Posted on 11/29/2016 11:45:22 AM PST by amessenger4god
Good article. The fact that the earliest Christians believed in Conditionalism should be good enough. Here's how to reconcile Rev 20:10 with this.
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
The word "Are" is added to he greek text. This is show in the King James (and others) by the italics. However the word that makes the most sense in the context of the beast and false prophet being mortal and dying in the fire is "were". It's just as grammatically correct. So the beast and false prophet WERE thrown into the lake of fire and the devil, a spirit being NOT mortal, will be tormented day and night forever.
Again, hell is a made up place. Jesus spoke of Gehenna, a real place with a sordid history, as an allegory for the permanent fate of the lost. He also used the example of weeds being burned UP. i.e. no longer in existence. It’s really very clear when you forget anyone ever told you about an eternal torture in a fiery “hell”.
The word of God is very clear about the fate of the lost human beings. It is even juxtaposed against the fate of the saved in places like John 3:16 and Romans 6:23. The saved receive eternal life. The lost don’t. The lost are destroyed, die, perish, etc. They are like chess pieces permanently removed from the chess board, as happened to Sodom and Gomorra.
Mal 4:1 "For behold, the day is coming, Burning like an oven, And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up," Says the LORD of hosts, "That will leave them neither root nor branch.
Mal 4:2 But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise With healing in His wings; And you shall go out And grow fat like stall-fed calves.
Mal 4:3 You shall trample the wicked, For they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet On the day that I do this," Says the LORD of hosts.
The wicked are burnt up. Stubble. Ashes under the feet. This is what the scripture of the 1st century SAID would happen to the wicked.
Lazarus and the rich man is a parable. It is not about hades. It is not about the eternal fate of the lost. It is about Judah and his five brothers not believing even when Jesus is raised from the dead.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=lazarus+and+the+rich+man+parable
This is a long but effective rundown of the whole thing:
https://bible-truths.com/lazarus.html
Also, Hades is translated, “the grave”. It is not the eternal fate of the lost, but the fate of all men after the body dies. It is thrown into the “lake of fire” and utterly destroyed.
Yes. all are resurrected at the GWTJ. Then the saved go to eternal life and the lost don’t. They go to their eternal punishment, which is death. It is eternal. They stay dead. They are gone and out of the picture. For eternity.
“Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.”
The lampstands are the churches and the lake of fire is the second death according to Revelation. Revelation is a vision crammed with symbolism. The second death is as final as can be imagined when you are tossed into the surface of the sun.
Are you a JW?
Electroconvulsive therapy?
No, I’m not JW nor am I SDA.
This is not directed at you, but to ask that question because I believe in CI is a bit like asking a believer in ECT if he is a muslim.
i.e. many of our beliefs do agree with some of the beliefs of other religions, though we may differ from those religions vehemently on other issues.
I used to believe in ECT until I studied it. I find that is the case with a lot of people on a lot of issues. We tend to believe what a “mature” Christian teaches us because they’ve been one longer, or they taught it to us as a child. But often it turns out they learned the same way. And so the circle goes.
Thing is, once one really reads the actual words in the scriptures involving the fate of the lost, it becomes more and more clear. Further, as one reads scripture and prays, one gets more of an understanding of the personality of God. The more I’ve done that, the more the “death” scenario matches His personality in scripture and the less the “ECT” scenario fits.
You’ve heard people say that the bible says that money is the root of all evil, even though most of us know that it is the LOVE of money that is the problem rather than money itself. Well, a similar thing is going on with eternity. It talks of eternal fires, unquenchable fires, worms that don’t die, etc. That is discussing something other than the person affected by it. The method and place may be eternal and the fate of the person may be eternal, but the person is described as destroyed, death etc. over and over in the bible. What kills them may go on but they are, in fact, dead.
Even the scripture about weeping and gnashing of teeth is often twisted. First, gnashing of teeth is a common phrase in the bible. It always means anger. Second, people say that that condition is eternal, but the bible never places a time frame on it. It is purely inferred and, in my opinion, incorrectly so.
I could go on and on. Go to youtube and watch Ed Fudges video (over an hour long) about the fire that consumes or read the book. Check out Rethinkinghell.com. There are some excellent resources there.
The bottom line is that once one comes to the CI position, the whole motivation thing changes. You are Christ’s because you DESIRE to be, not because you are trying to get out of hell. The latter goes against His teaching about salvation.
I completely agree. I was listening again on my way to work and noticed the Shield is of faith, and the sword is the word of God. The former is a defensive weapon and the latter, offensive.
I listen to the bible roughly 90 minutes every day on my commute. Listening brings a different perspective than reading, but both are valuable.
Jesus’s disciples understood Greek mythology, Greek being the dominant language spoken in non-Roman lands.
Hades was strictly a place in Greek mythology where the dead went after life. It also involved torment for wrongdoers. Think King Tantalus, for example.
This plus the synthesis of Greek philosophy and scriptural doctrine by the early Church (Plato in particular - ever wonder why angels are always depicted as females? Plato said the immortal soul was female) is what Christianity latched onto with regard to the afterlife.
This also contradicts all Hebrew scripture including the Torah and Tanakh, which Jesus preached from.
The belief in Resurrection precedes the early church, the Pharisees believed in it, while the Sadducees did not. Jesus demonstrated with His own life, death, and life again that He was, is THE Resurrection.
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While all of that is true, it is a non sequitur. That has nothing to do with hellfire and brimstone.
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As far as female angels go, all references in the Bible, Old and New Testament, are male angels— warriors and messengers. (Gabriel, Michael as examples). Christianity did not latch onto Greek philosophy of the afterlife, Christianity believed and believes in the Resurrected One.
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Once again, all true, but a non sequitur.
The belief that the human soul is immortal without God’s gift of eternal life is more of a Greek concept. The idea of a place where people are tormented for eternity is straight from Greek mythology. Nobody who believed the Torah and Tanakh believed such a thing.
The angel thing I mentioned spoke more to popular depictions of them, not the Biblical ones. It doesn’t really describe angels in any detail at all in the Bible; they have an ordinary human male appearance according to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Popular depictions include those back in the Renaissance.
It is no accident that the Church was heavily influenced by Platonic ideals at the time, since (as I mentioned before) Plato wrote that the human soul had a female nature.
If there is no hell, there would be no need for Messiah to come and for His piercing on the cross.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Stop with the non sequitur browbeating. The reason for the Resurrection is above, in the poetry of the Apostle John.
Eternal torment is unnecessary for the Resurrection. You have confessed already that the Pharisees knew of the Resurrection before Jesus was born, yet they knew nothing (until long after their scriptures were written) of an eternal hell.
You insist on trying to shoehorn a parable told by Jesus into Christian doctrine, when the parable was a device used to illustrate the hardness of the Hebrew priests’ hearts.
The mention of Abraham’s bosom (is that your idea of eternal reward?) and the last line of the parable “And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead”, are clues to its lack of relevance as doctrine, and more as an illustration to the immediate audience.
Now, until you have enough faith to shove a mountain in a particular direction, let’s refrain from using hyperbole and obvious storytelling devices as hard, concrete doctrine.
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