PastorKevin said:
Welcome but with all due respect we have been over this throughout this thread and in the Battle Royale. You might look back at the Battle Royale in particular as I went into explaining these things there. Read Round #2
HERE
The point is that they would have no rest day or night forever and ever just as the Scriptures say.
Universalism doesn't follow the Scriptures on these things. The onus is not on ME to "prove that it means literally for ever and ever in the Greek". The onus is
on the Universalist to prove why all of the wonderful Greek scholars that have translated our modern Bibles are less capable of translating Greek than Universalists. I would understand if I were coming out of left field here and saying that (for example) a Greek word taught that men could leap off of buildings and fly. I would be hard pressed to find ANY Greek scholars to demonstrate that is what those words meant.
IF HOWEVER, the vast majority of Greek scholars who have translated our modern Bibles (and virtually ALL of the translations going back through time as well), have translated these words to mean eternal and forever, then the ONUS is on the Universalist to refute the qualifications of THOSE scholars to translate Greek. It is silly that all of those Greek scholars who have worked so hard to translate the Bible have their translations completely ignored by Universalists who are attempting to avoid any translations that don't agree with their theology.
Logos for example says that Aion and its derivatives CANNOT mean forever. But he has never shown why HE is more qualified than the Greek scholars who DO translate it as such.
Logos has no Greek degree that he has spoken of, and yet he is to be believed over people such as Vine and Strong?
God bless and have a great night.
What Kevin says is true insofar as I do not have a Greek degree. The thing is...even if I did, the scholars themselves are not in agreement.
Aion is the word from which we get our English word Eon.
I cited several scholars in my opening for the Battle Royale that clearly disagree with the scholars Kevin wants to cite as backing for His view.
What I find fascinating is the history behind the doctrine of eternal torment. For the first 500 to 600 years the
majority of
Christians believed in Universal Salvation through Jesus Christ...as long Greek was the primary language of the Church. One theological school arose in Rome, and using Latin as it's primary language taught eternal torment.
How eternal torment came to be the "orthodox veiw" after then is a history of the Catholic Church imposing it's "orthodoxy", by force eventually, upon the world. Suddenly, many of the church fathers were declared to be heretics...including the composer of the first systematic theology of the church...of which universal salvation through Jesus Christ was a primary pillar.
This all began because aionios was translated into Latin as "aeternum" when it is associated with punishment.
Why did the majority of the
Christian world believe that all men would be saved and judgements were a part of that process so long as Greek was their primary language...and then that all changed when the Latin speaking Roman Church imposed it's dominion upon Europe?
Most of the arguments for eternal torment...which was first put into a systematic theology by Augustine... was written to convince
Christians that did not believe in eternal torment of it's fidelity to God's revelation of Himself. Most of those arguments failed miserably.
The Catholic Church began killing people that disagreed with them...among them believers that Jesus Christ would save all men. their writings were declared ananthema...and burned or otherwise discredited. Many died at the hands of church "leadership". Things got so bad that if anyone did not agree with the Catholic doctrine they would never admit it.
Until the reformation...the Church didn't even remotely resemble what the Bible taught anymore.
Given that kind of history...coupled with the fact that the majority of Greek speaking Christians did not believe in unending misery...leads me to one conclusion: The doctrine of eternal torment was a strong delusion that took hold of the Chrurch from ouside the teaching of scripture...and it did so 600 years after the beginning of the Church!
The good news is...we still have scholars that will recognize these facts and not sweep them under the rug. These are the ones I choose to trust.
