Theology in the Raw - 831: The Annihilation View of Hell

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

In the previous episode, I talked about the 3 different views of hell that have been taught throughout church history. In this episode, I briefly discuss why I used to hold to the eternal conscious torment view of hell but have come to believe that the annihilation view of hell is the most biblical. You don’t need to agree with me! But, if you claim to be a Christian, you do need to make sure your view of hell is based on Scripture and not just your church’s doctrinal statement or your tradition. Watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | 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. We are going to continue our discussion in the doctrine of hell for this episode. If you missed last week's episode, you need to go back and listen to that. That was titled Three Christian Views of Hell. And I worked through, you guessed it, the three Christian views of hell. I talked about eternal conscious torment, annihilation, and ultimate reconciliation. And there's various names that go along with that. For this episode, I am going to walk through why I have come to believe the so-called annihilation view of hell, or as we annihilationists like to call it, conditional immortality. Again, I have a video version of this podcast. So go to my YouTube channel if you want to watch it. And it would be

helpful to watch it, I think, because I have a working keynote presentation that goes along with it. So I'm going to be kind of even maybe even describing certain texts and circling certain words. So you'll kind of hear me interacting with the text in this podcast. And you'll be able to actually see me interact with the text in the YouTube version of this podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw, support the show for as little as five bucks a month. Also check out my forthcoming book, Embodied, Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say. It's available for pre-order where books are sold, i.e. Amazon. Does anybody buy books from anything besides Amazon?

I don't know. I kind of miss the old dusty bookstores. I wish Boise here in Idaho had something like a Powell's, you know, and you guys out there in Portland are, you guys have like an amazing used bookstore. I wish we had something like that. But anyway, until then, we still have Amazon. All right, let's dive into the so-called annihilation view of hell. And you can see why I have come to believe that view as being the most biblically faithful view of hell. Doesn't mean every single Bible believing Christian must believe it. I just think that

it's important for every believer to go back to the scriptures and analyze why they believe what they believe. So I hope you enjoy this wrestling with the text that I engage in as we talk about the annihilation view of hell. Also, just in case you missed last week's episode, this episode was originally a video-based sermon that I preached for Valley Christian Church out in Dublin, California. So you'll hear me reference the church context, especially at the beginning, but just so you know, that's the context of this original podcast. Hello, Valley Christian Church. It's good to be back with you to talk about this important topic of the doctrine of hell.

I hope I didn't stir up too much trouble talking about three Christian views of hell last time. Again, I just, I can't emphasize enough how passionate I am about properly understanding the issues that we're wrestling with before we seek to decide which one is more biblical. I think it's really important that we give each view a fair shake to truly seek to understand before we seek to refute. I know all of us probably come at this conversation with lots of presuppositions, lots of things that we think are true about what the Bible says about hell. But I've learned over the years that it's a lot more of a complicated topic than I had

originally thought. And so I want to have you go down that same journey that I've been on for many years. So if you were here last week or if you weren't here last week, um, you know, that we were talking about three, uh, Christian views of hell, um, three Christian views of how I'm going to pull up my slide here just so we can, uh, dig into that. Um, okay. Three Christian views of hell. And again, just to clarify what I mean by three Christian views is not that there are three equally valid views that are all taught in scripture necessarily, um, but that there are three views of hell that have been held by historic Orthodox Bible, believing Christians

throughout the centuries. Okay. The three Christian views are eternal conscious torment, which is the dominant view that has been held by most Western Christians, at least. Conditional immortality, sometimes known as annihilation, has been held by a minority of believers, but has also been held throughout the centuries. And then we have, of course, ultimate reconciliation, sometimes called universal salvation, that has been held by some as well. Now, yeah, just a super brief explanation. Again, the eternal conscious torment says that when

Jesus returns, he will raise the dead and there will be judgment day. Everybody will face judgment. And those who are followers of Jesus will go into eternal life. And those who deny Jesus, who rebel against Jesus will go away into, according to Matthew 25, eternal punishment. They will be punished for rejecting Christ. Um, uh, annihilation or conditional immortality says that same scenario agrees with all that. It just says that when people do go to hell, they will not live forever and ever and ever. Rather,

they will go into a place of punishment and they will, um, they will die. Like death is the punishment for sin. Ultimate reconciliation, in a sense, ultimate reconciliation agrees with eternal conscious torment in as much as people when they go to hell, they are not annihilated.

