MattyDub89 #fundie reddit.com

Your ability to tap dance around words or phrases that disagree with your conclusions doesn't change what those words and phrases mean. Eternal Punishment isn't truly eternal punishment if you get annihilated at any point, because you wouldn't be around to be punished in the first place. Ceasing to exist isn't a punishment since there's nothing there to punish for eternity.

"Destruction" doesn't always imply the end of something, it can also mean the ruin of something (like how someone's life gets destroyed meaning it become terrible rather than coming to an end). That's literally another definition for that word. Since "Eternal Punishment" can't reasonably mean anything else (including how you tried to define it in a futile attempt to explain it away), it's better to fit the more flexible word "destruction", to fit with the idea of "eternal punishment", which implies that "ruin" is the better choice.

Your observation of what happens to trees in a fire is irrelevant since the trees in that case are just used as an analogy for people (or, more properly, their souls) getting thrown into Hell. People's souls don't burn up like physical things do. Same goes for bodies that are designed to live forever. You have to be careful with analogies and taking every element and its implications as literal.

Lastly, the idea that eternal punishment is only reserved for the Devil, the Beast and the direct enemies of God is actually a self-defeating suggestion. The direct enemies of God is an all-encompassing idea. Anybody who is opposed to God is an enemy of God. Plus, if you look at that passage in Revelation 20 where it mentions the eternal torment, the ones who are said to experience that include groups of regular people (from the nations at the corners of the Earth). That implies that regular people aren't just consumed in the fire.

All the other verses you cited don't hint at Hell being limited to destruction (in the narrow sense you've taken it) either, so all you've got is the assumption that "destruction" always refers to something being completely annihilated even though that's not the only definition of that word. You would do well to look at a Bible Lexicon or some exegetical commentaries before basing your understanding of a Biblical topic on one measly word that doesn't always mean the same thing.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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