Outer darkness: A thousand years? or for eternity?

[aron]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

Like Mike said, maybe we don't know salvation as much as we think we do. The gospels are filled with examples of people who THOUGHT that they knew what salvation was....

The absurdity of the "1000 years of dispensational punishment" idea, as it was presented to us by Mr. Lee et al, is perhaps illustrated by the following joke. Two men are sitting in a bar, drowning their sorrows. The first man says, "I'm going to hell for eternity." The second says, "Well, I'm a Christian. I'm only going to get 1,000 years of punishment."

There was some degree of scriptural basis for Lee's teachings. But by the time he wrapped it all up in a neat hermeneutical package it was like the rest of his output, merely absurdist fables. I went along, and suppressed my laughter, because hey, "It's the church". And Lee was the oracle, so they said. But I never found his arguments compelling in their own right. And now that I am out of his organization, I find his interpretations to be even less compelling.

Maybe let's all take a step back. Let's let the Word of God tell us what salvation truly is... Let's let those whom the Lord has put over us and with us tell us what salvation truly is.

Maybe the reason I don't take kindly to blowhards like Lee and to some extent Mr Kelly today is that I am a blowhard wanna-be and I'm jealous that they got there first. Maybe I'm just a prickly and contentious person. Maybe.

But maybe I find a compelling story to be one that is immediate, and simple, and real. Love the person next to you. Your neighbor may not be very lovable, but God wants you to love them. God says that what you do to them, will be done to you. If you forgive them, you will be forgiven. If you don't forgive, it will not be forgiven you. And so forth.

To me, that is real, and immediate, and tangible; that is "...the Word of life which we handled" in 1 John Chapter 1. God has placed a sinner nearby and my destiny hinges on how I interact with them. Not some ideational construction by a Christian teacher like Witness Lee who is selling his speeches in print form, but rather there is a real, live human being near me. What am I going to do? What do they see when they see me, and hear me?

When I look in my rear view mirror I can still see Lee and the Bible Answer Man there, arguing about the Trinity. I decide, "Nah, I already put my hand on the plow; now go forward. Just keep going."