A More Merciful God

If God isn’t good, there’s no hope, and if we need anything, it’s hope.  Without it we’re lost.  And most of us have probably at times placed our hopes in the things of this world more than we should, to ultimately end up feeling somewhat empty.  We need to hope in something bigger than and beyond this life.

For those of us who have accepted the Bible as truth, and whose hope is in the God of Scripture, just exactly Who the God of Scripture is becomes very important.  Jesus said to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  I’ve found this difficult at times, for many reasons, and it’s often my own issues that interfere with following Jesus’s command.  But another major hindrance to an all-out heavenward love is simply some of the attributes and concepts of God which have become part of Christian tradition, with virtually no Scriptural support.  For me personally, believing that God is wholly merciful to all His creation is an integral part of loving Him.  Yet some of the doctrines which have become part of mainstream Christianity make believing in a merciful God almost impossible, unless we push these teachings someplace out of mind, as I suspect many Christians do.

The traditional Christian doctrine of judgment tells us that all who reject Christ will suffer conscious punishment in Hell for all eternity.  This is, and for centuries has been the predominant stance of mainstream Christianity.  But should it be?  I’m a Christian, and yet found myself struggling with the ramifications of the doctrine for years, as much in terms of the light it paints our Merciful Creator in, as in what it means for individuals.  As I suspect so many others do, I found my own ways to handle the doctrine, inadequate as they were, and generally put as little thought into it as I could.  But a number of years ago, while trying to answer a question about hell for a friend, I dug in a little deeper, and some promising finds pushed me into an intense months-long study of the subject.  It was quite revealing, and has continued for well over a decade now, as I’ve turned my study into the book you’re holding.  I was relieved and surprised to find that serious Bible study on the matter reveals a quite different fate than we’re most often taught for those who never find salvation, and most importantly, reveals a far more merciful God, hence the title.

Rather than being tormented for all eternity, the lost will instead be taken out of existence altogether – not a soft punishment, or a fate to pursue, especially when an eternity at peace with your Maker is the alternative.  But considering we were nothing before God brought us into being, I found it relieving to learn that the ultimate punishment for those who reject the pull of God is to be returned to what and where we were (or weren’t, technically) before we were created.  This is in stark contrast to the traditional idea of those who reject God burning “alive” for all eternity, with the first billion years not being even a drop in the bucket of timelessness.

In the pages that follow, I’ll offer substantial scriptural evidence against the traditional position.  There are about ten verses in the Bible which have been used to build and maintain the doctrine of the eternal conscious suffering of the lost, and I’ll show alternative ways to understand those verses, without violating other themes and concepts from Scripture.  But before we get to those, we’ll find some serious scriptural problems with the idea that all humans, even without salvation, already possess an immortal soul that cannot be fully destroyed.  This belief is really at the core of what appears to be error in final judgment doctrine.  And we’ll also see that from Genesis to Revelation, death, not eternal torment, has been the stated punishment for failing in faith by rejecting God.

This study did not convert me into an “annihilationist,” not in the strictest sense at least.  Let me be clear that physical death is not the final end of being for those without salvation, and yes, I do “believe in Hell.”  However with multiple Greek and Hebrew words all being translated into the same English word “hell,” the question “Do you believe in Hell?” isn’t as simple to answer as it might seem.  But the lost will be raised to stand judgment prior to their destruction.  And contrary to even many other non-traditionalists who believe in full soul sleep between the time of physical death and final judgment, there’s a great deal of evidence this phase could be a conscious one, at least for some portion of that time period.  So while I consider myself a “conditionalist,” in the sense that I believe immortality in any form is conditional upon whether or not one puts their faith in the one true living God, I have some differences with other conditionalists, especially with any who believe physical death is the final end of consciousness for the lost.

I’ve been greatly encouraged and enlightened by conditionalist writers like Edward Fudge and others, but have also at times felt like some of the more common conditionalist answers to the traditionalist arguments aren’t the most sound or Scriptural.  In the end however, I hope to take very little away from these who have gone before me in the fight against what appears to be a false doctrine within mainstream Christianity, and hope to add much more evidence to the non-traditional position.  I wouldn’t be writing at all if I didn’t believe I had something to offer the conversation, and I hope you find this volume valuable in your search for truth on the matter.

I also cannot address the topic of judgment and ignore the growing movement toward Universalism.  There are many names for this belief, but ultimately those who call themselves “Christian universalists” (CU) and similar designations all believe that at some point, after a time of initial judgment and punishment on those who do not accept God’s salvation in this first physical life, there will be another opportunity for salvation and that none will be judged eternally, either with true death and cessation of being, or with eternal conscious punishment.  I’ve read Rob Bell’s book Love Wins promoting this universal redemption idea as well as Julie Ferwerda’s more in-depth and very well written universalist book Raising Hell, which is the best modern attempt I’ve seen at promoting this doctrine.

While I believe that both of these authors are probably Christians who believe in the stance they take on this, I still find their doctrine wishful and their evidence lacking.  In the end, I’m going to settle where the bulk of evidence is on our doctrines.  For me personally, I found it in the middle ground, in between those who claim all mankind will be saved one day, and those who state that most of human creation will exist in conscious torment throughout eternity.  And even though I could hold out a little hope that the universalists are correct, it’s a dangerous doctrine to teach, in light of so much evidence that final judgment is in fact final.

Is this book for you?

If you’ve ever wondered how a God so loving that He would take the punishment for sin on our behalf could also be the same Person who causes or allows the eternal torment of billions who never find and accept His grace, then yes!

If you’re not yet a believer, having never put your faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and if your reasons for not taking that step are in any way related to questions you have about the nature and character of God that were raised because of the eternal suffering in Hell issue, then yes!

If you’re a Christian teacher or preacher, but you’ve had your own questions about this issue, and have never been fully convinced by what you were taught in seminary or Bible college, yes!

Do you have a loved one you believe died without salvation, and you’re sickened and heartbroken at the prospect that they might be in conscious torment for all eternity, then absolutely, yes.  I won’t offer you the false hope that a universalist will, but well before you’ve finished this book, you’ll find the biblical truth that no one will be in torment forever, and all suffering will one day end.

And lastly, if you’re strongly convinced that the traditional view of Hell is the correct position on what happens at final judgment, even to you I’d say yes!!  Please take one look at another viewpoint and see if Scripture doesn’t have something quite different to say on the matter than what we’ve traditionally been told.

Chapter content:

Chapter 1 lays a foundation for why the traditional doctrine needs to be challenged, but it begins with a plea for unity among Christians, even if we disagree on this or many other matters, as Christians always have.  Love for God and one another should override all doctrinal differences.  As important as I believe it is for this non-traditional view on judgment to be made known, believing correctly or incorrectly about what final judgment entails doesn’t make one saved or lost.  What we do with the knowledge of Christ does.  Salvation is in Him alone, and those who believe this should be able to worship and serve together regardless of peripheral doctrinal differences.  Among traditionalists, conditionalists, and Christian universalists, at least two of these groups are wrong about final judgment.  But we all have this one thing in common: We believe that Jesus Christ was God with us on earth, and that He suffered and died to provide salvation to eternal life, demonstrating a love beyond compare.  This should be enough to unite us regardless of our other views.

Chapter 2 may be the most important chapter.  Here we’ll deal with a pivotal question.  It’s become a foregone conclusion – not only by traditional Christians, but by those of many faiths and beliefs – that we are eternal beings from the moment of our conception.  This needs to be challenged.  This assumption is the basis that leads so many to the ultimate conclusion that the wages for sin is not true death – cessation of being – but some other sort of death that’s actually life, only in misery, and separated from one’s Maker.  Chapters 2 as well as 6 will strongly challenge this line of thinking with reasonable Biblical arguments.

In Chapter 3 we’ll look at the very plain language of Scripture and see that it clearly states what will happen to the lost, and that it’s consistent throughout Scripture.

In Chapter 4, we’ll analyze the key passages of Scripture that have been misunderstood or misused for centuries to maintain the traditional view of Hell and immortality.  Several of these passages, if taken out of context and not viewed in light of all Scripture, can certainly be interpreted to teach that the punishment for unbelief will be conscious and unending.  Digging a little past the surface on these and, in some cases going beyond the English to the original languages of Scripture helped me understand these passages in ways that line up more logically with what the entire Bible teaches about final judgment, and add nothing to the traditionalist viewpoint on eternal conscious suffering.

I’m most surprised that I needed to write Chapter 5.  It’s an argument that death, true death: cessation of life and loss of being, is actually an incredibly severe punishment.  But it did seem this chapter was necessary because many of today’s teachers and preachers make this out to be almost a non-punishment, claiming that only an eternity of conscious punishment could be severe enough to pay the debt a sinner owes.  And often, conditionalists like myself are accused of teaching a soft view of God.  We’ll find nothing soft about true final judgment.

In Chapter 6 we’ll return to the Garden of Eden, and find that universal innate immortality isn’t the only false concept that was created there.

In Chapter 7 we’ll discuss the time period between physical death and final judgment. We’ll look at the ideas of soul sleep, not only for the lost, but also the saved, and consider a number of viewpoints on this.  There’s a lot of disagreement about the matter, even among those who agree in general about final judgment.  We’ll take a look at all sides, and perhaps find some middle ground.

Chapter 8 will be a brief look at the universalist doctrine and unbiblical belief that all humanity will one day be saved.

Finally, Chapter 9 will be a look at the statements of several well-known traditionalists on the matter.  We’ll stretch back as far as 200 AD and analyze some of the early Church fathers’ statements on the doctrine, and come forward to modern times as well.

If the reader believes my challenge to the traditional view of Hell and immortality will fall short of truth, or at least not offer any evidence they haven’t seen before, then please come to that conclusion only after you read through the evidence I’ll present.  I’ve researched this carefully and been very fair to the traditionalist side, but can no longer go along with tradition after taking a careful look at it all.  I appreciate your interest in this important subject and I pray this book is a blessing to you.

God Bless,

Scott McAliley

 

Eternal truths predate the traditions of men, and God is far more merciful than we’ve been traditionally taught.  It’s been argued that the most important thing about us is what we believe about God, and this would be difficult to dispute.  The perception we have of our Creator affects everything else we do and think.

If we believe God is merciful, loving and good, we’re far more likely to be merciful and loving ourselves, and more likely to be hopeful in matters of eternity, regardless of the difficulties of this life.  And by the same token, if our view of a merciful Creator has become clouded for any reason, that’s going to find its way into our thinking and actions as well.  Unfortunately, the evidence this has happened is everywhere.  If we’re confused about the goodness of God, we’re on a slippery slope that can lead to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in this life, and a total loss of focus on eternity.  Our concept of a merciful God has come under attack, and it was partially an inside job.

In the Christian faith, we speak a lot about how merciful God is.  And absolutely, He is.  We see the record of His grace and mercy displayed throughout the old and new testaments of Scripture, most specifically in what He did in His Son Jesus Christ through His atoning death on the cross.  Of course, we experience His grace and mercy in our own daily lives as well, but then there’s this elephant in the room which few want to talk about; it clouds and confuses something that shouldn’t be confusing at all.  It’s destructive to our concept of a merciful God, and it’s had detrimental and far-reaching effects.  It’s the doctrine of final judgment which states that those who never find or accept God’s grace in salvation will be tormented literally and consciously for all eternity.

I’ve studied this carefully, and have bent over backwards to give the traditionalist side of the argument every benefit of the doubt, and at the end of it all, this is simply not what Scripture maintains.  Billions of souls are not going to be in conscious torment for all eternity, yet this is what most Christian ministers and teachers have told us for approximately the last 1800 years.  It’s a bad doctrine, based on a small handful of mis-used and mis-interpreted verses and a pagan concept that all souls come into existence immortal and indestructible.

Someone suffering with no relief, and for all eternity is a difficult concept to wrap your head around.  But just imagine: After billions and billions of years in torment (if there were such a thing as “years” in timeless eternity) the suffering isn’t even hours old.  The lost soul is just getting started on their torment journey, which will have no end in time or eternity.  After ten trillion years (whatever that meaningless number means), one is no closer to the end of their torment than the day it began.  It’s literally the most disturbing concept I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t think we Christians really understand what maniacal horror we’re accusing God of when we maintain and teach this doctrine — that a loving Creator is going to allow potentially billions of souls to endure such a thing.

God knows the end from the beginning.  While we have the free will to make our decision for or against the Lord during our lifetimes, God knew before He made us what those decisions would be.  According to Scripture, many more people are going to be ultimately lost than will be saved.  So what’s implied in the traditional position, but never stated, is that God brought into existence billions of souls who could not have possibly asked to be created, knowing that their ultimate “end” would be to exist in excruciating torment forever.  This brings God’s nature and character into question in ways it never should be because this concept is simply never established in Scripture.  It’s time to clear God’s good name.  Christians who haven’t delved deeply on this subject can’t possibly know just how much Scripture has to be violated, ignored, and twisted in order to maintain this tragic doctrine which has done untold damage.

Traditions have their place in our faith, and in life in general.  But Jesus and the apostle Paul both warned about the traditions of men, implying that sometimes doctrinal practices begin inching away from truth.  In Mark 7:13 Jesus said that man’s traditions can even nullify the Word of God.  And sometimes a traditional idea just needs to be challenged.  That’s what we’ll do in the following pages.

I’ll limit myself to just this one football analogy, but several years ago, the replay system became part of college football.  It slows the game down a little, and some people hate it for that reason, but personally I was glad when it was instituted.  Let’s face it.  While referees are critically important to sports, they’re also human, and they get it wrong sometimes.  And when a coach thinks there’s a bad call that’s affecting his team’s ability to move forward, now he’s able to issue a challenge, and the examination of the slow motion footage begins.  But here’s the thing about it.  The ruling on the field is king, and by rule, the replay evidence must be overwhelming in order to overturn the initial call on the field.

What I’m doing is sort of challenging for a replay in relation to this doctrine.  If the evidence I’ll offer isn’t clear, then by all means, hold onto tradition.  But let’s rewind, slow it down, take it apart and see if it holds up to scrutiny.  I believe you’ll find the evidence for a non-traditional view of final judgment to be overwhelming, and the evidence for the traditional view of Eternal Hell almost non-existent.

When carefully examined, the traditional doctrine of Hell and immortality which virtually all mainstream Christian denominations hold to appears to have a number of problematic issues.  Most notable, contrary to a consistent theme in Scripture, it maintains that every human, from conception, innately possesses immortality, and is going to exist consciously for all eternity, even those without salvation through Jesus Christ.  Scripture on the other hand, maintains that Christ alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16) and grants it as a gift to those who place their faith in Him.  Scripture tells us the ultimate punishment for rejecting salvation is death.  Tradition redefines death to mean “eternal life, only separated from God or anything good.”  Before you finish Chapter 2, you may be shocked at the number of errors that must be accepted in order to maintain the traditional view.

I hope I haven’t misled anyone to think they’re about to read a book about a soft fluffy God who doesn’t hold His creation accountable for their decisions.  That’s not where I’m going with this.  So please note two things early on. First, I’m not challenging the biblical fact that those who have rejected the pull of God in this life will one day stand judgment.  They will.  While it stops well short of the sick and twisted idea of eternal conscious torment, what Scripture truly maintains will happen to lost souls is still horrific and sad, and it’s more than enough incentive to prompt one to turn from unbelief and to the God who loves us, who is holding His hand out to us all day long.  It’s also incentive enough for those of us who do know the Lord, to continue sharing the saving knowledge of Christ so others can avoid judgment and the very loss of their soul.

We all have the almost unbelievable opportunity to gain immortality and live in peace for all eternity with our Maker who loves us.  Short of suffering consciously forever with no reprieve, I can’t imagine anything worse than standing there at final judgment and being rightfully accused of turning down God’s offer of salvation, knowing I forfeited eternal life, and that my very existence and any memory of me is about to end.  It’s a horrible end for a life that had the potential for eternal bliss.  Secondly, I’m also not challenging that the judgment God issues is eternal.  It is.  Once a soul is destroyed in final judgment, it’s gone for all eternity.  It is truly an everlasting punishment — eternal damnation, as Scripture states clearly, but it’s not an ongoing process of conscious punishment that lasts throughout eternity.  This concept is never established in the Bible.

So this is not another in a growing stack of books that are promoting the increasingly popular idea of Universalism which maintains that eventually everyone will be saved.  However, what I’ll demonstrate is that there’s barely a shred of biblical evidence that a human soul can survive the final Lake of Fire judgment or will exist consciously into eternity.  Those are the extremes, and the truth is in the middle ground.  I should also note that I didn’t take this change in my doctrine lightly as I began discovering the truth on this matter for myself years ago.  I’m a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of person generally, and it’s highly uncomfortable for me to challenge a view held by so many people I respect.  I absolutely wouldn’t do it if the evidence weren’t there.

There’s another danger that comes along with the traditional view of conscious eternal suffering in Hell.  Most Christians won’t admit it, but because a punishment of everlasting torment seems so uncharacteristic of a God who we know in our hearts is a good God, deep down we actually doubt the truth of this doctrine.  We teach it and share it because we think we’re supposed to.  But it’s just so unfathomable that there’s part of us that just can’t believe it.  Therefore, the danger is that if we think it’s actually stated in Scripture, but we doubt it, then we’re doubting Scripture itself.  And that’s another slippery slope.  What parts of the Bible are true then, and what parts aren’t?  It’s all true, the whole thing!  But what’s missing from Scripture is the concept that God is going to cause or allow the eternal suffering of those who reject Him.  He’s going to return them where they came from…nothingness.  And while it’s an incredibly harsh sentence, it also makes sense.  This is God’s world, and He makes the rules.  It’s only by faith that we can be saved.  He’s building a family of faithful believers who love Him because we recognize and appreciate the incredible sacrifice He made in order to give us eternal life.

There was a time we didn’t exist.  God gives us the first amazing gift by giving us life and being at all.  He didn’t have to make a single one of us.  And then we’re offered the immensely greater gift of eternal life if we’ll put our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus as Savior.  If we reject that, we’re returned to the nothingness we were before God initially gave us our life.  It’s a stiff penalty, but it doesn’t bring the nature and character of God into question the way the traditional doctrine of Eternal Hell does because even though the lost soul suffers the great loss of their own soul and the potential of eternal life, the one who rejects salvation is ultimately no worse off than where they began.  They were nothingness to begin with.

I’ve heard it said many times by traditionalist pastors or teachers that “We all deserve Eternal Hell.”  Often they’ll even personalize it and say things such as “I know I deserve to go to Hell for all eternity.”  I’ve never believed that or felt that way.  I’m just being honest before the Lord and the reader.  I do understand why they say this, however.  We who are Christians understand that the Lord is holy and perfect and that we fall well short of that standard every moment, and it’s only by His grace that there’s even a shred of anything good about a single one of us, and it’s only by His mercy that we can approach Him in any way.  Therefore, those among us who believe in eternal Hell are going to say things like that.

But the truth is, we don’t deserve to suffer for all eternity.  I can look back on times in my life where I was avoiding God, rejecting the truths of the Christian faith, and living for temporary pleasures, and even if I had died in that state, I couldn’t say that I deserved to suffer torment for all eternity.  I deserved death.  I deserved it then, and I still deserve death now – true and actual cessation of life and existence in any form.  We all do.  We didn’t ask for life.  We can’t grant ourselves life.  We can’t earn life.  And we therefore don’t deserve life, in any form.

That we experience conscious existence at all is a pure act of God’s grace.  As noted, we were nothing before God dreamed us up and made us, and therefore we, by our own merit, can’t deserve anything worse or better that our original state.  We were non-existent in eternity past and what we deserve is to be returned to that state of nothingness.  Any form of existence above that “is gravy,” as they say.  This life is a gift.  Eternal life is an unimaginably more gracious gift, but those who willingly forfeit it deserve their first estate, nothingness, or “the blackest of darkness forever” as Jude phrased it in Jude 13.

Don’t leave your church!

While I feel strongly about this important theological issue, I would never advise anyone to break fellowship with other believers over this, even if you begin to recognize the errors in the traditional position as you read through this study, or other peoples’ works on the topic.  In one sense this is a really big deal.  It concerns the very nature and character of God, and as already noted, our perception of who God is affects us deeply.  On the other hand, this is still a peripheral issue, not a salvation issue.  As convinced as I am that the mainstream Christian church has misinterpreted a handful of verses and promoted a bad doctrine for centuries, I remain a part of the mainstream Christian church.  In fact, during most of the years I studied and wrote on this, I was a Sunday School teacher and regular musician at a local church that constitutionally held to the traditional view of Hell and immortality, the very tradition I challenge.  And before choosing to step down, I had served as an elder and a deacon there as well.

When my family and I left that church after over a decade, we didn’t go find some cult or even fringe Christian denomination to fellowship with just so we might hear a “lighter” view of Hell and judgment taught from the pulpit.  Instead my family began attending and eventually joined another church where the pastor, and I’m assuming, most members hold that same traditional view.  And that’s alright.  In Christian unity, at least in terms of what should or shouldn’t cause division, we can overlook all non-foundational doctrinal differences.  It’s okay to disagree sometimes.  However, if there’s a traditional doctrine which is disturbing to many, and can also be shown to have little Scriptural support, and if the opposition of it can be strongly supported, then at the very least it deserves a hearing.  That’s all I’m really asking for.  This is not an attempt at a revolution or an attempt to divide believers, but I do hope it causes a little personal reformation and revival in the hearts of those like me, who will find truth and a sense of relief in a non-traditional view of final judgment which paints God in a far more merciful light.

Often during this study and writing project, I was so bothered by the thought of potentially just promoting one more thing for Christians to disagree over that I tried to put this book endeavor down several times.  But it would never go away.  And of course, that created a new mental struggle I had to deal with: Is this God not letting this go away because it’s something He wants me to bring to the attention of others, or is Satan trying to confuse me and then confuse others, through me?  You haven’t read the evidence yet, so if you’re a traditionalist on this matter, I already know which one you believe was happening.  But ultimately, I decided that outside of Scripture, I couldn’t answer that question with absolute assurance.

Every evidence I see in Scripture points to a non-traditional version of final judgment, while virtually every preacher and Bible teacher I listen to and respect holds the traditional view.  This has created a mental battle in my head for years now.

As far as what I personally believe about judgment, I’m going with Scripture and what it appears to say, and not with men, and what they tell me Scripture says.  However, whether or not to share my study publicly has been a more complicated internal debate.

I’ve heard more than one pastor say that in determining what God wants us to be missional about and step out in faith on, we’ll never be more than about 80% sure of anything.  And that makes sense — I suppose it wouldn’t require faith if we were 100% sure on these things.  I’m close to 80% sure I should be sharing, so I’m going with my heart, and with what appears to be the bulk of Scriptural evidence, and asking those who will read the material to determine for themselves if it’s Bible truth or not.  To me, it’s clear.

We’ll all have to answer to God one day for the things we do.  If I’ve just completely missed the boat on this and looked at it all wrong, I’d rather answer for misinterpretation than for ignoring what has often over the years felt like a prompting from the Lord to challenge what appears to be a bad tradition.  And on a personal level, I’ll never forget how troubling the doctrine of eternal torment has been to me, and I continue to have people contact me from my website who are similarly troubled, and are thankful for the biblical challenge to tradition I’ve presented.  One sweet woman from Scotland I corresponded with for a while told me that the traditional view of Hell had literally ruined her life.  But she has come to peace with God through a new understanding of final judgment.  I appreciated her honesty and her sensitivity to the matter.

It’s easy to get busy with life and not think about the ramifications of what we teach and believe on this.  If tradition is correct, essentially all of human activity and pursuit is to end with the vast majority of people suffering senselessly without relief for all eternity.  That’s heavy stuff to deal with.  People who really sit and think about it instead of pushing it out of mind somewhere are going to be deeply and most likely negatively affected.  Thank God the defense of such an idea is so weak, and the evidence for an alternative view is so Scripturally evident.  If this is something that has troubled you, I hope you’ll find the same relief I and my friend from Scotland did as you do the research.

The Counterfeit Bill Analogy

Often pastors or Bible teachers will use the following illustration when speaking about recognizing false teachings.  They talk about people who are being trained to recognize counterfeit money, and they point out that for long periods of time the students, rather than being exposed to counterfeit bills, are only exposed to original legitimate bills.  Then after being entrenched in what is real, counterfeits are easy to recognize.  We understand the illustration: Entrench yourself in truth so you can recognize what’s false.  But it seems that one unmentioned aspect of this analogy is that whatever you’re exposed to first and longest (and more importantly, what you’re told is right and real by those you trust) is what you will assume is legitimate and correct.  In other words, the students are assuming that the “true” bills they were handed to study are in fact legitimate.

So consider this — If the traditional view of Hell and immortality is wrong, but this is all we’ve been exposed to, and this is what we, as the Church, have handed down for centuries, then we’re going to assume that anything contrary to that tradition is false and that those who oppose tradition are working against Christ.  I’ve been accused of this, and if the reader is one who currently holds the traditional view of judgment, he or she may be tempted to reject what I’m putting forward, simply because it’s contrary to what you’ve always been told.  But what if someone sneaked in some counterfeit bills for those students to study?  I believe this is what happened, centuries ago.  This is where we’ve got to come back to the only source of truth, Scripture itself, and see if perhaps it’s been twisted a little to support such a doctrine.

What about Universalism?

The traditional view of Hell is at one doctrinal extreme, an extreme that, according to many teachers and pastors, has God causing or allowing billions of people to be literally on fire for all eternity.  Many others have a slightly softer view and teach that there won’t be literal fire involved, but the lost will instead be in the throws of mental misery, conscious, but separated from their Maker for all eternity.  Because of the extreme horror of either of these, many who can’t accept such a concept escape to the other extreme: Universalism, which maintains that all human souls will ultimately be at peace in heaven for all eternity.

The Christianized versions go by terms such as Universal Reconciliation or Christian Universalism.  These have in common with general Universalism that all souls will ultimately be saved regardless of what they believe about God, but these Christian versions do maintain that it’s only because of what Jesus Christ did in giving His life on the cross that any are saved.  However, they remove the individual faith factor – the one thing that Scripture maintains is required for salvation – us placing our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus and His atoning work on the cross of Calvary.

