NCarolinian

God is "funny". He takes a life that had been persecuting, imprisoning and killing believers in Christ and has him taste imprisonment and torture for Christ's sake as a converted believer - Paul.  Prepositions are important so when I read Paul's letters to fellow believers from usually a prison cell, the words he selects to describe himself are interesting. In Ephesians 3:1 and 4:1 , Paul portrays himself as "a prisoner of Christ Jesus" and "a prisoner for the Lord" - respectfully. In his second letter to his protege, Timothy, Paul deems himself "His [God's] prisoner" (2 Tim. 1:8) . Then again in a letter to Philemon, he states - "a prisoner for Christ" . Although Paul writes from prison in many, if not all of these verses I have documented, as stated before, the prepositions "of" and "for" should be considered. A "prisoner OF Christ" declares that you are somehow in some fashion imprisoned by...

The Concept Hell is sung about, seen in movies and heard in most everyone's everyday vernacular. Hell, one would think as much as we see the concept and use the word (1) everyone would believe in an afterlife and (2) most people would desire to go to Hell and/or if they don't, they would send their unlikables to the place. The popularity of Hell makes me think that those that sing about it in their rock songs, watch it in their movies and exclaim it in their speech are the same who believe in a literal place that nobody should desire to finish this life and begin their next. But I find that those same individuals shun the notion of it and with that discarding they throw away the truth of a Just God. However, according to a 2023 Pew Research Study - 71% of Americans believe in Heaven and 61% of Americans believe in Hell. As you can well deduce from those percentages this means there are people that reside in the non-believing camp. If people truly understood and believed in Hell...