... shall not perish but have life for an aeon ...

[Der Alte]

^ It seems to me that their universalist interpretation is based on their analysis of Bible's use of the words "olam" and "aeon"

Is that why the universalist author referred to Hesychius (c. 400-600 AD), John of Damascus (c. 750 AD) Phavorinus 16th century, unnamed "theologians," seven unidentified "Greek writers," both of which is a logical fallacy, appeal to authority, over 6 centuries and Plato [428 BC – 347 BC] in that order. That is not "analysis of Bible's use of the words 'olam' and 'aeon'"' He claimed that Plato "make use of aiõn, in common with other words; and no one of them ever employs it in the sense of eternity." But note I quoted from Plato where he said that aion/aionios meant, “eternal (aionios, before aidios),””eternity permanent in unity,””imitating eternity (aiona),””exists for all eternity,””Aion is what is properly eternal,””a timeless, immeasurable and transcendent super-time, an idea of time in itself.””Mysteries of Aion, the god of eternity.” See my [post=66613760][post #7][/post] this thread.

 

[ananda]

The end of the universe (or way out of our Universe) are black holes with the most massive ones at the centers of galaxies.

I'm speaking in the scientific context, not religious.

This is the recent theory of astrophysicists. Unless we think the "reaping angels" will throw evil people into the "end of the universe" or into the massive black holes at the center of our and other galaxies.

Coincidentally, blackholes hosts the hottest temperatures in the Univers in their accretion disks (which looks like a lake/disk of fire, glowing in X-ray or Gamma rays, incredibly intense, a most qualified all-consuming fire)

And some Galaxies literally look like reapers with their sickle-shaped arms made of stars.

Although there is a hypothesis by some thologians that our religion may have originated from an advance knowledge of astronomy from a technological advanced civilization lost over time (after many thousands of years). Either from our own Earth - our own advanced civilization in the distant past destroyed by a great cataclysm. Or we are possibly aliens ourselves, possibly immigrated from a distant planet from another star to escape a dire situation. We landed here on Earth, turned our "space arks" into homes and over a lengthy period, in our fight for survival in this alien planet, all our advanced knowledge lost and reduced to religion.

Some of the wiser ones may have preserved one of the space arks could be somewhere underground or buried in the moon or other planets. Waiting to be activated at the right time. At the opportune time when original race will walk the Earth again whose DNA will unlock the ship's systems and unite us all and steer us back to the path.

If none of this is real, it would still make a great blockbuster hit movie

I'd watch it

 

[rick357]

I'd watch it

It was called prometheus...

 

[timewerx]

Or maybe the moon was our ship...

There's a possibility.

Maybe some of early Earth colonists in their hunger for power got corrupted, created a religion which promoted ignorance, convinced the other colonists that they didn't needed technology and it was hampering their evolution and the new Earth colony gave them the opportunity to start anew without technology.

So they hid the massive colony ship in orbit with dirt from Earth named it "The Moon" so succeeding generations will have no idea it was the colony ship. Which is why the moon rocks is very similar in composition to the Earth.

But the few elite greedy colonists who deceived the other colonists continued to access the colony ship (the moon) and use its superior technology to exert control, live like immortals, and take advantage of the other colonists for their own amusement.

And the cycle of evil continued to this day where the original elite colonists pretended to be aliens were in fact, also humans and when we finally developed the technology to reach the moon. They sent secret communications banning landing of men on the moon after the first Apollo missions.

The Apollo missions were "allowed" to further convince the masses, it is made of nothing but dirt.


I made that all up. If it's true, it's purely coincidence!!

 

[rick357]

There's a possibility.

Maybe some of early Earth colonists in their hunger for power got corrupted, created a religion which promoted ignorance, convinced the other colonists that they didn't needed technology and it was hampering their evolution and the new Earth colony gave them the opportunity to start anew without technology.

So they hid the massive colony ship in orbit with dirt from Earth named it "The Moon" so succeeding generations will have no idea it was the colony ship. Which is why the moon rocks is very similar in composition to the Earth.

But the few elite greedy colonists who deceived the other colonists continued to access the colony ship (the moon) and use its superior technology to exert control, live like immortals, and take advantage of the other colonists for their own amusement.

And the cycle of evil continued to this day where the original elite colonists pretended to be aliens were in fact, also humans and when we finally developed the technology to reach the moon. They sent secret communications banning landing of men on the moon after the first Apollo missions.

The Apollo missions were "allowed" to further convince the masses, it is made of nothing but dirt.

I made that all up. If it's true, it's purely coincidence!!