I wish I could tell you my study of Scripture revealed that everyone will be saved in eternity, but that’s not what happened.  Jesus said that few are taking the narrow path that leads to eternal life and many are taking the broad road that leads to destruction (oh, and notice, He said “destruction”…not eternal conscious suffering).  Much like the traditional view of Hell, Universalism is depending on too few verses for support, and being overly creative with them.  There’s John 12:32 where Christ says that when He is lifted up, He will draw “all men” to Himself, and Colossians 1:20 which says God will reconcile “all things” to Himself.  And there are a few other verses like these which on the surface could be taken to mean that all will be saved, but of course they could be understood to mean something very different…and should be.

Universalism has some new allies: Rob Bell is one of them.  He, until a few years ago, was the popular pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Michigan, and in 2011 he released a book entitled Love Wins, a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.  I’m not going to an extreme and calling Bell an enemy of the Gospel.  I’m assuming he loves God, as he understands Him, and that he believes that it’s only through Christ’s atoning death that any can be saved, something all true Christians agree on.  And he probably legitimately believes what he teaches about Universalism.  But I have to wonder what drove him to this belief.  After reading his position on the matter, I can’t help but believe it was the horror of the traditional view.

Bell has an issue with tradition…as I do.  But he errs on the other extreme, but by the same method, using too few verses, and even those, out of context, to maintain a doctrine.  And at the core of both Traditionalism and Universalism is the idea that every soul created already has the innate ability and right to exist consciously for all eternity.  This assumption is the foundation for both errors, and we’ll see strong evidence in chapters 2 and 6 that there’s no sound biblical basis for this thinking, and we’ll also see how this relates back to Satan’s first lie to humanity – that we would not surely die.

Julie Ferwerda took the case for Universalism to another level in her book Raising Hell.  I found it well written – so well written in fact that if I had not already been studying this exact issue from a non-traditionalist viewpoint for years, I would have been tempted to buy in, being a person seeking to find answers to the unmerciful God of tradition.  I appreciate any Christian who makes an effort to combat the problematic teachings of eternal conscious torment in Hell.  But I find many errors in the universalist stance, and my plea to those who believe and teach it, is to consider the ramifications of teaching it, if they happen to be wrong.  If you, the universalist are not 100% convinced – if in your mind there’s the slightest chance you’re wrong, then stop.  You’re damaging the concept that faith is the key to salvation, and while you probably mean well, it’s potentially leading more people to destruction.

And I don’t think any of us in this final judgment conversation, if we’re honest, can say we’re 100% sure about every aspect.  The Bible was written a long time ago, in various cultures all different from ours today, by multiple inspired (yet human) authors, in multiple languages, with there being some disagreement about and room for discussion over the definitions of many of the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic words that make up the canon of Scripture.  So even as much as I’ve studied the doctrine of final judgment biblically, I’m not bold enough to believe there’s no way I’m incorrect.  I wouldn’t be writing if I thought this was likely, but I never rule out that I could’ve missed something somewhere.

In fact, I hope the universalists are correct.  But based on the research I’ve done, they’re simply not.  Many people will ask a question such as the following: “But what about those who never hear the gospel?”  The universalist answer is the most comforting, although the least verifiable in Scripture.  Their answer is that all will ultimately be saved, whether they’ve heard the gospel in this life or not.  Unfortunately, that’s not the biblical statement on the matter.  But if that’s your question, I offer what I believe are satisfying answers to that and similar thoughts in Chapter 8 where we’ll address Universalism.

The strongest evidence is on the conditionalist third of this 3-way debate among Christians about how final judgment will play out.  And concerning labels, I’d prefer to not identify with any label and instead simply say I’m a Bible believing Christian who has a scriptural understanding of final judgment.  Having any label beyond “Christian” almost seems “culty.”  But it would make writing about this issue difficult if we didn’t have terms for the different factions.  So if cornered, I’d have to call myself a conditionalist.  Both traditionalists and universalists believe all souls are immortal and are going to exist somewhere for all eternity (a view shared by virtually every other religion, which right there maybe should cause one to raise an eyebrow at tradition).

Conditionalists instead believe that being granted the attribute of immortality — the ability to go on living forever — is conditional upon putting one’s faith in Christ, and this is what the Bible tells us.  However this does not mean we believe the lost will simply vanish out of existence at the time of physical death.  Some who hold a conditionalist view may believe this, but that would be more of an atheistic belief than any form of Christian position.  Traditionalists, most conditionalists, and even many Christian universalists believe there will be judgment and consciousness in the afterlife.  However, we vary widely on interpreting how the process will play out, in function and in duration, and certainly concerning what the end result will be.

If the preacher says it, then I believe it!
…almost always

Allow me to share a story from Scripture.  One day Paul met with the other apostles and told them that going forward, their primary message to the unbelieving world should be that we all have an immortal soul and are going to live somewhere for all eternity, and that we need to decide where we want to spend our eternity.  Okay, NO THAT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL!  In fact, Paul never said anything like this.  Jesus also never said anything of the sort.  And no other writer of Scripture stated this either.  No, we need to decide if we love the God of the Bible or this quickly degrading world.  Do you want to live eternally, or be destroyed?  Those are the things we need to decide.  But the way I posed my fake bible story is how our eternal prospects are presented all the time in Christianity today.

A few years ago, during a church service, the pastor asked us to turn in our bibles to Hezekiah 3:4.  Only a couple people began looking for the passage initially, and then more joined in when he added, “Well, is anyone going to look that up with me?”  I’ll save you the trouble if you don’t already know; no, there’s no book of Hezekiah.  And his point was this: What sounds biblical and right isn’t always.  He and I disagreed about final judgment, but I appreciated the illustration.  It helps my argument, because also notable from his demonstration, even if unintended, was that we assume we can trust what we hear from the pulpit.  And the majority of the time, we can.

There are a number of terms and phrases in “Christianese” that sound biblical because many of us heard them all of our lives, but we’re going to seriously challenge some of them in this volume.  Here’s just a few you’ve probably heard thrown around: “Your immortal soul,” “a Christ-less eternity,” and “You’ve got to decide where you’re going to spend your eternity.”  These force the assumption that we even get an eternity to spend somewhere, when, without salvation, we don’t.  This issue is at the center of this matter, and as often as these types of statements have been made, especially in our modern day, there’s nowhere in Scripture where such a proposition is so clearly laid out.  Jesus, nor Paul, nor any other writer of Scripture ever said “You’re going to live somewhere for all eternity.  You need to decide where.”  Why not?  If it’s true, and if that’s now our primary argument for why people need to make a decision for Christ, why wasn’t it phrased so simply when Scripture was being penned?  And why didn’t it begin with God’s warning to Adam?  Why did God tell him he would ultimately return to dust instead of warning him that if he disobeyed he was at risk of suffering in fire for all eternity?  It’s a fair question.

Somehow, against all biblical evidence, it’s become a foregone conclusion that from our conception, we have, or we are an immortal soul and regardless of our faith, will exist consciously somewhere for all eternity, never mind what the Bible says in countless places on this matter.  And while many teachers avoid the matter altogether, some bring it right down into the most commonly used terms: “Heaven or Hell.  What’s it gonna be?”

Please don’t misunderstand.  In one sense, Heaven and Hell are our only two choices.  Many words are translated into the English word “hell,” and these words sometimes describe the fate of the lost, but the different terms have different meanings, and it’s unfortunate that the English language doesn’t differentiate among them, but instead lumps them all into one term: “hell.”  And it’s further unfortunate that we’ve allowed anything other than Scripture itself to define the terms and concepts.  Two of the terms translated as “Hell,” Sheol and Hades, refer to either the grave itself, the state of being physically dead, or the place, real or theoretical, where departed souls await their resurrection to life or to judgment.  And Scripture is clear that both faithful and faithless souls would await there, at least prior to Christ’ death and resurrection; whether that’s waiting in a conscious or unconscious state is another debate, and we’ll look at that in Chapter 7.

Another term that Jesus used often, Gehenna, is also translated as “Hell” in virtually all modern Bible versions, but this was a geographical location adjacent to the city of Jerusalem where refuse was burned.  It was a waste dump.  And Jesus used it figuratively for the destruction that awaits the faithless.  But rather than leave the word which means “Valley of Hinnom” alone, translators and interpreters literally change the words of Jesus and make it “Hell.”  It’s difficult to believe this is just okay.  It was a physical location, and even though He was most likely using it as a figurative type for final judgment, it’s inexcusable to plug “Hell” in for a map location, yet almost every modern Bible version does this very thing.

And then concerning the faithful saved, our eternal lives will ultimately be with God in Heaven.  So, while the terms can be confusing, Heaven and Hell are our only choices in some sense.  But when the “Heaven or Hell” proposition is made, the assumption is that most people hold the traditional impression of “Hell” as a fiery eternal dungeon or fiery lake, and then sensible people are being asked, “Would you rather have this for all eternity, or eternal bliss?”  That’s a no-brainer, if we believe Scripture is true and if we believe it when we’re told that this is what the Bible portrays about Hell.  But scaring people into their “salvation” with unbiblical ideas can ultimately backfire.  While our Dante’s Inferno-like descriptions of a place that will burn forever with fire are the predominate picture people have of judgment, the effect is short-lived — probably because it borders on the unfathomable, and likely, many people simply don’t believe it.  In fact, many of the great revivals in America’s past, at least the one’s “fueled” by fiery teaching on eternal hell, ultimately fizzled back out into unbelief.

And what about the state of the church in North America right now?  Did those “great awakenings” last?  I believe “sick” and “in trouble” were just two of the words that one of my favorite teaching pastors used to describe today’s church, and he may well be correct.  And what about all the efforts of traditionalists John Gill, Charles Spurgeon and others in 18th and 19th Century England?  Did no one pick up the torch?  Genuine Christianity in England has declined steadily since that time, and it’s almost non-existent at this point.  Without discounting personal sinfulness as a leading cause, is it possible that being taught an unmerciful God of fiery eternal torment has been a major contributing factor in our failure as Christians?

I’m not trying to take anything away from the many positive things these and other well-known past Christians have done, but it seems that everyone who maintains a doctrine that causes people to question God’s mercy and goodness is damaging their own efforts to spread the good news of salvation.  Wouldn’t the truest revival and longest lasting awakening happen when the most merciful and loving God is revealed, assuming what we reveal could be supported with Scripture?  We should be teaching a God we can both fear and love at the same time, without having to question His character and nature.  And that’s Who the Bible actually offers us.

We’ve seen that the traditional position on judgment has adopted a number of unbiblical phrases that get thrown around constantly in Christian teaching.  Let’s see what we’ve done with some common terms that we thought we knew the meaning of, and this will really demonstrate what shaky ground tradition is on.  Die actually means “live forever in misery,” destruction and be destroyed actually mean “indestructible and unable to be destroyed,” and “will perish” means “will never fully perish.”  Further, the traditionalist position asks us to believe that when God indicated no sinner could endure His wrath, He actually meant they not only could, but would endure it for all eternity.  And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the contradictions in terms involved in the traditional position.

I appreciate the pastors most who will tell you things like, “Check me on this. I could be wrong,” or “Be a good Berean and do your own research” when they’re making certain claims from Scripture that aren’t blatantly obvious.  And truly I appreciate all pastors and preachers who God has called to be His spokespeople for the difficult days we’re in…even those I disagree with about this judgment issue.  But being called and used of God doesn’t mean any are beyond error.  Paul called out Peter for error.  Barnabas and Paul parted ways because of disagreements.

In our own day, one pastor will tell you that God has a specific plan for your life that you and only you can fulfill, and that if you don’t do it, no one will and it will be left undone.  Another will tell you that it doesn’t work that way at all, and if you don’t answer to those nudges from God and fulfill your calling, God has someone else waiting in the wings to take your place.  Two of my favorite nationally known pastors are on the two opposite ends of this scenario, and they can’t both be right.  But I believe they’re both wonderful Bible teachers, called by God.

In some ways, the judgment issue is just another peripheral doctrine that we’re going to have to agree to disagree over, although in my opinion it’s a really important one to get an alternative view of out there, so people can see there’s another valid side to the issue – a fact which many people are completely unaware of.

There are many different ways to interpret the non-fundamentals of Scripture, and that’s what I hope readers will keep in mind as they’re reading this book.  I’m not a heretic.  Even if I’m wrong, it only comes down to this: I see final judgment taught one way in Scripture, and someone else sees it taught another way.  And if I couldn’t strongly support the position I’m putting forward, and if I didn’t know the same doctrine that troubled me greatly also troubles many Christians and would-be Christians, I wouldn’t bother to argue for it publicly.  I would simply believe it in my own heart and mind.  But I know it’s a problem for a lot of people, and it’s easy to demonstrate the flaws and holes in the traditional view, so it’s impossible for me to hide the answers I’ve found any longer.

At the end of the day, Mainstream Christianity has portrayed God in a less than merciful light, and then has pointed us to Jesus’s command to love this One with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  This is difficult enough as we battle our own flesh.  But it’s almost impossible for many of us, when God is made out to be this one who requires the intense and eternal suffering of those who never find His grace.

Adding to the difficulty of conjuring up a love for this god are the Calvinist leanings of many of today’s pastors and Bible teachers.  If you don’t know what I’m referring to, teachers that follow in the Calvinist line of thinking promote the idea that God only gives the ability to respond to Him with saving faith to the relative few, making faith in God a literal impossibility for most of human creation.  So, because He requires faith for salvation, but only gave it to the few, the logical conclusion for Calvinists is that God preordains most to destruction.  And making the matter worse is that this “destruction” isn’t even a merciful putting away from existence, but is redefined as eternal conscious suffering in a tormenting Hell, by virtually all mainstream Christian preachers and teachers.  It is these teachings that disturbed me for years, and made my taking Christ seriously difficult, and my re-approach to Christianity slower than it should have been, after I went away from the faith for several years.

I began writing a book challenging Calvinism several years ago.  I probably won’t pursue it.  Unlike the conditionalist view of final judgment which gets little attention (and which I’m hoping to bring more attention and validity to with this book), Calvinism/Predestination is often challenged, and there are a number of books already out there.  But in case you’re one who has fallen victim to the ideas it encompasses, just a brief defense of the Free Will position here before we center back on the primary topic:

People who hold to the Calvinist line of reasoning (even if they don’t technically call themselves “Calvinists”) seem to be hung up on a couple of concepts which they can’t see past.  The first is “predestination.”  This is a biblical concept, but it has nothing to do with us having free will or not.  Romans 8:29 says in part “For those whom he (God) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” (ESV)  The Calvinist reads this and thinks something like, “see, He planned ahead of time to predestine some of us to salvation and others, not so much.”  But that’s not what the verse says.  Unless we want to believe this “foreknowing” means that we somehow pre-existed with God before our conception (an idea which almost all of us would disagree with), then the words themselves explain everything perfectly.

There’s something that God knows – something He “fore” knows.  What is it?  Leaning back on God’s omniscience and foreknowledge answers so many doctrinal questions.  God is growing a family of faithful believers to spend eternity with, and our having free will to put our faith in God, or put it in something else, is part of that process.  But while we have free will in real time, God already knows what we’re going to do with our faith.  He knows all future.  In that sense, He “foreknows” who are His.  And as the verse clearly states, those whom He foreknew (those He knew would be his), He predestined (determined ahead of time) to conform them to the likeness of His Son.  A common sense biblical understanding of predestination takes nothing away from our free will.  God simply already knows what we’re going to do with our free will.  Passages like this are a testament to God’s omniscience, and shouldn’t be mis-used to damage the biblical and common sense concept that of course we have free will.

The other big hangup for Calvinists is God’s sovereignty.  I don’t understand why this seems to be such an issue with them, but it is.  They believe that because God is sovereign, He simply cannot allow humanity to truly have free will, because it would infringe on His sovereignty.  Even if unintentional, that’s a jab at God’s omnipotence.  My short answer to this is that if God sovereignly chooses to give mankind free will, then that was His sovereign decision, so it therefore cannot be said that our free will violates His sovereignty.  Allowing it was part of His sovereign determination.  But even that’s a bit of a small picture way of looking at it.  What’s truly amazing is that God’s plans ultimately go His way even with our free will intact because He is light years worth of chess moves ahead of us.  He sees the future and works His plans in and around all of the good and bad things humanity will ever do.  Someone will ask, “Why then are we told that most are going down the broad path to destruction and few going down the narrow path to life, since we’re also told that God isn’t willing that any should perish?”  The Calvinist answer is that the “any” of that verse only means the relative few that God chose to save.  The better understanding is that there are layers to God’s will.  He isn’t willing that any perish, therefore He made a way so that none would have to.  But His ultimate will and intention is to only grant salvation and eternal life to those who put their faith in Him.  There’s a distinction between not being willing that any perish and creating a system where none will perish.  The former is biblical.  The latter is not.

There are some passages of Scripture which Calvinists believe prove that God overrides our free will and pre-determines who can be saved.  First, it needs to be said that pre-knowing who will come to Him for salvation, and pre-determining who is able to are very different things.  But let’s look specifically at a couple of passages.  A common one a Calvinist will take you to is Malachi 3 where we find God pleading with the nation of Israel (Jacob) and stating that He loved Jacob, but hated Esau.  First, this “hate” is more the idea of “rejection” than how we may humanly think of “hate.”  But again, God’s foreknowledge solves the dilemma.  God knew before these twins were born, and even before creation itself, that one day, the older, who should have been in the line of the Messiah, and the one to receive the birthright, would trade that birthright for a bowl of soup because his stomach was growling.  Jacob, the younger (by only seconds most likely) desired the birthright, and valued the promises of God to their family.  And this too God knew.  God doesn’t pick favorites, but His foreknowledge is undeniable, and that’s where He operates from.  He knows who will value the things of the Lord and knows who will put their hope in this fading world, and He works from that place of knowledge.  But everyone, in real time, can choose for or against God.

Except for Pharaoh, right?  This is another place a Calvinist will go.  When Moses was sent by God to tell Pharaoh to let His people go out from Egypt, we find something interesting.  Throughout the various plagues that God sends, sometimes we read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and wouldn’t let the people go, and other times the text says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  And it’s undeniable that back in Exodus 7:3 God says, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” and in 7:4, “Pharaoh will not listen to you.”  So does He want Pharaoh to let them go, or doesn’t He?  If we read on in Chapter 7, we’ll see that God’s ultimate purpose was not only to free His people from the bondage of slavery, but to demonstrate who the real God of the universe was to the masses of people in Egypt who were lost and headed toward destruction.  And this was stated again in Chapter 9.  And many Egyptians did in fact leave Egypt with the Israelites; that’s who the “mixed multitude” was.  And Exodus 9:20-21 tells us that because of the plagues, already some in Egypt, even Pharaoh’s servants, were beginning to fear the name of the Lord, while others were still unconvinced.

Ultimately, God was trying to save Gentile souls, and lots of them — not only free His own people from slavery.  But what about poor Pharaoh?  Isn’t he just the victim here?  Even though God’s ultimate purpose was to demonstrate His power to Egypt so that as many as would, could be saved, Pharaoh was used as the pawn because he wasn’t even given a choice — God hardened his heart so he couldn’t exercise his “free will” and let the people go, right?  Actually, he had already exercised his free will and denied God.  There’s no way that Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the world at the time wasn’t well informed and fully aware of who the Israelites living in Goshen, just outside of Egypt, were.  He knew they claimed to know the one true God, and their God wasn’t Pharaoh, and he made them slaves and kept them in bondage.  So Pharaoh rejected God in this way first.  Also, while God did forewarn Moses that He was going to harden Pharaoh’s heart, we don’t see God actually doing that until Exodus 9:12, well into the series of plagues, and after Pharaoh himself had hardened his own heart multiple times, according to the text.

We could keep looking at these types of places in Scripture that Calvinists believe demonstrate our lack of free will, and keep finding that one has to read information into these passages that isn’t there to come away with the conclusion that we don’t have free will to accept or reject God.  But let’s look at it from a different angle.  There are so many places where we could get these types of verifications of free will, but let’s first go straight to the words of Jesus.  In Revelation 2:20-21 where He’s dictating to John the letters to the churches, He reprimands the church in Thyatira for tolerating a prophetess named Jezebel who is seducing His people into sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols.  But what I find interesting is that in verse 21 Jesus says, “I gave her time to repent, but she refuses…”  And then He goes on to tell of the trouble she’s about to fall into because of refusing to repent.  But wait.  Why did He do that, if there was no way for her to repent?

And think about Cain and Abel for a minute.  Cain saw that God approved of the offering Abel brought, but did not approve of his own, and was angry about this.  We won’t get into exactly what all that was about.  There are a number of theories on why one was approved and the other not.  But what I find interesting is that God came to Cain, even after He had disapproved of his offering, and asked, “If you do right, will you not be accepted?”  Either God is practically mocking people, and acting in total futility when He attempts to get them to turn from their faithless acts, or these people truly have the free will to turn or not turn.

Denying we have free will makes a mockery of Scripture and really all of life.  What exactly is the point of anything, if God has essentially done nothing more than create a movie in which we’re playing a role, but in reality our lines are scripted and we only “feel like” we have free will?  The entire Bible is screaming that we have free will, and God is pleading with us to exercise it toward Him, putting all our hope and trust in Him for eternal life.  Picking only two of the countless evidences of this seems like a dis-service to the topic, and there are so many other facets to the dismantling of Calvinism that we’re not even getting into, but we need to move on.  This isn’t a book about the issues with Calvinism.  But before we move on, I must say, regarding God’s question to Cain, that “if” is the one word God doesn’t need to speak to humanity if we don’t have true free will.

Why would God imply that Cain would be just as accepted as Abel “if” he would do right, if in reality, there was no way for him to do right?  Now, again, because God knows the whole future, He already knew that ultimately Cain was not going to do right, but was actually going to go totally off the deep end and commit the first murder.  But that just proves even more that Cain had free will.  Even though God knew what he would do, He still went out of his way to give him the opportunity to do right and be accepted.  If Cain had no true ability to make a decision one way or the other, then truly God was doing nothing more than mocking him.  I’m going to choose to believe that God doesn’t lock people into being unable to act rightly, and then mock them for it.  Is that fair enough?

Speaking of “if” being the one word that God shouldn’t say if we don’t have true free will, that was actually going to be the title of the book I’m probably not going to finish — If: the one word God shouldn’t use if we don’t have free will.  Someone should steal that from me.  Oh wait, they already did.  Not really, but it’s sort of a funny story.  Years ago, when I was dug in on both my final judgment and anti-Calvinism studies, I was listening to a podcast of one of my favorite teaching pastors, Mark Batterson, and the sermon was about the importance of knowing where we stand on some of the peripheral doctrines of the faith, and he specifically mentioned the Calvinism/Predestination vs. Free Will controversy.  But instead of share where he lands on the matter, he chose not to, and instead just emphasized the importance of knowing why you believe as you do, no matter which side you’re on.  I get that…to some degree.  But I really wanted to know where he stood, and I also wished he would take a stand publicly for what he believes, although I think I understand now why he doesn’t.  These issues can be divisive, and for him to do the things that God has specifically called him to do, it’s probably more productive to not publicly get into some of the peripheral issues.

But at the time, I just wanted to know where he was on it.  He had indicated in that broadcast that he had been on both sides of that argument at various times in his Christian life.  So I emailed him, and shared a lot of what I’d been finding in the way of challenging Calvinism, hoping that if he had swung to the Calvinism side, maybe I could help swing him back.  I can’t say this with absolute assurance, but I’m 99% sure I mentioned that I was working on a book about it, and about 90% sure that I told him my tentative title was “If.”  Well I never heard back, and I wasn’t surprised.  I can only imagine how busy he is, with multiple church locations and all the responsibilities he must have, and all of that on top of having family responsibilities as well.  So I wasn’t offended or shocked that he didn’t respond.  But then I’m in a bookstore in the Christian section a couple years ago and I see this black book with a huge white lowercase “if” right there on the cover, and who is it written by?  Mark Batterson.  Mark Batterson wrote a book called If and just a few years prior, I had emailed him and told him I was writing a book called If.  What are the odds?  Now don’t get me wrong.  First of all, his “if” book isn’t even about Calvinism.  Secondly, books can have the same title; it’s not a violation.  Thirdly, it’s very likely he never even saw my e-mail, and it’s a total coincidence.  On the other hand, it’s possible he read the e-mail, didn’t respond for whatever reason, and the “if as a book title” concept just went into his subconscious.  It doesn’t matter.  I really just find it funny and probably coincidental, and he’ll always be one of my favorite pastors and authors.  But for some reason, I never read that one.  I’ve read five or six of his books, loved every one of them, but just haven’t gotten around to If yet.  Let’s move forward…

While both of these teachings (Calvinism and eternal conscious suffering) are questionable and potentially destructive on their own, together they paint a picture of a god[1] who brings individuals into existence who could not have possibly asked to be born, requires the impossible from them, and then when they of course fail in faith, their punishment is to be tormented for all eternity.  Further confusing is that many of those who promote these dual ideas say the reason God does it this way is that it glorifies Him.  What??  How?  Yes, this is the elephant in the Sunday School room – the ugly side of our faith, which for the most part is just swept under the rug, but we need to hash these things out.

Us-centric instead of God-centric

God desires people to respond to Him in faith, and in fact it is only by faith that we can please Him according to the Bible, yet for centuries, the primary means enlisted by most preachers for drawing people to this loving God is the threat of suffering consciously for all eternity.  It doesn’t take a lot of faith to make that choice if you believe what you’re being told – only a desire to not be on fire forever.  And this is one of the detriments of the traditional view.  It hinders the act of coming to God in loving faith and appreciation for His expression of love, and replaces it with “You better come to God because you need to decide where you want to spend ‘your eternity’…in bliss, or on fire.”  It becomes more about saving our own neck than falling in love with God.

Jesus, God with us on earth, prayed to God the Father in heaven for those who rejected and mocked Him as He was dying on the cross, yet tradition would have us believe that He requires not the life of the one who rejects him, but rather his or her eternal torment?  It just doesn’t add up.  This is not who God is, but this is the traditional view of Hell and immortality in a nutshell.  And this paradoxical view, I believe, while drawing many in to get more answers, repulses many others and keeps them from the God who loves them.  The scriptural truth of the divine judgment of those who reject the knowledge of God is scary enough without the threat of having to remain “alive,” conscious and tormented throughout timeless eternity to regret the decisions one made against the one true God.

This is not a new teaching!