They don't just die. Rather, they keep living, but they will have an endless opportunity to turn back and turn to God. And God will always accept the repentant sinner that turns to him, whether on this side of life or the other side of life. Now, my journey began almost 10 years ago when there was a book published by Rob Bell. Some of you remember Rob Bell's book, uh, love wins, love wins. Uh, I thought it was a really provocative book. I thought there was a lot of good things in the book, but one of the main thesis theses

in the book was that, um, perhaps it's kind of how you framed it. Perhaps God's love will always be open to those who turn to him. Perhaps God's love will melt the hearts of every person who has ever lived. And so he basically challenged the traditional view of hell. He challenged eternal conscious torment in particular and argued for something that would be similar to, um, ultimate reconciliation. And that book just blew up. People were like, what in the world? I thought Rob Bell was a Christian and he, um, yeah, the aftermath didn't, didn't go too well. So I remember reading the book and being intrigued. I honestly was.

I was thinking like, man, I haven't thought about that and haven't thought about this. And I was really wrestling with this topic as a result of reading that book. And so at the time, I was teaching at a Bible college that Francis Chan was, the Bible college that Francis Chan had founded. And so both of us, both Francis and I kind of got together and talked about Rob Bell's book and what do you think? And long story short, we decided to write a response to Rob Bell's book and not the kind of response of, we know he's a horrible, big, mean, ugly, bad person, and we're going to show why.

But we wanted to write a response saying, what does the Bible actually say about hell? Like, what is he right? Um, part of me kind of wants him to be right. Um, is, is it biblical? Like, you know, he's, he's saying we've really misunderstood what the Bible says about hell. Is that, is that, is that true? Um, because we have misunderstood things throughout church history. Like Christians do misunderstand things. So both Francis and I, we looked at each other and said, like, I've never done a deep dive study of hell in the Bible. Have you? I'm like, no, I haven't. I just thought it was a done deal.

Like we both thought hell meant eternal conscious torment. That was the belief we grew up with. We just assumed that to be biblical. But neither of us had done our own study. Neither of us had actually gone back study. Neither of us had actually gone back to the text of scripture to see what the Bible says about hell. And so we spent some time doing that. And that, and the result of our joint study is this book, Erasing Hell, that was published in 2011. Some of you have read it or are reading it right now.

Some of you have read it or are reading it right now. Now, in that book, our main goal was to raise the question, is hell real? Like a place of punishment in the afterlife? And is it reversible? Okay. Is it a real place? Is it not necessarily that there's literal fire, literal flames, but is there a place of punishment called hell? Is that what Gehenna means? We looked at the word Gehenna last time. Um, and so we wanted to look at what the Bible

says about that. Um, our, so our main goal was really to look at hell in light of the ultimate reconciliation position that says that, yes, there's a hell, but people will be rescued out of that place. That was the main question we were asking. We weren't actually analyzing whether or not the annihilation view of hell was correct or not. But we did spend about two pages on what we called the duration of hell or the duration of the punishment. And in those two pages, we concluded this, that the debate about hell's duration is much more complex than I had first assumed. We write it, even though it's a jointly written book, we write in the first person singular I. It was much more complex than I had assumed. While I lean heavily on the side that it says it is everlasting, I am not ready to claim that with complete certainty. So we do say we believe in eternal conscious torment, but we do kind of give a nod to the annihilation position.

