Question: How could God send people who don't accept Him to hell?

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

You may hear something like the following: "People who do not accept God are going to Hell. How could God do that?"

Those who don't want to obey God will reject God. We were created for the purpose of serving God. This is the only place we can be satisfied and content, that is, in His service. Satan was created for this also, and he fell by self-will. When we will to do God's will, we fulfill our destiny.

It may help to think about this in another way. God is love. That doesn't make God less Almighty Creator. It makes us understand that most of what we think of as love is actually something other than love. God's love is pure, holy, powerful, and good. It is kind, gentle, and all-wise. When we yield ourselves to God's love, then God does His righteousness through us. God's righteousness is the outworking of the the Love of God through us. It is a free gift. We can't work it up in ourselves. We can't direct it. When we try to direct it or to do righteousness on our own, we really make things much worse. We try to violate the basic laws of how things work. It's like trying to stop a train by stepping in front of it. That isn't the way to stop a train, and it doesn't work. (I'm using a simplified example to help with the understanding of this, of course. I hope it helps with the explanation.)

So, when someone rejects God, He tries by every means to bring them to Himself. Since He knows every person better than they know themselves, He is able to determine the best course of action. Some just listen to His voice right away. Some respond to gentle judgment. Some seem to want to persist in rejecting God. They are rebellious. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Eventually, some will persist until they force the issue and end up in hell. God doesn't want anyone to go this way. All God's judgments are remedial, but hell is so severe that God doesn't want anyone to go there. Yet, some will persist. God knew that this would happen and that some would persist. He knew every person ahead of time. Those who would be conformed to His image for the first resurrection, He appointed ahead of time for this purpose. He did this according to His foreknowledge without taking away free will. We have no revelation that says that He appointed anyone to hell ahead of time. Those who go there do so of their own wills, not God's will. I don't understand why anyone would make that choice, but people do.

There is no one who is totally ignorant of God. Every person on the planet knows about God. We know that by revelation. There would be no other way to know it. We also know that God is ultimately fair. We are each responsible for what we know. No one is responsible for what he or she does not know. You can confirm this in Scripture. (Luke 12) However, every person knows God to some extent, and God attempts to have a relationship with every person. We can't know enough about these personal relationships to make judgments, but God will judge all of this correctly. The fact is that the person who is reading this page has heard the utterance of God in a very specific way and is responsible to come to Christ and receive Him. The judgment will be most severe if this person refuses, after receiving all of this information, to give themselves to Jesus Christ in submissive obedience. To fail to do so is rebellion.

Question: How could God send people who don't accept Him to hell?

How can we know anything about anything

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