Theology in the Raw - 772: #772 - The Annihilation View of Hell Part 2

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

Preston continues his conversation about the annihilation view hell. In this podcast, he goes through the Old Testament, Early Judaism, and the New Testament, showing that there is a good deal of biblical support for annihilation. Preston then addresses some of the common pushbacks for this view. If you’ll like Preston to address a question related to this topic, you can email [e-mail] Editors note: We had some frequency issues on this recording. There is some static noise from 28:30-35:00 on the podcast recording. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am in the middle of a two-part series on the Annihilation View of Hell. Oh, Happy New Year, by the way. Yeah, we're talking about Hell, first of the year. If you did not listen to the previous episode, then I highly, highly, highly recommend that you hit pause and go back and listen to the previous episode in your podcast feed, whatever you were using to listen to this episode. So long story short, as I explained in the last episode, what you're about to listen to is an older podcast, about eight months old from my, um, well, it was a, it was a patron only podcast. Uh, so I record podcasts for my patron supporters. Once a month. I send out two extra podcasts to my

supporters and an extra blog post to my supporters as well. And eight months ago, I did a two part series on the annihilation of hell, yada, yada, yada. And it was behind a paywall for all this time until recently, I asked my supporters, Hey, would you mind if I release these to the general public? And they all said yes. So that's where we are. Now, as I said, in the last episode, I was nervous releasing this podcast, because even though I have talked about my view of hell, I haven't done so super thoroughly and I haven't done so recently. So I know there's a lot more listeners on this podcast than I had a year ago or two years ago. So, um, I just, uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I just want to confess to you my nervousness with talking about this doctrine,

because I know there's loads of presuppositions about what, you know, what kind of person even could believe in something like the annihilation of hell. Some people make premature judgments on someone's faith or their biblical commitment or lack thereof if they hold to a certain view of hell. There's just lots and lots and lots of presuppositions about that. So if anything, I just want this podcast to be very educational so that people who want to know more about the different views of hell can learn about the annihilation view of hell and what biblical support I think there is for it. So also, lastly, you might hear references to me referring to my Patreon only podcast

supporter, my Patreon supporters through the podcast, because originally it was just, you know, recorded for them. So you might hear some references to the month of March, which is last March. You might hear references to my Patreon supporters, me talking to them or whatever. So yeah, all that's going to be on the episode. So without further ado, here is the second half of the Annihilation of the Apocalypse. I'm in the middle of a two-part series on the Annihilation View of Hell. So if you signed up in the last couple of weeks, you have access to all of the backlogged episodes on Patreon-only episodes. So you can go back and unlock those but you will

definitely want to go and unlock the previous one that i posted on the patreon web page that you can go unlock it was the march edition of the patreon only podcast for gold level supporters because in that episode i gave part one of my journey to embracing the annihilation view of hell. Okay, so I give all the background, 40 minutes of background of my journey leading up to this podcast, which is going to give the biblical defense of why I hold to the annihilation view of hell. So, uh, if you are interested in all the background stuff, then I would highly recommend going and listening to that. Cause we're just going to jump into the text in this episode. So if you recall in the previous episode, um, let me just begin here. I don't want to repeat everything I said. Um, but I do want to say this, the soul, or let me say that the main, overall main driving reason why I now hold to an annihilation view of hell is based on the, what I see is the overwhelming biblical exegetical support for this view.

It is not out of emotion. It is not because I don't think God can punish somebody forever and ever and ever in an ongoing conscious state of torment. God's God. He can do what he wants to do. If that's what he wants to do, then he can do that. And I would say, I mean, that that is a troubling picture of God. But my picture of God needs to be based not on what I find to be subjectively troubling, but based on how, what he's revealed about himself in scripture. Like I'm very,

sometimes I get labeled, you know, a liberal on a slippery slope or, you know, whatever, not, not conservative enough. I am extremely conservative when it comes to my view of the Bible in the sense that I believe the Bible is inspired. It is God's revelation of who he is to humanity. And so if through that revelation, God has told us that he desires to punish people in an ongoing state of never ending torment, then so be it in a sense. And I, that's just my view of God and the afterlife must be dictated primarily by scripture. I do find that picture troubling. And you do too. I don't know any Christian who doesn't kind of balk at that idea that if you are a 15-year-old teenager living in Saudi Arabia and some underground missionary hands you a track and walks you through the four spiritual laws and says, do you want to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? And the 15-year-old, you know, Muslim girl says, no, I'm Muslim. And

then she walks across the street, gets hit by a bus that God, the God who revealed himself through Jesus Christ, desires to hold that person in a miraculous ongoing state of conscious torment to experience the most pain forever and ever and ever. Billions and billions and billions of years, God is divinely preserving this person so that they don't die. Because naturally, if you're in a state of that kind of torment, you would just naturally die. But God is miraculously preserving them so that they would feel the worst pain ever for billions and billions and billions of years. And after 10 billion years, God's just getting warmed up. If God revealed that to us in scripture, I would believe it. I truly mean that. I truly mean that. Maybe it's kind of the way I'm

wired. I am very analytical and very, I try hard not to base my beliefs on the emotion. Now we all have emotions that play into our beliefs. That's just inevitable. But I really mean it when I say, if I believe the Bible taught eternal conscious torment, I would believe that in the, I don't want to say only, yeah, the only reason why, or the main driving reason why I now believe in annihilation is because I see an overwhelming, overwhelming support for that view from scripture over and against the so-called traditional view that is called eternal conscious torment. Okay, let's get into the text. Why do I believe this? Let's go as any good, as any good biblical thinker should do. You should go through scripture and not just go and cite verses in the abstract, but we should go and do what scholars call biblical theology. We should

go into the storyline of scripture and follow that storyline. So you begin in Genesis, you go through the Old Testament and then into the New Testament. And it's always helpful to understand the Jewish context between the Testaments before we get into the New Testament. So we have our arms around the overarching context in which the New Testament says what it says. And then it's also helpful, I don't know if we'll, well, maybe we'll get into this, but to go into the early church, especially the anti-Nicene church, the pre-Constantine church, and see how are they interpreting these questions. So let's begin in Genesis 2, just quickly. Genesis 2, or 1 to 3, we know that God created humanity as mortal. When they sinned, they, mortal meaning like they in their natural, like after sin entered the world in Genesis 3, death entered the world.

Cessation of life entered the world. And God had to put angels guarding the Garden of Eden so that the man and woman would not be able to eat from the tree of life and therefore live forever. Meaning living foreverness is contingent upon the tree of life. Or, you know, you could say almost in a broader sense contingent upon being in God's presence in this sort of sinless state, if you will. We are mortal. Our immortality is contingent upon God. So already in Genesis 3, we see that left up to their natural state, excluded from the tree of life, humans will not live forever and ever and ever. Living foreverness is contingent upon being right with God, if you will. So the rest of scripture is, in a sense, a quest to get back to the garden. How do we get back to the tree of life?

