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My post was about the fate of the lost: those who DON”T enjoy eternal life. And my point is that they are simply destroyed, not tortured for linear time neverending. They don’t have eternal life. That is what the bible clearly teaches.

All right... I'll leave aside your apparent "predestination of the damned" belief for the moment, and address your last point: when you say that this is "what the Bible clearly teaches", I simply don't see it. You're injecting your own definition of "life" into the Biblical text, when it obviously means something else.

In order for your statement to be true, you'd have to be taking "life" to mean "conscious existence", and "death" would be "unconscious non-existence"; you take "separation from God" to mean "utter annihiliation". In other words, you're plagiarizing an atheist, materialist definition of "life" to which neither Scripture nor the Church ever confined itself.

Just as a quick example:

And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." (Ephesians 2:1-2)

...and:

"[...]remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (Ephesians 2:12)

Obviously, St. Paul does not mean that the Ephesians were *physically* dead through their trespasses, etc.; he means that they were *spiritually* dead (i.e. without sanctifying grace, oriented toward damnation). They were physically alive, ever while they were separated from Christ; so there should be no talk of "separation from Christ always means annihilation". The second passage is even more explicit, saying that they were not only separated from Christ, but "having no hope and without God in the world"; so "without God" cannot simply be read as "annihilation". There's obviously at least some way (or ways) to be "without God" and still exist... or else the texts simply lie.

Secondly: there's obviously a way to "die" without being annihilated; the blessed (i.e. those who are bound for Heaven) are an obvious example of "dying" physically without annihilation. But (as shown above) there's also a way to "die" and/or "be dead" spiritually, while still not being annihilated. To maintain that "spiritual death" (as referenced in Revelation, etc.) must mean "annihilation" (i.e. ceasing to exist) is simply wrong.

Given that: on what possible basis do you say (apart from personal preference and personal taste) that the damned do not suffer in hell for all eternity, when I (and others) have cited Scripture passages which claim explicitly that they DO?

I’ll leave aside your apparent “predestination of the damned” belief for the moment

I didn’t mention anything about predestination. That is your inference, and an incorrect one. Frankly, there are a LOT of incorrect inferences being made in this thread. Sometimes it’s because I’m not being as clear as I might, wre this a college thesis, but sometimes it’s because peopler reading what they want to read between the lines or so couding my words with their own belief system that, well, again, it’s that between the lines thing.

Now, I make incorrect inferences all the time myself, but I try not to take them as the ipso facto position of the person who’s post I am reading until I ask some clarifying questions first.

address your last point: when you say that this is “what the Bible clearly teaches”, I simply don’t see it. -———————————————
Ok, you are responding to my comment about the lost “...They don’t have eternal life. That is what the bible clearly teaches.”

Look up the words death, destruction, perish in the NT and focus on where they are justaposed with “eternal life” or “life eternal”. Likewise, look up the two “life” phrases and notice, when they are compared to the fate of someone NOT receiving it, what the fate of the person not receiving it is.

Really, it’s very clear - until you compare them with scriptures that, on the surface, appear to contradict them.

But even then the point is missed because our understanding of who God is is not limited to scripture. It is also in prayer and our personal relationship with Him. The older I get, the more incredible it is to me that He answers prayer for such an unworthy person. Praise be to Him! I understand what Paul was feeling when he lamented about the same thing, though I think it was much stronger for him.

And it is the prayer and personal relationship with Him that cements my belief about the fate of the lost.

BTW, not to dilute this too much, but when viewing sites where people are overtly antagonistic to Christianity, they almost always attack Christianity on the hell thing. Interestingly, when I remove that aspect from God they don’t even know how to attack. They’ve been stripped of their primary weapon against Christianity and the reallly vehement ones start attacking things that actually ARE a part of bible teaching, and come across as fools in the process.