I suggest you should study more on who or what the "covering cherub" is in Eze. 28 and you will find it is not speaking of Satan.
To God Be The Glory
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I suggest you should study more on who or what the "covering cherub" is in Eze. 28 and you will find it is not speaking of Satan.
To God Be The Glory
"The rich man also died"
"being in torments"
"he cried"
"I am tormented in this flame"
"this place of torment"
Luke 16:22-28 (NKJV)
22 The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 24 Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.' 25 But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.' 27 Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'
Yep, still there with LITERAL Biblical people!
Death does not mean "cease to exist"! Why are you resorting to OT to overrule NT?
Matthew 25:41-46 (NKJV)
41 Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:
46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Judas went on to commit suicide. Everyone who commits suicide, by that act, is confessing that they wished that they had never been born.
The advantages of his wasted life did not overbalance the sorrows and anguish which terminated in despair, suicide and the second death. There will not be a resurrection and eternal life for Judas, so his first death is also the second death for him. Judas had enjoyed a sufficiency of light and knowledge of righteousness to constitute a trial (and Jesus is the judge), and his deliberate sin against such light and knowledge meant the second death.
John 6:70-71 (WEB): Jesus answered them, “Didn’t I choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Now he spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve.
John 17:12 (WEB): [Jesus said] While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you have given me I have kept. None of them is lost, except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Revelation is full of symbols. We know that the fate of the wicked is destruction, even of Satan, so being "tormented with fire and sulphur" is symbolic of destruction. The expression of "the smoke of their torment ascends forever" is symbolic of the fact that remembrance of their torment and destruction will be a lesson that will last forever. Those worshiping the beast and his image will be annoyed, or tormented, by the unfolding truth. Their destruction will be a lesson that will never be forgotten.
He is using symbolic language to foretell of the imminnent destruction of the nation of Israel and of the destruction of all who do not come to God through Jesus. Saying the fire is unquenchable is emphasising that the fire will not be quenched until it has fully destroyed whatever is thrown into it.
John said that to the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come for his baptism to warn them of the wrath of God about to come upon that nation because of its hypocritical formalism and failure to live up to the light and privileges it enjoyed. This was to be the "wrath to the uttermost" which Paul spoke of in (1 Thessalonians 2:16), which came upon the Jewish nation in the end of the Jewish age:
14) For you, brothers, became imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus; for you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews;
15) who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and drove us out, and don’t please God, and are contrary to all men;
16) forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved; to fill up their sins always. But wrath has come on them to the uttermost.
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I presume you haven't done that studying or else you would have enlightened us! The "covering cherub" is only referred to in this chapter of Ezekiel. God says:
(Eze 28:13) You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Who was in Eden? Answer: Adam, Eve, God, and Satan. It's not refering to Adam or Eve, so that only leaves Satan.
In Ezekiel 28:19 God says "you will exist no more". Are you calling God a liar? I'm using the Old Testament to help you understand the New Testament. It is all God's word!
The punishment for sin is death. Jesus is consistent in using the same symbolic language for the second death. If it's not symbolic then he will be sending goats into the fire:
(Mat 25:33) He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
ByGraceThroughFaith
Well-Known Member
so all of the warnings in the Bible of future punishment for the wicked are just symboilc? Jesus told Judas that it was better if he had not been born, because He knew that he was going into eternal punishment. There is not a single verse in the Bible that says that wicked will not suffer after death. The account in Luke 16 of the rich man and lazarus, shows the future state of the saved and unsaved. And this is not just some fable, but FACT. Your personal theology is causing you to dismiss all that the Bible says on eternal punishment. Are you seventh day adventist or jehovah's witnesse?
Everyone is heading to the Grave.
We are all born to die.
Some will meet the Rapture and not the Grave., but all at this time, are heading to the grave.
Firstly, "cherub or cherubim" cannot be an angel as can be proven in the Holy of Holies.
Secondly, "man" was "put on" in the Garden of Eden and never Satan.
Precious stones refer to believers as can be seen in Eze. 28: 13-15 and I Co. 3:11-15.
The "anointed cherub" in verse 14 is a reference to God Himself and never as an angel for no angel can be above God over the ark in the Holy of Holies.
In verse 15- man was made "perfect" as he was created in the "image of God" till iniquity was found in him.
Can Isaiah 14 be referenced here in verse 16? NO!!
Verse 17- there is beauty in mankind.
Should I continue or do you the gist?
To God Be The Glory
According to Matthew 16:28 "YOU ARE A LIAR!"
For God has declared: "Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."
To God Be The Glory
Just because you don't believe what it clearly says doesn't make it "symbolic". You can twist Scripture from now to eternity but it means what it says.