And one of the byproducts of to get back to the garden. How do we get back to the tree of life? And one of the byproducts of that would be to live forever. Now, getting back to the tree of life is a way of saying getting back to a right relationship with God, getting back into the presence of God, getting back into the temple. If you, you know, the imagery of the temple throughout the Old Testament mimics and imitates the garden of Eden, and both the temple and the garden even represents God's presence on earth. We need to get back to the presence of God, which means we need to get right with God

so that we can dwell in his presence. And therefore, therefore live forever. Okay, so immortality or living foreverness is contingent upon God's grace. It's not intrinsic to human nature. Now, throughout the Old Testament, we have to ask the question, okay, so now we're going to focus more narrowly on what does the Bible say about the final fate or state? Fate sounds kind of unchristian, but I'm going to use those interchangeably, and state what does the old

testament say about the final state of the wicked and the two options i want to propose to you because these are the two views that we're discussing our number one uh uh eternal conscious torment meaning the final state of the wicked will be in some kind of eternal, ongoing, never-ending state of misery, of torment. That's one option. When we say, what's the final state of the wicked? One option would be they will be living forever in a state of ongoing torment. That's one option. Option two is that they will die. Their life will cease. They will be destroyed. That would be the annihilation view, that there is finality to the existence of the wicked. Okay. Those are the two options. And so when we come to the Old Testament, that's the question we're asking. What does the Old Testament

say about the final fate of the wicked? Is it an ongoing, never ending state of torment, or is it a, a final state of death, destruction, cessation, cessation of life? Now, some people come at the Old Testament with the question of what does the Old Testament say about hell? And then they do a word search on hell and they find out that it doesn't say anything about hell exactly. And so you have, for instance, Daniel Block, who is one of the most amazing evangelical Old Testament scholars.

He wrote a 1500 commentary, page commentary on the book of Ezekiel. Took him 10 years. The dude is brilliant. Professor at, I think he's been at Wheaton College. He's been at Southern Baptist Seminary. I think he might be at Southern now. He is a brilliant Old Testament scholar. And he wrote an essay called, you know, the Old Testament teaching on hell.

And he begins the essay by saying, what does the Old Testament teach about hell? The simple answer to this question is very little. And he is right in that if we ask the question, what does the Old Testament teach about hell? But that's not really the right question we need to ask. We're not asking a question about hell per se. We're asking a much broader question about the final state or fate of the wicked. were asking a much broader question about the final state or fate of the wicked. You see, hell or Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom is one image used in scripture to describe the final state of the wicked. It's not, I mean, it's one image. It's kind of like saying, well, I don't want to get too

far off track here. It's kind of like saying, what does the Old Testament say about redemption? It's like, wow, it doesn't say much about redemption, but it says a lot about forgiveness and salvation and, you know, reconciliation. And you see, there's lots of different images for what we would term, you know, this broad concept of salvation. Redemption would be one image used in that broader conversation. Same thing with the afterlife or with the final state of the wicked. We're not asking a question, we're not just asking a question about what does it say about hell? We're asking a question, what does it say about the final state of the wicked? And hell is one image that is used in the Bible to describe the final state of the wicked. Now, as you may know,

the term hell or Gehenna is only used in the New Testament. It's based on a passage in Jeremiah 7, and we'll get to that. But, you know, if you ask the question, what does the Bible say about H-E double hockey sticks? You're going to come up with very little. But if you ask the question, well, what does the Bible say about just the final state of the wicked, even if hell is not the driving image used in the Old Testament? Now we have a whole plethora. I'm sorry. I can't say the word plethora without thinking of Three Amigos and El Lapo. Would you say I have a plethora? Yes, yes, you have a plethora. It's so funny. That's one of my favorite movies anyway. What am I even talking about? Oh, so when we ask the broader question about what does the Old Testament say about the final state or final fate of the wicked, now we have a plethora of passages to go to.

Okay. Even if the Bible, even if the Old Testament says very little specifically about the afterlife for individuals, it does cast a much broader vision for what's going to happen in the end to the wicked. You see, the Old Testament is working with the, if I can say, the eschatological framework of this age and the age to come. That's how it looked at history. There's this present age filled with wickedness and evil, and God's people are struggling to stay alive, and they're pursuing Yahweh, and everybody's falling away, and, you falling away and then there's the age to come when God returns to judge the wicked, reward the righteous, and introduce a new age of flourishing. What the New Testament refers to as the new creation

or the new Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. So the Old Testament is looking at this age or the age to come and what's going to divide those ages is God's going to return. He's going to come back. He the age to come, and what's going to divide those ages is God's going to return. He's going to come back. He's going to rescue Israel. He's going to redeem the righteous and punish the wicked. So how does, within that framework, how does the Old Testament describe the punishment and final state of the wicked? Let me read to you just a few passages.

Isaiah 1, 27 to 31 talks about Israel's future redemption and then says that the wicked, quote, shall be broken together and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed. Does that image suggest, does it in and of itself suggest, number one, some sort of ongoing, never-ending state of torment? Or does it suggest some state of finality, some state of cessation, like their life will be ended? Well, the image of being consumed, it's an image of fire. It's an image of like weeds and stuff being burned in a fire. And we see this and we'll get to it in the New Testament where, you know, weeds are thrown into the fire and they are consumed. They are burned up. This is the same image here. So I would say, I mean, this is not really that disputed. If you just look at this passage and say eternal torment or

cessation of life, like not living forever, it would be the latter. Cessation, consume, they're done. Isaiah 5.24, the wicked will be like dry grass that sinks down into flames. Isaiah 5.24, the wicked will be like dry grass that sinks down into flames. Isaiah 5.24, the final state of the wicked, dry grass sinking down in the flames. Is that conveying an image of the dry grass existing forever and ever and constantly being kind of burned and tormented? Or is it an image that dry grass will be consumed and burned up and won't be there anymore? Will be dead grass burned up? I would say the latter. I mean, I don't know how you can argue otherwise, really. They will become dead bodies like refuse in the streets. Cessation of life or ongoing torment in some conscious state of existence.

That's Isaiah 5, 25, the next verse, Isaiah 33, 12, the wicked will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down that are burned up in the fire, cessation or ongoing existence. Isaiah 63, one to six. Okay. This is a rather gruesome picture of the future judgment. God tramples the wicked as if he's stomping around in a wine press and the lifeblood of the wicked spattered on my garments on the day of vengeance where God trampled down the people in my anger.

I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. Is that an image of ongoing existence in a state of torment or is it an existence or is it an image of death, finality, cessation of life, no more? Can I say clearly the latter of those two options just in this passage? Let's keep going. Isaiah 65, 12, those who forsake the Lord are destined to the sword and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter. The image of slaughter conveys death, destruction, cessation of life, not constantly cutting people with swords, but they're going to keep living forever as they're slaughtered, you know, being cut by the sword. No, they are destined to the sword in the sense that they are destined to death, the cessation of life. So all of these images so far, images of

death, slaughter, cessation of life, and not ongoing torment. Now there's even some more, there's some specific statements that are even tailored to this, this, this view of like the final judgment. Isaiah 11, 4, God will kill the wicked with the breath of his lips. Kill. Does that say, is that torment in the state of a conscious existence or the cessation of life? Isaiah 20, 12 or 60, 12, the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish. Those nations shall be utterly laid to waste. Isaiah 60, 12, Isaiah 66, 16 and 24, they will be slain by the Lord and Israel will look upon the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. And of these dead bodies, this is important, as you'll know, of these dead bodies that were slain.

Isaiah says, their worm shall not die. Their fire should not be quenched and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Now you say, oh, wait a minute. I know that phrase. The worm shall not die. The fire shall not be quenched. That's must be eternal conscious torment because Jesus says it as well. Not so fast.