Since they would moniter us they could easily know we were coming...both when and where and have staged the landing sight.

 

[James Is Back]

So Netzarim you think God will destroy the New Earth and The New Heaven? So what happens after that? Does He create another universe and destroys that,creates another and destroys that rinse and repeat for eternity?

Or do you think he's just going to destroy us all for eternity? No Eternal Life nothing?

 

[timewerx]

I'd watch it

I look a bit like young Gene Roddenbery maybe why icant stop myself from letting my imagination fly.

 

[ananda]

So Netzarim you think God will destroy the New Earth and The New Heaven? So what happens after that? Does He create another universe and destroys that,creates another and destroys that rinse and repeat for eternity?

Or do you think he's just going to destroy us all for eternity? No Eternal Life nothing?

I don't know for sure.

It's not palatable, even for me, to think that heavenly life is not eternal, but I can only go where the text takes me.

I've been studying the earliest Buddhist texts over the last couple of years, and it seems to me that Christianity might fit as a subset of a larger Buddhist perspective. That is to say (if I was arguing from a Buddhist perspective), the Biblical God is certainly a god, and reigns in his own heaven, and his heaven is accessible by someone who practices love in this lifetime. He lifespan is in the billions of years, but is/was unaware of that fact, and so he believes it to be infinite. His kingdom will eventually end though, and the heavens will be burnt up and everything will start anew.

Or, like timewerx stated, re-creation of the universe from scratch is a possibility.

 

[timewerx]

Since they would moniter us they could easily know we were coming...both when and where and have staged the landing sight.

Hypothetically speaking they allowed the apollo missions so as to not arouse too much suspicion that something on the moon is actively preventing missions to it.

 

[timewerx]

Or, like timewerx stated, re-creation of the universe from scratch is a possibility.

Not really what I said but that is also a possible scenario.

What I meant for the "end of the Universe" are EXIT locations for our Universe. Places where you can get out of our Universe. And it's postulated they are black holes but cannot yet be verified.

 

[ananda]

Not really what I said but that is also a possible scenario.

What I meant for the "end of the Universe" are EXIT locations for our Universe. Places where you can get out of our Universe. And it's postulated they are black holes but cannot yet be verified.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, thanks for the correction!

 

[agape101]

What if "eternal life", as is commonly believed in Christian circles, really meant "life for an aeon"?

aion/aeon/aionios in verses such as John 3:16 are virtually almost always translated "eternal [life]" (ζωὴν αἰώνιο&#957 ... but would it change anything for you if Jesus actually meant "life for an aeon"?

It is said that in koine Greek, "aionios" refers to things whicn endure, and the word has been used to describe things like "stones used to build a wall", or the length of time a person was imprisoned. Chrysostom reportedly wrote that the kingdom of Satan "is aionios, in other words it will cease with the present aeon"! "Aeons" seems to refer to something lasting, but also temporary.

A more direct example, for me, is Mt 13:39, where Jesus said: "The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels." The phrase translated "end of the world" actually states "completion of the aionos"! Does it make sense to translate it "end of eternity"?

For some, this understanding points many to an interpretation of Christian universalism (universal reconciliation with God). I am personally open to this possibility, and to the possibility that "life for an aeon" Christianity may be compatible as a subset of a greater Buddhist cosmological framework.

It changes everything when you undetstand the framework of the ages.... in titus and timothy there is a reference to the "space" prior to the eonian times or ages. Paul also talks about the "consummation." The end of the ages. "In the age to come", " in this present age"... "for the ages of the ages"..... when you see the translation "for ever" as two words the second in greek is "aion" so literall shld be translated "for an age".... this is proved by evidence that the term "aionon" (which is plural of aion) shows up.... no such thing as "evers"....

 

[agape101]

Philo, the sentence is in De Mundo, 7, en aioni e of being of the date and Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament, as the others give the regular, and at the same time philosophical force of the word, aion, aionios. Eternity, unchangeable, with no 'was' nor 'will be,' is its proper force, that it can be applied to the whole existence of a thing, so that nothing of its nature was before true or after is true, to telos to periechon. But its meaning is eternity, and eternal. … That is, things that are for a time are put in express contrast with aionia, which are not for a time, be it age or ages, but eternal. Nothing can be more decisive of its positive and specific meaning.

