Dear Josh: You have the questions, you have your answers. And what answers they are.
Question= Would the infliction of endless punishment be overcoming evil with good?
Your answer=
"Yes. It is good to have an absence of evil."
I have zero problem with evil being ended, and in fact firmly believe when it has accomplished the purpose for which God has designed it shall be no more. "I the Lord create good and create evil, I the Lord do all these things."
The verse is, once again, being taken out of context. I cannot recommend emphatically enough that you pick up a book or two on exegesis. The Isaiah 45:7 verse is a verse that occurs
after sin has already entered the world. You're also using the KJV which in many of these cases is not the best translation. The righteous, sinless, law making Law Maker cannot act lawlessly without compromising his own character. I assume it is that principle you seek to leverage (abuse) in this op. The problem is once the world and all humans become corrupt God is free to do with the refuse as He pleases; tossing out the trash isn't evil in any way, shape or form and the fact that He let you draw enough breath to type this op is a gift of grace. He could have ended your life the moment you were born.
You and I are just each just a big black pit of sin and you have
nothing God needs or wants.
So when Isaiah writes in a sinful world of a righteous God working in a sinful world with sinful people and describes God creating evil in an already-evil world that is a much, much different condition than God creating evil prior to Genesis 1:31 when He Himself declared
everything He made "very good." And it remained that way until Genesis 3:7, at which time sin entered the world through one man's disobedience. From that moment on - again I state -
God is free to create evil from the already-existing evil and pour it into and onto the lives of already-sinful humans as He sovereignly chooses.
And no amount of proof-texting will change these facts.
It will, however, demonstrate an appalling lack of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding rightly handling God's word.
God our Father does NOT inflict endless punishment. He punishes with one object, and one object only as the Father of all fathers>>>
Change & transformation in Holy perfect rectitude
You got scripture for that?
Because my Bible has Jesus plainly stating,
Matthew 10:24-33
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."[/I]
Body and soul are destroyed.
Eternally.
Period.
Paul reiterated this when he wrote,
Galatians 6:6-8
"The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."
The term Paul used in our Greek manuscripts is, "phthoran." It means decay, corruption, rotting, or decomposition. The term Jesus used is much more blunt: "apolesai." It means to kill or destroy to the point of the cessation of existence. The figures of speech employed all throughout the NT communicate this truth: chaff in a fire is literally destroyed, the trash in Gehenna burns and decomposes until it ceases to exist. Anyone living near a landfill simply need watch the methane vents to understand the poignant picture Jesus was referencing.
Ultimately a very important truth is necessary: The traditional Jewish view was Sheol," the realm of the dead where "the dead know nothing" (Ecc. 9:5). This was the view of the Sadducees in the first century when Jesus corrected their legalistic reading of God's law and their hypocritical practice of it. It was the Pharisees, who arose during the inter-testamental period, that believed in a resurrection, or a life after death. We see only Pharisees converting to Christ (Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Saul of Tarsus), no Sadducees. Jesus spoke of Sheol, the land where the dead know nothing, Gehenna, the trash pit on the backside of Jerusalem where trash smoldered and decayed endlessly until it turned to ash and then nothing, and the Greek and Roman Hades and Hell. For the Greeks and Romans the dead lived in endless and aimless misery unless a person was deified, by which they didn't actually become gods, they were merely permitted to live in the Elysium Fields at the foot of Mount Olympus.
None of the above is what Jesus taught!
Jesus corrected that dross. He told those first century folks the blunt truth: you'd be blessed if you got to suffer. No, your fate is much worse than that if you do not believe. What Jesus taught was a very plain and simply dichotomy: eternal life or eternal destruction. You need to fear Him Who destroys both body and soul to the point they cease to exist. Apolesai. And we know this destruction, whether due to a gradual decay and decomposition of the dead, or an immediate separation from the Creator in Whom life itself is alone found and Who holds all things together, or instant, permanent, eternal annihilation - we know this destruction contains finality because in the end death itself is destroyed. If death doesn't die, then none of scripture is true. Death remains.
Eternally.
So put your thinking cap on and deal with the whole of scripture not selective use of individual verses that lead to bad doctrines.
In the end death gets destroyed, and along with it all those who denied Christ crucified, dead, and resurrected.
Eradicating evil is a good thing.
