Tom, you have yet to explain what God does to prevent sinners from reaping the results of sinning the moment they sin and during judgment as they revisit millions of sins one at a time. I assume you believe it is the same thing God did to prevent Jesus from dying prematurely throughout His life and on the cross. If so, then you believe God does something supernatural to keep them alive becauswe otherwise, like Jesus, they would die prematurely.

So, the question is - What kind of God supernaturally keeps sinners alive, writhing in agony, so they don't die prematurely?

Tom, you have yet to explain how sin kills sinners (when God stops supernaturally preventing it). Sometimes you say the revelation of God's character will kill them, and other times you say sin will kill them. You say God's character gives life to the righteous and takes it from the wicked. You define death as the cessation of brain and blood functions. So, how does sin or God's character, cause these functions to cease?

My bad. I misread what you said. You caught me with the double negative!

When you say the law specifies death for the sinner, what specifically are you thinking of? Is it that "the wages of sin is death" and similar statements specifying that those who sin will die? Assuming so, I don't think either crucifixion or death by fire have anything to do with this. Christ could have died in Gethsemane just as well as on the cross.



So it seems you are suggesting that any sort of death would work. In this case, why would God choose such an inhumane method? That doesn't make sense to me. Especially when GC 541-543 tells us that God will use the principles of "kindness, mercy and love" in the judgment, as well as telling us that the exclusion from heaven of the wicked is voluntary with themselves. It doesn't seem to me that anyone would voluntarily choose to be set on fire for days. I think that's something you'd have to force upon someone.



I think I've been quoting DA 753, and saying that Christ suffered the anguish the wicked will suffer.



Since I quoted her, I think she did.



I don't think I said this when I quoted her.



I agree with this. It doesn't mean the same thing for me as for you, but I agree with it nonetheless.



Do you think physical pain will be the primary source of suffering for the wicked? (I suppose so, if you think they'll be burned alive.)



That was part of suffering; not all of it.



I haven't claimed this. I've not said the lost will suffer everything Christ did.



Where does she say this?

To be clear as to what I am saying, I've quoted the following:



This says that Christ felt the anguish which the sinner will feel when mercy no longer plead for the guilty race.

She also wrote:



This makes me think that the wicked, who will have to bear their own guilt, will be crushed by it.

She also wrote:



This says that Christ "suffered the death which was ours," which is speaking of the second death. This also is drawing an equivalence between the suffering the lost will experience in death and His.

It's necessary that the entire universe agree in regards to God's character.



The Great Controversy is all about God. His character has been on trial. It is necessary that the entire universe render judgment. In order for the lost to render judgment, they must be made aware of what has happened in their lives. Unfortunately, this causes suffering for them, as does the loss they experience.

I'll quote from someone that touches more on this point in a moment.

At any rate, there's no way the judgment can be completed without the lost suffering. It's not something causes or wants to happen, but it's inevitable, as is their death. Suffering and death are the inevitable results of sin.



I don't recall saying this.



I have been saying this, sort of. What I've actually been saying is that their death is the inevitable result of sin. The best explanation I know of this is DA 764, which I've often quoted.



Not exactly, but close. I quoted from DA 108, which says that the light of the glory of God, which gives life to the righteous, will slay the wicked. The context makes clear this is speaking of the revelation of God's character (the very next sentence(!!) speaks of Christ, the revealer of God's character).



I've not defined death this way. I said that death (the second death, I take it you're talking about) *involves* the cessation of thought and consciousness, but I did not define the second death to be this.



Take a look at DA 107-108, 764, and GC 541-543, in addition to the last chapter of "The Great Controversy." Try to come up with something which ties all these passages together. I've been working on this for years. Some things I can say for sure. They are:

1.God is the fountain of life; and when one chooses the service of sin, he separates from God, and thus cuts himself off from life.
2.God gives them existence for a time that they may develop their character and reveal their principles. This accomplished, they receive the results of their own choice.
3.By a life of rebellion, Satan and all who unite with him place themselves so out of harmony with God that His very presence is to them a consuming fire.
4.The glory of Him who is love will destroy them.
5.The light of the glory of God, which imparts life to the righteous, will slay the wicked.
6.God will use the principles of "kindness, mercy, and love."