0166 aionios αιωνιος without beginning or end, eternal, everlasting
LEH lxx lexicon
UBS GNT Dict. # 169 (Str#166)
aionios eternal (of quality rather than of time); unending, everlasting, for all time
αιωνιος (iva Pla., Tim. 38b; Jer 39:40; Ezk 37:26; 2 Th 2:16; Hb 9:12; as v.l. Ac 13:48; 2 Pt 1:11; Bl-D. §59, 2; Mlt.-H. 157), on eternal (since Hyperid. 6, 27; Pla.; inscr., pap., LXX; Ps.-Phoc. 112; Test. 12 Patr.; standing epithet for princely, esp. imperial power: Dit., Or. Index VIII; BGU 176; 303; 309; Sb 7517, 5 [211/2 ad] kuvrio" aij.; al. in pap.; Jos., Ant. 7, 352).
1. without beginning crovnoi" aij. long ages ago Ro 16:25; pro; crovnwn aij. before time began 2 Ti 1:9; Tit 1:2 (on crovno" aij. cf. Dit., Or. 248, 54; 383, 10).
2. without beginning or end; of God (Ps.-Pla., Tim. Locr. 96c qeo;n t. aijwvnion; Inscr. in the Brit. Mus. 894 aij. k. ajqavnato"; Gen 21:33; Is 26:4; 40:28; Bar 4:8 al.; Philo, Plant. 8; 74; Sib. Or., fgm. 3, 17 and 4; PGM 1, 309; 13, 280) Ro 16:26; of the Holy Spirit in Christ Hb 9:14. qrovno" aij. 1 Cl 65:2 (cf. 1 Macc 2:57).
3. without end (Diod. S. 1, 1, 5; 5, 73, 1; 15, 66, 1 dovxa aij. everlasting fame; in Diod. S. 1, 93, 1 the Egyptian dead are said to have passed to their aij. …keep someone forever Phlm 15 (cf. Job 40:28). …On the other hand of eternal life (Maximus Tyr. 6, 1d qeou` zwh; aij.; Diod. S. 8, 15, 3 life meta; to;n qavnaton lasts eij" a{panta aijw`na; Da 12:2; 4 Macc 15:3; PsSol 3, 12; Philo, …carav IPhld inscr.; doxavzesqai aijwnivw/ e[rgw/ be glorified by an everlasting deed IPol 8:1. DHill, Gk. Words and Hebr. Mngs. ’67, 186-201. M-M.

Bauer, Walter, Gingrich, F. Wilbur, and Danker, Frederick W., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1979.​

BIBLE STUDY MANUALS - AIONIOS -- AN IN DEPTH STUDY

αιωνιος
• Strong's - Greek 165

• NRSV (the uses of the word in various contexts in the NRSV text):
again, age, course, end, eternal, forever, permanent, time, world, worlds

• CGED (A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, by Barclay M. Newman, New York: United Bible Societies, 1993, page 5):
age; world order; eternity (ap aion or pro aion, from the beginning; eis aion, and the strengthened form eis tous aion, ton aion, always, forever);

• The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology [NIDNTT], Volume 3 (edited by Colin Brown, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1978, page 827, 830):

In Plato the term [aion] is developed so as to represent a timeless, immeasurable and transcendent super-time, an idea of time in itself. Plutarch and other earlier Stoics appropriate this understanding, and from it the Mysteries of Aion, the god of eternity, could be celebrated in Alexandria, and gnosticism could undertake its own speculations on time.

The statements of the Johannine [John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John] writings, … reveal a strong inclination to conceive of a timeless, because post-temporal, eternity… As in the OT [Old Testament], these statements reveal the background conviction that God's life never ends, i.e. that everything belonging to him can also never come to an end…

aion - αιων - age, world
A. "for ever, an unbroken age, perpetuity of time, eternity; the worlds, universe; period of time​

Basically, if you weed through all the copypaste, you are still going to have to admit that since "aion(on)" which is the plural of aion is used. Aion cannot mean eternity, because there are no such thing as eternities.

And it only takes me 4 lines to destroy your entire argument....​

 

[Der Alte]

Basically, if you weed through all the copypaste, you are still going to have to admit that since "aion(on)" which is the plural of aion is used. Aion cannot mean eternity, because there are no such thing as eternities.

And it only takes me 4 lines to destroy your entire argument....

What a joke, I cracked up when I read this. You have destroyed nothing! Copy/paste implies dishonestly copying someone else's work and presenting it as one's own. I properly identified all my sources.

You failed to notice I quoted nine (9) Greek language sources and quoted from two pre-Christian secular Greek writings by Plato and Philo. There is a grammatical device in the Bible known as epizeuxis. A word is repeated for emphasis. Jesus poften did this "Amen, Amen." The earliest occurrence of this is in Genesis 2:17 when God told Adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in Hebrew the penalty is מות תמות/muth tamuth, literally "dying you shall die." One who does not know Greek should not try to substitute their assumptions/presuppositions for the knowledge of Greek scholars and ancient Greek writers. What is true in English is not necessarily true in other languages. Reduplicaton of aion is a way of emphasizing the endlessness of aion. See "Figures of speech used in the Bible:" E. W. Bullinger.

