http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=201
The Origin, Nature, and Destiny of the Soul [Part V]
[
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I of this five-part series appeared in
February. Part II appeard in the
March issue. Part III appeared in
May issue. Part IV appeared in the
June issue. Part V follows below and continues, without introductory comments, where the first article ended.]
BIBLE TEACHING ON HELL
As one examines the various means through which men have attempted to
circumvent the idea of the existence of hell, it is evident that there
is no shortage of such theories. From universalism on the one hand to
annihilationism on the other, men have done their best to disgorge the
concept of eternal punishment from their minds. Some even have suggested
that the only “hell” men experience is that of their own making here on
Earth. Such a notion is standard fare in the vernacular of our day. For
example, people speak of the fact that “war is hell.” They complain
that, as they endure the vicissitudes of life, they are “going through
hell.” John Benton noted:
When people’s personal lives go wrong, when they get caught up in
bitterness and anger, when perhaps there is vicious language and even
violence in the family home, we sometimes speak of people creating “hell
on earth....” The psychological agony of guilt or the deep pain of
bereavement are spoken of colloquially as being “like hell” (Benton,
1985, p. 42).
In his book,
Hell and Salvation, Leslie Woodson observed: “The
reference to man’s hard lot in life as ‘going through hell’ has become
so commonplace that the modern mind has satisfied itself with the
assumption that hell is nothing more” (1973, p. 30).
Believe whatever we will, say whatever we please: the simple fact is
that none of these descriptions fits the biblical description of hell.
And certainly, Jesus never spoke of hell in such a fashion. When He
warned us to “fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in
hell” (Matthew 10:28) and spoke of those who “shall go away into
eternal
punishment” (Matthew 25:46), He was not referring to some sort of
temporary, earthly misery resulting from war, bereavement, or the like.
Furthermore, the idea that “hell” is represented by whatever “pangs of
guilt” we may experience from time to time during this life is a foolish
assertion indeed. As one writer summarized the matter:
[I]t is a well-known fact that the more one sins the more callous he
may become until he has “seared his conscience as with a hot iron” (II
Tim. 4:2). If this theory is true then it follows that the righteous suffer greater punishment than the wicked.
A wicked person can destroy his “hell” by searing his conscience.
However, a righteous man will be sensitive to sin and will feel the
pangs of guilt when he sins. And, the more devout he is the more
sensitive he is about sin. Again, if this theory is true the worse a man is the less he will suffer.
To escape hell one simply would plunge himself into unrestrained sin
and harden his heart. Obviously this doctrine is false (Ealey, 1984, p.
22, emp. added).
The book of Job makes clear that, on occasion, the righteous do suffer
terribly—while the wicked appear to prosper. At times, the psalmist even
grew envious of the prosperity of the wicked, and wondered if it really
was to his benefit to strive to be righteous (Psalm 73:2-5,12-14).
Absolute justice is a rarity in the here and now, but is guaranteed at
the Judgment yet to come (Matthew 25:31-46). We would do well to
remember that the “Judge of all the Earth”
will “do that which is right” (Genesis 18:25). We also should remember:
It is significant that the most solemn utterances on this subject fall
from the lips of Christ himself. In the New Testament as a whole there
is a deep reserve on the nature of the punishment of the lost, though of
course the act of final judgment is prominent. But with Christ himself
the statements are much more explicit (Carson, 1978, p. 14).
The urgent question then becomes: What did Christ and His inspired
writers teach regarding hell? What does the Bible say on this extremely
important topic?
The word “hell” (which occurs 23 times in the King James Version of the
Bible) translates three different terms from the Greek New Testament—
hades, tartaros, and
géenna. While each has a different meaning, on occasion the
KJV
translators chose to translate each as “hell.” Was this an error on
their part? Considering the way the word was used in 1611, no, it was
not. Robert Taylor addressed this point when he wrote:
Hell in 1611 referred to the place of the unseen, the place that was
beyond human eyesight, the place that was covered. In that day men who
covered roofs were called hellers—they put coverings on buildings or
covered them (1985, p. 160).