Remember the image of worm not dying and fire not being quenched is being, is describing dead bodies, not living people. There's no people being tormented by worms here. There's no conscious state. And the worm is, you know, the undying worm is conveying that they are alive. No, they have been slaughtered. And Isaiah explicitly says that these are dead bodies. The worm will not die talks about the finality of the worm consuming the flesh. The dead flesh is what happens when people die, when they are not living any longer. And I would say, and we'll

get to this, that when Jesus uses that image, he's using it according to its original sense, according to the original context. He is not saying that an undying worm and an unquenchable fire means that the thing or person that is being consumed or has been consumed is not really dead, but they're actually living. He's referring to the horrific finality of God's punishment of the wicked. Malachi 4, 1 to 6. And I'm not going to, so, I mean, I can keep going and going and going as there's a plethora of these passages. Let me just give one more, because this one's important, like extra important, because it is talking about the final day. And it is the last passage in the

Old Testament, Malachi 4, 1 to 6 of the day, the day of the Lord. This is like a future reference. The day of the Lord will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evil doer will be stubble like dry grass. And the day that is coming will set them on fire. Okay. So just look at the image when stubble is set on fire, what happens? Does it exist forever in a state of being burning, but never really burned up? Or is it, is it consumed? Not a root or branch will be left to them. They will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act, says the Lord Almighty. On and, okay, so again, do you think just based on this passage, apart from presuppositions, apart from what you think hell must be or not be or what it must say, based on this

passage and all the other passages of the two options that the thing being spoken of here, the wicked through the images being used is the author trying to convey an ongoing state of torment or some kind of finality death, not living forever, not living any longer, but being consumed perishing being destroyed i would say and okay so let me just make this personal not say you must read it this way from my vantage point it seems like it's clearly the latter like if you just read passage after passage after passage after passage in the old testament it talks about the final state of the wicked they overwhelmingly and i would say exclusively, talk about, describe a state of existence that is

final, that is irreversible, that is death, destruction, and that the person will not be alive or conscious any longer. I don't see any evidence in the Old Testament that the wicked, when God returns, will be living in a state of ongoing consciousness while they are being tormented. Let's look at a couple other things in the Old Testament. The fate of the wicked will be like Sodom. This is an image used throughout the Old Testament. Well, I mean, the Sodom story in Genesis 18 to 19, when God saw the wickedness in Sodom and he rained down judgment and almost said annihilated the city. But that would be, I'm not trying to like smuggle in my view here, but I mean, that would be an appropriate word. He annihilated the city.

He destroyed the city of Sodom and there was nothing left. Like it was a comprehensive act of destruction, leaving no remains. Like the people of Sodom weren't there suffering forever and ever. God wasn't tormenting the people of Sodom. He destroyed the people of Sodom. Kaput. In fact, we see the word, the Greek word apolumi, which is the main Greek word for destroy that you see throughout the Old Testament. You see apolumi in the Greek translation of the Old Testament used in 18, Genesis 18, 24, 28, two times, 18, 29, 30, 31, 32, 19, verse 13. It is a word used throughout the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to describe the destruction. That's what apolumi means, destroy. Okay. That's important later on when we talk about the meaning of apolumi in the New Testament. Later Old Testament passages refer back to the story of Sodom as a description for

the future state of the wicked. Lamentations 4, 6, Deuteronomy 29, 23, Jeremiah 29, 18, Zephaniah 2, 9, Isaiah 13, 19 to 22, Jeremiah 50 verse 40. This is a very common way to describe the fate of the wicked. The fate of the wicked ultimately will be just like or like what God did to Sodom. And what did God do to Sodom? Complete annihilation, no more existence. more existence. Fire, brimstone, smoke, and the uninhabitable wasteland left in the wake of God's destruction of Sodom. These became stock images for God's future judgment of the wicked. Isaiah 34, 9 to 10, Jeremiah 49, 17, 18. You know what? Well, and we also see it in early Judaism, in Josephus and Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon, which is an important book for the background of the New Testament for Romans in particular. Sodom was referred to as an example

for what's going to happen to the future state of the wicked in second Peter 2.6, which we'll look at in Romans 9.29 and Luke 17.26 to 33. And also in Philo Josephus, these are common first century Jewish and Christian ways of talking about the future state of the wicked to say, it's going to be like what God did to Sodom. So we have to ask the question, what did God do to Sodom? He destroyed them. He didn't torment them. So the Bible's consistent use of Sodom's destruction highlights its totality, finality, comprehensiveness, and irreversibility. There isn't a shred of evidence that God tortured or tormented the Sodomites. that God tortured or tormented the Sodomites.

So just I'll sneak peek at the New Testament. We're trying to stay in the Old Testament and then we'll get to the New. But 2 Peter 2.6 says, Reducing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction. The Greek word is katastrophe, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. So if you ask Peter, if you sat down, Peter said, okay, I have a question for you about the annihilation versus eternal conscious torment view of hell. Um, what do you think is going to

happen to the ungodly? And I think he would just open up his letter and say, well, I already said, I know what, think what's going to happen. Look at verse six of chapter two of my letter. I mean, he wouldn't have said that letter. I mean, he wouldn't have said that because he doesn't, he would probably point to a scroll and say, look at this side of the scroll, you know, cause there was no chapter in verse anyway. I mean, he says explicitly that what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is like what's happened to the ungodly in the future. He's talking about future judgment explicitly here. So then we have to go back to what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah and ask the question, is this trying to illustrate an ongoing, never ending state of torment or

death, destruction, and finality where the person who was destroyed will not be living any longer. Fire is often used as an image of judgment throughout the Old Testament. Now, fire can be used in one of two ways. Well, two main primary ways. Refinement or destruction. Refinement or destruction. When fire is used in the context of future judgment, it is used either to describe refinement or destruction. What do I mean by refinement? Well, refinement means fire makes things stronger or better after they go through the fire. Psalm 12, 6, Isaiah 1, 25, Isaiah 66, 10 to 12. And this is where, just so you know, where a lot of people who believe in Christian universalism will argue the case. They'll look at fire, which is an image used of judgment in the new Testament. And they'll say,

well, look at how it's used in the old Testament. It is used to refer not to destruction, but to refinement. You go through the fire and you come out better on the other side. So people who go to hell will come out, will be refined and come out better on the other side. And then they will all be redeemed.

That's, that's one argument. Now they do have some Old Testament support for this, especially when fire is used to refer to God's future work with Israel. Like, they will be cast away to Babylon through exile, but that will be not just its punishment, but it's also a refining punishment. They'll come out better on the other side. They'll return home from exile, and they'll enter the new age when God returns.

That is true. But fire is also used as an image to refer to the destruction, not refinement, but the destruction of the wicked. Psalm 21.9, regarding God's enemies, you will make them like a blazing oven when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath and fire will consume them. You will destroy their descendants from the earth. Psalm 97.3, fire goes out from before him and burns up his adversaries all around. You can look at Malachi 4.1 and other passages. Oftentimes, fire is used not as refinement, but as destruction.

But here's the thing, fire is never used as an instrument of ongoing torment in the Old Testament. But when we think about fire and judgment and hell, all of us, right? When you hear me say that, fire, judgment, hell, you think torment. You're just constantly burning, but not ever burned up. But that's not the way the Old Testament uses the image of fire. Let's just make sure we're staying with the Old Testament. It can refer to refinement. It can also refer to burning up, consuming, and destroying, not tormenting.

So that's the Old Testament. That's really just not a whole lot of lack of clarity here. I mean, I could cite dozens and dozens and dozens of passages in the Old Testament that convey basically everything that I've been talking about. The only verse, well, the two passages that are sometimes taken to support eternal conscious torment are Daniel 12.2 and Isaiah 66, at the end of that passage. We've already talked about Isaiah 66. That's where, you know, they looked upon the dead bodies that were slaughtered by the Lord, and the worm shall not die, and the fire will not be quenched, as images of the finality and irreversibility of the punishment, not the ongoing torment, of dead bodies, okay, dead people. Daniel 12.2, I might come back to that one

basically says that the righteous will be raised to eternal life and the wicked will be raised to eternal contempt and people say see torment well it says contempt not torment so what is what does that mean well the only other time

the word contempt or some translations might say shame in Daniel 12, I think it's 12, two and three, not just the first two. Um, the only other time that word translated, oftentimes translated contempt is used is in Isaiah 66.

