Spending eternity in hell, no way to get out? Also, Limbo.

According to the bible or any other dogmatic text, is their anyway to get out of hell once you’ve been told you’re spending all eternity in it(ex. saying 30 psalms)? Or a way to greatly reduce it so it’s only a much smaller amount like say 500 000 years?(;))

Also, what gets you sent to Limbo or the space between?

According to Dante, there is an exit. At the bottom. If you are brave and virtious.

In Revelation 20, those in Hell get out at the end of Jesus’s thousand year reign…

to be judged at the Great White Throne & cast into the Lake of Fire for aions of aions.

which MAY not be as hopeless as it sounds. Some forms of Chrisitan Universal Salvation see this as being raised from the darkness of death & absence of God (Sheol/Hades/Hell) to confronted with the unyielding Light of Jesus/God’s Justice & Love in which the trash of one’s life is burned & purified for however long & to whatever extent it takes. In Revelation 22, after describing the Heavenly city New Jerusalem, we are shown those sinners who remain outside the gates & then issued an invitation by the Spirit & the Bride to come drink of the water of life. It is quite possible that such an invitation will be always issued to those outside the gates.

Then again, it’s also possible that those in Hades-Hell who are thrown in the Lake of Fire will be eventually destroyed if they are totally closed to the Grace & Life of God/Jesus.

I do not at all believe in Eternal Conscious Suffering in the Lake of Fire (which is also called Gehenna Hell by Jesus).

The bible doesn’t support the idea of an eternal hell in which anyone suffers consciously.

The book of Revelations is really the only part of the bible that seems to support an eternal hell, and it happens to be the most symbolic part of the entire bible.

There are also misinterpretations that allow the idea of an eternal hell. This site talks about some of them:

http://www.tentmaker.org/
There are also direct contradictions in the bible to the idea of eternal torment. And they come from much less symbolic parts of the bible. A couple I remember:

Those who do not have the Son do not have eternal life (1 John 5:11-12).

God can destroy the soul (Matthew 10:28)

Friar Ted, in which scriptures does Jesus talk about Gehenna Hell? I’m not doubting you, I’m interested.

A few threads that have addressed some of these issues:

What’s the Catholic Church’s position on this (GQ)
what the hell (or heaven) is purgatory (GQ)
Just where the heck did HELL come from anyway!?! (GD)
Why “purgatory”? Is this indecision by God? (GD)

The use of the word Gehenna in the NT (some of them are clearly allusions while others seem to describe a real place) are at:

Mt 5:22
Mt 5:29f
Mt 18:8-9
Mt 23:15
Mt 23:33
Mt 25:41

Mk 9:43
Mk 9:45
Mk 9:47

Lk 12:5

Js 3:6

The use of the word Hades is at:

Mt 11:23
Mt 16:18

Lk 10:15
Lk 16:23

Rv 1:18
Rv 20:13f

Of course, if you find Benny, he could help you find your way out . . . :slight_smile:

Khadaji, tom answered for me. Thanks, tom!

Nighttime- we hang out the same places on the Net!