“The LORD God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it YOU WILL SURELY DIE…” (Genesis 2:16-17)
I am told that the Hebrew word translated “die” is more accurately rendered “to die shall you be dying”...in other words the dying process began and all of us inherit the dying process as a result of the original sin of Adam.
“…as through one man (Adam) the sin did enter into the world, and through the sin the death; and thus to all men the death did pass through, for that all did sin…” (Romans 5:120
I was asked by a Christian friend if I thought his Daddy had lied to him when he told him that the penalty for unconfessed sin is everlasting punishment in hell?
It was a loaded question and I was not about to call his Daddy a liar… so I said no he did not lie to you, he sincerely told you what he believed. He was concerned as any parent believing in hell would be….he was just MYTHTAKEN.
And this attitude I find to be the strongest hindrance to people repudiating the false teaching of eternal conscious torment in hell. They trust their spiritual leaders and I learned early that you cannot argue with that “logic”. So all I can do is post my different opinion, citing the Scripture upon which I base my view, hoping some people will pick up the bible and check it out….if so, I am confident they will find as I do that the wages of sin is DEATH, just as "the free gift of God is eternal LIFE". Our existence began with God creating us in our mother’s womb….and the new creation will start at our resurrection when God creates us brand new as a free gift into the immortal, sinless image of God, of which Christ Jesus is the firstfruit.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord….as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord… Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly…this mortal must put on immortality…then will come about the saying that is written, “DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory.” (Romans 6:23; Romans 5:21; 1 Corinthians 15:49-54)
God wins…and so do we!