That the dead bodies will be ashamed that they will have a, you got to think, you got to put your ancient Near East or just Eastern kind of cap on here. Put yourself in the context of an honor-shame culture. The manner in which somebody dies was a big deal back then. Like if you died a shameful death, then that was bad, really bad. If you died a good death, you live a long life and you have your kids gathered around you and your grandkids and you extend your legs and breathe your last and you're gathered to your father, that's a good death. But if you are killed on the battlefield or, you know, or in that patriarchal culture, like if a woman kills you, you know, that's like a shameful death, like in Judges 4,

the whole tent peg to the skull thing. That was what really stands out to an ancient writer in that passage. Like, oh, that's a shameful death. You just lost the battle, and now some stay-at-tent mother drove a tent peg to your skull because you weren't on your alert. Like, that's a shameful death. I mean, a painful death, but the main thing is it's a shameful death. So that seems to be the point of Daniel 12, 12, 12, 12, 2, and 3,

that the wicked will be raised up, and then they will die, and that death, like Isaiah 66, will be a shameful death, a contempt. And that will never leave them. That memory of their shame will never pass away. That seems to be the point of Daniel 12 too. Okay, so what happens? Okay, so that's the Old Testament. Some of you could say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. The Old Testament didn't really have a concept of the afterlife. They didn't really talk about, like, where's the soul going to go when the dead body is slain? And don't we have, you know, when you get to the New Testament, now we have themes of afterlife and resurrection and all these things.

So it is important to, well, let me say this. By far, the overwhelming evidence in the Old Testament is in favor of annihilation. I'm just going to say that. And I hope you see it too. I mean, we can go back and I can cite more and more passages. But it is true that the New Testament could change that. It could change that. Like the Old Testament could come along and say, actually, this death and destruction thing that we see in the Old Testament,

yeah, guess what? There's a soul that's going to live beyond the body, and that's going to be tormented forever and ever. Like, that's a possibility that the New Testament could give much further light on what we read about in the Old Testament and fill in some serious gaps. So the question is, does the New Testament correct and change what we see in the Old Testament, or does it continue on the same themes that we see in the Old Testament? And to get there, to give us a running start, we have to look at some movements within early Judaism. Early Judaism, or otherwise known as intertestamental Judaism. What's going on between the Testaments to help us give some context to the New Testament. Well, if you look at some developments in early Judaism,

you see a massive development in terms of the resurrection of the righteous. You hardly see anything with the resurrection of the righteous in the Old Testament. You see one reference in Isaiah 26, 19. You see another clear reference in Daniel 12, 2. The righteous will be raised to eternal life. You see some vague statements in the book of Psalms, other disputed references, but pretty much there's two clear

passages in the Old Testament that the righteous will be raised from the dead and live forever. But you see between the Testaments, not just two passages, but you see a lot of books and thinkers talking you know, talking about the resurrection of the righteous.

Well, what do they say about the fate of the wicked? The overwhelming majority of references in early Judaism, prior to the New Testament, prior to the writing of the New Testament, the overwhelming majority do refer to the fate of the wicked in terms of what we would call annihilation. We do see some references to some state of ongoing torment. Most of them are after the writing of the New Testament, or at least they're late first century AD. That doesn't mean that that can't help us understand the New Testament. It just means that most of the early references

prior to the New Testament in early Judaism, when it talks about the fate of the wicked, even though it might affirm, radically affirm the resurrection of the righteous for eternal life, when it talks about the fate of the wicked, the overwhelming majority of references in early Judaism talk about annihilation, death, destruction, finality, not living foreverness. Death, destruction, finality, not living foreverness. Again and again, we do see some references if you want the books. Second Baruch, 4 Ezra. There's one reference in the book of Judith.

If you're Catholic, you probably read the book Judith in the Apocrypha. There are some references in these books to what seems to be some sort of ongoing conscious state of torment. And I talk about this in my book, Erasing Hell. And I actually wasn't as precise as I could have been in that book. I've never told anybody this. But I mean, I didn't consider the different dates of Jewish books that talk about annihilation versus the dates of books that talk about eternal conscious torment. When I did my survey of Jewish literature in Erasing Hell, I just kind of lumped them all together. It was later that I kind of found out that most of the ones that talk about annihilation are early, like before the New Testament. And most of the ones that

talk about eternal conscious torment are kind of late first century, most of them. Now, in between the Testaments, you have all kinds of different strands of Judaism, lots of different people, lots of different sects, not S-E-X, but S-E-C-T-S, sects of Judaism. You have the Essenes, you have the Pharisees, you have the Herodians, you have the Essenes, or I said Essenes, the Pharisees, the, oh, Sadducees. You have the Hellenists. I mean, lots of different branches of Judaism. So we can't just take one Jewish book and map that on the New Testament. We have to kind of take the Jewish books that would most resonate with later New Testament thought. Does that make sense?

Which brand of Judaism did New Testament Christianity grow out of? It wasn't the Sadducees. I mean, they were very different than New Testament Christianity. It actually was more the Pharisees. I mean, one of the reasons why you see such a clash between Christians and Pharisees is because these were kind of like, they were very similar sects, if you will. Like the Pharisees were the ones that made a big deal about a Davidic son of, a son of David, who's going to be the Messiah. The Pharisees were the ones that were opposing the radical rank Hellenism that had invaded and corrupted so much of Judaism. The Pharisees were the ones that were opposing the radical rank Hellenism that had invaded and corrupted so much of Judaism. The Pharisees were actually the, I mean, we always see them as the bad people in the New Testament. They were actually the good people, like a hundred years before Jesus. Like if you lived a hundred years before Christianity, you should have been a Pharisee.

Like Pharisees were, they were good, good people. Okay. So, so where am I going with this? There are at least two books, early Jewish books that resonate very much with New Testament thought. They use similar language, similar ways of thinking, similar language, similar theme, similar theology. One of those books is called the Psalms of Solomon. No relation to Solomon. Written about 50 years before the birth of Christ. 18 Psalms.

And some scholars, many scholars, some at least, let's just say 50%, believe that the Psalms of Solomon were written by Pharisees 50 years before Jesus. So it gives us one of the only direct insights into Pharisaical thought. Throughout the Psalms of Solomon, the resurrection of the righteous is affirmed. Throughout the Psalms of Solomon, the Davidic Messiah is affirmed. In fact, we even see the phrase Christos Kurios, Christ the Lord, the exact same phrase that we see in Luke chapter 2 verse 11. It's the only other time Christos Kurios, Christ the Lord occurs in Judaism, and it's here in the

Psalms of Solomon. A lot of us, if you read through the Psalms of Solomon, you're like, man, this feels very similar to like New Testament way of thinking, or, you know, even Old Testament way of thinking. way of thinking, or, you know, even Old Testament way of thinking. So throughout the Psalms of Solomon, not only do we see a consistent theme of the righteous being raised from the dead, but we also see a consistent theme of the wicked being destroyed. May the wicked perish once and for all from before the Lord, and may the Lord's devout, the righteous, inherit the Lord's promise. for the life of the righteous goes on forever, but sinners shall be taken away to destruction and no memory of them will be found. The inheritance of the sinners is destruction and darkness and so on and so on. So, I mean, I don't want to keep quoting Psalms of Solomon, might bore a lot

of you, but we see not only a consistent teaching that the wicked will be destroyed, but we also see, interestingly, the same language, apolumi, apoleon, which is the Greek word for destruction. We see the Greek word for destruction used, I think, at least half a dozen times to refer to the fate of the wicked in Psalms of Solomon. This is the same word that the New Testament writers will also use. Okay, another body of Jewish literature that resonates significantly with the New Testament. I mean, to the point to where people have been scratching their heads for years saying, what's the relationship between this Jewish literature and the New Testament? Because they look so similar, and that's the Dead Sea Scrolls. Found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a bunch of Old Testament texts, but also a bunch

of sectarian Jewish literature. We know more about the ancient sect that lived by the Dead Sea, probably Essenes. We know more about that Jewish sect than almost any other social group in ancient history because we have found through the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a whole library of internal religious documents talking about their theology, their beliefs, and so on and so forth. It's fascinating. And much of my, for what it's worth, PhD work was done on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was just one of my greatest intellectual joys in life has been just spending a few years just reading the Dead Sea Scrolls. So I'm very familiar with this literature.

