Punishment and the fear of God

[jriccitelli]

Where do we find the lake of fire has a get out of jail free card? Frankly i think folks who either hate God or are simply indifferent would not be to upset over annihilation. I think whatever punishment may await the unbeliever in the LOF prior to either annihilation or a process of restoration would be just because God is just. What may happen after that will be mostly a matter of God's will IMO. (7150)

7150, I meant that UR is like a get out of punishment card, not specifically annihilation. It would seem if one could cry uncle in this situation it would render alot of the warnings to repent now not as urgent, and render faith and belief meaningless.
If after serving their punishment in the LOF, and they now sit until they repent, then is it still a Lake of fire?
If after serving their punishment in hell, and they now can sit until they repent, is it still hell?
If it is hell then I suppose none of hells descriptions still apply, unless you want to call sitting in hell or outer darkness 'not' a punishment.

[jriccitelli]

If I loved God, why would I want to sin? Have you found comfort in sinning? I haven't. Only "weeping and gnashing of teeth (Steve)

I was sure it would be obvious that I 'was' speaking of ‘unbelievers’. And the point is not moot in that we are all warned and hopefully deterred by the promise of punishment in hell and the danger of ‘not’ having a ‘second chance’. If someone really believed they would get a second chance wouldn’t that motivate them to delay a decision and put off living a godly life?

How could this be hard to answer if UR has an answer?

And the relevance was that I have testimony to the fact that many or most people do indeed live as if they are all ok with God, they can live as they want, and they can just repent and change at some later time. Thus the fear of God has no relevance to many millions of people, including christians.

[steve]

Either my intellectual powers are fading, or your sentences are becoming more and more unintellible the further you get into this discussion. I honestly am having a real hard time following your thoughts.

There is no ostensibly on my part, as you must know that I am trying to get you to cough up any verse that describes postmortem hell 'because' many have Old Testament roots. It has been really hard to determine how much your full or partial Preterism plays into ‘your’ argument for UR.

I don't know how preterism plays into my argument either. Maybe in that some of the verses I see as applicable to AD 70 are ones that you apply to hell? I doubt that my preterism has affected my view of final destinies, since AD 70 did not mark the final judgment or the assignment of people to final destinies. Which of the New Testament passages about "hell" have Old Testament roots? We can look at them case-by-case, if you wish.

I will pretend to know nothing of UR and ask you then; does UR accept any or most OT verses describing destruction, cutting up, burning, ruin and blotting out as only describing temporal events pre-NT times or do they accept these as descriptions of post Judgment punishments?

If any Old Testament passage is to be used as a reference to post-mortem judgment (or to anything more than what it seems to describe), I am willing to see the exegesis by which this claim is sustained.

I was wondering how ‘you’ determine Jesus is talking post mortem (or post AD70) on a verse such as these that contain something such as weeping and gnashing of teeth,

The verses about weeping and gnashing of teeth are in contexts which, on other grounds, strike me as eschatological. Therefore, they seem to me to be referring to the results of the final judgment.

when Jesus uses this same phrase in conjuncture with parables concerning the tares and being thrown into fire, which previously I heard you determine that the fire was temporal (Gehenna)

Where are you finding a reference to Gehenna in the parable of the wheat and the tares? I see the "fire" there as eschatological, but I don't find any reference in the story to "Gehenna."

or AD70 when you used Preterism to support your argument for UR, for which you show no sign of ‘tentative’ thinking.

I am not getting your thought here. When did I use preterism to defend UR? And what was it in my doing so that gave no sign of tentativeness in my thinking about hell?

Please take more time in framing your comments, so that I can make sense of them (if you are desiring a response from me).

[steve7150]

7150, I meant that UR is like a get out of punishment card, not specifically annihilation. It would seem if one could cry uncle in this situation it would render alot of the warnings to repent now not as urgent, and render faith and belief meaningless.
If after serving their punishment in the LOF, and they now sit until they repent, then is it still a Lake of fire?
If after serving their punishment in hell, and they now can sit until they repent, is it still hell?
If it is hell then I suppose none of hells descriptions still apply, unless you want to call sitting in hell or outer darkness 'not' a punishment.







Really JR? What if the punishment in the LOF lasted a hundred years? Would a life of sinning for 50 years would have been worth it? Or what if the punishment were a thousand years? Ten thousand years? How about a million years, would it have been worth it?

Someone here once said if he knew the punishment lasted 10,000 years in the LOF he would go back to drinking and partying tomorrow. What do you think about that?

[steve]

Someone here once said if he knew the punishment lasted 10,000 years in the LOF he would go back to drinking and partying tomorrow. What do you think about that?

