I think the biggest damage to the message in a post modern world is the ECT* message. Educated people don’t take Christianity seriously often just because of that. And the “comical” part is that when I try to explain to them that the bible does not teach that, they argue back fervently that it is the core of Christianity as though they were backwoods baptists. Its imperative to them that Christianity teaches that or their single most strong case against Christianity goes away.
*ECT: Eternal Conscious Torment for the lost. This site covers it very well: https://www.jewishnotgreek.com/
Yes. If true to the Bible you are neither in eternal hell or “sent up to heaven” on death; death is a sleep, and after the final judgement you will be either united in God, or gone forever, period. God wants you with Him but he is not going to torture you in hell for an eternity if you shut Him out.
bkmk
Although Hebrews talks about men dying once and then being judged, Jesus speaks four times in Revelation about the “second death.” This second death, I’ve always thought, was to happen after the Great White Throne judgment when people who didn’t “make the cut” would be utterly destroyed by God. No eternal torment, no everlasting fire (except for Lucifer and his angels); just snuffed out.
I will take a very close look at the linked material.
However, it seems like this is pretty close to the modern day teaching of that theologian John Lennon (and many others): There is no hell.
So a distinction without a difference?
Later