However, I would like to deal with this one now:
Yes, if you take that translation at face value, that is the conclusion to which you would come.I would say He did guarantee exactly that if we take this verse at face value:
John 11:26
26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"
NKJV
But here is the Greek (in English characters) and its literal rendering. Excuse the dashes. I had to put them in in order to keep the words further apart than a single space:
kai---pas--------ho zōn-----kai---pisteuōn--eis---eme
and--everyone--living------and--trusting---into--me
oumā----apothanā---eis---ton--aiōna
no way--would die--into--the--age
Since I believe that when you're dead, you're dead, I understand that "not dying into the next age" means that you will not stay dead, but will be resurrected at the beginning of the next age when Jesus returns again. (Yes, I am a pre-millenialist, and believe "the age to come" will be the 1000-year millenium).
I do not believe in the immortality of the soul (a Greek philosophical concept). The scriptures affirm "[God]alone has immortality".
But we shall receive immortality when we are resurrected. Paul said in I Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter:
1 Corinthians 15:53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.
He doesn't have it yet, but will "put it on" at the time of the resurrection.
Sounds a bit like "being clothed upon with our house from heaven" in
1 Corinthians 5:2, doesn't it?