According to Brown, “this was a correct rendering in 1611 because the
word ‘Hell’ in Elizabethan English also meant an unseen place (e.g.,
Matthew 16:18; Luke 16:23; Acts 2:27,31; et al.)” [1999, p. 171].
The actual origin of the Greek
hades (transliterated as hades in the English) is not well known. Some scholars have suggested that it derives from two roots:
a (a negative prefix depicting “not”) and
idein (a word meaning “to see”). Thus, according to
Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon,
hades would evoke the idea of “not to be seen” (1958, p. 11). W.E. Vine advocated the view that
hades
meant “all receiving” (1991, p. 368). The exact meaning of the term,
however, must be determined via an examination of the context in which
it is used.
Hades occurs eleven times in the Greek New Testament.
On ten occasions (Matthew 11:23; 16:18; Luke 10:15; 16:23; Acts
2:27,31; Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 20:13-14) the
KJV translates it as “hell.” [In such occurrences, most recent versions (e.g., the
ASV,
NKJV, et al.) transliterate the Greek as “hades.”] Once (1 Corinthians 15:55),
hades is translated as “grave.”
The Greek
tartaros is the noun (translated into English via the Latin
tartarus, cf.
ASV footnote on 2 Peter 2:4) from which the verb
tartarosas (aorist participle of
tartaroo)
derives. Ralph Earle observed that the term signified “the dark abode
of the wicked dead” (1986, p. 447). Originally, it seems to have carried
the idea of a “deep place”—a connotation that it retains in both Job
40:15 and 41:23 in the Septuagint. The Greek poet, Homer, wrote in his
Iliad of “dark Tartarus...the deepest pit” (8.13). The word
tartaros
occurs only once in the Greek New Testament (2 Peter 2:4), where it is
translated “hell” (“God spared not angels...but cast them down to
hell”). In writing of this singular occurrence, R.C.H. Lenski remarked:
“The verb does not occur elsewhere in the Bible; it is seldom found in
other writings. The noun ‘Tartarus’ occurs three times in the
LXX [Septuagint—
BT], but there is no corresponding Hebrew term. The word is of pagan origin...” (1966, p. 310).
The Greek
géenna is the predominant term used in the New Testament to depict hell. The word “represents the Aramaic expression
ge hinnom,
meaning ‘Valley of Hinnom’ (Neh. 11:30; cf. Josh. 15:8), and for this
reason the word is commonly transliterated into English as
Gehenna
” (Workman, 1993, p. 496). Several sites have been suggested for the
“valley of Hinnom” (or Valley of the Son of Hinnom, Vos, 1956, 2:1183;
Earle, 1986, p. 447), but most authorities now believe that it was
located on the south side of Jerusalem. In the Bible, the valley is
mentioned first in Joshua 15:8. Centuries later, the apostates of Judah
used it as a place to offer child sacrifices to the pagan god Molech (2
Chronicles 28:3; 33:6). When good king Josiah ascended the throne and
overthrew the practice of idolatry, he “defiled” the place called
Topheth (a name signifying something to be abhorred and spit upon) in
the Valley of Hinnom (2 Kings 23:10). The valley came to be reviled for
the evil that had occurred there, and eventually turned into a
smoldering garbage dump that served the entire city of Jerusalem. Years
later, it even was used as a potter’s field (as is evident from the many
rock tombs that are known to rest at its lower end). A perpetual fire
burned, to prevent the spread of contagion, and worms and maggots
performed their unseen, unsavory tasks amidst the debris and decay (see
Morey, 1984, p. 87; cf. Foster, 1971, pp. 764-765). J. Arthur Hoyles
graphically described the grisly goings-on:
Here the fires burned day and night, destroying the garbage and
putrefying the atmosphere from the smell of rotten flesh or decaying
vegetation. In time of war the carcasses of vanquished enemies might
mingle with the refuse, thus furnishing patriotic writers with a clue as
to the destiny of their own persecutors. They were destined to be
destroyed in the fires that were never quenched (1957, p. 118).
