Outer darkness: A thousand years? or for eternity?

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by ABrotherinFaith

Either your silly and like to pretend you can't read/understand well or you're intentionally misunderstanding what I am saying so you can have you way...either way, let me explain (again and again). I think (I am not certain beyond a doubt--I'm not that brave) that there are two. 1. Believers. These are people who accept Christ and obey/endure to the end. 2. Non believers. These are people that do not accept Christ as their Lord and Savior--as evidenced by either their not enduring/obeying to the end or by simply not believing at all.

I suspect you got this when you read what I wrote but wanted to sound clever in your own way.

I am NOT trying to sound clever.

You have defined a believer as one who accepts Christ, obeys Him to the end, and endures to the end.

This is incredibly naive and idealistic to define every believer this way.

But sorry, I'm wasting your time.

Have a nice day!

[bearbear]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I am NOT trying to sound clever.

You have defined a believer as one who accepts Christ, obeys Him to the end, and endures to the end.

This is incredibly naive and idealistic to define every believer this way.

But sorry, I'm wasting your time.

Have a nice day!

I don't see what's wrong with saying that, isn't he just restating verses like the ones below? The Greek word translated to believe is pisteou, which means to trust or commit oneself to something. Jesus seemed to make it clear that this commitment was expected to be a lifetime in his teachings which include the parable of the sower. This is consistent with passages in the OT as well such as Ezekiel 18 where God expects us to live in righteousness until the end.

John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Matthew 24:13
But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

[OBW]

BB,

I think that one problem that is going on in this discussion is the notion of how extreme one must be to believe and obey. I would not say that it is simple, like mental belief. But neither do I think that the kind of extreme that is getting implied here is what it means.

I note that Jesus went throughout his ministry preaching righteousness and sending the people home to live right.

Not to become one of the people who followed him everywhere he went.

That is one of the millstone burdens of both the Pharisees of old and the "serious" Christians of this age. They think that life must be overanalyzed. That we must beat ourselves up for every mistake. That we must spend an hour in the word and prayer each morning. That we must never fail or fall. That we must be burning in the meetings. And go to more meetings than anyone else we know.

Problem is that we all fall. And we do it at some level every day. While there is clearly a level of failure that will be recompensed on "the day" by something other than a crown with many stars in it.

In the mean time, there really is not sufficient evidence of what that recompense is to insist on any particular understanding of it.

And it is evident that we have multiple understandings about outer darkness. We can go on brow-beating each other with wet noodles and get nowhere because we simply do not know. The only thing we do know is to believe and obey. Take care of that and it will pan out in the end.