This is a rebuttal to the 18th alleged Bible contradiction

Question 18: Is it possible to never die at all?

These are the verses Evans presented to make his claim.

In the 'no' category, we have

Romans 5:12

and in the 'yes' category, we have

John 8:51.

Note: If I find verses to be repetitive or unnecessary, I may decide not
to quote them.

My standard prefacing comments:

God's dealing with Mankind has been chopped up into various dispensations,
starting with that of Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham, then to Moses,
then to Jesus (who gave us the Church Age), then to the Millennial Reign
of Christ, etc. The moral constraints that God places on the people of the
earth are primarily dictated by the dispensation the individuals were born
within and their undefiled consciences.
The Bible reveals the big doctrines of God progressively over time,
such as heaven, hell, angels, devils, salvation, the Messiah, etc. As a
consequence, the verses in the back of the Bible (i.e., the Gospels on)
tend to be more authoritative than those in the beginning of the Bible.
As a corollary to this, often part of the revelation given to the prophet
will not make any sense to the prophet or even to the people of his own
generation. In my novels I refer to these verses as 'praega talleas' or
hidden gems, not capable of being appreciated or even understood until
centuries or even millenia later.
Not all verses are equally authoritative. What Jesus said trumps every
other writing in the Bible.
Not all people are equally equal. Jesus Christ is not just another man
among the billions of people. Jesus, not you or me, is God in the flesh.
In the Church Age, the true followers of Jesus, by the grace of God, are
partakers of the divine nature [2 Peter 1:4], but they are not themselves
divine. See also Galatians 5:16.
Just because a certain action or claim is recorded about someone in the
Bible, doesn't mean that God approved of it. They may even be sincere
and still get it wrong. Remember Job's friends who came to Job to
commiserate with him and later to advise him on righteousness and the
nature of God? They assumed that they were acting as the oracles of God,
but God gave them a stern rebuke for their errors. But even if God did
not approve of some claim or action, that does not mean that the Bible
specifically condemned it in the attending verses.
My favorite way to attempt to resolve controversial doctrines or claims is
to collect all verses on the matter and then consisticize them so as to reduce
the number of apparent contradictions, if there are any. Like it or not, the
Bible has to be interpreted by the Bible.
I am not a Christian apologist. It may take twenty years of hard study
to be good at Christian apologetics, and I'm too old to start education for
that now. I'm just a Christian who has had to deal with some of these
hard questions on my own.

On the No side:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:.
-- Romans 5:12

On the Yes side:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he
shall never see death.
-- John 8:51

My answer

Mr. Evans has some trouble here with the subtlety of these verses.
Physical death, as a curse of the Fall, has indeed passed to all the
descendants of Adam. It's like a legal sentence. But actual physical
death has not come to all and in the future will not go to all. God said,

[I] will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew
mercy on whom I will shew mercy. [Exodus 33:19]

There were two in the Old Testament days that I know of that did not
taste death: Enoch and Elijah:

Let's begin with this verse:

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
-- Genesis 5:24

This short sentence does not give details, but I would say that Enoch
had been raptured by God in the twinkling of an eye, which is to say,
quickly. Now, let's look at a New Testament rapture verse.

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put
on immortality. -- 1 Corinthians 15:50-53

So, Paul used the word "sleep" as a metaphor for death. And,

15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we
which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall
not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself
shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ
shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall
be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
-- 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

Now, for Elijah:

8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote
the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they
two went over on dry ground. 9 And it came to pass, when they
were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall
do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said,
I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. 10 And
he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see
me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not,
it shall not be so. 11 And it came to pass, as they still went on,
and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and
horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up
by a whirlwind into heaven. -- 2 Kings 2:8-12

Way to go, Elijah! He got an express ride to heaven and cut through
all the usual red tape.

Ok, so what did Jesus mean when he said, "he shall never see death."
In Christendom there is both physical death and spiritual death. Quoting
again from the Book of John:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall
not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
-- John 5:24

This refers to a spiritual conversion by which someone enters the
Kingdom of God in the spiritual. What this means is that if he or she
should die right then, his or her soul would go to heaven. But it is
not a promise that the person will never experience physical death.

