I was looking for this article in Google and the Freerepublic link came up.
I’m with you on everything you say. In several places the bible says that one goes to “eternal life” with the Lord and the other goes to “death and destruction”. If we were not talking to people who believe in eternal suffering, the meaning would be clear - just as, when you are not talking to a rabid Obama supporter, his wipe-out in the debate is clear.
I say that as someone who was once an “eternal suffering” believer, though I had never really studied the subject in depth. Once I did, the evidence was all over the place about the eternal fate of the non-believer.
What’s interesting is I shared what I had found with my pastor, figuring I should get a theologically trained person to look at it and show me the weak points. He looked at it and couldn’t come up with anything that the article didn’t already address.
While he thought the idea was interesting, I got the impression that he hadn’t seen this argument from Scripture before and I didn’t get the feeling that he changed his view point. However, I did start noticing small changes in his sermons which made me think, he may have changed his mind.
I think the dilemma for pastors is two-fold: if they start preaching something that many Christians are unfamiliar with, then it can cause people to leave your church. Two, I think pastor are so ingrained with the “big stick” of eternal punishing, that they don’t know what to do without it. The thought process is kind of like if a horrible sinner (I know, I’m a horrible sinner too, but you know what I mean) thinks that all his punishment is a temporary punishment in Hell and then complete ellimination in the Lake of Fire, they might say, “That’s not so bad, I can handle that.”
The problem with the last point is that I believe only children are “scared” to Jesus. Adults, I believe, come to Jesus because they recognize that they are sinners and that they can’t save themselves, and that there is a better way to live in this world. I think they also recognize that there is an AMAZING Creator in this world and they want to be a part of Him.