 

[Der Alte]

It changes everything when you undetstand the framework of the ages.... in titus and timothy there is a reference to the "space" prior to the eonian times or ages. Paul also talks about the "consummation." The end of the ages. "In the age to come", " in this present age"... "for the ages of the ages"..... when you see the translation "for ever" as two words the second in greek is "aion" so literall shld be translated "for an age".... this is proved by evidence that the term "aionon" (which is plural of aion) shows up.... no such thing as "evers"....

Have you ever studied Greek? Do you know anything about the Greek language or is this just your assumptions/presuppositions which change nothing?

 

[ananda]

It changes everything when you undetstand the framework of the ages.... in titus and timothy there is a reference to the "space" prior to the eonian times or ages. Paul also talks about the "consummation." The end of the ages. "In the age to come", " in this present age"... "for the ages of the ages"..... when you see the translation "for ever" as two words the second in greek is "aion" so literall shld be translated "for an age".... this is proved by evidence that the term "aionon" (which is plural of aion) shows up.... no such thing as "evers"....

The meaning of aion and related words are self-evident from their usage in the NT. No need for post-NT examples which redefine the word(s).

 

[Stephen Kendall]

Quote from Der Alter:

"Aion, Aionios and the lexicons:
166. αιωνιος aionios; from 165; agelong, eternal:— eternal(66), eternity(1), forever(1)."

It seems to me that agelong is age long and not eternal and it is listed before eternal and should be the first most used definition from the source that you are quoting. Is that correct?

 

[Stephen Kendall]

With one word changing the entire Christian faith (aionios), there seems to be a present day conspiracy to own the word from one camp and the other. Much of our faith seems to be claimed whether true or not, who cares, this is war! Right! All is fair in war, even the truth is up for grabs. Refuting is the name of the game, yet there is but one truth and each side declares ownership of it. I can see why we were told to live a quiet life and to just do good, and give account of our hope to those who ask for it.

It is my estimate that in war, neither knows anything, they just shoot. The honest man isn't the refuter, but the quiet guy just watching to see if anyone of these claimers is obeying Jesus and following him. Who are people defending, for sure it isn't God, for he needs no defense?

When I was 6 years old, I was gay (1950's pleasant and happy definition). Now, I wouldn't dare be gay, for the ownership of the word was no longer mine, the perverts now own it. God owned the first rainbow, but then comes equal rights movement of the gay world and they get to own it. I have a feeling that aionios is no longer owned by the people who first had it, it too has been taken over, right? Universalists did some detective work and found discrepancy of its meanings. Will we ever really be sure what was spoken. Maybe the commands of Christ have also been taken over too, yet they aren't nearly as important as these key words! Not many are following Christ anyway or paying that much attention to real faith (obeying him), so Jesus commands are left alone and none wanting to have ownership or to take over them, right?

Can't anyone see that conspiracies are as common as leaders desires for power, be they presidents, dictators, church heads to Pharisees. How many souls and saints were martyrs for their beliefs? The simple truth is we will have knowledge in due time, right now think the best of God & Christ and love one another, obeying Jesus in this and in all things, just think we do know there is little interest in obeying Jesus so no camp has tried to take over his commands & teachings, except for his description of the punishment place/length of the wicked non-repenting ones.

 

[James Is Back]

John 3:15(NIV84)-"that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life"

Notice the bold world eternal nuff said.

 

[ananda]

With one word changing the entire Christian faith (aionios), there seems to be a present day conspiracy to own the word from one camp and the other.... The honest man isn't the refuter, but the quiet guy just watching to see if anyone of these claimers is obeying Jesus and following him. Who are people defending, for sure it isn't God, for he needs no defense? ... I have a feeling that aionios is no longer owned by the people who first had it, it too has been taken over, right? Universalists did some detective work and found discrepancy of its meanings. Will we ever really be sure what was spoken. Maybe the commands of Christ have also been taken over too, yet they aren't nearly as important as these key words! Not many are following Christ anyway or paying that much attention to real faith (obeying him), so Jesus commands are left alone and none wanting to have ownership or to take over them, right? ...

Great points, Stephan Kendall. Though wouldn't you say that widespread ignorance of Jesus' direct commands & teachings is the product of attempts to dethrone them?