Paul, like Jesus before him, used the word "dead" as a metaphor:

But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth
-- 1 Timothy 5:6

Jesus used the word "sleep" as a metaphor. He had entered into the
house where a young maiden had recently died so He could heal her:

52 And all wept, and bewailed her: but he said, Weep not;
she is not dead, but sleepeth. 53 And they laughed him to
scorn, knowing that she was dead. 54 And he put them all out,
and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise.
55 And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway: and
he commanded to give her meat.
-- Luke 8:52-55

To most people, the words of Jesus here are strange. Why did He
use the word "sleep" when He could have been conventional and
just said "dead"? I suppose to the unbelievers out there, it must
seem like the 'fiction writer of the book of Luke' just wanted to
make the Messiah look impressive by His pretentious use of
"deep" words, mysteriously wrapped in an enigma. Because gurus
are supposed to talk mysteriously like that, right?

But I have a much simpler explanation that happens to fit in with
Jesus's usual preaching. It's my personal interpretation, so you
can take it with a grain of salt. Jesus was always and everywhere
taking advantage of randomly presented opportunities to deliver what
we call today a "teachable moment." Okay, so the term "sleep" is a
common metaphor for a temporary separation of the spirit from
the body, until they will be rejoined in resurrection. Jesus spoke
of the resurrection:

28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the
which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
29 And shall come forth; they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
-- John 5:28-29

So, that's the stakes: heaven or hell. But people don't like to think
about such things. Some people tell themselves that they'll get around
to salvation -- someday. Maybe they never get around to it. But the
situation in Israel at that time was even more dire than that, for some
of the religious leaders -- the Sadducees -- taught that there was
no resurrection and no spirits and they taught soul annihilation (at
least this is what I learned on-line). These by-standers just declared
the maid dead, so if any of them believed in the teachings of the
Sadducees, they have got a real hard lesson to be learned after
her resurrection.

So, to sum up: All of humanity is under the legal penalty of death,
but not all people will actually taste death. Some avoided it in the
past as it pleased God to have it that way. In the future, when Jesus
returns with the trump of the archangel, many will avoid death by
being raptured.

One last comment: I warn you to be careful when analyzing the
words of Jesus because He often used words with a double meaning.
To make a point, He would often speak in hyperboles. Lastly, He
often spoke in what we could call 'crazy talk' (eat my flesh, drink
my blood [John 6:54-56]) to encourage those of His followers -- who
were not really His disciples, but just tagged along with Jesus's true
disciples out of curiosity -- to leave Him.

Look, I'm not a Christian apologist nor a Bible expert, but I don't
have to be an expert in the Bible to recognize a Bible novice. So
I warn you criticizers of the Bible, especially you criticizers of Jesus
in the Gospels, if you don't understand that Jesus intensionally used
His words with double meanings, then you will not get His subtlety
and you will reveal yourself as a biblical rank amateur.

But you naysayers show your ignorance of the Old Testament as well.
When attempting to find inconsistencies in the Bible, you can't just
treat the Bible as a justaposition of so many thousands of random
verses stuck together and then start comparing them, giving no
importance to the context of the book, chapter, or adjoining verses
of that verse. So, for example, when trying to claim that some
verse uttered by Job is inconsistent with some other verse in a
different book, you can't just ignore that Job was just a man, going
through torment on earth, and the worst of his torment was because
he didn't know why. Whatever spiritual statements Job uttered in that
state of mind may or may not be spiritually reliable.

If you criticizers don't grasp God's 'Big Plan of Redemption', then
you will likely misinterpret events in the Bible. Example:

21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh,
when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem,
worship the Father. 22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know
what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
-- John 4:21-22

So, when we read about a theophany wrestling with Jacob in the
wilderness, if we don't see this as a hugely important moment to
God, we could completely screw-up its interpretation. Homework:
You work it out. (Hint: the descendants of Abraham became Jews
as the descendants of Israel.)

Question: Why didn't God have a slew of angels blowing horns for
Jacob's princehood 'ceremony' and roll out the red carpet for him?

Question 19: When was Jesus born?
For the time being, I will leave this question for the apologists to deal with.

Question 20: Who was Christ's paternal grandfather?
For the time being, I will leave this question for the apologists to deal with.

Question 21: Could Christians carry staffs?

Remember this: The righteous are mindful of the poor and help them; the wicked do not! (Proverbs 29:7)

You either get control of your lusts and feelings of entitlements or they will get control of you. -- Ilfinor