It might surprise some readers to know that Conditionalism is nothing new.  Not only, after years of study, does it appear to be the consistent theme of Scripture, but throughout history many church leaders and even some church “fathers” have held a conditionalist stance.  Even in our own day, the often quoted and well-respected Christian author and church planter, the late John Stot announced in 1988 that he was tentatively letting go of his belief in the traditional view of Hell, and stated that he believed the subject needed to be revisited by the mainstream.  I hope that’s what I’m offering with this book.  And Stot is certainly not alone.  I could offer a decent list of people who rejected the traditional view of eternal suffering, but even by only mentioning Stot, it’s too close to doing something for which I’m critical of traditionalists commentators, which is relying more on the opinions and findings of other humans to strengthen their arguments than on Scripture itself.

One multi-author book I read which set out to defend the traditional view of Hell, Hell Under Fire, was difficult to even push through because of the constant footnoting and references back to other men’s writings and sayings, especially the other co-authors of that very book.  I’d never read a book where on many pages, the footnote section on the lower half of the page was physically larger than the body of “new” content at the top…and the footnotes were even in a smaller font.  So I’ll spare the reader from much of that at all from this point on, and we’ll simply look at what Scripture says on the matter, not what other people believe.  But if one finds the philosophical or religious company they’re in to be important, then you’re not in bad company if you’re a conditionalist.  But you are in the extreme minority.  The traditional view is widely held, and from what I’m seeing, is unfortunately only being combated semi-effectively by Universalism – which seems to be solving one problematic false doctrine with another problematic false doctrine.  Today, we who reject the traditional view in favor of the conditionalist position — which should at least be considered an equally acceptable way to understand divine judgment — are spoken of as if we are fools or heretics with no Scripture to back our view.  The opposite is true, and if you’ll bear with this study, I believe you’ll agree there’s a better way to interpret final judgment — without violating Scripture.

Debating in Love

I’d like to briefly address the tone this book is written in.  I’ve been putting down and picking up this writing project for over a decade, for reasons already partially explained.  I’ve sat down to study and write in various different moods and modes over the years.  Obviously the book has been edited, and the extremes of tone and mood have been eliminated.  However, at times the reader may detect that I’m upset with a particular pastor, speaker or author who’s made an attempt to defend the traditional view in a less than stellar way.  Sometimes the reader may even pick up on some sarcasm, although most of that has been removed.  The truth is, the traditional position on hell and immortality not only appears to be doctrinally incorrect, but because it is so disturbing to myself, and so many others, and because the defense of it is generally so poor, if I’m honest, I am upset — and I’ve let a little of that come through in the writing at times.  Sometimes a person’s argument is so weak or offensive, to highlight it in a dry, emotionless way seems less than genuine.  I certainly could’ve altered my approach and let this book read like many scholarly works about doctrine – no first-person writing, etc.  But this book and this topic are very personal to me.  So while I believe you’ll find the doctrinal study to be deep and meaningful, I wrote it from the perspective of being a real person, not a stuffed suit that doesn’t have personal opinions or get upset when someone is making a weak case that brings the nature and character of God into question.  And to be clear, I’m not upset with the general Christian population that holds the traditional view.  Most haven’t studied the doctrine.  If I’m upset with any individuals, it would be those who have been exposed to excellent arguments from the conditionalist position, and instead of admitting it’s perhaps at least a viable alternative way to view final judgment, instead it’s stubbornly ignored and explained away.

The people I challenge have put their positions out into the public arena, and it’s fair game, just as I’ve now put my own position out there as well, to be assessed, attacked…whatever may come.  But what I want the reader to know is that if someone is out there defending the traditional view of hell, that tells me at least one thing: They’re a believer in Christ.  And I love and respect them as a brother or sister in Christ, and I appreciate that they share the gospel.  But that doesn’t get them off the hook if they’re making other public statements that don’t seem to line up with Scripture.  If my method for calling someone out seems less than merciful in a book about how much more merciful God is than we’ve been told, then hold that against me personally, and not against the doctrinal stance on judgment which I’m putting forward.  If my personal methods for going about this study and writing project are also less than stellar, then please look beyond my methods to the information itself and know that God is far more merciful than we’ve been told.

While I’m critical of the traditional view, and at times the people who put forward ideas that don’t line up with Scripture (and more their methods than anything personal), in no way do I intend to bring into question any traditionalist individual’s ministry as a whole.  I’ve reaped a harvest of biblical knowledge and life-giving words from the numerous Bible teachers I listen to in person, on the radio, Internet, and television.  But the vast majority of them hold a traditional view of judgment which I of course disagree with, and I believe they’re doing damage to the gospel in this one area.  This book is a plea for traditionalists to reconsider the matter, but it is not a slam on a single one of them as a minister of the gospel truth that salvation is in Jesus Christ alone.

I’m also not questioning the intelligence of any person who holds a traditional view.  I’m familiar with the proof texts for the doctrine (all of which we’ll address in Chapter 4 if not before), and I understand why many people hold this view.  But I also understand just how strong tradition can be, and how much we desire to trust everything we hear from our pastors and teachers.  And while I don’t think this is a matter of intelligence at all, I do believe that many who hold a traditional view have never studied the topic deeply.  And even those who do may be overlooking the obvious and simpler message of Scripture in favor of tradition.

Often traditionalists come at the study of judgment with the assumption that all souls are already eternal, and then try to make everything fit into that box, so they begin with a question like “So what will eternal Hell be like?” instead of a fairer question like “What does Scripture say will ultimately happen to those who reject God’s offer of salvation?”  James MacDonald has consistently been one of my favorite radio/internet/TV Bible teachers over the years, and I continue to listen to, be challenged by, and learn from him all the time.  But on a broadcast of Walk in the Word a few years ago, he prefaced a short series on Hell by credentialing himself as having spent “an entire week” studying the topic.  MacDonald has more Bible knowledge in his little finger than I ever will in my head, but after having been at my study of final judgment for years at that point, I couldn’t help but be a little offended at the implication that a week of focused study prepared him to teach solidly on the matter.  And it became quickly obvious during the three-message series that he, like most other traditionalists, approached the topic looking for “descriptions of Hell” rather than truly delving into bigger questions such as, “What is the fate of those who reject the pull of the Holy Spirit to come to Christ for salvation?”

And another note:  Although MacDonald initially expressed doubt that those who claim to have had glimpses of the afterlife are legitimate, he later seemed to use some of these very accounts as evidence for his own conclusions about Hell.  I don’t put a lot of stock in peoples’ accounts of going to Heaven or Hell and coming back to tell (and write books) about it.  I’m not claiming there’s no way this could happen.  It’s at least possible that God has given people in modern times glimpses of what the afterlife will look like, for both the saved and the lost.  But there’s no way to know who’s being honest and who isn’t, and they all have varying versions of Heaven and Hell.

I believe I’ve made this clear, but in case I didn’t, I’m not denying that the lost will exist beyond this life.  They will.  The souls of those who reject salvation will not vaporize at physical death.  But they will not exist after final judgment and into timeless eternity.  Eternity is for the saved.  But the lost will certainly experience something after death, and it’s possible that some have been given a sneak peek into it.  However, while personal accounts of near death experiences make interesting stories, they’re impossible to verify.  The only thing I’m going to base my doctrinal beliefs on are going to come straight from Scripture or undeniable personal experience.

I realize that asking people to “open their minds” to a new way of looking at a topic which they believe they’re familiar enough with can be taken completely wrong.  “Opening your mind” has a very “new age” connotation.  But the fact is that coming at the topic with a lot of preconceived ideas is the first problem.  If you already believe that all souls are eternal, and if you already believe there’s a place where the lost will spend eternity, and just can’t fathom that anything else could be the case, then you’re going to have trouble reconciling actual biblical statements with statements of tradition you’ve heard from the pulpit.

The pulpit tells us the lost will suffer for all eternity.  Scripture tells us they will ultimately perish and become non-existent.  Scripture tells us the total obliteration of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah was an example of what will ultimately happen to the ungodly, but tradition tells us that unbelievers will get an asbestos-like body so they are able to survive and suffer in the Lake of Fire for all eternity.  While many traditionalists tell us the lost will be on fire for all eternity, the Bible tells us that fire fully destroys all but the faithful.  And then in Luke 16, the favorite proof text for traditionalists who believe the lost can and will exist on fire, we read of a lost man in Hades who says he is tormented, but curiously, by a single flame, not the fire that tradition tells us he’s in.  And when we dig a little, it becomes a fascinating study.  Every time that singular flame appears in Scripture it’s a reference to the reality and truth of God Himself, not literal fire.  This is expanded on in Chapter 4 where we address every well-known proof text for the traditional position.

I’m in total agreement with traditionalists that those who have rejected God will experience regret and suffering in the afterlife.  It’s the duration which I’m in disagreement over.  Chapter 7 is a study of the intermediate state between physical death and final judgment.  And the conscious suffering of the lost may be very brief, or it may be quite lengthy.  There’s room for debate.  But whether it’s short or long, that suffering will in fact end.

We could go on and on looking at these diametrically opposed concepts which are not sensibly reconcilable, and the strain to make them all work has created more problems and disagreement among traditionalists than it has solved.  Even more unbelievable is that some modern day traditionalists somehow view all the biblical language about the lost being burnt up as chaff, thrown in a furnace of fire, consuming away like smoke, and being thrown into a lake of fire as only figurative language for a spatial separation from God, a separation which most traditionalists maintain was prefigured by Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden.  We’ll find many problems with that theory and discover some real treasures as we carefully study through the Garden of Eden scene again in the following chapter.  An open-minded and honest look at biblical judgment is sorely needed in Christianity, so yes, I’m asking the reader to open his or her mind.  You will not be disappointed by the answers you find.

Christian Unity

Is this worth debating over?  Christian unity is a major theme in the New Testament.  We need to be very cautious about what we spend time outwardly disagreeing over.  I have four children.  Nothing makes me happier than when they are getting along and being sweet to one another, and little else bothers me more than when they are arguing or fighting with one another over insignificant matters.  I imagine it’s not too different with our Heavenly Father.  I’m sure the divisions and arguments we have over petty (in the grand scheme) issues hurt the Lord.  Mark Batterson (a traditionalist on this judgment matter as far as I can tell, but a wonderful teacher, author, and motivator) calls our wasted efforts and arguments over peripheral doctrines “sideways energy in the kingdom,” and I agree with him.  Christians often waste a lot of time and energy on issues we shouldn’t.  And Batterson might even consider this particular topic one to not hash out publicly; everyone has to determine for themselves where they draw the line on whether an issue is worthy of argument or not.

Here’s where I personally draw the line:  Does it bring into question the nature and character of God in a way that can affect a person’s relationship with their Heavenly Father, or for those who have not yet made a decision for Christ, can it affect their comprehension of who God really is?  If it doesn’t, it should fall into the “let’s not waste our time fighting over that” category.

I’m willing to talk about any subject in Scripture, but I’m personally not going to debate someone over certain issues — such as the young earth/old earth issue — not because it isn’t important on some level.  It is.  But because it isn’t an issue that concerns the character of God.

I’m also not going to argue with someone over when or if the rapture will occur.  Again, not because it isn’t an important topic, and not because I don’t have my own strong opinion on the matter.  I do, and I share it at times, and I’m planning a writing project now where I’ll challenge some of our thinking in that area as well.  But I’m not going to argue with anyone over it or break fellowship with other believers, because the timing of the rapture, like so many other doctrinal matters, doesn’t directly concern our comprehension of our Maker.  But the doctrine of judgment does.  And Calvinist-like doctrines do as well.

So there are topics to hash out, and times to do such.  And there’s a precedent of believers bringing others believers back to truth when doctrinal problems arise, especially when it involves falling into the traditions of men.  And if I’m wrong on these matters, I pray someone will show me the light and bring me back in line.  But if I’ve found truth, I hope it finds many others.  A devotion to unity shouldn’t keep us from delving into difficult doctrinal questions, and we can certainly remain unified as believers in Christ even if we disagree over large issues.

Regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong on these non-essential doctrines, there is one God who loves us and saves us.  As already noted, I’ve continued to attend a local church that maintains the traditional view of Hell, even though I disagree with the doctrine.  What would be the alternative?  Join an odd sect of Christianity that has a similar view of final judgment, but that adds strange things to Scripture?  Stop going to church?  We don’t need any more separation.  We need unity, and while it may appear that there’s a form of unity on this issue already, because most mainstream Christians have a traditional view of Hell and immortality, the truth is, there’s still no full unity on this topic, even among traditionalists.  There are as many different versions of Eternal Hell as there are people who believe in Eternal Hell.

Truth is older than tradition.

What I’m asking readers to do, especially those who teach, is take this one look into the matter and make sure you are holding the view, not with the most traditional support, but with the most Scriptural evidence, and which most accurately portrays the God of love and mercy we believe in.  Tradition can be very strong, but sometimes it can also be a stronghold.  We have an Enemy.  There is one who does not want individuals to know God as He is, and he’s extremely clever.  Are we Christians so beyond error that there’s no possibility we’ve been deceived and are perpetuating Satan’s very first lie to humanity?  I certainly believe that I was deceived, before delving into this study and re-thinking it.  Is it not possible that we have problems in a couple of our major doctrines?  Christianity has come a long way doctrinally since the dark and middle ages, but are we there yet?  Have we sorted out every major doctrinal issue?  Probably not.  And certainly every issue doesn’t need sorting out to have unity and be effective in the world as Christians, but shouldn’t we work toward it?

There’s a phrase that’s become popular within Christianity over the last several years and it’s this:  “You need to know why you believe what you believe.”  I totally agree, and that concept is foundational to why I’m writing this book.  But an equally important, if not more important question would be: Does why you believe what you believe make the most sense, logically and scripturally?  I can believe that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.  And I can believe this because teacher says so (or because it’s a line in my favorite Christmas movie).  But it’s based on nothing factual.  A number of books have been written defending the traditional view of eternal conscious torment, and these books are filled with the best why’s humans have come up with to maintain the traditional what’s.  But careful study reveals gaping holes in the logical process behind most of those arguments, and we’ll critique some of those as we work through this study.

Tradition appears to be wrong on this matter, and a clearer view of judgment needs to be made available for those who have struggled with tradition.  And while I may challenge what certain people believe and teach on this, I don’t hold any personal hard feelings toward them — just the opposite.  I respect all of the teachers who have spoken life to me through Biblical teaching.  And I hope this challenge will be taken in the right spirit.  Having disagreement or debate shouldn’t ruin us.  We’re all sinners saved by grace, in need of God’s mercy every moment.  God bless you as you read on.

Copyright © 2018 by Scott McAliley

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without giving credit back to the original source.  If more than 500 words are reproduced, in any format, written permission from Crickets Publishing LLC is required.

[1] lower case was on purpose, because this is not the One True Living God of Scripture

Solid factual support for the traditional view of eternal suffering in Hell is not found in Scripture. So where does the idea come from, and why then is it taught? It seems to have three lifelines. One is tradition itself. It’s an incredibly strong force, and challenging tradition is difficult, so it often goes undone. The second line of support is created by inappropriate interpretations of approximately 10 verses of Scripture (a few more if you consider repetition of similar themes or duplicate accounts within the gospels). In the case of some of these verses, it’s a stretched meaning that causes the error – reading more into the verse than is really there. With other passages, tradition overrides simple logic, and the traditional interpretation is the exact opposite of what a passage seems to be clearly stating. We’ll carefully examine all of those mainstay verses in Chapter 4, and find biblically coherent meanings of them which have nothing to do with eternal suffering.

This chapter’s focus is the third line of support for the traditional position. It’s the erroneous idea that every soul already has immortality. If this were true, it might be a logical conclusion that every soul must then exist somewhere for all eternity — those who’ve rejected salvation spending it tormented. But this is found nowhere in Scripture, yet it’s the common teaching concerning our soul nature, not only in Christianity, but virtually every faith in the world, which should give Christians pause when considering its validity. Instead, this fact that it’s an accepted doctrine across many religions has often been presented as evidence of its truth. So we Christians reject every other aspect of some other religion’s theology, but their belief that all souls are immortal and eternal is evidence that it’s true?
The desire for eternal life is something that God put within mankind. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God set eternity in our hearts (which is different from creating our souls to be immortal). But the feeling that we almost deserve an eternal life, and the idea that eternal existence is simply a given is not from God. We deserve death, and that’s where we’re headed without salvation through Jesus Christ.

Others have done the historical research and shown how this idea of innate immortality came from pagan culture. I don’t completely agree with every conclusion of conditionalist Edward Fudge regarding final judgment, but I’d recommend reading any of his books about this topic. I haven’t read most of his work, but I read Two Views of Hell wherein he debated traditionalist Robert Peterson and I found his section on the history of the doctrine of immortality enlightening and informative. But even if we can nail down which pagan philosophers and Church “fathers” made the idea popular, ultimately it’s satanic at its core – one of the Enemy’s many attempts to create confusion about who God is. Now, in no way am I implying that individuals in the Christian world who teach the traditional view are satanic. Well-meaning people have fallen prey to the doctrine and are only doing what they believe they’re supposed to be doing when they share it — Just wanted to clarify that.

Here’s an example of how the idea of universal immortality is usually presented in the Christian world:

“Precious one, what you and I need to know and understand is that once we are born we are eternal beings. We’re going to live for all eternity in one place or the other. We’re either going to live in the presence of God and enjoy eternal life, or we’re going to live in the presence of the devil and his angels and we’re going to suffer the torment of eternal punishment” -Kay Arthur (italics mine)

This quote is from several years ago when I was in the first year or two of this study. Arthur made this statement during one of her broadcasts of her Precepts for Life program. She went on to claim that if we don’t believe this, it’s because we have not read the Bible, have not read the whole council of God, and have not honored His precepts for life, nor esteemed His Word. I can’t speak for anyone except myself, but I love and highly esteem the Bible, yet completely disagree with her premise that all people are already eternal beings. And the word “torment” is never connected with the idea of an “eternal punishment” anywhere in Scripture.

I listen to or watch Kay Arthur on television from time to time, and for the most part she’s a fine Bible teacher; I’ve learned a lot from her, and I certainly don’t mean to single her out. They all do this. Another of my favorite preachers, Jack Graham, stated more recently: “That’s what Hell is: To live eternally, without God.” (italics for emphasis). David Jeremiah (and I really like him too, by the way) put it this way on one of his Turning Points radio broadcasts: “I got news for ya folks. Everyone is going to live forever. It’s just a matter of location.” Are you noticing a theme? All their statements fall right in line with the common thinking and teaching within Christianity on the matter, and it really is at the core of the problem of teaching the eternal suffering of the lost. Contrary to strong statements in Scripture, our favorite Bible teachers are telling us that everyone is going to live forever. If unbelievers did in fact exist forever as traditionalists claim, then they must be somewhere, and since we know from Scripture a day is coming when they’re cast into the Lake of Fire at final judgment, it would be reasonable to assume this would be their eternal home…IF all souls were already immortal and not destined for destruction. But all who reject salvation are in fact destined for destruction, and we’ll see in this chapter that Scripture never makes the statement that all souls are immortal from conception.

Arthur offered no Scriptural support for her claim of human immortality, as most who teach this won’t — at least not during that particular broadcast, she didn’t. The idea of the innate immortality of all souls is such a foregone conclusion, most teachers feel it’s unnecessary and throw that idea around freely. So it’s stated as fact, but rarely supported. However, a few traditionalists have attempted to give evidence of this, and we’ll analyze their arguments later in the chapter. In the quote above, Arthur mentioned “eternal punishment,” a biblical phrase which in itself has led some to believe in the immortality of the lost. It sort of sounds like a punishment that continues on for all eternity, doesn’t it? The Bible does in fact promise an eternal punishment for the unbeliever. So this phrase could be stretched by the imagination to mean a form of conscious punishment which lasts forever. The Greek word being translated as “eternal” is aionios and often denotes “permanence” when context is considered. If we take the Word of God at face value, the punishment for sin not covered by faith in Christ is death. This is stated throughout. So, the eternal punishment is in fact a permanent eternal death, rather than all the everlasting perpetual conscious torments that our imaginations could conjure up. It is very simply death which the lost are ultimately headed for, and those who rejected God will remain dead for all eternity…an eternal punishment.

Before we get too deep into this subject, since we’ll be discussing the fate of “the soul” throughout this book, we need to know what we mean by that term. It would be easy to get bogged down in all the various definitions. In fact, a few different Hebrew and Greek words are all translated as “soul” in English bibles. But we don’t need a lengthy examination for our purposes in this book. Most Christians agree that the soul is “who” we are. It is the essence of the person. In Genesis 2:7, we see that God breathed into the man and made him a living soul, so we don’t just have a soul. We are the soul. The soul is the life that animates our flesh, and the part of us that can outlive the flesh, and which will inhabit a new glorified body one day, for those who have put their faith in Christ. There are places in Scripture where a word translated as “soul” may carry with it the idea of the whole person, the flesh and also the immaterial part that animates it, but our discussion concerns what happens to that immaterial part after the flesh is in the grave. So, when I refer to the “soul” in this discussion, I’m generally not referring to the whole person but the immaterial person.

So, will all human souls, saved or unsaved, go on existing for all eternity? That’s the question. The first great evidence that the soul is not immortal from its conception, like so many Biblical truths, can be found early in the book of Genesis. Satan’s introduction to mankind was in the Garden of Eden, and while we may have physically misplaced its location on earth, the Garden, doctrinally speaking, is still a stronghold area where the Enemy continues to do his deceptive work. I’ve found so many of our common teachings about what happened there to be completely backwards. I hear the following phrase applied to many topics these days, so I’m hesitant to use it, but I can’t resist: “Almost everything you know about (fill in the blank…in this case, the Garden of Eden) is completely wrong.” I was hesitant to use it because it’s often sort of a sensational way to draw attention to an individual’s “new and better way” to think about or do whatever it is they’re wanting you to think about or do. And I’m sure I’ll be considered “that guy” by some readers. But I’m not being sensational. We seriously teach the garden scene wrong and therefore come to some backward conclusions which are antithetical to the gospel.

Tradition has redefined the concept of eternal death and turned it into eternal life, but separated from God, and traditionalists believe they have evidence for this right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden. The common teaching would go something like this:

God told Adam there was a tree in the midst of the garden which he was not to eat from, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam is told that in the day he eats of it, he would surely die. Eventually he and Eve did both eat from it, but they didn’t drop dead on that day, so death must mean something else. They were expelled from the garden in what appears to be that same day, apparently separating them from God in some sense. So death must not mean death as we commonly understand it: loss of life, existence, and being, but rather separation, leaving God’s presence, so in that way, they “died spiritually.”

That’s probably similar to how you’ve heard it explained before. On the surface, it sounds fairly logical. But when you dig a little deeper, it falls apart.

In the original language of Scripture, the phrase being translated as “You will surely die,” is simply two words, and it’s actually only one word, “death,” repeated twice in two different tenses. Literally, it says, “Dying, Die.” It’s called an “infinitive absolute,” and this Hebrew verbal technique indicates an emphatic statement concerning whatever verb it’s being applied to. So, what we have is an emphatic statement about death being a result of eating from the one forbidden tree. If I can put it this casually…Death wasn’t a thing yet, prior to sin. The warning from God wasn’t that if they sinned, they would drop dead physically, or immediately die in any other form – spiritually, etc. The emphatic warning was that on the day they chose to sin, death itself would change from only a potential, and into reality.

Remember that the original Hebrew only says “dying, die.” It’s not a stretch at all to take what has been interpreted as “you will surely die” and express it more accurately as “death will become sure,” especially since the “you” part of “you will surely die” which appears in English bibles isn’t even in the Hebrew original. On the very day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, death (their future death) became a sure reality. But wait, they were expelled from the garden, right? So couldn’t that separation still be part of what God meant by death? Absolutely Not. That theory is dead on arrival because God tells us specifically why they were expelled from the garden, and we’ll get there shortly. But let it be noted that God’s presence didn’t stay confined back in the Garden, and God continued to have encounters with mankind, and still does…all outside of Eden.

So with a grammatically equally acceptable, but alternative rendering, we’d have something like, “In the day you eat of it, death will become an absolute certainty for you.” Remember that prior to sin, Adam and Eve still had the theoretical capability of eating of the Tree of Life, which the Bible says will make them go on living forever (Genesis 3:22), i.e. eternal life, eternality, immortality — at least for the soul. And most likely the dusty body would have been transformed at that point as well, thereby even avoiding a death of the physical body. So, while God always knew from eternity past that they would not eat from the Tree of Life before first eating from the forbidden tree, sin had not yet occurred in the course of time, so there was still the potential for death not to take hold of Adam and Eve as long as they had access to the Tree of Life. We don’t need to try to support the idea that their own death in some way occurred on that day they first sinned, even though this idea has a couple of interesting defenses. It’s unnecessary. As God promised, death became a sure reality in the very day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but no part of them died yet, nor was it typed or figured in their expulsion, nor did any part of them need to die on that very day for God’s warning to come true.

In fact, in the day they ate of it, they brought the reality into effect that they would ultimately, surely, and unavoidably die, and it is the expulsion that made this sure because the Tree of Life was back in the garden. It’s a bit of a fine line, but the expulsion did not represent their death by separation. Their expulsion however would result in death because they lost access to the thing that could make them go on living forever. Scripture confirms this when, after Adam’s sin, God tells him that he is dust, and now because he has sinned, to dust he will return (one day…not that day). He was confirming to them that, just as He had warned, they had now, on that day, brought death into reality.

As noted, the general line of thinking from traditionalists is that Adam and Eve’s banishment from the garden and the Tree of Life figuratively represents eternal conscious separation of the soul from God, or what traditionalists commonly call “spiritual death.” We’ll find multiple flaws in this theory as we work through this topic of mortality and immortality in this chapter and chapter 6 when we return to the Garden. But the answer to the “in the day” question is much simpler. We only need to understand that Adam and Eve were created mortal and could only become immortal by eating of the Tree of Life, a fact for which we will see much evidence, perhaps the most obvious being that otherwise, eating of the Tree of Life would offer them nothing they didn’t already possess — ever think of that?

Please don’t miss it. Countless traditionalist pastors and teachers will tell you that Adam and Eve were perfect and immortal prior to sinning, but not one will be able to give a sensible answer for what value the Tree of Life would have to perfect immortal beings who we’re told were in perfect relationship and harmony with God (another idea we’ll challenge). Why was it even planted there? We’ll see later in this chapter that its presence in the garden helps lay down a fundamental aspect of the gospel, but this seems to have gone completely unnoticed. Getting back to the immortality issue, Genesis 3:22 tells us that eating of the Tree of Life will make one go on living forever. The only logical conclusion is that they didn’t naturally possess the ability to go on living forever. Therefore, they were mortals. Is this a stretch?

