A hypothetical Question

[Nicholas]

Well, let us say that God answers this prayer! And he now is in heaven, only he is not actually completely obedient to God. Then the problem is, heaven is a place where God's will is always done without exception, so this friend has no corner where he can go off and indulge his favorite peccadillo, no shadow where he can make faces at old Biff any more (how did he get in here, anyway?), no secret place in his soul where he can think an unkind thought, even.

So for this man, heaven would be hell...

Blessings,
Lee

Have you seen thee Twighlight Zone episode dealing with a man who thought he was in heaven, but turned out to be in hell?

[Nicholas]

It's a profound mystery: if even one soul is lost forever, then the good means nothing, yet if even one soul is saved, then evil is defeated.

As the (no doubt apocryphal) starfish story goes:

A little girl is walking along the beach with her father, when she comes across a stranded starfish. She carefully picks it up and runs down to the surf and places the starfish back into the ocean.

Whe she comes back, her father asks "there must be hundreds of stranded starfish, what difference can you possibly make?"

"It made a difference to that one," she replied.

-Neil

I think I remember that story.

[Teallaura]

You could, but it's not good for the screw driver.

No, still can't (try it at home - er, then again, don't). You'll hurt something all right - your fingers (when you hit them) and your head (when it slips) and your neighbor (when it slips and flies), and potentially poke out an eye (when you do something stupid like using the base end so you can get a better grip) but that nail ain't going in that board unless you modify the screwdriver - which is cheating and destroys the analogy anyway..

Okay, let's see you drive screws with a circular saw - no modifications allowed.

I realize they aren't authoritative, otherwise they wouldn't be apocryphal, but my question is this, does this idea actually violate any real rules? The question isn't while theyr'e still alive, it's when they're actually in Hell and the people in Heaven ask God to let them free, and technically it wouldn't violate their free will since they're already in Hell.

There is Scripture that indicates that Hell is permanent and some other that seems to point to annhilation (talk to Theo on that one, I'm not convinced). I can't think of a single passage indicating Hell/separation is anything but permanent. The strongest off the top of my head would be the story of Lazarus (not the one that came back) and the rich man.

Yeah, if by 'violate the rules' you mean that the doctrine is contrary to Scripture, I think it is.

Now yes, I know it's not an authoritative source and yes, I know that people are probably thinking that I shouldn't have mentioned where I got the hypothetical situation from. But that wasn't my point, my point was whether or not the idea of people being forgiven after they're in hell acutally violate any of Christianity's rules?

No, I actually appreciate the heads up on source - it's helpful. I just meant that I personally wouldn't have taken this on had I known it from the start. It would have been helpful to know, but the hypothetical is so sketchy that even with it, it was hard to get the gist of where you were going. And I already knew I wasn't feeling up to a serious scholarly thing.

And please, I'm simply curious about people's thoughts on this idea, I'm just asking questions.

Ask away - sorry if I sounded snappish - I really wasn't meaning to. Nothing wrong with your question - it's not a bad one nor is it the first time I've heard it (never seen it supported before, however).

I'm going to leave this to others now. Really, I just don't feel up to hauling out the concordance to do this right and you deserve better than I can give without it.

[Nicholas]

No, still can't (try it at home - er, then again, don't). You'll hurt something all right - your fingers (when you hit them) and your head (when it slips) and your neighbor (when it slips and flies), and potentially poke out an eye (when you do something stupid like using the base end so you can get a better grip) but that nail ain't going in that board unless you modify the screwdriver - which is cheating and destroys the analogy anyway..

Okay, let's see you drive screws with a circular saw - no modifications allowed.

I'll start another thread on this somewhere...

There is Scripture that indicates that Hell is permanent and some other that seems to point to annhilation (talk to Theo on that one, I'm not convinced). I can't think of a single passage indicating Hell/separation is anything but permanent. The strongest off the top of my head would be the story of Lazarus (not the one that came back) and the rich man.

Yeah, if by 'violate the rules' you mean that the doctrine is contrary to Scripture, I think it is.

Ok, I think I see where you're going with that.

No, I actually appreciate the heads up on source - it's helpful. I just meant that I personally wouldn't have taken this on had I known it from the start. It would have been helpful to know, but the hypothetical is so sketchy that even with it, it was hard to get the gist of where you were going. And I already knew I wasn't feeling up to a serious scholarly thing.

Ok, I'll try to remember to do that next time.

Ask away - sorry if I sounded snappish - I really wasn't meaning to. Nothing wrong with your question - it's not a bad one nor is it the first time I've heard it (never seen it supported before, however).

I'm going to leave this to others now. Really, I just don't feel up to hauling out the concordance to do this right and you deserve better than I can give without it.

Quite alright.

[Adam]

Okay, if I understand you correctly the Christian prayed something like this:
Dear Lord, I know my friend has rejected you and wants nothing to do with you, I know that he rejects your message and your gift of salvation. I know that he prefers to live by his own standards and his own rules and hates the path that you have given us to follow.
But Father, I am asking you to override his free will and deny him this human freedom of choice that you give to all of your children. Ignore his wishes and turn a deaf ear to his statements. What he desires and what he wants is of no significance to me; do instead what I want and bring him into heaven to make me happy.
I think God would ignore that prayer and let the friend decide for himself if he wanted to accept Christ or not as Saviour.

Lots of you out there need to buy a red-letter edition Bible. You guys pay no attention whatever to what Jesus Christ said.
Try reading Matthew 25 some time. Jesus seems to be presenting that as the be-all-and-end-all of salvation.
Jesus does teach the helpfulness of believing that He is the Son of Man (Son of God as would be understood in Aramaic), but anyone really believing this would amend his life. (Jesus specifically condemns those who seem to believe, but whom He says in effect only knew Him in name only.) And if Jesus is God the Son who creates all including all people, then He calls all people in a more intimate way than we would recognize externally or call in some cases, "accepting Jesus into one's heart".
Adam