The one thing we did land pretty confidently on is that we didn't feel that the ultimate reconciliation view was best represented the scriptures when it came to eternal conscious torment versus annihilation. We're like, it's a little more messy. It's a little more dicey. In fact, both of us,

and this is just to give you some insight, both of us were kind of taken back a little bit messy. It's a little more dicey. In fact, both of us, and this is just to give you some insight, both of us were kind of taken back a little bit and how much evidence we did see for annihilation. We didn't think there was evidence for annihilation. We didn't grow up with that as an option, but we did see certain passages and themes and verses that did seem to suggest annihilation. So we didn't want to land. We didn't want to go beyond the Bible.

We wanted to land where we thought the Bible was leading us and not land so strongly so as to ignore some counter arguments that we found to be fairly legitimate. Now, why did we land on that, on eternal conscious torment? It was largely because of the big three, these big three passages that I discussed, um, in, in the last, uh, talk,

uh, Revelation 20, Revelation 14 and Matthew 20, 25, uh, 46. Um, let me be honest with you guys.

Um, I remember after writing that book thinking, I think there's a lot more to this conversation than I had realized. And even though our whole point in that book wasn't to argue against or for annihilation or whatever, like the whole annihilation position, not the position itself, but the biblical evidence that we found in support of it really intrigued me. So I began a journey that was back in 2011 when that book was published. And I began a journey re-evaluating whether or not there's something to this annihilation view. When I say re-evaluating, I'm saying I'm going back to Scripture. I'm looking at texts. I'm looking at arguments. I'm looking at counter arguments. I'm reading books that have been written on the doctrine of hell, both from an annihilation perspective and those who hold to

a eternal conscious torment view that are refuting the annihilation perspective. And here are some of my assumptions that I hold to now and that I held to when I sort of continued on that journey of understanding the doctrine of hell. Number one, the Bible is God's inspired word and the Bible should dictate our beliefs. Hands down, I'll go to the grave believing that. I'll take a bullet for that. If the Bible is God's word, then the Bible must dictate our beliefs. Sometimes our interpretation of the Bible can be difficult and messy. And sometimes the Bible itself can be complex. But at the end of the day, the Bible is our authoritative guide on belief and practice.

Another fundamental belief that I have that I hold to this day is that God is God. We're created. He can do whatever he wants. Psalm 115.3 is my life verse. Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. That is a fundamental presupposition of how I approach God. The God of the Bible is that he is God.

I'm not. He can do whatever he wants. I don't have the right as a created being to put God in the dock and to pepper him with questions and to make him fit my presuppositions of what God should be and how God should act. God is God. We are not. We should not formulate our view of hell based on emotions. Emotions aren't always bad, but they can be misleading.

It's hard for people to stomach any belief in hell. But just because it kind of doesn't resonate with our emotions doesn't mean it's not true or not. We can't say, as I said in the last talk, well, I could never believe in a God who would dot, dot, dot. All we're doing there is creating God in our own image. And I don't want to worship somebody that I've created. If I've created a certain view of God, because, uh, uh, you know, uh, God must do this, must do that because of how I think justice should be executed. Then all I'm doing is creating God in my own image and my own emotions. And I don't want to worship a God that looks too much like me. I think that's a dangerous place to be. My other presupposition is that sometimes

traditional brief beliefs are wrong. Tradition is not bad. I'm not anti-tradition. I think there's absolutely a place for tradition. And it's kind of impossible to read the Bible apart from some tradition. I think tradition informs our interpretation and informs our lenses that we read the Bible through. That's just the way it is. But sometimes tradition is wrong. Sometimes your tradition is wrong. Sometimes my tradition is wrong. Sometimes church history, church tradition is wrong. So just because there has been a sort of mainstream traditional belief on hell in the Western church, again, that doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. So which one is more biblical, eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality, or ultimate reconciliation? While I used to hold to eternal conscious torment, it's what I grew up with.

It's what we lean towards in Erasing Hell. And, um, I also, um, in Erasing Hell and still to this day, do not think ultimate reconciliation best represents the scriptures. Um, even though part of me, I've often called myself a hopeful universalist. Like I kind of wouldn't mind this view to be true. And it's still maybe. Maybe I'm getting it wrong. I'm a fallible interpreter of scripture.