Prior to eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they had not yet disobeyed God and were therefore at a crossroads, mortal, having not yet eaten from the Tree of Life, but still with the potential to do so, and therefore having the theoretical potential to avoid death, body and soul. It seems to explain itself sufficiently if we won’t deny the obvious, that Adam and Eve were created mortal, with mortal souls. I’m defining a “mortal soul” as one that can die, and now that sin has occurred, will die, come to an end, and no longer exist, if God does not intervene.
Eat from them all, or freely eat from any?

So, the Tree of Life was in the garden, but it was never eaten from. Remember that God had told them they could eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But here again, the English translations may not be giving the most accurate rendering of the Hebrew when they read something like, “you may freely eat from every other tree…” In the Hebrew, it seems likely that this is more of an emphatic command to make sure to eat from all the other trees except the forbidden one, more than simply an allowance that they could if they so chose — not that there was any time limit imposed in which to do this, but it seems most likely that there was a command to make sure and get this done. We have another infinitive absolute here with the word “eat”: “eating, eat,” creating an emphatic statement about eating from “every” tree, and the common interpretation that there was simply a free allowance to eat from “any” of the trees may likely not fully represent the meaning. Also, the word “command” is used in the same statement in Genesis 2:16-17 which adds some weight to the argument.

Genesis 2:16-17: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die. (italics for emphasis — 1833 Webster Bible)

It doesn’t make sense that a person is “commanded” that they “may” do something. If one is commanded to do something, the assumption is that there is something to do — not that there is a free choice. “I command you to be free and do whatever you so choose…” That doesn’t really work does it? There was a command, and it was to eat from all the other trees except the tree of knowledge. We have the phrase “every tree,” not simply “any tree,” and we have the word “command,” and we have the Hebrew infinitive absolute creating an emphatic statement about eating. In every way, there’s a command to eat from every tree in the garden. Yet, it is commonly only translated as “may freely eat.” This just doesn’t add up. Also, if there were not a command to eat from all the trees, since we don’t see God specifically telling Adam or Eve about the Tree of Life anywhere in the garden account, it could be claimed that the Lord never told them to eat of the Tree of Life – only that they could if they so chose. This seems highly unlikely that the Lord would take such a dispassionate position on whether or not they ate of the Tree of Life and gained immortality. But it does make sense that He would veil the specific command to eat of the tree which would give eternal life inside of the greater command to eat from all of the trees, and we’ll see why in Chapter 6.

As we already noted, the Tree of Life was there for the taking yet remained untouched, and this is highly significant in the discussion of whether souls are created eternal or not. Even more significant is the fact that God drove them out of the garden after they sinned for the sole purpose of making sure they did not reach out their hand and eat of the Tree of Life. Genesis 3:22-24 states,

“And the Lord God said, Now the man has become like one of us, having knowledge of good and evil; and now if he puts out his hand and takes of the fruit of the Tree of Life, he will go on living for ever. So the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to be a worker on the earth from which he was taken. So he sent the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden he put winged ones and a flaming sword turning every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”
This seems very clear. Now, due to the banishment, we find there is no way mankind can “go on living forever,” at least not by his own effort, and it just so happens that this matter of whose effort is behind the gaining of or granting of eternal life is at the core of understanding the banishment (and the gospel, for that matter). Genesis 2:7 says that God breathed into man, who we know was only earthly dust, and he became a “living soul.” I don’t think any of us would deny that we are living souls. But our disagreement, if we have one, is over whether or not being a living soul is the same thing as having a soul that will live consciously for all eternity, without God granting it by some condition. It seems very reasonable to assume that in the same way that our flesh is living and dying simultaneously, so the soul without redemption is as well (not that they must die together, but that they are both on a course that leads to death). One is the outward picture of the other.

Not only does it seem that the Lord has provided us this perishing body as an object lesson indicating the fate of our soul without redemption, I’ll ask my question one more time: If Adam had immortality prior to eating from the Tree of Life, what then is the significance of the tree which the Bible says that eating from would make him go on living forever? There was no promise that eating of it would allow Adam to live in God’s garden paradise forever, or would make him wealthy and happy, or any other blessing — only that eating of it would make Him “go on living forever” generally, as the Bible clearly states. There is nothing about “going on living forever” which would bind God into allowing them to stay in the Garden. In fact, God does not say, “Since man has an eternal soul and will go on living forever, we certainly can’t allow him to live here in the garden now that he has sinned.” But unfortunately this is how the banishment is generally taught, but it’s an obvious distortion of Scripture.

Adam was mortal and already prone to death even before he sinned. As I phrased it above, he was at a crossroads, and whether he sinned or not would determine whether he would go on living forever or continue on a path of mortality. Please don’t miss the following. Notice that after Adam sinned, God took no new action against his flesh or soul to make his death certain. He only banned him from the one thing that Scripture says would have made his life continue eternally — another clear indication that he was mortal, even prior to sinning. And it all happened “in the day he ate from the forbidden tree.” As promised, death became a sure reality that day.

Let’s see if following the timeline of actions helps solidify the thesis. God creates man and causes him to become a living soul when he was still outside of the garden. So it stands to reason that this Tree of Life which was inside the garden offers something more than what the man already possessed after God first breathed into him. This is significant. When Adam was created, he had no access to this Tree of Life, even though God had already made him as a “living soul,” until God later put him in the garden. How much later he was put there is irrelevant. It could have been seconds or weeks, or even longer. It doesn’t matter in the discussion of whether or not souls are unconditionally eternal. It’s the order of events that’s critical to recognize and which will create sound doctrine.

Genesis 3:22 plainly tells us that eating of the Tree of Life is what will make them “go on living forever.” And Adam did not have access to that tree when he first became a living soul. So being a living soul, in and of itself, is not the same thing as his having the capability of going on living forever, immortality, if we accept the simplicity of God’s Word. Now, is it possible that this passage has nothing to do with the immaterial soul, and that God only meant that their flesh would somehow go on living forever if they ate from the Tree of Life after sinning, and is it that He simply didn’t want that to happen since they had sinned in their flesh? No, because no human flesh can be animated without the soul (James 2:26). It is nothing more than dust, earthy chemicals, and it never was.

The Genesis warnings of impending death concern the whole man, body and soul. And by the same token, eating of the Tree of Life, were it possible after they sinned, would have given their souls eternal life, and likely would have transformed their mortal bodies as well (this is just my own speculation regarding their bodies). But God, knowing the end from the beginning, knew He wasn’t going to let them gain immortality by their own efforts. This is the same problem we have in the world still – people trying to attain eternal life (or earn their place in Heaven) by their own efforts and works, which was never God’s plan. We have to remember that God is omniscient. He knew they would sin and that Adam and Eve by their own free will were going to find and take the forbidden fruit which held so much “promise” before finding and taking the other fruit that would give eternal life.

The Ancient Gospel

In Genesis 3:24, God drives them from the garden and blocks access to the Tree of Life, specifically, the Bible tells us, so humanity cannot eat of this fruit and live forever. But we can’t assume that eternal life is no longer available for them because of this. They and all of us are created with the potential to live forever (our soul, that is, in a new body that we will receive after this life), and it is God’s will that we all become eternal (2 Peter 3:9). The following is important, and I think it is the most important thing we can take from the garden account: Being driven from the Garden and the Tree of Life only represented that Adam and Eve had no ability on their own to gain immortality, just as we do not.

The banishment in and of itself was not, nor did it represent, their spiritual death. It couldn’t be, and we’ll see the obvious reason why shortly. Banning them from the Tree of Life was nothing more than a clear statement that mankind cannot attain eternal life by his own efforts. Don’t miss the key phrase: The only reason they are banned according to Scripture is “lest they reach out their hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever.” This is simply a clear expression that God alone saves, and that we cannot save ourselves by our own hand. It’s the same principal that we see in Judges 7 when God is whittling down Gideon’s army so that when God delivers them, the Israelites will not think they did it by their own power. In fact, even this idea of it happening by their own “hand” is expressed in Judges chapter 7:

Judges 7:2 “The LORD said to Gideon, ‘The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’” (ESV — italics for emphasis)
And this is a common theme throughout the Bible, and it’s what we teach all the time when it comes to salvation: It’s not by our power but by God’s, not by our good works, but by God’s good work. But we fail to see it in the garden, instead taking valuable symbolism, and turning it on its head to teach something entirely unscriptural — that we are immortal beings, which lays the groundwork for the false doctrine of eternal torment.

It’s only by accepting God’s work and sacrifice that we are saved from death — not physical death — God never relented from His statement that we are dust, would return to it, and that death would become a certainty. But the saved are saved from the very destruction of the soul in the Lake of Fire, which is the destiny we were headed toward from birth, as enemies of God (Romans 5:10). It’s the second death which we are saved from, not the first one.
So specifically, how can a person gain immortality? How can we avoid the death of the soul and “go on living forever”? It’s certainly not by merely having been created as Kay Arthur and countless others imply, and then our faith or lack thereof determining our eternal location. No, it requires more than merely coming into existence to become eternal. It required a sacrifice from God Himself. We now know that God’s work and sacrifice was fulfilled in Jesus’s death on the cross, and this is the means to eternal life. The Bible tells us this act atoned for the sinful condition of mankind, for any who will accept it and confess it, and that we are saved from eternal death when we, by faith, accept Christ’ work as necessary and sufficient to right our relationship with God.

But this does not mean that salvation was not available for those who lived prior to Christ. Revelation 13:8 calls Jesus “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world,” meaning that while His sacrifice had not yet occurred in the course of time, it was as sure as God Himself, and no one could ever have been saved at any time, before or after Christ, if this sacrifice was not certain. Jesus said Himself that none could come to the Father but by Him – by the actions He took on our behalf. Shortly before Jesus was to die on the cross, He prayed to the Father that if there was any other way, to let that cup pass from Him (Matthew 26:39). But it didn’t pass. It’s safe to conclude then that there was no other way.

So while no one could be saved at all were it not for what Jesus did on the cross, people have always been saved by faith in the one true God, even prior to specific knowledge of Christ, and their faith was always exhibited by their actions. We’re told that when Abraham put his faith in God, it was counted to him as righteousness, and he exhibited his faith by following God’s instructions to move to a new land, and ultimately by offering his own son Isaac as a sacrifice (which God did not require him to go through with). In the Old Testament story of Rahab, the non-Israelite harlot who hid the Israelite spies, we find that she expressed little knowledge of God, yet she acted on what she knew and she earned a mention in what is commonly called the “Hall of Faith” in chapter 11 of the New Testament book of Hebrews, and I believe we safely assume she is saved eternally.

So how were Adam and Eve saved from the death of their souls, if they were? What action did they exhibit that indicated faith in God’s work and sacrifice? The answer to this is so important because it’s the primary thing that negates the argument that the banishment indicated “eternal separation from God,” or so-called “spiritual death.” After they sinned and became aware of good and evil, they realized they were naked and needed a covering. They tried to provide their own, but apparently God found their attempts to cover themselves to be insufficient. The symbolism is overwhelming. We’re sort of touching on the same theme we saw before – that people innately try to do things for themselves, including covering their own sin and shame in an effort to show they are without need of God’s involvement. But this is not God’s way.

We’re told in the New Testament to “put on Christ.” He is our covering. We have no sufficient covering for our shame except in Christ. It was similar for Adam and Eve. Their own attempts at coverings were not sufficient. And so we’re told that the Lord Himself provided skins for them as coverings, indicating that He apparently slew an animal to do so. Hebrews 9:22 tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins, speaking of Jesus on the cross, and it was no different in their case as God shed the blood of an animal to provide for them. So it is commonly accepted (and I’m in total agreement with the idea) that this covering provided for them was a foreshadowing of Christ’ sacrificial death. And for Adam and Eve, this was, in a primitive form, the very offer of salvation, which they could have rejected, had they been so prideful. But they didn’t, and therefore I believe they were saved and reserved for the inheritance of eternal life.

So how does this fit with the theory that their expulsion from the garden foreshadowed eternal conscious separation from God or “spiritual death”? It doesn’t, nor should it. The Bible plainly indicated why they were expelled and we’ve covered it sufficiently. Following the time line of events will again give us a sound doctrine. Their covering preceded their expulsion, so either the covering did not represent salvation, or the expulsion did not represent eternal separation from God because Adam and Eve’s “salvation” could not precede their “damnation,” as would be indicated if we took the traditional stance on the meaning of the banishment. And isn’t it strange that most of the same people who tell us the banishment is symbolic of eternal separation from God also believe Adam and Eve are saved? Thank the Lord that He gave us an order of events because it really does clear up the matter. Because the symbolism for the covering representing salvation is so strong, and since Genesis 3:22-23 tells us precisely why they were expelled, I’m forced to view these aspects of the garden in a light not commonly expressed in Christian circles.
Now, a traditionalist might challenge what I’ve written and say to me, “If you believe the covering represented their gaining eternal life, then the banishment from the life-giving tree has no meaning. They already had eternal life.” I would have to agree with this if the covering had literally and immediately caused them to become immortal. But it didn’t. That’s why I said the covering “reserved” them for eternal life, just as when we put our faith in Christ today we are reserved for eternal life. We “have” eternal life in the sense that it is a sure guarantee, a promise from God, but we are not literally immortal yet. We, nor any believer while still in their flesh, ever “attained the prize” or “received the inheritance” (as Paul referred to it) prior to physical death. Read Ephesians 1:13-14:

“In Him (Christ) you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (ESV)

Even those of us who are “saved” have not yet actually eaten of the Tree of Life that causes one to go on living forever, but we will after we have endured to the end. The Tree of Life makes another appearance in Scripture and we’ll come back and examine this toward the end of the chapter.

I need to clarify something in case I’ve been unclear. I’m not claiming there’s no such thing as “spiritual death.” I’m only claiming that the expulsion from the garden did not represent it or cause it, and I’m claiming that an unbelieving soul is temporarily alive, yet spiritually dead in the sense that it is headed for death. Only after they sinned did God come to them and lovingly make a sacrifice for them and begin open 2-way communication; only after sinning did they recognize their weakness and God’s strength; only after they accepted God’s covering and His authority did they become spiritually alive. Before, they were spiritually dead. I know this statement creates some cognitive dissonance because it’s so contrary to what we’re inundated with, but we’ll see more and more evidence as we move forward. And I’m still waiting for anyone to show me in Scripture this awesome relationship Adam and Eve had with God or each other prior to sin. You won’t find it in Scripture, even though we teach it all the time. And again, our bodies, alive yet wasting away, seem the perfect object lesson for what’s happening at the immaterial soul level, and since they had not eaten from the Tree of Life, they were prone to decay as well. They had not obeyed the other command to eat from all the other trees, which would include the Tree of Life, so they were as much on a road to perishing as any of us.

And while there’s now no hope for our flesh, in that there is no avoiding the first death, God has graciously made a way of escape from the second death (Rev 20:6), the one that would take our souls. And Adam and Eve were not the exception. They were the foreshadowing example of the state in which we all come into existence.

John Gill, an influential 18th century theologian, in his extensive, verse-by-verse study notes begins his analysis of this portion of Scripture by claiming that Adam and Eve were at first unwilling to go out of the garden upon orders. I suppose this is possible, but it’s never stated in the Bible, and it’s hard to believe they would be arguing with God much at that point. We know they were ashamed and hiding from God after they sinned, and they had just been inundated with judgments but then graciously covered in skins the Lord Himself made. I just can’t picture them putting up much of a fight as Gill states. He then indicates that Adam and Eve were only forbidden from eating of the Tree of Life because they might flatter themselves by eating it, thinking that they could live forever. Gill goes on to theorize that “very probably” the devil planted that idea in their minds. I only mention all this because it epitomizes how theologians and Bible teachers read so much into the Garden account (and Scripture in general) which isn’t there, and isn’t even implied there.

God says in His Word that eating the fruit from the Tree of Life would give them eternal life, but noted theologian John Gill says that Satan planted the idea in their minds. And the Bible plainly states that eating the fruit of the Tree of Life would cause them to live forever, so rather than say, as Gill does, that eating the fruit could not cause eternal life, it’s far safer to say that they were simply not going to eat of the Tree of Life before eating the forbidden fruit, and God surely knew it, although the potential was certainly there. We can’t get away from God’s omniscience. He knew the plan of Salvation before time began, and knew that we would not resist sin. God also knew that humanity, with a nature which leaves us unable to fully obey, would succumb to what was forbidden before choosing obedience that would lead to eternal life. In their case, obedience would mean avoiding the one forbidden tree, and then obeying the other command to at some point eat from all the other trees in the garden — again, not only “freely eating” from the ones they chose.

Summarizing what we’ve covered so far, many traditionalists claim that verses referring to man as a living soul prove innate immortality. Here in Genesis we have the first clear proof to the contrary. Adam is first created to be a living soul, then later, God gives access to a Tree of Life that according to His own Word, has the potential to cause Adam to become immortal. But Adam never eats of the tree God said would make him live forever, and his access to it is then blocked by an angel with a flaming sword, and we aren’t even left to wonder why this was done. God’s Word tells us that it is so he cannot reach out his hand and take of its fruit and live forever. But prior to this, God took an action that in every way appears to indicate the preservation of Adam’s soul until the Tree of Life is one day available again. The angels weren’t told to cut the tree down after sin occurred – only to block access to it.

The Garden account so plainly teaches that even living souls are mortal and dying without God’s taking further action in salvation, and then us, the living/dying soul, accepting and trusting God’s action. As we’ve noted, God’s action was slaying an innocent animal and covering them with its skin, and this foreshadowed Christ’s then future sacrifice for sin. I was discussing this with a Hebrew scholar who was helping me with some word studies, and he advised that I not make too much of this provision of skins in this book, since it is never confirmed in Scripture that this was a foreshadowing of Christ’ death to cover our sins. But many of the actions and stories in the Bible that we commonly accept as precursors or typing of later events are not necessarily called so within Scripture.

Some might say that this provision of skins was only demonstrating that God cares about the little things too. I can personally testify that God does in fact care about the little things of life, and this is one of the aspects of God that is so amazing. But I hope that anyone who claims this as the meaning of the provision of skins isn’t also in the theological camp that claims the banishment from the garden is representative of eternal separation from God in Hell, because then we essentially would have God saying, “Here’s a nice new outfit for you because I care about the little things…HOPE YOU ENJOY IT ON YOUR WAY TO ETERNAL HELL!!”

Obviously I write that in jest and believe no such thing was intended. We have the hindsight of knowing from Scripture that all of the sacrifices of animals for sin in the Old Testament were a picture of what Christ would later come and do. And we also know from Scripture that it was the Father’s will to show His love for and forgiveness of mankind through the sacrifice of His Son. It falls right in line then to see this action of God providing skins to cover their shame immediately after sin, as a foreshadowing of Christ. The Bible doesn’t need to come right out and say it. It is apparent. It further seems that God could have easily instructed Adam to make his own skins, if there were no significance in God’s doing it for them and if the only reason was to provide a more durable outfit than fig leaves.
It seems that not only was this act evidence that God provides a more sufficient covering of shame and sin than we ever could, but that He does it Himself, and without our even asking (while we were yet sinners, according to Romans 5:8), and it’s up to us only to accept it or not. Adam and Eve accepted the provision, and I believe they are with the Lord and will inherit eternal life, just as all believers will. How appropriate that God gave such a clear and complete picture of the entire gospel story and the two potential fates of the soul, all in the first three chapters of the Bible.

Before we leave the garden topic, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 15:45-54:

“45 So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However that which is spiritual isn’t first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. 47 The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49 As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the heavenly. 50 Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s Kingdom; neither does the perishable inherit imperishable. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must become imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 But when this perishable body will have become imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then what is written will happen: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” (WEB)

This is very plain. Look at verse 45. It supports the claim I’ve made that being a living soul and having eternal life are not the same thing. It plainly confirms that Adam was in fact a living soul, but that the last Adam, Christ, gives life. Why did Christ need to give life if Adam was already a living soul that would live eternally? Because a living soul without Christ’ salvation is also a dying soul, headed for death, just as our living flesh is headed for death. I once heard one of my favorite pastors claim that the eternal suffering of the soul is the “logical extension” of the picture of death that we have in the body. With all due respect, I could not disagree more. The most logical extension of the finite dying body would most certainly be a finite dying soul. In what way could the death of the body, due to our sin, be the foreshadowing of eternal torment in Hell? It just couldn’t.

Regarding our bodies, dying is temporary, yet death is eternal. Why would we assume anything different for our soul?

Moving on with this passage, in verse 46, that living souls do not yet have eternal life is further supported when we see that the natural came first, and the spiritual later through Christ’ death. And then in verses 53 and 54 we see that immortality is something for the future as we’ve noted, not something we already have, and not for all souls, but for believers only.

We’ve seen that God, early on, wanted people to know that their eternal fate would be death if they didn’t accept His free gift and grace. Why would He veil such a thing as eternal conscious suffering? Would you not tell your children the consequences for their potential actions or inactions? Of course you would. Knowing our potential punishments is the deterrent to sin.

I’ve heard it theorized that the truth of eternal torment in Hell is something that God intentionally built up to gradually, progressively, and that He dispensed a little more information here and there, until now, with the full Word of God in our hands, we can finally understand just how horrible Hell is. Well, if this could even be supported, I guess that would be fine for those of us who have lived since the New Testament was completed, but what about all those before then? Why didn’t God fully warn them? Why don’t we see God warn Adam and Eve about the potential to live in conscious torment for all eternity if they disobeyed or even failed to accept the covering He offered? That would have been a great place to implant that warning into humanity so it would get passed down.

The reason we don’t see that warning is obvious. Eternal conscious torment is not the fate of unbelieving people. God laid out the potentials for the soul over and over: Life or Death. And He started early, back in Genesis. God also shows us clearly in nature, the life and death cycle. It’s simply understood that things die. That’s why immortality is such an amazing gift – It goes against everything we naturally observe. It’s normal to assume that what is living today will someday cease to live. That’s the case with everything we could observe scientifically. It’s the law of Entropy. And it’s the law laid down in Scripture as well, but with one loophole: faith in the one true living God saves us from death, and we who believe will, instead, go on living forever.

Modern Teaching

I said we would address a couple of fellow-Christians who have attempted to defend the idea that all souls, saved or lost, are immortal and eternal and will exist consciously into timeless eternity. I considered trying to do this without naming names. It’s certainly not my intention to potentially damage any well-known Christian’s ministry by causing people to doubt their doctrinal judgment or interpretation skills. But because I needed to quote them, I couldn’t do this without giving their names. I believe both of the people I’m about to challenge are Godly Bible teachers and I’ve learned a lot from them both. None of us are beyond error, and I certainly don’t have everything figured out yet. So I hope my challenging the method of someone’s doctrinal judgment isn’t taken in the wrong spirit by the reader. But the intention of this book is to demonstrate where we’ve erred on this doctrine, and it would be less effective without pointing to some of the specific instances and examples of exactly where we’ve gone wrong. I hope this doesn’t come across as in-fighting or back biting. It’s just part of the process if we’re going to challenge a traditional take on a particular doctrine which appears to be in error.

If a line-by-line analysis of someone’s statements on soul immortality isn’t your cup of tea, I don’t blame you. It was tedious work to do on my end, and it will make for somewhat tedious reading, to some. The following two chapters are where we’ll take a close look at what Scripture actually says about final judgment, and also analyze the top ten most used verses to defend eternal conscious suffering, and I don’t fault anyone who wants to jump forward to that. But if you want to see just how poor the arguments for lost souls being immortal are, I’d recommend pushing on through this chapter. To me it’s enlightening to find that some of the most respected Christian teachers have no better defense for the doctrine than they do.

Several years ago, I was listening to a former president of Moody Bible Institute on the radio and wasn’t surprised to hear that he, like the majority of Christians, holds the view that all souls are eternal, even without salvation. But like everyone else I’ve heard attempt to give some reason for this belief, he failed to make the case. But before we go through what he said, I must say that otherwise I hold him in high regard. His name is Michael Easley. When Joe Stowell stepped down from that position in 2005, I was disappointed. I had enjoyed his radio teaching for years. It was my Sunday morning routine to get up and listen to him on Moody Presents while making breakfast before church. But when Easley began being broadcast in Stowell’s place, I was relieved to hear that he was another down-to-earth Godly man like his predecessor, and I was fed many times through his teaching before he too stepped down a few years later.

The broadcast I want to address was one in a short series on doctrine, and the primary intention was to make believing listeners see the importance of knowing why they believe what they believe. I couldn’t agree more about the importance of that. That’s one of the reasons I’m challenging people in this book to answer some hard questions about why they believe as they do regarding the immortality of souls and the nature and duration of Hell. He and the announcer were conversing about the various areas in which the thinking of the world has crept into the church, and how that has done great damage. Again, I couldn’t agree more. But then Easley made reference to “annihilation” and my ears perked up because I had been on this track and study for a while at that point. He had just given a list of various different lies that are creeping into the Church and then says that there are even some theologians now who are saying there is no Hell, and we’re just annihilated, and go into nothingness.

Let me first confirm with him that there are in fact those who believe that, and that’s not what I’m putting forward. The Bible plainly teaches that the unsaved soul, after physical death, and after suffering consciously, for at least some portion of time in Hell (Sheol in Hebrew/Hades in Greek) while their physical body lies in the grave, will then be resurrected after the 1000-year reign of Christ, judged, and cast into the Lake of Fire, or what Jesus called Gehenna (also translated “Hell” in English in the New Testament). There is a conscious afterlife for unbelievers in Hell (Hades) and at judgment. Although I believe Scripture teaches the ultimate annihilation of the lost soul, in no way do I think those without Christ just disappear without conscious judgment. There’s no argument with Easley’s initial statement that some theologians do not “believe in Hell” and that this is in error. But there needs to be a distinction between those like myself who believe in ultimate annihilation of the unsaved only after suffering, resurrection, and judgment, and those who believe that all souls or at least unsaved souls immediately go out of existence upon physical death.

Let’s move on to Easley’s argument. This is where he begins a line of logic that would work if the second building block in his argument had any Biblical foundation. He reasons that…

“if we are made in the image of God, if we are image bearers, there is what Augustine called a ‘spark of divinity,’ a fair illustration. God is not going to eradicate that part of his divinity. It is therefore eternal. So if all human beings are eternal, the difference is location, with Him or apart from Him.”

