Since I mentioned the Long Version in my post #320, I can save you all a lot of time and effort by posting my conclusions after two years of research:
There are many who have studied the doctrine of hell in just as much - if not more - detail and over longer periods of time than you have who have come to the
opposite conclusion concerning eternal conscious torment in hell. Their studies have confirmed that indeed the doctrine of ECT is entirely biblical, taught frequently by Christ in the Gospels, and by those apostles whose writings constitute the New Testament. How is it they have come to such different conclusions? Are you smarter than they? More spiritual? Better versed in all the various language and cultural factors pertinent to the matter? I doubt it. Very much.
It is not determinative of the correctness of your perspective how much time you've spent pouring over this issue. Time and effort aren't necessarily valid arguments in favour of your point of view. A man whose beginning premises/presuppostions are faulty will arrive at correspondingly faulty conclusions, no matter how hard or long his study.
1. There is no mention of Hell in God’s Creation of the Cosmos - therefore, Hell is uncreated by God or anyone else. See
Genesis 1:1,
Isaiah 65:17,
Jeremiah 7:31, 19:5.
John 1:3 explicitly states that God made all, and that no other person or agency made anything. The Bible contains many instances of “heaven and earth” paired together as a term…without “hell.”
There is no mention of galaxies, or tectonic plates, or black holes, or quantum singularities, either. Are all of these things, therefore, not of God's creation? There are, in fact, a great many things never mentioned in the Creation account that exist nonetheless. Ought we to discount them as fiction? That would be a distinctly irrational thing to do, yet, this is exactly what you're trying to do with the biblical doctrine of Hell. Your thinking above is a giant non sequitur. It doesn't follow that because Hell is not mentioned in the Creation account that it therefore does not exist any more than Jupiter does not exist because it was not mentioned in the Creation account.
2. In the first chapter of Genesis, it is stated six times that God saw that what He had made was good, excluding Hell as being possible, as the Creation could not have been wholly good had Hell been in existence. See
Genesis 1:10,12,18,21,25,31.
You're assuming that Hell does not fall under the definition of "good." But from whose definition of "good" are you working? Is the prison that confines criminals considered to be a good thing by the criminals? No. Does this mean prisons are evil, that they are not good? No. Is the brain surgeon who must drill holes in the heads of his patients, and cut out portions of their skulls, and slice away pieces of their brain tissue, doing evil? Did the surgeon not do good by his surgical efforts? Yes, he did good, though he shed the blood of his patients and badly damaged their heads. Was it evil for the Allies to violently assault the German troops, killing many of them, in order to halt their domination of Europe and their wholesale slaughter of Jews, gypsies, and the disabled? Did they not do good in protecting the World from Hitler's genocidal tyranny? Yes, they did good, though many died cruelly in doing so. In the same way, God's holy, just, perfect wrath, meted out in hell upon the unrepentant, unbelieving wicked, who have spurned His love and grace, despised the Saviour, and lived in life-long rebellion to Him, sinning continually 'til their decease, is also good.
3. The Creation is properly a hierarchy, not a dualistic Heaven versus Hell – with the Earth and humans as a contested prize, fought over by God and Satan. See
Genesis 1:1,
Job 1 & 2,
John 1:3,
Philippians 2:10,
Revelation 5:13.
The Creation is not a hierarchy in the sense in which you seem to mean it here, but a
monarchy. God rules supreme over all, the undisputed Sovereign of Everything. No, He is not fighting with Satan as though with an equal who might overcome Him. Satan is a created being, just as we are, and as such just as contingent, just as dependent upon God, for his existence. Hell, then, is not some base of operations for the devil, his kingdom from which he rules, symbolic of the devil's vying with God for human souls. Hell, the "Lake of Fire," is the place God has made for the devil's eventual eternal punishment and for the punishment of those who die enemies of God, unrepentant and unbelieving. But, regardless, one does not have to hold to the dualistic view you describe above in order to hold to the doctrine of eternal conscious torment in Hell.