By the second century B.C., the term
géenna
began to appear in Jewish literature as a symbolic designation for the
place of unending, eternal punishment of the wicked dead. As Gary
Workman noted:
It is natural, therefore, that when the New Testament opens Gehenna
would be the primary term for hell. It is so recorded eleven times from
the lips of Jesus and is also used once by James. It was not to the
literal Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem that they referred, nor
anything similar to it, but rather to “the Gehenna of fire” in a
realm beyond the grave. Both Jewish and Christian historians confirm
that the prevailing view of Jews at the time of Christ (except the
Sadducees who denied even the resurrection) was that of eternal
punishment for the wicked. And since Jesus never attempted to correct
Pharisaic thinking on the duration of Gehenna, as he did with
eschatological errors of the Sadducees (Matt. 22:29), this is weighty
evidence for the meaning he intended to convey by his use of the term
(1993, pp. 496-497).
The word
géenna occurs twelve times in the Greek New Testament.
In nine of these (Matthew 5:29-30; 10:28; 23:15,33; Mark 9:43,45; Luke
12:5; James 3:6—
KJV), it is translated as “hell.” Three times (Matthew 5:22; 18:9; Mark 9:47—
KJV)
it is translated as “hell fire.” David Stevens has pointed out: “It is
also significant that eleven of the twelve times that the word
gehenna is used, it is used by the Lord himself! Thus, it is evident that what we know about
gehenna, we learn from the Lord himself ” (1991, 7[3]:21).
There exists a diversity of views regarding the usage of these terms in
Scripture. For example, some scholars have suggested that hades (or the
Old Testament
sheol) is a generic term for
the abode of the dead, whether good or evil,
while they await the final Judgment—a view with which I concur. Thus,
hades is composed of two compartments: (1) the abode of the spirits of
the righteous (known either as paradise—Luke 23:43, or Abraham’s
bosom—Luke 16:22); and (2) the abode of the spirits of the wicked
(Tartarus—2 Peter 2:4, or “torment”—Luke 16:23) [Davidson, 1970, p. 694;
Denham, 1998, p. 609; Harris, et al., 1980, 2:892; Jackson, 1998,
33[9]:34-35; Stevens, 1991, 7[3]:21; Thayer, 1958, p. 11; Zerr, 1952, p.
17].
On the other hand, some scholars suggest that hades should not be used
as an umbrella term to refer to the general abode of the dead. Rather,
they suggest that after death, there exists: (1) the grave for the
physical body (
sheol, physical abyss, physical hades); (2) the
abode of the spirits of the righteous (paradise, Abraham’s bosom, the
“third heaven”); and (3) the abode of the spirits of the wicked
(Tartarus, spiritual abyss, spiritual hades) [see McCord, 1979,
96[4]:6]. Still others have advocated the belief that gehenna, tartarus,
and hades are synonyms representing exactly the same thing—“the place
of all the damned” (Lenski, 1966, p. 310).
There is one thing, however, on which advocates of each position agree
wholeheartedly, and on which the biblical text is crystal clear: after
death and the Judgment, gehenna (hell) will be the ultimate, final abode
of the spirits of the wicked. But what, exactly, will hell be like?
Hell is a Place of Punishment for Bodies
and Souls of the Disobedient Wicked
The Scriptures speak with clarity and precision on the topic of hell as
a place of punishment appointed for the disobedient wicked. The
psalmist wrote by inspiration: “The wicked shall be turned into hell,
and all the nations that forget God” (9:17). Jesus taught that at
Judgment, the wicked will “depart” into punishment “prepared for the
devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41; cf. Matthew 25:46 where Jesus
employed the Greek term
kolasis, which means punishment, torment,
suffering, and chastisement [see Brown, 1999, p. 173]). When John
described those who would join the devil in hell’s horrible abyss, he
referred to “the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and
murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and liars”
(Revelation 21:8). Paul said that those who inhabit hell with Satan will
be those who “know not God” and who “obey not the gospel of Christ” (2
Thessalonians 1:7-9).
