Edward Fudge: Hero Or Heretic?

[VictoryinJesus]

1 Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening (life giving) spirit.

And I have questions concerning
Revelation 13:14-15 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. [15] And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

1) how does ‘he had power to give life’?

Revelation 17:13-14 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. [14] These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

how do these have power and strength to give to the beast? Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

 

[bbyrd009]

So then, you have no reply to make about John 1:29?

well, that is kind of making the point, see, in John 1:29 we are hearing JohnB make a Statement, from his understanding; but what did Jesus reply to this? Also that is at the beginning, the institution of the new dispensation, so maybe some allowances should be made there, but regardless of that the Lamb Himself tells us to worship Yah alone, and of course if Jesus Did It All then we have no need to pick up our crosses and follow Him, and even greater things will you do becomes blasphemy, basically.

So, what John said could just as easily have come true simply because it was believed by the people, and not bc Yah "needed" a Sacrifice, as we are taught. Imo we should remember that these were a ppl sacrificing their children to Molech, right? Did Yah accept those sacrifices, too? Of course not, but that did not matter to the people who believed that sacrificing was what Yah wanted; so iow the truth becomes irrelevant when you have to deal with ppls beliefs

Another way to put this is that Esau believed he needed Red Stew or he would "die," and so the Supplanter provided Red Stew, but there is no "Jacob ate some red stew too" and also Esau He had hated becomes clear as well, as Esau believed and relied on blood sacrifices to appease Yah, rather than correct behavior and public confession for less than correct behavior

but even if you reject all of that, No son of man may die for another's sins remains, and imo address that however you will, but address it

 

[GerhardEbersoehn]

I as a Seventh-day Adventist, who adheres to the Bible (KJB) for all matters of faith and Practice, believe in what it teaches, annihilation.

You can view Hell and Mr Fudge here - Matthew_ten_Verseight

Lecture - Edward Fudge - The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of Hell

Historically:

Like Luther who believed the person sleeps in death until their resurrection at the return of Jesus:

Others included Camillo Renato (1540)[109] Mátyás Dévai Bíró (1500–1545)[110] Michael Servetus (1511–1553)[111] Laelio Sozzini (1562)[112] Fausto Sozzini (1563)[113] the Polish Brethren (1565 onwards)[114] Dirk Philips (1504–1568)[115] Gregory Paul of Brzezin (1568)[116] the Socinians (1570–1800)[117] John Frith (1573)[118] George Schomann (1574)[119] Simon Budny (1576)[113]​

Like Milton:

Those holding this view include: 1600s: Sussex Baptists[126] d. 1612: Edward Wightman[127] 1627: Samuel Gardner[128] 1628: Samuel Przypkowski[129] 1636: George Wither[130] 1637: Joachim Stegmann[131] 1624: Richard Overton[90] 1654: John Biddle (Unitarian)[132] 1655: Matthew Caffyn[133] 1658: Samuel Richardson[134] 1608–1674: John Milton[135][136] 1588–1670: Thomas Hobbes[117] 1605–1682: Thomas Browne[137] 1622–1705: Henry Layton[138] 1702: William Coward[138] 1632–1704: John Locke[139] 1643–1727: Isaac Newton[140] 1676–1748: Pietro Giannone[141] 1751: William Kenrick[142] 1755: Edmund Law[143] 1759: Samuel Bourn[144] 1723–1791: Richard Price[145] 1718–1797: Peter Peckard[146] 1733–1804: Joseph Priestley[147] Francis Blackburne (1765)[148] (1765).​

19th-20th century:

Others include: Millerites (from 1833),[154] Edward White (1846),[155] Christadelphians (from 1848),[156] Thomas Thayer (1855),[157] François Gaussen (d.1863),[158] Henry Constable (1873),[159] Louis Burnier (Waldensian, d.1878),[160] the Baptist Conditionalist Association (1878),[161] Cameron Mann (1888),[162] Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff (1891), Miles Grant (1895)[163] George Gabriel Stokes (1897),[155]

