Maybe that's because you read the Bible in the original languages.Sam Vara wrote:I can't find the bit about eternal consequences, here or in an "ever present" form.
Otherwise, per NIV:
Matthew 18:8:
If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
Matthew 25:41, 46:
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
2 Thessalonians 1:
5 All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. 6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
Jude 1:6
6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.
Probably most people in the world have known Christianity to be the fire-and-brimstone religion, though.On a more general level, there are a huge number of sophisticated and impassioned debates over the meaning of what Jesus said. I probably live among liberal and tender-minded Christians, but the idea of eternal damnation does not gain much favour with them. Nor the idea of an eternal soul which can suffer it. Some angry right-wing Christians believe it, but then again there are some people who call themselves Buddhists who think and say some decidedly odd things...