Thoughtful Believer/Scholars and the Fate of Sinners (Rev 20)

[news]

Thoughtful believers live with a tension. On the one hand, believers, by definition, feel like they have enough evidence to make serious commitments regarding the Bible, theological positions, or a particular denomination. At the same time, thoughtful believers have a scholarly side that recognizes that they have a lot to learn and that on some […]

The post Thoughtful Believer/Scholars and the Fate of Sinners (Rev 20) appeared first on Jon Paulien's Blog.

View the full article

[Kevin H]

This is a powerful post. I've been thinking about the 3 major suggestions: universalism, annihilationism and eternal torment may not be as different as we think if we have the right understanding of hell fire. 

On the one hand, with hell fire being the beauty, love, and glory of God, just seeing God in person and his treating us all a like, then in a very real sense it is universalism; but it does not have universal results. There are those who find this to be heaven, while others find this to be hell as they are unforgiving people and thus cannot comprehend forgiveness. As they contrast their sinfulness to Jesus' purity, instead of responding by singing "worthy, worthy, worthy is the lamb" they imagine what they would do to someone like them if they were God, and thus picture God as sooner or later going to go after them for their sins. They live in the fear of what sooner or later God should do to them. They want to run into Jesus' loving arms, but do not know him and thus they don't trust him. They want to come but won't. 

This leads to the "eternal torment". The lost have become prisoners of their own mind, They want to run to Jesus, but pull back out of fear of what he should do to them. They also trade the joy of enjoying all reality which becomes heaven. The lost have created and enjoy their own morbid heaven of sulking and despising. Eli Siegel talks about the two different pleasures, 1A which is a full pleasure from being fair to reality, and 2A which is a pleasure from having contempt for the world around us. William Glasser describes something very similar only he calls them happiness vs. pleasure.  There is a joke about a girl who was scolded by her mother, and went out on the stoop to sit and sulk and grumble and pout. While sitting and pouting a bird flew over and sure enough plop right on her lower lip. The girl just sat there growling "It will just have to stay there until daddy comes home, it will just have to sit there until daddy comes home."

Being in a situation where they are not being physically tormented (beyond the seeing their deepest desire Jesus, and all the joys with their loved ones in heaven that they are free to come and enjoy if only they would quit their sulking) If they are not manipulating and ruining the joy of those inside the city, there is physically nothing happening, just being in their own little world enjoying the pleasure of complaining, criticizing, blaming Even though it is a morbid type of pleasure, I don't see anything wrong to just let them continue to sulk as long as they wish, even if it ends up being forever.  I do not believe in eternal punishing, I believe in  annihilation, but when looking at how I understand the Bible and Mrs. White to teach about hell, the idea of it lasting forever does not particularly repulse me. 

Since we are talking about these three, I believe in annihilation, but it comes from God universally placing everyone in the same situation. And as I said, if they get that morbid pleasure, I would not argue with God if we learn they can stay in that state forever.  

-- by the way, once you get an idea of what the Bible and Mrs. White teaches about hell,and remember the warning at the end to not read more into a dream or vision... you can read the C. S. Lewis book The Great Divorce with new eyes.