And yet the worldview conveyed in the Dead Sea Scrolls is so similar to the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls have what we call an already not yet eschological framework, meaning we are living in the kingdom now, but we're awaiting the full manifestation of the kingdom in the future. The Dead Sea Scrolls have that same framework, which we see all over the place in the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls believed in an afterlife, the resurrection for the righteous. The Dead Sea Scrolls emphasize the salvific work of the Holy Spirit. The Dead Sea Scrolls have a

very pessimistic anthropology, meaning we are dead, we are cannot come to God on our own power, we are very evil of flesh, and so on and so forth. The Dead Sea Scrolls emphasizes the grace of God and salvation. The Dead Sea Scrolls emphasizes the curse of the law that hangs over rebellious Jews and the rest of the world. Very similar to what we see in passages like Galatians 3 and others. All throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls,

when it talks about the future judgment of the wicked, it says God will kill the wicked with the breath of your lips. The wicked you have created for the time of your wrath. You have predestined them for the day of slaughter. At the judgment, you will annihilate, karat in Hebrew, all the men of deception. At the end time war, the sword of God will pounce in the era of judgment and all his sons of his truth will awaken to destroy the sons of wickedness and all the sons of guilt will no longer exist. On and on and on and on.

You know, I won't keep reading these because I probably didn't want to just listen to quote after quote after quote of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But this is, again, not really, nothing I'm saying here is disputed, by the way, that Psalms of Solomon, death and destruction for the wicked, Dead Sea Scrolls, death and destruction for the wicked. There is one disputed passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls that some people have taken to refer to eternal conscious torment. I don't think it is, but I'm going to save you that. Either way, the old, I mean, even if there's one passage, there's dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of other passages that clearly convey the idea of annihilation. Okay. So when we approach the Old Testament, let's gather our thoughts here. We have, we can affirm, let's go back and just kind of summarize. In the Garden of Eden,

humanity is intrinsically mortal, left up to their own natural devices. They will die. They won't naturally live forever. The idea that immortality, that every soul of humanity is immortal, that is a platonic thought that crept into the church through Augustine and other early church thinkers. That is not a biblical idea that the human soul is intrinsically immortal. Our immortality, our living forever and everness is dependent upon salvation, really, dependent upon the only one who's immortal, namely God, that's 1 Timothy 6, granting us immortality through our in Christ-ness by being, you know, partakers of the divine nature, second Peter, it is not natural to our human condition. So already that's a support for

annihilation. That's why some people don't like the term annihilation. They call the view a conditional immortality, that our immortality is conditioned upon believing in Jesus. And if we don't believe in Jesus, then we will die. We'll just end up, our life will cease to be. Okay. So we have that groundwork laid down in Genesis 1 to 3. Then again, to summarize throughout the Old Testament, the overwhelming picture, I would say the exclusive picture of the final state of the wicked is one of cessation, destruction, death, and not living foreverness. And then we get into early Judaism. And while we see some evidence for some Jews believe in an eternal conscious torment, at least two of the books or bodies of literature that resonate most with New Testament thought, overwhelming, describe the fate of the wicked, very much in line with the Old Testament and very much in a way that would support annihilation.

You with me? I'm looking at the time here. It's like 43 minutes. I was hoping that this would be a lot quicker, but hang in there. So when we get to the New Testament, we still have to leave open the possibility that the New Testament departs from what the Old Testament says about the final state of the wicked. And it can, it can. I mean, you can almost say the New Testament departs from the significance of circumcision in terms of belonging to the covenant of Abraham. Like there are some discontinuities between the New Testament and the Old Testament. So we need to come to the New Testament with that as an open possibility. But we still have to ask the question, does the New

Testament resonate with the Old Testament or does it depart from the, from Old Testament and some major branches of early Judaism? Let me see if I want to, yeah. So the most, let me, so let's just get into it. The most common words used to describe the fate of the wicked in the New Testament are words that typically mean destruction in line with what we've seen all over the place in the Old Testament, the Psalms of Solomon and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Let me say that again, just so you don't have to do the whole 15 second reverse thing on your iPhone. The you don't have to do the whole 15 second reverse thing on your iPhone. The most common words used to describe the fate of the wicked in the New Testament are words that typically mean destruction, finality, irreversibility, and not ongoing

torment, which is in line with what it says, with the Old Testament teaching in some branches of early Judaism. For instance, the Greek word apoleia, destruction. We see this in Matthew 7.13, John 17.12, Acts 8.20, Romans 9.22, Philippians 1.28 and 3.19, 2 Thessalonians 2.3. The way of, so Matthew 7.13, I don't have it in front of me. I just have the reference, but it's, you know, the way of, so Matthew 7, 13, I don't have it in front of me. I just have the reference, but it's, it's, you know, the way of there is a, the narrow road leads to life. The broad way leads to death or destruction. Okay. And again, if you come at that passage with the momentum of the old Testament and, or even early Judaism, you would say destruction means destruction. Like there's not, there's nothing, no Old Testament person would be shocked at that. That's apoleia. That's the noun. Apolumi, the verb to perish or to

destroy is used also throughout the New Testament to speak at the final state of the wicked. Do not fear him who will, can kill the body, but not the soul. Fear him who can destroy, destroy both body and soul in hell. I don't, I mean, if you read Matthew 10, 28, would you walk away with the momentum we've already created with the Old Testament? Would you say, oh yeah, that's clearly talking about eternal torment. Or would you say, this just seems to fall right in line with what we've seen in the first 39 books of the Bible so far. 39? Yeah. That's the Old Testament. We see Luke 13.3, Luke 17.27, 29, John 12.25, Romans 2.12, and many others. Where the verb destroy means destroy in the sense of the Old Testament. Now, some people do look, some people who critique

annihilation say, well, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. No, no, no, no. You can't just say destroy means destroy because sometimes apolumi is used in a more metaphorical sense to, that doesn't mean the cessation of life. For instance, Apollumi is also used in reference to the lost coin. Remember the woman who lost her coin in Luke 15, the parable? It says her coin was Apollumi, and that coin wasn't therefore destroyed or annihilated. It was simply lost, but it still existed. It still was there. It just wasn't found. Wineskins that can't function in the proper way are burst. They are destroyed. The whole, you know, the whole wineskin thing in Matthew 9, 17, Mark 2, 22. So we can't say that just because the word apolumi is used, it therefore means annihilation

or finality and no longer livingness. And that's true. That's true that the word Apollumi, even though by far it means destroy, cessation of life, even though by far when it's used in judgment passages, it means just that, that the person will be destroyed. It is true that the word, like almost every other Greek and Hebrew word or English word or any word is capable of other possible meanings. However, when Apollumi is used to describe, well, let me say this, when Apollumi is used to describe

non-human objects like coins and wineskins, it is true that it doesn't necessarily mean cease to exist or to be killed. I mean, it's kind of hard to kill a coin. However, when apolumi is used in the active sense to describe what one person does to another, the verb almost always, there might be one exception to this, almost always means to kill. So when, do you understand what I'm saying? So when a personal, when a one person is apoluming another person, the verb almost always, I mean, I would say 99% of the time means to kill. Matthew 2, 13, you know, the people were seeking to destroy Jesus and the baby, the baby Jesus. We see this a few times throughout the gospels where they were seeking to destroy apoluming Jesus, where people are seeking to Apollumi another person. When it's in that context, it almost always means to kill, to end the life of.

