Eternal Torment vs Annihilation

[Redeemed]

We cannot forget, eternal punishment is MORE than a warning, it is a promise from God. A character of God is this, He IS eternal. As far as I understand, due to scripture, He MAKES promises as PART of His character.

I agree completely ( with the whole post actually ) and that's pretty much exactly how I left in in that old thread.

[Redeemed]

The underlying premise of universalism is also supported in parts of the OT, but similarly the concept of resurrection, salvation, and the age to come hadn't really developed yet. Most of the OT has in mind a continuation of the world as they knew it, just better. Paul's seven letters (I follow the critical consensus that just seven are authentic, the others pseudonymous) teach universalism. The central thesis of Romans is a universalism through Jesus. Colossians and Ephesians are also pro-universalism.

You're so far off base you may as well be on another planet. The central thesis of Romans is a universalism through Jesus? No. It's about the grace of God and that salvation only comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
Both Jew and gentile can be saved, yes, but only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ ( being born again)

Paul wrote about the exact opposite of Universalism.

[RandyPNW]

Just to put my two cents in on the general subject, I believe that eternal fire refers to eternal removal from an earthly paradise, but not to being burned alive forever and ever. God would be the worst monster imaginable if He burned human flesh alive for all eternity. It would be bad enough if it was just for a single day. Can you imagine being on fire for 24 hours?

No, it is like saying I'm going to throw garbage into a burn pile. The burn pile removes the trash--it doesn't torture it. To throw trash into an eternal fire is to remove the trash forever.

This is what the lake of fire is. It isn't Hell, which is also burned up in the Lake of Fire. Hell is removed forever. What remains after being thrown into the fire is nothing. The person is completely removed from the earthly paradise and is removed elsewhere, in outer darkness. There will be a measure of torment in outer darkness, but not torture. If anything, it is self-inflicted torture, because it is the torment of having chosen to live apart from God and His People.

Jesus clearly said that in the eternal punishment some would be punished *lightly,* and others more *heavily.* This indicates that the afterlife for the damned is not a torture chamber. Rather, God has a place for these people, just as He has a place for the righteous on the New Earth. It's just that the unrighteous must be eternally separated from the righteous. They must go into outer darkness, where the lack of spiritual blessings feels like being in an arid place.

[journeyman]

The Bible's inconsistency here is one of the reasons I stopped trusting it.

I was being taught things that weren't consistent with other parts of scripture, so I stopped trusting the people teaching me. The Bible is consistent. Theologians aren't.

[agnostic]

You're so far off base you may as well be on another planet. The central thesis of Romans is a universalism through Jesus? No. It's about the grace of God and that salvation only comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

What we're saying is not mutually exclusive. Paul believed salvation only comes through faith in Jesus. And he believed that salvation would come to "all Israel" and "the fullness of the Gentiles", "so that God may be all in all".

[agnostic]

Just to put my two cents in on the general subject, I believe that eternal fire refers to eternal removal from an earthly paradise, but not to being burned alive forever and ever. God would be the worst monster imaginable if He burned human flesh alive for all eternity.

Yet, God burning people for eternity is exactly what some people at the time believed.

Isaiah 66 talks about corpses being burned in unquenchable fire, where the worm never dies. Judith 16 takes this and alters it to become eternal torment, so that "he will send fire and worms into their flesh, so they will weep in pain forever".

There is also 1 Enoch, which describes the perpetual torment of rebel angels. Of the leader of the rogue angels, God commands, "bind him feet and hands and throw him into the darkness". For these angel this is only what they suffer before the final day of judgment.

And Jesus uses the same wording from Judith 16, "thrown into Gehenna, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched". In one of his parables, Jesus recites the 1 Enoch quote about perpetual torment in darkness almost word-for-word, except he uses it to describe the punishment of the final judgment. When he talks of "eternal punishment" in "eternal fire" which was "prepared for the devil and his angels", he's pulling from 1 Enoch's idea of perpetual suffering.

Same with Jude, which quotes 1 Enoch directly in verses 14 and 15, but also describes 1 Enoch's idea of eternal suffering in verses 6 and 7, "the angels .... serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire". There's no room for reading this fire as a metaphor.

This is what the lake of fire is.

The Revelation's lake of fire takes phrases from Isaiah 34 and Jeremiah 25 and -- like Judith 16 -- alters it to become eternal torment. It is no longer the smoke of an empty wasteland that rises forever. It is now "the smoke of their torment" that "rises forever and ever", "tormented with fire and sulfur", and "they will have no rest day or night". It's reiterated with "the lake of fire and sulfur", where they are "tormented day and night forever and ever", "which is the second death".