That ends his statement about the eternality of souls, but he went on to say that what we believe “better be grounded in the truth.” I’m not sure his reasoning holds up to that standard on this particular issue. He begins with the truth that we are all image bearers of God, but then relies on the uninspired writing of Augustine which claims we all have a spark of divinity in us. It really doesn’t matter if Augustine says we have a spark of divinity in us. I’ve searched for any Biblical reference that would indicate that we, prior to salvation, share or possess divinity in any form or amount, and I can’t find it.

So what does God mean when He says He created us in His image? This statement that we’re created in the image of God is used, it seems, more than any other to defend the idea that we are already immortal beings, so it’s important to look to the Bible, not our imagination, for an answer to this. I won’t pretend to know everything this might mean, but there are a number of ways we are like Him. In the Bible, we’re told that God loves. We love. God gets angry. We get angry. God is jealous for that which is His. We get jealous for what we believe is ours. God is Merciful. We can be merciful. God feels pity. We feel pity. God creates. We create. And, ever since mankind’s first sin, we now know good from evil and are like Him in that respect according to His Word. I could go on and on. As sinful as we are, and far short of divine, we are like God in many ways, in our actions and emotions.

Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to wonder or speculate about what He means by “in God’s image.” He hasn’t required Augustine or anyone else to attempt to define this outside of what the Bible maintains. Perhaps I shouldn’t have even pointed out my own ideas on ways we’re like God. In Genesis 1:26, which is the first verse that says we are made in God’s image, we’re told we are made that way so we can rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth. The Oxford Cambridge New English Bible translates the Hebrew as “Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of…” (italics mine). So “to rule” means “for the purpose of ruling.” According to Genesis Chapter 1, we are in His image in the sense that we have been put in control of the earth and been commanded to rule over it.

That makes sense. God rules over the entire universe and we are in His image, or like Him, on a much smaller scale, in that He gave us the task of ruling over the earth. But there is no call, Biblically, for us to connect anything having to do with immortality of souls with this fact that we are made in God’s likeness and image. In fact, there’s no call for us to attach any meaning with it other than what the Bible plainly gives us. So does this Biblical understanding of the concept make sense with later mentions of us being in His image? I think we could say it does. We find the statement that we are in God’s image again in Genesis 9:4-7. God is blessing Noah and his sons and giving them instructions and warnings.

“4 But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. 5 I will surely require accounting for your life’s blood. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. 6 Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. 7 Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.” (WEB)

Here God confirms what He means by “in His image.” Just as there is nothing over God, he makes it clear here that nothing on earth should be over us. No man is permitted to murderously take the life of another man, and if one of the animals, of which we are to rule over, takes a man’s life, then God requires its blood. The point is then driven home again when God says, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood shall be shed by man; for God made man in his own image.” (italics for emphasis) There’s nothing about eternal souls here. The concept is about ruling over the earth and the sanctity of life.

Continuing with Easley’s statements, after concurring with Augustine that being in the image of God equals possessing some of His divinity, he then says, “God is not going to eradicate that part of His divinity.” This statement might be true if we, before salvation, were divine in some way, but this portion of his statement relies on the Biblically unproven assumption that being in his image equals possession of divinity in some measure. Claiming innate divinity might be offensive to a Holy God, Who Isaiah couldn’t even bear to look up at, and Who throughout the entire Bible, repeatedly reminds us just how “not God” we are. There is nothing good in us before salvation. Even our righteousness is filthy rags according to Scripture. And does God really have reservations about eradicating things He creates? He had no problem eradicating almost everything on earth in the flood of Noah’s day. And He tells us that the whole earth, everything in it, and the heavens will be subject to fire one day, even though when He created it, He called it “very good.”

I think God makes it plain in Scripture that He eradicates what offends Him and we, without Christ, the objects of wrath, before acknowledging our need for Him, are on the top of that list — and this includes our souls. We are the soul. Further, it makes no logical sense for someone to claim that God will not eradicate a soul because it has a “spark of divinity” within it, but to then assume He would, however, eternally torment that same soul containing that same “spark of divinity.” He would be tormenting Himself, by Easley’s logic. If one is going to claim that He would not destroy a soul because it has a little piece of Him in it, then how can they any more justify God subjecting those billions of little pieces of Himself to eternal torment? Neither idea really works.

The following is by no means a perfect illustration, but the only one I could come up with that relates to this subject would be a mirror. If I hold a mirror and look into it, it bears my image as long as I hold it up, but if I choose to shatter it and remove my presence from it, it no longer bears my image; yet I have lost none of my own attributes because of destroying it, and likewise I think Easley is wrong in stating that “God is not going to eradicate that part of His Divinity.” It is in fact only an image, not the real thing, not God, and not divine. God loses no part of Himself when He destroys what offends because He was whole and complete before creation. And to take the mirror illustration even further, if I break it, I won’t leave it in my house in a shattered state forever. Soon, I’ll dispose of it, just as God does the souls He would destroy. It seems clear that Jesus used Gehenna, Jerusalem’s burning trash dump, as the illustration for where lost souls would be cast, not because they would be in fires that never end as so many misinterpret it, but because they would in fact be eradicated and consumed just as everything was which was thrown into Gehenna.

Moving on, Easley puts another assertion upon an already faulty one when he says, “It is therefore eternal,” “it” being that Augustinian part of us which is supposedly divine. He then goes on to say, “So if all human beings are eternal, the difference is location, with Him or apart from Him.” There is no proof Biblically that all human beings are eternal, and it was not proved here in this argument either. And the Bible certainly doesn’t come right out and say that we, before salvation, have anything divine in our nature. Why would God not make such a thing obvious? Doesn’t it seem strange that, if it were true, in the entire Bible there is not one clear statement that all souls are immortal or divine in some way. Would it not be stated clearly at least once if that were the truth?

Easley’s conclusion can only be arrived at through the projection of non-Biblical concepts. Easley began building his argument with a truth misused, then used a human, non-Biblical assumption for his next building block, and then everything else on top of that crumbles. Not surprisingly, he ends up at the same wrong conclusion about the immortality of souls and duration of Hell that all Christians do who rely on the early church fathers instead of the plain text of the Bible as it relates to this issue. In fact, our core problem is the very mistake of trusting uninspired man to give us our doctrine of judgment instead of the plain teaching of God’s Word. And maybe that’s why Christianity has been turned over to the captivity of a false doctrine for so long.

What we have here is a faulty line of logic from an otherwise astute Godly man, all in the interest of trying to find some reason to “know why he believes what he believes” about Hell, while being unwilling to accept the fact that orthodox tradition isn’t always the pinnacle of truth. Faulty logic or reliance on extra-Biblical writings and teachings is really the only way one can come to the conclusions which mainstream Christianity has on these matters. But if the question of “Why we believe what we believe” is important, then even more so is the question “Do my reasons for what I believe hold up to Scripture?” If not, then we need to believe something that will. It’s that simple.

I’ve already said it, but I think it bears repeating here. I don’t mean any of this criticism personally. I respect Michael Easley as a sound Christian teacher, generally. I continued listening to his teaching until he left Moody. Both of these faulty doctrines, the “eternal suffering in Hell” doctrine and the inseparable “innate immortality of all souls” doctrine are deeply entrenched in Christianity, and common to most Christians’ beliefs, and I don’t completely fault anyone who hasn’t researched them for following the mainstream. In fact, I respect them for trying to find some way to justify it since it is so vital that we know why we believe what we believe, but we should go to the Bible for our answers and not Augustine or anyone else. The Bible does not tell us that we have some divine piece somewhere in us that keeps us eternal. It says the opposite over and over. It is a false notion that cannot be proved.

Modern-day misinterpretations about our immortality are plentiful, and John MacArthur is another teacher who I’ve learned a lot from, but who also has been very vocal about innate immortality, but with little evidence. As I said of Michael Easley, I have a lot of respect for his teaching and I generally believe his ministry to be of God, although with MacArthur, the subject of immortality isn’t the only strong disagreement I have with him — but that’s a different book. Regarding innate immortality, he too tries in vain to hold on to traditional views that won’t hold up scripturally. During a radio sermon series on the subject of the afterlife several years ago, before getting into the topic of heaven, MacArthur first wanted to establish that all souls are immortal — that essential doctrine for trying to prove eternal suffering in Hell. No less than twelve times in the first ten minutes of the broadcast he stated in one form or another that every soul was eternal. So did he prove it? Let’s first look at what he claimed and then we’ll look at the scriptures and even extra-Biblical sources he used to attempt to support his claims.

After giving a definition of the soul or spirit, similar to what most, I believe, understand the soul to be, he next states that “it is that living spirit that lives forever.” He gives no scripture to support that, and then, like Easley and so many others, says that having or being a living spirit is “part of what it means to be created in the image of God, who is that eternal Spirit.” God is indeed the Eternal Spirit, but I think we’ve covered the “image of God” topic sufficiently already. There’s nothing Biblical to support the assertion that being created in His image means we’re immortal.
Consider this: If being created in His image enabled us to claim the immortality which belongs only to God according to 1 Timothy 6:16, then we could just as well claim any other attribute of God that doesn’t actually belong to us. It would make no less sense logically to claim that all humans, saved or unsaved, are omniscient, and omnipresent, or at least have a “spark” of omniscience or omnipresence. After all, God is omniscient and omnipresent, and we were made in His image according to Scripture, so therefore we must be as well. I hope you see the absurdity of this and therefore the absurdity of claiming divinity or immortality when Scripture does not attribute those to us, and I don’t think divinity is ever attributed to us anyway, even after salvation, only the promise of future immortality, eternal life. We will not become God. And I also hope you see that we could no more be partially omniscient or omnipresent than we could be partially divine. Next MacArthur says, “Every living person is an eternal soul. Every living person is an eternal spirit.” Again, no scripture is given to support these statements. He then says,

“Everyone who has ever lived will always live. No one goes out of existence. Everyone whom God has created is eternal. We are all designed to live forever and will indeed.”

Here again we have the common teaching that we will all, saved or lost, live forever, which completely opposes Scripture. And again, we have more repetition of the traditional view without any solid Biblical basis or defense for his statements. And far from being “designed to live forever,” we’re told in Romans 9:22 that we are vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction. If we trust Scripture and not man, we will find that we, the whole person – body and soul, were “designed” to perish, as all of this initial creation was. This design is why the gift of eternal life is so amazing.
For his first attempt at evidence, MacArthur uses Zechariah 12:1 which says toward the end of the verse that “it is God who forms the spirit of man within him” and then, with no indication to the listening audience that he has stopped quoting scripture, MacArthur continues, “and that spirit of man is an everlasting spirit.” To the radio listener who doesn’t go behind MacArthur and check the Bible, it portrays the Bible as saying that this “spirit of man” is everlasting. But it doesn’t say this in the Bible. He added that statement without informing the listener that he had stopped quoting the Zechariah passage.

MacArthur continues to make claims with no evidence when he says this everlasting spirit of man is “everlastingly self-conscious, everlastingly able to reason and think and feel and understand, everlastingly alive.” Continuing on, MacArthur next quotes Job 32:8: “But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” This is repeating what we learned in Genesis. God breathed into man and made him a living spirit or soul. We’ve covered this extensively. It offers no evidence of souls being eternal. And then we see in this same verse, Elihu, Job’s younger friend who is speaking, go on to say that because God did this, we have the ability to understand, not that because of this we will go on living forever. It seems that this latter portion of the verse exhibits the purpose of the former. If the point here in Job were that all souls are immortal, then it seems he would have stated that. The verse is about understanding, not immortality. We should also note that this is Elihu speaking, not God. And God chastises Job and all his friends for their assumptions in the book of Job. This doesn’t mean that nothing they stated was true. Much of it was. But we need to be careful when drawing doctrine from someone God chastises.

John MacArthur goes on to talk about humans having self-consciousness after death. I have no argument there. I too believe that consciousness extends beyond physical death, but not beyond the end of time for those without salvation. MacArthur continues:

“None of us will ever go into an unconscious state. None of us will ever go into some kind of condition of soul sleep in which we feel nothing, think nothing, reason nothing, have no idea what is reality around us.”

I disagree with his overall statement. After a lost human soul is cast into the Lake of Fire, they’re finished, destroyed, and no longer consciously existing. But I partially agree with him here regarding soul sleep. Many Conditionalists who hold a similar view to mine regarding final judgment believe that when we die, whether we’re saved or lost, we enter into a sleep state that we only awake from at resurrection. I’m going to address this more in depth in Chapter 7 where we’ll take a look at the intermediate state between physical death and resurrection, but I’ve personally found biblical evidence for both consciousness and sleep, for the saved and for the lost, during that intermediate state, and what I’ll propose is that perhaps both happen, for varying lengths of time and various reasons. It’s a gray area, and I can’t offer many 100% conclusions but I do disagree with many other Conditionalists, such as those of the Seventh Day Adventists, who believe all souls are in a sleep state for the entire time between physical death and resurrection. I’ve looked into all the verses that cause people to believe this way, and I can see how this mistake can be made, but there are excellent explanations for those verses, and we’ll get into it later in Chapter 7 where we discuss Hades, where souls await judgment.

MacArthur continues, stating that we are souls and that we are self-conscious, both of which are very Biblically verifiable, but again, as he does so often, he concludes with the unbiblical statement that, “We are eternal spirits. Every one of us will live consciously forever.” This would be true if he were referring only to Christians, but clearly he is not. He’s trying, but failing, to establish that all souls are eternal regardless of salvation. Next MacArthur refers to the book of Job where Job asks, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” MacArthur says the answer is a “Resounding Yes.” Again, I agree with him and with the clear teaching in the Bible that all souls will exist consciously after physical death. The Bible is conclusive on this point, but this verse in Job does not confirm anything having to do with eternity for those who do not know God, only that the soul will not immediately go out of existence upon physical death, and certainly Job and other believers will go on living forever. But MacArthur somehow finds support for his theory in this verse from Job, and again states, “Everyone will live forever.”

Next, he references a former president of Yale University who wrote that there had to be an afterlife because there is the “tug of the afterlife in the human spirit.” The president likened it to a blind boy flying a kite who, though he couldn’t see the kite, could feel it pulling. No offense to the Yale president, but we need to believe in the afterlife because God’s Word tells us about it, not because of a feeling that we may or may not feel. Again, I regret being so repetitive, but the reality of an afterlife for the saved and unsaved still does not prove that unsaved souls are not ultimately annihilated as the Bible appears to say they will be.

Next, MacArthur references some of the practices of pagan cultures which reveal they too believe in an afterlife. I don’t really see the relevance there. I’ve studied some of the extra-Biblical interpretations of the afterlife, and I can find nothing that even deserves comment, at least nothing that supports Scripture; however, I do see from these studies where many of our myths about the sufferings in Hell and the immortality of souls derive from, but pagan belief in universal immortality should cause us to question the doctrine, not give us a reason to believe it.

After detouring from Scriptural proof, MacArthur then comes back to the Bible and says that we have “the testimony of the Word of the Living God.” I couldn’t agree more that this is what is needed, but let’s see where he goes with this. He reads from John Chapter 5, verse 28 and part of 29:
“Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming in which all those in the tombs will hear His voice, and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

This is the Word of God and there’s no problem with it. Still, there is no mention of eternal existence of the souls of the unsaved, however. The Greek word being translated as “judgment” which is also sometimes translated ‘damnation’ is krisis, and The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (referred to as Strong’s from here on) has among its possible meanings: a tribunal, divine justice, and accusation. I think it’s fair to assume that this judgment referred to is the Day of Judgment, or the actual act of God accusing the unsaved of their sin and failure to receive the only acceptable pardon. The unsaved’s sentence could possibly be implied here, but the accusation is the only thing we can know is indicated here, by definition of the words “damnation” or “judgment.” This is the judgment that precedes being cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the sentence. And even if the ultimate sentence (not only the momentary act of judgment) was implied by the verse, we’re only told that the lost will be resurrected to receive it, not that the Lake of Fire will torment human souls eternally. But MacArthur again concludes from this verse that every soul is eternal, when this is not in the text at all. Only the assumption, first of all, that this verse is telling of the sentence and not only the accusation, and then by the unfounded, preconceived notion that the Lake of Fire does not ultimately destroy lost humans as Jesus said it would, can he come to the conclusion that every soul is eternal. This is a lot of assuming. MacArthur makes reference to the truth that believers will be fitted with a new body to go into eternity, but then he says that the unbeliever will “receive a body fitted for the eternal Lake of Fire, which is the final form of Hell into which they will be cast at that time in the future.” MacArthur again seems to be reading information into a passage when it cannot be supported with other scripture.

Jesus asked, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” The man is the soul according to Genesis Chapter 3, so the answer to Jesus’s question is: It profits him nothing at all, and it can’t. The loss of your soul means that you are no more because you are your soul, and this lines up with concepts established in the Psalms which we’ll look at in Chapter 3 where we’ll see language used for the lost that indicates “non-entity” and “non-existence.” The soul is who you are. One can’t lose it and still exist. The Bible tells us the unsaved are going to be cast into a lake of fire. We have every Biblical reason to believe this fire, figurative or literal (more likely literal), is the end of unrepentant human souls. So it is entirely out of line—and arguing in a circle—for MacArthur to go on from this last quote of his to this conclusion:

“We will live forever. We will all live forever. We will all live forever, consciously, self-consciously, aware of our surroundings and aware of our response to those surroundings. And we will all live forever with a body suited for our surroundings; in the case of those raised to life, there will be a body like the resurrection body of Jesus Christ that can absorb all the glories of eternity, and manifest our eternal spirit through that glorified body, in praise and in service and in communion with God and all the redeemed. For those who are given a body fit for Hell, it will be a body suited to feel the agonies of that eternal judgment.”

I’m in total agreement regarding the saved souls, however, there’s nothing in Scripture that indicates the unsaved will “feel the agonies” for all eternity, nor that the unsaved are given a new body “fit for Hell.” These are assumptions based on faulty doctrine about what follows judgment. There are indications that the unsaved will feel agonies in the intermediate state as they await judgment, for at least some period of time, and there is evidence they will be in agony again on judgment day, but as Scripture will show us more and more as we continue to explore deeper, no human soul will survive the Lake of Fire. None can endure it. As noted, Jesus figuratively used Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, Jerusalem’s burning landfill, as the term associated with final judgment, which gets translated to the word “Hell.” If He had wanted to indicate unending and eternal agony, misery, or torment, then He could have figuratively referenced any form of these in a way his audience of the day would understand it. But he chose Gehenna, a burning trash pile, a place they were familiar with, where nothing thrown in continues to exist in any form because it is consumed. And how many times does God tell us He will consume His enemies? Many. It all adds up when we read and trust Scripture. We have no reason to believe that this reference to the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) indicates eternal existence. Just the opposite is true.

There’s a very good reason that even two Godly men like Michael Easley and John MacArthur, both mightily used by the Lord to impact many souls for Christ I’m sure, have no better defense than this for the concept that all souls are eternal. The concept is not Biblical, plain and simple, and they are grasping for something that isn’t there.
To sum up, there is no Biblical connection between being made in His image, and being divine or eternal. The Bible says we are desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), far below God (Isaiah 6:1 and 55:9), spiritually dead (John 11:25, Romans 4:17, Ephesians 2:1), separated from God (Ephesians 2:12 and 4:18), insufficient (2 Corinthians 3:5-6), that He alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16), and that eternal life is the gift of God (Romans 6:23) and that even those of us who believe have not yet become immortal(1 Corinthians 15:54). The notion that we are partially divine and therefore wholly eternal without salvation is completely foreign to scripture, but all too common, unfortunately, in Christian teaching.

As just noted, Paul in Romans 9:22 and 23 indicates that God has endured with longsuffering “the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” This Greek word for destruction, apoleia, is strikingly similar to the English word “abolish” which means “abolish, to make no more.” Strong’s has among its definitions waste, destruction, perish, die, ruin, and loss, none of which in any way give even a hint that these “vessels of wrath,” these unsaved souls, will survive in any form after judgment. It also doesn’t say they are given a new body, fitted for continued existence in the Lake of Fire, only that they are “fitted for destruction.” The Bible is clear that souls are innately mortal, not immortal, and therefore are fitted for destruction at the point of their creation. This is not something that happens right before they are cast into the Lake of Fire. Unsaved people have not eaten and will never eat from the Tree of Life that would make them go on living forever, anywhere. In fact, just make a careful reading of Romans 9:22 and I think you’ll see that this “fitted to destruction” was past tense. The 1965 Bible in Basic English translates it this way:
“What if God, desiring to let his wrath and his power be seen, for a long time put up with the vessels of wrath which were ready for destruction” (italics for emphasis)

And the Literal Translation reads:

“But if God, desiring to demonstrate His wrath, and to make His power known, endured in much long-suffering vessels of wrath having been fitted out for destruction,. . .” (italics for emphasis)

It seems clear that whatever it is about the unsaved that makes them fit for destruction was already in place from the point of their creation. So what is it? Is it the “asbestos-like” body that some defenders of the traditional Hell doctrine claim the unsaved souls are fitted with? Not likely. No, it’s the mortal soul that our Merciful God created just that way for the express purpose of being able to rid Himself of human offense, but without there being eternal agony for those souls. “Fitted for destruction” essentially means “created mortal, and headed for a date with destruction by fire.”

Let’s look at another passage of Scripture that tells us all souls are not eternal. In Matthew Chapter 10, Jesus is forewarning his disciples that they are going to be hated for His Name’s sake, and that they will be persecuted. Then He tells them in Matthew 10:28:

“Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” (WEB)

Here’s another passage of Scripture that is undeniable. Do we really have innate immortality? 1 Timothy 6:15 and 16 say,
“15b…who is the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and eternal power. Amen.” (WEB — italics for emphasis)

This is quite a list of divine attributes that Paul gives us here, and one of them is immortality. And it specifically says that He alone possesses it. That makes sense, since we are not divine, according to Scripture. So how do we get this immortality? The same way it would have happened in the Garden of Eden, were Adam and Eve capable of obedience – eating from the Tree of Life. We’ve come full circle now. Matthew 10:28 concerns persevering through trial to reach the goal, and this chapter of Timothy follows suit. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:11-12,
“But you, man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you confessed the good confession in the sight of many witnesses.” (WEB — italics for emphasis)

So we have Jesus advising them to fear God because He can destroy (apollumi/abolish) the soul, thereby not giving it eternal life, and then Paul tells Timothy (and us) to pursue righteousness so as to “take hold of eternal life.” We began this chapter in the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Life representing the availability of immortality but with Adam and Eve being driven away from it, representing man’s inability to attain it by our own efforts. And now we’ve been promised this eternal life if we endure. So where in Scripture do we see our receiving this eternal life? Appropriately, it’s in the very last book of the Bible, in Chapter 2 of Revelation and then finally in Chapter 22, the very last chapter in the very last book of the Bible. That Tree of Life makes another appearance. God is the first and the last, the beginning and the end and He alone has immortality. It’s more than coincidental and it’s quite significant that this Tree of Life is found in the first and last books of the Bible. We begin with it, the entire Bible is the story of God’s love and how He wants to give eternal life to us, not let us gain it own our own, and then we end with Jesus’s own words, saying in Revelation 2:7:

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the Paradise of my God.” (italics for emphasis — WEB)

In Revelation 22:2, we’re told that the Tree of Life is for the healing of the nations. “The nations” means it is offered to those from all people groups of earth who persevered in the faith, and the condition that all nations need to be healed from is our perishing souls.

The only other mentions of the Tree of Life outside of Genesis and Revelation are in Proverbs, most notably 11:30 which says, “The fruit of the righteous is a Tree of Life.” The Hebrew word translated “fruit” is periy and Strong’s defines it as “reward.” And that fits exactly with the other teachings about it. Yes, immortality belongs only to God, and He rewards it to those who overcome. Paul called it a prize. So how do we overcome? Jesus tells us we will have trouble in this world, but to take heart because He has already overcome the world. We only need to put our faith in what He has done, put on Christ, and when our faith is there, He will empower us to overcome, and one day receive eternal life, which we even now have the surety of because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

There’s one more thing that we should not miss about this life-giving tree. Remember that it is eating of its fruit that leads to eternal life. It’s no coincidence that the Lord himself hung on a tree when He gave his life for us, or when in Matthew 2:26 He told us to eat of his body. Not only is He the bread of Life come down from heaven (John 6:35), but He is, and offers, the fruit we must “eat of” to gain immortality.

Let’s look quickly at a few more verses that seem to tell us that all souls are not immortal.

2 Timothy 1:10: “and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (ESV)

According to this verse, Jesus Christ brings about immortality. It is not an innate attribute for humans.

John 6:50-51 “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (ESV)

This seems very clear. If we accept Christ’ sacrifice, we will not die. If we do not, the implication is that we would die.

James 5:19-20 “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” (ESV)

Here we have another confirmation that the soul of the sinner is headed for death. He could have easily stated, as so many modern Bible teachers do, that he would save his soul from “an eternity separated from God.” But he didn’t.
Jude 6: “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—” (ESV)

It’s interesting that something was in an “eternal” state until a later date, and even more interesting that the later date is the date of the final judgment. This proves, as so many other verses do, that this word “eternal” is not always referring to timeless eternity.

Psalm 33:18-19 “Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.” (ESV)

An Old Testament reminder of the same thing: Souls are headed toward death if they are not delivered.

John 11:25-26 ” Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (KJV)

Again the implication here is that if we do not believe this, we will die.

Jude 20-22 “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” (ESV — italics for emphasis)

Jude is addressing believers, people who already “have” eternal life we would say, yet he tells them to keep themselves in the love of God, “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” Clearly he does not see himself or other believers as technically already literally having eternal life, only the promise of it for those who wait and persevere. This idea of persevering to eternal life is mentioned elsewhere in Scripture such as in Matthew 24:13 where Jesus says, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (ESV), in James 1:12 where it says that when one stands “the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (ESV), and several other places.

But Jude also advises them to snatch others “out of” the fire. Have they already been cast into the Lake of Fire? Of course not, but they are “in the fire” in the sense that this is their destiny if they do not accept God’s offer of salvation from death. They are mortal and fitted for fiery destruction if their turning in faith toward the God who loves them doesn’t happen.