In discussing gehenna in the
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,
Geerhardus Vos addressed the verses that deal with hell, and then
stated: “In all of these it designates the place of eternal punishment
of the wicked, generally in connection with the final judgment.... Both
body and soul are cast into it” (1956, 2:1183). E.M. Zerr commented: “
Gehenna
is the lake of unquenchable fire into which the whole being of the
wicked (body, soul and spirit) will be cast after the judgment” (1952,
p. 17). Hell is a place of contempt and shame (Daniel 12:2), as well as
torment and anguish (Luke 16:23-24). It is a place of “outer darkness”
(Matthew 8:12; 25:30) where punishment and suffering occur (Matthew
25:46; Revelation 14:11) that will involve both body and soul (Matthew
10:28).
Hell is a Place of Conscious
Sorrow, Torment, Pain, and Suffering
From such vivid descriptions, it is quite evident that the wicked will be in a state of
consciousness. In fact, John wrote that Satan and his human cohorts would be “cast
alive into the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone” (Revelation 19:20). That is to say, the Bible definitely teaches “
the persistence of personality
after physical death” (Warren, 1992, p. 32, emp. added). When Christ
described hell as a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew
22:13), He overtly emphasized the fact that its inhabitants will endure
conscious
sorrow. Hell is a place of such terrible suffering (2 Thessalonians
1:9) that the apostle John referred to it as the “second death”
(Revelation 20:14-15; 21:8). Benton summarized this well:
Hell...is to be shut out of God’s presence, cut off from all that is
good and wholesome. It is to be cut off from all love, all peace, all
joy for ever. Jesus explains that once people realize this, once they
realize what they have missed, the effect upon them will be devastating.
“There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It is an unspeakably
sombre picture. Men seldom weep, but in hell men weep uncontrollably.
Jesus speaks of the place being totally characterized by tears.... In
hell people do not just weep; they gnash their teeth. Having been shut
out of the presence of God into the eternal blackness, permanently
deprived of all that is wholesome and good, in bitter anger men and
women grind their teeth in speechless rage. As they realize that once
and for all, “I’ve been shut out!” they are overcome with a sense of
eternal loss which leads to a depth of anger and fury that they find
impossible to express in words (1985, pp. 47-48).
In addressing the consciousness of those in hell, Wayne Jackson wrote:
Punishment implies consciousness. It would be absurd to describe
those who no longer exist as being “punished.” The wicked will be
“tormented” with the fire of Gehenna (cf. Rev. 14:10-11). Torment
certainly implies awareness (cf. Rev. 9:5; 11:10) [1998, 33[9]:35, emp.
in orig.].
And torment there will be! When, in Revelation 20:10, John wrote of this torment, he employed the Greek word
basanisthesontai, the root of which (
basanizo)
literally means “to torment, to be harassed, to torture, to vex with
grievous pains” (Thayer, 1958, p. 96; cf. Matthew 8:6 regarding the one
“tormented” [
basanizomenos] with palsy).
Previously, John spoke of those who inhabit hell as experiencing the
“wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his
anger” (Revelation 14:10). Imagine—experiencing the undiluted wrath of
God! In the next verse, John lamented: “The smoke of their torment
[notice:
not the smoke of their annihilation!—
BT]
goeth up for ever and ever.” Little wonder, then, that the writer of
Hebrews referred to the second death as “a sorer punishment” than any
mere physical death (10:29).
Hell is Eternal in Nature
Surely, one of the most horrific aspects of hell is its eternal nature.
