Is Hell Annihilationism or Eternal Torment

Dan1988 said:

I just asked the Lord Jesus for a new Ferrari, but He didn't hear me and He didn't give me a nice red Ferrari either.

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" You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." John 14:14

He will teach, He is here to show Himself to people.

Mark Quayle said:

I hope you meant, "novice astronomer"!

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Sure did.

Mark Quayle said:

I hope you meant, "novice astronomer"!

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Still trying to figure it out. Trying to find ways to prevent dew on my EP's. Are you into Astronomy?

zelosravioli said:

You ask: Do we know what death is? Do we know what life is?

Death is obvious - the first death - as all living beings have observed: is a body becoming lifeless, decaying, turning to bones, and DEAD. Death needs no defining. As well, the first death defines the ‘second’ death - lifeless, decaying, DEAD.

Scripture defines death as well over and over: gone, forgotten, blotted out, destroyed, they are no more, etc.

Yes, death is defined in scripture as a process: the first death is of the body. First you go to Sheol or Abraham’s bosom (or paradise), then there is the Great judgement where the dead are separated one from another. The righteous to eternal life and the unrighteousness to eternal punishment - they are punished ‘according to their deeds’ (here they are still a living conscious spirit) and ultimately they go to the Lake of fire - the second ‘death’.

According to their deeds: Psalm 28:4, Isaiah 59:18, Jeremiah 17:10, 25:14, 32:19, Ezekiel 16:59, 36:19, 39:24, Matthew 16:27, Romans 2:6, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Galatians 6:7, Revelation 20:13, 22:12, etc.

The second death is just as the first death - it is ’death’. Then all is fulfilled. And so then the many 100 scriptures that speak of ‘death’ are fulfilled. The dead sinners are gone, forgotten, forever blotted out, as water into the ground, destroyed, perished, they are no more: Isaiah 17:14, 26:14, 60:12, Psalm 53:5, 54:5, 59:13, 88:5, 92:7, 94:23, 109:13, Job 24:20, Jeremiah 9:16, 10:20, Nahum 1:12, Job 14:12, Daniel 11:44, Zechariah 11:9, Joshua 11:12, 11:20, 24:8, Deuteronomy 7:24, 8:19, 9:3, 12:29, 32:26, Ezekiel 20:13, 20:17, 1 Corinthians 10:10, 2 Thes 2:8, etc. etc… so did God mean he would destroy them, or did God mean he keeps them alive in torment forever? I believe God means what He means - they are destroyed.

Death does not need to be described in anthropomorphic terms, neither does life. There is no ’not understanding’ what death and life are - that is, unless you prescribe to the eternal torture doctrine.

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You say, "Death does not need to be described in anthropomorphic terms, neither does life." Yet, that is all you have done here. You define them by your point-of-view." Even when you use scriptural terminology, you don't know more than what little you know, just like me. Can you say, WHY, or HOW life does what it does? Who does God think we are, apart from him?

Look at the various words for destruction in both old and NT, and even the contexts for "done away with" in its various expressions. I don't often read them to mean, "returned to null". I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying you haven't done much to support your position. It seems to me that there's too much to contrast with God's abhorrence of sin and his retribution for it, to say they are just returned to non-existence.

ladodgers6 said:

Still trying to figure it out. Trying to find ways to prevent dew on my EP's. Are you into Astronomy?

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I used to be, back when I was extremely near-sighted. But it didn't last long. I had a radial keratotomy done (precursor to lasic) and ever since, a star looks like about 8 main ones, with a bunch of streaks and other distortion around them. Had to give it up 35 or 40 years ago. Had a real nice telescope (cheap cardboard tube but great optics) 10" reflector. The best thing I found for it was to keep it covered, and uncovered only while my eye was looking through it. I used a bucket cap for the tube and another plastic cap for the eyepiece, and a cloth over the whole business.

I never did find anything that worked well for it, but they say that there is some kind of spray that is good for optics, and doesn't let condensation form.

Of course, the best viewing was the cold night, ironically. I kept it in the cold garage so there was little condensation typical of bringing it into the warm of the house.

Spent many a happy night with a cold runny nose, trying to find as many of the Messier Objects as I could, and finding some objects that (I was hoping) were ORIGINAL DISCOVERIES by ME!! (I don't remember the names of any of those--(none of them were unknown, of course)-- but it was curious to me that Messier missed some of them, and I couldn't find some of his!)

Dan1988 said:

God doesn't agree with you. Gods description of death is very different to your theory.
If I was to go along with your theory, then it would be necessary to consider what God said about the matter as being a lie. And I know God doesn't lie, it's not in His nature to lie.

