PinSeeker wrote:
tam wrote:
This is an interesting opinion, Pinseeker, but how is it anything more than that?
That's sort of a funny question, is it not, Tam? Everything anyone post here is their opinion, even you and yours, no?
Not everything, no. I cannot speak for anyone else, but if I share something I learned from my Lord, then I cannot call it my opinion.
Regardless, you offered an interpretation of what 'their worm does not die' means, but gave no evidence to support it except your opinion. So I am questioning the opinion and hoping you will do the same.
tam wrote:
Who taught you this?
I'll use your own words here: my Lord taught me this.
I am a little confused, because you implied above that it was your opinion.
And several other great theologians -- not, of course, to equate them with Jesus, but -- including, oh, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Berkhoff, Lewis, Packer, and Sproul, to name a few.
Okay... so these theologians claim that 'their worm does not die' is a metaphor for people suffering in hell? If so, what evidence is
their conclusion based upon?
tam wrote:
What is your evidence?
Scripture itself.
We are discussing scripture (or at least we are discussing the bible). But what IN scripture supports the interpretation that the phrase 'their worm does not die' is a metaphor for people suffering in hell?
I am just wondering how you come to this conclusion.
tam wrote:
We say the same kind of thing even today when we say something like, "This is just eating you up" or, "That's just eating away at me..." we are bothered and even tormented to no end. Such will it be in hell for those who go there; this is the Lord's purpose in relating this metaphor.
These are things that the living feel.
Sure, that's the metaphor.
It seems to me that if it it directly references a phrase in Isaiah, then the Jews listening to Christ should have understood it in the context of how it had been used then.
Since Israel had no concept of people suffering in "hell" (Remember that Job longed to go there to escape his suffering; and all of the dead were said to go there), why conclude that it means something that it never meant to begin with?
You may think you can, but you can't know that. Because you've never been dead. I haven't either. The only thing objective that we have is Scripture,
Scripture states that the dead know nothing.
and what we do know (or should, anyway) from clear reading of Scripture is that the physically deceased from this life and eternally deceased after the second death remain in a conscious existence,
There is no scriptural support that people remain in conscious existence after the second death (the lake of fire).
As for the "physically deceased from this life" (which would be referring to the first death), even Christ described those who had died as being asleep.
Even from Daniel:
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Daniel 12:2
That would be more of an
unconscious existence. Therefore it makes sense that "the dead know nothing".
(That verse from Daniel is speaking about the resurrection of the dead; the second resurrection - where some are resurrected to LIFE, and some are resurrected to judgment and the second death)
tam wrote:
"...
but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.
Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished..." Ecc 9:5, 6
This passage in no way insinuates that those who know nothing or have any further reward or whose name is forgotten or whose love, hate, and jealously have vanished do not exist anymore.
I never said they do not exist.
They still exist, they are just dead. Asleep (as Christ described them).
Rather, it fits very well with, say, Jesus's parable concerning the tares. They will be thrown into the fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (for there to be weeping and gnashing of teeth, conscious existence is necessary).
Conscious existence may be necessary for there to be weeping and gnashing of teeth... but the dead are asleep; not awake, and so the dead are not conscious.
Weeping and gnashing of teeth could occur anytime before the sentence (of death) is carried out. But once the sentence (of death) is carried out, the weeping and gnashing of teeth necessarily stops.
tam wrote:
The punishment is eternal. But that punishment is death, destruction. The second death is eternal.
Death in the Bible is not cessation of existence.
The first death is not.
The second death
is.
Adam and Eve died the day they partook of the fruit, just as God told them they would. But they were still existing and conscious. Paul speaks of those unsaved, which we all were at one time, as dead. But we were surely existing and conscious. So will it be in death, and the second death for those who remain unsaved.
That is not the kind of death we are talking about.
Death and hades give up the dead in them - these are people who already died in a literal and physical way.
I agree, the second death and punishment are eternal. Cessation of existence, though, would mean neither the second death nor the punishment is eternal, but only until that cessation of existence.
I'm afraid I do not understand that reasoning, my friend. Cessation of existence; total destruction - these things sound pretty eternal to me.
Grace and peace to you, Tammy.
Thank you dear Pinseeker, and peace also to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy
