Is not believing in an eternal hell Heresy?

[shturt678s]

The bible is a big book and it says all sorts of things that one can choose to run with while ignoring other things that it says that point to a different conclusion. The truth is never easy to discover when reading the bible, unless it is something absolutely obvious and almost intuitive. Hell, heaven, rewards and punishments are obvious in one sense that's why even annihilationism looks for punishment of some sort and rewards of some sort. But what do you do with passages that actually do point to a conscious after-this-world-life for both the good and the wicked? The rich man and Lazarus story points to conscious suffering for the wicked - in his case the wickedness was heartless indifference to the poor and needy - do you dismiss it as a parable that one need not take as indicating what actually happens? Samuel's spirit also rises from the place of the dead to condemn Saul the king was that a demon pretending to be Samuel? Yet every word spoken by Samuel came to pass and the story never hints at Samuel being a fake. And what is Paul's unnamed person who ascended to the third heaven and heard things that no man can utter? Was that just a vision? And Paul's desire to depart and be with Christ, was that just a pious expression about the first resurrection?

There are many passages one can cite on these matters and one can pit the one passage against another and end with confusion or one can admit that they are all there in scripture and ask how do we resolve this? It's obvious that careful bible reading doesn't resolve the matter - if it did then either those who believe in hell and eternal punishment as well as heaven and eternal joy are misreading the bible or those who believe in soul sleep and annihilation for the wicked and resurrection and eternal joy in heaven or on the earth (depending on their theology) are misreading the bible yet both groups will claim to be reading the scriptures carefully and arriving at their opposite conclusions regarding the wicked. There has to be anther place to go to get a resolution and that can't be to God directly since both sides will be claiming God's teaching as well as scripture for their beliefs. In the end some source beyond the verses and prayer is needed; it can't be personal opinion since that will resolve nothing at all and it can't be a majority vote because if it were then the heaven and hell group would win hands down and you'd be left wondering if the election was rigged. So where are you going to go to get the answer?

 

[Timothew]

to say there is no hell would be a heresy

The bible is a big book and it says all sorts of things...

You folks had better be absolutely certain that believing there is no eternal torture in hell is not Biblical BEFORE you go around claiming that it is a heresy.

Got it?

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

Glad to see a Lutheran getting on the side of the RCs



http://www.christianforums.com/t6980813/
That Martin Luther? He wasn’t so bad, says Pope


.

 

[shturt678s]

You folks had better be absolutely certain that believing there is no eternal torture in hell is not Biblical BEFORE you go around claiming that it is a heresy.

Got it?

Brother Timothew, for those that confronted enough 'truth' of the Word from our Lord's view from heaven, rejecting that truth for whatever reason, upon their passing immediately awake in hell in conscious toments until cast into the lake of fire at the great white throne judgment seat where tomented forever and ever with their new bodies both internally and externally where there are even different levels of toment in hell.

Old Jack's pretty firm opinion

 

[shturt678s]

Glad to see a Lutheran getting on the side of the RCs



http://www.christianforums.com/t6980813/
That Martin Luther? He wasn’t so bad, says Pope


.

MC is also 'so bad' in a good sense. Have to have his back says old outdated insignificant Jack.

Always appreciate you and your posts also!

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

Brother Timothew, for those that confronted enough 'truth' of the Word from our Lord's view from heaven, rejecting that truth for whatever reason, upon their passing immediately awake in hell in conscious toments until cast into the lake of fire at the great white throne judgment seat where tomented forever and ever with their new bodies both internally and externally where there are even different levels of toment in hell.

Old Jack's pretty firm opinion

Where do you get that from?


.

 

[James Is Back]

I think you do, isn't that lake of fire in Revelation a place where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth (as the KJV says)? Surely those words convey the idea of suffering.

Have you read "The Great Divorce" by C S Lewis?

I think you do too but those who believe in annihilation don't think so.

 

[shturt678s]

Where do you get that from?


.

