My life was pretty straight. My mother told me about Christ and I just followed him. Nothing influenced me.

Thanks to our Lord!

Thanks

Mark

The answer to your question is actually in my post above. And yes I mean AIWNION, from the noun AIWN. It does work for every instance. If you look at the covenant with the Israelites, it was age-lasting and the Messiah did come at the end of that same age and brought in a new age and made a new covenant in his blood. In that case olam does not mean everlasting.

Then you have as I mentioned above, age-lasting life. Age-lasting life simply means you have life thru that whole age, without mentioning the next age. If you take the narrow view, it may seem so to the reader. But the concept of eternal life is not restricted to the meaning of AIWNIOS as I mentioned above. It is the greater context of the Word that explains everlasting life. For instance verses that mentions, the esteem that will be revealed to those who belong to the Messiah in the ages to come; believers taking part in the first resurrection shall not die again; and mortality putting on immortality.

You can take The Age-lasting Test in translation, it works every single time. The verse from Mark 10:30 makes that point “in the age to come age-lasting life”. It simply means in that age we have age-lasting life, but the broader Word explains that we have eternal life. It is not just the meaning of one single word.

To give you one last example. Our Creator Himself, is said to accomplish “mighty works” and having “mighty power”. But the overall Word definitely describes Him as the All powerful. So the explanation of His eternal and almighty greatness does not lie in words like the Greek MEGAS meaning great, although it is applied to Him. The narraw view of looking at the word ‘great’ does not explain His almighty power, but rather the overall word. So we don’t translate the word MEGAS when it is applied to Him, as almighty, because it is not explained by this single word. So likewise AIWNIOS the adjective form of AIWN can safely be translated age-during in every instance, yet we understand everlasting life from the broader Word.

Joseph

Do you mean αἰώνιος? Comes from αἰών and is similar to עֹלָם. αἰών was used for an unbroken age, eternity, the universe, world, period of time, and age. αἰώνιος was used for everlasting, without beginning, without end, never ceasing, that which always has been and always will be. Both words are used more than a hundred times in the New Testament. Does your translation/definition work in every case? Language, usage, context. Do the words mean the same thing in every usage, every context?

Thanks!

Mark

I think we can agree that the teaching of eternal hellfire is false. The literal translation is the correct translation. When the scriptures says “age-during life”, that’s exactly what it means. Now everlasting life is not limited to the definition of “AIWNION”. Everlasting life is found in the verses that says “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” – 1 Cor. 15:53

Age-during life is the promise of life mentioned concerning those who will be resurrected at the end of this age, for the thousand year long age. It means that these will live that whole age. The book of Revelations say that those who take part in this resurrection will never taste death again. So age-during life is the correct translation of “ZWHN AIWNION”.

“But he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come age-during life.” – Mark 10:30

So there are those that receive age-during life in the age to come, and after that age they don’t die because they have put on immortality, but lives unto the ages of the ages. Forever. It is how the scripture add up, not just the meaning of age-during life.

I’m only hoping to provide a helpful explanation here.

I do agree with you that I was a “theist in the making.” I just didn’t know it at the time. One of the amazing truths I’ve realized since becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is that He chose me for Himself. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6) It is quite extraordinary and humbling to realize that God chose us to belong to Him before He created the worlds.

If we had spoken about this before 1971, I would have agreed with you. I had no desire to want “to go there” as you put it. I enjoyed fighting the good fight of atheism and used my radio talk show to get out the word about how ridiculous it was to believe in a “god.” I had no desire to change at all. I was confident in my beliefs as an atheist. I was a “scientifically thinking atheist,” so there’s one person I know who was “won” to the other side. However, that other side is not one of “no evidence,” as you say.

Thank you for reading the post and I hope you’ll return again for the next post about my journey through the evidence.

Appreciate the insight into this and looking forward to your future articles.

God bless,

Ed

If you’ll permit a bit of a ramble, I’ve always felt the idea that causality works at all is support for theism. That is, there is no secular answer for the question “Why does science work?”. Modern people (following the agnostic philosopher David Hume) admit that we have no answer for why there should be discoverable patterns to reality.

Those that invented science, however, did so because they believed that the world was made by a rational creator. They rightly saw the advance of science as a reason to believe in God.

But, that is enough of a tangent for one comment. Thanks for putting this up.