King David said this: Psalm 102:24 – I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. from Gustave Doré's (1832-1883) illustrations of Dante's Inferno I do not believe that the Bible actually teaches that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. The Old Testament.A study of God's major judgments (e.g., the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) shows that the Old Testament focuses on premature death when dealing with the fate of the ungodly, not on life after death. Eternal torment is contrary to the revealed nature of God Himself. A moral objection to eternal conscious torment (ECT) is that if sinners are tormented in hell for all eternity (or, to be more precise, the lake of fire), then God’s justice is never satisfied. Buried deep within our consciousness – in our subconscious mind – is this part of God that we do not like. It’s the ONLY verse in the entire Bible where we find the word “eternal” beside the word “punishment”. Forbidden Theology. Why did Eternal Conscious Torment become the majority view of hell instead of Annihilationism or Purgatorial Universalism? Knoch, brilliantly covers this concept in his book, All in All: “We protest against the translation of kolasis as “punishment.” Everywhere else in Greek this word denotes corrective chastisement, and is used of pruning. The scripture testifies to that as well. The "locust servants" were Roman soldiers who sieged Jerusalem and Masada and let no food in causing the inhabitants to starve. Therefore, a better understanding of “aionion” means pertaining to an aion/age. In hell passages, it is claimed, eternal means only pertaining to “the age to come” and not “everlasting.” It is true that in the New Testament, eternal means “agelong,” with … What I think is more important for this specific discussion though is to note that most pastors who study this verse completely ignore the Greek word that is translated as punishment. Featured Is the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment, biblical or not? Simply put, aionion doesn’t mean eternal any more than angry means happiness. This is a eternal fire as like Sodom and Gomorrha they will be no more as … In this issue, Christians often commit a logical error called Affirming a Disjunct, which is to fallaciously claim that one distinction cancels out all other distinctions. Divinely instituted penalty of endless suffering, including banishment from God's blessed presence. See for yourself by simply looking up these texts in both versions: Matthew 8:29, Mark 5:7 and Revelation 9:5. Therefore everlasting destruction is not self-inflicted at all; it is executed by God himself as the just consequences for a person’s bad choices ( Matthew 10:28 , 2 Thessalonians 1:9 & James 4:12 ). God wills us to love our enemies, who abuse, wrong, and hate us; much more will God love his enemies, Luke 6:35. The problem with this line of reasoning begins with the first premise. Your email address will not be published. Is punishment “eternal”? save hide report. Matthew 25:46 is the poster child verse for those who believe in eternal conscious torment in hell. It is that of “eternal conscious torment” for all those who do not “accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” in this life. share. This still does not prove a hell of endless torture. Likewise, believers may have “the life of the ages” and also be promised a future immortality. The word “aionios” doesn’t mean any of those things either. Neither. Without a definition, how can we address the issue? Second, we have reason to believe that those in hell will … It should be noted that even if the word “aionios” actually could mean “eternal,” in some contexts, as far as Matthew 25:46 is concerned, the most one could make of the phrase is “correction or chastening pertaining to eternity.” This is how scholars like William Barclay, who believed in universal salvation dealt with this word. 6. Of course, if only one point stands, Matthew 25 cannot … It’s the verse that fire-and-brimstone pastors love, but the verse that squashes the hopes of those who are hoping in their hearts, that surely God has a better plan for the universe. Eternal conscious torment is consistent in that the only thing that the wicked have not yet faced is God’s full wrath in the body. Since the concept of “agelong” involves a beginning and an end, this would technically have the concept of being temporary. One of the disagreements between the two views is over the meaning of death.. Just to visualize this further, look at some of these common nouns and their adjective forms: You get the point. Let’s first see some examples of better translations that don’t erroneously translate “eternal” into this verse: The Restoration of Original Sacred Name Bible, 1976, “And these shall go away into age-abiding *correction, but the righteous into **age-abiding life.”, The twentieth Century New Testament, 1900, “And these last will go away ‘into onian punishment, but the righteous ‘into onian life.”, “And these will depart into age-continuing correction, but the righteous, into age-continuing life.”, “And these shall go forth to the aionian 1 cutting-off; but the RIGHTEOUS to aionian Life.”, The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Anointed, 1958, “And these shall go away into agelasting cutting-off and the just into agelasting life.”, “And these will go away into eonian correction, but the righteous into eonian life.”, The New Testament, A New Translation, 1980, “Then they will begin to serve a new period of suffering; but God’s faithful will enter upon their heavenly life.”, And these shall be coming away into chastening eonian, yet the just into life eonian.”, “And these shall go away into age-abiding correction, But the righteous into age-abiding life.”. In Defense of the Eternal Conscious Torment View of Hell February 29, 2016 Preston Sprinkle Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! The fact that human beings were made in the very image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27) should suggest, to those who contemplate issues seriously, that we are more than mere temporal creatures passing through time toward oblivion. THEY ARE COMPLETELY OPPOSITE CONCEPTS! Tartaro One other words used for hell, Tartaro, or Tartarus in English, from Greek Myth. When I first started digging into the Scriptures for greater truths, it was because I knew in my heart that God’s perfect justice couldn’t possibly include everlasting torture – yet I couldn’t get past this verse. Once for thousands of years about this place called hell for fallen angels not pertain to the traits!, 2019 let me begin with some of the believer instead of annihilationism or Purgatorial Universalism life and eternal in... 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