These parts of the Bible teach eternal torment, but there is nothing in the text so ambiguous that readers can conclude eternal torment is what people "do it to themselves", or even that the fire is a metaphor. These are, in my opinion, absolutely disingenuous apologetics meant to soften what these books explicitly say: God is passing judgment, and he sentences people to "torment" with "no rest day or night" in "fire and sulfur" that lasts "forever and ever".

[RandyPNW]

Just to put my two cents in on the general subject, I believe that eternal fire refers to eternal removal from an earthly paradise, but not to being burned alive forever and ever. God would be the worst monster imaginable if He burned human flesh alive for all eternity.

Yet, God burning people for eternity is exactly what some people at the time believed.

Isaiah 66 talks about corpses being burned in unquenchable fire, where the worm never dies. Judith 16 takes this and alters it to become eternal torment, so that "he will send fire and worms into their flesh, so they will weep in pain forever".

I reject Judith 16. And Isa 66 is saying the same thing, I believe, that I said earlier. It speaks of eternal removal--not eternal torture. Fire can torture, and it can remove. I believe Isaiah is references the quality of fire that eternally removes.

There is also 1 Enoch, which describes the perpetual torment of rebel angels.

I reject 1 Enoch. A portion of it quotes an ancient prophecy of Enoch, which Jude also quotes. But I don't believe Jude is confirming the authenticity of 1 Enoch as a book.

And Jesus uses the same wording from Judith 16, "thrown into Gehenna, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched".

Jesus more likely referenced Isa 66.24's view of this "worm." And Judith 16 may have had similar implications, although I reject Judith as non-canonical.

In one of his parables, Jesus recites the 1 Enoch quote about perpetual torment in darkness almost word-for-word, except he uses it to describe the punishment of the final judgment. When he talks of "eternal punishment" in "eternal fire" which was "prepared for the devil and his angels", he's pulling from 1 Enoch's idea of perpetual suffering.

1 Enoch may have quoted, word for word, material  which Jesus saw from a different point of view. I don't believe Jesus ever indicated that the eternal fire represented the burning of flesh, or eternal torture. It brought torment and misery only because these angels and men were to be excluded from paradise--not because their bodies would be on fire for all eternity.

Jesus never said that. He could've said that, but didn't. If he quoted popular works of the time, he never interpreted this "fire" to be physical torture.

Same with Jude, which quotes 1 Enoch directly in verses 14 and 15, but also describes 1 Enoch's idea of eternal suffering in verses 6 and 7, "the angels .... serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire". There's no room for reading this fire as a metaphor.

You have to read this "fire" as a metaphor because angels don't have physical bodies like humans that die and suffer physical torment. Their torment is spiritual, the deprivation of God's spiritual ecstasies., or the loss of joy, bringing a kind of remorse and resignation.

This is what the lake of fire is.

The Revelation's lake of fire takes phrases from Isaiah 34 and Jeremiah 25 and -- like Judith 16 -- alters it to become eternal torment. It is no longer the smoke of an empty wasteland that rises forever. It is now "the smoke of their torment" that "rises forever and ever", "tormented with fire and sulfur", and "they will have no rest day or night". It's reiterated with "the lake of fire and sulfur", where they are "tormented day and night forever and ever", "which is the second death".

The image of an eternally-rising smoke indicates a city that has been forever destroyed--nothing about eternal torture.

These parts of the Bible teach eternal torment, but there is nothing in the text so ambiguous that readers can conclude eternal torment is what people "do it to themselves", or even that the fire is a metaphor. These are, in my opinion, absolutely disingenuous apologetics meant to soften what these books explicitly say: God is passing judgment, and he sentences people to "torment" with "no rest day or night" in "fire and sulfur" that lasts "forever and ever".

Suit yourself. I completely disagree. Jesus *never* called the Lake of Fire a "torture chamber." He said Hell will itself be thrown into the Lake of Fire. And you say this isn't a metaphor? A "place" is burned?

No, Jesus identified the Lake of Fire as a means of *removal* from God's paradise, from His promised Eden. He identified the eternal punishment not as a literal burning fire, but rather, as a separation from God and from His people, as Outer Darkness, as an arid condition, as torment, in the sense of a hopeless resignation or remorse.