Excellent question. My take off verse has always been IIThess.2:10b. Am an old man that beleive it or not a care giver, barely a caregiver, to a few others younger than me and have to get back soon after a brisk walk to keep my old heart going...however let's keep the campfire warm till get back and maybe MC will awake from his 'sleep'? Not 'soul sleep' however.

Old Jack not looking forward to cardio hill...pain on my daily morning walk. Stop complaining Jack!!!

 

[By Faith Alone]

Glad to see a Lutheran getting on the side of the RCs
.

Yeah. They dance well together, do they not?

The majority view of hell is borne of starke ignorance and laziness. There is NO concept of hell in the OT at all and the NT did NOT come out of a vacuum. Best to look up the Greek when in doubt.

It is SINISTER and borders on BLASPHEMY to say God is a loving God out of one side of the mouth and turn on the other and say He is JUST and it is HIS business if He sends someone to suffer like that for eternity. It is ALSO His business if He kills innocent children in the flood and by the sword of Israel.

Makes a whole heap of sense.

I will follow Timothew to the gates of hell.....oops. Gates of the GRAVE on this one.

 

[MoreCoffee]

All of us who believe that the wicked will be destroyed instead of tortured forever in heck, of course!
Remember the thread title? Is not believing in eternal hell a heresy?

I think that it is a formal heresy, those who believe it may not be heretics; it depends on how they came to believe it and why they are rejecting what the Church teaches.

 

[seeingeyes]

I think that it is a formal heresy, those who believe it may not be heretics; it depends on how they came to believe it and why they are rejecting what the Church teaches.

"Formal" would mean that the church agrees with you. It does not.

 

[shturt678s]

Yeah. They dance well together, do they not?

The majority view of hell is borne of starke ignorance and laziness. There is NO concept of hell in the OT at all and the NT did NOT come out of a vacuum. Best to look up the Greek when in doubt.

It is SINISTER and borders on BLASPHEMY to say God is a loving God out of one side of the mouth and turn on the other and say He is JUST and it is HIS business if He sends someone to suffer like that for eternity. It is ALSO His business if He kills innocent children in the flood and by the sword of Israel.

Makes a whole heap of sense.

I will follow Timothew to the gates of hell.....oops. Gates of the GRAVE on this one.

Only one little problem, MC doesn't know how to dance the Jitterbug or the Lindy Hop...I do thus difficult to dance together my brother.

Secondly God is not only a God of mercy and grace, but a God of Justice and forever wrath.

Old Jack having difficulty dancing with my cane.

 

[By Faith Alone]

I think that it is a formal heresy, those who believe it may not be heretics; it depends on how they came to believe it and why they are rejecting what the Church teaches.

Goes to prove Catholicism is irrelevant in the scheme of things.

 

[By Faith Alone]

Only one little problem, MC doesn't know how to dance the Jitterbug or the Lindy Hop...I do thus difficult to dance together my brother.

Secondly God is not only a God of mercy and grace, but a God of Justice and forever wrath.

Old Jack having difficulty dancing with my cane.

Brother Jack. You said you were a schoolteacher. Did the subject you taught allow for speculation or were there rules and guidelines to follow?

 

[shturt678s]

Brother Jack. You said you were a schoolteacher. Did the subject you taught allow for speculation or were there rules and guidelines to follow?

Retired, of a lower paygrade languages teacher long ago. You unknowingly nailed it, ie, Rev.11:2 has been my rule and guideline to follow so I don't follow the heathen (A.V. "Gentiles") ending in Rev.20:10 for forever and ever my brother...body and living soul and the last day.

Only old Jack's opinion

 

[MoreCoffee]

The bible is a big book and it says all sorts of things that one can choose to run with while ignoring other things that it says that point to a different conclusion. The truth is never easy to discover when reading the bible, unless it is something absolutely obvious and almost intuitive. Hell, heaven, rewards and punishments are obvious in one sense that's why even annihilationism looks for punishment of some sort and rewards of some sort. But what do you do with passages that actually do point to a conscious after-this-world-life for both the good and the wicked? The rich man and Lazarus story points to conscious suffering for the wicked - in his case the wickedness was heartless indifference to the poor and needy - do you dismiss it as a parable that one need not take as indicating what actually happens? Samuel's spirit also rises from the place of the dead to condemn Saul the king was that a demon pretending to be Samuel? Yet every word spoken by Samuel came to pass and the story never hints at Samuel being a fake. And what is Paul's unnamed person who ascended to the third heaven and heard things that no man can utter? Was that just a vision? And Paul's desire to depart and be with Christ, was that just a pious expression about the first resurrection?

