I just know that this topic has probably been dealt with but Revelation 10:6 and 15:7 both use this phrase to say how long God lives. So what do you guys think this means? If you have another topic that spoke on this in greater detail then itd be great if you posted a link to it. Thanks
It means in every Age, God lives.
If that is true then in every age the wicked will be torment. Later in Revelation it says that the smoke of the wicked’s torment goes up to the ages of ages. I find that problematic.
First this is a larger study than I was actually expecting.
Second. The SMOKE, not the torment, goes on for ages and ages.
Third. Depending on the context it is ‘ages and ages’ or ‘an age and an age’ or ‘ages of ages’ etc. Each have a completely different understanding so we have to make sure that this is what the author meant.
“That movie lasted for ages!”
vs.
“The Earth has been around for ages.”
vs.
“God lives for ages!”
In my experience, much of Biblical interpretation can be more easily settled with a little bit of “contextual common sense” if that makes sense. 
I think awakeningaletheia is asking whether the phrase used in Revelation 10:6 and 15:7 is identical with the phrase used in Rev. 14:11, whether it’s an idiom meaning unending duration, and (if it’s not) why it’s used of God in Revelation 10:6 and 15:7?
Well whether or not it truly means forever and ever or ages of ages does not matter, the only thing that is changed is if Satan is saved or not (Revelation 20), your point about the smoke rising forever and not their torments being forever settles the case of humanity ever being eternally tormented.
Still I wish some more people would take a stab at this thread. I don’t just want to admit that it means ‘forever and ever’ without first getting an informed opinion.
If ‘ages of ages’ really is an idiom for eternal then it doesn’t change much except the trinity of evil being tormented eternally, UR is still in the ballpark. But I still can’t help believing that ages of ages doe snot mean eternal, aminly because of Revelation 11:15,
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever."
Yet we know that Jesus hands over the kingdom to God the Father in the end. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:28,
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
So what gives? This has me a bit stumped.
Alright I think I found a suitable answer, since its been bugging me for a while now I did some research.
"Similarly, that God and Christ are living for “the eons of the eons” (Rev. 1:18; 4:9; 10:6; 15:7) has reference to the eons of the future, not to the present eon. That is not to say that God and Christ Jesus are not living during the previous eons. God was the living pre-eonian God. He is the living eonian God, and He will be the living post-eonian God. Paul, when writing to Timothy, said (1 Tim. 4:10), “For this we are toiling and being reproached, for we rely on the living God, Who is the Saviour of all mankind, especially of believers.”(An Analytical Study of Words --Louis Abbott)
In the King James version God liveth for ever in both chapters, and in the Good News Bible God lives for ever and ever! What do the Greek scholars have to say??
Michael Witty
If it’s possible for a created being to be so irrevokably evil that he deserves unending torment, and if God created such a being, doesn’t it weaken the arguments we use to support UR?
I’d like to see what our Greek scolars have to say too.
I found this on another thread.
And
After pondering this for a moment I think I now understand. God is the great ‘I am’, from age to age he is Yahveh. When God spoke to Moses he said that he was the Hayah (I am). If we take this seriously then we know that God is, and he will never cease to be. If he ceases then we cease and this simply will not happen. God lives into the ages of the ages, just as he is the God of the ages. A quote comes to mind which I cannot remember the source of it, but it went along the lines, “People must know that God lived in these times too”. God lives TODAY, tomorrow he will be alive, and the next day and the next. God lives to the ages of ages, yet he lived before the ages of ages, and he will live after the ages of ages. At least that is what I got from my study and the understanding of Jesus which I have come to.
Coincidentally I had a friend grill me about “eis aionas aionon” today, both from Rev but also 1 Tim 1:17, unfortunately I hadn’t thought about it properly for eons 
, so didn’t have much of a reply 
, Paul"]Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
to de basilei ton aionon, aphtharto, aorato, mono theo, time kai doxa eis tous aionas ton aionon; amen.
It also came up in “Terms for Eternity: Aiônios & aïdios” talk part 2 but I felt the answer wasn’t detailed enough 
The English word “tall” is a relative word. There is nothing in its meaning which indicates the height of the object described. One may speak of “a tall building”. Probably every building described as “tall” is over 20 ft. high. So would it make sense to say that one of the meanings of “tall” is “being over 20 ft. high”? A man may be described as tall, but no man is over 20 ft. high. Does “tall” take on a different meaning when applied to a man? I don’t think so. The word “tall” NEVER has an inherent meaning of being over 20 ft. tall, even though it is used to describe objects over 20 ft. tall.
A similar situation applies concerning the Greek word “αἰωνιος” (aiōnios”). Perhaps the best English translation of the word is “lasting”. Like “tall”, the word “lasting” is relative. There is nothing in its meaning which indicates how long the object or condition described, lasts.
The word was used in koine Greek (the Greek spoken from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D.) to refer to anything which is enduring. The word was used by Diodorus Siculus to describe the stone used to build a wall. I am not sure how long the stone would last. 500 years? 1000 years?
Josephus in “The Wars of the Jews” book 6, states that Jonathan was condemned to “αἰωνιος” imprisonment. Yet that prison sentence lasted only three years.
In an English translation of the Septuagint, while in the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed:
Water was poured around me to the soul: the lowest deep compassed me, my head went down to the clefts of the mountains; I went down into the earth, whose bars are the αἰωνιος barriers: yet, O lord my God, let my ruined life be restored. Jonah 2:5,6
The Hebrew uses the word “owlam”, the Hebrew equivalent of “αἰωνιος”. Yet Jonah prayed for deliverance, and he spent only three days and nights imprisoned by those barriers.
