"Words have meanings. They should be used with care."
When you read something in the Bible, the Word of God, the book of Truth, you would think that they are reliable words. True, interpretation from language to language does tend to cause some corruption to the meaning at times, but certain concepts transfer pretty readily.
Take the concept of forever, for example. If God says that something will last forever, we should be pretty safe to assume that is synonymous with eternal, not "for a really long time" or "until the earth is replaced on Judgement Day" or "until the sun goes supernova and swallows the earth." So when you see text like Genesis 13:15, where God gives a specific chunk of land on this specific planet to a specific group of people forever, you've got to stop and wonder how on earth that could be true.
This is especially puzzling when put in light of some of Christian eschatology which proposes that at some point in time this physical existence will cease to be. Then, it seems, people are anxious to redefine forever. Forever will come to an end some day, and then a new forever will begin. It is all pretty amusing to me; the things we will believe.
If you've got some time, follow this link, which is a search on Bible Gateway for "forever." Pretty interesting stuff...
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