But based on my ongoing study, I just haven't seen as much biblical evidence for ultimate reconciliation. I have leaned towards, not leaned towards, I have landed on the view that I think conditional immortality or annihilation best represents the totality of scripture. Now, even by saying that, some of you might be tuning out. Maybe you're yelling slurs at the screen like I'm a heretic and want to burn me at the stake. I've had some of those responses.

But again, my main concern is not to line up with tradition, not to say something that pleases somebody else's presuppositions. I will go to the grave. I will go to the grave and take a bullet for making sure that my beliefs are best rooted in the best understanding of the biblical text. The question is not which view is more traditional, which view is more widespread, which view resonates with my denomination. The ultimate question is which one is more biblical.

with my denomination, the ultimate question is which one is more biblical? And while there's arguments for each of these three views, okay, we've looked at some texts in the last talk. I do think that when all is said and done, when we look at all the arguments, the biblical arguments, the counter arguments, from my vantage point, I do see conditional immortality being the view that best represents a totality of reading Scripture. Now, let me, two more qualifications. Number one, and I'm going to explain this to you, like why I hold to this view, why I have moved from eternal conscious torment to conditional immortality. A few things. to conditional immortality.

A few things. First of all, I'm going to explain my journey to you and why I read the text this way. My only goal is that you would simply think about it. I am not going to say you must believe this. This is the only way to read the Bible. I have the corner market on the correct view of hell. I'm not at all saying that. Every Christian is responsible for making sure their beliefs are rooted in Scripture.

And my only goal at the end of this talk is that you too would be firm in your beliefs about what the Bible actually says about hell. Okay? I think it would be unfortunate if anybody listening kind of sat back with the arms folded and said, and wasn't willing to open up the text for themselves to see if, uh, this view has any merit. I'm not, again, you don't need to believe in it. I'm not going to ask, I'm not going to give a quiz at the end of this talk, pass or fail. I just simply want you to see how I have arrived at this position.

I think there's good godly people who hold to all three of these views, actually. Absolutely. The majority of evangelical biblical scholars, at least in the West, hold to eternal conscious torment. There's a good number of, I would say, British or European evangelical biblical scholars who would hold to conditional immortality. Some would even hold to ultimate reconciliation. But certainly in America, at least, the eternal conscious torment view is still the most popular evangelical position.

And I mean, no absolute disrespect or anything against those who hold to this view. All right, enough caveats. Let's jump in. And I want you to see how I have arrived at this position. First of all, there are so many Old Testament statements about God's judgment of those who are rebelling against him, God's judgment of the wicked. And in all of those passages in the Old Testament, we'll look at a bunch, the language used to describe the future state of those who reject God is language of destruction, language of finality, language that does not convey some idea of ongoing torment but language that that refers to the death and end of those who be considered wicked i know wicked is not a term

we typically use a lot today but the bible uses it quite a bit the wicked shall be broken together those who forsake the lord shall be consumed not not tormented. The wicked will be like grass that sinks down into flames. Think about that image. What happens? You can go do it. You can go take your five minutes, go outside, you know, light a fire and then throw grass into it. What happens there? Does the grass just, is it there in the flame for an ongoing state never ending or does it pass out of existence? Is it annihilated? Clearly, it's the latter. They will become like dead bodies, like refuse in the streets.

