[quote]forlife wrote:
Mse2us, thanks for your detailed response to my question.
You’re saying that the scriptures I quoted meant everlasting annihilation, but that’s not actually what they say. It’s everlasting fire, not everlasting annihilation. If people were destroyed by the fire, it wouldn’t be necessary for the fire to last forever. And if they were destroyed, how could they weep, wail, and gnash their teeth for eternity?
How much sense would it make to bring these people back from death, only to destroy them again?
I believe the second death is a spiritual death, i.e., the eternal separation of their souls from God. They continue to exist forever, but they also suffer forever.[/quote]
You’re welcome.
I didn’t make this clear in my last post but everlasting fire that Jesus mentioned and the lake of fire are symbolic for everlasting destruction. The lake of fire is not a literal place. It is necessary to show that the fire last forever to distinguish from the Adamic death that does not last forever and the second death that will last forever.
At one time Jehovah’s Witness believed the same as you believe. We used to believe that there is a place of literal fire, like most of Christendom believes, where Satan is in charge and the souls of all the wicked were tormented for all eternity. But as we examined the Bible closer we realized that this belief was not scriptural. We used the the Bible to come to this conclusion based on what the Bible clearly states about the condition of the dead. The Bible makes it clear when one is dead his thoughts and consciousness cease. There are many scriptures that state this.
Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 states:
5 “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.”
10 “All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going.”
Psalms 115:117 states:
“The dead themselves do not praise Jah, Nor do any going down into silence.”
Psalms 146:4 states:
“His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; In that day his thoughts do perish.”
When a person dies and is not conscience and has no thought then he cannot be literally burned and literally suffer from being burned.
The Bible also states that the soul which most Christians believe survives after death is not immortal and that the soul is the actual person.
At Genesis 2:7 after God created Adam the verse states that Adam became a living soul - it does not say Adam was given a soul.
Scriptural proof that the soul is not immortal is at Ezekiel 18:4 which
states:
“Look! All the souls - to me they belong. As the soul of the father so likewise the soul of the son-to me they belong. The soul that is sinning-it itself will die.”
Jesus also said that the soul could be destroyed at Matthew 10:28 which
states:
“And do not become fearful of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather be in fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”
In that verse Jesus is saying don’t fear a person who can physically kill you because even though they can kill you physically, to God, you as a person are not dead. Remember at Luke 20:37-38 where Jesus is explaining to the Sadduccess about the resurrection. Jesus states that God is the “God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob. He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living, for they are all living to him.” By saying these words, Jesus confirmed that from God’s viewpoint the long-dead Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still lived in God’s memory. Even though their bodies have long been dead and returned to dust, their souls or them as people were still in God’s memory waiting to be resurrected. However, Jesus did say fear he who could kill both the body and soul by being thrown in Gehenna. Here Jesus is saying to fear God because he can kill both the body and soul. Meaning that when this happens not only will your body be dead but you as a person will not be in God’s memory waiting to be resurrected. And as for Gehenna, this is another term that symbolized complete destruction. As I’m sure you know, Gehenna was a literal place in Jerusalem where garbage and people who didn’t deserve a proper burial was thrown into to be completely consumed by fire.
Gehenna was a continuous fire that often had sulfur added to make it even hotter. Like I said in my previous post, the listeners at that time would not have associated Gehenna with eternal torment of the living because only the dead people were thrown into Gehenna and whatever was thrown into Gehenna was completely consumed by the fire. Also, criminals while they were alive weren’t thrown into Gehenna as a punishment for being bad, only dead people were thrown into Gehenna. So the listeners of that time would have understood that the dead who were in Gehenna would be completely destroyed and because the fire continually burned, there would not have been a chance of them being resurrected.
The early Jehovah’s Witnesses were able to see from the Bible that the penalty given to Adam which is dying and returning to dust is the same penalty all of his descendants face. Once this penalty is paid and one dies, their thoughts perish and they are conscience of nothing. The soul is not some immortal part of a person that survives after death but the soul is a living being because even animals are called souls in the Bible. And the soul is not immortal because the Bible states that the soul dies.
You’re right in that the Bible does describe people who are thrown into the lake of fire as being tormented. This sounds like a contradictory statement because how can a dead person be conscience of nothing as Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 states and yet still be tormented? The early Jehovah’s Witnesses wondered the same thing so they had to look at the Bible and see how torment was used back in the first century A.D. Matthew 18:34 is a verse that can be looked to to show how the word torment is used. At Matthew 18:21-35 Jesus give the illustration about the Master who forgave the slave who owed a large debt and the same slave not forgiving a fellow slave who owed him a much smaller debt. When the master hears of this he throws the unforgiving slave in jail until he can repay the debt. The Greek noun basanistes occurring at Matthew 18:34 is rendered “jailers” in some translations such as the NIV and “tormentors” or “torturers” in others such as the KJV and the New Revised Standard Version. When one is jailed he is restrained and because of being restrained this can be likened to being tormented or tortured. Only people or things being thrown into the lake of fire is described as being tormented forever. Using the information I just stated above the early Jehovah’s Witnesses were able to see that this torment means that the people who are thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur which is the second death, will be in a condition of restraint for all eternity with no chance of being released from the condition of death. Like I said in my last post, people who die from the Adamic death they inherited from Adam will be resurrected so their torment or restraint is only temporary. Notice how Job describes being dead and resurrected at Job 14:13, 14 which states:
“O that in Sheol you would conceal me, That you would keep me secret until your anger turns back, That you would set a time limit for me and remember me! 14 If an able-bodied man dies can he live again? All the days of my compulsory service I shall wait, Until my relief comes.”
In that passage, Job equates him being resurrected to relief. And that’s because Job being restrained or tormented in death will not last forever and when he’s resurrected then his relief will come.
Again, the Bible makes it clear that there is a death that one does not come back from and it uses the term tormented to meaning they will be restrained forever in death.
Nowhere in the Bible does it state that people weep, wail and gnash their teeth in death for eternity. Jesus used the term several times in an illustrative sense. At Matthew 13:41 when Jesus explains the meaning of the wheat and the weeds parable he states that the weeds will be thrown in the fiery furnace which is where their weeping and gnashing of teeth will be. But, Jesus also uses the same expression at Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30 which are all parables that have nothing to do with death.
The second death can’t be a spiritual death because death and hades are thrown into the lake of fire which represents the second death. Again, Isaiah 25:8 and 1 Corinthians 15:54 state that “death is swallowed up forever.” Death being destroyed forever is then symbolized at Revelation 20:14 as being thrown into the lake of fire. Then at Revelation 21:4 the verse states that “death is no more.” It’s no more because it had been thrown into the lake of fire and will be restrained forever. Also, after Armageddon at Revelation 20, Satan is thrown into an abyss for 1000 years and after the 1000 years ends he is released for one final test to see who on earth will side with Satan. Once this test is over at Revelation 20:10, Satan is then finally thrown into the lake of fire where he will be tormented or restrained in death forever. So the second death can’t be a spiritual death as you stated above.
I’m know you won’t agree with what I said but I hope you can see that Jehovah’s Witnesses base doctrines, such as the one we’ve discussed, completely on the Bible. We use many scriptures as evidence to formulate a doctrine and even though we at one time believed that the souls of people were tormented in hell for all eternity like you believe, we were able to see that we were wrong and we adjusted our thinking based on what the Bible states.
