Hellfire

Jesus clearly tells us at John 8:32 "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

About 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus, the Sumerians and the Babylonians believed in an underworld that they called the Land of No Return. This ancient belief is reflected in the Sumerian and the Akkadian poems known as "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and the "Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld." They describe this abode of the dead as a house of darkness, "the house which none leave who have entered it." "The extreme care that the Etruscans took of their dead is explained by their conception of the nether regions. Like the Babylonians, they considered these to be places of torture and despair for the manes [spirits of the dead]. The only relief for them could come from propitiatory offerings made by their descendants." Another reference work declares: "Etruscan tombs show scenes of horror that inspired Christian paintings of hell." Interestingly, it would appear that the torments of the Egyptian, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian versions of hell are not everlasting. According to these religions, after a period of suffering, the souls of sinners move on to some other place or state, depending on the particular religion's concept of human destiny. Their ideas of hell resemble Catholicism's purgatory. "HELL," explains the New Catholic Encyclopedia, is the word "used to signify the place of the damned." A Protestant encyclopedia defines hell as "the place of future punishment for the wicked." But belief in such a place of punishment after death is not limited to the main churches of Christendom. It originated many centuries before Christendom came into existence. What crime, however horrible, could cause a God of love to torture a person endlessly?

The Truth is: God is a God of Love He does not punish people in hell.