They will become like dead bodies, not bodies who are living forever or being tormented, but dead. No more life. Their life ceases to exist. The wicked will be as if burned to lime like thorns cut down that are sorry this is cut off again that that are burned in the fire is how the rest of the verse continues this is um isaiah uh 33 12 okay um i'll keep going because there's 3312. Okay. I'll keep going because there's so many texts I'm going to look at. Look, I'm not going to apologize for overwhelming you with the text. Okay. I'm going to give you text after text after text after text because one of the things

that I want you to see is that there is at least biblical merit to this view. Again, even if you're like, I still don't believe it. I don't buy it. I hold to one of the other two views. That's totally fine. All I want you to see is that it simply would be wrong to say, if you hold to annihilation, you're not being biblical. Because I get that accusation sometimes. Preston, I thought you used to believe in the Bible. And no matter how many times I point to scripture to justify my view, some people say you're just not being biblical. I'm like, here's the Bible. You're not being biblical. Here's the Bible. So I've gotten in the habit of saying, okay, I'm just going to overwhelm you with the text of scripture so that you can still disagree with my interpretation. But please don't say that this view is wrong because it's just

simply not biblical. I think that's a lazy, not accurate accusation of this view. Let's keep going. God tramples the wicked and their lifeblood splattered on my garments on the day of vengeance when God trampled down the people in anger and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. And this is in kind of more of a future kind of leaning passage, talking about God's future judgment. And again, it gives a picture of some kind of more of a future kind of leaning passage, talking about God's future judgment. And again, it gives a picture of some kind of finality. No more life for those who rebel against God.

Those who forsake the Lord are destined to the sword. All of you shall bow down to the slaughter. All of these images are of death, of slaughter, cessation of life, and not ongoing torment. Let's keep going because there's many others. And I'm being very selective here. There's many other passages I can look at. Isaiah 11. And this is kind of an end time passage.

This is where we get the lion will lie down with the lamb. The wolf will lie down with the lamb. We have a picture of the second coming of Jesus in Isaiah 11. So in a very end time context, it says God will kill the wicked with the breath of his lips. Kill, not torment. End the life of. The wicked will be slain by the Lord. The righteous will look upon the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled

against the Lord. And this is the passage where we get the whole image of the worm shall not die. The fire shall not be quenched, which some people take to prove eternal conscious torment. Well, the text from which those images come from, the undying worm, the unquenchable fire, come from this passage that clearly teaches the annihilation of the wicked, that there will be no more life left in these bodies. They are dead bodies that have been destroyed by God. Another one, and I understand these images are kind of gruesome, and they are images, but they're images that convey a deeper theological point.

Um, and then this one is really disturbing. Actually, uh, Malachi chapter four, the day of the Lord will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evil doer will be stubble. And the day that is coming will set them on fire. Not a root or branch will be left to them. So the image of fire is not a means of torture or torment. It is the means of disintegration, of annihilation. They will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act. Clearly talking about end time, future judgment. And again, the image, if we're going to ask the question, Malachi,

are you talking about the never ending torment of the wicked or the destruction and ending the life of the wicked? Clearly the image here is of the latter. These images are of death, slaughter, the cessation of life and not of ongoing torment. Throughout the Old Testament and in the New, we see the story of Sodom and Gomorrah being a picture of what God is going to do to those who reject him. What he's going to do in the end. I'm not going to, you can look at these passages. In the New Testament, Sodom is viewed as an example of what is going to happen in the future judgment.

So this isn't just an Old Testament thing. This is very much a New Testament thing. And I just, I included these references here. These are two first century Jewish writers. And I just list those to show that it was very common in first century Judaism to use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as a picture of what the end time judgment will be like. Again, Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't a time of torturing and torment. It was a time of destruction. In the New Testament, please don't look all these up right now. I'm just there for your referencing pleasure. And this is something I referenced in the last video,

so I don't want to spend a lot of time here. But this Greek word apoleia, which is translated destruction, is often used, often used to describe the final state of those who reject God. And I have bolded and underlined the verses that I think are most relevant to our conversation that do seem to be talking about not some kind of this worldly judgment, but an end time judgment of God. Okay, so again, you can look these up if you're, and you make your own kind of interpretive decisions. I don't want to, I'm not trying to hide these verses from you and saying, just believe what

I say. No, I actually want you to do your own study. So I would encourage you to check out those verses. That's the noun for destruction. Apolline is the verb to die, to kill, those verses. That's the noun for destruction. Apolline is the verb to die, to kill, to perish. We looked at Matthew 28 in the last talk.

