Something you can't counter, pilgrim

The Bible doesn't say what happens to unbelievers when they die. No, it doesn't. It leaves that in mystery. It does say what happens to believers when I die: I go to be with God in Heaven. The unregenerate who die, though? They go to Hades. Is that hell? Hell is where unbelievers - very petulant unbelievers - go to after they are judged at the great white throne judgement when Jesus comes again and time ends. Prior to that? Are unbelievers in Hades just waiting? No. Most likely it doesn't work that way. People are too different in development (in essence) for an only once go-around to explain it.

Let me explain...

Time to us is linear. That is how we perceive time. Birth to death. Linear. But look at our time from God's point-of-view from the scale of eternity. Eternity is wholly above our time. From God's perspective our time is not linear but a living circle. Don't get too literal with that, it's not necessary, but just know that from the perspective of eternity the linear, birth to death, time of our lives is alive at every point at the same time. This is how what is not possible with man is possible with God. Regarding God being able to act in any part of our time. If you're middle aged right now God can act in your life right now when you 'were' a child. If you die today God can act in your life when you 'were' a child tomorrow.

The Bible speaks to us from our point-of-view of necessity. It's best that way. If the Bible spoke from the perspective of higher scales of time it would explode the narrative and the message.

So a question arises: if our seemingly linear, birth-to-death time is actually more a living circle of time then what is death? An interval in that circle? An interval between death and birth? Perhaps Hades resides in this interval. The unregenerate, unbeliever dies and goes to Hades, and emerges from Hades back into their same living circle of time.

Reincarnation, you say? No. Same life doesn't mean reincarnation. You know what it means? It means death (not just the interval in Hades, but the whole thing). Unregenerate same life existence alienated from God, from the Water and Tree of Life. It's life too though! Afterall, we all come from that existence when we are regenerated by God. We can be developing, we can be also, though, on a downward spiral. We can be stagnant. But when God regenerates (chooses) He does it from eternity.

Plato describes how souls go down to Hades (interesting that the Word of God uses the same word for the afterlife of the unregenerate as Plato and ancient Greek culture in general). He describes souls as going down to Hades and then going through various events such as drinking from a river (Lethe, I seem to recall) that makes them forget their past life they've just lived, forget to varying degree, depending how lustily they drink the water (and they've been walked through a long parched desert type landscape to get to the river). Then he shows the souls choosing a life to live for when they cycle back 'up'. What is interesting is though they seem to be choosing different lives from what they were before, they are still clearly who they are. I.e. Odysseus may choose to be a poor river boatman, yet he will still be, in essence, Odysseus. This is not reincarnation (actually it is, really, but we don't have to follow Plato at every point; in fairness to Plato, though, he really doesn't quite describe reincarnation in the Myth of Er from his great diaglogue the Republic). This really is more a kind of recurrence. Hades is an interval for the unregenerate. Nobody believes individuals are born and going through a cycle of life once and that is it. People are too different. There is too much difference in essential development.

The difference between recurrence and reincarnation is a person cycles back into their own unique time. Not into some historical 'role' or different time. There can be change within their own time (there is more going on, Horatio, than your philosophy allows you to think). Even change of gender. Even change of family. What God deems a person needs to awaken, especially after they have been chosen and are in the influence of the Spirit.

Orthodox theologians will smirk and sneer (not knowing I could quote a number of early century theologians discoursing on just these matters). But who cares. They won't out-Christian or out-believe or out-on-the-mark-doctrine (or something like that) me. They can't. I expose them easily and skewer them and they run (ban me, delete me).

They'll quote the only verse they have from Hebrews about how it is given man to die once and then judgment. Yes -- judgment. That happens at the end of the Age. The great Harvest. The end of the world. When time is no more. When the big wheel completes it's revolution. Yet there are little wheels inside that big wheel spinning around any number of times during the course of the one great revolution of the big wheel. Those little wheels are individual human lives.

The regenerate (believers, born again, with saving faith) don't go to Hades, though, and don't continue in the circle of their time, but go to be with God in Heaven. The Bible is clear on that.

On the question of 'second chance-ism' and all that. Or, also, universalism. No, it can be fended off. The Bible definitely wants to put the terror of the situation into you. Jesus' words on hell alone were given to do that. They apply though to you. Yes, you, pilgrim. Because you know of them. You are awake to them. Once you awaken to the truth you are more in danger of hellfire than the currently unawakened. Hell is serious for you once you awaken to the truth. And Jesus is talking to you. When you read Him or hear the Word of God spoken to you. You don't have a second chance.

And there will be people in hell. And they'll want to be there. There will be nobody in hell who doesn't want to be there...

Anyway, you see people, you know of people, who aren't evil (other than from original sin), and yet who aren't believers or even awake to religion or the Bible and who seem very far from ever being awake to it. Evangelizing to them is...er...difficult let's say. Kind of like teaching your dog to do a trick he just has no interest in learning or having anything to do with. They aren't necessarily lost, though, because their time is only linear and finite at death from human perspective, but not from God's perspective, the perspective from eternity. This is why you can't spend your time worrying about 'others'. They are God's creation. You're not more just and good than God. Evangelize, yes. Even if it doesn't seem to sink in, it may in time long after you've left the scene. Your own 'being' can evangelize to people as well. Your silent presence and being. Especially immediate family.

You need to assault heaven. Don't let worry about other's 'fate' make you a fool that questions God's plan and way of working with his creation...

Back to Hades... Hades is not a good place to be, surely. The land of shades. Yet it's not hell. Better yet is to be in heaven with God, and wherever God is is where heaven is.

Interesting how very old people become childlike, and how people in the prime of life instinctively talk to the very elderly like they talk to children. Except for pehaps the very elderly who have been regenerated and are awake with the light of the Spirit in their eyes and mind and heart. They may be childlike too, but childlike in a different way and with a different destination...