ok, i understand your question, as it is something that many people ask themselvs, and as a 13 year old girl you have right to think and question about it. and i know my answer is a bit extensive but i hope you take the time to really read it all and think about it:) well anyways, your friend Rachelle is way overboard and though that may be her beliefs, which i respect, its something compleatly ridiculous. Here are my beliefs. I am a Jehovah's Witness and you may have heard about us, but what we believe is that Jehovah God will bring a trial upon people of the earth to see if they are truely gud and faithful to him at heart and of those who arent. Many say the world is going to end in 2012, which was the mayan belief, but the only reason that date is chosen was because they only lived to make their calenders to that date. Issac Newton thought it was going to end in 2060, but that doesnt make it true either. None the less, the world isnt going to end, not as a planet anyways. The bible tells us that God has created earth for humanity to inhabit it, therefor, why would he let it be destroyed? Your friend Rochelle says if your badgoing to hell,have you ever questioned if hell even exists? ok, here is how thebible puts it. Have you ever seen anyone be tortured? well i hope not, but none the less, its sickening and abhorrent. The teaching of hellfire implies just this, GOD torturing people in an endless fire. If you can, picture someone being tomented in a fire, dayd on day, weeks on weeks, years on years,but withought their death ever happenng, wouldnt your heart go out to that person no matter the crime he comitted? do you think that the person or being causing that toture was a loving person, to be able to see such a thing and feel no mercy? they couldnt be in any possible way. love shows compasion and mercy, not delight in someone elses pain. but if it did exist, someone has to have created it right? and who but God could have done it, but consider this, the bible says in 1 John 4:8 "He who does not love has not come to know God, for God IS love" if God is love, and love is compasion and mercy for others, do you think he would create such a place? it wouldnt be logical would it? then what happens wen you die you might ask yourself, God gives us that answer in the bible. Ecclesiastes 3:19 and 20 says the following,"As the dies, s the man dies, and they all have but one spirit...All are going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all returning to the dust." did you hear any mention of hell? humand return to the dust, to a nonexistence. they have no knolege of anything nor do they feel, listen or talk because they are dead, like a flame on a candle, what happens to it when you blow it out, does it go somewere and continue existing? it just dissapears, becomes unexistent doesnt it? Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, "the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore wages, because the remembrence of them has been forgotten." this text may make you think that we forget the dead, or that that is wat it implies, but it is implying instead that their memory is gone, in other words, they have no consciessness of anything. therefore, logic rebels against the belief of hellfire. but this doesnt mean that we wont be punished for our sins. im not saying there is some sort of torment to come, ok think of it this way, when you have done something wrong, your parents punish you right? and they do it because they care about you and want you to know what is right, but they dont torment you incessantly do they? (taking your cell phone away doent count) of course not (and if they do, you should report it) but none the less, they punish you because they care. God is just the same, he is the father of all of us, being our creator, therefore he cares about us as his children. Life is a gift from God, and when we CHOOSE to sin, we no longer demonstrate to appreciate that gift. The bible tells us that the penalty for sin is death, not hellfire, but that doesnt mean that sininning will mean death for sure. if you truely regret wat you have done and pray to God to forgive you he will, becuae like i explained before, the bible says "God IS love" therefore he is compasionit and merciful. I know you may think that i have gone off your subject of the world ending, but this is conected, God being love, would not destroy the world, for he has made it for us as humans to inhabit it. You may have heard of Armagedon then? well this is existing and thebible does relate it to being "the end of the world", but it uses it in the sense that God is going to diminish all evil in THIS world that we live in today, meaning the way of life of this world which is governd by the Devil, Satan. Why you may aks yourself that if God is love, why does he let Satan rule this world now, well God is patient and kind, he is giving time to those who have not come to know