But all these passages would encourage you to look up if this is of interest to you. And there's just, there's a lot of them, okay? Where this word occurs in an end time passage to describe the final state of those who reject God.

We also have images from the Gospels, from either something John the Baptist said or something Jesus said, that, again, if we're going to ask the question, is Jesus trying to convey the fact that the wicked will be tormented forever and ever? Or is he trying to convey the idea that the wicked will cease to exist, that their life will end? Of those two options, eternal conscious torment versus annihilation, clearly these images convey something like annihilation. We can just look at the second one here. His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering and just enter into this image, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. And some people say, oh, unquenchable fire. See, that's never-ending torment. It's like,

well, let's look at the image though. Unquenchable fire simply means a fire is so strong, so comprehensive that you can't put it out with water. It's a powerful, powerful fire. It doesn't necessarily mean that whatever's thrown into that fire will never pass out of existence, but will constantly be living in the state of burning. In fact, if you look at the image, the chaff will be burned up. Katakayo is the Greek word for translated to burn up, and it means to fully consume. And if you just follow the image, when you throw chaff or you throw wheat into this massive fire that you can't even put out with water. It's so uncontrollable. What's going to happen to that wheat? Will it be tormented forever or will it simply burn up

and pass out of existence? Um, clearly the, the latter is more accurate to this image. All right. Keep going. Okay. I don't just because again, I want you to see that I'm not, this isn't just a verse here, a verse there. I do think this is a dominant way of looking at the final state of those who reject God in Scripture. Jesus says, you know, as weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. So here, you know, he's not just talking about, again, some kind of this worldly judgment. He's talking about the end of the age. not just talking about, again, some kind of this worldly judgment. He's talking about the end of the age. At the judgment, God's fiery indignation will consume his enemies. The idea of consume

does not convey ongoing torment. It conveys finality, cessation of life. So we saw this just briefly in the Old Testament that the image of fire is not an agent of torment. Fire functions in two ways in judgment passages in the Old Testament. One, either as refining fire, like God's going to put you through the fire and you're going to come out better on the other end. Or it conveys the idea of an irreversible punishment, not by tormenting, but by consuming. And this is something we see throughout the Gospels in particular, but also in the book of Jude, where fire as an agent of destruction, not torment, is used to refer to the final state of those who reject God. We looked at this passage when I was giving my unbiased representation of all three views.

I just want to bring it up again, because I do think it's particularly clear. If you're going to ask Peter, what is going to happen to the ungodly in the end? I mean, that's exactly what he says. Peter, what is going to happen to the ungodly? Well, it's going to be a lot like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God condemned them. He reduced the cities to ashes, condemning them to extinction, catastrophe, where we get catastrophe from, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. So this verse alone, I would at least, I would at least want people to say, okay, this verse alone, if this is all we had, clearly annihilation would be the biblical view. You have to at least get there. Now you could say, well, but there's other passages that teach something different and we have to kind of go with these other clearer passages. And, you know,

I understand we could do that. We could look at other passages that would say, well, actually, annihilation isn't the correct view overall. But at least, I mean, this verse alone, I think, is a really clear picture of the annihilation view of hell or conditional immortality. And now you've seen me go through passage after passage after passage. So I do think that this passage isn't some isolated, random, weird, you know, outlier verse. I do think this passage simply reiterates all the other things that we've looked at so far. Okay. What about the big three? Okay. Again, Revelation 20, Revelation 14, and Matthew 25. We'll look at each one just briefly. This one, and I kind of hinted at this in my last talk,

that when the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire, it says they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. I just do want to point out that, yes, anyone's name who's not written in the book will also be thrown in the lake of fire, but it doesn't say they will be tormented day and night forever. You can assume that because they go to the same place that they will receive the same fate. You can assume that. But you have to admit that the text doesn't actually say that. So I don't, um, I don't want to say therefore this tap passage teaches annihilation. That's not my point.