There are many passages one can cite on these matters and one can pit the one passage against another and end with confusion or one can admit that they are all there in scripture and ask how do we resolve this? It's obvious that careful bible reading doesn't resolve the matter - if it did then either those who believe in hell and eternal punishment as well as heaven and eternal joy are misreading the bible or those who believe in soul sleep and annihilation for the wicked and resurrection and eternal joy in heaven or on the earth (depending on their theology) are misreading the bible yet both groups will claim to be reading the scriptures carefully and arriving at their opposite conclusions regarding the wicked. There has to be anther place to go to get a resolution and that can't be to God directly since both sides will be claiming God's teaching as well as scripture for their beliefs. In the end some source beyond the verses and prayer is needed; it can't be personal opinion since that will resolve nothing at all and it can't be a majority vote because if it were then the heaven and hell group would win hands down and you'd be left wondering if the election was rigged. So where are you going to go to get the answer?

I have carefully read through the Bible, and have been doing so for over 20 years including the New Testament in the Original Greek and I have come to the conclusion that it does not support the traditional doctrine that the lost go to hell when they die where they will be tormented alive forever while they are dead.

Okay, I am back from my evening out and I am looking at your reply and how you quoted only the portion of my post shown in bold text in the quote above and it leaves me wondering are you in this discussion to deal with what your interlocutor says or not? I didn't write two paragraphs just to have them skimmed over as if they said nothing. I hoped you would interact with the content of those paragraphs and offer some sort of reasoned response but that is not what I see in your post. If you do not want to reply then okay, we can move on and I'll spend time chatting with people who are willing to deal with what issues raised. Even if you think what I raised was invalid you ought to at least have the courtesy to say so. It isn't as if my reply was vacuous nonsense or a troll or something.

Your side has not established that the Bible says anywhere that the lost will go to hell when they die where they will be alive and conscious of torment forever. Your side makes the claim that to believe the lost are actually destroyed is a heresy, but your side has not proven that the Bible says that the lost are not destroyed, and I have given several (unanswered) instances where the Bible says exactly that.

I think your statement is not correct, there are numerous detailed exegetical texts dealing with the question of hell and heaven, eternal punishment and eternal reward, the intermediate state and the resurrection and all of them deal with the texts in sacred scripture in detail and answer numerous objections raised by conditionalists over the ages. I myself have read and dealt with Leroy Edwin Frooms's The Conditionalist Faith of our Fathers which is a Seventh Day Adventist text (two volumes) dealing with the matter of conditional immortality as it is taught by Seventh Day Adventist theologians and their church. I haven't written any books that have been published as a formal reply but I have dealt with the issue in various forums and in teaching within my own church. It is not true that my side has not put forward a credible case, it is more that you do not acknowledge it. I wrote that second paragraph in the quote above to draw you out so that you would offer a response to the issue of differing interpretive frameworks and how they leave us with no definitive answers for this issue; yet you offered none except a blanket statement that dismisses all who hold a view supportive of eternal punishment and an eternal hell. Do you think that is a serious and worthwhile way to respond?

IF your side wishes to call us Heretics, they had better have solid proof, not the ambiguity you are talking about. Heresy is a serious charge, in the past a charge of heresy would get a person killed.

My side is people, not some kind of monolithic organisation that condemns you individually as a heretic. That's kind of poisoning the well isn't it? What I mean is that you're reply is attributing motives and actions to my side (whatever my side is alleged to be) which are not present in what I wrote, and by attributing motives to what I wrote which are absent from what I wrote you make it seem as if the very notion of heaven & hell as eternal realities is unworthy and wicked when such is not the case, thus the well is poisoned making the very mention of eternal hell become an accusation that you are a heretic and that is not the truth.