The idea that a person could be Apollumied by another person and yet still be alive is just foreign to the natural meaning of the term. I did a deep word search and study of apollumi in the Greek translation of the Old Testament just to see how it is used. And the verb is used in an overwhelming sense to refer to God killing people as an act of judgment. The verb, we saw this earlier, is frequently used to refer to God killing the people of Sodom and throughout Genesis 18 and 20. It's also used frequently to describe the curse of the covenant, namely death. Leviticus 26, 38, many other passages. It's often used in the Pentateuch

to refer to killing in general. In several other passages, Apollumi does describe like the, you know, smashing of idols or the destruction of various nations. Again, images that would convey, that would roughly correlate to death, destruction, finality. There are only a few places where apolumi is used to mean something other than death.

But again, these are used to describe inanimate non-human objects. And I want to add to the fact that, and this is a fact, that apolumi never means torture or torment in anything. I mean, even if you can say, well, it might mean something different in some passages here and over there, ignoring the overwhelming sense of the term, what we know as a fact is that Apollumi never means torture or torment. I did do a little bit of study in, I mean, Apollumi is used hundreds and hundreds of times in the Old Testament, so I didn't look at every single one. I did look at a lot of them.

Throughout the prophets, Apollumi is a typical word to refer to God killing his enemies. Sometimes it's kind of this worldly judgment, like in Amos 1, 8, Obadiah 8. And other times it's referring to a more distant eschatological future day of judgment, uh, where people are apollumied, they are destroyed. Jeremiah 6, 15, Isaiah 13, 9, and many, many other passages. Also, look, can I pause for a second? Cause some of you, you, maybe you've turned it off. I don't know.

Some of you are probably geeking out. Others are like, okay, I'm done. I can't, I don't, didn't want to go this deep. But here, so I just want you to know my heart. And I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going deep, unapologetically, because I consistently get accused of being unbiblical because I believe in the annihilation view of hell.

Some people accuse me of being not even a Christian anymore. I have been written off for being non-biblical, for denying what the Bible says about hell. So this is why I am going to plummet the depths of the Bible so that anybody who accuses me, even if you disagree with my conclusion, that's fine. But if you disagree, if your argument against my view that I'm trying to promote is you're being unbiblical, I want that response to be exposed as simple, I almost swore, idiocracy, ignorance, inaccuracy, maybe slander. I mean, I just, I don't know what, you fill in the blank, what word do you want to use? I want that argument that Preston Sprinkles being unbiblical to be shut down, put in the grave and annihilated. See what I did there? Okay. So that's

why I'm, that's why I'm going so incredibly deep to just say that you just can't make that argument. The Hebrew word, the Hebrew equivalent to Apollumi is the Hebrew word Abad. It's used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is written in Hebrew, to mean destroy. I found 79 uses of Abad in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I didn't read through the entire body of literature in Hebrew. I did a word search through a cool program that I have. A little shout out to Faith Life, the Logos Bible program, which has a searchable electronic version of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Fascinating. So what does Abad mean throughout the scrolls? Well, we do see the meaning of lost, kind of like the lost coin, when used of inanimate objects. But the most common meaning is when used of people, especially when one personal agent is acting upon another personal agent is death. And I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and about a dozen references here. I'll save you the references.

And again, apoleia, the noun is the choice word used to describe the future state of the wicked in the Psalms of Solomon. Okay. So all this is going back to my earlier statement that the overwhelming language used to describe the future state of the wicked is language of destruction, primarily drawn from the word, the Greek word apoleia or the noun apolumi. So we have to ask the question, what does apoleia, apolumi means? That's why I did all that. We went to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, looked at some early Jewish references, and we see that aside from a few passages describing inanimate non-human objects, the word Apollumi when describing one personal agent acted upon another means death, destruction, finality. There are other words used to describe the final state of the wicked in the

New Testament aside from Apollumi, but with very similar meanings. And these words also connote the idea of cessation of life, not some sort of ongoing existence. The Greek word alethros, which is translated destruction. First Thessalonians 5.3, second Thessalonians 1.9. Thanatos, not Thanos, but Thanatos, probably related, meaning death. Romans 1, 32, 6, 21 to 23, where Paul says the wages of sin is death. Probably alluding back to Genesis 2 and 3. But the free gift of God is eternal life. Contrast between death and life.

Life means living forever and death means death. Thora is used to describe the future state of the wicked, which means disintegration or corruption. Galatians 6, 8, 2 Peter 1, 4, and 2, 12. Therion or, yeah, I'll stop here. There's lots of language used to refer to in ways that are very similar to the way destruction is used. Also, I'm going to keep going. Do I have a biblical case yet or not?

Am I being unbiblical or am I at least showing that there's biblical evidence for the annihilation view? In the Gospels, Jesus refers extensively to the fate of the wicked. In almost every instance, I mean, I would say it's every instance, but just for the sake of the argument, I like to be cautious. In almost every instance, he uses images or words that unambiguously convey the cessation of life and not ongoing torment. Jesus compared the future fate of the wicked to that of a burnt, to burned up chaff, burned up trees, burned up weeds, or burned up branches. Matthew 3, 12, 7, 19, 13, 40. He destroyed, uh, referred to the future state of the wicked as a destroyed house, an uprooted plant, a chopped down tree at the coming of the son of man. Unbelievers will be like those who were destroyed

in the flood. They died or those who are burned up at Sodom. they were annihilated. Luke 17, 27, 29, 32. They will be like wicked tenants who were ground to powder or cut up into pieces. Matthew 21, 41, 44, and 24, 51. They will be like Galileans killed by Pilate or like those who were killed by a falling tower. Luke 13, 2, 4, 19, 14, and verse 27 of chapter 19 of Luke. Look, and there's, again, for an Old Testament saint steeped in the Old Testament, none of this is shocking. First century Jews are yawning right now saying, well, yeah, this person who claimed to be Messiah was just

basically drawing on the way the Old Testament talks about the future state of the wicked. None of these are hard to interpret. It's very clear how these images are being used. What about the New Testament's use of fire? Remember, fire can be used as either refinement or destruction, never torment in the Old Testament when it talks about future judgment of the wicked? Okay, so does the New Testament refer to fire and judgment context as refinement? Does it refer to fire in the context of future judgment to refer to destruction, which would support annihilation? Or does it come up with a new use, biblically speaking, a new use of fire to refer to ongoing torment. I'm just going to read the passages and let you decide. Matthew 3, 10. The ax is already laid to the root of the

trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. What is that image trying to convey? Does it resonate with the Old Testament understanding of fire as destruction? Or does it come up with a new sense of ongoing torment? Are the trees thrown into a fire? Like just go cut down a tree and throw it in the fire. What happens to it? That's what is John the Baptist is trying to convey here. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He will clear his threshing for gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up. Katakayo doesn't mean just burn, but burn up. The chaff with unquenchable fire.

There's that phrase unquenchable fire. That doesn't mean a fire that will torment the thing. It's burning forever and ever and ever. It just means it's a super, super powerful fire that cannot be reversed, cannot be put out. And it's so raging that whatever's thrown into it will be consumed, will be burned up. That's Matthew 3, 12.

Matthew 13, 40, as the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be in the end of the ages. At the judgment, God's fiery indignation will consume his enemies. Is that torment or is that cessation of life? So overwhelmingly, the image of fire in the New Testament, in judgment passages, highlights the destruction, not the torment of the wicked, which is right in line with what we see in the Old Testament and early Judaism. The New Testament also talks about the wicked, the fate of the wicked, that they will become like Sodom. They will be destroyed like Sodom.