4. God made both good and evil, for the same Hand that planted the Tree of Life also planted the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, Satan did not make or create evil. See
Genesis 2:9,
Isaiah 45:7,
Lamentations 3:38,
Amos 3:6.
Are you equivocating with terms, here? What "evil" do you mean? Natural "evil"? That is, the destruction caused by natural events like storms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and such? These are not "evil" in a moral sense and ought not to be lumped in with such evil. God is certainly the Ultimate Cause of
natural evil, but He is not the Ultimate Cause of
moral evil. If God is the Source of moral evil, then He is not good. And if God is not good - and maximally so - then He is not God. To assert as you have, then, that God "made evil" is to make God something other than God.
Is the wood carver who fashions a knife to carve wood, making the blade of the knife long, and hard and sharp, responsible for the use of the knife, stolen by a thief, to kill someone? No. He intended the knife to be used to carve wood, not kill people. In making a knife to carve wood, He could not avoid making a knife that could also kill a person, but His purpose for the knife was never for it to be put to such use. How, then, is he responsible for the evil way the knife has been used? Well, he isn't. The thief is responsible, not the wood carver.
In the same way, God made us with the capacity to love Him. This necessitated giving us free will; for love cannot be coerced, it must be freely given. But giving us the freedom to choose to love Him necessitates giving us the freedom not to love Him. And when we choose not to love Him, we use the "carving knife" of our free agency to an evil purpose. But that is entirely on us, not God. He is no more responsible for our evil conduct than the wood carver is responsible for the evil way his carving knife was used.
Even though I hold firmly to the ECT doctrine, I have never thought the devil was the source of moral evil. That is
our "claim to fame" - or infamy, actually.
6. The prince of Tyre in
Ezekiel 28 is not Satan, as it specifically refers to him as a man. See
Ezekiel 26 - 28.
Not sure what this has to do with whether or not Hell is an actual place of eternal punishment awaiting the unrepentant, unbelieving wicked...
7. The Law God gave to Moses warned of death, but did not specify punishment in Hell, or warn of it. Punishments were delivered in the real world, and the most severe was simple death. See
Genesis 2:17, Exodus through Deuteronomy,
Romans 6:23.
"Simple death" is the most severe punishment? I think not. Those who are tortured, or dying of some excruciating illness, long for "simple death." Death is, for some, a blessed relief, a welcome end to pain and suffering. So, no, the "most severe" punishment is not "simple death." Certainly, God knows this, which is why, in part, Hell awaits the unrepentant, unbelieving wicked after death.
Imagine Hitler, or Stalin, or Jeffrey Dahmer, thinking, "No matter what I do, no matter how evil I am, my end is exactly the same as the very best, most saintly, person who ever lived. The worst God will do to me is kill me - the very same thing He does to even the most Christ-loving person." Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? That death is supposed to be the worst possible punishment for Hitler, but something else for Mother Theresa. This seems grossly irrational to me, actually (as well as unbiblical).
Whatever the case with the Law of Moses, the preaching of Christ warned of ECT quite a lot. I've posted some of his warnings about Hell and the wrath of God in earlier posts.
9. All people die, but none of them go to Eternal Conscious Torment – only to the grave or pit. See every instance of personal death in the Bible, with “hell” (if present) properly replaced with “sheol” or “hades,” as so often noted in the center or marginal reference column.
Now you are grossly equivocating with terms. "Hell" (at least, in the KJV) may mean "Sheol," "Hades," "Gehenna," or even "Tartarus." However, only "Sheol" (Heb.) or "Hades" (Gk.) refer to the grave, or "place of the dead," and only "Tarturus" refers to the pit or abyss (which is solely for holding fallen angels). References to Hell using the word "Gehenna," however, do not refer merely to the grave but to a place of torment:
Mark 9:43
43 It is better for you to enter into life maimed, than having two hands, to go to Gehenna into the fire that shall never be quenched.
Luke 12:5
Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna.