REASON #31
Endless conscious torment would NOT bring God honor and glory. Rather, restoration and renewal would. But, this is not saying that everyone will choose to live endlessly.
Some will refuse and reject God, even at the cost of their lives. That is the grim reality. So, does God get what he wants?
Yes, because God wants to give each of us human beings the right of free choice and he will not take it back from us, even if we die eternal death for it.
Some will choose death, meaning permanent death over permanent life. But why? Because their hatred for the God of the Bible is so ingrained, they will not repent of it, no matter what.
Yes, I do believe in annihilation. God is merciful and will not allow them to suffer for all time to come; they will be unconscious for all time to come.
Jeremiah 51:39, 57. Starting in verse says: 36 ‘Therefore thus says the LORD; Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you; and I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry.
37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.
38 They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps. 39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD. 40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
Then on to verse 55 Because the LORD has spoiled Babylon, and destroyed out of her the great voice; when her waves do roar like great waters, a noise of their voice is uttered: 56 Because the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, every one of their bows is broken: for the LORD God of recompenses shall surely requite.
57 And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, says the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.
58 Thus says the LORD of hosts; ‘The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.’
In their rejoicing on earth, the LORD himself will allow them to do horrific evil, but in the end, he will surely requite them and make them ‘sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake’.
I cannot be awake and asleep at the same time. Babylon is real as well as symbolic for the wicked who will be destroyed completely (annihilated).
When all is quiet and the Earth and all the universe is at rest and in peace, then God will be glorified for he has given us life and brought life to the worlds he has made. The wicked simply will be no more. They will be as though they had never been.