I read through your post, none of that proves that the lost are not destroyed. Does Luke say that the rich man's torment was eternal? Does the account of Samuel say ANYTHING at all about the fate of the wicked? The account doesn't even say that the disembodied spirit of Samuel arose from the grave. Does Paul's vision prove that the lost are not destroyed but are kept alive in hell forever? Does Paul's vision say anything about hell whatsoever? No.

The point I made by bringing up the rich man and Lazarus as well as Samuel and saint Paul is that despite the presence of such passages in sacred scripture the doctrine of conditional immortality must read such passages as teaching either nothing about eternity and eternal punishment or as visions, parables, or something equally unimportant for the purposes of deciding if there is such a thing as eternal punishment and an eternal hell. Your reply above is an example of doing exactly that. So, now that you've dismissed the passages I've raised and I can equally dismiss the passages you've raised we are left exactly where I said we would be - in a mutual dismissal of one another's reading of scripture or a dismissal of one another as incompetent exegetes. That was the point made in the second paragraph.

The belief in eternal conscious torment in hell is based on idle speculation like this, not solid biblical proof. And I have given solid biblical proof that the wicked will be destroyed. It appears to be sheer stubbornness on the part of people who what to believe in the traditional view.

Many of the Church Fathers taught an eternal hell with eternal punishment and those who were in the East were native speakers of Greek. Those who lived in the first four or five centuries of the Christian Era were native speakers (and readers) of the koine Greek of the new testament. Such men were serious exegetes and even if you do not agree with them they were nevertheless serious exegetes whose comments cannot be dismissed as ignorant and/or uninformed on this matter. And since those who wrote in the first four or five centuries were Early Church Fathers they were recording the Tradition that you've alleged is the basis for my beliefs. Surely they themselves were not blindly following a Traditional ready established unless the source for their Tradition was the Apostles themselves. I think their Tradition was Apostolic, I hazard the guess that you disagree, and if that is so then our dispute is not merely about what this and that passage in the bible says but also what the Apostles taught while they were alive and how that teaching was transmitted to the Church. So once more I appeal to you to deal with the content of my earlier post and now I also appeal to you to deal with the content of this one. Think about what it means to say "you side is wrong and mine is right" without attaching significant reasons for saying so. Thus far the reasons you've indicated are not substantial in their current form.

I'm not going to get the answer by majority vote. If we all were to vote on which path to take, the majority would win the election. Jesus said that the way is wide that leads to destruction (Notice that he said "destruction" and I agree with him, and not "eternal torment in hell") and many follow it and the way is narrow that leads to life and few find it. Finding truth by majority vote is risky at best, and leads to destruction at worst.

Jesus said many things including that the rich man looked up from his torments in Hades and appealed to Father Abraham for mercy. It's not so easy to make the word "destruction" that's present in our English translations the foundation for the doctrine of Conditional Immortality.

Destruction in the King James Version this word translates over 30 Hebrew words in the Old Testament, and 4 words in the New Testament. Of these the most interesting, as having a technical sense, is 'ăbhaddōn (from verb 'ābhadh, “to be lost,” “to perish”). It is found 6 times in the Wisdom Literature, and nowhere else in the Old Testament​

Since the "destruction" is also said to be everlasting destruction from his presence (2 Thessalonians 1:9) it is worth checking what the expression means.

who shall be punished with everlasting destruction Rather, men who will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. In these awful words the Apostle describes the retribution designed for godless men and rejecters of the Gospel. His word for “penalty” (diké, the root of the words righteous and righteousness in Greek) brings to a climax the idea of justice developed in 2Th 1:5-8; see note on “vengeance.” But the clause while defining, qualifies the foregoing; for “who” is equal to such as, who with all like them. The threatening applies to the impious and malignant opposers who were seeking to crush the infant Church. Their sin corresponded to that which our Lord denounced as the sin against the Holy Spirit, the “eternal sin,” the “blasphemy against the Spirit which shall not be forgiven” (Mat 12:31-32; Mar 3:28-29, R. V.).

