Three Views of Hell, Part 4 - Eternal Torment Critique

When we look at the last post and the list of passages cited there, it certainly looks as though the Eternal Torment view is the only possible interpretation that is Biblically justifiable. However, the case is not as iron-clad as it looks at first glance.

Before I continue, I just want to give credit where it’s due: Several teachers and theologians have made me aware of many of the things that I will be writing on over this and the next several posts, John Stott, Steve Gregg, and Clark Pinnock foremost among them. I would not have been able to see much of what I will be writing about from here on out without reading their work.

Our preconceptions about what the Bible teaches often prevent us from recognizing good alternative theological views and prevent us from seeing problems with our own beliefs. Additionally, legitimate alternative views suffer because most of us don’t know the Bible as well as we should (I most definitely include myself in this). Both of these problems work in favor of the Eternal Torment view of Hell.

Let’s start with the word “eternal,” the backbone of the Eternal Torment view. The regular appearance of this word in describing various attributes of Hell has, understandably, led many to the conclusion that the suffering of the lost in hell lasts forever.

It should be pointed out that the Greek word “aion” or aionios” which is most often translated in these passages as “eternal” is defined by Vine’s Expository Dictionary as,

“Duration, either undefined but not endless, or undefined because endless.”

Right out of the gate, we find that the word we’ve always understood to mean everlasting may not mean that at all. Of course, “eternal” or “everlasting” could just as likely be the proper translation; I am not a Greek scholar by any means, and so far all Greek scholars involved in translating these passages have concluded that “eternal” is the best word. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to judge how justified their choice of translation is, except to say that translators are not free of their preconceptions and are just as capable of being swayed by them as you or I. It also seems that translators believe a great deal in precedence; that is, since aion was first translated as “eternal,” they will also translate the word as “eternal” unless they have a very good reason not to. Since we don’t have an ancient Greek scholar available to us, for the rest of the post let’s assume that “eternal” and other words that imply eternality are translated correctly.

As it turns out, the word “eternal” and similar words only appear eight times in the passages said to be describing Hell, and most of these passages are apocalyptic in style – that is, among other things they make use of hyperbole to make their points. This is the case for what are probably the two strongest passages supporting Eternal Torment: Revelation 14:11 and Mark 9:47-48.

Revelation 14:10-11
…he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 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.

To anyone who has studied the Book of Revelation in light of the rest of the Bible, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Apostle John is borrowing imagery directly from the Old Testament. In Isaiah 34 the prophet records a judgment against the nation of Edom:

Isaiah 34:8-10
For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. And the streams of Edom shall be 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.

While John is not quoting this passage directly, his imagery is borrowed from it. In both texts the picture of judgment brought against the lawbreakers makes use of fire, sulfur, and smoke ascending eternally. But is the unending state pictured in these passages meant to be understood literally? In Isaiah 34, I believe the answer is unquestionably no.

Edom was utterly destroyed by the Nabataeans just as God predicted through Isaiah. The land of Edom is no more, there are no more Edomites (the last known Edomite was Herod the Great), there has not been a descendent of Esau on the face of the Earth for 2000 years. Yet, if we were to travel to the former land of Edom, on the southern shore of the Dead Sea, we would not find the smoke of the Nabataean conquest still rising into sky, yet this passage speaks of the smoke from their burnt land ascending forever. This is a word picture, poetically written, meant to convey the message that Edom would be destroyed and never recover. Smoke is what is left after what has been burned is consumed. That it “go[es] up forever” might be understood to mean the Edomites will remain consumed forever. They are dead and gone two millennia ago, and will never cease to be consumed. Is this the way John means to use this imagery? I can’t say that I know for sure that he does, but it does seem possible.

However, if eternal torment is not what’s in view in verse 11, then why does the end of that sentence read, “and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name?” No rest seems to imply continued consciousness throughout the process that lasts “forever and ever.” While that might be the case, if we read just 2 verses down from this statement it appears that John himself explains:

Revelation 14:13
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

The rest that John writes about Revelation 14 appears to be another description of Heaven. The saints that die in Christ enter their "rest," those that perish without Him never enter that rest. It is entirely possible that by saying they will never experience rest day or night John is implying that they will not enter Heaven - not that they will remain conscious forever.

