That's not what I said, either! Unless you meant to say "it's not talking about God's not being tyrannical". Of course those who receive God's wrath for their sins didn't get volunteered for it! She speaks of arbitrariness about once, maybe, as a rejection of it: judicial discretion may not be excluded, in God's judgement scene, but fairness must be clarified if any doubt it...There are better things to emphasise!

Out of curiousity -- how many here see this statement on the death of Christ as our substitute - to be in perfect harmony with the statements Ellen White makes about the "details" of the 2nd death lake of fire?










in Christ,

Bob

As compared of course to these "reference texts" on the "details" for the 2nd death and lake of fire...

(Already mentioned many times on this thread)

=====================================================

Great Controversy - 673

Fire comes down from God out of heaven. The earth is broken up. The weapons concealed in its depths are drawn forth. Devouring flames burst from every yawning chasm. The very rocks are on fire. The day has come that shall burn as an oven. The elements melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein are burned up. Malachi 4:1; 2 Peter 3:10. The earth's surface seems one molten mass--a vast, seething 673

lake of fire. It is the time of the judgement and perdition of ungodly men--"the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion." Isaiah 34:8. {GC 672.2}

Some are destroyed as in a moment, while others suffer many days. All are punished “according to their deeds." The sins of the righteous having been transferred to Satan, he is made to suffer not only for his own rebellion, but for all the sins which he has caused God's people to commit.

His punishment is to be far greater than that of those whom he has deceived. After all have perished who fell by his deceptions, he is still to live and suffer on. In the cleansing flames the wicked are at last destroyed, root and branch--Satan the root, his followers the branches. The full penalty of the law has been visited; the demands of justice have been met; and heaven and earth, beholding, declare the righteousness of Jehovah. {GC 673.1}

EW 294

The Second Death

Satan rushes into the midst of his followers and tries to stir up the multitude to action. But fire from God out of heaven is rained upon them, and the great men, and mighty men, the noble, the poor and miserable, are all consumed together.

I saw that some were quickly destroyed, while others suffered longer. They were punished according to the deeds done in the body. Some were many days consuming, and just as long as there was a portion of them unconsumed, all the sense of suffering remained. Said the angel, "The worm of life shall not die; their fire shall not be quenched as long as there is the least particle for it to prey upon." {EW 294.1}


Satan and his angels suffered long. Satan bore not only the weight and punishment of his own sins, but
295
also of the sins of the redeemed host, which had been placed upon him; and he must also suffer for the ruin of souls which he had caused. Then I saw that Satan and all the wicked host were consumed, and the justice of God was satisfied; and all the angelic host, and all the redeemed saints, with a loud voice said, "Amen!"
{EW 294.2}

Said the angel, "Satan is the root, his children are the branches. They are now consumed root and branch. They have died an everlasting death. They are never to have a resurrection, and God will have a clean universe." I then looked and saw the fire which had consumed the wicked, burning up the rubbish and purifying the earth. Again I looked and saw the earth purified. There was not a single sign of the curse. The broken, uneven surface of the earth now looked like a level, extensive plain.
==============================

So what say you? Did you find solid agreement between the details we just saw in the DA 753 references vs the 2nd death details seen above?

in Christ,

Bob

i think the real question is, who here shares the same picture you have of these quotes?

if Jesus was our substitute as you see it why wasnt He burning in a lake of fire for our sins, or thrown in gehenna? it also seems He would still be burning for 6000 years of sins committed by everyone because that is an awful lot of guilt.

if dying on a cross is the punishment, then why wont we all be stuck up on a cross who dont repent and be covered?


God suffered His wrath against transgression to fall on His beloved Son. Jesus was to be crucified for the sins of men. What suffering, then, would the sinner bear who continued in sin? All the impenitent and unbelieving would know a sorrow and misery that language would fail to express. {DA 743.2}
His mind passed from His own suffering to the sin of His persecutors, and the terrible retribution that would be theirs. {DA 744.2}

Upon Christ as our substitute and surety was laid the iniquity of us all. He was counted a transgressor, that He might redeem us from the condemnation of the law. The guilt of every descendant of Adam was pressing upon His heart. The wrath of God against sin, the terrible manifestation of His displeasure because of iniquity, filled the soul of His Son with consternation. ..... But now with the terrible weight of guilt He bears, He cannot see the Father's reconciling face. The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. So great was this agony that His physical pain was hardly felt. {DA 753.1}