“Destruction,” as applied to man and his destiny in the N.T., signifies perdition, ruin, the utter loss of blessedness. It is opposed to “salvation” in Heb 10:39; 2Co 2:15, &c.; and “eternal destruction” is the antithesis of eternal life.” There is no sufficient reason for interpreting the destruction of the reprobate as signifying their annihilation, or extinction of being; they will be lost for ever—lost to God and goodness. Nor can we limit the range of the word eternal in its relation to this fearful doom; it removes all limits of time, and is the express opposite of temporary (2Co 4:18). Seventy-two times the Greek original of the adjective is found in the N.T.: forty-four of these examples are repetitions of the phrase “eternal life;” it is arbitrary to suppose that in the opposite combination “eternal” bears a restricted sense. Christ’s judicial words in Mat 25:46 bar all attempts to minimize the penal effect of the sentence of the Last Day; “eternal punishment,” He says, and “eternal life.” Comp. Php 3:19, “whose end is destruction.”

from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power Better, as in R. V., and without the comma, from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might. Language borrowed from Isaiah 2, where it occurs thrice repeated, all but identically (Isa 2:10; Isa 2:19; Isa 2:21), in the prophet’s picture of Jehovah’s coming in judgement: “Enter into the rocks and hide yourselves in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He ariseth to shake the earth.” The words of Rev 6:15-16 are based on the same original: “They say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” The preposition here seems, however, after the word “destruction,” to signify coming from, rather than shrinking from the face of the Lord. The sight of their Judge and His Almightiness, robed in fire and attended by His host of angels, will drive these wretched men, terror-stricken, into ruin. Their destruction proceeds “from the face of the Lord;” in His look the evildoers read their fate. So we can imagine it will be with the murderers of Jesus, and with malicious persecutors of His people. Comp. Psa 34:16; Psa 76:7, “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil:” “Who may stand in Thy sight, when once Thou art angry?”

While the destruction of the persecutors and the deliverance of the persecuted are contrasted in themselves (2Th 1:6-7), they are identified in point of time. For justice will overtake the former—

(The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)​

 

[By Faith Alone]

Retired, of a lower paygrade languages teacher long ago. You unknowingly nailed it, ie, Rev.11:2 has been my rule and guideline to follow so I don't follow the heathen (A.V. "Gentiles") ending in Rev.20:10 for forever and ever my brother...body and living soul and the last day.

Only old Jack's opinion

Forever and ever is mistranslated from The Greek aion, meaning ages. "Unto the ages of the ages". 1 Corinthians 15:24 gives us "the end" of the ages. Be that as it may, the only ones seen to be tormented are the unholy trinity. All others suffer the "second death". For there to be a second death the must have been a first one.

Now. The book of Revelation is the only time the lake of fire is mentioned, and like the Rich man and Lazarus and the angels carrying Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham likewise mentioned only once, a complete doctrine is made of the two.

I ask you. Do you see the second resurrection and the GWTJ as a general resurrection and judgment?"

 

[shturt678s]

Forever and ever is mistranslated from The Greek aion, meaning ages. "Unto the ages of the ages". 1 Corinthians 15:24 gives us "the end" of the ages. Be that as it may, the only ones seen to be tormented are the unholy trinity. All others suffer the "second death". For there to be a second death the must have been a first one.

Now. The book of Revelation is the only time the lake of fire is mentioned, and like the Rich man and Lazarus and the angels carrying Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham likewise mentioned only once, a complete doctrine is made of the two.

I ask you. Do you see the second resurrection and the GWTJ as a general resurrection and judgment?"

The last I checked...no sarcasm this time...about 63% of all Christians are Amillennial like myself, ie, validity isn't ruled by majorities of course...just want to bring this to your attention.