Hi Steve,

I know you are awaiting JR's response (which ay be similar to mine—we'll see), but I thought I would give my reaction to this stupid and dishonest comment.

First, the commentor is saying that he loves drinking and partying more than he loves Jesus. This tells me either that his memory of the former is faulty, or that he knows nothing of the latter. No one who knows Jesus could say his life was more fulfilled and happy while pursuing meaningless, transient and shallow pleasures.

Second, he is saying that he loves sinful pleasure, lasting for a few decades at the most, more than he dreads thousands of years of torment. This is simply a lie. No one is that stupid. No one. Let the same man be abducted and subjected to torture until he would swear off drinking, and he would cave-in in less than ten minutes—to say nothing of 10,000 years.

The man who made the comment is saying loudly, "I am not a Christian. I am grudgingly complying with the rules of religion because eternal torment is what I believe—and is the only thing that would persuade me to give up the sins that I dearly love."

The traditional view of hell, because he believes it, is causing him to act contrary to his heart and his convictions. In other words, the doctrine has made him a hypocrite, and has made of him a man resting in a false assurance of a false salvation.

[jriccitelli]

I don't know how preterism plays into my argument either. Maybe in that some of the verses I see as applicable to AD 70 are ones that you apply to hell? I doubt that my preterism has affected my view of final destinies, since AD 70 did not mark the final judgment or the assignment of people to final destinies.

Although the Hell thread may have started out addressing ET it ran the same ground as the UR threads and the same arguments, nevertheless it is just one of many instances I see where you derail references to punishment and what we would suggest is hell, as all being fulfilled in 70ad;

The burning of the city is an unambiguous reference to AD 70. The man thrown into outer darkness (after the final judgment, I presume) was a church member who did not come in on the King's terms (quite relevant, actually, to our present topic). This parable (like the one prior to it, and almost everything else in chapters 21) is another example of prophetic denunciation and prediction of national doom—not a case of evangelism. (Steve, Hell thread 6-09-13)

I am not unraveling the discussion about this verse right now, just noting that this is what I generally see from you in response to these verses.

And 7150, I do not understand what you mean as I am for CI not ET, a d believe God's punishment is only suited to the crime or the sin.

[steve]

So my seeing certain verses as fulfilled in the past somehow undermines the doctrine of hell? Shouldn't we, in studying hell, restrict our research to the consideration of material that is relevant the subject?

In Isaiah 14:31, it says that the Philistines would be "dissolved" due to "smoke" coming "from the north." Would you apply these words to something that has now occurred in history, or to a future judgment? In the next chapter (15:1), the judgment on Moab is said to be its being "laid waste and destroyed." Do you think this judgment has happened already, or is it still future? In speaking of the judgment of Edom, Amos 1:12 says, "I will send a fire upon Teman, which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah." Here we find your typical language of destruction. Is it your opinion that this prophecy has not yet been fulfilled, and is describing post-mortem destinies?

I don't see that my "preterism" plays any significant role in my discussion of hell, except that I see certain prophecies as having obviously been fulfilled as predicted. I doubt that this commitment makes me any different from yourself. You, I presume, don't call yourself a preterist. However, I would be very surprised if you do not recognize that some predictions of scripture have been fulfilled in the past (e.g., Micah 5:2; Zech.9:9; Mark 14:27,30; Luke 19:43-44). This makes you a "partial preterist" (a label that means that you see part of the total body of biblical prophecies as having a past, rather than a future, fulfillment). All Christians are partial preterists.

If you would object to someone taking these fulfilled prophecies and using them to support some arbitrary end-times scenario, how is it different for me to apply the same rule with other prophecies that have likewise been undeniably fulfilled?

[TheEditor]

Hi JR,

I started a different thread regarding something you posed in a previous conversation. I put your name on it.

Regards, Brenden.

http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=4640

[steve7150]

And 7150, I do not understand what you mean as I am for CI not ET, a d believe God's punishment is only suited to the crime or the sin.

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jriccitelli

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JR you said UR is like a "get out of punishment card" so i asked if UR were true after a period of punishment do you think a life of sinning for say 50 years would have been worth it if the sinner then faced punishment for,
100 years
1000 years
10000 years
1000000 years

What i am leading up to is that UR does not have to preclude a just punishment which God can determine. Just the same same as CI can include punishment and then annihilation.

[jriccitelli]

7150 I am sure I have heard UR proponents say you could repent before your punishment, during, or after and since the whole idea of UR is completely speculation I guess you can have people repenting at any time you want. Are you holding them back so they cannot repent till ‘after’ punishment?

CI proponents vary in their beliefs too, but I do not recall reading from any that propose someone could opt out of their punishment before or during and be annihilated. In fact that is just what a lot of sinners are hoping for, that is 'avoiding' the wrath of God.