Andretti, Not a day has gone by since our last exchange that I haven't warmly reflected on you, your scriptural arguments and objections you presented. As workmen"that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."let's continue. [2 Tim 2:15] You cited:
Rev 14 smoke of torment ascends forever
Rev 20 lake of fire
Mat 25 depart into everlasting fire prepared for devil & angels
Mat 13 into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing & gnashing
Luke 16 in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments
I add Mark 9:43-5: into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched
For immortality you cited: 2 Cor 5:6&8 Absent from body, present w/Lord
Unquenched eternal fire & smoke: Isa 34: 9-10 uses the same terms for the destruction of Edom. Edom's fires & smoke were eternal in consequence, not duration. Isa 66:22-4 speaks of burning yet undestroyed bodies in the New Earth to be reviewed sabbath to sabbath eternally. Yet Obadiah 16 says the wicked shall be as tho they had not been.
Which is true? How do we reconcile these "contradictions?" which every drunk falling off a bar stool blames the Bible for? "Rightly divide the word of truth" and separate symbolic from the literal. Isaiah 34 & 66 show smoke and fire are figurative, so this principle can be harmoniously applied to your first 3 texts, above.
Fire doesn't harm spirits, angels in Ezk 1:4 and Dan7:9, so is no threat to the devil, unless it means destruction. Hebrews 1:7: "Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." Since Death, Hades, The 7 Headed Beast & False Prophet cannot be tortured what does consignment to the Lake of Fire show the Lake does to consignees? IT ENDS THEM FOREVER, Second Death!
In Mark 9:43-45 it is the worms, maggots NOT HUMANS that are deathless as in Isaiah 66. Mark wrote: "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell [gehenna], into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Andretti, Did Jesus teach self-mutilation? What if both your hands offend you, and both feet? Obviously these are symbols, as was the dump outside the SW wall of Jerusalem: Gehenna, which Jesus spoke of here. Gehenna [11 times], the Valley of Hinnom, was a geographic feature representing divine condemnation.
Jews burnt their sons in Gehenna 2 Ki 23:10, Jer 19:5. At Jer 7:31-2 Jehovah promised it would be the valley of Slaughter "they shall bury in Topeth, till there be no place to bury. And the dead bodies of this people shall be food for the birds, and for the beasts ..." Topeth = a place of child sacrifice. I've covered this previously. Jesus' audience knew this well, Gehenna was half a mile away! It stood for DEATH! Mistranslation has removed the distinction between Gehenna and Hades in the KJV, manufacturing Hellfire and giving us the hellish gospel of King James rather than Jesus Christ!!
THE RICH MAN & LAZARUS: Luke 16:13 is about money lovers: "No servant can serve 2 masters, Ye cannot serve God and mammon. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things and scoffed at him." 16:14 He condemned them as an exalted abomination: and illustrated with a parable of 2 men whose circumstances switched after death.
How are we to understand this since at John 3:13 Christ said: "No man has ascended to heaven" which would include Abraham and Lazarus? Paul said dead believers were asleep 1 Cor 15:6. We understand it by division: This story like the one immediately before it in the same chapter about a money loving steward is a parable.
The poor followed Jesus, not those "clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day," 16:19, the ecclesiastical elite in Jewish society. Now a change ocurred and both died to their former conditions: the poor were exalted; the money lovers abased and tormented by Jesus' teachings. Moses nor the Prophets nor one from the dead could save them for they rejected the Son of God, who was greater than all. After the parable Jesus, pharisees in mind said: "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones." 17:1-2
MATTHEW 13:41-42 It's the end of the world
Angels gather out of Christ's kingdom all that do iniquity
They're cast into a furnace of fire, to weep and gnash
The righteous shine as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.
Daniel 12 speaks of the "time of the end", "Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are shut up till the time of the end. Many shall purify themselves and be refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand."
The angels gather sinners "out of his kingdom." Rev 12 says the Kingdom is born in heaven when Satan is cast down to the earth after a war in heaven: "Now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethern is cast down...the Devil is gone down unto you having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." In Job's day Satan roamed the earth, and entered right into God's court to accuse Job. He hadn't been cast down yet.
Chronology and fulfilled prophecy indicate this heavenly event has happened in our century, and we are in the time of the end, Satan's "short time," so the world has gone mad. Angels are separating out of Christ sheepfold the reprobate who weep and gnash in their Christless misery. The righteous shine like the sun. Daniel 12:3 "They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." Showing that during this time a great evangelical work will be done.
Enough for now, Andretti. Please go to work on some of the questions I've asked. I'll send more soon. My best evidence is yet to come.
May Jehovah's Spirit grant everlasting blessings!!
Don
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