God said "In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die". Did Adam die, on the day he ate the forbidden fruit, according to you he did not die so that means that God lied to Adam, or it means that your theology is dead wrong...

Adam went on to live another 900 odd years, before he experienced your version of death. So in summary, according to your version of death Adam may have died three times. He first died, on the day he sinned, then he died again when he was around 960 years of age, then he died the second biblical death, or the third death according to your theory.

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I don’t think God agrees with your ‘math‘. You have two different numbers as your answer.
No man has died the second death yet - the Lake of fire - IS the ‘second’ death.
Like all mankind: we are all under ‘the sentence‘ of death - and because of ‘the sentence‘ we will all die.
Its not my theory - scripture only speaks of ‘two’ deaths.
The death of the body - is the first death.
The death of our spirit- is the second death (that is if we aren’t born again).

We can choose to ‘die with Christ,’ He died for us so we don’t have to, and if we do we are instantly raised with His spirit in newness of life, we are a new creation. But note we don’t die because we join Him in His death - he died in our place. Our body dies, so it can’t be the body that we are concerned with (as in the verses from John below). Only the saved die with Christ.

But according to Eternal torment theory - you supposedly die three times, and yet you are still consciously alive in the Lake of Fire? And you were somehow dead the whole time you were alive on Earth? And the believer was supposedly dead already when they die again with Christ?
So we were either kinda dead - or should it be understood, as scripture says ‘under the curse of death’.

Adam - like all humans after him are ‘under the curse’ ‘the penalty of sin is death.
Christ freed us from ‘the Law of sin and death’ the ‘curse’ of death, just as
Adam was under the ‘curse’ of death.
I understand ‘the church has said’ for centuries that ‘Adam died spiritually’ in order to try and explain the difficulty of the fact that Adam didn't die the ‘day’ he sinned. But no where in scripture does it say ‘Adam died spiritually’. It does not make sense that Adam was just a living ‘body’. ‘We’ are spirits, we aren’t the body.

Our body is our tent. We have a body, but ‘we’ are living spirits. The theory of Eternal torment wants us to believe ‘Adam died spiritually ‘that day’. Conditional Immortality suggests Adam was put under the curse of death on that day, just like the other curses. Adam was ‘alive’ after sinning, but condemned to die. The Eternal torment theory makes spiritual ‘death’ kind of meaningless if we are still ‘alive’ as Adam was.

But Conditional Immortality says ‘God meant Adam will die’ and ‘Adam did die, and actually will experience spiritual death and die’ if he is not saved. Saved from the second death in the Lake of Fire - The second death.

Your ECT theory has Adams spirit dead while he is living, and then his spirit ‘continues’ to live forever in the Lake of Fire the second death - so Eternal conscious torment doctrine has Adam dying three times. And that also means neither of the two deaths of the spirit are actual deaths. Make that make sense. (as a side note: Genesis 3:22 says Adam had to be expelled from the garden so that he might not continue to live forever… how is that possible if he was dead)

While Conditional Immortality says: death means death, the second death is the second death, the guilty are punished ‘according’ to their works, people are raised to life only if they die ‘in Christ’.

John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life’
John 3:36 ‘The one who believes in the Son has eternal life - but the one who does not obey the son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him’
John 8:51 Truly truly I say to you, if anyone follows my Word he will never taste of death’
John 10:28. ‘and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish’

Mark Quayle said:

You say, "Death does not need to be described in anthropomorphic terms, neither does life." Yet, that is all you have done here. You define them by your point-of-view." Even when you use scriptural terminology, you don't know more than what little you know, just like me. Can you say, WHY, or HOW life does what it does? Who does God think we are, apart from him?

Look at the various words for destruction in both old and NT, and even the contexts for "done away with" in its various expressions. I don't often read them to mean, "returned to null". I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying you haven't done much to support your position. It seems to me that there's too much to contrast with God's abhorrence of sin and his retribution for it, to say they are just returned to non-existence.

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Anthropomorphic terms are used to describe something about God in human terms so we would understand something about Him we are not familiar with - God does not die, and we are not talking about Gods death (?) we are talking about ‘our’ death (as in the OP). There is no reason to use anthropomorphic at all because we all know what death and life are. I did not bring up anthropomorphic.

What little ‘I‘ know about life and death? I know what life and death are, but I do not know what you are talking about if you don’t know what it means to be alive or dead.

You may be thinking of the purely annihilationist view, I am not exposing that. If you read my posts you see that I am exposing the Conditionalist position- that the sinner is punished according to their deeds. They are not ‘just returned to non-existence’ as you said. They are punished, each for their own sins, some I suppose for a very long time, and then thrown into the Lake of fire.