Satan with his fierce temptations wrung the heart of Jesus. The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father's acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal. Christ felt the anguish which the sinner will feel when mercy shall no longer plead for the guilty race. It was the sense of sin, bringing the Father's wrath upon Him as man's substitute, that made the cup He drank so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God. {DA 753.2}



The spotless Son of God hung upon the cross, His flesh lacerated with stripes; those hands so often reached out in blessing, nailed to the wooden bars; those feet so tireless on ministries of love, spiked to the tree; that royal head pierced by the crown of thorns; those quivering lips shaped to the cry of woe. And all that He endured--the blood drops that flowed from His head, His hands, His feet, the agony that racked His frame, and the unutterable anguish that filled His soul at the hiding of His Father's face--speaks to each child of humanity, declaring, It is for thee that the Son of God consents to bear this burden of guilt; for thee He spoils the domain of death, and opens the gates of Paradise. He who stilled the angry waves and walked the foam-capped billows, who made devils tremble and disease flee, who opened blind eyes and called forth the dead to life,--offers Himself upon the cross as a sacrifice, and this from love to thee. He, the Sin Bearer, endures the wrath of divine justice, and for thy sake becomes sin itself. {DA 755.1}

Having looked no further than your "quote" here and Bobryan's question, the first clue that comes to mind is that Heb 2:9 says the Son of God "tasted death" for every man: he wasn't dead forever, like they shall be who are judged by hell fire instead; the cross is explained by Paul as equating with hanging, which brings the curse of God, so Christ suffering the curse is of the law for us "on a tree" makes his death the equivalent of eternal damnation of the wicked with Satan.

Isn't the comparison I'm guessing Bobryan (not having read his post yet!) is looking at the equivalency of suffering in both cases, Saviour and hell fire judgement, rather than methods to reach the same ends?

I explained this in the previous email. It doesn't seem like I should have to point this out each time. Of course you're not saying God is being tyrannical, but you were implying this was the subject matter of the paragraphs. I was pointing out that's it's not.



Don't know what you're saying here. Their exclusion from heaven is voluntary.



No idea what you're trying to say here.

Regarding what I'm emphasizing, it's that the wicked die as a result of their own choice, as opposed to something God arbitrarily does to them. I think this is an extremely important thing to emphasize. Wrong ideas about the atonement stem from this, for example.

This is the third time I'm asking the following:

I'm not understanding you Bob. I agree that the descriptions in DA 753 apply to the suffering of the wicked, and this agrees with my conception of what will happen at the end of time, but I don't see how you would think it agrees with yours. The wicked suffer mental anguish because of sin, as Christ did, but Christ was not made to pay for individual sins by being burned alive, like you think the wicked will be. It seems like what you're quoting just brings out why they way you're looking at EW 294 and DA 673 can't be right.

I think an important question as to how the death of the wicked should be viewed, as well as the atonement, is how is it that sin causes death. If sin causes death because it is deadly, then it makes sense that God would do whatever is possible to save us from sin, even to the point of giving us His Son, and allowing Him to suffer the death which is ours. Accepting this premise, it follows that for the wicked to die requires nothing more than God's allowing them to suffer the consequences of sin, which they have determined to cling to. The atonement becomes, in this perspective, the means by which God effects a reconciliation between Himself and man, thus freeing man from sin and the effects of sin.

Otoh, if we view death as something which God arbitrarily causes to happen to those who sin, ("arbitrarily" meaning "manufactured" or "imposed," not "capricious") then that changes completely the dynamics of both the judgment of the wicked and the atonement. A couple of problems I see with this point of view is that it makes sin to be innocuous (except that God doesn't like it), and it doesn't portray God's character in a positive way.

This is somewhat confusing.
I agree that their exclusion from RIGHTEOUSNESS which is the government of heaven was voluntary, but if I read the account correctly, the wicked definitely wanted to take the city of God by force and live in it. They wanted in, but on their own terms not God's.





What do you mean by "their own choice"?

The wicked die because their choices showed their rejection of the Prince of Righteousness and Love. They rejected Salvation, by this choice; thus they chose death by default, by rejecting the giver of life. For the most part they do not directly choose to die, they want to live. But they chose not to be in submission to One Who is the Source of Life, they don't want to be saved from sin.

They want to take the city and live according to their own designs. They want to dethrone God and get to the tree of life and live forever, and satan is urging them on pretending he is the rightful prince of the city. (see GC 663)

Yes, that's a way of saying it, but I don't hold myself to just that phrasiology. You'd like to agree with it, would you?