Interestingly, the other passage most often cited as teaching that Hell is a place of eternal torment, Mark 9:47-48, is also borrowed from the very last verse of the last chapter in Isaiah:

Mark 9:47-48
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell [lit. Valley of Hinnom], ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Isaiah 66:24
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

No matter which view of the final six chapters of Isaiah you hold to (these chapters are very controversial) this last verse of the book makes it clear that the prophet is not referring to souls or people in hell eternally suffering worms and flames. The prophet is referring to the bodies of the dead which experience these things, not their conscious souls or their resurrected bodies.
It also appears that undying worms and unquenchable flames should not be taken literally. As I pointed out in an earlier post, in Mark 9:47-48, Jesus refers in the passage specifically to the Valley Hinnom, which was a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem. When Jesus spoke about Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, his audience would not have thought about a distant future judgment after death, but simply of the valley just outside of Jerusalem's wall. The fires there burned day and night and the worms constantly consumed the garbage, refuse, and the bodies of criminals disposed of in that place.

We in the west make very similar statements all the time, yet for some reason we insist on holding the Biblical writers to a woodenly literal use of language. When you have a problematic ant infestation that you have tried to kill off unsuccessfully, it would not be unusual to complain that these ants “just won’t die.” No one would take you literally and conclude that you were saying these particular ants were immortal or would infest your house for eternity. In this light it is probably safe to say that neither statement about the flames and worms have anything to do with eternity, but are simply common expressions about what one would find in the Valley Hinnom at any given time.

The Valley of Hinnom was also mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke of it several times while proclaiming the coming judgment on Israel carried out by Babylon in 586 BC.

Jeremiah 7:31, 32
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Jeremiah 19:6-9, 11-12
…Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them’…and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's
vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there
will be no place else to bury. Thus will I do to this place, declares the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.

The question is, in citing the passage of Isaiah and referring to the place which figures somewhat prominently in Jeremiah’s prophesy of destruction upon Israel, could Jesus be warning of something similar occurring again? It is very possible. The similarities between the Babylonian destruction of Israel and the Roman destruction 600 year later are striking.

Josephus writes extensively about the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem in “The Jewish Wars,” and he records that during the height of the Roman siege there were rotting bodies laying in the streets of the city and bodily fluids running in the gutters. The people of Jerusalem cast so many bodies over the walls that they filled the Kidron Valley. While Josephus never mentions the Valley of Hinnom, it may well have seen the same result from this war, especially seeing as this was it’s general use anyway.

These ancient prophets may provide us with a better understanding of these two passages which have long been cited as the support for the view of eternal torment, but they don’t shed any light on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:28 that we should “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell [lit. Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnom]. One explanation that has been suggested is that Jesus is simply saying that when the offending individual is dead God is not done with them yet. I don’t know of any other possible explanations of this particular verse, which I find quite mysterious.

A number of the scriptures that are generally cited in support of the Eternal Torment view of Hell talk about eternal fire. The argument is that the fire of Hell is eternal and so the suffering and torment of those condemned there must be eternal as well. While one can easily see how descriptions of eternal fire would lead one to assume an eternal Hell, the fact is that neither suffering, torment, nor punishment are mentioned in these passages; only eternal fire.
An explanation of this could be that the modifier “eternal” actually refers to something other than duration of torment. It’s quite possible that in describing eternal fire the author is not saying that the fire itself lasts forever but that the fire has it’s source in eternity, which is an attribute solely of God. This idea is not without some scriptural support.

Genesis 19:24
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Jude 1:7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

As I pointed out before regarding Edom, if you were to travel to the west bank of the Dead Sea, where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to have been located, you will not see a fire continuing to burn. Genesis tells us that these cities were destroyed with fire “from the Lord out of heaven.” While the fire that burned these cities has long since gone out, the source of the fire is the God who holds eternity in His hand. If this is the case, then to say that the condemned suffer eternal fire would not be saying anything more than that they suffer the judgment of God.

One final point is that the Bible does not say anywhere, that I am aware of, that unbelievers live forever. We often assume it because we understand that those who enter into the New Heaven and the New Earth will reign with God forever; but eternal existence of the damned isn’t taught in the Bible to the best of my knowledge.