Romans 8:2 “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (KJV)

Because all men will die physically, and we know that Paul of course did, this law of death that he claims to be free from could only be referring to the death of the soul.

Isaiah 10:16-18 “16 Therefore the Lord GOD of hosts will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory a burning will be kindled, like the burning of fire. 17 The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day. 18 The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land the LORD will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when a sick man wastes away.” (ESV)

Here we see souls and bodies devoured, and in a single day, and them being compared to a man who wastes away. This could be a reference to how God will deal physically with those being punished, and a simultaneous predictor of the day of judgment when they would be cast in the Lake of Fire.

1 Corinthians 15:50: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” (KJV)

This verse really drives home the idea that there is no way the lost can go on existing forever. The Greek word being translated as “incorruption” is aphtharsia, and the Strong’s concordance has as one of its primary meanings “general unending existence.” There is nothing in the word itself that denotes a blessed eternal life, only an existence that has no end, the very thing that traditionalists claim even unbelievers possess. Let’s look at the context of the verse, and first note that Paul is speaking to “brethren.” Then in the very next verse, he tells the brethren that what he is doing is revealing a mystery, the mystery that some would be changed physically at the time of the rapture, and also that those believers who had already died would be raised, but with a body that cannot perish. These are both part of inheriting the general unending existence that Paul spoke of in verse 50, and this is not a promise for the lost, but for the saved. Scripture never anywhere maintains that the lost will go on existing eternally, but clearly maintains that death will be their end.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (ESV)
This free gift of eternal life is contrasted with death in this verse, and because we know that all die physically, we can again reasonably assume that it is the death of the soul that’s being referenced. And there’s no warning that eternal existence in conscious torment is the wage of sin. The context of the fates however is that the fate will be permanent – either permanent death or permanent life. We can take this at face value and believe it, or we can continue to redefine death and imagine all sorts of things this could mean. It’s my hope that we will begin to look at the plain language of the Bible and put our trust in it, and it’s also my hope that this chapter has gone a long way toward showing Biblically that there is no reason to believe human souls without God’s salvation will go on existing into eternity in any conscious form. But we certainly haven’t exhausted the evidence.

Copyright © 2018 by Scott McAliley

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without giving credit back to the original source.  If more than 500 words are reproduced, in any format, written permission from Crickets Publishing LLC is required.

What would Jesus do?  According to many traditionalists, Jesus will watch the majority of humanity burn in a lake of fire for all eternity.  And according to approximately half of Christians, God the Father pre-ordains who can and cannot be saved, without true human free will coming into play.

Being taught that God created humanity, knowing most of us would be on fire for all eternity (and worse, that He pre-destined this to happen, according to many teachers) didn’t have the same effect on me that it seems to have on so many others.  Rather than drive me to beg my way out of that fire, it forced me to ask, Who then IS God?  That combination of the “eternal suffering” and “pre-destination” doctrines certainly didn’t make me want to cozy up to God, or even be a kind or loving person.  I don’t think we’re ever going to become more loving than we believe God Himself is, and I’ll be completely transparent here, at the risk of lightning striking me down: These doctrines don’t paint the picture of a merciful God.  In fact, even though I was raised in the Church, those doctrines have strongly contributed to a life of melancholy, and often times, a desire to distance myself from God.  If what we believe about God is the most important thing about us, as A.W. Tozer has stated, and I think that’s easy to argue, then the traditional Christian doctrine of judgment is a major downer.  It’s little wonder that the Church doesn’t look much different than the world.  The late John Stot, noted Christian writer and church planter, said that the doctrine of endless torment forces us to cauterize our feelings.  I agree.  Who can live with such a thought?  So we either push it down and out of the way, or we search for answers.

More and more of us are delving back into Scripture to see if what we’ve been told about our merciful God is really true.  And many of us have been pleasantly surprised.  When I first began realizing there are other (and better) ways to interpret these verses that have led people to the traditional view of innate human immortality and eternal conscious torment, I was elated.  And I was shocked that the traditional view has survived all these centuries, with so much evidence to the contrary, right there in Scripture.  I immediately began writing.  I wanted to share what I was finding.  I also immediately went to the board of the church that I attended at the time and shared with them.  Bad idea.  They were a lot less excited.  And overall, the reaction has been negative.  Aside from a handful of people who have found the website and expressed great thanks for the information, mostly this has been a pretty negative experience for several years.  And that has caused me to doubt the study, and also my conclusions at times, and to doubt whether or not I’ve wasted a lot of time pursuing the writing out of this study so that others can see the more merciful God of Scripture that I found.  But I move forward because the doubt doesn’t come from anything I find in Scripture, but from struggling with the idea that so many well-known Christian leaders and teachers who I generally trust, read the same bible as I do, and come to a completely different conclusion.  On my weaker days, that tends to make me feel like they know God, and I don’t.  But I know that’s not true.  First of all, you can be wrong about an aspect of judgment and it doesn’t mean you don’t know God.  There are millions of people who hold a traditional view of hell which to me seems in conflict with Scripture, but I don’t believe that keeps them from knowing God.  It just means they believe incorrectly on this topic.  And of course they’d say the same thing about me.  But I’ve studied this carefully.  I love Jesus, and do so even more sincerely after discovering His mercy even in judgment.  I’m in awe of what He did to save us.  And as I’ve prayed and asked God for specific answers in this area of judgment, and have search the Scriptures deeply, I’ve found what I’ve found.  I can’t help it, or change it.  What God does in judgment, and who has salvation available to them seem very clear in Scripture.  So what can I do but share it?

I hope to finish at least the rough draft of the book this Summer.  Of course, I’ve hoped to meet deadlines like this in years past as well, only to be thwarted by many obstacles, myself included.  But I’m still hopeful.  If you have any questions about this topic, feel free to comment.

 

Revelation 14:9-11

“And a third angel followed them, saying in a great voice, If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead, or in his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the anger of God having been mixed undiluted in the cup of His wrath. And he will be tormented by fire and brimstone before the holy angels and before the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. And those worshiping the beast and its image have no rest night and day, even if anyone receives the mark of its name.”

We saw in the verse above in the traditionalist verse list, that 2 Thessalonians 1:9 could not have been a picture of eternity. And we have the same situation here. This is actually describing the same earthly scene when Christ returns to set up his kingdom. The first thing to note is that this tormenting that occurs happens in the presence of the Lamb and the holy angels.  If 14:10-11 is a description of eternity in hell, then we have a very big problem, because I always thought the Lamb (Jesus), and the holy angels would be with us in heaven.  Secondly, to believe that this is a reference to all who failed to put their trust in God is to deny the plain language of Scripture that tells us that this is specifically a judgment on those who took the mark of the beast and worshiped him during the tribulation.  Thirdly, three verses later in 14:13, it says: “Blessed are the dead, the ones dying in the Lord from now on”.  If 14:10-11 are a description of eternal hell, then we have entered eternity at that point in Scripture, and who else could die in the Lord?  No one could.  These verses are very clearly a description of the judgment coming on the lost that inhabit the earth at the second coming, not a description of eternity in any sense.  We are just not to that point yet in chapter fourteen of Revelation.

As for the smoke of their torment rising day and night, forever and ever, and them having no rest day or night, I have a couple of comments.  First, I think we have to understand that the “forever and ever” is somewhat figurative language, for the reason already mentioned – that this process of tormenting is occurring in the presence of Jesus and the holy angels(this is certain when you look at the Greek) and this is not what they will be doing for all eternity (“forever and ever” as we tend to understand it these days).  Also, there are other places in Scripture where the word “forever” and the phrase “forever and ever” indicate something that goes until completion or as long as is possible, not to eternity. Also, the Greek phrase being translated as “forever and ever” can be translated as “to the end of the age”. This return of Christ happens at the very end of this current age, and the last moments of the destruction of those who rejected God’s salvation in this life will be the last moments of this very age. So the smoke of their torment will literally go until the end of the age.

Regarding the lack of rest “day and night” mentioned in verse 11, if this is a picture of eternity as traditionalists claim, we’d have to assume this is figurative (since there will not be any night in eternity, being that this current heavens and earth will have been destroyed by fire). Or we can take it literally as referring to something that happens while we still have “day and night”.  I choose to take this literally.  I believe, just as the verse says, that there will be no rest day or night for those who have taken the mark of the beast, while they are being tormented by fire and brimstone from the heavens.  Also, I don’t think we should assume that any one individual will be able to withstand much of this torment before their physical death occurs.  I believe that the “those” in verse 11 means that collectively there will be no rest day or night for the masses of people who are being tormented, until they are all ultimately consumed, not that any individual is going to be subjected to some type of lengthy, merciless torture.  Overall, this passage has absolutely nothing to do with hell or eternity, except that any picture of the earthly destruction of the physical bodies of those who reject Christ is ultimately a picture of how one day, at final judgment, their soul will be destroyed in the lake of fire as well.

Overview

 

As I mentioned on the “Garden of Eden” page/tab above, the traditional view that the final judgment of the lost entails being in conscious torment for all eternity finds its strength first in the mistaken concept that all souls, saved or lost, are immortal, and secondly from about 10 passages of Scripture that are believed to demonstrate the reality of eternal suffering. While it was well short of the full study I’ve done of the erroneous view of unconditional immortality, I hope the “Garden of Eden” page demonstrated many of the flaws with that view, and pointed to the source of much of that error. In the links to the right, below the link that brought you here to this page, you’ll see 9 passages of Scripture, that are each a hyperlink to a post I’ve written about the traditional take on these passages. Each post is an analysis of each passage, and like the Garden of Eden page, it’s only a summary of the full study I’ve done on these, and which one day will hopefully be available in book form.

A Very Brief Background

Over a decade ago, when I began to seriously question the traditional view of eternal hell and immortality, I purchased a book entitled Two Views of Hell, wherein the topic was debated from the traditionalist position, and the non-traditionalist position (often called the “conditionalist” view). It’s called this because those of us who hold such a view consider immortality, in any form, to be “conditional”, based on faith in Christ (or faith in the one true God, for those who lived before Christ came in the flesh). Edward Fudge argued the conditionalist position and Robert Peterson argued for the traditional. As I pursued this study, I found most of Fudge’s scriptural logic to be solid, but if I thought he’d got it all correct and addressed the subject from all angles, I wouldn’t have pursued writing out my own study. Yet I still appreciate his position for the most part, and his knowledge of the historicity of the immortal soul issue is deep. I found little of value in Peterson’s arguments for the traditional position. They were weak for the most part, filled with fallacies, and failed to let Scripture interpret Scripture. But I’m not singling him out as “the” problem by any means. While he is probably the most outspoken modern proponent of the issue, and has taken upon himself to write about the subject in numerous articles, and at least three books that I’m aware of, he is simply restating what the Church’s position has been on this for centuries. And he’s doing so by using the same small handful of proof texts that have always been used, and those either taken out of context, or not considered in light of the overwhelming biblical statement on what is in fact the ultimate wage for the sin of faithless unbelief.

So in the analyses of these 10 passages, which Peterson calls “the footings of the foundation of the house of traditionalism”, I’ll reference his commentary on various passages at times, in order to demonstrate that perhaps he’s not taking the care he should with some of the verses in question.

The reason there are nine links instead of ten is that two of the verses will be discussed together (that’s the “undying worms and unquenchable fire” link) because the same images are used in both the Old Testament and New Testament references to a particular judgment.

I’m making a late edit to this introduction because I believe something that I state in the closing (the “There you have it” link) needs to be stated at the outset of going through these proof texts for the traditional view of hell and immortality. For those of us who have had the concept of eternal conscious torment deeply ingrained in our minds, it’s easy to assume the reality of it, and then see these verses as descriptions or verification of a reality that we already assumed existed. That’s actually a backward way of looking at it. Can I get onto one of my favorite preachers for a minute here? I absolutely love James MacDonald. He’s still in my top 3 favorite pastors to listen to, learn from, and be inspired by. But in my estimation, he, like so many other pastors and teachers I love is wrong when it comes to this eternal suffering issue, and not only has he referred to these proof texts in the way I described above…sort of as a verification of what we already know, “describing and giving us more information about hell”, but in the introduction to that same 3-sermon radio series where he stated this, he “validated” his knowledge and study for that series with the statement that he had taken a whole week and studied nothing but hell. I almost choked when I heard that. A week?!? I was a few years into this being a topic I was passionate about when I heard him say that and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Fortunately no one was around. I’ve studied this for well over a decade now, and sorry James, a week is simply not enough. And I think that exemplifies the problem within mainstream Christianity. It’s not a comfortable subject, so it gets avoided, even by pastors who should be the ones digging in most deeply on it. And then if you begin to get an inkling that maybe we’ve missed the boat somewhere in our traditional thinking, well then you’re challenging your own Christian brothers and sisters, which is also very uncomfortable…believe me…hasn’t been fun. Overall, it’s just flat out an uncomfortable topic, even if you’re coming to some non-traditional conclusions that actually relieve you greatly in terms of how much more merciful God is in final judgment than what we’ve been taught. Well, I’m drifting a little off from the point I wanted to add here. But it’s this – We need to step back from it far enough to realize that the only way we can claim that there is a future reality of eternal conscious suffering in hell for the lost is if it’s solidly found in Scripture. We can’t assume its reality and look to this tiny handful of passages as “descriptions” of an eternal hell reality we already simply “know” is out there. If it’s truly out there, and if it’s a reality, then Scripture should make that crystal clear. It doesn’t….not at all. And what follows in the links which are below the one that led you here, are the top 10 verses that Robert Peterson (the most outspoken eternal hell proponent) believes lay the foundation for this reality, and I’m going to demonstrate that not a single one of these does any such thing, and in fact, a few of them actually demonstrate just the opposite. Please take the time and read through each of these – not all in one sitting of course. It’s long, and at times tedious. But it will be worth the work. And again, if you haven’t read the “Garden of Eden” page yet, please click on that tab and read it first before getting into the analyses of the traditionalist proof texts. God Bless.

 

Scott Smith

Luke 16:19 And there was a certain rich man; and he was accustomed to don a purple robe and fine linen, making merry in luxury day by day.

Luke 16:20 And there was a certain poor one named Lazarus who had been laid at his doorway, having been ulcerated,

Luke 16:21 and longing to be filled from the crumbs that were falling from the table of the rich one. But coming, even the dogs licked his sores.

Luke 16:22 And it happened, the poor one died and was carried away by the angels into the bosom of Abraham. And the rich one also died and was buried.

Luke 16:23 And being in torments in hell, lifting up his eyes, he sees Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.

Luke 16:24 And calling he said, Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flame.

Luke 16:25 But Abraham said, Child, remember that you fully received your good things in your lifetime, and Lazarus likewise the bad things. But now he is comforted, and you are suffering.

Luke 16:26 And besides all these things, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that those desiring to pass from here to you are not able, nor can they pass from there to us.

Luke 16:27 And he said, Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house;

Luke 16:28 (for I have five brothers, so that he may witness to them, that they not also come to this place of torment).

Luke 16:29 Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them.

Luke 16:30 But he said, No, father Abraham, but if one should go from the dead to them, they will repent.

Luke 16:31 And he said to him, If they will not hear Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if one from the dead should rise.

This passage is one of the most relied upon by traditionalists as evidence of a conscious afterlife of torment for the lost, and it very well may be evidence of a time of consciousness after physical death. However, most preachers and bible teachers that I hear comment on this passage go on to use it as evidence of the eternal state of consciousness that they teach the unsaved will endure. I’ve studied this section of Scripture extensively, and while I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on it, I’ve come to only a couple of absolute conclusions about it. And one thing I am absolutely sure of is that this passage is not a picture of an eternal conscious state of damnation of those who reject salvation. In the full book that I’m writing on this topic, I went through this passage forwards and backwards, looking at every different aspect of it, giving multiple evidences as to why this isn’t intended to be an accurate literal picture of the eternal state of the lost, and I also shared the various positions that people take on the passage. For this blog version, I’m downsizing it considerably.

Let’s first look at the flame that the rich man says he is tormented in. When I used to teach 1st and 2nd grade Sunday School, I remember one time that the children’s take home pages had a picture of the rich man from this passage engulfed in flames, up to his elbows. Yeah, those papers went in the trash that day. A person in that situation, literally on fire, would probably do a number of things differently than what we read of this man doing, in Scripture. He probably would have asked for buckets of water to be cast on him, not a drop of water…and not for his tongue. But something else that I noticed and spent a lot of time on in the full version of this was that he says he is tormented by “this flame” – singular. While some versions of the bible may say “this fire” or “these flames”, that’s not how the original Greek reads, and while I’m not crazy about the old English of the KJV, it is probably the most overall accurate translation, and it’s clear that this is a singular flame this man says he is being tormented by. So I looked around Scripture (electronically searching with e-Sword), and sure enough, there were other Greek words that would have been used if “this fire” (meaning multiple flames, as fire normally exists) is what was intended. I also looked at every place in Scripture where this Greek word phlox (Strong’s coded word G5395) was used, which is the word used here in this passage that is correctly translated as a singular “flame” in the KJV- and I found something really interesting. This word is used in only 7 verses in the New Testament (always in the singular) first here in Luke 16, and then in all six of the other passages, it is a direct reference to God Himself or an angel. Here are those other six references:

The next one is in Acts 7:30, but it’s a reference back to the Old Testament where it says an angel of the Lord appeared as a flame of fire to Moses in a bush. The third time is in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8 where it is Jesus Christ Himself at His second coming. The fourth is in Hebrews 1:7 where we read that God makes his angels and ministers as “a flame of fire”. And remember how the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost? It was as single flames over the heads of the believers. This single flame represents God himself, or at least his unveiled reality, and this is what is tormenting this man, not a literal fire, or we’d have seen other words used to describe it, and likely different requests from a man on fire. The tongue causes a lot of trouble. I know mine has. And this is part of this man’s problem. He is asking for one drop of water for his tongue (as if that could help a man on fire), and he’s a man who has probably used his own tongue to speak ill of Lazarus numerous times, as he was laid at his gate. It’s his way of saying, “I was wrong, and Lazarus is more righteous than I.” But the point of it all is that it’s too late to right the wrongs after physical death. Another contrast could be made between his wicked tongue (which James says can set a whole forest ablaze), and the singular tongue of fire of truth that is tormenting him (mentally tormenting him….not physically).

The fifth, sixth, and seventh times we see this singular flame in Scripture is in Revelation 1:14, Revelation 2:18 and Revelation 19:12, and in all three it is the description of the pure eyes of Christ. Not much commentary needed there. Again, it’s about the fact that after this life, all truth will become evident, and everything will become very real, and there will be no excuses, no second chances. It’s a powerful lesson, that the mainstream church has somehow, against all biblical reason, twisted into a teaching that God is going to torment those who rejected salvation for all eternity.

There’s a lot more I could get into with this passage. And if I ever finish the book I’m writing on this, it will be included in that, but the one point I really want to address in this blog version is that even if this were a 100% literal picture of what happens in Hades immediately after death, it would still add no weight to the argument that the lost will suffer throughout eternity. Scripture maintains that one day, even Death and Hades (where this scene is taking places) will be cast into the Lake of Fire, which is called the “second death”. This Luke 16 passage is at best a picture of what happens immediately after physical death, which is not the same thing as when those in Hades are one day raised to be judged at the “great white throne”, which will end with them being cast into the Lake of Fire, and the end of their very existence, from everything I’ve read in Scripture. But again, I think we may be seeing what would be said, if anything could be said. I’m not in charge, and certainly God will do what God will do, but it also seems unlikely that Abraham is going to be the go-between who is communicating for those who end up on one side of the chasm or the other. In fact, think about this – The only people who would have called him Father Abraham would be Jews, or Christians. Christians have Abraham as our father in the sense that he’s the father of the faith. And Jews have him as their father in terms of genealogy. So where does that leave the unsaved Gentile who is reading this passage? They don’t even see themselves represented here. I think Christians need to step back from Luke 16, and come at it with some fresh thoughts that actually make sense. I don’t mean to come across ugly, but time is getting short, and it’s time to get to know God better, and we’ll do that if we throw off some of these lies about Him.

Concerning conscious suffering immediately after death: People who believe as I do, that immortality is a gift only given to those who exercise faith in the One True Living God, are often called “conditionalists”, because we believe immortality, the opportunity to go on living forever, is conditional, upon placing your faith in Christ and enduring to the end. But that doesn’t mean we believe that unbelievers just go POOF and disappear when they physically die. Now, some conditionalist Christians do in fact mistakenly believe that. But please don’t mix that up with anything I’m trying to get across. And also, I try not to identify with that label of conditionalist at all, because most of them believe in total soul sleep for the lost, from the time of physical death, to the time of the white throne judgment, and I disagree slightly with that. Many conditionalists also believe in soul sleep for even the saved, from the time of their physical death until when they are raised to life. It’s a complicated issue. And I’m not dogmatic about many of the issues regarding this intermediate state because I’ve seen evidence for soul sleep, as well as for consciousness. Would it be entirely impossible for both to happen? Maybe it’s not either/or, but both …so maybe a saved person dies, and Jesus is there waiting for them to welcome them home(like how Stephen saw heaven open and Jesus standing there while he was about to be stoned to death), but there’s really not a job to do yet, with the next thing on the schedule being the rapture/redemption, then the marriage supper of the lamb, and then our return with Him to reign on earth for a millenium. (Jesus said that He’s going to prepare a place for us, but He didn’t say that as we die off, we join the construction team…maybe we do, but you can’t support it with Scripture) So maybe after that initial welcome, we’re put in a state of sleep until the redemption?? Just a thought. I obviously haven’t been there to see this. But there is evidence for both sleep and awareness after death in Scripture, prior to resurrection, so it seems like at least a decent possibility. Another thing that complicates it a little is that for saved believers, something different likely happens now, than before Christ’ death and resurrection. When Christ died, the veil in the temple was torn. I believe this literally happened, but it’s also likely symbolic that now there is access to heaven that wasn’t there before that. That’s why Paul, in the New Testament spoke of dying and going to be with Christ, but David and Job, from the Old Testament, both spoke/wrote of going to hell (Sheol), instead of going to be with the Lord. They didn’t write or speak as if they believed they would be conscious there, but it did sound as if they knew they’d be redeemed from it one day. (and even though it’s in the New Testament, when Jesus is telling this story of Lazarus and the rich man, He hasn’t died or resurrected yet, so Old Testament rules still apply, in terms of all people going to Hades/Sheol, but the lost are potentially in torment, while the saved are either in bliss, at rest, or asleep (or have a moment of bliss, followed by restful sleep) I don’t think Scripture is extremely clear on this intermediate state between physical death and being raised to life (for those who are saved) or to final judgment(for the lost), so I’m not making a statement of faith or fact here…just my gut feeling, but just as I believe that the thief on the cross was going to be with Christ in paradise “on that same day” as Jesus told him he would, I believe it’s likely the lost are going to have a conscious revelation on the same day they die (somewhat like the rich man in this story did), and it will be the result of that “glass dimly” sort of vision we have now being melted away by the reality of the undeniable flame of Truth, the One that tormented the man. But just as I wonder if the saved will remain aware for that entire time, or after an initial welcome, will they be put into a sleep/rest (oh, and isn’t that in Scripture, that we “enter His rest”? I should look that up, but I’ll let someone else take that one) ….so just as I think that’s a possibility, I think it’s also possible that the lost, after the initial realization of what they’ve forfeited, they may also be mercifully put to sleep until they are resurrected to the Lake of Fire judgment at the end of the millennial reign of Christ. God is merciful. He wants the lost to know how they’ve offended the Holy Spirit in their rejection of His drawing them, but does that require hundreds or thousands of years of conscious torment (depending on when one died) to remain aware and awake on what is essentially “death row”? Even death row inmates get to sleep half the time. God is God. His rules. His way. He can require their consciousness for that entire time if He desires to, and perhaps that’s exactly how the process works. But even hundreds, or a couple thousand years of mental torment, is less than a drop in the bucket of timelessness, and as stiff a penalty as it may be, if in fact that’s how it works, it’s still a vapor of time compared to eternity. In fact, no amount of finite time, can even be logically compared to eternity, because here’s the thing with eternity…For instance, a person who never found and grabbed hold of grace is in hell, in torment, floating around the lake of fire, and they do that for a billions years…Ok, well that was just day one, essentially. Time to begin a second billion years on “day two”…. I really don’t think we understand the level of suffering we’re accusing God of allowing when we teach that He is going to allow the eternal conscious suffering of potentially billions of human souls throughout all eternity. Fortunately, while Scripture isn’t crystal clear about the intermediate state of judgment, it is very clear that immortality, and going on living forever, which are made possible only by avoiding the “second death” – that these are all things that are for the saved only. The lost will not suffer into and throughout eternity. That’s a huge relief to me, on so many levels, but primarily because of what it says about God’s merciful nature. He’s a harsh judge, but not a maniac whose thirst for His enemies’ demise is unquenchable. His judgment will be satisfied when those who rejected Him are destroyed and returned to the state of their non-existence where they began. And that brings up one last point to ponder, for the blog version of this passage: Because traditionalists can’t find direct statements of eternal conscious suffering in Scripture, yet they desire so badly to hang onto this “tradition of men” (Paul and Jesus both warned against those) they’ve created several arguments from so-called reason. Here’s one of them. “God is an infinite being. Therefore judgment against those who reject Him must go on for infinite time”. Not in the bible at all. And what I hear in between the lines when someone puts that forward is “God’s judgment will never be fully completed, and His purposes in final judgment, not really final, since the process goes on into eternity.” Does that sound like God? Isn’t he a finisher? He’s just gonna annex evil, and not eradicate it? Here’s the scriptural truth: The lost will perish (Just check John 3:16). And nothing perishes forever. Anything perishing ultimately comes to nothing. And that is where those who reject Christ will end up. It’s tough, but it’s merciful. God Bless.

 

Sometimes all doctrinal concepts that stand against a mainline tradition can be carelessly lumped together.  Conditionalism and Universalism both portray God as far more merciful than tradition would have us believe.  But make no mistake — This is not Universalism that I’m putting forward in this book.  But could the universalists be correct?  It’s highly doubtful.  It far over-stretches what logically works with many scriptures and themes in Scripture.  But the truth is, it’s at least remotely possible, at least some versions of it, so we’ll take a look at it.  What I’m calling “Universalism” goes by different names such as Universal Salvation, Universal Reconciliation, and Christian Universalism (CU), among others.  I’m referring to those who would consider themselves Christians, but who believe that ultimately all mankind will be saved and live eternally with their Maker, even those who rejected Christ in this life, rather than there being a judgment which would result in either eternal torment (the traditional view), or eternal death and loss of being (the non-traditional view I hold and promote).