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (1995), says "There is no concept of an immortal soul in the Old Testament, nor does the New Testament ever call the human soul immortal.",[190] Harper's Bible Dictionary (1st ed. 1985), says that 'For a Hebrew, ‘soul’ indicated the unity of a human person; Hebrews were living bodies, they did not have bodies",[191] the New Bible Dictionary’ (3rd. ed. 1996), says "But to the Bible man is not a soul in a body but a body/soul unity",[192] the Encyclopedia of Judaism’ (2000), says "Scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul",[193] the New Dictionary of Theology’ (2000), and "The notion of the soul as an independent force that animates human life but that can exist apart from the human body—either prior to conception and birth or subsequent to life and death—is the product only of later Judaism",[188] Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), says "Far from referring simply to one aspect of a person, “soul” refers to the whole person",[194] the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says "Possibly Jn. 6:33 also includes an allusion to the general life-giving function. This teaching rules out all ideas of an emanation of the soul.",[195] and "The soul and the body belong together, so that without either the one or the other there is no true man",[196] Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (1987), says "Indeed, the salvation of the “immortal soul” has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical.",[197] the Encyclopedia of Christianity (2003), says "The Hebrew Bible does not present the human soul (nepeš) or spirit (rûah) as an immortal substance, and for the most part it envisions the dead as ghosts in Sheol, the dark, sleepy underworld",[198] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2005), says "there is practically no specific teaching on the subject in the Bible beyond an underlying assumption of some form of afterlife (see immortality)",[199] and the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible (rev. ed. 2009), says "It is this essential soul-body oneness that provides the uniqueness of the biblical concept of the resurrection of the body as distinguished from the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul".[200][201]

The mortalist disbelief in the existence of a naturally immortal soul,[1][5] is also affirmed as biblical teaching by various modern theologians,[202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210]- Christian mortalism
​

Very good post.

 

[YeshuaFan1]

Revelation 20:
9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them,
10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Only live things can be tormented

This is another strong refutation from the Bible against the heresy of annihilationism. It simply is not true.

The same term used to describe how long heaven is was used for duration of Hell!

 

[YeshuaFan1]

You asked: "What false teaching was I presenting?"
> Your reply in the above: "the final Antichrist yet to come,..."

he has not yet arrived!

 

[YeshuaFan1]

So does Jesus sustain their life while they are tormented? What I read seems to imply that there is no life without Christ?

Eternal life is that quality of life being with God and in his presence, but the unsaved also have an eternity!

 

[Brakelite]

The OP mentions the (mostly SDA) doctrine who believe that the dead heathens shall cease to exist when Christ returns. This doctrine negated the doctrine of hell.

If you are going to accuse Adventists of getting something wrong, best to make sure what it is they actually do teach before doing so.

In your imagination (and that is a fact; NOT being snarky).
You will not find anything mentioning "annihilation" here below:

Revelation 20:
The Defeat of Satan
7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison
8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.
9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them,
10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

The Great White Throne Judgment

11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.
14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
ESV​

The section headings give you the context, and there is ZERO things telling of the annihilation of people. Even in their Second Death, they are live in the Lake of Fire.

I would suggest that consumed covers things fairly well.
But the question still remains that neither you nor anyone else has attempted to answer.
In the dark ages the state powers working on behalf of the church learned to torture people in unimaginably disgusting and evil ways in order to extract some sorry confession from them. They learned to induce a state of excruciating pain but just short of taking their life. They could keep people alive for days yet in constant mental and physical agony. This they learned from Rome, only enhanced and took it to new levels. No-one in their right mind today would suggest this wickedness was a just, merciful, loving thing to do. We all, without exception, utterly condemn such practices and they are condemned even by secular authorities in most countries. Those that do practice such barbaric practices today are considered the bottom dwellers of society, and rightly so, and worthy of nothing but hate and loathing.
Yet God, the Creator of the universe, is accredited with even greater skills. The Savior is said to be not only worse, but God has added a dimension that worldly dictators could only dream of. God does it for eternity. Without stop or pause. And in conditions that would normally destroy and kill even the most strongest man, God must work daily individual miracles on a population described as the sand of the sea just to keep them alive in order to repeat the process, again, and again, and again.

And Christians have the utter shameless gall to call this justice.

Yes, you can find some obscure scriptures that seem to suggest your theory. But those same scriptures can be used to suggest the opposite also. What you have to do to support your theory against that opposite is to do so against all logic and reason and against everything the rest of the scriptures tell you concerning the nature of the God you claim to know. And not one person on this entire forum can answer that challenge.
No-one can justify eternal torment in the face of all we know of the character of God. I know why, because it can't be done.