Like I said at the beginning of this series, I don’t know what position to believe at the moment. While I have been critical of the Biblical arguments offered in support of the Eternal Torment view Hell, nothing I have laid out is concrete. I have simply offered what I believe to be reasonable questions about the traditional interpretations of the passages used to support the view of Eternal Torment.

Three Views of Hell, Part 3 - Eternal Torment

What is the nature of Hell? Many of us have heard about it since we were small children in Sunday school. It’s lampooned regularly in the old “Far Side” comic, and references to it are common in English literature and in film. Chances are that even the most theologically uninformed individuals know that Christianity teaches that “bad people go to Hell forever.” But what does the Bible teach about the place that has been set aside for those not found in Christ?

As I stated in my introduction to this series, until last year I would never have given a second thought to this subject. I “knew” that the Bible taught what is referred to as the “Traditional View” or the “Eternal Torment” view and that any other understanding of Hell was straying into the realm of cults and theological liberalism. But when I honestly assessed what I really did know about what the Bible said on Hell, I discovered I knew a lot less than I thought.

I’m going to start with an examination of the Eternal Torment view of Hell. To be clear, this view is the common one, held by the vast majority of conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, which says that those who die without accepting the substitutionary atonement of Christ will be separated from God in Hell and will suffer torment for eternity.

It should be noted beforehand that one of the primary assumptions of those who hold the Eternal Torment view of Hell, whether they know it or not, is that man is by nature immortal. The case for this belief is made by pointing out that the Bible teaches that man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) and one of our shared attributes with the Creator is immortality. Thus, even when man becomes separated from God in Hell he continues to survive forever.

I’m going to spend the rest of this post quoting every passage in the Bible which is generally accepted as saying something about Hell. I won’t need to make the case for this view so much as lay out the passages that are cited for it – most of us in the West, even non-Christians, have grown up with this view so embedded as part of our shared cultural knowledge that we will immediately recognize the view from the following passages.

Matthew 5:22
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:29-30
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 23:33
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Matthew 23:15
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land
to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Mark 9:43,45,47
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire… And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell… And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.

Note that in each of these quotations the word rendered as “hell” is the Greek word "Gehenna."

What can we learn from these passages? Hell (or specifically, Gehenna) is a place for people who say “You Fool;” it is better to mutilate yourself (cutting off various body parts) than to go there; it is a place of bodies and souls; and it is a place that people are sentenced to go to. While these passages convey the idea that this place is terrible and not one any person would choose to go to, they don’t really give us any specifics, they don’t tell us about the nature of Hell. For that we need to look elsewhere.

None of the following passages explicitly mention hell, however, just because they don't use the word doesn't mean they don't have anything to teach us about it. They also represent the totality of Bible teaching on the subject. Outside of these passages the Bible has nothing else to say about damnation (that I'm aware of).

Matthew 3:12
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 7:23
And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:40-42, 50
Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41,46
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Romans 2:8-9
…but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and
distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,

2 Corinthians 5:10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:3
While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

2 Thessalonians 1:9
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Hebrews 6:1-2
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

Hebrews 10:27
…but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

2 Peter 2:12, 17
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction…These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.

Jude 7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Revelation 14:10-11
…he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 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.

Revelation 20:10
…and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into 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.

These verses refer repeatedly to separation between the righteous and the unrighteous (the lawbreakers). The unrighteous receive the due sentence for the works that they did “in the body” (that is, while they lived on earth). They will be forced to depart from Christ and be cast into a fiery furnace (called the "lake of fire" in Revelation) where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are placed to suffer torment “forever and ever.” This fire is said to be "unquenchable" or "eternal" and it has been prepared for the devil and his angels. In addition to fire, “gloom” and “outer darkness” are also referred to. It is place of torment, and the smoke of that torment ascends day and night and those who sufferer it will have no rest. Those who obey unrighteousness will suffer wrath and fury, tribulation and distress. This destruction will be sudden, is called eternal, and will consume the adversaries of God.

After all this, is there any question that the Eternal Torment view has good Biblical support? The fact is, from this list of passages, the traditional view of hell appears unassailable to many and is easily justified. However, we will examine whether this is actually the case or not in the very next post.

