken up to Paradise "and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (v4). He could not tell whether he was in a body or not (v3).
Perhaps the most famous occasion of a man going to ...
8
I think almost all branches of Christianity* agree that both heaven and hell are places specifically created by God. The justification for this is pretty simple: all things outside the being of God himself were created by God. There are no other eternally existing beings, things or places, and all the extant beings, things and places are explicitly ...
8
I'm trying not to give an answer that's purely a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but the matter is discussed so well there that there isn't much I feel I can add to it:
816 "The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend ...
8
"Liberal Christianity" is a loosely defined and wide-ranging group, and there can be many approaches to salvation, but let me describe a commonly believed approach.
While we often use the word 'salvation' as if it was synonymous with 'rescue', in the original languages it doesn't really mean that in a simple way. The word has connections with both 'healing' ...
8
1) the large majority of people go to hell
See ch. 32 § "The Mystery of This Number" of Life Everlasting: A Theological Treatise on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell by Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. For example, he writes:
The number of the elect is known only by God. "The Lord knoweth who are His." [II Tim. 2:19.] …
…
...
7
The phrase "Bosom of Abraham" was a traditional Rabbinic idea that when righteous people died they went to the "Bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob".
From The Legend of the Jews:
The phrase "to be in Abraham's bosom", found in the New Testament, and
sporadically also in rabbinic literature (e.g., Kiddushin 72b; Ekah 1.
85), has, however, nothing to do ...
7
I'm going to give a slightly different understanding of this than you may have heard before, largely because I've faced up to the same thing and wondered the exact same thing. The question comes down to this: "Isn't believing in something simply the same as doing something? Isn't it a work in and of itself?" This question always bothered me.
Here's the ...
7
I'll certainly unpack this for you. Although I would not trust that internet reading alone would give anybody a comprehensive understanding of the Jewish religion (or any other religion, for that matter), you can read about Jewish conceptions of the afterlife here, for example: Olam Ha-Ba: The Afterlife . There is no single doctrine to which Jews adhere ...
7
The Catechism answers the questions (as ever!):
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”615 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom ...
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