John doesn't speak of a 2nd resurrection, but by saying "the first" he certainly implies a 2nd....again, uses the word in the symbolical sense. The 2nd resurrection = Jn.5:28, 29; 6:39; Dan.12:2. = general resurrection & judgment in the sense of the following: Each was already judged in the sense by sitting on the left or right at each one's passing where already at one side or the other at the GWTJ

The 1st resurrection = Rev.20:4; 5a

Only old Jack's Amill. opinion

 

[Timothew]

Okay, I am back from my evening out and I am looking at your reply and how you quoted only the portion of my post shown in bold text in the quote above and it leaves me wondering are you in this discussion to deal with what your interlocutor says or not? I didn't write two paragraphs just to have them skimmed over as if they said nothing.

Coffee.
I did deal with your entire post, look for my responses.

 

[Timothew]

Okay, I am back from my evening out and I am looking at your reply and how you quoted only the portion of my post shown in bold text in the quote above and it leaves me wondering are you in this discussion to deal with what your interlocutor says or not? I didn't write two paragraphs just to have them skimmed over as if they said nothing. I hoped you would interact with the content of those paragraphs and offer some sort of reasoned response but that is not what I see in your post. If you do not want to reply then okay, we can move on and I'll spend time chatting with people who are willing to deal with what issues raised. Even if you think what I raised was invalid you ought to at least have the courtesy to say so. It isn't as if my reply was vacuous nonsense or a troll or something.I think your statement is not correct, there are numerous detailed exegetical texts dealing with the question of hell and heaven, eternal punishment and eternal reward, the intermediate state and the resurrection and all of them deal with the texts in sacred scripture in detail and answer numerous objections raised by conditionalists over the ages. I myself have read and dealt with Leroy Edwin Frooms's The Conditionalist Faith of our Fathers which is a Seventh Day Adventist text (two volumes) dealing with the matter of conditional immortality as it is taught by Seventh Day Adventist theologians and their church. I haven't written any books that have been published as a formal reply but I have dealt with the issue in various forums and in teaching within my own church. It is not true that my side has not put forward a credible case, it is more that you do not acknowledge it. I wrote that second paragraph in the quote above to draw you out so that you would offer a response to the issue of differing interpretive frameworks and how they leave us with no definitive answers for this issue; yet you offered none except a blanket statement that dismisses all who hold a view supportive of eternal punishment and an eternal hell. Do you think that is a serious and worthwhile way to respond?My side is people, not some kind of monolithic organisation that condemns you individually as a heretic. That's kind of poisoning the well isn't it? What I mean is that you're reply is attributing motives and actions to my side (whatever my side is alleged to be) which are not present in what I wrote, and by attributing motives to what I wrote which are absent from what I wrote you make it seem as if the very notion of heaven & hell as eternal realities is unworthy and wicked when such is not the case, thus the well is poisoned making the very mention of eternal hell become an accusation that you are a heretic and that is not the truth. The point I made by bringing up the rich man and Lazarus as well as Samuel and saint Paul is that despite the presence of such passages in sacred scripture the doctrine of conditional immortality must read such passages as teaching either nothing about eternity and eternal punishment or as visions, parables, or something equally unimportant for the purposes of deciding if there is such a thing as eternal punishment and an eternal hell. Your reply above is an example of doing exactly that. So, now that you've dismissed the passages I've raised and I can equally dismiss the passages you've raised we are left exactly where I said we would be - in a mutual dismissal of one another's reading of scripture or a dismissal of one another as incompetent exegetes. That was the point made in the second paragraph.Many of the Church Fathers taught an eternal hell with eternal punishment and those who were in the East were native speakers of Greek. Those who lived in the first four or five centuries of the Christian Era were native speakers (and readers) of the koine Greek of the new testament. Such men were serious exegetes and even if you do not agree with them they were nevertheless serious exegetes whose comments cannot be dismissed as ignorant and/or uninformed on this matter. And since those who wrote in the first four or five centuries were Early Church Fathers they were recording the Tradition that you've alleged is the basis for my beliefs. Surely they themselves were not blindly following a Traditional ready established unless the source for their Tradition was the Apostles themselves. I think their Tradition was Apostolic, I hazard the guess that you disagree, and if that is so then our dispute is not merely about what this and that passage in the bible says but also what the Apostles taught while they were alive and how that teaching was transmitted to the Church. So once more I appeal to you to deal with the content of my earlier post and now I also appeal to you to deal with the content of this one. Think about what it means to say "you side is wrong and mine is right" without attaching significant reasons for saying so. Thus far the reasons you've indicated are not substantial in their current form.
Jesus said many things including that the rich man looked up from his torments in Hades and appealed to Father Abraham for mercy. It's not so easy to make the word "destruction" that's present in our English translations the foundation for the doctrine of Conditional Immortality.