 

[bbyrd009]

Well, in your quote, that is true, "no son of man may die for another's sins".
The sin in a man cannot make atonement for sin in another man.
However, he who is the Son of God, and also the son of man, CAN make an atonement for another's sin.

Esau believed he needed Red Stew or he would die, too, yes

Jesus is the God/man, the go between, the bridge, the only Mediator for God the Father and man.

and spiritually speaking, i do not disagree. We got Jesus bc we needed a Jesus, not bc Yah did

I believe Jesus used that term: "the son of man" to the Jews, so that they would search the scriptures

amen, and No son of man may die for another's sins there it is eh. So again, dont get me wrong, Christ died for our sins, but imo understanding that correctly requires that we take personal responsibility for it, I killed Immanuel all by myself when i chose the world over Him, and i can call "Jesus, You are the greatest, I worship you on my knees" worship if i want to, until i am blue in the face even, but that is not worship at all, according to our own Book right, as well as violating what Jesus Himself tells us to do, in many places

now i should prolly reiterate that this is not some belief that one can just switch off i guess, it takes a walk, a slog, out of, and there is even a cliff you gotta basically jump off of, but it should be noted imo that Esau is never condemned for eating red stew; the statement is merely made that Esau sold his birthright, which is after all his perfect right to do so if he wishes, which is why we cannot Quote "and this was a bad idea" even if it is inferred, and of course is a bad idea, but then Yah is not our Baal anyway, our "Lord," like we currently believe; Yah does not go around Lording It over anyone, and, in a vignette that trust me no Preacher will ever attempt to dissect from a pulpit, we are shown that Esau, whom Yah had hated, was not like punished or anything for the belief--which makes no sense in your model wadr--and even apparently inherited his birthright, which also makes no sense, right? Esau sells his birthright to Jacob, and it is Jacob who leaves? lol

 

[Waiting on him]

Eternal life is that quality of life being with God and in his presence, but the unsaved also have an eternity!

So can I take that as a yes?

 

[Brakelite]

I as a Seventh-day Adventist, who adheres to the Bible (KJB) for all matters of faith and Practice, believe in what it teaches, annihilation.

You can view Hell and Mr Fudge here - Matthew_ten_Verseight

Lecture - Edward Fudge - The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of Hell

Historically:

Like Luther who believed the person sleeps in death until their resurrection at the return of Jesus:

Others included Camillo Renato (1540)[109] Mátyás Dévai Bíró (1500–1545)[110] Michael Servetus (1511–1553)[111] Laelio Sozzini (1562)[112] Fausto Sozzini (1563)[113] the Polish Brethren (1565 onwards)[114] Dirk Philips (1504–1568)[115] Gregory Paul of Brzezin (1568)[116] the Socinians (1570–1800)[117] John Frith (1573)[118] George Schomann (1574)[119] Simon Budny (1576)[113]​

Like Milton:

Those holding this view include: 1600s: Sussex Baptists[126] d. 1612: Edward Wightman[127] 1627: Samuel Gardner[128] 1628: Samuel Przypkowski[129] 1636: George Wither[130] 1637: Joachim Stegmann[131] 1624: Richard Overton[90] 1654: John Biddle (Unitarian)[132] 1655: Matthew Caffyn[133] 1658: Samuel Richardson[134] 1608–1674: John Milton[135][136] 1588–1670: Thomas Hobbes[117] 1605–1682: Thomas Browne[137] 1622–1705: Henry Layton[138] 1702: William Coward[138] 1632–1704: John Locke[139] 1643–1727: Isaac Newton[140] 1676–1748: Pietro Giannone[141] 1751: William Kenrick[142] 1755: Edmund Law[143] 1759: Samuel Bourn[144] 1723–1791: Richard Price[145] 1718–1797: Peter Peckard[146] 1733–1804: Joseph Priestley[147] Francis Blackburne (1765)[148] (1765).​

19th-20th century:

