What Type of God Do You Believe In?
There is no theological question more decisive than this one.
Not “Is there a God?” That is the child’s question by comparison. Anyone can mumble “yes, there is something out there.” The harder question — the one that exposes what a person actually worships — is what kind of God they take Him to be.
So let us be plain. Do you worship a God who created billions of His own children specifically to torment them forever in hell? Most Protestants will instinctively say no, of course not. Then ask them to describe what their theology actually teaches about the eternal fate of the lost — and the answer they give describes precisely that God.
This page is about that God. The one a great deal of mainstream Christendom officially confesses, but quietly hopes nobody examines closely.
The God of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not that God. Not by a long shot. And the difference matters more than almost anything else in religion — because the God you worship is the God you eventually become like (1 John 3:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
If your God tortures forever, what does that make you?
The God Most of Christendom Officially Confesses
Read the creeds, the confessions, and the famous sermons. Then read what they actually say about the eternal fate of the damned.
Mainstream Protestant theology — especially in its Reformed, Calvinist, and broadly evangelical forms — teaches a doctrine called eternal conscious torment. The phrase is precise and it is theirs, not ours. Let us examine what they confess in their own published documents.
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), XXXIII.2
“The wicked… shall be cast aside into eternal torments, and be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”
Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741)
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked… his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.”
Edwards is not a fringe figure. He is celebrated by mainstream Reformed Christianity as a theological giant. That sermon is reprinted in seminary curricula. The God it describes — the One who looks at His own creatures “as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire” — is the official God of historic Reformed theology.
The Resurrection Twist
Most Christians who confess eternal torment have never thought through what their own creeds also confess about the resurrection. So let us think through it now.
In standard Protestant eschatology, the damned are not merely souls in pain. At the general resurrection, they are reunited with their bodies. The same Westminster Confession states it bluntly:
Westminster Confession, XXXII.3
“The bodies of the unjust… shall be raised to dishonour.”
Sit with that. The God most of Christendom confesses has already decided that billions of His children will be damned. Their souls suffer in hell. But that is not the end of His provision for them. He resurrects them — gives them back their bodies — not for any kind of mercy, but so that the torment can now be physical as well as mental, forever.
Causing them to suffer mentally in hell was not enough. So He raises them up so they can also suffer in the flesh. Forever. With no escape. With no end. With no possibility of repentance, growth, or relief.
This is not a caricature. It is a careful summary of what Westminster, the Augsburg Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Baptist Faith and Message all explicitly teach. Read them yourself. The wicked are raised, given back their flesh, and that is the everlasting state — eternally suffering body and soul both, while the God who made them and chose not to save them “is glorified” in their torment.
And in the Calvinist Case, He Designed It That Way
In Reformed theology specifically, this is not even framed as a tragedy God could not prevent. It is framed as something He chose. The doctrine of double predestination teaches that before the foundation of the world, God elected some to salvation and reprobated the rest — not on the basis of foreseen faith or works, but by sovereign decree.
Westminster Confession, III.3
“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.”
The reprobates were foreordained to everlasting death. Before they existed. Before they could choose. Before they could even draw a breath. And the document explicitly says this was for “the manifestation of His glory.”
Read that sentence again and ask yourself what kind of God is being described. A God who created beings specifically to damn them forever, in their bodies and souls, so that His glory might be the better “manifested”? This is not a position any honest reader has to argue against by caricature. The creeds confess it on their own pages.
The Verdict — And the God the Gospel of Jesus Christ Actually Teaches
If you do not worship that God, you owe it to yourself to read what scripture actually teaches.
The Restoration did not invent a new God to dodge the eternal torment doctrine. It restored what the apostolic Church taught and what scripture has always said about God’s justice and mercy. Compare:
What the Bible and the Restoration Both Teach
- God is no respecter of persons — Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11. He does not arbitrarily damn billions before they exist.
- God desires all to be saved — 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9: “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
- The gospel is preached even to the dead — 1 Peter 3:18–20; 4:6. Christ Himself went to spirit prison and preached. Why, if their fate was already sealed?
- There are degrees of glory, not one fate for all the saved — 1 Corinthians 15:40–42: “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial… one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.” Paul is explicit. Most of Christendom never reads it.
- Christ took the keys of hell — Revelation 1:18: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” If hell is a perpetual closed system, why does Christ hold its keys?
- Mercy claims its own — Alma 42:23: “mercy claimeth all which is her own… and the great plan of redemption.” The atonement reaches as far as repentance is possible.
The Restoration recovered the truth that the resurrection is for everyone, not just the elect (1 Corinthians 15:22: “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”). And the resurrection is a gift, not a torture device. Even the resurrected bodies of those who reject the fulness of the gospel receive glory — telestial glory, but glory still, and a kingdom (D&C 76:81–89). Outer darkness — eternal separation from God — is reserved for the very few who, with full knowledge of God and after partaking of His Spirit, openly defy Him (D&C 76:31–35). It is not the default fate of billions of people who never heard the gospel in mortality.
The Question Returns
So — what type of God do you believe in?
A God who creates billions of children, foreordains most of them to eternal damnation before they exist, sustains them in conscious torment for eternity, and then resurrects them in the flesh so that the torture can be physical as well as mental forever, all for the “manifestation of His glory”?
Or the God of Jesus Christ — a Father who sent His Son to atone for all sin (1 John 2:2), who is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9), who preaches even to spirits in prison (1 Peter 4:6), whose resurrection is universal (1 Corinthians 15:22), whose mercy claims its own (Alma 42:23), and who has organized His house so that there are many mansions (John 14:2) for the everlasting fellowship of His sons and daughters?
These are not two readings of the same God. They are two different Gods. One of them is the God of historic Reformed creeds. The other is the God the scriptures — both Old and New Testament, plus the Restoration — actually describe.
Choose carefully. You are going to become like the one you worship.