Throughout the Bible, words like “eternal,” “forever and forever,”
“unquenchable,” and “everlasting” are used repeatedly to describe the
duration of the punishment that God will inflict upon the wicked. As the
“Judge of all the earth,” God alone has the right to determine the
nature and duration of whatever punishment is due to the wicked. And He
has decreed that such punishment will be eternal in nature (Matthew
25:46; Revelation 14:10-11). That may not agree with our mind-set, or
appeal to our sensitivities, but it is God’s word on the matter
nevertheless.
I once heard of a newspaper in Detroit, Michigan that ran a story about
a man who (ironically) had been transferred from Hell, Michigan to a
city by the name of Paradise. The news headline read: “Man Leaves Hell
for Paradise!” Such an event might occur in
this lifetime, but you may rest assured that it will not happen in the
next (Luke 16:19-31). When Dante, in his
Inferno, depicted the sign hanging over hell’s door as reading, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he did not overstate the case.
Some, of course, have objected to the concept of
eternal
punishment because of such passages as Mark 12:9 (where Jesus foretold
in a parable that God would “destroy” those who killed His beloved Son)
and Matthew 10:28 (where Jesus told His disciples to fear Him who was
able to “destroy” both soul and body in hell). But the belief that the
soul will be annihilated is based, not on an understanding, but a
misunderstanding, of the passages in question. In addition to referring to destruction, the Greek term
apollumi
employed in these two portions of Scripture (and approximately 90 more
times elsewhere in the New Testament), also can mean “lose,” “perish,”
or “lost.” As Vine pointed out: “The idea is not extinction but ruin,
loss, not of being, but of well-being” (1991, p. 211). Thayer defined
apollumi as it appears in Matthew 10:28 as “to devote or give over to eternal misery” (1958, p. 64).
Granted, it would be more comforting for the wicked to believe that at
the end of this life they simply will be punished “for a little while”
and then “drop out of existence,” rather than to have to face the stark
realization of an eternal punishment in the fires of hell. But
comforting or not, the question must be asked: Is such a belief in
compliance with biblical teaching on this subject?
While it is true that, on rare occasions in Scripture, words such as
“everlasting” and “forever” may be used in a non-literal sense (i.e.,
the thing being discussed is not strictly eternal—e.g. Exodus 12:14 and
Numbers 25:13), they
never are used in such a sense when describing hell. The word
aionios
occurs some seventy times in the Greek New Testament where it is
translated by such English terms as “eternal” or “everlasting” (e.g.,
“eternal fire,” Matthew 18:8, 25:41, Jude 7; “eternal punishment,”
Matthew 25:46; “eternal destruction,” 2 Thessalonians 1:9; and “eternal
judgment,” Hebrews 6:2). In his
Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Vine wrote of
aionios:
Moreover, it is used of persons and things which are in their nature,
endless, as, e.g., of God (Rom 16:26); of His power (I Tim. 6:16), and
of Him (I Peter 5:10); of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 9:14); of the redemption
effected by Christ (Heb. 9:12), and of the consequent salvation of men
(5:9);...and of the resurrection body (II Cor. 5:1), elsewhere said to
be “immortal” (I Cor. 15:53), in which that life will be finally
realized (Matt. 25:46; Titus 1:2) [1966, p. 43].
Thayer stated that
aionios means “without end, never to cease, everlasting” (1958, p. 112).
In his inspired discussion about the coming fate of false teachers,
Jude assured the first-century Christians that those who perverted the
truth
would be punished. To illustrate his point, he reached back
to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25) as an example of those
“suffering the punishment of eternal fire” (v. 7). G.L. Lawlor commented
on Jude’s illustration as follows:
Jude says these cities, their sin, and their terrible destruction lie before us as an example, deigma.
Better, perhaps, the word might be rendered “sign,” that is, to show us
the meaning and significance of something, i.e., this awful sin and
God’s catastrophic judgment. The cities were destroyed by fire and
brimstone, but the ungodly inhabitants are even now undergoing the awful
torment of everlasting punishment. These cities are an example, they
lie before us as a sign, to show the certainty of divine punishment upon
an apostasy of life dreadful almost beyond description (1972, p. 70).