My point is to say, I don't think you can simply quote revelation 20 as clear proof for eternal conscious torment. It does seem to say eternal conscious torment for the devil, the beast and the false prophet within the book of revelation though. The beast is clearly the, well, clearly, I mean, everything's debated in Revelation. I think the best understanding of the beast is that this is the political entity of Rome and political entities that oppose the work of God and the prophet.

I do think that the prophet is not thinking of us necessarily of an individual figure, but as the sort of religious opposition to the movement of God, I do think that the devil is an individual spiritual being. But I do think that the devil, beast and false prophet, at least the beast and the false prophet are probably talking about spiritual entities, not just individuals. But again, you don't even need to, you know, follow me for that because it says they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. It does not explicitly say that about anyone's name who's not found in the book of life. This one used to be a slam dunk for eternal conscious torment for me, Matthew 25, 46, because of the contrast between everlasting punishment and everlasting life.

But as I hinted in the last talk, everlasting punishment doesn't have to mean the never ending act of punishing, as in the punishment will never quite fully be complete. It's punishing forever and ever and ever. It could mean that the punishment is simply irreversible. If you ask the question, well, what is the punishment? What is the punishment? Throughout scripture, we see that the wages of sin is death. Death is the punishment. Destruction is the punishment. We saw, I mean, again, all the passages we looked at in the Old Testament, it's the cessation of life. You will no longer live. That's the punishment. Well, how long

will this death last forever? The punishment lasts forever. It's the completed punishment of death that will last forever. It doesn't mean that that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be living in an ongoing conscious state of being punished for the punishment to be never ending. That's at least, I think that's a legitimate way to interpret this text. This one to me, Revelation 14 is probably the strongest evidence I would, in my opinion,

for eternal conscious torment. The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night. I would ask a couple of questions though. Is this actually referring to hell? And that's something you need to decide. Go back and read the context. Read Revelation chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. It's not clear that this is talking about end time punishment. We do get that in Revelation 20 and 21 with the lake of fire. This might be some sort of like metaphorical way of God speaking about some punishment in this present day and age.

But, you know, that's disputed. The whole book of Revelation is disputed, which might also caution us from formulating the doctrine simply out of a highly disputed book. What's interesting here, though, is this phrase, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

This is clearly drawing on Isaiah 34, where it says that Edom's, the country of Edom, that their streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning fire, burning sulfur. Her land will become blazing pitch. It will not be quenched day or night. Its smoke will rise forever. The smoke rising forever, I think, is an image for the comprehensive nature of the destruction,

not evidence of an ongoing torment. And again, I've been to Sodom and Gomorrah. It's not there anymore. I've been to Edom. That Edom, the ancient country of Edom does not exist anymore. God judged Edom, and he, like Sodom and Gomorrah, kind of annihilated the city. So, and all I want to do is point out that I do think we have to understand not just these images and assume we know what smoke of their torment going up forever and ever means.

I think we need to go back to the source text of the Old Testament to try to understand what did this image originally convey? And maybe that's what it means in this passage here. So, you know, this is going to be a little unfair. I didn't go through every single one of these passages. But, you know, when I wrote A Race in Hell with Francis Chan, you know, we were pretty impressed with these passages. I no longer am that impressed. I still think Revelation is a tough one.

I'm not so impressed with the other ones in terms of supporting eternal conscious torment. But even if they did, I mean, there's a lot of passages, a lot more passages that from my interpretation, you've seen me, you know, how I read these passages, they do seem to support the annihilation view. So that one thing I was taught in Bible college is when you have something that's clearly and pervasively taught in scripture, and if you have a few other scriptures that seem to go against that, you go with the weight of the clear passages and, um, you know, you don't, you don't disagree with the other passages. You just maybe say, maybe there's more to these outlier passages than might meet the eye. Um, so, um, let me say a quick word about universal reconciliation. Cause I,

uh, this argument might, um, seem like um seem like really persuasive for those who hold to this view that just as all people died in adam so all people will be made alive in uh christ or sorry not died in adam but became came under the condemnation of of adam came under the condemnation of Adam, which led to death, obviously. Well, and people, you know, I even said like, well, does all mean all? Well, the meaning of all is trickier than some people make it out to be.

