Armstrong and his old World Wide Church of God posited the same stuff you did about sinners and the afterlife and a lot of other things he couldn’t support in scripture. Armstronmg argued from an emotional point...that it would be cruel for a loving God to keep sinners alive for eternity to experience the Lake of Fire forever in contradiction to what the Bible says about the eventual reality of sinners’ everlasting torment there.
You’ve been quoted other scriptures from myself and others that do support the opposite views.
The great danger of the teachings of your view is that sinners exposed to it will simply conclude that “why be saved(?) since they will be forever “blanked out of existence” anyway. These folks may decide that they can just wax worse and worse in their sins since their consciousness will be blanked out. Even the great white throne judgment where all the remaining dead (plus those still on Earth alive after the 1000 years of Satan’s imprisonment) will be resurrected, won’t move such sinners since they will be eventually blanked out with no eternal consciousness.
The prospect of eternal consciousness of one’s separation from God after placement in the Lake of Fire is the only scripturally supported and orthodox position of what happens to those who heard the truth of Christ and rejected it. The warnings are stark for a reason. All who have been formed by God in the womb have an eternal presence. Where our presence ultimately resides depends on our response to Christ.
Proverbs 12:6Remember Him before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is crushed, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel is broken at the well, 7before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
I don’t know what Armstrong teaches exactly. He might teach 95% correct, but in error for the remaining 5%.
I only know that the breath of life and body makes for a human soul and we cease to exist upon death, other than that God remembers who we are. That is our nature. There is one Judgement, not a judgement for each of us but one Judgement. At that judgment, you will either be resurrected and translated for eternity or you will perish and cease to exist in the Hell Fire that God uses to judge Satan and his angels.
Revelations calls the hell fire God’s strange Act, because it is so contrary to who He is. In your view, somebody can be destined to burn forever and suffer forever because they stole a single chocolate bar as a child and forgot to repent or they told their mother off one time, but they forgot to repent.
I don’t preach eternal separation, because that requires an inherent eternal existence, which I do not believe that is the nature of man. I preach non-existence as the punishment from God for the unsaved.
Malachi 4 says the wicked will be burned up, not burning. They will burn like the stubble after the wheat is harvested. That implies an incredibly short existence for man within the Hell fire.
It will be very painful for the wicked to know they will perish, when they see the saved translated and looking like Adam looked in his pre-sin state. They will understand what they lost when they choose the pleasures of the world. That will be a punishment in itself when they realize what they really lost.
The Great Day of God
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.
2But 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.
3You 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.