When the king said "Depart from me into the eternal fire..." what makes you think they would obey that command? It says nothing about being forced or escorted to a place of eternal fire; they're just told to depart and go there. For all we can see from those standalone verses, maybe they said "No" then went home.
Should we assume the King has a procedure in place to make sure His judgement is seen through to the end? That seems like a fair assumption.
Their first stop is "death" and the location is "hell" (these are immediate).
That eventually takes them [later] to the GWTj, when "Death" and "Hell / Hades"
GAVE UP the dead which were in them.
I'm not saying that Jesus' pronouncement were merely "words" without power [/effect],"
no. (As though they could choose to go against His words and do whatever they want to do, like go home, like you say.)
The only method of going to the eternal fire (the lake of fire) that the Bible speaks of is being cast into the lake of fire or being thrown there. See Revelation 19:20 and Revelation 20:15.
So the method of departing to travel to the lake of fire is by being thrown there. Do you know how fast God can throw someone? He can throw someone with perfect instancy anywhere He wants without delay.
Right, but this will be AFTER "DEATH" and "HELL / HADES"
GAVE UP the dead which were in them (which takes place at the LATER GWTj point in the chronology). What takes place in Matthew 25:41 is the "
DEPART [G4198 - travel] from [
apo - away from] Me...
UNTO..." (but "death" and "hell / hades" is the first stop
on that journey; and both the "death" / "hell/hades" AND "the lake of fire" are components of what v.46 speaks of: "[go away
unto] ETERNAL PUNISHMENT" (i.e. the SENTENCE is never "reversed"; meaning, once the lost experience "death" and "hell / hades," there is NO second chance to "reverse" this)
Matthew 25, the sheep and goat judgement, is definitely the GWTJ.
No, they were not asking Him ANYTHING regarding "
the end of THE AGE [SINGULAR] TO COME"...
... but rather, they were asking Him (v.3) re:
"the end [singular] of the age [singular]" (which He had ALREADY spoken to them about in Matt13:24,30,39,40,49-50, which is FOLLOWED BY "the age [singular] TO COME" [
aka the
earthly MK age--connected with earth-time as we know it--so "1000
YEARS"... and in EVERY case in Scripture where the word "
YEARS" is used
with a number, it
MEANS "
THAT MANY *years*"--that is, the writer wants the reader to picture "
THAT MANY YEARS" in their mind when they read the text])