You are correct Gary that aionios in Romans 16:26 does describe God.
It tells us that He is the eonian God which is describing Him as the God pertaining to the eons. When the eons end He will no longer have eons to be God over. He will then be God, All in all. All eonian punishment is just punishment or chastening pertaining to the eons.
If just one goes to an eternal hell then Christ died in vain.
All of the arguments in your new post are refuted through the search engine at the top of the front page on the tentmaker site at http://www.tentmaker.org
Type in a key word or phrase from any of your posted arguments or scripture passages that you quoted and ten articles will come up refuting the claim that the Bible teaches eternal torment. Then click to the next page and ten more articles will come up, and so on and so on for many, many pages.
Regarding the most common argument that the same word for "punishment" is also used for "life" see the following:
All three of these articles should be studied with care, especially the third one.
http://concordant.org/expohtml/TheEons/aion.html
http://concordant.org/version/tranprin.html
Gary, within the wise counsel of His decretive will, both you and I will influence others exactly as much as God wants us to at any point in time. In that great truth I continue to relax. The strongest influence will prevail every time. It always does.
I am just so glad that according to the growing number of positive emails in my email file folders and the many messages in my guest book, the same information that enabled me to recover from a twelve year nervous breakdown is also helping other people to truly love God with all of their heart for the first time. People who want to keep believing like you do will embrace your arguments without question. But other people tell me they are glad to know that there is evidence that the Bible does not support such a concept of God as you see in the Bible.
You tell me what kind of God you see in the Bible, and I will know what kind of person you are.
It seems that we have come to a stalemate in our debate. We both think that the Greek scholars on which we rely are the most reliable. That being the case I think the decision should be made on which perception of God best glorifies Him. Does it best glorify Him to let anyone suffer forever, or does it best glorify Him to successfully bring influence to bear on them so they won't have to suffer forever. For me the choice is a no brainer.
From Rodger Tutt in Toronto, Canada
"That God may be All in all" 1Cor.15:28