But what did Lawlor mean when he said that the inhabitants of Sodom and
Gomorrah “are even now undergoing the awful torment of everlasting
punishment”? His point is this. The Greek
hupechousai (rendered
“suffering”) is a present participle and “shows that they were enduring
‘eternal fire’ even as Jude wrote! The primary force of the present
tense in the Greek, especially as connected with a participial
construction as here, is that of
continuous action” (Denham,
1998, p. 607, emp. added). Greek scholar M.R. Vincent wrote regarding
this point: “The participle is present, indicating that they are
suffering to this day the punishment which came upon them in Lot’s time”
(1946, 1:340). Brown remarked: “This grammatical construction simply
means that Jude is saying that the inhabitants of the two cities not
only suffered, but they continue to suffer. What a warning to those in
rebellion to God!” (1999, p. 176).
The Jews (and Jewish Christians) of Jude’s day would have understood
that point because they knew and understood the significance attached to
gehenna. Alfred Edersheim, who stood without equal as a
Hebrew/inter-testamental period scholar, devoted an entire chapter of
his monumental work,
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, to
the rabbinical and New Testament evidence on the subject of eternal
punishment. His conclusion was that the Jews in the time of Christ
understood gehenna as referring to a place of eternal, conscious torment
for the wicked (1971, pp. 791-796). Eminent religious historian Phillip
Schaff (1970, 2:136) reported that, except for the Sadducees (who
believed in neither a resurrection for the righteous nor the wicked),
the Jews of Christ’s day consistently held to a view of personal,
eternal, conscious punishment—a truly important point for the following
reason.
During His ministry, Jesus was quite outspoken against those things
that were wrong or misleading. In Matthew 22:23-33 He chastised the
Sadducees severely regarding their erroneous views about the lack of a
future existence. Yet, as noted earlier, He
never opposed the
Jewish concept of eternal punishment of the soul. Had the Jews been in
error regarding the afterlife, surely the Son of God would have
corrected them in as public a manner as He did on so many other points
of Scripture. Instead, He
repeatedly reaffirmed such a concept. His silence speaks volumes!
No Hell...No Heaven
When Christ spoke to the people of His day about the ultimate fate of
humanity in eternity, He stated that the wicked would “go away into
everlasting (
aionios) punishment, but the righteous into eternal (
aionios) life.” As Denham has pointed out: “The word rendered ‘eternal’ is the same Greek word
aionios, rendered earlier as ‘everlasting’ ” (1998, p. 615). The Lord’s double use of the term
aionios is critically important in this discussion. J.W. McGarvey addressed this fact when he wrote:
Whatever this Greek word means in the last clause of this sentence it
means in the first; for it is an invariable rule of exegesis, that a
word when thus repeated in the same sentence must be understood in the
same sense, unless the context or the nature of the subject shows that
there is a play on the word. There is certainly nothing in the context
to indicate the slightest difference in meaning, nor can we know by the
nature of the subject that the punishment spoken of is less durable than
the life. It is admitted on all hands that in the expression
“everlasting life” the term has its full force, and therefore it is idle
and preposterous to deny that it has the same force in the expression
“everlasting punishment.” The everlasting punishment is the same as the
everlasting fire of verse 41. The punishment is by fire, and its
duration is eternal (1875, pp. 221-222).
There can be absolutely no doubt that the Lord intended to teach two
specific states of conscious future existence. In fact, as James Orr
observed in the
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: “The whole doctrine of the future judgment in the
NT presupposes survival after death” (1956, 4:2502). Writing in
The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology,
Joachim Guhrt stated that since “God’s life never ends, i.e., that
everything belonging to him can also never come to an end,...even
perdition must be called
aionios, eternal” (1978, pp. 830,833).
