Hi Trent,

Good Article. The word nephesh in the OT is translated in many more ways than the three listed though. None of them however, would lead one to believe that there is anything eternal in and of itself about the soul or that the soul is even anything that we possess. I came away from this word study with a new perspective of being a living soul possessed by God to do with as He chooses. The only thing that comes near to the eternal nature of the soul would be that each one is remembered by God to be resurrected at the last day. Those not written in the Lamb's Book Of Life will be destroyed on that day and remembered no more.

We are all born dead, so to speak, dead to God. If we are not imparted life through Jesus Christ, there is nothing living to suffer for eternity. "the dead know nothing".

Pam

"Some shall be punished with
MANY stripes, ... some with
few." - THE DURATION of the
punishment is ENTIRELY at the
discretion of "The Righteous Judge of all the earth." - and The One TO WHOM all give an account.
The FIRST QUESTION He asks everyone is:
"What have you done with My
SON." ?
- a TRULY awesome question.
That's the way I see it.

Excellent arguements, btw, against the doctrine of "eternal torment to all the lost." Thanks for the insights. I'm going over all this more thoroughly.
Grace & Truth.
Len

I'll have to check when I get home, but I believe that "Reasoning from the Scriptures" is a Jehovah's Witness publication. I have a copy of this that came with a box of books from a garage sale. It's a crazy book.

What about Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16?

23In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

25"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.

forgot the next verse from Luke 16:
26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

Hello Mike,

I'm recovering from surgery and while I am laying around, I thought I would take a day or so and get back to some of the emails that I have neglected in the last couple of weeks. Yours is among the oldest in my in-box. Sorry that it took so long to write back.

There is no question that the passages to which you refer, depict an afterlife for the wicked that is one of agony, regret, confinement, and torment. The place for this confinement is within a great fixed chasm prison within hades/hell. Note that verse 23 calls it "hell" and apparently this is where Abraham and Lazarus are as well ... "hell" though they are beyond the chasm and show no signs of the desperate discomfort of the soul that is on the other side of the chasm in hell. So, all of them are in hell, while some are partitioned away from others to share in misery in that part of hell. Jesus calls this story a parable, and there is a bit of ambiguity about how much of it is factual and how much of it is pure fantastic fiction. However, whether it is fantastic or realistic, it does not ever once indicate that there is "eternal torment." In fact, I will hope to show you that there is evidence in this story that makes it impossible for there to be "eternal" torment.

Note that in verse 25 Abraham makes a case that the tormented soul has not forever been in torment. "Remember that in your lifetime you received your good things," That means that for a while the soul was given a time to live a life and there was good things received ... apparently that soul had a time in which it was not in hell and not in torment. How then could it be ever said that the soul received "eternal torment" For ETERNITY or that which is ETERNAL has NO BEGINNING and NO END.

This soul's torment had a beginning, and Abraham asks them to remember before the torment began ... THUS by virtue of having a beginning to the torment we can conclude with absolute certainty that this soul has not been inflicted with "Eternal torment." It must be TEMPORAL torment - or torment for a length of time that has a beginning.

We find that this is all consistent with the TEMPORALLY of the realm of hell. One cannot be tormented in hell one single day longer then hell exists. Nobody can be tormented in a place that no longer exists ... for it is written:
Revelation 20:14
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.

Just like there is no continuance of our first life after our first death, it follows that there is no continuance of one's second life (in hades) when one has gone through second death.

What I am saying is the straightforward interpretation of the vast majority of scripture that depicts the punishment of "DEATH" rather then torment.
"""Choose life and not death!""" 2 Kings 18:32, Deuteronomy 30:19

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."Matthew 10:28

Or even examine the meaning of the words in the churches most often quoted verse:
John 3: 16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

The contrast is between death and life, and eternal life is the only alternative to death. Thus the fallacy that someone could be WITHOUT Eternal Life and yet be that was ETERNALLY, is false. The choice is NOT Imperishable Life of comfort and Imperishable life of distress. It is and has always been one of Life or DEATH.

As you can see by Abraham's words the agony that this soul experiences is not eternal. It must be temporal, thus completing what scripture says elsewhere ... even in John 3:16.

I hope this helps,

Trent