OK, it could be the case that Luke 13.1-9 refers exclusively to Israel and not to anyone else. However, does all the talk of judgement in the New Testament refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and to nothing else? What about “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” from 2 Cor 5.10?

My point is that there is a future judgement according to “what each one has done” and when Paul speaks of it again in Rom 2 he adds “to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness – indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek” in verses 8-9. There will be a future judgement (presumably not to be identified with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70) in which those who are “self-seeking and do not obey the truth” will receive not merely consignment to unconscious non-existence but “tribulation and anguish”.

I’m still content to maintain the Bible’s own tension between a) suffering followed by destruction and b) simply everlasting suffering. I don’t need to resolve the tension because it’s not up to me anyway. The picture I certainly am resisting is that people will be raised for judgement and then punished, not with any on-going suffering at all, but simply with non-existence. It’s not that I find the idea on-going suffering in any way appealing, as I said before. But I can see that at least some on-going suffering after death, or “tribulation and anguish”, is what Jesus and his apostles taught is the just result of rejecting God.

Regarding your interpretation of Jesus’ suffering and death, and whose suffering and death he took away, that probably needs a seperate thread. Is there a live thread discussing these issues that I could join? Or even an old thread where it’s been hashed out already? I’m posting away and I don’t even know my way around the site properly yet :-)