shohn,
I followed your reference from the other post concerning Revelation 21:8. I definitely was missing your point but in both cases I think it is an issue translation without context. Olam or Owlam is often translated in error. There is a whole website on just this word see
http://www.owlam.com/ (don't get caught up in his AEF discussion because he never really draws a conclusion other than we can't determine the context because we weren't there when author wrote it.)
Look at the
Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon for owlam:
KJV (439) - alway, 2; always, 3; ancient, 5; ever, 272; everlasting, 63; evermore, 15; long, 2; misc, 6; more, 2; never, 13; never + (0408), 2; old, 22; perpetual, 22; time, 6; world, 4;
NAS (299) - Everlasting, 2; ages, 1; all successive, 1; always, 1; ancient, 13; ancient times, 3; continual, 1; days of old, 1; eternal, 2; eternity, 3; ever, 10; everlasting, 110; forever, 70; forever and ever, 1; forevermore, 1; lasting, 1; long, 2; long ago, 3; long past, 1; long time, 3; never, 17; old, 11; permanent, 10; permanently, 1; perpetual, 29; perpetually, 1;
It would take to long to hit every reference or should I say it would take "owlam". I'm sorry, I couldn't resist that one. hehehe
Suffice it to say the context should define "forever" or "a really long time". Yahuweh never contradicts himself and is perfectly consistent.
Let me address a logic flaw in a statement you made.
Quote:In the Septuagint the Greek word, aion, is used to translate the
Hebrew word olam. Thus, if we want to get a sense of the New
Testament meaning of aion, we need to understand the meaning of
olam in the Old Testament.
That just isn't true unless you are assuming that in all places you see aion in the Renewed Covenant the original text was Hebrew and used the word owlam.
Jim