Even more damning to your position is the fact Jesus described some eternal punishment as the equivalent of "few stripes," as opposed to some who will suffer "many stripes." Jesus never equated stripes with eternal torture. You're quite wrong, and want to make the Scriptures into something so extreme your conscience will allow you to reject it. I would take it deadly serious, however. Just my opinion.

[journeyman]

He said Hell will itself be thrown into the Lake of Fire. And you say this isn't a metaphor? A "place" is burned?

No, Jesus identified the Lake of Fire as a means of *removal* from God's paradise, from His promised Eden.

Death and hell (the grave) were defeated by our Lord when he rose from the dead.

For our God is a consuming fire. Heb.12:29

A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about. Psa.97:3

His enemies and the enemies of his people (death and the grave) are destroyed by his presence. Peter describes the return of Christ as a lake of fire, consuming all evil.

the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 2Pet.3:10

[Slug1]

When we stand before God, we are after the duration of one's life. Due to this fact, eternal punishment cannot refer to interpretation of the latter.

The duration of ones life includes judgement day.

Are you implying mankind stands in their flesh?

Both the righteous and the unrighteous lives have ended and before God, all are in their eternal resurrected forms (Acts 24:15) and once in our eternal form, some (the righteous) experience eternity with God and some (the unrighteous) experience eternity apart from God.

The resurrected form of the unsaved is corruptible, which will be completely consumed by the fire of Christ,
the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming 2Tim.2:8

Typo, the verse is 2 Thess 2:8... but this verse is about the person who is the anti-christ, which is a person in the future who will rule the earth before Christ's return. The verse is specific to that single person... not mankind.

Acts 24:15 says nothing about the ungodly existing beyond exposure by the Truth.

The scripture illuminates the truth that all of mankind is resurrected, if they have died prior to Jesus' return. Then when you apply the context of what happens to the unrighteous, then we understand their separation from God, is everlasting.

[Redeemed]

What we're saying is not mutually exclusive. Paul believed salvation only comes through faith in Jesus. And he believed that salvation would come to "all Israel" and "the fullness of the Gentiles", "so that God may be all in all".

That's not what he said at all. Those who believe and are born again become one church under Christ so there then there is no longer Jew or gentile among them.
Universalism says that all will eventually be saved no matter if they believed in God and lived righteously or if they were cannibalistic Satin worshipers.

[Slug1]

This just popped up in a feed I have....

[RandyPNW]

He said Hell will itself be thrown into the Lake of Fire. And you say this isn't a metaphor? A "place" is burned?

No, Jesus identified the Lake of Fire as a means of *removal* from God's paradise, from His promised Eden.

Death and hell (the grave) were defeated by our Lord when he rose from the dead.

For our God is a consuming fire. Heb.12:29

A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about. Psa.97:3

His enemies and the enemies of his people (death and the grave) are destroyed by his presence. Peter describes the return of Christ as a lake of fire, consuming all evil.

the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 2Pet.3:10

I'm not a supporter of Annihilationism. But for all intents and purposes, from our perspective, they will all be gone forever--out of sight, and out of mind. Thanks!

[agnostic]

I reject 1 Enoch. A portion of it quotes an ancient prophecy of Enoch, which Jude also quotes. But I don't believe Jude is confirming the authenticity of 1 Enoch as a book.

To say there's actually a whole other prophecy from Enoch without any evidence, is really just inventing "evidence" from thin air simply because you need it to exist. When the only evidence we have for this prophecy from Enoch is the book of 1 Enoch, and Jude quotes it, he's using that book. Actually, Jude uses 1 Enoch throughout his entire epistle. That is the simplest explanation of what's happening.

Jesus more likely referenced Isa 66.24's view of this "worm." And Judith 16 may have had similar implications, although I reject Judith as non-canonical.

Whether Judith is canonical or not is completely irrelevant. The point is that both Judith 16 and Jesus change the wording in Isaiah 66 to become neverending torment. They both remove the mention of corpses outside of Jerusalem, and they both add details to stress this is punishment in the afterlife.

1 Enoch may have quoted, word for word, material  which Jesus saw from a different point of view.

I'm sure you've heard of Occam's Razor, but do you know what the principle actually is? It's not just "the simplest view is the right one". It's that without evidence we should not multiply entities unnecessarily. 1 Enoch was written centuries before Jesus was alive, so when Jesus quotes something almost word-for-word that is found in 1 Enoch, in a similar but heightened context, then he is quoting 1 Enoch. We don't get to make up the existence of an otherwise unknown "material" that had the exact same content as 1 Enoch but wasn't 1 Enoch.

If he quoted popular works of the time, he never interpreted this "fire" to be physical torture.