Others include: Millerites (from 1833),[154] Edward White (1846),[155] Christadelphians (from 1848),[156] Thomas Thayer (1855),[157] François Gaussen (d.1863),[158] Henry Constable (1873),[159] Louis Burnier (Waldensian, d.1878),[160] the Baptist Conditionalist Association (1878),[161] Cameron Mann (1888),[162] Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff (1891), Miles Grant (1895)[163] George Gabriel Stokes (1897),[155]

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (1995), says "There is no concept of an immortal soul in the Old Testament, nor does the New Testament ever call the human soul immortal.",[190] Harper's Bible Dictionary (1st ed. 1985), says that 'For a Hebrew, ‘soul’ indicated the unity of a human person; Hebrews were living bodies, they did not have bodies",[191] the New Bible Dictionary’ (3rd. ed. 1996), says "But to the Bible man is not a soul in a body but a body/soul unity",[192] the Encyclopedia of Judaism’ (2000), says "Scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul",[193] the New Dictionary of Theology’ (2000), and "The notion of the soul as an independent force that animates human life but that can exist apart from the human body—either prior to conception and birth or subsequent to life and death—is the product only of later Judaism",[188] Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), says "Far from referring simply to one aspect of a person, “soul” refers to the whole person",[194] the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says "Possibly Jn. 6:33 also includes an allusion to the general life-giving function. This teaching rules out all ideas of an emanation of the soul.",[195] and "The soul and the body belong together, so that without either the one or the other there is no true man",[196] Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (1987), says "Indeed, the salvation of the “immortal soul” has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical.",[197] the Encyclopedia of Christianity (2003), says "The Hebrew Bible does not present the human soul (nepeš) or spirit (rûah) as an immortal substance, and for the most part it envisions the dead as ghosts in Sheol, the dark, sleepy underworld",[198] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2005), says "there is practically no specific teaching on the subject in the Bible beyond an underlying assumption of some form of afterlife (see immortality)",[199] and the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible (rev. ed. 2009), says "It is this essential soul-body oneness that provides the uniqueness of the biblical concept of the resurrection of the body as distinguished from the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul".[200][201]

The mortalist disbelief in the existence of a naturally immortal soul,[1][5] is also affirmed as biblical teaching by various modern theologians,[202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210]- Christian mortalism
​

@Giuliano . Here is a clear unabashed exposition of the biblical understanding of soul and body without the religious and spiritualist/occult machinations of man.

 

[bbyrd009]

the prob with that imo is that again we have a group of ppl that believes they know what happens after death, right?

we do not yet know what we will become

so i mean bam believe you will go up to heaven after you have died if you want, believe you will get "annihilated" if you want, but personally i believe Yah has a better idea

 

[Brakelite]

the prob with that imo is that again we have a group of ppl that believes they know what happens after death, right?

we do not yet know what we will become

Actually we do. We will either live or die.

 

[bbyrd009]

Actually we do. We will either live or die.

meh, so then contradict Scripture, ok with me, speak as if you know, i am not offended
i even understand. i was raised to reason in hegelian myself, how can i condemn? You are forgiven, apparently. Good News, huh? But fwiw Samuel attests to merely rest right, who is it that disturbs my rest

you might consider that "live, die," we have only a poor grasp of these concepts anyway, maybe

but i would at least consider the optics there,
Yah: you do not yet know what you will become
Brakelite: actually, we do...guess you didnt notice i have a Cardinal as my avatar, pal, and like that see

which i made personal there, but that is of course common to us all i guess

 

[Giuliano]

So then, you have no reply to make about John 1:29?
Well, in your quote, that is true, "no son of man may die for another's sins".
The sin in a man cannot make atonement for sin in another man.
However, he who is the Son of God, and also the son of man, CAN make an atonement for another's sin.
Jesus is the God/man, the go between, the bridge, the only Mediator for God the Father and man.
I believe Jesus used that term: "the son of man" to the Jews, so that they would search the scriptures

John 1:29 doesn't talk about Jesus atoning for the sins of people. It says "sin of the world." Sin is singular. People may be in the world but they are not the world. Jesus as Lamb of God reversed the Adamic curse on the ground. Since we come from the earth, the very matter our bodies are made of is cursed. A baby who has never sinned can die. Indeed if someone could live a hundred years without sinning, he'd still die unless God intervened somehow. That's not fair. That's not right; but it's the way things are in this world. What Adam did affected the earth and all his offspring. I repeat that wasn't fair, and Jesus came to make things fair, to remove that sentence of death if people were willing to live lives of love and obedience to God. Having the innocent suffer or die for the sins of the guilty is how man wants things to be. God doesn't want things that way.