Three Views of Hell, Part 2 - Translation Problems

Before I begin an exploration of what I now consider to be the three Biblically acceptable views of Hell, we need to clear a few misconceptions and problems out of the way. Unfortunately, when it comes to this subject, there is one tremendous roadblock in particular that prevents many people from coming to a clear understanding of what the Bible actually teaches about Hell: The King James Version of the Bible.

No offense to those who love the King James Version of the Bible - for its time it was a marvelous feat of scholarship and it still is the most beautifully rendered of all Bible versions - but we now know that there are a quite a few places where the translation is misleading or simply flat out wrong. This is the case with the KJV use of the word “Hell.” Unfortunately, the wide familiarity of the KJV rendering of many passages has led to quite a few misunderstandings regarding what the Bible actually teaches about Hell (among other subjects).

As we go through these posts on Hell you must keep in mind that no matter which of the three views you accept Hell is place where the unrighteous are condemned to go following the judgment of Christ at His second coming. While there are places described in the Bible that look similar to our understanding of Hell, some of these are described as existing before the Judgment, and therefore cannot be what Christians understand to be Hell. They might be precursors to Hell, but not Hell itself.

If you look up the word “Hell” in the KJV you will find that it appears exactly 31 times in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word that the translators chose to render as “Hell” in the OT is “Sheol,” which scholars now know is a severe mistranslation. Sheol literally means “the place of the dead;” it either refers to the place where everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous, go when they die or it refers to the physical state of death. There is no notion of suffering or separation from God in the word at all. Few, if any, of the modern translations even attempt to translate sheol, as there is not a good modern English equivalent, most just leave it as it is. Later on, as I go through all the verses that are generally cited as telling us something about Hell, you will notice that none of them come from the OT, which apparently (and interestingly) has nothing to tell us about Hell.

In the New Testament, there are three different Greek words that have been translated as “Hell,” particularly in the KJV, and “Hades” is the most numerous of the three. If you’re familiar with the Greek myths, you know that Hades is the land of the dead. Just like sheol, it is either the place where both the good and the bad go or it is simply the state of physical death. It has no equivalence with Hell, as Christians understand the word, but is instead a direct equivalent of sheol. This is most apparent in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) into Koine Greek made between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, which translates all instances of "sheol" as0 "hades."

The second Greek word translated as Hell in the New Testament is “tartarus.” Tartarus only appears once in the entire Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4 which reads:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into [tartarus]
and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

This might sound like the Lake of Fire described in Revelation but it can’t be. The verse tells us that the angels who are held in Tartarus are waiting for the judgment day (it’s a temporary prison) while the Lake of Fire in Revelation 19 and 20 appears to be a final holding place for the beast, the false prophet, and anyone whose names are not found in the Book of Life. Unfortunately, little else is known about Tartarus – it could be the name of the location that the rich man, from the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, found himself in; although there are several dissimilarities between the two places. Or it could be somewhere else completely. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be Hell.

The third and final word often translated as Hell in the New Testament, “Gehenna,” is also the one which is most justifiably translated as "Hell." The word appears several times in the teaching of Jesus and once in the book of James (3:6). Gehenna literally refers to a narrow ravine just outside of Jerusalem, known also as the “Valley of Hinnom” or “Topheth” (pronounced: toff-et) where a number of unsavory things occurred throughout Jewish history.

In the time of the Jewish kings Ahaz and Manasseh the Jews were conducting ritual infant sacrifices to the demon-god Moloch in the Valley (2 Kings 16:2-3, 2 Chron 28:3; 33:6). When King Josiah took the throne of Judah he put an end to this practice by making the Valley unclean through the disposing of bodies of executed criminals and dead animals there and draining the sewage of Jerusalem’s upper city ("Bethso") into it. The fires of Gehenna were kept burning day and night without end to destroy the carcasses and garbage that were dumped there. Apparently, brimstone (that’s sulphur to us) was also used in the valley to assist in the burning of the garbage as well as for it’s disinfectant qualities.

The singular Jamesian reference to Gehenna tells us nothing about the word, other than it has bad undertones. James writes that, “The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by [Gehenna].” While this is a strong warning against undisciplined speech it really doesn’t tell us anything about Hell or Gehenna, as James understood those words.

