…continued & ended]
Rev 6:12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood,
Rev 6:13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale;
Rev 6:14 the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
Rev 6:15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains,
Rev 6:16 calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and
hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
Rev 6:17
for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?"
Rev 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it;
from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the fountains of water, and they became blood.
Rev 16:5 And I heard the angel of water say, "Just art thou in these thy judgments, thou who art and wast, O Holy One.
Rev 16:6 For men have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink. It is their due!"
Rev 16:7 And I heard the altar cry, “Yea, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are thy judgments!”
God is praised for his judgements upon the wicked, and rightly - I hope St. John will not be called a “sadist”.
It is entirely possible to abominate one’s own wickednesses, and to believe that they richly deserve damnation; and to be glad that God is too merciful to overlook them. ##
God’s justice is very different, as is made clear in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1-15. You should read it. Here is a comment on it from Fr Hilarion Alfeyev’s ‘The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian’, p. 296. ISBN 08790775X:
"A place in the kingdom of heaven is given to a person, not on the basis of his worthiness or unworthiness, but on the basis of God’s mercy and love for humankind. The kingdom of heaven is not a reward, and gehenna [which will have an end] is not a requital: both are gifts of a merciful God ‘who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’" [1 Tim 2:4]
And you would actually assert that God cannot save all men?
Can God avert the events of 1517 ? Perhaps - but to do so might well make nonsense of the choices men made then - and since. We live within time & space, even though God does not. We make choices - including choosing to sin. If we become hardened and die - how can we be saved ? If we can be saved after death, why don’t we forget about Christ in this world, sin, and be saved in the next ? Why did the martyrs die for Christ when they could’ve have had a good time as apostates, and been forgiven after death ?
IMHO, this doctrine is immoral.
- unless, of course, I’ve missed something; which is quite possible ##
The parable of the laborers in the vineyard tells us that, from God’s point-of-view, work, whether large or small, is work and that all workers deserve equal recompense no matter how much work they may or may not have done. Similarly, sin is sin, and all deserve equal recompense.
This must mean that, since we are all sinners, we are all destined for hell. Or it must mean that God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, willl lead all souls to heaven, though it will take longer for the wicked to get there since they will have to undergo the dreadful detour of gehenna.
Why need that parable mean either 
? If it must mean both - it may mean neither. There are other possibilities. FWIW, I’ve never heard of either those interpretations until I read that post. IMO, it doesn’t refer to eschatology at all - I think it may be about the call of the Jews and Gentiles.
What I agree with entirely, is that the Kingdom of Heaven is not a reward: it is the exercise of the Kingship of JHWH - so how *could *it be a reward ? ##