As far as I'm aware, we're not given the explicit detail you seem to be asking for. I'm trying not to go beyond what revelation has said.

Part 1:

Sin changes us so that God's very presence becomes a consuming fire. When Cain sinned he was still able to talk to God. Yet when God talked to his people who he just delivered from slavery people asked for God to talk to someone to give them God's message instead of hearing God speak directly. When this intecesser asked to see God, God told him that if he saw God's face, like Cain did, that he, Moses would die, so for Moses' protection he was hid in the cleft of the rock and only allowed to see the back of God.

Back to when God spoke on Mt. Sinai, there was a border around the mountain that if anyone crossed that border that they should be put to death, this was to protect from the chance of seeing God's face.

When the prophets would see God in vision they felt that they were being burned alive, but they came to find themselves transforming from where this fire burned them that they came to thrive in this flame.

Salvation and what ever Jesus did on the cross was to give to humanity the experience of the prophets of finding this fire of the visible presence of God from making them feel like they were being burned alive to coming to thrive in this fire.

Part 2:

Jesus is our deepest desire, the desire of ages, the desire of all nations, the one beloved of women (probably the least known, but very important Old Testament name of Jesus). The psalmist, talking about God's law which is a reflection of the character of Jesus says that Jesus is more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey. The angels announced to the shepherds that they had news of great joy to the chosen few, that they had news of great joy to only the honest in heart, that they had news of great joy for those who do not love the world.-- Wait a minute, am I quoting the angels correctly? Surely this is what the angels said, they must not have meant news of great joy to ALL people, could they?

When we sinned we developed the sinful nature, as Mrs. White describes in the communion chapter "There is in man a disposition to esteem himself above his brethren, to serve self, to seek the highest place and often this results in evil surmisings and bitterness of spirit." or as the poet - philosopher Eli Siegel said "There is in every person a disposition to think they are for themselves by making less of the outside world" or as the psychiatrist William Glasser says that we think it's natural to try to control people through external control psychology, but it ends up destroying the relationships that we need and long for.

If all we had was the sinful nature there would be no problem. However before casting Adam and Eve out of Eden God said to mankind that there would be enmity between the woman's seed and the serpent, besides being a promise of the messiah, it was also telling us that our deepest desire is NOT our sinful nature but our desire to be like and with Jesus. So all of us are in a horrible fight between our sinful nature and our deepest desire.

Now just because it is the most powerful thing in us, like a small group of tyrants controlling a large group of people, our deepest desire may not always be in control, at times we allow our sinful nature, the weaker of the two, be the one who give the control of our life over to. Since this is the weaker desire it is like kicking against the thorns. We are all a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We all have a bit of Abraham inside of us and we all have a bit of Herod inside of us. At one moment we yield to the Holy Spirit and go towards our deepest desire, another moment we yield to our sinful nature. Yet despite being the weaker of the 2 it is still wide spread in us and touches everything we do, even the good. Even the desire to be with Jesus is tinged with a little selfishness, and selfishness is our sinful nature, and thus our best works are like filthy rags. But as we go through life and make choices we develop characteristic tendencies to either yield to the Holy Spirit, or our tendency to think we are for ourselves by making less of the outside world.