So again, there is nothing inherent in the meaning of “αἰωνιος” which indicates how long the object or condition described lasts. Thus, though “αἰωνιος” is used to describe the eternal God, we cannot infer from this fact that “αἰωνιος” sometimes MEANS “eternal”, just as we cannnot infer from the fact that “tall” sometimes describes objects over 20 ft. high, that the word sometimes MEANS “over 20 ft. high”.
Chrysostum in his Homily of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, wrote that the kingdom of Satan “is αἰωνιος. In other words it will cease with the present αἰων (age).” So it seems that Chrysostum apparently believed that “αἰωνιος” meant exactly the opposite to “eternal”! ---- not only “ lasting” but also “temporary”.
A similar case may be made for the Greek expression “εις τους αἰωνας των αἰωνων” (into the ages of the ages). This is an expression which might be translated “for ages and ages”. There is nothing in meaning of the expression which indicates exactly how long this period is, but it does indicate a very long period of time. Like “αἰωνιος”, it can describe objects or conditions which are everlasting as well as those which last for a finite period of time. So just because the phrase is used to describe God does not imply that it must always describe objects or conditions which are everlasting.
But what is the point being made in Rev. 10:6, and 15::7?
Unless "εις τους αἰωνας των αἰωνων" is used as a euphamisim (an idiom) for unending duration in those passages, isn’t it a gross understatement???
I mean, what is the point of saying that an immortal God lives “for ages and ages”?
It also came up in “Terms for Eternity: Aiônios & aïdios” talk part 2 but I felt the answer wasn’t detailed enough
Have we found the universalists’ achilles heel? This seems like a real problem!
One could ask a similar question concerning Romans 16:26.
What is the point of calling an immortal God “ὁ αἰωνιος θεος” (The lasting God)? Why didn’t Paul call Him “ὁ αἰδιος θεος” (The eternal God)? After all, the same Paul, writing the same letter, referred to God’s “eternal (αἰδιος) power and deity” in Romans 1:20. So it wasn’t that Paul didn’t have the word “αἰδιος” at his disposal.
I don’t know the answer. I guess it’s the genius of the language (a “smart” sounding answer to cover ignorance). It seems that Paul must have had a reason for choosing “αἰωνιος” instead of “αἰδιος”. Nevertheless, I will hazard a guess. Paul wanted to make clear that the secret which has been made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith, would in fact bring about that obedience — that because God is lasting, He will be able to take all the time that is necessary to make it happen.
I guess my answer wasn’t good enough huh? Lol well back to the drawing board I guess. Aha! Okay I want everyone to PAY ATTENTION please. I looked up other places where it says God lives forever and I found one in Daniel 12:7,
The man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, lifted his right hand and his left hand toward heaven, and I heard him swear by him who lives forever(olam), saying, "It will be for a time, times and half a time. When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed."
Now as we know there is allot of support for ‘olam’ being a limited duration (its applied to doors, mountains, ended covenants, Solomon’s temple, days, years etc). So we must ask ourselves why did Daniel use this ambiguous term when he could have used ‘ad’ (which means perpetual). In fact one single ‘olam’ seems even less time than ‘ages of ages’. The LXX translates it this way ζώντι εις αιώνα (one living to the age), again why not use the word aidios?
The answer is simple, the term living to the age or ‘ages of ages’ does not limit God’s duration, it simply means he lives during the age, once the age ends he is still the ‘I am’, he is deathless. The definition of the Greek word ‘eis’(into) lends support to this idea,
God lives into the age, and the ‘ages of ages’(the two crowning ages). If I say I lived during WWII it doesn’t mean I cease to exist after the War, it means I lived during that time. Problem solved hopefully 
P.S. The very name Yahweh means ‘the eternal’, so to say Yahweh is eternal is like, saying the blue sky is blue. Its redundant, this solves the problem of why the Jewish people always translated ‘olam’ as ‘aion’ even when it referred to God. They didn’t need another word to communicate eternal, God was eternal to them, it was simply assumed.
If you still have questions I suggest you check out this link: tentmaker.org/books/asw/Chapter5.html
I certainly agree that God is pre-eonian/eonian and that having this revealed in the Bible is important. However, unfortunately I didn’t understand what Louis Abbott meant by post-eonian and why he then quoted 1 Tim 4:10 
Good point, however that actually seems to support the angle I’ve adopted, that aion/aionas/aionon/aionios is about location/quality rather than duration i.e. immortal is a duration descriptor.
That’s the conclusion I’m leaning towards too 
So it seems like there might be multiple (although not infinite) ages of punishment, but God will be in each
I think Abbott’s point was that God is the living God, meaning he is always alive,
“…we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
That is a possibility since Weymouth translated it Punishment of the Ages. Though I am more inclined to believe that ‘ages of ages’ means the two crowning ages. The first is the millennial kingdom (whether literally a 1000 years I know not), I believe this will be more like the wicked are sleeping in the dust. The next age will be the one where the wicked are put into the Lake of Fire( again I think its not literally a fiery lake, simply a metaphor). During this age we hear God on the throne utter these words, "Look! I am making everything new!” The present tense gives hope that there is still work to be done. I believe 1 Corinthians 15 goes beyond Revelation 22 here. Once Christ has made everyone subject to God then Jesus will hand over the kingdom to him, that God may be all in all. This makes sense of the fact that Jesus reigns for the ‘ages of ages’, he reigns during the millennial and punishment age until all enemies are conquered by love.
Just my two cents