Can the bible prove against the term "Everlasting punishment" ?

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by Praetorius

 

As far as what Ellen White supposedly said,

She did, I looked it up later.
You can look it up on the E.G.White Estate web site where they have a searchable data base.

I'm not doubting you, I just always throw a 'supposedly' or 'allegedly' or some such onto something that I haven't verified myself - no offense intended.

I don't know about, "silly" but back then it was a real problem people worried about and thought all these people who did not have a chance to accept the Gospel were going to end up in eternal hell fire.
So, she said something she thought sounded better to her.
She contradicts herself in the example I gave on the SDA Church thread I started, where at one time she said that babies become like they were never born and then she seems to think if the parents (or maybe just one) go to heaven, then so will the baby.

I honestly need to do more research on White and and origin of the Seventh-Day Adventists. I tend to agree with most of their views based on my understanding of the bible itself, but don't know much about the church itself beyond that.

There is an OT word, cherem, which the KJV translates sometimes as, utter destruction. It can be a way of giving things to The Lord, just by making them unusable by people. It is used in the story of Ahab and the king of Syria, where the prophet says that the king was supposed to be utterly destroyed. This just meant, killed.

And this correlates to the new testament's verses on death, perishing, destruction, and the rest - they means more or less what they're translated as - they don't mean eternal life, or some other words would be used. Multiple authors in the new testament, as well as Chris himself, would - in my view - have to have been quite clumsy to continually use words referring to death and ending when actually meaning eternal, ongoing life instead.

Second death is only in Revelation, which I don't take literally, and could mean to me, going back to Hades.

We'll agree to disagree on that as I believe it ties quite well in with what Christ said about god being able to destroy both body and soul in hell as well as when taken with the other verses through the bible about the fate of the unsaved and the dead in general.

I think you suffer from an OT fixation where everything demands a punishment. My advice to not think like that and to study forgiveness. There may be something like, a lack of reward.

I definitely agree with the last bit - our rewards and level of glory after the resurrection will be determined by various things in this life, and I believe some will have little to no reward for merely accepting the gift while never doing much beyond that. However, I don't believe the unsaved will share in *any* of this, as the bible simply does not promise it to them.

As to me having an OT fixation with punishment - it's not my fixation, and not only the old testament teaches of judgement and punishment. The new testament is replete with pronunciations of judgement, condemnation, destruction, fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and so forth. I've always thought it was most unfair that people always saw only judgement and wrath in the old testament (which has more references to grace and forgiveness than the new testament) and only grace and forgiveness in the new testament (which is even more strict in its announced punishments for rebellion and sin.

Take care.

reply to post by Praetorius

I'm not doubting you, I just always throw a 'supposedly' or 'allegedly' or some such onto something that I haven't verified myself - no offense intended.

I get that, you don't want to take the word of an unnamed person "at church". I was just throwing in the other bit as general information, how to find the quotes.

I don't believe the unsaved will share in *any* of this, as the bible simply does not promise it to them.

Unsaved, is that a word? We have these neat little concepts because people want things tidy, but they are not necessarily true, because truth is messy.

reply to post by jmdewey60

Unsaved, is that a word? We have these neat little concepts because people want things tidy, but they are not necessarily true, because truth is messy.

Eh, by that I just means those on the "wages of sin is death" end of the "gift of god is eternal life" stick.

Then again, in romans Paul directly says:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

...so unsaved seems to be a fitting term for those who don't accept the gift.

reply to post by Praetorius
I'm working on translating Hebrews 9:14 and it mentions the everlasting spirit. That just seems odd and I don't remember ever hearing anyone talk about it. I'm doing all the word searches to look at ever usage of every word in the verse (probably sounds like a weird thing to do but what I am especially good at, which is long and complex and tedious tasks). It is actually a continuation from verse 13, so it is a very complex sentence and that makes it difficult to figure out what this eternal spirit is, and what it is doing. I'm going to make a thread on this verse once I get some basics of it figured out.