At the end of time when we all see Jesus in person, for those who have been responding to the work of the Holy Spirit on their heart will find it heaven to be living in the consuming fire. But others who see their deepest desire but have had their sinful nature be in control of their lives are in a horrible hell of wanting to come to Jesus, but refusing to. They developed characters of revisiting the drawing power of the love of Christ on their lives on earth, and they find that they continue their habit of rejecting the drawing power of the love of Jesus on their hearts as they stand outside the Holy City with God's love trying to draw them in. But despite Jesus being their deepest desire they have been unforgiving people and they see the contrast between their sinfulness and Jesus's purity and they are horrified as to how ugly their sins are. Hitler sees what he did not from the eyes of good people who were living in the 20th century and thus thousands of years degraded from Eden, but he views it through the perspective of the love and purity of God. While the saved respond to this horrible event by casing our crowns at the feet of Jesus and cry "worthy, worthy worthy is the lamb" the sinner, being unforgiving in nature cannot conserve of God forgiving them and fear that some time some place, God will get them for their sins, so they want to pull back from the only source of life and flee from what they know they deserve... However Jesus is still their deepest desire, Grace is still crying out to them, The birth of Jesus is still good news for them, but they turn it into the most horrible event that ever happened. They want to come and bow and say worthy is the Lamb, but they wont.

They see loved ones inside the city who they loved being with on earth and they so long to throw their arms around them again and hug and kiss them again and shed tears of joy at having a wonderful reunion, they feel this craving even more for Jesus, but they remember how they have used Glasser's external control psychology over their loved one, and see others in the city who they have also hurt and they feel horrified at what they have done and realize that if they were inside the city that they would still revert back to that selfish activity and they are horrified at what they have become, and they know that the one sitting on the throne sees the deepest recesses of their hearts and they choose to resist their longing to throw their arms around their loved ones just to get away from the purity of that holy place. They want to come, but they won't, Jesus is their deepest desire, but they refuse to yield to his love for them. they refuse to believe that he loves and forgives and would heal them. "For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (John 3:20) Jesus may be their deepest desire but they fear that if they were to yield to him that he will reprove them for their deeds. Jesus goes on to say that those who do come to the light, instead of finding a condemning God instead find that their deeds change and manifest that they are wrought in God. The unforgiving nature of the lost cannot make them able to conceive God forgiving and healing them.

Still Jesus is their deepest desire. They are bombarded by the full force of the Holy Spirit, the full drawing power of the love of God and they are overwhelmed by the love and beauty of Jesus. Calvin saw the power of this and felt that God's love must be revealed to only certain people because you cannot exist while rejecting it. But Calvin believed in the immortality of everyone. If you don't have Calvin's universal immortality, you have the answer of how God kills. God's irresistible grace being rejected by people who choose to reject, equals the inability to exist.

If God did not want to kill, God could be a strict Calvinist and only show his grace and love to those who he knows would accept it. But God shows irresistible grace and love to everyone, whether it gives those who come into contact with it eternal life or eternal death. God does one act: shows up in person in his full loving glorious self, and like putting in a clay pot and an ice sculpture in a kiln, one can be transformed from the fire into a wonderful work of art the other melts away unable to stand the heat. The kiln does not have two settings one to make works of art the other to destroy ice sculptures, but the one and same act does both.

The horror of hell is loosing our deepest desire, loosing Jesus. The center of the doctrine of hell is Jesus. Jesus himself is the lake of fire.

Part 3:

We see how God kills in the garden and on the cross. Jesus wanted to be with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Holy Spirit wanted to be with Jesus. Jesus so desired to be with the Father and the Father so desired to be with Jesus. But they knew that if they did not take sin upon themselves that it would kill us, so while the lost want to come to Jesus but refuse to yield to this longing out of selfish reasons, Jesus and the Father refused to yield to their desire to be with each other out of love for us and choosing to allow my sin to separate them, maybe even eternally, if it would keep sin from killing me.

The resurrection tells us that if we would only yield to our deepest desire to be like and with God, that all the sins of the world cannot keep us apart.

The previous three posts are by Kevin H., who is a member of this forum. He gave me permission to post the above.

I like these thoughts very much. I hope they help in understanding why the wicked suffer and die.

1. What is their source of life while separated and cut off?
2. You said they are separated and cut off, what, then, is their source of life?
3. Why hasn't the presence of God destroyed evil angels yet? What is their source of life? Why aren't they dead?
4. Why doesn't the glory of God consume and destroy them now? I assume you believe the glory of God is His character.
5. How does His character impart life? How does it slay alive the living?
6. But it says mercy no longer pleads for the wicked.