Fire and brimstone like Sodom. They will be destroyed like Sodom. Fire and brimstone like Sodom. We see this in Romans 9.29, Luke 17.26-32, and 2 Peter 2.6. We've already read the 2 Peter 2.6 passage, which unambiguously, by itself, unambiguously supports annihilation. What's going to happen to the ungodly? Well, it's going to be like Sodom and Gomorrah. What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, they were reduced to ashes or they were condemned to ash. They were reduced to ashes and being condemned to extinction. There's, I mean, it's this verse alone and many others I would say, but this verse alone,

there's no ambiguity in what's being conveyed there. So I can keep going on. Some of you are like maybe crying, uncle. You're like, okay, okay. Well, okay. But I know lots of smart people. My pastor is brilliant and he completely disagrees with you. D.A. Carson disagrees with you. Augustine disagrees with you. Aquinas disagrees with you. Daniel Block disagrees with you. And so many really, really smart people that obviously they have a good argument. What's the counter argument? I would be very happy, very happy for you after listening to this to go read D.A. Carson's chapter in The Gagging of God, which is on annihilation. I would be extremely happy for you to read the critiques of the annihilation view in books like the

compilation, the book Hell on Fire. And I'm going to leave my microphone for a second and just glance at my hell shelf here for a second. Hold on a second. Oh, Hell on Trial or Hell on Fire is a whole kind of argument against annihilation, defense of the traditional view. Or read the book that I edited, The Four Views on Hell. It just came out a couple years ago. And you can see what the counter arguments are. I am extremely happy to let my audience decide what those counter arguments even address,

let alone hold more biblical weight against everything I've been saying so far. So I don't, can I be honest? One of the things that has pushed me even more towards annihilation camp has have been the exegetically torturous, uh, critiques of annihilation view in a, in an attempt to defend the eternal conscious torment view. I'm, that might sound strong, but I've just been serious. Like when I read the critiques, I'm like, really? That's your critique? You're not even dealing with like the arguments. And sometimes you're just making stuff up.

It's really can be embarrassing. Especially, I remember reading D.A. Carson's, I remember wanting to be a traditionalist, saying like, man, I've seen all this evidence for annihilation and gosh, come on, man. I don't want to go this route because it can cause you a lot of job loss and critique from your evangelical friends and neighbors and family and schools. And I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to

invite that on myself. So please give me some reason to hold onto the traditional view. And someone says, oh, you got to read D.A. Carson's critique of annihilation. I'm like, oh, good. I mean, he's more brilliant than almost every New Testament scholar I've ever read. Okay. So, all right. G.A. Carson is going to pull me back to the traditional view. And that book is incredible. The Gaggin of God, everything he writes is incredible. The chapter where he critiques annihilation is terrible. It's just, it's not, it's just not argued well at all and has so many unsubstantiated claims there. It's shocking. What about the big three? When I wrote Erasing Hell, when Francis Chan and I wrote Erasing Hell, there were still three passages in the New Testament where he said, well, these seem to teach the traditional view,

so we're going to lean towards the traditional view. They are Revelation 12, or sorry, Revelation 20 verses 10 to 15, Revelation 14 verses 9 through 11, and Matthew 25, 46. So Revelation 20, let's look at this. The devil who had been deceived, who had deceived them was thrown in the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. And so some people would say, see, torment forever and ever. I'm like, well, yeah, but it's only talking about the devil, the false prophet and the beast. And if you look at Revelation,

while the devil might be a personal agent, I think it is, the beast and the false prophet most likely are referring to political and religious concepts. Like they're not personal agents like that. I think that's the, if you read, especially revelation chapters 12 through 18, like you get the sense of beast and false prophet aren't like literal people.

For sure. The beast isn't, I mean, maybe false prophet, even there, I think false prophet are representing concepts. Anyway, what is not stated in revelation 2012 is that all those who, um, all the wicked will be tormented

forever and ever day and night in the lake of fire. However, people, some people say, ah, but that comes in later in verse 15 and verse 15 does say, and if anyone's name is not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. I agree with every jot and tittle that's stated there. It doesn't say that these people, anyone's name not found in the book of life will be tormented forever and every day and night in the lake of fire. Oh, but that's implied because it already said that in verse 10, when it talked about the dead devil, beast and false prophet, maybe, maybe it's implied, but implied, but you're going off an implication against the overwhelming weight leading up to Revelation 20

of everything we've been talking about for the past one hour and four minutes, almost five minutes. So in the face of the overwhelming momentum that is supporting annihilation from Old Testament, New Testament, early Judaism, when you get to this verse in Revelation

and you're saying, well, it's implying that what's going on in verse 15 is the same thing going on in verse 10. I'm like, you're really going to overthrow all of that biblical evidence in the face of an implication, an assumption, an unstated assumption? That, I don't, I wouldn't take that exegetical approach. I would be like, well, let's just go on what's actually said and let's go on the dozens, if not hundreds of passages that do speak more clearly and directly to the final state. Okay. Revelation 14, 9 to 11. If anyone worships the beast in his image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured out full strength in the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels,

in the presence of the lamb. Really? In the presence of? I mean, that's, if this is talking about never ending torment in a literal way, then you also have to interpret in the presence of the lamb, Jesus is present in the torment of the wicked. I thought that they're separated from God's presence. Isn't that the kind of point? And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name. So it is specifically the phrase, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and that they have no rest day or night. That is the specific support of the eternal conscious torment view. Now,

the first phrase here, smoke of the torment goes up forever and ever, is, I don't think supports or doesn't support eternal conscious torment, because that is, I don't think supports a Nile or it doesn't support eternal conscious torment because that is, that image is going back to Isaiah 34, unambiguously, Isaiah 34, 10, where Edom in Isaiah 34, 10, nobody disputes that this passage is, that revelation is referring to Isaiah 34, 9 to 10, where Edom will be, quote, turned into pitch and her soil into sulfur. Her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched.

Its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste. None shall pass through it forever and ever. So you have forever and ever language. You have smoke imagery. You have day and night. But the image is clearly referring to a city that's been destroyed and is not existing in ongoing torment, meaning the image, and it is an image of smoke

going up for an ever and ever, is an image describing the comprehensiveness and irreversibility of the punishment, not some sort of ongoing, never-ending conscious state of torment for the Edomites. That's crystal clear. And I'm not supposed to use those phrases. That seems clear to me when I read Isaiah 34 and 9 to 10 in its historical context. Now, could John, the author of Revelation, be introducing a different meaning into the images he's drawing from Isaiah 34? That is possible. I would say that the author of John is reflecting on, not disagreeing with the original meaning of Isaiah 34. I think John is using the images that he's drawing from Isaiah in the same way that Isaiah himself was using these images, and that is from Isaiah in the same way that Isaiah himself was using

these images. And that is to describe the irreversibility and comprehensiveness of the punishment, not the ongoing torment of those being punished. Now, the one phrase, well, okay, so that's what the smoke, but what about the phrase, they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives its mark. Even the phrase. Okay, let me, let me be honest. This phrase, no rest day or night, is to me the strongest support of the eternal conscious torment view in all of scripture. I still don't think it really supports it.

But I would say that this is okay. Why say no rest day and night if they're dead? Well, again, we do have in the same passage in Isaiah 34, the phrase night and day. Is John with the phrase no rest day and night still drawing on the same passage that he's clearly drawing on in the previous sentence? I would say probably. I don't think it's just coincidence that the same Isaiah passage where he gets his smoke rising forever and ever also has day and night or night and day. I think it would be hard to argue that he is not still drawing on that image, on this passage for it's the meaning of night and day.