This wasn’t a topic I initially planned on addressing in this book – not more than a brief mention anyway, even after reading Rob Bell’s Love Wins that promoted a version of the doctrine several years ago.  I didn’t think his arguments warranted much of a response.  But a couple years after I read Bell’s book, I came across another Universalism-promoting book by Julie Ferwerda entitled Raising Hell.  And it was such a well-written and well thought out attempt, that if I had not already researched this subject extensively, I might have jumped on the bandwagon with her myself, being a person seeking an alternative to the traditional view of judgment, and one certainly hoping to find a more merciful God than what tradition has given us.  However, at the end of the day, I find that she didn’t address many Scriptures that would negate her claims.  And I think she stretched too far in other places, such as suggesting that there’s really no concept of eternity in Scripture, at least not in relation to judgment.

Although Universalism isn’t new, and while some of what I’ll address in this brief chapter will be the general teachings of this doctrine, I’ll focus as much on some of Ferwerda’s specific positions, since hers is the most recent work I’ve read on the matter, and one that I’m concerned could sway many people.  I don’t know Ferwerda personally, and I’ve only read one of her books.  But based on what I’m reading, my belief is that she’s probably a saved Christian who believes that it’s only by Christ’ death and resurrection that any can be saved.  I don’t believe she’s a heretic, at least not in the sense of being a person setting out to intentionally destroy the work or Word of God.  Nevertheless, I believe she’s wrong in her ultimate conclusion that everyone will eventually be saved from eternal judgment, however you want to define it.

There’s a theme that runs through the entire Bible, and it’s the necessity of faith.  It’s what God grants in some measure to all, and it’s what He requires the exercise of in order to be made right with Him.  There is no thematic evidence in Scripture that all people will be saved.  Just the opposite.  Jesus said that most would go down the broad road that leads to destruction, and watching the faithless and rebellious go down, is something one can do in almost every book of the Bible.

There are a handful of verses that, if not considered in light of all Scripture, and if taken out of the context they were given in, can be surface-interpreted to mean that all people will ultimately be saved.  And these verses, combined with a strong desire to reject the unmerciful traditional view of a God who would torment billions of souls for all eternity, are the basis for Universalism.  But just as the traditional doctrine of eternal suffering is based on too little Scripture, and those verses taken out of context or misunderstood, so too is the other extreme, represented by the doctrine of Universal Salvation.  If we would accept that God is merciful in that His grace extends to all, and in that those who reject it will not be saved, but at the same time will not be made to suffer into eternity, we wouldn’t need to hyper-extend into a doctrine which negates God’s requirement of faith for salvation.

Most likely the truth on judgment is somewhere in the middle ground.  It’s in between those who believe that a loving God can bring billions into existence, with the full foreknowledge that they would reject Him, with that rejection resulting in an eternity of suffering in a literal or non-literal lake of fire, and then those who believe God would still save those who rejected Him in faithlessness and instead loved this world.  God is merciful, yes.  But it is only by faith that we can please Him according to Scripture.  Does this mean He won’t save some that don’t please Him?  Arguments can, have, and will be made for the potential salvation of some who didn’t know better, and who never received a full revelation of Christ. And there definitely seems to be a theme in Scripture that personal responsibility is in proportion to personal revelation, but that goes beyond what I want to address here.  I’ll touch on it briefly at the end of the chapter.  But for those who outright reject the revelation that God gives them…Will they be saved?  I think we would find little evidence for this, and much evidence that those who reject God will in turn be rejected.

What we’ll do in this chapter is first see why the universalist doctrine almost works.  We’ll take a look at some of the proof texts that universalists are relying on.  Then we’ll see where it breaks down.  Sometimes we’ll be looking at things Ferwerda specifically stated, since she, in my opinion, has made the best modern attempt at defending Universalism.  But may I give a challenge to universalists to consider?  If you’re a universalist, and are 100% convinced you are right, then go with your heart, I suppose.  But if you believe there’s even a small chance you’re wrong, can you see how potentially dangerous it is to tell people that all souls will be saved one day, no matter the decisions they made in regard to the Lord?  Wouldn’t many who are feeling the pull of God on their hearts more likely take the path of least resistance and remain in unbelief if they’ve been made to believe there are no permanent consequences for faithlessness?

Julie Ferwerda begins her defense of Universal Salvation by analysis of three parables in Luke chapter 15 which she considers to be a series.[i]  They are the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son.  If I understand her correctly, she maintains that the fact that the sheep couldn’t “find” itself, but that the shepherd went looking for it is evidence that all mankind will be saved — same for the lost coin.  And she sees the father’s waiting and watching, even while the prodigal was in rebellion, as evidence of the same.  I love these parables, but simply can’t come away with the same conclusion.  A shepherd looking for the lost one is a picture of what God does.  He seeks the lost.  And the prodigal came to the end of himself, and repented.  He had to take this action in order to be restored.  Ferwerda seems to see the prodigal as one who went into judgment after this life, but then saw the error of his ways, and essentially “left Hell,” so to speak.  The traditional view of Hell and universal immortality is partially to blame here.  The widely accepted traditional idea that a human soul is able to survive the second death in the Lake of Fire is the foundation for the universalist error that one could then exit such a judgment, and by their own will.  And indeed Ferwerda believes there is some form of judgment after this life but that a soul can repent and confess and be saved from it.  Sounds very Catholic/Purgatory-like to me.

These parables were a response to some Pharisees and scribes griping that Jesus receives and eats with “sinners.”  In the middle of telling these parables, Jesus stated that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over many who need no repentance.  It seems that He was condemning the pharisees, in their arrogance, not seeing themselves as needy.  And it also seems that he was or had recently been in the act of “eating with sinners,” the very thing that prompted the parables, and so Jesus was doing what the parables teach.  He was seeking the lost.  And people were in turn repenting and following him – now – in this life.  There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that this is about something that can happen after this first earthly life.  And the best evidence may be Jesus’s very statement about the rejoicing in heaven over those who realize their need, because he contrasts these with those who don’t see themselves as needing salvation.  Who, in the Lake of Fire, (were it possible to survive it) would not see their need to then repent?  It just doesn’t work.  These parables are not about exiting final judgment to enter eternity.  They’re about God seeking us out to save us from final judgment in the first place.

Next, after personal testimony on how she left her traditional belief in Hell, Ferwerda began, somewhat flippantly it seemed, naming all of the classes or types or people who are going to end up in Hell, if the place truly exists, and if Scripture is to be interpreted literally[ii], as if Scripture doesn’t maintain salvation is offered to all, of any class and type.  And I sense that she is using this growing number of peoples as an evidence that this simply couldn’t be, at least not if their end will be eternal torment.  But concerning the sheer numbers of those who will face final judgment, is this not exactly what Jesus predicted when He said that wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction and many there will be who take that path?  She names off the wise and learned, the Jews, the Gentiles, the Calvinists, the Armenians, among others.  Even just naming the Jews and Gentiles essentially included everyone.  As I’ve made clear throughout this volume, I of course reject the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.  But I completely accept Scripture’s statement on final punishment, in that it ends with destruction.  And what she seems unable to accept (the idea that such a large majority are headed for final judgment) is exactly what Jesus said.  The road is broad and the gate wide that leads to destruction, and many are going down that road.  And He went on to state that few are on the narrow path that leads to life.

Rob Bell, Julie Ferwerda, and many other universalist writers and teachers do not deny that there is some time of judgment for those who rejected God in this life.  This is one reason why I say their doctrine almost works.  In Love Wins Bell seems to imply that those in Hell can at any time confess Christ and be taken out of judgment.  It’s up to them — our human freedom is not stifled (except temporarily) by being cast into Hell.

Universalist Proof Texts

In John 12:32 Jesus said that when He would be lifted up, He would draw all men to Himself.  And universalists go on to point out that the Greek word being translated as “draw” in this verse can actually mean “drag.”  They use this as evidence to demonstrate that He will pull people “from Hell” at some point.  If God is not trying to grow a family of faithful followers who love Him, as Scripture seems to indicate, but is rather ultimately saving everyone, this leaves me to wonder what the last 2000 years have been about, and why be missional in sharing the gospel?  And why choose God in this life?  Ferwerda makes attempts at demonstrating that these still have value, but I remain unconvinced. If our choices in faith or faithlessness have no ultimate consequences regarding whether we gain eternal life or not, then I don’t see the point. Even a lengthy earthly life in pain, or lengthy time of trial and testing after this life are less than nothing compared to timeless eternity.

Ultimately, this life, our decisions for or against God, and anything of lesser importance are of no ultimate consequence and have no bearing whatsoever on our eternal state, if the universalist doctrine is correct.  If Christ’ being lifted up (which was a reference to His death on the cross) was the thing that literally saved/dragged every soul to Him, and if with Him is where we’ll be for all eternity, regardless of our actions, thoughts, and pursuits now, our ministries, etc., then just what are we doing?  Nothing of any ultimate value, I would think.

Back in Chapter Five I mentioned Robert Jeffress’s thought that if Hell isn’t eternal torment, it takes some of the urgency out of witnessing.  Best I could tell, he was saying that as an argument against Conditionalism, not Universalism.  While that logic doesn’t apply well in relation to conditionalist ideas, since the consequences for faithlessness are still quite dire in the conditionalist model, it actually applies very well to Universalism.  What exactly is the point of witnessing to anyone, if all will be saved regardless?  And according to some universalists who still believe there is a place of burning torment, they maintain that those who go there don’t have to be there any longer than they want to be.  After physical death, when the faithless ones find themselves in a raging inferno, all they have to do is humbly admit they were wrong to not believe, and they’re free to go.  If that were how it works, I’d say most would stay there about .1 seconds, and that would then lead me to the question: Why create that place?  But that’s not what Scripture teaches.  There would not be the call to faith throughout Scripture if it were not critically important, and if all wrongs of faithlessness were correctable after this life.

It’s far more likely that the verse is making it clear that salvation would be available to “all men,” and that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth would be working on the hearts of “all men,” pushing, pulling, dragging, whatever it takes.  The Lord isn’t willing that any should perish, and therefore He has gone to monumental lengths to demonstrate His love toward us.  But that level of His will is over-ridden by the requirement of placing faith in Him to be saved.  Again, to take it as the universalists do would negate hundreds of verses, and actually make all forms of ministry, outreach, or any attempts at living for Christ of no ultimate value, if everyone’s end is the same, regardless of how we believed or lived in this life.

Scripture tells us that God isn’t willing that any should perish.  Universalists go on to claim that God’s will cannot be thwarted, so, it is reasoned that ultimately none must perish. But it is clear from Scripture, that “God’s will” is often thwarted, leaving mankind in detrimental circumstances. God can “will” that Cain do right and be accepted. But when Cain followed up his first disobedience with the murder of his brother, God can (and did) banish him from his presence. This doesn’t mean that he wanted him to kill Abel. God can “will” that mankind spread out over the whole earth, but when we congregated to build the tower of Babel, God can (and did) come down and confuse languages so that we were forced to spread out. I could literally go on and on with examples of God’s will thwarted. So God can certainly be willing that none perish, and so make a provision in Christ by which we will not perish, yet when we reject the provision, there are dire consequences.

God has an ultimate will to save all those, and only those, who will place their faith in Him.  He is building a family of faith. This ultimate will overrides his general will that none perish.  Jesus did not say that one day he would tell some who mistakenly believed they had been doing His work: “Depart from me, I never knew you…oh, but hey, I’ll catch up with you on the other side of your correction in the Lake of Fire.”  No, that last part isn’t actually in Scripture.

In her book, Ferwerda creates a typical conversation between her and an orthodox Christian[iii] where she “wins” the argument by ultimately quoting James 2:13 which states that “Mercy triumphs over judgment.”  This is a great example of how universalists, like traditionalist Christians (as relates to eternal conscious suffering), pluck verses out of context and use them as proof texts to back their views. She didn’t mention the previous sentence in the verse that stated that judgment would be unmerciful to those not showing mercy.  And apparently she fails to see in the following verse that James is ultimately teaching on faith, and that faith without works is dead.  Why is teaching on faith so important if faith in this life isn’t even necessary for eternal salvation?  Compared to eternity, time-wise, this life is less than a grain of sand in comparison to every beach on earth.  Why are James, and God, through James, and so many writers of Scripture spending all this time on the matter of faith?   Because it is of eternal importance.  God is growing a faith family, and these who prevail in faith are those who will spend eternity with God.

Let’s look at another text that Ferwerda believes states that salvation will be given to all. It’s Acts 17:30-31.

“Truly, then, God overlooking the times of ignorance, now strictly commands all men everywhere to repent, because He set a day in which “He is going to judge the habitable world in righteousness,” by a Man whom He appointed; having given proof to all by raising Him from the dead.” (LITV)

She claims that the Greek word pistis that’s being translated as “proof” is a mistranslation.[iv]  Strong’s concordance gives several ways to translate it, such as “persuasion,” “moral conviction,” etc.  And the King James version translates it as “assurance.”  Ferwerda points out that the word pistis is often translated as “faith” and “belief” in other places where it’s used, but she doesn’t seem to recognize the context and statement of this verse.  It blatantly states that God “strictly commands all men everywhere to repent” because He “is going to judge the habitable world.”  Why the strong warning to repent, if the actual point of the verse is to give assurance that everyone is going to be saved?  It just doesn’t work.  The last part of verse 31 is stating that it is the raising of Christ from the dead that gives us the “grounds for” faith and belief – the “assurance” that the promises of God are real and true.  But His resurrection doesn’t automatically save everyone.  Only those who act in faith on the “persuasion” that His resurrection was in fact substitutionary on our parts for saving us from the penalty for sin.

Ferwerda believes there’s a verse in the Old Testament book of Daniel that prefigured a false teaching about Hell.  I found this to be one of the more odd arguments in her book.  You may be familiar with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.  These were three Jewish young men who were exiled to Babylon during one of Israel’s rebellions, yet they remained faithful to God, refusing to bow down to the image that Nebuchadnezzar had erected.  Because of this refusal, they were cast into the fiery furnace that had been heated up seven times hotter than normal, just for them.  But they were unharmed.  Ferwerda seems to believe that these men in a fire, yet not being burned by it, is a metaphorical prophecy that one day there would be a false doctrine about Hell, but just as these men were unharmed, so will any who might have been in danger of Hell, by traditional standards, be ultimately unharmed…since it’s not even real.

This is an odd take on Hell because these three Jews were faithful to God and not even in danger of His judgment.  Ferwerda using these as a foreshadowing that no one will ultimately be in danger of fiery judgment is to ignore the very thing that set them apart to begin with — their faithfulness to God.  The claim of Scripture is that the faithful will be saved from the second death that happens when the lost are cast into the Lake of Fire, and if anything was foreshadowed here it’s the salvation and survival of these three men because of their faith.  Notable too is that Ferwerda attempts to disregard the fact that the men who cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego into the fire were themselves killed while doing it because the fire was so hot.  Her method for avoiding this was to include a footnote claiming that the captors’ death is not in the Septuagint version.  But the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the original Hebrew Scriptures.  If those who translated it left something out, that’s no evidence that it didn’t happen.  It was still in the original Hebrew.

Ferwerda voices her concerns about the Lake of Fire being interpreted as something literal, when so much of the book of Revelation is figurative.  Her point is fair enough. But with the likely correlation between the Lake of Fire and what Jesus called the “eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” to me it sounds like this is a real thing that has been or will be literally prepared.  And even if it isn’t, the Bible states what it is.  It is the second death.  The first death is the death of the body, and the second is that of the whole person: the soul and whatever manifestation of body that God gives to stand judgment in.  And whether the Lake of Fire is a literal lake of fire, or is symbolic for something beyond our comprehension, perhaps something extra-dimensional even, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that it is stated to be the place and/or process of final death and destruction.  And while I reject the traditional notion that it’s a place where the lost will be able to exist and suffer for eternity, I can’t deny that it’s real in some form, and appears to be much more than some sort of correctional or refining fire.  And yes, there are those sorts of terms in Scripture, and we Christians are told that we will endure “fiery darts” and “fiery trials,” and certainly, these are not literally fiery darts (although some Christian martyrs of other ages did literally endure fiery trials).  Ferwerda makes much of the fact that fire in Scripture can be for purifying and refining.  But I’m just gonna put it in kindergarten language: Fire burns stuff up.  We know this from experience, and from Scripture, such as Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed by fire, and this being said to be a foreshadowing of the final end of the lost.  Fire is God’s means of destroying those who reject him.  Consider John 5:24.  Jesus says:

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” (italics for emphasis — ESV)

The logical conclusion is that if one will not hear His word and believe, they will not gain eternal life, they will be condemned, and they will not cross over, but rather stay on a course with death.

Jesus said that blaspheming the Holy Spirit would not be forgivable.  What do universalists do with this unpardonable sin?  Do they simply say “Well, unforgivable at the time of judgment, but of course, later, all will be overlooked”?  I just don’t see it.  Furthermore, If Christ’ suffering death atoned for the sins of all, regardless of whether active faith is placed in Him, then why do those who are ultimately saved still have to suffer any time of judgment, as many universalists believe they will?  What’s the purpose?  Is God saying, “Well, you failed to put your trust in me, and I’m going to save you anyway, even though you denied me in faith. But first you have to go through this punishment”?  Seems that either Christ took their punishment or He didn’t.  They don’t both need to suffer.  What the Bible teaches instead is that either we’re going to suffer the eternal punishment of death, for sins uncovered, or we’re accepting Christ’ death on the cross as our covering from God’s ultimate wrath.

To be fair, there are more verses that universalists believe add to their theory than the ones I’ve addressed.  But I don’t want this chapter to turn into a stand-alone book.  I hope that answering the sampling I chose demonstrated the issues with trying to bend these verses to mean something they don’t.  And truthfully, there’s not that many more.  If there were just hundreds and hundreds of verses like these few that have been used to create the universalist doctrine, and only a handful of other statements that made it sound like judgment was final, then I, and I’m sure most Christians, would accept this as truth.  But that’s just not the case.  And when a handful of verses can be surface-interpreted to mean something, but if that something is in direct opposition to too much other Scripture, it needs to be questioned.  The same thing applies to the traditional Hell and immortality doctrine.  Both are built on too few verses that conflict with the major statement on judgment in Scripture.

Nevertheless, there’s a big part of me that hopes I’m wrong and universalists like Ferwerda are correct.  It’s no problem to me if at the end of all of this, God relents on final judgment and saves us all.  But then, I’m not a Holy God with righteous requirements who has stated consistently that it is only by faith that I can be pleased.  I’m just a sinner who needs God’s grace and mercy.  So, what I want is of no consequence.  And I’m just never going to get beyond Jesus telling us that there will come a time when He says to many: “Depart from me. I never knew you.”  God stating that He will send one to “restore all things” is simply not the same thing as Him saying that ultimately he will save every soul He ever created.  He so blatantly stated just the opposite in many places as we’ve already looked at.

I wrote this book to demonstrate that God is more merciful than traditional Christianity has led us to believe.  I have that one thing in common with the universalists. But they take it far beyond what Scripture will allow. Not only does their doctrine deny the permanence of all the warnings of coming judgment, Universalism negates all of the foreshadowing of judgment, such as Noah and his small group of faithful being saved from the destruction that fell on the many, and Lot being saved out of Sodom before destruction fell on it. The Bible is so consistent on this. But it has no significance outside of the events themselves if all are ultimately saved. We know these stories do have significance however because we have two other books of the Bible claiming that the utter decimation of Sodom and Gomorrah were a picture of what will ultimately happen to unbelievers, and that “as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man.”  It’s stated very plainly, and there’s never a hint in those passages that there is restoration after this decimation.

Who then can be saved?

The universalist doctrine is tempting to latch onto because, were it true, it would help answer some difficult questions about who can be saved.  One question that many have asked is: “What about those who were never reached with the gospel?  How can it be fair that they should suffer for all eternity just because God put the great commission in human hands, and then human missions attempts failed those unreached people?”  The reader already knows my answer to at least part of that question.  No one is going to suffer for all eternity, even those who reject Christ, much less those who never even heard the name.  But can these who never received the details of the gospel be saved?  The universalist answer is simple: Yes, everyone is going to be saved eventually.

My answer is a little more complicated – first, because I’m still not omniscient and can’t claim absolute knowledge.  But here’s a few things to consider: Rahab, the non-Jew, pre-Christ-era harlot made the New Testament list commonly called the “Hall of Faith,” found in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews.  And she likely knew very little of God, and likely nothing of a promise of a Messiah.  She acted in faith on the little she knew, and she is counted among the faithful according to the writer of Hebrews.  For that matter, none of the Old Testament faithful, Jew or non-Jew, had much of the details of what exactly Christ would one day do.  The gospel is called a mystery.  Yet many were faithful to what they knew of God, and will be saved.

Further, it’s almost universally accepted among Christians that children who have died in the womb, very young children who pass away, and those of any age who die without the mental capacity to grasp the concepts of the gospel and salvation, are going to be saved.  And we give those in these categories “a pass” so to speak.  And I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t.  I’m in agreement.  But I’m only asking: Why are we giving them a pass?  Best I can tell, the criteria is that they don’t know any better.  So how is a person who likewise doesn’t know better, any more responsible, simply because they’ve grown to be an older child or an adult?  I know what some readers are thinking – “Age of Accountability.”  But let’s be reasonable.  It’s knowledge and revelation that makes us accountable…not time and date.

We’re responsible to act in faith on what we know of the one true God.  The one difference is that an older child, or an adult, even one who hasn’t heard the full gospel, has begun getting some revelation of God.  I believe that God is always (and always has been) attempting to draw all mankind to Himself.  Paul asks in Romans 10:14 how one can believe without a preacher.  He goes on to claim in verse 18 that all have heard “the preaching” as he makes reference to Psalm 19 which states that the creation itself is the first “preacher” telling us who God is.  What’s generally taught is that if we respond in faith to the little revelation we have, God will send more revelation, ultimately sending full revelation of Christ, which can be accepted or rejected.  Others believe that a response in faith to whatever you know of God will produce salvation.  I’m not going to act like I know the absolute answer.  But I do believe that one or the other of these is true, because God isn’t willing that any should perish.

However I don’t believe we can put our faith in just anything, and therefore be saved “by faith.” When God stated that it is only by faith that we can please Him, I don’t think He meant faith, just for the sake of faith. It’s been stated often that it takes more “faith” to be an atheist these days, with all of the evidence of a creator. But God isn’t going to save a person who lives and dies as a faithful atheist. Scripture is clear enough on this. So it’s not just faith, but faith in what we know of God, the real God…not some false version or concept of God.

I believe God is moving on all people. And if He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and if He isn’t willing that any should perish, as Scripture tells us, then I’m forced to believe that in whatever way, He is making Himself known to everyone, on some level, in a way that if they respond in faith, it will either save them, or bring further revelation which they will be able to respond to in faith and be saved.  The only other possibility, if in fact God is not willing that any should perish, is if He truly did look over the “times of ignorance.”  Something like this is stated a couple of times in Scripture, and there are different interpretations of what it means; some believe that in various times in history God did not reveal Himself, and that the people who weren’t exposed to knowledge of God were used by God for a particular role in history. And the thinking would be that this is not their fault, but was God’s plan, so we would take the couple of verses in Scripture that seem to say that these will be overlooked, and trust that God knows what He’s doing.

Would He save these who had zero knowledge of Him, if in fact anyone has ever existed who had zero knowledge of Him? First, it’s difficult to believe that any have existed in this state, with creation screaming that there’s a Creator.  But ultimately, I’ve got to admit that His ways are higher than my ways, that I’m not God, and that I’m just going to trust that since He isn’t willing that any should perish, He has made provision.  In the end, my point is this: There are a number of ways to interpret Scripture that don’t violate it, yet do not maintain that God is rejecting people who lacked revelation. We don’t need to resort to Universalism to be able to handle this question.

If someone grows up in a country that has kept Christianity out, and they are going about the motions of their religion, let’s say for instance, a religion that believes in multiple gods, but are then impressed that “this is wrong,” and there must only be one God, and they respond to these promptings in the best way they can in their position, it’s hard for me to believe that this isn’t faith in action, even if a full revelation of Christ isn’t available.

By the same token, if a person is involved in that same religion that denies the one true living God of Scripture, and they’re being impressed that it’s wrong, presumably by the Holy Spirit, yet they reject those promptings to perhaps challenge tradition, etc., and simply continue on, it’s impossible for me to believe they’ll be saved.  But I’ve gone a little off topic.  All of that was just to say that there are ways to understand that God is merciful in our various levels of revelation that we’ll receive, depending on where we live, when we live, etc.  So the real question is less about how God could save one who appears to have not received the full gospel (With God, all things are possible), but more like “Will God save those who reject the revelation He gives and never seek deeper or repent from faithless living in this life?”  And I just don’t see the affirmative ‘yes’ answer to this question in Scripture that the universalists see.

Ultimately, let’s not get hung up on questions about “what happens to the aborigine who never got the gospel?” since it’s just as likely that none have ever existed that didn’t receive at least some revelation of the one true God that they could either respond to in faith and be saved, or respond to in faith, and be granted further revelation that could lead to saving faith.  But please do not think I’m negating the importance of outreach and missions.  God wants people to know Him as fully as possible in this life.  I don’t believe He’s content with partial revelation.  But because He has given the commission of spreading the gospel to a bunch of sinners who fail miserably at this most of the time, it’s difficult for me to believe that He automatically outright rejects those who do not get the full gospel of Christ.

Well, I don’t claim authority on this matter of who can be saved. I have some questions of my own. I only went on a little there to demonstrate that there are plenty of ways to be at peace with God on the matter, without resorting to the false conclusion that “God must save everyone, or else He is unjust.”

Ferwerda makes much of those from whom God “hid” truth in parables.  She seems to imply that if she’s wrong about her universalist position and everyone one day being eternally saved, that we have literal proof that Jesus rejoiced that God was sending many to an eternal Hell.[v]  My first issue with this is that she juxtaposes all of her positions against what I already believe is a wrong position in the idea of eternal conscious torment, and she completely ignored the conditionalist position except for a single end note that acknowledged that Conditionalism maintains that death is eternal.  But secondly, everywhere in Scripture where I see God hardening someone or hiding information from someone, the someone had already hardened themselves to God first, and the hardening has a purpose.  It’s not random or unmerciful.  We saw a great example of that with Pharaoh and the Exodus back in Chapter 1.