Revelation 20:10 (NKJV)
10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Guess you missed this.
Revelation 20:10 (NKJV)
10 The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
That's why Jesus called it "everlasting fire"!
OT cannot overrule NT no matter how much you would like it to.
YOU are saying "symbolic", not Jesus. Jesus called His people "my sheep". He was referring to people.
There are many verses that teach us that the penalty for sin is death, not an eternal life of suffering. Death is compared to a sleep, an unconscious state, and we will awake when we are resurrected - sleeping is not suffering! If you have read my responses in this thread then you will have read many of the verses that I have quoted, so I won't repeat them all, just a few:
(Psalm 146:4) His breath goes forth; he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
If you have no conscious thoughts then you can not feel pain and suffering.
Job 14:10-14 (WEB):
10) But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he?
11) As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wastes and dries up,
12) so man lies down and doesn’t rise. Until the heavens are no more, they shall not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep.
13) “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,that you would keep me secret, until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14) If a man dies, shall he live again?
If you are not alive (and conscious) then you cannot suffer. After the second death there is no further resurrection - Jesus cannot become a human sacrifice again to redeem anyone for a second time.
Again, I have explained that parable in previous replies. If it was not a parable, then what was it that made the poor man end up in a different place to the rich man? Was he a Christian? It doesn't say so. And Abraham is dead and unable to speak (his thoughts have perished), just like the rich man. It is obviously not a literal story - otherwise your "future state" is to lie on Abraham's bosom, along with milliions of other people, and listening to millions of people crying in agony a short distance away (within earshot so that Abraham can speak with them) - ludicrous!
What is your point? Ezekiel 28:13 says he was in Eden, so it had to be Satan.
(Eze 28:15) You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you.
How many Cherubim have become unrighteous apart from Satan?
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying Satan didn't tempt Eve in the garden of Eden?!
I don't see any comparison or connection between those two passages.
Nonsense! The very next verse, that I quoted above, says "you were created", so it can't be a reference to God.
Adam was not an anointed cherub, so verse 15 cannot be referring to Adam, or any man.
(Eze 28:16) By the abundance of your commerce, your insides were filled with violence, and you have sinned. Therefore I have cast you as profane out of God’s mountain. I have destroyed you, covering cherub, from the middle of the stones of fire.
(Isa 14:15) Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit.
In both verses God says he will destroy/kill Satan. Likewise in both passages it says that people will be astonished to see the death of Satan:
(Eze 28:19) All those who know you among the peoples will be astonished at you. You have become a terror, and you will exist no more.
(Isa 14:16) Those who see you will stare at you. They will ponder you, saying, “Is this the man who made the earth to tremble, who shook kingdoms;
The gist is that you're clutching at straws trying to prove that it doesn't refer to Satan! You claimed it was referring to God himself, and then to man (and at first just believers) - it can't be both (but it can be neither)!
As Chuck Missler often said, "The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed". The author of both is God:
(2 Timothy 3:16) All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
"Sheep" is symbolic for his people!
The previous verse says:
(Rev 20:9) They went up over the width of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints, and the beloved city. Fire came down out of heaven from God and devoured them.
So all of the people that side wilth Satan are devoured, consumed, or destroyed by fire coming down from heaven. They are not being burnt forever.
Is the beast that's in the lake of fire and brimstone being burnt by fire forever? The beast is symbolic of kingdoms, nations and empires, that exist over many years, and which will be destroyed (not tormented forever, literally):
(Rev 17:8) The beast that you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into destruction. Those who dwell on the earth and whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see that the beast was, and is not, and shall be present.
(Rev 17:9) Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.
(Rev 17:10) They are seven kings. Five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come. When he comes, he must continue a little while.
(Rev 17:11) The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes to destruction.
(Rev 17:12) The ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour.
(Rev 17:13) These have one mind, and they give their power and authority to the beast.
(Rev 17:14) These will war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings, and those who are with him are called chosen and faithful.”
(Rev 17:15) He said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages.
(Rev 17:16) The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire.
(Rev 17:17) For God has put in their hearts to do what he has in mind, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished.
(Rev 17:18) The woman whom you saw is the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.”
As I commented in reply #105, the beast was symbolic, and so is the lake of fire and sulphur. It is symbolic of destruction. The Greek that's translated as "forever and ever" is "ice aion aion", meaning "unto the ages of ages", or until the perfect ages are due - after the 1,000 years judgement reign of Christ. Everything symbolically thrown into the fire will be tormented briefly until they are destroyed. Death and Hades are symbolically destroyed in this fire too, just as everything that goes into it is destroyed.
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