onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
"Fleeting"?? How is annihilation fleeting?
Does the person endure it forever? No.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
It's quite permanent...
Sure, it's permanent, but that's another thing entirely. It's not long-lasting in any way, ergo, fleeting. No matter your view on capital punishment, it's a very good temporal illustration of the much greater eternal reality here:
- If one is put to death by electric chair or lethal injection, he or she receives punishment for the crime committed, but the punishment itself only lasts until he or she is dead, a very short time.
- Conversely, he or she may be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and therefore endures that punishment for the rest of his or her life.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
...the individual that is obliterated will not be tortured endlessly...
No one is tortured at all, much less endlessly. Everyone is given what he or she wants, actually.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
...more to God's merciful character's liking.
Who are any of us to say what is more to God's liking or less?
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
What point would there be to torturing someone forever?
See above. Again, there is no "torture" that goes on.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
...Jehovah isn't that sadistic.
Yes, Jehovah is not "sadistic" in any way.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
The lake of fire is the parallel to "Gehenna"---total destruction.
The biblical concept of destruction is to be understood not in the way of annihilation or extinction but rather ruination, or the state of being ruined. The word “hell” in verse 47 translates the term "gehenna," which was another name for the “valley of the son of Hinnom,” the place near Jerusalem where many ancient Jews sacrificed children to the pagan god Molech (2 Kings 23:10). By the first century A.D., the place was seen as accursed because of that, and it was used as a figure for the eternal place of punishment after death, or hell. Jesus’ use of the unquenchable fire in reference to this place (v. 48) borrows from the fact that in His day, the physical gehenna was a garbage dump where garbage never stopped burning. Jesus uses the physical reality to point to something much worse: unending suffering -- not physical torture, but surely anguish and torment, which cannot be endured if one does not exist -- in the afterlife for those who remain unrepentant and do not trust in Him and His righteousness alone for their salvation.
Annihilation is surely not in view, but quite the opposite. It's terrifying, but, well, it is what it is.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Many Bible translators... associate the pagan-inspired notion of an afterlife of fiery judgment for the wicked with the physical fire in the valley outside Jerusalem.
There may be some translators who understand it in this wooden way, just as there were then and are today others that believe the same thing, but that doesn't affect the translation in any way. The translation is what it is.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Jesus, however, never associated Gehenna with torment.
He certainly did, as He illustrated to His listeners (and us) in Luke 16.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Jesus knew that the very thought of burning people alive is repugnant to Jehovah.
Yes, because He is Jehovah (along with the Father and the Holy Spirit), and because no one gets burned alive. But yes, He knew very well that God does not obliterate what He made in the first place, much less what He made very good, as we see in Genesis 1.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Is it safe to say that burning people in a fire was repugnant to God?
The whole idea of anyone getting burned alive is ridiculous, because God Himself is the fire, the consuming fire.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
The idea of torment for the dead conflicts with God's loving personality as well as with the Bible's clear teaching that
the dead are "conscious of nothing at all." (Ecclesiastes 9:5,10)
No, what utterly conflicts with God's Word is the idea that God would annihilate any part of His creation, the work of His own hands -- what He made for His own glory. The whole of Ecclesiastes is about "life under the sun," physical, temporal life here on earth. There were then, are now, and always will be -- until Jesus comes back, of course -- those who, though they be walking among us, are dead in their sin and
therefore are conscious of and know nothing of their need for Christ and their need of salvation in Him. Indeed, they think the Gospel, which we know is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, is utter foolishness.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Again, Jesus used the term "Gehenna" to
symbolize the utter destruction resulting from God's adverse judgment.
Agree. But destruction is not analogous and parallel in any sense to annihilation, but to
ruination. See above.
onewithhim wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:03 pm
Both Gehenna and the lake of fire symbolize eternal destruction from which no resurrection is possible. (Luke 12:4,5; Revelation 20:14,15)
Well, no
redemption is possible; the resurrection has already taken place -- they have been resurrected to judgment (John 5:29). They cannot cross the great chasm has been fixed between the place of their anguish/torment/ruination to the place of rest at Abraham's side (Luke 16).
Grace and peace to you.