When it’s all said and done, any individual, group, or sect can take Bible verses and turn them to what they believe — or want to believe.  And I’ve certainly been accused of this over the course of this discovery, and the writing out of this book, and I’m sure more opposition is headed my way.  But I’m asking the reader to seek which interpretation is the most biblically linear, the most logical, and most lines up with the nature and character of God, as revealed in Scripture.

The traditionalist can take a handful of verses and turn them to mean that the lost will suffer consciously for all eternity, even though doing so violates many other concepts, forces the redefinition of common terms and ideas, and contorts possibly the most consistent theme in Scripture, painting a picture of a very unmerciful God.  The universalists, at the other extreme, have taken another small handful of verses and created a god that would negate all the emphasis on the importance of faith, another theme which is highly important to Scripture, because Universalism would tell us that ultimately it doesn’t matter if you demonstrated faith in this life or not — You will be saved, and with the Lord for all eternity.  It sounds good, but ultimately it raises more questions than it answers, and it’s overly hopeful, beyond what Scripture allows.

The answer is in the middle ground.  God is a righteous judge, and at the same time a Merciful Father.  His grace extends to all, but His salvation belongs only to those who accept the gift.  There are wonderful blessings awaiting those whose faith is in Him.  And there is judgment and death awaiting those who reject the moving and prompting of the Holy Spirit on their hearts and minds.

We all have our explanations of the verses that we use to forward our beliefs. But we can’t all be correct.  Of the traditional, conditional, and universalist takes on this matter of judgment, either none of us are correct, or one of us is correct.  At least two of us are wrong.  But if asking “Why do I believe what I believe?” is an important question, and it is, then the answer to that question being sound and solid is even more important.  And I don’t find the traditionalist or universalist defenses of their positions sound and solid.  Let’s rather ask, “Does why I believe what I believe make the most Scriptural sense, in light of all the evidence?”

In Raising Hell, Ferwerda recounts the story of a man named Kent whose family was murdered, but who felt strongly that God was telling him to forgive.[vi]  Ferwerda is using this as evidence that God wouldn’t ask us to do something that He doesn’t also do (forgive one that didn’t ask for forgiveness).  She seems to ignore that this prompting of God could more likely have been to demonstrate God’s love so that the murderer would come to faith in Him (because coming by faith to God happens to be of critical importance in this life, as Scripture makes clear), and she only sees it as something that proves her points.

Universalist proponents, and Julie Ferwerda is no exception, have a very one-sided way of viewing things. They see all people as “God’s children” when clearly the Bible states that we all begin as enemies of God, capable of being adopted as sons and daughters of the King through faith.  She however believes that we as parents, who love our children unconditionally, are the ultimate evidence that God will not destroy those who reject Him.  The way I’d view it, I can love a rebellious child all I want, but if they’ve left me and will not return, we don’t have a relationship…end of story.

And I can’t state fervently enough that the Bible makes it clear that we are counted as righteous, only by faith in God.  This is where the comparison between us as parents, and God as the “parent” of all people sort of breaks down.  We don’t require “faith” in us (at least not in any sense like God requires) to have a relationship with us.  We’re not “blood relatives” until we’ve put ourselves under the blood of Christ.  All people are not God’s children.

As earthly parents, we are a dim likeness of the heavenly father.  We just can’t metaphorically equate every aspect of our parenthood directly with God’s Fatherhood and come to the conclusion that because we are commanded to love our children, and all people for that matter, God will not ultimately reject those who reject Him.  It just doesn’t work.  And her theory that no loving parent would ever let their child go doesn’t match up with reality.

I wouldn’t be shocked to find out many universalists are “Calvinist rejects.”  Or it might be more correctly stated that they are those who for their soul’s sake, were forced to reject Calvinism.  Just a quick two-sentence reminder/summary of what I use the generalizing term “Calvinism” for, in case the reader missed or forgot what I wrote in Chapter 1 about the doctrine: Essentially, it’s the belief that we do not have free will, and that God predestined most of His human creation for eternal conscious punishment because He chose not to give them the ability to respond to the Holy Spirit.  It’s a sickening doctrine, and it took me into the depths of despair more than once before I dug into it and found the logical problems with it, and some great answers to it.  Prior to my research in that area, because scholarly, “respectable” people who write lots of “Christian” books are teaching such things, and because there are a couple of Bible passages that on the surface seem to support the concept, for a time there, I was feeling forced to accept it, and the unmerciful God that it creates was more than I could bear.

I’ve found many people on Calvinist forums who have felt the same way, but who have yet to reject it, and now that I’ve educated myself more about it, I’ve peppered them with questions that should bring their belief into serious question.  Generally, the response I get is “I’m gonna to get back to you on that.  I’ll write a lengthy explanation that…”  Well I’m still waiting for those responses.  Bottom line: Selective mercy isn’t merciful.  I’m just gonna say it.  And if I’m wrong, then I’ll answer to God for it one day.  But I’ll never fathom how some can believe God is merciful when they also believe that He brings us all into existence as sinners, none of us able to ask for life or existence, then sets a requirement of faith in Him for salvation from judgment for our sin, but only gives the ability to respond by faith to the relative few.  That’s quite monstrous to ask the impossible, and then when unavoidable failure happens, to then punish with the most detrimental of punishments — to suffer consciously, not for a billion years only, but for timeless eternity.

Thankfully, there are wonderful scriptural defenses against Calvinism, and other ways to comprehend its proof texts, and we only touched on a few of those back in Chapter 1.  But Ferwerda, it seems, was never able to get beyond some of the concepts that comprise the Calvinist doctrine.  She seems to scoff at those who believe we have free will to choose for or against God.  So in turn, she just dumps the “eternal” part of judgment, and in that way, finds a merciful God.

Ferwerda, in defending the idea that we have nothing to do with initiating our salvation goes to the exodus from Egypt, and God stating that He would bring them out.  She points out that they had absolutely nothing to do with this, and believes this is a picture of all of us having nothing to do with our “rescue.”[vii]  There’s some problems with this. First, the Bible states clearly in Exodus 3:7 that the people who had become enslaved in Egypt were crying out to God for deliverance.  So they were certainly seeing their need, and calling out to the only One who could do anything about it.

But secondly, although God brought them all out, most of them ultimately proved to be faithless, and perished in the desert.  And then, when you take in this last fact, you see that more likely this symbolizes what those of us who believe in free will would claim, which is that God of course makes the first move in deliverance.  None could be saved if first He had not offered Christ’ sacrifice to us, and secondly if He did not endow us all with a measure of faith to be able to believe in Him.  But then we can exercise this God-given faith toward God, or put our hope in other things such as our own “goodness” or the pursuit of the riches of this life, etc.  And the exodus and later results are a perfect picture of this.  God heard their cry and saw their need, and made the first saving move.  But He required faith and trust to enter into the Promised Land, and ultimately most forfeited it, just as Jesus stated of all mankind, that “many” would go down the broad road that leads to destruction, and that “few” would take the narrow path that leads to life.

Free Will

Ferwerda seems to mock those who believe in free will.  And her method is to imply those who think we have the free will to make a decision for the one true God, must also believe we have free will over every aspect of our lives.  Clearly we don’t.  There are multiple forces, good and evil, that are constantly infringing on our will – not to mention multiple places in Scripture that indicate that God steps in whenever He so chooses, to direct humanity.  And yes…he even hardens some people toward what would otherwise appear to be His will that they do or believe.  But we already noted that this only seems to happen in cases where the person or people group has already rejected Him.  But believing we have the free will to make a faith decision for or against the Lord, is different from believing that God is hands-off or that we have perfect control over all aspects of our lives.

God clearly uses those who are unrighteous for His purposes, just as He uses those who do believe, trust, and hope in Him for His purposes as well. But none of this convinces me in the least that He is not intentionally growing a family of faith, and that the members of this family become members by their own free will. I’m not denying obvious Scriptures that indicate that no one seeks after God in the natural and that it is only by divine intervention that anyone seeks after Him. But we do this with the faith that He has granted us. He draws all men. Some will respond and some won’t. It likewise doesn’t infringe on His sovereignty for us to have free will because He sovereignly determined to give us the ability to reject or accept Him. And by His omniscience, His foreknowledge of every single future human decision, He can, and does, play all of that into His own moves. And His purposes cannot be thwarted because His purpose is to save those who will by faith receive Him. If that’s one person, or one billion people, His purpose is fulfilled.

In Ferwerda’s version of Universalism, she seems to accept the Calvinistic position of Sovereign Election, but then rejects the idea that those not elected in this first life will actually be lost, rather seeing them needing further correction in the Lake of Fire which she believes is figurative for a purifying learning process.[viii]

As I’ve done in most every other chapter in this book, I’ve pulled much of the original material out for the sake of space.  There’s certainly much more that can be said in addressing the issues within Universalism.  But I hope this at least demonstrated some of the weaknesses of the universalist doctrine that all humanity will one day be saved. This idea is a serious hindrance to spreading the gospel of Christ, with an accompanying warning of potential judgment.

 

[i] Ferwerda, Raising Hell, 14

[ii] Ibid., p.30

[iii] Ibid., p.74

[iv] Ibid., p.35

[v] Ibid., p.28

[vi] Ibid., p.73

[vii] Ibid., p.208

[viii] Ibid., p.64

Copyright © 2018 by Scott McAliley

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without giving credit back to the original source.  If more than 500 words are reproduced, in any format, written permission from Crickets Publishing LLC is required.

“I remember the first time that my father told me, as a little boy, that someday I was going to die.  Somehow the thought had just never occurred to me.  But when he told me that, it filled me with terrible sadness and horror, and I just cried and cried and cried.”[i] – Dr. William Lane Craig, theologian and Christian apologist

This quote was from a man who was raised by non-believers, according to his testimony, so as a child, it was likely not the prospect of eternal Hell that grieved him so when his dad told him he was going to die.  More likely it was the thought of no longer existing.  Death is indeed horrible and sad, and I think a child’s perspective is most interesting, and probably the least tainted by multitudes of theories and ideas about the afterlife with which adults have been inundated.

I can relate to Dr. Craig’s experience.  I remember one day when I was young – I don’t know what age…maybe eight or nine, and I was staying at my grandmother’s house for the day during the Summer as I often did, and then we got the news that the next door neighbor had been killed earlier that morning when he was electrocuted while touching his back fence.  A power line had fallen on a fence a couple of houses over and there were a number of “hot” fences in the neighborhood.  I suppose I should have been most upset about the man who just lost his life, but I was a child, and I had only even seen him a few times, and didn’t actually know him at all.  And perhaps he wasn’t all that old, but to children, all grownups seem old.  In my mind, the elderly man next door who I didn’t know, and really couldn’t even picture, had died.  I did feel sad about the man, but if I’m honest, what upset and struck me most was that me and a couple of other boys had been playing right next to the same network of fences that were electrified, right at the same time the man was killed.  We literally came inches away from dying that day, and as I thought about it, I became extremely distraught.  I remember crying and crying at the thought that my life had almost ended that quickly and easily, and I finally persuaded my grandmother to let me call my mother at work so I could tell her about everything.

Unlike Dr. Craig, I was raised in a Christian home, but for whatever reason, I just don’t think I was paying attention in church for a number of years, and didn’t come to any substantial knowledge of Christ until my teen years, and I don’t consider myself to have been saved until into my 20s, although an experience with the Lord when I was 15 was highly impactful.  And when I got so upset that day, I wasn’t thinking that I may have gone to Hell, or that I should have been happy because I would have been in Heaven.  I was just thinking that I almost died.  My life, the only life that I could comprehend, my “eternal” life (as far as I was concerned) had almost ended.

Death is sad, and eternal death as a punishment is severe beyond measure.

Several years ago, early on in the writing of this book, I attended the funeral of a church friend’s mother.  I didn’t know her, yet I became saddened and emotional during the service.  By reading entries from her diaries and recounting conversations he had with her, the pastor gave us lots of reassurance that she was in fact saved.  And although I didn’t know her, I became sure of this as well – as sure as a person can be about another person.  But I was still sad – sad for the loss of her life — sad for those who knew and loved her.

It seems like God has designed us this way, even believers, such that even though we have a blessed hope, and can know that we will again see our loved ones who have put their faith in the Lord, we still feel the pain and sadness of death.  It serves a purpose.  The loss of this first life at the death of our flesh and the surrounding sadness is an object lesson to us of the much more grievous sadness that should be, and will be, felt for the ultimate death of a soul.  If we’re as sad as we are when a saved person dies, even a person that we don’t know well, or a person that we know we’ll see again, how much more grief should we have for those who will die ultimately and never be seen again?  And shouldn’t this inspire us to tell those who are headed for death about Christ?  Ezekiel 33 8-9 says:

“When I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die; if you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked one shall die in his iniquity; but I will require his blood at your hand. But, if you warn the wicked of his way, to turn from it; if he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your soul.” (LITV)

It’s an approaching death that we are to be warning people of, not eternal torment.  The Bible nowhere, Old or New Testament, tells us to warn of impending eternal torment for human souls, but we are required to rescue those who are perishing.  Death as a punishment is a dreaded and harsh one.  You wouldn’t know it to hear certain traditionalists speak of it.  Non-traditionalists like myself, who choose to believe the multitude of Bible verses that predict death as the final end of those without Christ, are often portrayed as trying to create a softer image of God and His wrath than what in reality exists.  But there’s nothing soft about a God who destroys and brings those who reject Him to nothing.

I’ll give you an idea of what I’m referring to.  I’ve heard similar statements in different forms from a number of traditionalists, but one that struck me during the writing of this book was when nationally known pastor Robert Jeffress said in a radio sermon:

“If unbelievers are simply destroyed, that takes a little bit of the sting out of Hell, doesn’t it? I mean, after all, if you’re not a Christian and you’re wrong, the worst that happens to you is, okay, you die, you cease to exist. It takes a little urgency out of sharing the gospel with your non-Christian friend or family member because after all, I mean, if they don’t accept Christ, they won’t be in heaven, but they won’t be in pain forever. They just simply cease to exist.”[ii]

Simply?  Ceasing to exist — the very loss of one’s soul and being is only a “simply”?  For Jeffress, a judgment of death for the wicked is just not severe enough.  Apparently he believes they need to be in conscious pain forever.  And he maintains that there is less urgency to share the gospel if a person’s end is only death.  With God’s most severe form of punishment being death throughout Scripture, and with the second death of the soul being the final judgment of those who reject God’s love, it’s hard to believe that a line of thinking like Jeffress’s isn’t offensive to God.  But Jeffress isn’t the only one.  There are many Bible teachers who state such things, all of whom I respect as it concerns their position on and their general promotion of the gospel, but whom I’m forced to disagree with on this issue.  Earlier in the same broadcast Jeffress stated that the doctrine of “Annihilationism simply says that an unbeliever doesn’t live forever.  After the great white throne judgment, he is cast into the Lake of Fire and he’s simply destroyed.”[iii]  Yes, that is exactly what the Bible appears to say.  There is no consciousness noted or predicted for humans after they’ve been cast into the Lake of Fire.

Also in the same broadcast, Jeffress said that the suffering which will take place in Hell defies description, but that the only way he “could possibly even describe it would be to say, it’s like having your flesh on fire forever and ever and ever.”  He can’t possibly know this since no one has come back from the Lake of Fire to report, and this is never predicted anywhere in Scripture, but Jeffress went on to say that God was too loving not to allow this kind of torment for all eternity.  Huh?  What a twisted teaching this has become in the Church.  I’m sure Robert Jeffress is a man who reveres God, as he understands Him.  But he, like many others, is not accepting the plain language of the Bible, and is instead helping to perpetuate misinformation that damages people’s understanding of who God really is.  God is a harsh judge, but not a twisted maniac who requires the everlasting feeling of being on fire for all eternity for those who failed to accept His grace.  Death is enough.  It will satisfy God’s wrath.

I recently found one author’s take on the loss of life particularly disturbing.  Dr. Clint Archer, who I’d never heard of, wrote a book entitled A Visitor’s Guide to Hell: A Manual for Temporary Entrants and Those who would prefer to avoid eternal damnation.  He implied that for the lost to experience annihilation would be blissful oblivion.[iv]  I couldn’t believe it.  Actually I could.  The entire book was filled with the same arguments that are always rehashed in these sorts of books, and in my opinion Archer offered nothing to the conversation.  And please know that I didn’t purchase it in order to criticize it; rather, I thought it might show me something I’d missed from the traditionalist position.  It didn’t.  It confirmed the non-traditional track I had been on for a number of years, and it was the last of six books I’ve purchased which attempted to prove tradition correct.  There won’t be a seventh.

May I state the obvious?  To experience bliss, one would first have to exist.  Is that fair enough?  If a lost soul is annihilated at final judgment, they won’t experience bliss, so the idea is complete nonsense.  But it also ignores that what precedes destruction and annihilation in the Lake of Fire is a conscious judgment that the lost will endure.  Where’s the bliss in that?  A faithless person who died rejecting Christ will one day stand judgment, and endure a mental torment that I can’t even imagine, as they realize that their very existence is about to end.  They’re living out their last seconds, knowing it’s all over.  It’s an absolute horror.  But for Archer …blissful oblivion.

Others have expressed similar feelings as Jeffress and Archer, regarding ceasing to exist being too light of a punishment, at least for some offenders, as if we were not all guilty before the Lord.

Sinclair Ferguson, another co-author of Hell Under Fire, seems to imply that only the reality of eternal Hell as traditionally understood would create the necessity of Christ’s crucifixion.[v]  It’s poor logic, unless there is simply no value to life itself.  Why would it require the reality of an eternal Hell to bring necessity to Christ’ sacrifice?  Death was the enemy to be conquered, according to many places in Scripture, and He accomplished that as His death now makes eternal life available for us.  The Lord is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9). He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). He did what He did so we could ultimately escape the eternal punishment of a death from which there is no return.  Ferguson is correct that it would be folly if His death on the cross was unnecessary. But His sacrifice was not made necessary because of eternal conscious suffering in Hell, but so death would be defeated (2 Timothy 1:10).

Hebrews 2:14-15 “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (ESV)

We can see from this verse that Christ took death upon Himself in order to defeat death, and the dread of impending death. And once again there is no mention that Christ saved souls from eternal suffering in Hell.  It seems strange and almost silly to have to write this chapter, essentially reminding us that death is bad, and that the ultimate death of a soul is the grimmest, most sorrowful fate.  But it becomes a necessary reminder when so many prominent Christians are claiming that the lost must be on fire for all eternity in order to bring value to what Christ did on the cross.  And this isn’t new.  This thinking has been handed down since some of the early church fathers.

And as it relates to Christ taking our punishment upon Himself on the cross, if the penalty for sin isn’t death, but rather endless torment for all eternity, then Christ in fact did not take our punishment upon himself, because He’s not still suffering nor will He for all eternity.  Now, traditionalists will come up with arguments such as, “Jesus is an infinite being, so even though His suffering was momentary, He was able to experience an eternity of suffering in those moments.”  Forgive my unprofessionalism, but that’s hogwash — just a feeble attempt at human reasoning to make sense out of something that can’t make sense.  The biblical concept of a day being like a thousand years with the Lord is a far cry from a few hours being like eternity.  If a lost human’s fate is to suffer consciously for all eternity, and if Jesus was to take our punishment for us, then the only substitute would have been for Him to literally suffer consciously for all eternity in the place of those who put their trust in His atoning sacrifice.  Fortunately for those of us who are looking forward to spending eternity with Jesus, death was the punishment He took on for us, and death is what He conquered, and eternal life with Him is what’s in front of us.

The Sanctity of Life

I realize that my having no abbreviations behind my name, and otherwise no formal credentials has probably given some readers cause to doubt if they’re finding reliable information in this book (although I hope I’m demonstrating that Scripture speaks for itself on this matter).  And I realize that not quoting many outside sources, as so many traditionalists do when addressing these topics may further give readers some apprehension.  Well now I’ll probably shred any remaining credibility I may have had when I quote a line from the 1990 film Joe Versus the Volcano, one of Tom Hanks’ lesser known movies.  It was a quirky, cartoonishly fantastic movie, that, aside from a couple of choice four-letter words, I really loved, and found to be profound in its general message.  I won’t try to give all of the background but some is necessary.

It’s the story of a man (played by Tom Hanks) who never felt well.  He had been in a boring dead-end job for a number of years, had forgotten to live life, and so was dying on the inside, and it was manifesting in physical symptoms.  During one of his many visits to the doctor, he’s told he has a rare, incurable disease and a very brief time to live.  Being a hypochondriac, he fails to get a second opinion, so believing he is at death’s door, when presented with an opportunity to be a hero, though it will cost him his life, he accepts the challenge.

On his way to his destination as he crossed the ocean on a yacht that was provided by his benefactor, a storm takes the vessel down, and only he and the young lady who was captaining the boat survive.  They were saved because of his over-sized waterproof luggage which they floated on for several days, her unconscious since the accident, and him neglecting his own needs and rationing the only bottle of water to her in capfuls periodically.  The profound moment for me comes when after several days of scorching sun, no food, and no water, and on his way to his own death through heroism, if his own terminal disease or starvation doesn’t get him first, he lifts his eyes one starry night and is struck by the beauty of an enormous moon coming up over the horizon, and speaks out with almost no strength, “Dear God, whose name I do not know, Thank you for my life.”  He pauses for a moment and then says slowly, “I forgot how big.”[vi]

And you may be wondering just exactly what my point is.  It’s that even this brief life, even when it is troubled, trying, discouraging, depressing, and sometimes just plain boring, is still a wonderful gift, and this man realized it as he was on the brink of losing it.  And not only that, but he was thankful for what he had, even though he believed it was almost over.  I’m sure this is the experience of many people near the end of their life.  Even when we’re not at the end of life, but are thinking back on the past, we get nostalgic and often see everything much sweeter in remembrance than we did while experiencing it.  Life is so much better than we realize it is while we are living it.  It’s always more attractive in retrospect.  Why is it that way?  Is it that we’re fools now for forgetting how difficult things really were in the past, or were we fools then for not appreciating every moment?  Maybe it’s a mix, but I tend to believe it’s often the latter, and I’m certainly guilty of this.  This life is a gift.  We should be joining Joe and constantly saying, “Dear God (and we do know His name if we trust Scripture), Thank You for my life.”  God didn’t have to create you or me, but He did.  That we exist at all is really quite amazing if we’ll ever just think about it.  God dreamed us up, knew every wrong thing we would ever do, created us anyway, and goes to extreme lengths to draw us to Himself so we will inherit a life that will never end.

This first life is a wonderful gift, even with its troubles.  But eternal life, and a tearless one at that, is then an infinitely more wonderful gift.  And yet, many traditionalists don’t see the eternal loss of life the unsaved face as even enough motivation for witnessing to those who are perishing.  But it’s obvious where this kind of thinking comes from.  If one has it ingrained in their mind all their life that the lost will suffer in literal fire for all eternity, then losing their being, an extreme loss, can actually seem like a non-punishment to some.  Can we see how Satan has so deluded us with the lie that “surely [we] won’t die”?

I wish I could say I go around with a positive attitude all the time, but that’s not always the case.  Life is full of problems for all of us, whether our problems are so-called “first world problems.” or if they’re more dire — whether you have poor people problems or wealthy people problems.  What I’ve noticed about problems is that they’re relative, and most people believe theirs are the worst — and for them, they are.  But Christians should be living in constant hope, no matter what difficulties we have.  Jesus said that we’d have trouble in this life, but to take heart because He overcame the world.  It’s much easier to write advice like this than to live it, but it’s so true.  If we’d just sit and reflect on the reality that we were nothingness, and now have the opportunity to live forever in painless bliss and awe of a God beyond comprehension…life is good — because regardless of our temporary trials, it’s leading somewhere good beyond compare if we persevere in faith.  Existence, our very being, is a miracle — a true gift.  If a person gets one day of conscious life, it’s a gift, and it’s one more day than we deserve by any merit of our own.

At the other end of the spectrum, but by the same token, there is nothing we can do or not do to merit an eternal existence in torment.  We’ve already covered it sufficiently, but contrary to what is commonly taught, our eternal existence is not a given.  It too is a gift, but unlike the gift of this first earthly life, it’s given only to those who place their trust in the one true living God; and for those of us who have heard the full New Testament gospel message, eternal death can only be avoided by accepting Jesus’s death as an atoning sacrifice that puts us in right standing with the Father.  There is certainly nothing one can do to earn eternal suffering.  There’s actually nothing one can do to “earn” eternal death either.  It is the natural course of all things living, including souls, to return to non-existence (death), if God does not intervene.  It’s the law of entropy.  And he only intervenes for those who respond to His calling.  Otherwise eternal death awaits, a return to the nothingness we were before God gave us this opportunity of life.

Nothingness is a horrible destiny in comparison to what’s available.  It won’t be “blissful oblivion.”  It won’t be anything.  You won’t be there for it.  One day you won’t exist if you resist the offer of salvation.  The insistence by some well-meaning Bible teachers that eternal death is not a serious enough consequence for rejecting God is a serious challenge the idea of the sanctity of life that we Christians claim to be the defenders of.  So it’s not only unbiblical to believe in eternal conscious torment, but it’s a logical fallacy and gross inconsistency when out of one side of our mouths we claim how valuable even this first life is, when arguing against, for instance, abortion, but out of the other side of our mouths say that eternal death and the loss of eternal life is virtually a non-punishment.  We need to take another look at our positions on these things and make sure we’re being biblical and consistent.

 

[i] I originally heard this quote on Ravi Zacharias’s Let My People Think program that was rebroadcast on OnePlace.com ca. 2007. As I remember, it was something said during a question and answer period that Dr. Craig and Ravi Zacharias participated in at a college.  I regret that I don’t have more accurate date information for this reference, but I stand by the accuracy of the quote itself.

[ii] Robert Jeffress Pathway to Victory radio program rebroadcast on OnePlace.com ca.2009 I regret that I don’t have more accurate date information, but I stand behind the accuracy of the quote.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Archer A Visitor’s Guide to Hell 42

[v] Ferguson Hell Under Fire 226

[vi] Joe Versus the Volcano 1990

Copyright © 2018 by Scott McAliley

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