In this same vein, Guy N. Woods commented: “Our heavenly Father is
described as ‘the everlasting God.’ (Romans 16:26.) Hell will be the
inhabitation of the wicked so long as God himself exists” (1985,
127[9]:278). George Ladd thus noted:
The adjective aionios does not of itself carry a qualitative
significance, designating a life that is different in kind from human
life. The primary meaning of the word is temporal. It is used of fire,
punishment, sin, and places of abode; and these uses designate unending duration (1974, p. 255, emp. added).
But that is only a portion of the Lord’s message. Orr went on to
observe: “Here precisely the same word is applied to the punishment of
the wicked
as to the blessedness of the righteous.... Whatever
else the term includes, it connotes duration” (1956, 4:2502, emp.
added). When he discussed the definition and meaning of the word
aionios in
The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
Herman Sasse noted that when the word is used “as a term for
eschatological expectation,” if it conveys “eternity” for the rewards of
the righteous it also must convey “the sense of ‘unceasing’ or
‘endless’ ” (1964, 1:209). Therefore, “however long then the righteous
will experience the blessedness of
eternal life is just how long the wicked will suffer
everlasting punishment...” (Denham, 1998, p. 615, emp. in orig.).
In his intriguing book,
Hell on Trial—The Case for Eternal Punishment—Robert
Peterson wrote the following under the chapter titled “The Case for
Eternal Punishment”: “Jesus places the fates of the wicked and the
righteous side by side.... The parallelism makes the meaning
unmistakable: the punishment of the ungodly and the bliss of the godly
both last forever” (1995, p. 196). Gary Workman spoke to this very point
when he observed:
New Testament writers used aion and aionios 141 times
when speaking of eternity to convey the idea of unceasing, endless, and
perpetual. If the word means “without end” when applied to the future
blessedness of the saved, it must also mean “without end” when
describing the future punishment of the lost (1992, 23[3]:33).
Benton elaborated:
The same word aionios, “eternal,” is used to describe both
heaven and hell. If we take the position that hell is capable of
termination then, to be consistent, we must believe that the same is
true of heaven. But, from the rest of the Bible, that is plainly not the
case. Heaven is for ever. We must stay with the plain meaning of the word “eternal.” Both heaven and hell are without end (1985, p. 55, emp. in orig.).
These writers are correct. The fact that Christ made a special point of repeating
aionios in the same sentence requires that we “stay with the plain meaning of the word.” Hoekema therefore concluded:
The word aionios means without end when applied to the future
blessedness of believers. It must follow, unless clear evidence is given
to the contrary, that this word also means without end when used to
describe the future punishment of the lost.... It follows, then, that
the punishment which the lost will suffer after this life will be as
endless as the future happiness of the people of God (1982, p. 270).
Those who are willing to accept Christ’s teaching on heaven should have
no trouble accepting His teaching on hell. Yet some do. Their refusal
to accept biblical teaching on the eternal nature of the wicked,
however, is not without consequences. John Benton accurately summarized
the situation.
Disregarding the doctrine of eternal damnation tends to make us doubt
eternal salvation.... Though Revelation 21-22 proclaims the final fate
of the wicked—existence in the lake of fire (21:8) and exclusion from
the city of God (22:15)—these chapters trumpet more loudly the final
destiny of the redeemed (1995, p. 217).
But does it
really matter
what a person believes in this
regard? Wayne Jackson answered that question when he wrote: “Those who
contend that the wicked will be annihilated are in error. But is the
issue one of importance? Yes.
Any theory of divine retribution which undermines the full consequences of rebelling against God has to be most dangerous” (1998, 33[9]:35, emp. added).
Since both heaven and hell are described via the same, exact
terminology in Scripture, once the instruction of the Lord and His
inspired writers on the subject of an eternal hell has been abandoned,
how long will it be before the Bible’s instruction on the eternal nature
of heaven likewise is abandoned? Have we not witnessed the effects of
this type of thinking before? Those who started out to compromise the
first chapter of Genesis eventually compromised other important facets
of biblical doctrine as well (e.g., biblical miracles, Christ’s virgin
birth, the Lord’s bodily resurrection, etc.). For many, rejecting the
biblical concept of the eternality of hell may well represent the first
steps on the slippery slope that eventually will lead to compromise in
other areas of Scripture. Surely it would be better by far to echo the
heartfelt sentiments of Joshua when he told the Israelites that while
they were free to believe whatever they wished, or to act in any manner
they chose, “as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah” (Joshua
24:15).