While the word Gehenna is used by Jesus only 7 unique times (11 times total among the synoptic Gospels), the ways in which it is used lend themselves far better toward being translated as Hell then any of the other three words I covered above. Of course, whether this translation is appropriate remains to be seen; I will go over all the passages that appear to say something about Hell in my next post, which will make the argument for the Eternal Torment view.

Three Views of Hell, Part 1

Recently, I have been studying the Biblical doctrine of Hell, and have come to a surprising conclusion: I don’t know what to believe about Hell.

As I studied the passages that most Protestant Christians believe speak about Hell, I discovered that the Bible has far less to say on the subject than I ever thought. You’ve probably heard it said that Jesus spoke more about Hell than about any other single subject; I have heard it said countless times in my life, but in studying the subject I found that Jesus either rarely, or never (depending on how you understand several vague passages) spoke about Hell. In reality, He spoke most often about the Kingdom of God, but that’s a subject for another time.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this subject, and as my views are now up in the air, I would like to present what I have found and see if any readers have any comments. This will probably take three or four posts (or six or seven), and I imagine that each will be pretty long. That said, I hope this interesting for all.

Three Biblical Views of Hell?

Like most Christians, I grew up believing in what is generally known as the “Eternal Torment” view of Hell. We’re all familiar with it - In brief, it says that all people who die without having accepted the saving work of Christ are judged and then cast in Hell, or more specifically the Lake of Fire, where they are separated from God and suffer torment for eternity. While I was aware that liberal Christians and some groups I would call cults had different beliefs about Hell, I never for a moment considered that anything other than the Eternal Torment view was Biblically justifiable.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in “Annihilationism,” that the soul of the unbeliever is destroyed upon death so that there isn’t any hell at all. For the JW, there is only Heaven and non-existence. The Unitarians believe in “Universalism,” that there are many ways to God, and that all people will be accepted into God’s presence upon death. For them Heaven is the only destination. These are not the only pseudo-Christian cults and groups that hold such alternative doctrines about Hell, but they are two of the most prominent.

Neither Annihilationism nor Universalism, as stated above, has any grounding in scripture. Both views primarily emanate from a strong distaste for the eternal torment view – a distaste that most Christians can probably empathize with. I have never been particularly comfortable with the eternal torment understanding of Hell myself, but I have defended it on internet forums and in the High School Sunday School classes I taught because I believed it was what the Bible taught. That said, in conducting a more focused study of the Biblical teachings on Hell I was very surprised to come to the conclusion that two other views, very similar to Annihilationism and Universalism, do have as much Biblical evidence in their favor as the view of Eternal Torment does.

“Universal Reconciliation”

I imagine that most conservative Christians will have a bad reaction to this view instinctively, as on it’s surface it appears almost indistinguishable from Universalism. Like Universalism, Universal Reconciliation teaches that all people will bow the knee, be reconciled with God, and join Him in Heaven. While the end result is the same, there are three key differences which make Universal Reconciliation, I believe, tolerable to Biblical Christianity while Universalism is not.

1. There is a Hell in Universal Reconciliation.
While Universalism teaches that all men go to heaven because God is too loving to send people to hell, that He is pleased with us no matter what we do, Universal Reconciliation teaches that men who die without Christ suffer judgment and Hell for their sins against God.

2. All men will be saved, but that Salvation is only through Christ.
While the god of Universalism loves everyone so much that he will overlook any sin in accepting people into Heaven, Universal Reconciliation holds that it is only because of suffering and Hell that the damned are brought to a place of repentance and repaired relationship with God through Christ.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Universal Reconciliation.
Universalism is based on a negative emotional response to the doctrine of Hell. Those evangelicals who consider themselves Universal Reconciliationists hold the view not because they hate idea of Hell but because they believe the Bible teaches it.

“Conditional Immortality”

Like Annihilationism, this view teaches that all men not found in Christ when they die, will cease to exist. The ultimate final destination is either Heaven for the saved or non-existence for the lost. Many evangelicals would call this view Annihilationism, and it is very similar to that heretical position except for three points.

