Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Responding to unbelievers 510-2 - 9 - 3

So just how should a believer respond to the sorrows and failures of his/her “enemies.” Tempting as it might be to gloat, not a Christ-like reaction. Far better to reflect on how I would react to similar sorrows and/ or failures. Empathy would be better as it would demonstrate a more Christian behavior and could possibly be used as a witnessing tool, “I remember when….”
That said, rather than enemies, I would like to address unbelievers and the sometimes-negative attitudes held by “Christians.”
For two years whenever I would see a very gentle soul who called himself Spirit I would quietly witness to him. He was wholly in the new age but I had hoped to bring him to faith in Christ Jesus. One day he came storming up to me telling me that a friend of mine had told him he was going to burn forever in hell due to his new age beliefs. Spirit asked me if I agreed that he was going to hell and I rather beat around the bush. After all, wasn’t/ isn’t that the traditional view of hell, Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). As I didn’t disavow the view that Spirit was headed for ECT, no more conversations and no more opportunities to witness to him.
Three questions:
Q 1. Do we as Christians warn unbelievers that they are headed for ECT?
Q 2. Is the tradition view of ECT Biblical?
Q3. What is Conditional Immortality?
A1. I do not know the heart of an unbeliever, only God does.
A2. A quick search of the Internet for articles concerning ECT produced more than 350 thousand results. As an example:
10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HELL AND ETERNAL CONSCIOUS PUNISHMENT by Sam Storms February 13, 2017
“I take no special delight in writing this article. But hell is real and people are going there. So let’s look closely at what the Bible has to say about it as well as the on-going debate over whether hell is eternal conscious punishment.”
[http://samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/10-things-you-should-know-about-hell-and-eternal-conscious-punishment]
A3. Conditional Immortality, only believers are granted immortality with God, unbelievers face annihilation in Hell. Here a quick search of the Internet for articles concerning Conditional Immortality produced more than 250 thousand results.
The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, Third Edition and Hell A final Word by Edward Fudge and just two books dealing with the subject.
Lots of interesting views are published on Facebook. I joined the main grouphttps://www.facebook.com/groups/rethinkinghell/
And also the regional far-west group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/RethinkingHellFW/
This year’s Rethinking Hell Conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 15th. It would be wonderful if I had the time and money to both attend the conference and visit the Koinonia House River Lodge in New Zealand.
I gather that the leaning of KI is towards tradition view of ECT, however, I’m leaning towards CI.
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish (G622), but have everlasting life.”
Perish, G622, from G575 (usually denotes separation, departure, cessation, completion, reversal) and G3639 (to destroy; a prolonged form); ruin, that is, death, punishment: - destruction.; to destroy fully), literally or figuratively: - destroy, die, lose, perish.

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