CONCLUSION
The latter part of this series has dealt at length with the concept of
the souls of the wicked inhabiting an eternal hell, but has had
relatively little to say about the concept of the souls of the righteous
inhabiting an eternal heaven. Actually, this should not be all that
surprising. The very idea of hell has met with violent opposition—for
good reason. No one
wants to go to hell. Thus, the Good Book’s teaching on heaven is accepted far more readily than its teaching on hell.
The simple fact of the matter, however, is that God created man as a
dichotomous being who consists of both a body and a soul. When
eventually each of us has “shuffled off this
mortal coil” (to quote Shakespeare), our
immortal
soul will return to God Who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Infidelity, of
course, always has objected strenuously to the concept of “life after
death.” The very idea seems preposterous to unbelievers—just as it did
to King Agrippa in the first century when Paul asked the pagan monarch:
“Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?”
(Acts 26:28).
Indeed, why should it be difficult to believe that an omnipotent God
could raise the dead? For the God Who created the Universe and
everything within it in six days, and Who upholds “all things by the
word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3), how difficult could it be to raise the
dead? As Blaise Pascal, the famed French philosopher once remarked: “I
see no greater difficulty in believing the resurrection of the dead than
the creation of the world. Is it less easy to reproduce a human body
than it was to produce it at first?” (as quoted in Otten, 1988, p. 40).
Writing in the book of Revelation, the apostle John described in
unforgettable language the destiny of the righteous when this world
finally comes to an end: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He
will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will
be with them” (21:3,
RSV). Thousands of years
earlier, God’s pledge to Abraham had foreshadowed just such a covenant
relationship. Moses recorded: “And I will establish My covenant between
Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an
everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you”
(Genesis 17:7,
NKJV). Paul spoke of the fact that
“if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to
promise” (Galatians 3:29), and referred to those who serve Christ
faithfully as “heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7).
James rejoiced in the fact that those who were “rich in faith” would be
“heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him” (James
2:5). The writer of the book of Hebrews spoke of Christ as having become
“unto all them that obey him, the author of eternal salvation” (5:9).
No doubt that is exactly what John had in mind when he went on to say
in Revelation 21: “He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I
will be his God, and he shall be my son” (vs. 7). God will be Father to
the man or woman who demonstrates faith in Him, perseveres to the end,
and lives in humble obedience to His divine will. Such is the promise of
sonship to believers. God will welcome those who believe in and obey
His Son as “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17),
and will—according to His promise—bestow upon them all the riches and
blessings of heaven.
In the next verse, however, John went on to paint a picture of stark
contrast when he described the ultimate end of the impenitent wicked:
But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers,
and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part
shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the
second death (Revelation 21:8).
What diametric alternatives—enjoying eternal happiness as a son or
daughter of God, or enduring eternal pain in “the lake that burneth with
fire and brimstone”!
The good news, of course, is that no one
has to go to hell. When
Christ was ransomed on our behalf (1 Timothy 2:4), He paid a debt He
did not owe, and a debt we could not pay, so that we could live forever
in the presence of our Creator (Matthew 25:46). God takes no joy at the
death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11). Nor should we. As one writer
eloquently stated it: “No one who has been snatched from the burning
himself can feel anything but compassion and concern for the lost”
(Woodson, 1973, p. 32).
As we begin to comprehend both the hideous nature of our sin, and the
alienation from God resulting from it, we not only should exhibit a
fervent desire to save ourselves “from this crooked generation” (Acts
2:40), but we also should feel just as passionate about warning the
wicked of their impending doom (Ezekiel 3:17-19).
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