I'm going to step up and support Magenta here (actually everyone). I posted this on another thread to the same OP but since people argued a lot no one noticed it and the OP also ignored it, never giving me feedback after asking me questions and me giving answer. There is a way to make peace between the two views, so the Scriptures agree harmoniously. And no, it is not eternal results ("eternal results" is actually a bad argument). OK. Please be patient to hear me out brothers and sisters,
I wouldn't call myself an "annihilationist". That might imply that I am trampling the Scriptures that talk about eternal punishment, which I don't. I do believe in annihilation as the Scriptures teach, and I also do believe punishment is going on eternally as the Scriptures teach
both. I don't believe these two are in opposition, at all. The
whole of the Scriptures
must be true, and
agree harmoniously. I'd call myself a "harmonist" if I had to pick a title. I believe that people who pit Scriptures against Scriptures are wrong. It's like Calvinists and Arminianists, who pit Scripture against Scripture and ignore the other half. As the Bible teaches "elect according to foreknowledge" this shows they are both right and both wrong, as both free will and predestination simultaneously exist as God can foresee who will choose what. I hold annihilation vs eternal torment is yet another Biblical paradox, of exactly the SAME kind.
"Eternal results" isn't a good argument, because the Scripture does say it goes on forever. But this then seems to contradict with the other Scriptures, that suggests destruction, the mortality of the soul, etc. We cannot have discord, it must all agree. This picture then occurred to me as the tree service was cutting a tree next to the house. So I thought, what if it was put into a fire?
"The tree that gives bad fruit" is cut and thrown into the fire. Right?
But if is perpetually burnt without being consumed, would that not make the bad tree like a
burning bush?
(please bear with me I promise I'll make it worthwhile in a bit...)
Only God and those with God on the inside are able to burn without being consumed, because they are tried and came up gold and silver. They are filled with Holy Spirit, baptized by fire. Doesn't everything ungodly burn up and perish?
This is just to demonstrate that current understanding doesn't make perfect sense with other things we are taught by the Bible... Now, onto my main proposition:
If the new trees are thrown into the fire and you keep doing it, so the smoke keeps rising on and on, does this have to necessarily mean you are burning the
same piece of wood continually? Actually, NO. It could be the
process itself which is going on and on, but that first tree had long turned into smoke and perished - the thing is that the
new ones are now added to the pile. Accordingly,
Nowhere does the Scripture say that the smoke will be sustained by the same persons burning. The Bible states the same CATEGORY of people (the ungodly) will forever sustain the smoke of torment. Beyond doubt... However, the Scriptures do NOT state that the same INDIVIDUAL PERSONS will be sustaining it for EVER... It ONLY specifies the category of people that is fueling it.
And I know what some of you might be thinking now.
There is a Biblical notion suggesting that existence of our planet is finite, so some might say that God would "run out of wood" at a certain point, so how could that be eternal? But that is a very temporal understanding of "eternal". God is out of space and time. The reason He's eternal is because He's
neverchanging. We are limiting God with our concept of eternity, which is somehow also on a timer. A lot of Christians see eternity as if some end times timer expires at 12a.m., and then it's the "end of time" at midnight and eternity then "begins". But this is the same old linear time. Eternity is what has always been there, what is, and always will be, like God. Time has beginnings, endings, befores and afters. Eternity is called what is never changing and always the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The unchanging reality of Truth, which is in God. "Sure, I come quickly". It's not only that days are shorter for God than for us. It's that Jesus literally does come quickly. He comes quickly to our rescue, or to judge the wicked,
all the time, every day, without fail! When He says behold I come quickly, He is not joking! "Quickly" REALLY means "quickly"!
If something is a part of God's nature, I would argue that it qualifies as ETERNAL. God "cannot behold evil". Evil is destroyed in His presence. It is God's
eternal, timeless nature to
always destroy His enemies: past, present, and future. So the punishment will be meted out
eternally, yet
also annihilating the enemies during the process. Furthermore, Annihilation is commanded by God in words,
"you shall utterly destroy them", which is God's
unchanging will for all His enemies. He does not give some enemies a special treatment. (The opposite would suggest that God is a respecter of persons.) Therefore...
God always did, does, and will annihilate His enemies, and therefore
"the smoke of their torment shall rise for ever and ever"... because God never changes (if He changed, it would cause this smoke to stop rising, but it ever rises).
So this is why I now believe it is totally possible for the torment to go on forever and just like the Scriptures say, and yet annihilate also like the Scriptures suggest. My argument is NEVERCHANGING RESULTS so the results are CONTINUING FOREVER AND EVER, based on God Himself being neverchanging. The fire is not ever being quenched, either, because
nothing can deliver any man from His judgments (by quenching the fire).
I honestly believe lot of the confusion Bible wise comes from us being stuck in the human timeframe and our erroneous understanding of "forever and ever" based on this timeframe. Christians are automatically imagining, in their heads, some infinitely long period of time, in which there will be burning for ever and ever (for an infinitely prolonged period of time) "after" time "ends".
But "an infinitely long period of time" is not what eternity, aka forever and ever, means. And after "end time", any kind of
duration "afterwards" would also be completely
nonexistent in that case because if time continues then time didn't
end. That would be my second argument. I might not have everything lined up 100% yet, but hey, at least I'm trying to make a more comprehensive picture so help me. We need to stop with one sided views and beating each other down with Scriptures utterly divorced from one another. Well I am posting this, so help me God.
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