Omimanordude, has any of these responses helped you at all?omimanordude wrote:I don't really know how to respond to unbelievers' questions...
They ask me about Hell. They ask me how an All Knowing GOD can create man full knowing how there will be more people there than in Heaven. Though I know we are finite in being and mind, how can I explain this to them? How often have you guys struggled with the Doctrine of Hell?
What are your thoughts now about responding to unbeliever's questions on this subject?
Orthodox Biblical Christian belief very clearly teaches that Hell does exist, that Jesus refered to it often as a place to avoid at all cost (Mark 9:34) and to be afraid of being led astray to end up there (Matthew 10:28).
Scripture offers reasons for the existence of Hell - that God's justice demands such a place for the wicked to go, that His love demands a place for those who want nothing to do with Him, His sovereignty demands such a place as He is the ultimate victor over evil, and human dignity demands a place away from Heaven as people should not be forced into Heaven to be in the presence of He of whom they want no part.
The well-known Christian apologist, Norman Geisler, has this to say in the response to the question Why did God create People bound for Hell?:
He also said this about Hell:Some critics of Hell argue that if God knew that his creatures would reject them and eventuate in such a horrible place as Hell, then why did he create them in the first place? Wouldn't it have been better to have never existed that to exist and go to Hell?
It is important to note that nonexistence cannot be said to be a better condition than any kind of existence, since nonexistence is nothing. And to affirm that nothing can be better than something is a gigantic category mistake. In order to compare two things, they must have something in common. But there is nothing in common between being and nonbeing. They are diametrically opposed.
Some one may feel like being put out of a life of misery, but such a one cannot even consistently think of nonbeing as a better state of being. True, Jesus said it would have been better if Judas had never been born (Mark 14:21). But this is simply a strong expression indicating the severity of his sin, not a statement about the superiority of non-being over being.
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Further, simply because some will lose in the game of life does not mean it should not be played. Before the Super Bowl ever begins both teams know that one of them will lose. Yet they all will to play. Before every driver in America takes to the road each day we know that people will be killed. Yet we will to drive. Parents know that having children could end in tragedy for their offspring as well as for themselves. Yet the foreknowledge of evil does not negate our will to permit the possibility of good. Why? Because we deem it better to have played with the opportunity to win than not to have played at all. It is better to lose in the Super Bowl than not to be able to play in it. From God's standpoint, it is better to love the whole world (John 3:16) and lose some of its inhabitants than not to love them at all.
Geisler, Norman L., Baker Encyclopaedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Academic, Michigan. 1999. (page 312-14)Nowhere does the Bible describe it [Hell] as a "torture chamber" where people are forced against their will to be tortured. This is a caricature created by unbelievers to justify their reaction that the God who sends people to Hell is cruel. This does not mean that Hell is not a place of torment. Jesus said it was (Luke 16:24). But unlike torture which is inflicted from without against one's will, torment is self-inflicted.
Even atheists (such as Sartre) have suggested that the door of Hell is locked from the inside. We are condemned to our own freedom from God. Heaven's presence of the divine would be the torture to one who has irretrievably rejected Him. Torment is living with the consequences of our own bad choices. It is the weeping and gnashing of teeth that results from the realization that we blew it and deserve the consequences. Just as a football player may pound on the ground in agony after missing a play that loses the Super Bowl, so those in Hell know that the pain they suffer is self-induced.
I read somewhere recently the someone who rejects God is someone whose polarity is all wrong. God is a lover, not a rapist - He does not force Himself upon anyone. We can choose to reject Him by rejecting Christ, but that means we have set our polarity such that He is repelled by us, and consequently we are by Him. He will respect the choice we make.
Trying to diminish the notion of Hell in any way at all is an exercise in denial of spiritual reality and Christian Truth. Doing so will not cause Hell to disappear. We don't get to vote on it's existence, duration, characteristics or anything else about it. God has made a place for all those who do not want to have anything to do with Him, where evil and sin can be deposited, and there you have it - the choice to go there or not is over to you (or to whom you are explaining this doctrine) by accepting or rejecting the offer of salvation through faith in Christ.
. I really appreciate the effort you guys put into all of this. Yes, they are all very informative. I think I comprehend now more than before, especially the articles that you guys put up (Judah's one with the Craig-Bradley, nice 
). It has been awhile, but I think that this depressing feeling of Hell looming over mankind is finally subsiding now, with prayer and honesty. You are right; there is nothing we can do for the ones in Hell, and we must preach the message to all that we can; that is our mission, and I seem to have almost forgotten this over my despair 
. Puritan Lad, I think you are right; we truly do not deserve Heaven, but Love bought us. I think that is right, that we all can get salvation, yes, I do believe that. It just saddens me at times that SO many die each day, and they have NEVER even heard Jesus or God. Though I know that all men must have some degree of understanding of a Creator, I think my biggest source of sadness was this; there are those who were in places where it is hard to reach, or places that missionaries never even been before, and just that so many perish without ever a true chance to even respond to the Gospel. I checked a statistics site, and it seems that people die almost per second, and most of them are not even in the U.S.; they are in poor areas that people have never tried to help, and not only do these poor souls suffer in this life, they will atone for their inherent sins in the next. Though I feel much better now, I think this is still bothering me quite a bit. Thank you guys for the continual responses.