I started this blog a few years ago as a way to share my journey in faith. I have come a long way since then and not blogged at all. Now I have decided that I need to stop putting it off.

Instead of just blogging about faith, I think I will blog about life in general. My faith is obviously a HUGE part of my life! Also, I have always been a minimalist at heart but my husband is a pack rat so I want to start a journey to downscale our lives for the better, together. Currently, I am pregnant, using a midwife, and trying to do everything natural with this child. So I will have all sorts of things to share about birth, cloth diapers, breastfeeding, and everything in between. This is also a new journey for my 7 year old son who will soon be a big brother. That is so exciting! At the same time my husband has just started leading worship at a local congregation again and he has tons of emotions and a lot of excitement to share. Maybe I can get him to write once in awhile too. Anyway, my hope is that just taking the time to type this will help motivate me to start writing more often. Who knows, maybe I will even carry my camera around so that I can get more pictures of what is happening in our life.

So long till next time, I will write again soon!

Is Hell Real?

How many of us wonder if hell is a real place? I know I have many times in the past. Could a loving G-d really cast the people He cares about into an eternal fire? My answer is YES! Hell is real and G-d will put people there. But what is hell really? Is it exactly what you think it is?

I was raised in church with a Christian family. My parents love G-d, pray, read their Bibles, and have a true relationship with Jesus. This is the same family that taught me that hell is real. I was raised to believe that hell is a location where someone goes when they die and they are tormented forever. A few years ago I started to doubt this idea. I want to tell you my story, what I believe, and why.

When I was 18, I decided to get married. This was a bad decision and the marriage did not last. My ex was from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They tried and tell me that hell was not real. They said that G-d loves everyone and would never throw anyone into hell. I had no problem tossing this theory out the window. My parents had taught me enough scripture to know better. It did make me wonder why He would want to torture them if He loved them.

When I was in my early 20s I decided to take some classes in theology. I wanted to be a missionary and tell people all around the world about Yeshua. The director of the school gave us an assignment. Each week we had to pick one Psalm and meditate on it. Then at the end of the week we had to write an essay about what we thought the author was trying to convey. The first scripture I picked was Psalms 88. After reading it over and over and dwelling on it all week I had a strong feeling that David understood more about death than me. This portion of scripture convinced me that we did not go directly to heaven or hell and that hell may not have been what I learned it was. The more I studied this subject the more I found that I did not understand it at all.

During this last year, my husband and I made the choice to attend a series of sermons about Revelation. I can't say that I agreed with everything in those classes but they sure did have a lot of knowledge and I loved the way they studied the Bible. Toward the end of the classes they did a lesson on this very subject. HELL!!! This is exactly what I had been waiting on. I wanted desperately to know how they believed. Did they understand this subject for real, or were they going to tell me the same stuff I had heard all my life?

The event was being put on by Amazing Facts and the speaker was Jason Sliger. He suggested that when a person dies they do not go directly to heaven or hell, but remain in the grave and wait for the resurrection. This did line up with the Psalm I had read......so I needed to hear the rest of his views. Then he explained that hell is real. Real FIRE and real DESTRUCTION. But this time he did not explain it as being a place where the wicked would stay and be tormented forever. Instead, he said that the fire would burn out and the wicked would be forever GONE!!! This was a new idea and it sounded so much more logical than anything I had heard before. I needed to get home and study all the scriptures for myself.

So, let's look at the scriptures together right now.

First off, I would like to point out that humans are not immortal. The Bible only mentions this trait once and it is in reference to G-d. However, the Bible does teach us that people (and their souls) can die. We also know that because of the sacrifice Yeshua made on our behalf, we can be given immortality and live forever. The wicked will not be given the same gift of life, but instead will collect the wages of sin, which is death. We do not get this gift until the resurrection of the righteous!

1 Timothy 1:17
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53
⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

After reading these scriptures, is it possible for the wicked (who did not accept Yeshua as Lord and Savior) to live forever? NO! Not in heaven and not in hell! They cannot live forever anywhere because they are not immortal. Instead they (and their soul) must die.

Now, here is the fun part. Why do we even believe that hell is a place that lasts forever? Is that even what the Bible says? Lets look closely at the most common scripture and examine it.

Matthew 25:46
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

Notice the word punishment. This is not the word punishing. When a father spanks his child, does he eventually stop spanking them, or does he have to keep spanking them forever? The father will eventually stop spanking the child when the punishment has been completed but the child will ALWAYS be able to say they were punished. G-d's punishment is final. Once the wicked have been tossed into hell, G-d will never have to punish them again because their punishment will be an eternal one. They will be burned and completely destroyed!

Let me ask you this. If G-d says he will destroy them, then does He have to actually do it? I don't know about your Bible but mine says that the wicked will be turned to stubble. How can someone be turned to stubble (completely destroyed and dead) if the fire never goes out? At some point when the wicked are completely gone, the fire will not have anything left to burn and will come to an end.

Psalms 37:10
A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.

Psalms 37:20
But the wicked will perish: The LORD's enemies will be like the beauty of the fields, they will vanish—vanish like smoke.

Malachi 4:1-3
¹ "Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them. ² But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. ³ Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things," says the LORD Almighty.

Does G-d want to hurt these people? Of course not! He has to get rid of them because He has promised us justice and peace. But that does not mean that He wants to. G-d loves everyone and sent His only son to die for us. The Bible says that this will be an act that is out of the normal for Him. Honestly, if G-d was going to be happy about torturing these people He loves......I would probably not be happy about Him being my G-d. But fortunately for all of us He is kind and loving. He does not want to do this and will get it over with as fast as possible.

Ezekiel 33:11
Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'

Isaiah 28:21
The LORD will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon— to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task.

Obviously I could go on and on about this but I feel like I have given enough scripture to back up my belief. At the end of this post I will have a link for a website with more information and scripture to support this view. Please check it out and study on your own to see if what I am claiming is true. Don't take my word for it.

In conclusion I would like to state clearly what I think hell is. Hell is a fire that is going to completely burn up and destroy all of the wicked people. G-d does not want to destroy all of the people He created and loves, but is going to ONLY because He is just and must keep His promises.

http://www.helltruth.com/

The Reason for This Blog

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I have never tried this before and I cant promise that I am a great writer. Actually, I am definitely not good at it at all so please forgive me for that.

So, I decided to start this blog with the intention of sharing my testimony as well as my more recent spiritual journey. I don't expect other people to understand everything or agree with it all. However, I plan to post scriptures and I hope that you will at least study it for yourself before coming to the conclusion that I am crazy.

I come across someone almost daily that wants to know how I view somehting or why I think the way that I do. Most of my answers are not short and tend to be hard to understand if they are new concepts to the other person. My hope is that when someone asks me a question I can simply direct them to this blog and they will be able to read my full thought when it is convenient for them to do so. I don't like having to give people partial answers when I dont even have time to show the in the Bible why I beleive the things I do. Scripture is very important to me.

Again, I do not expect everyone to agree with everythign I believe. Heck, I have change most of my beliefs this past year and I am sure I will change a few more in the years to come. In the end it does not matter if we differ becuase G-d knows each of our hearts. I can tell you this: I will be wrong about a lot of things but I love Yeshua and long for a closer relationship with Him. If nothing else, I hope that reading this will cause you to love Him and want to build a close relationship with Him too.