Again, night and day does not mean in Isaiah 34 that the people being destroyed, the Enamites are suffering forever and ever, being tormented forever and ever. It is again, a poetic way of describing the comprehensive nature of the judgment. I think it's more likely that the author of John is speaking in this same image in a way that resonates with its original context. That's my argument. Am I reading into the text what I want to see, or am I at least trying to draw from the text the intrinsic meaning of the text itself according to the historical context of the author of Revelation and the historical context of the Old Testament writer that he is clearly drawing on? I still have a couple other questions, even if you're like, no, I think he's using the phrase night and day in a different sense.

I mean, of course, this still means eternal conscious torment. Okay. I would still say there's still some lingering questions. Is he talking about just those who worship the beast and its image? What does that mean? Is this a way of describing all unbelievers? Are they all worshiping the beast and its image? A lot of people,

at least conservative dispensational interpreters, would say this is a specific kind of group of people at a specific time. Also, what do we do with, in the presence of the lamb? Is God, is Jesus present in hell forever? Is he, isn't he in the new creation? Well, he's both, he's omniscient. Well, yeah, Is Jesus present in hell forever? Isn't he in the new creation? Well, he's both. He's omniscient. Well, yeah, but he's still embodied.

Like he was raised from the dead and he's embodied and he will dwell literally in an embodied form in a new creation. Well, presence is just metaphorical because he's omnoing. His presence is kind of there, even though his physical presence will be in the new creation. Maybe, I guess that's possible. It's just, at least we can all acknowledge it's kind of an odd reference. Also, how do we know Revelation 14, 9, 11 is talking about the afterlife and not some hyperbolic description of God's punishment in the, either the first century judgment on Rome or some earthly punishment, not the afterlife. You're like, well, no, it's clearly it's afterlife. Well, look at the surrounding context. There is

nothing in the surrounding context before or after Revelation 14, it's clearly it's afterlife. Well, look at the surrounding context. There is nothing in the surrounding context before or after Revelation 14 that's talking about the afterlife. And I'm not saying, maybe he kind of like, for a second, leaves, you know, the stuff he's talking about in the first century and then goes to the afterlife and swings back and goes back to first century stuff. That's possible. I'm not saying that's not possible. I'm saying you at least have to prove, not assume that Revelation 14 is clearly talking

about the afterlife and not some first century judgment. Okay. Third passage of the big three. Well, let me, so to summarize, I would say Revelation 14 verse 11 is the strongest support for eternal conscious torment. But as you've heard some of my pushbacks, I don't think it's that clear. In fact, I would say the eternal conscious torment reading of this passage has several of its own problems. Even if for the sake of just the benefit of the doubt or to be generous, if we said, okay, this is one verse that supports ECT, even though I wouldn't say that, let's just, but for the sake of the argument, I would still say it's one verse in the weight of an overwhelming plethora of passages

that clearly to my mind would support annihilation. Also, both these verses are in Revelation, which is apocalyptic literature, which is latent with metaphors and images and is very difficult to understand, interpret. So I would have a hard time going against Genesis through Jude. That's the book before Revelation, right? I think so. Genesis through Jude says annihilation, but you know, Revelation says eternal conscious torment. So we go with eternal conscious torment. That just doesn't make the interpretive sense to me to take that, even if we assume that this verse supports ECT.

Okay. Last verse that I was hung up on when I was leaning towards the traditional view is Matthew 25, 46, and these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life. So here I used to think, oh, okay, this is clearly supporting eternal conscious torment. I mean, the contrast between everlasting life, which is living forever and everlasting punishment proves ECT. Because if the life is everlasting, then the punishment is everlasting. And guess what? I actually think the punishment is everlasting. The punishment of the wicked is everlasting. It will never end. You say, wait a minute, are you speaking on both sides of your mouth here? No. You have to ask the question,

what's the punishment? What is, biblically, Old Testament-ly, early Jewish-ly, Jesus-ly, early Jewishly, Jesusly, what is the punishment? It's death. I mean, that's not, I mean, the wages of sin is death. The forgiveness of God's eternal life. Those who reject God will be destroyed in hell, body and soul. I mean, all the passages I've read so far, the punishment is death. So death is everlasting. Death will never end.

Death will never change. Death will never be reversed to life for those who are raised, for the wicked who are raised and are punished and are cast into hell. They're cast into hell and they will receive death. And that punishment of death, that punishment will never end. So the point I see in Matthew 25, 46 is that the everlasting punishment means that that punishment is irreversible. I don't, and also the Greek word for punishment here, a colossus, just linguistically doesn't mean everlasting, doesn't mean torment. It could mean that out of the context of man's life, but the word itself doesn't mean that.

Punishment doesn't mean torment. If the punishment is death, then Colossus can easily mean, you know, Colossus Ionios, the everlasting punishment, could just simply mean the everlasting effects of the death sentence that's put over them. Like if someone receives a penalty, the death penalty in our age, we can say that is an everlasting punishment. It will never be reversed. Can't undo it. And even the Greek word colossus, the way, I don't want to get too deep here, but it's a noun that emphasizes the results of the verb it's modifying. There are verbal nouns and other kinds of nouns. Verbal nouns can have an internal verbal sense to it. So that punishment could mean

punishing, but this noun is not that kind of noun. It is punishment. It often conveys the results of the thing that it's talking about. Kind of like when in Hebrews, we see references to our everlasting redemption in Hebrews 9, 12. That doesn't mean Christ hangs on the cross and is in the forever process of redeeming us. It just means the results of Christ's final and finished work on the cross is a redemption that will always be there. Death will always be there for those who face everlasting judgment in Hebrews 6, 8, or Mark 3, 25. This doesn't mean an incredibly long courtroom session that never ends, everlasting judgment, but the never-ending results of the verdict. The everlasting sin

that Mark 3, 39 talks about is not talking about a never ending sin that people just keep committing forever and ever. It speaks to the results of the sin, not the ever ending act of punishment or commitment, the never acting act of committing that sin. Okay. So goodness, I'm going to wrap things up here. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to post my notes. I should have said this earlier. I'm going to post my notes, my 24 pages of notes that I have, 25 pages of notes, 20, I don't know, how long is this document? 27 pages of notes that I've been going off of for this entire two-part series on the Annihilation View of Hell so that you can have all the references, all the stuff in front of you. At the end of the day, this is why I see overwhelming biblical evidence in favor of the annihilation view of hell. Even if we granted the big three passages that I refer to, Revelation 14,

20, and Matthew 25, we still have dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of other passages that would support the annihilation view of hell for the wicked, along with the whole idea that immortality is conditioned upon resurrection and faith in Jesus Christ. That left up to their natural state, the wicked will pass out of existence ultimately. Okay, let me stop. I really mean this when I say I am not trying to say you must believe this, whatever. I do want you to believe at least this, that the annihilation view of hell has a lot of, let's just say, let's just be cautious, biblical or biblically grounded arguments that support it. People that believe in annihilation like me are not necessarily

doing so because they can't just stomach the eternal conscious torment view or because they're denying the Bible or trying to depart from Jesus or they're on a slippery slope towards, you know, universalism. None of that's true necessarily. I mean, maybe some people might be doing all those things, but that doesn't have to be the case. Certainly not the case for me, why I hold to the annihilation view of hell. I hold to the annihilation view of hell. I hold to the annihilation view of hell. Again, I say this unapologetically because from my journey, from my reading, from my interpretation of Scripture, from my study,

it seems to be one of the more overwhelmingly clear teachings in Scripture. And it's because of Scripture, my love for Scripture, and my view of its authority that I believe in the annihilation of hell. Thanks for listening to this very long Patreon only podcast. Thanks so much for your support. We'll see you next time. Thank you.