Jesus' offer of immortality is only for those who don't want to have other people suffer or die because of their sins -- they obey the Golden Rule.

We should remember too that the Passover Lamb was not a sacrifice for sin. Christians may think of it that way, but it's not described that way in Exodus. Indeed at the time Moses led Israel out of Israel, God had not commanded any sacrifices. They had the Passover, but that was not a sacrifice for sin.

Jeremiah 7:22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:

The idea of having one person pay for another's sin is not God's way. He said so.

Ezekiel 18:19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
21 But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

 

[Giuliano]

@Giuliano . Here is a clear unabashed exposition of the biblical understanding of soul and body without the religious and spiritualist/occult machinations of man.

To me, he's the blind leading the blind. Someone who is spiritually blind has no idea how to interpret the Bible. Has Fudge ever seen hell? No. He's only read about it. He's earnest, but he still doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[bbyrd009]

hey well as long as he admits that hes my kinda guy!
guess ill hafta watch some of these vids lol

John 1:29 doesn't talk about Jesus atoning for the sins of people. It says "sin of the world." Sin is singular. People may be in the world but they are not the world. Jesus as Lamb of God reversed the Adamic curse on the ground. Since we come from the earth, the very matter our bodies are made of is cursed. A baby who has never sinned can die. Indeed if someone could live a hundred years without sinning, he'd still die unless God intervened somehow. That's not fair. That's not right; but it's the way things are in this world. What Adam did affected the earth and all his offspring. I repeat that wasn't fair, and Jesus came to make things fair, to remove that sentence of death if people were willing to live lives of love and obedience to God. Having the innocent suffer or die for the sins of the guilty is how man wants things to be. God doesn't want things that way.

Jesus' offer of immortality is only for those who don't want to have other people suffer or die because of their sins -- they obey the Golden Rule.

We should remember too that the Passover Lamb was not a sacrifice for sin. Christians may think of it that way, but it's not described that way in Exodus. Indeed at the time Moses led Israel out of Israel, God had not commanded any sacrifices. They had the Passover, but that was not a sacrifice for sin.

Jeremiah 7:22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:

The idea of having one person pay for another's sin is not God's way. He said so.

Ezekiel 18:19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
21 But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

so there you got other immortals procreating in a finite space? Which i srsly doubt, plus you (Scripturally) lost me @ "other immortals" yeh, There is only One

 

[Giuliano]

hey well as long as he admits that hes my kinda guy!
guess ill hafta watch some of these vids lol
so there you got other immortals procreating in a finite space? Which i srsly doubt, plus you (Scripturally) lost me @ "other immortals" yeh, There is only One

Oh, think about how many cells you have in your body. Are they you? Think of the atoms in those cells -- are they you?
If you were "the only one" around, what would you want to do?

The problems start happening when one of the gods decides he'd like to go into competition and doesn't want to be part of the Unity. It's like chopping a limb off a tree -- it doesn't have much life after that. Tree of Life? Moses wrote that man is a tree. . . .

 

[bbyrd009]

Oh, think about how many cells you have in your body. Are they you? Think of the atoms in those cells -- are they you?
If you were "the only one" around, what would you want to do?

The problems start happening when one of the gods decides he'd like to go into competition and doesn't want to be part of the Unity. It's like chopping a limb off a tree -- it doesn't have much life after that. Tree of Life? Moses wrote that man is a tree. . . .

seems to me that you have dodged the Q rather than repied to it, wadr
we are told that we are already gods, even though we are not immortals?

 

[marks]

Indeed. And what happened to them in the end... The second death. You can't die twice without being resurrected once.

When we think of death as cessation, or inactivity, that would make sense. But when we think of death as separation, then this isn't needed.

I see three things that are called death in the Bible. One is to be dead in trespasses and sins, and this is separation of relationship with God. Then there are that which are called the first and second death, one being to be separated from your body, the second to be cast into the lake of fire, in a complete separation from God and all His graces.

Much love!

 

[bbyrd009]

how do these have power and strength to give to the beast?

by their belief in it