Destruction in the King James Version this word translates over 30 Hebrew words in the Old Testament, and 4 words in the New Testament. Of these the most interesting, as having a technical sense, is 'ăbhaddōn (from verb 'ābhadh, “to be lost,” “to perish”). It is found 6 times in the Wisdom Literature, and nowhere else in the Old Testament​

Since the "destruction" is also said to be everlasting destruction from his presence (2 Thessalonians 1:9) it is worth checking what the expression means.

who shall be punished with everlasting destruction Rather, men who will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. In these awful words the Apostle describes the retribution designed for godless men and rejecters of the Gospel. His word for “penalty” (diké, the root of the words righteous and righteousness in Greek) brings to a climax the idea of justice developed in 2Th 1:5-8; see note on “vengeance.” But the clause while defining, qualifies the foregoing; for “who” is equal to such as, who with all like them. The threatening applies to the impious and malignant opposers who were seeking to crush the infant Church. Their sin corresponded to that which our Lord denounced as the sin against the Holy Spirit, the “eternal sin,” the “blasphemy against the Spirit which shall not be forgiven” (Mat 12:31-32; Mar 3:28-29, R. V.).

“Destruction,” as applied to man and his destiny in the N.T., signifies perdition, ruin, the utter loss of blessedness. It is opposed to “salvation” in Heb 10:39; 2Co 2:15, &c.; and “eternal destruction” is the antithesis of eternal life.” There is no sufficient reason for interpreting the destruction of the reprobate as signifying their annihilation, or extinction of being; they will be lost for ever—lost to God and goodness. Nor can we limit the range of the word eternal in its relation to this fearful doom; it removes all limits of time, and is the express opposite of temporary (2Co 4:18). Seventy-two times the Greek original of the adjective is found in the N.T.: forty-four of these examples are repetitions of the phrase “eternal life;” it is arbitrary to suppose that in the opposite combination “eternal” bears a restricted sense. Christ’s judicial words in Mat 25:46 bar all attempts to minimize the penal effect of the sentence of the Last Day; “eternal punishment,” He says, and “eternal life.” Comp. Php 3:19, “whose end is destruction.”

from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power Better, as in R. V., and without the comma, from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might. Language borrowed from Isaiah 2, where it occurs thrice repeated, all but identically (Isa 2:10; Isa 2:19; Isa 2:21), in the prophet’s picture of Jehovah’s coming in judgement: “Enter into the rocks and hide yourselves in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He ariseth to shake the earth.” The words of Rev 6:15-16 are based on the same original: “They say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” The preposition here seems, however, after the word “destruction,” to signify coming from, rather than shrinking from the face of the Lord. The sight of their Judge and His Almightiness, robed in fire and attended by His host of angels, will drive these wretched men, terror-stricken, into ruin. Their destruction proceeds “from the face of the Lord;” in His look the evildoers read their fate. So we can imagine it will be with the murderers of Jesus, and with malicious persecutors of His people. Comp. Psa 34:16; Psa 76:7, “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil:” “Who may stand in Thy sight, when once Thou art angry?”

While the destruction of the persecutors and the deliverance of the persecuted are contrasted in themselves (2Th 1:6-7), they are identified in point of time. For justice will overtake the former—

(The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)​

All of this is too long to respond to. Can you summarize?