Sometimes the word all means every man, woman, and child. That's true in some passages. Sometimes it just means something a little more generic, like all kinds of people. Sometimes the word all is an overstatement. You know, the Pharisee says, they say in the gospels, you know, all of Jerusalem has gone after Jesus. You know, it's like, well, really every single man, woman, and child, the whole city has been cleared out. There's not a single human soul in the city of Jerusalem. They've all followed Jesus. And like, well, no, it was a, it was a general statement.

I mean, a whole lot of people. Oftentimes in scripture, the word all, the sense behind all is all without distinction, like Jews and Gentiles is kind of the emphasis. What's interesting in the book of Romans is the first several chapters of Romans, or I would say the book of Romans as a whole, that is a huge emphasis, is to level the playing field to show that Jews don't have better favor with God than Gentiles. It is an equal playing field. We are all under sin. And the emphasis there in Romans 3, we're all under sin, is that even you Jewish people are under sin.

Don't think that you get a free pass just because you were born in the line of Abraham. We are all equally under condemnation, all without distinction. So given that emphasis, and if you did a word study on the word all, pontos in the Greek, you would see that it often occurs in passages where there's this emphasis on leveling the playing field, Gentiles and Jews. So here I would say the emphasis is all without distinction, die in Adam. Even Jews receive the condemnation from Adam's sin. Even Jews are born with a sin nature, Paul might say. And so here, justification in life for all.

Paul might say. And so here, justification in life for all. That includes even you Gentiles, even though some Jewish people in the first century didn't think Gentiles could get into the kingdom without becoming Jews. Paul says, no, all without distinction. And I think the same thing is true here in Romans 11. I mean, the whole chapter of Romans 11 is focusing on this Jew-Gentile distinction, trying to show that Jews are no better off than Gentiles. They all have the same opportunity to follow Jesus. So yes, God has consigned even Jews to disobedience so that he might have mercy on all kinds of people, not necessarily every single man, woman, and child. So that's how I would understand these passages. So which one is more biblical?

Eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality, or ultimate reconciliation? I truly think that there are biblical passages and arguments that can be used to support each individual view. support each individual view. And when I think about the eternal conscious torment, it does make me, I am impressed with the weight of tradition that supports this view. And I don't want to dismiss that lightly. In fact, it's taken me several years to land on conditional immortality because I don't want to pretend like I know more than millions of Christian leaders throughout the centuries. Okay. But there's, I do have a few pretty significant theologians on my side that would hold to conditional immortality. Um, ultimate

reconciliation. We, I think there's again, biblical arguments that can be used. Um, honestly, I feel like these two kind of, or I think if conditional immortality or annihilation is true, then ultimate reconciliation can't be true. This one sort of cancels out this one because if upon judgment, you're thrown into hell and your life ceases to exist, then there's no hope of turning back to God if you're no longer around. So I do think these two, um, have to kind of face off with each other and show how the other one is,

uh, incorrect. But if you hold, if you, if you do, if you are persuaded by the biblical evidence for annihilation, then in a sense that kind of rules out ultimate reconciliation. But also I do think there is a,

um, a responsible counter interpretation to some of the passages used to justify ultimate reconciliation. But also I do think there is a responsible counter interpretation to some of the passages used to justify ultimate reconciliation. So thanks for listening. Again, this is just something to chew on. Everything I've summed up, I mean, it's taken me years and hundreds of hours of study and research. I don't expect everybody to just be convinced because you heard it from me, but I would challenge you. Here's my one, one main challenge that everybody must go home with. And that is make sure your beliefs, if you call yourself a Christian, if you say you believe the actual Bible, then make sure your beliefs are rooted in the actual text of scripture,

not relying on some traditional assumption about what you think the text should or must say. Thanks for listening to this conversation about the doctrine of hell. Thank you.