1. There is a Hell in Conditional Immortality.
Like Universalism, Annihilationism gets rid of Hell completely, as those who hold to it choose not to believe that a god of love could punish people in Hell. Conditional Immortality recognizes the Biblical teaching of Hell and the requirement of judgment upon those who reject God before they are extinguished from existence.

2. Human Beings are mortal by nature.
Annihilationism holds that God destroys the soul that dies without Christ, that ceasing to exist is the sum total of the punishment that God meets out. Conditional Immortality says that human beings are not innately immortal, and thus there is no need for God to destroy them. Immortality, it is argued, emanates from God, and without God to sustain the soul it passes away.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Conditional Immortality.
Like Universal Reconciliation, the Biblical argument in favor of Conditional Immortality is surprisingly good. Those who support the view do so not because they hate the idea of hell, like the cultist and the liberal, but because they believe it is taught in the Bible.

Let me reemphasize that I am up in the air, no longer leaning toward Eternal Torment, Universal Reconciliation, or Conditional Immortality. I am totally undecided. As that is the case, I want to present each of the views and the arguments both for and against them as best I can. Because I am undecided, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and want to know what everyone thinks about each view. I hope everyone will find this interesting.

Nowhere Else to Go

Have you ever considered whether you could come to a place of total unbelief in God, a place where you could walk away from your Christian faith? I have pondered that question numerous times. Recently, Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason gave the best short answer to that question that I have heard:

"I have never doubted so strongly...that I have been tempted to walk away. And the reason is because I think I know too much. What am I going to walk to?

Am I going to walk to atheism? I couldn't be an atheist if I tried! There's too much evidence for the existence of God. I would have to buy all these atheistic conundrums: everything came from nothing; life came from non-life; consciousness came from matter; morality came from nowhere; law came from chaos. All of these are wildly counter-intuitive.

Maybe some other religion? What other religion doesn't have the same kind of problems I'm facing right now? Whatever it is that I might be disappointed with God about, there is no other religion that is going to offer me something more. I could be a Hindu, I guess, and say that it's all just an illusion anyway, but that doesn't ring true.

I have doubted, I have been challenged, I have been hurt, I have questioned God, I have disbelieved God's goodness many times. But in all I have never been tempted to walk away because there's nothing [else] to go to."

"Jesus Didn't Exist"

Those of you who have taken the time to talk with atheists and skeptics about the historicity of Christianity have probably engaged someone who has made the claim that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Generally, when this claim is made we Christians fall all over ourselves attempting to provide evidence to the contrary. We do all the heavy lifting, fruitlessly providing evidence to the contrary. I have to admit that I have done exactly this on more than occasion.

I have recently been reminded of a better option. Do nothing. Don’t engage in the debate on the terms of the one making the ridiculous claim. One of the most important tactics to remember when debating with anyone, no matter what the topic, is, “The one making the claim bears the burden of proof.” When the atheist makes the claim that Jesus never existed, in total contradiction to all the available evidence and virtually the entire community of ancient historians, it’s up to them to support their claim, not for us to refute it.

Instead of immediately jumping into the debate with research and evidence, just sit back and ask, “What’s your proof?” There is none. This is just a claim that atheists make without any support at all, generally because it gets Christians riled up and distracted doing all kinds of leg work to refute the claim. Chances are, you won’t make any headway trying to convince an atheist that their claim is bad by providing evidence, but you might actually get him to back away from such a claim by forcing him support it himself.

Apocalyptic Prophesies

I want to look at one more prophesy from Isaiah. I separated this one from the three previous examples as it’s not about Jesus, but is an excellent example of what many scholars call
"Apocalyptic literature;" or prophesy in the apocalyptic style.

Apocalyptic literature is particularly strange to us in the West, as it is the only literature type in the Bible for which we do not have a corresponding style. Some of the peculiar hallmarks of this literature type include: symbolic language making frequent use of hyperbole; focus on a coming divine judgment on a people or a nation often referred to as a “visitation” or “coming” of God; often, apocalyptic literature is written in verse, or in poetic form. In my opinion, these distinctive are vitally important to keep in mind when reading Biblical prophecy that is likely apocalyptic in nature.

