"(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)"
--Romans 2:14, 15
I'm not sure if anyone will read this, but I certainly hope so.
By saying 'no', I'm not saying they won't be in heaven. Nobody will get to heaven 'first'. Everyone goes at the same time. The closest thing we have to 'getting there first' is being the first off the ground.
"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air"
--1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17
As for athiests being in heaven, there most certainly will be.
"(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)"
--Romans 2:14, 15
Or, as C. S. Lewis put it: "Therefore if any man swear by Tash (Satan) and keep his oath for the oaths sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him."
I'm not saying that any cliff is deadly to jump off of. I've done my fair share of leaping for 15- to 20-foot-high cliffs, but those falls are quite short (and still hurt if you hit flat-footed). But when you're talking about a 20-second fall, there's no way you'd survive that.
For the sake of this particular discussion, I'd say jumping off a bridge is better. A) I'd have already checked to make sure it was safe. B) I'd be willingly jumping off it.
For the cliff, falling generally indicates no will in the situation. And the majority of cliffs (if taken from a grab-bag of the world's cliffs) probably aren't safe to jump/fall from.
if it's deep enough you won't hurt yourself that bad.
I'm going to refute this for both here and the one above. If you fall for long enough, the force of hitting the water will be the same has hitting concrete.
The terminal velocity for a pencil-diving human is around 300 mph, which equates to around 44 feet per second. That gives you less than 0.15 seconds for you to push a column of water 6 ft by 2 ft (depending on how thin you are, and sort of rounding off the width of shoulders to the thin depth of the body) out of your way.
The impact alone will kill you.
.... yeah, and totally piss off all the remaining extremest muslims? We've probably already made a martyr. Why would we go throwing it in their faces?
I say it's good enough that he's dead, and that he left no grave for worshipers to worship.
Just to be original, I'll take it a different way.
It's because, in these trying times, people need heroes.
Either that, or movie companies are just showing off their cool CG, and loving the fact that they can actually do superhero movies well, for the first time.
And, yes, the money.
"Hell exists in our own mind and lives"
Although I understand the spirit of your statement, please humor me. For the sake of argument, can you provide biblical supports (to go along with the introduction to this topic)?
"I do not believe it is a physical place with Satan ruling over it."
I find it interesting that you should point out that last part, "With Satan ruling over it". I think it's almost funny how that idea has become so mainstream, yet the Bible clearly states that Satan will suffer its effects more than anyone else, if that's at all possible. In fact, the Bible implies that Hell was/will be created for Satan.
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Mat. 20:28b "Only God ... can destroy both soul and body in hell." (NLT)
Luk 12:5b "God ... has the power to ... throw you into hell." (NLT)
Rev 19:20c "...the beast ... [was] thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur" (NLT)
Sorry that it took so long for me to respond to you. I hope you can forgive extreme tardiness.
"There are various scriptures where Jesus describes hell as a place of fire."
Yes, there are. I've looked up the other times 'geenna' occur, and, besides Jesus' 'cut off your eye' speech, Jesus says this: "Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28b, NLT) If Hell, or 'geenna' were a place of eternal fire, than God wouldn't destroy sould and body, merely place them there.
Further studying mentions that 'Geenna' originated/refers to the vally of Hinnom, where trash (and dead animals) were taken and burned. Such fires were not permament, only the results.
"the angels had yet to die their first death"
That is true, but the Second Death is the term used for us humans, who tend to die fairly easily. Although, technically, the term is 'Second Resurrection', but, once resurrected from death, the damned will die again, thus, Second Death.
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Also, you might bring up the term 'unquenchable fire' that crops up many times. To make a pun of the previous sentence, the term shows up in Jesus' parable of the farmer separating the wheat and the chaff.
"He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire." (Matthew 3:12, NLT)
The word used for 'burning' is Greek 'katakaio', which means 'to consume with fire'. The chaff is totally burned up, gone. However, had the fire been quenchable, one could conceivably put out the fire before the chaff was done burning. But this fire cannot be stopped--all of the chaff will be consumed.
This conveys the image that, once again, the effects are eternal. The evil will be totally consumed by the fire, but will not burn forever.
Although I find the idea of it completely appalling, and the Constitution doesn't allow it, it might be interesting.
If religion was made illegal, it would only make it grow. That's what history has taught. Oppression usually weeds out false religions (being religions set around control and not spiritual enlightenment), leaving only true religions to flourish.
But when the rich get healed from serious diseases, there's really no inherent superiority in it. They still suffer from the same sicknesses that poor people do; the rich can only cure them. But when you have an entire class of people genetically immune to those diseases, you do have inherent superiority. And nothing can stop them from lording over the little people.
