I’ve been spending some time at the tentmaker.org website, and found some interesting articles on the word Aionian or Aion (The greek words that are translated at eternal or everlasting in our Bibles.) What I found interesting is that, at least tentmaker.org claims, is that the word actually means AGES, or AGES OF AGES - an age, in ancient greek, meaning a particular period of time that cannot be measured.

In other words, it does not necessarily mean ETERNAL because only God is eternal. Time isn’t. Time has a beginning and and end, and it lives / exists in God who is eternal. The issue may be QUALITY, not QUANTITY.

According to tentmaker.org (and similar websites I suppose) the word indicates that there IS an end to punishment, that hell is used for correction not for endless (and rather pointless) punishment.

Personally, I’m quite happy to accept God as good whether he sends people to hell for all of eternity or whether he sends them to hell for an age only. I also think that he would be perfectly good if he simply annihilated those who did not accept Him. The reason why I say this is because I believe God IS good, and we are unable to comprehend what is good or not because of our stupid sinful nature. Only God knows what is TRULY good, and TRULY just, and TRULY loving.

As far as eternal seperation goes, I’ve thought that perhaps a life of sin leads to complete rebellion even after death to God - that even, when faced with God’s judgement, some would rather CHOOSE hell over being with God - because of His holiness, and also because of their own hearts. Also interesting to note, is that the word ‘lake’ in ‘lake of fire’ seems to mean a ‘hedge of protection’ (According to Strongs) and I’ve always asked - protection from what? Who is God protecting here? Just some random thoughts. Is he protecting people from his holiness, because it may consume them entirely?

But, What this means for me, with regards to the meaning of the word, is that even if hell is only for a duration of time, we have no means of speculating exactly how long that period of time is. The greek word is usually placed in the context of what it is referring to - in other words, a dog’s Aionion would be like 10 years or something. So, when it refers to the Aionion punishment, it refers to a time that we cannot measure - or we are not given the measurement from. That, in itself, is a scary thought!

The bottom line for me is : we can’t know FOR SURE, and that is why it is important to take the Gospel to every man and woman and child! Because, there is definately a punishment coming, and there is definately a wonderful life to be had and experienced and enjoyed starting now. A life no longer under the slavery of worthless sin and idols! A life where we can KNOW God!!

I’ve never paid much attention to the universalists, thinking that they were WAY off but recent studies that I’m doing shows me that they may have A LOT to add to the picture here - and I believe that traditionalists and Annihilationists also have a LOT to add. There’s bound to be truth in all these views somewhere, I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us all into it!

God is good man.