Isaiah 13 declares itself to be an “oracle concerning Babylon,” and it’s an excellent example of the apocalyptic style. It is also an passage to learn from because we know a great deal about the fulfillment of this prophesy from both the book of Daniel, the historian Herodotus, and modern archeology.

Vs. 9 – Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.

The second half of this verse didn’t happen. The land wasn’t made desolate in 539 BC, in fact, Babylon remained a large and important city until well after the life of Alexander the Great. Neither did God literally exterminate sinners from the land around Babylon; sinners lived in the city throughout the time of the Medes and the Persians and through the time of the Greeks as well. In fact, there are records in existence that relate the continuation of pagan sacrifices in the city temples until at least 275 BC, 264 years after the event predicted in Isaiah 13.

While this didn’t literally take place, it paints a picture of severe judgment against the Babylonian empire and its people because of their great sin before God. This part is clearly true and, I think, the intended image Isaiah wished to convey.

Vs. 12 13 – I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind than
the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will
be shaken from it’s place, At the fury of the Lord of hosts, In the day of His
burning anger.

None of these things literally occurred in the fall of the Babylonian empire. There were just as many men in the 5th century BC as there were in the 6th, even in and around Babylon. While none of us can say whether the heavens trembled or not, it seems pretty clear that the earth was not shaken from its place.

This type of language, the shaking of heaven and earth from their place, is not an uncommon image when the author desires to communicate serious and significant changes. In this case, the greatest empire in the world at this time, Babylon, is going to be overthrown, in a single night no less, and replaced by an entirely new power, the Medes and the Persians.

Vs. 19, 20 – And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’
pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be
inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his
tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.

Verse 17 places the time of this whole prophesy unmistakably in 539 BC at the overthrow of the Babylonian empire by the Medes and Persians, yet none of the things in verses 19 and 20 actually happened. God did not burn Babylon off the face of the earth as He did to Sodom and Gomorrah, but it continued to be an important city in the hands of both the Medes and Persians and the Greeks; it was inhabited and lived in for many generations following the Babylonian overthrow.

However, in another sense, God’s judgment on Babylon is exactly like His judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. In both cases the cities, or nation, under judgment completely vanished in an instant. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a moment by fire from heaven, while Babylon was completely supplanted by an entirely new empire in the space of a night. In both cases the entities under judgment ceased to exist in a virtual instant.

We need to understand the writing in the way the author intended it to be understood: The point of the prophesy is that God is going to bring judgment on Babylon and that the tool of that judgment will be the Medes and the Persians and that the changes brought about by this judgment will be significant.

This is very standard hyperbolic language which is used regularly in this type of Ancient Near Eastern literature. Rather than conveying actual events, its purpose was to convey importance and significance. We know this from many examples this style of literature found in both Biblical and extra-Biblical documents.

For example, consider the extra-Biblical prologue and epilogue written for the book of Esther and attributed by the author to Mordecai:

Prologue:
Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth! And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly. And at their roaring every nation prepared for war, to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth! And the whole righteous nation was troubled, they feared the evils that threatened them, and were ready to perish. Then they cried to God and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring there came a great river with abundant water, light came, and the sun arose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those held in honor.

At the end of the book of Esther this epilogue is added:

I remember the dream that I had concerning these matters, and none of them has
failed to be fulfilled. The tiny stream which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water–the river is Esther, whom the King married and became queen. The two dragons are Haman and myself. The nations are those gathered to destroy the name of the Jews. And my nation, this is Israel, who cried out to God and were saved.

You can see how the story of Esther is retold in this apocalyptic paragraph and how the symbols, similar to those found in Isaiah and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible, play a role in depicting the story. I think that from this example we can see how apocalyptic literature tends to retell (or foretell, in the prophets’ case) history in fantastic imagery and sensational symbols. I think the same thing is going on in the case of Isaiah 13, and a number of other passages in the Bible. There certainly is a precedent for it.

It is a mistake to apply the same literal standard to all prophesy in the Bible, nor is it a good way to interpret scripture. Taking the time to examine passages like Isaiah 13, and the extra biblical prologue and epilogue of Esther can give us insight into a style of writing wholly unfamiliar to us, and give us tools for understanding other scriptures where the fulfillment has not been provided.