This sounds like when the kid in math class says "You never said we couldn't use a calculator" when caught using one during a test. There is nothing which justifies interpreting the fire mentioned by Jesus as anything other than literal fire, especially when we know from so much of the literature of the time that everyone understood the fire literally.

You have to read this "fire" as a metaphor because angels don't have physical bodies

According to... what?

The Bible shows angels have bodies. And, like in most everything else, we have a lot of ancient Jewish literature showing people understood this literally.

The image of an eternally-rising smoke indicates a city that has been forever destroyed--nothing about eternal torture.

Revelation 14 and 20 say nothing about a city being destroyed forever. If the author wanted to communicate eternal torment with his readers, he could not say it any clearer than he already did: individual followers of the beast suffering "torment" in "fire and sulfur" "forever and ever" "day and night" "without rest".

Jesus *never* called the Lake of Fire a "torture chamber."

Okay, but so what? Jesus never mentions the "trinity". That doesn't stop people from finding the concept in the Bible.

He identified the eternal punishment not as a literal burning fire, but rather, as a separation from God and from His people

Revelation 14 says the "torment" which individual followers of the beast suffer "day and night" "forever and ever" takes place "in the presence of the Lamb". How is that a separation?

Even more damning to your position is the fact Jesus described some eternal punishment as the equivalent of "few stripes," as opposed to some who will suffer "many stripes."

At worst, this would mean Jesus taught the severity of suffering in the eternal fire varied from person to person. At best, it's not about eternal punishment at all, but something else entirely (chastisement of the saved, or perhaps nothing to do with the final judgment at all).

The notion that the fire is an elaborate metaphor, regardless of speaker or context, is a later invention by people uncomfortable with the idea of burning people alive. But it came from a culture where one of their Law commands burning people alive for this or that sin. They did not share your or my modern disgust with the idea of people burning in fire.

[agnostic]

What we're saying is not mutually exclusive. Paul believed salvation only comes through faith in Jesus. And he believed that salvation would come to "all Israel" and "the fullness of the Gentiles", "so that God may be all in all".

That's not what he said at all.

It's... word for word what he says.

In Romans 9

As it is written, ‘I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.’ What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’

A lot of Christians -- most commonly Calvinists -- think this is the clencher, that Paul taught there were people who would be condemned, no one had a right to challenge God, because he gets to choose who he will have mercy on. "Vessels of wrath" and all that.

It's the first half of an inclusio. The end of it is in Romans 11

So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!

He starts to turn the idea around. It might seem like the people of Israel became "vessels of wrath", doomed to condemnation, but in reality it is part of God's plan for "reconciliation of the world".

And just in case people object to this universalist message Paul is heading toward, he calls his readers out

So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved .... Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy.

There's that idea of God's "mercy" again, he's coming up to the other side of the inclusio

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

He starts his argument by saying God has the right to be merciful to whoever he wants. There are apparent "vessels of wrath", whose purpose is to provoke the salvation of others. It appears the people of Israel have become such "vessels of wrath", in order to provoke the salvation of Gentiles... but, the end result is that God will save "the full number of the Gentiles", and then in turn "all Israel will be saved". What, you resent the idea that God would save everyone through Jesus? Tough! God will be "merciful to all", so that "from him and through him and to him are all things".

Like you said, Paul taught salvation is contingent on Jesus. He does say "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord", you'll be saved. He also said that "every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord".

Paul expected all people to be saved through Jesus in the end.

[journeyman]

Are you implying mankind stands in their flesh?

The unsved will. Paul says of believers,

the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1Cor.15:52

The dead unbelievers won't be raised incorruptible and unbelievers living at that time won't be changed.

Typo, the verse is 2 Thess 2:8... but this verse is about the person who is the anti-christ, which is a person in the future who will rule the earth before Christ's return. The verse is specific to that single person... not mankind.

It doesn't matter what unsaved human he refers to, since they all have the same end. Look at what Paul is saying in 2Thes, compare it with Rev.19 where antichrist is cast alive into the lake of fire and ask yourself, "How is this person destroyed by the presence of Christ in one passage, but thrown into the lake of fire in the other passage???" The answer is, the presence of Christ is a consuming lake of fire to the ungodly.

The scripture illuminates the truth that all of mankind is resurrected, if they have died prior to Jesus' return. Then when you apply the context of what happens to the unrighteous, then we understand their separation from God, is everlasting.

After standing naked and having all their sins exposed before Christ, nonexistence will be eternal separation from God.
[/quote]