Ep. 385 - Is Hell Eternal?

Hell is one of the most avoided yet essential doctrines in Christianity, and misunderstanding it changes both the gospel and the character of God. Ray, E.Z., and Mark, joined by Denny Burk, address the reality of eternal judgment and explain why downplaying hell reduces sin and distorts God’s holiness. The guys clarify that in a relativistic culture, people resist consequences, often reinterpreting hell as less severe or nonexistent. Scripture presents a sobering reality meant to reveal both the seriousness of sin and the greatness of salvation. What believers think about hell influences how urgently they live and share the gospel.

The guys and Denny define eternal conscious torment and contrast it with annihilationism, which teaches that the wicked eventually cease to exist. The discussion emphasizes that this is not a minor disagreement because it touches on the nature of God’s justice and holiness. The guys stress that many reshape this doctrine based on emotional discomfort rather than biblical authority. Scripture must define both judgment and God’s character. A low view of hell often reflects a low view of sin and a diminished understanding of who God is.

The conversation shifts to biblical language describing hell. The guys explain that terms like "destruction" and "perishing" refer to ruin rather than extinction. Jesus often spoke of hell using imagery of fire, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, highlighting its severity. Fire symbolizes God’s judgment and presence, not just physical suffering. Misunderstanding these terms leads to distorted theology, but careful study reveals a consistent message. Hell is terrifying because it reflects God's righteous judgment against sin.

The guys also discuss human mortality and divine justice. God alone has life in Himself, yet grants continued existence to all people. Every person will be raised to face judgment. The seriousness of sin is measured by the One it is committed against, and because God is infinitely holy, sin has eternal consequences. The guys emphasize that downplaying sin leads to rejecting eternal punishment. Understanding God’s holiness helps explain why judgment is just.

Finally, the guys turn to the urgency of the gospel. God’s victory over evil is demonstrated through His righteous judgment, not its absence. This truth should inspire urgency, compassion, and bold evangelism. The doctrine of hell encourages love for the lost and gratitude for salvation. The guys urge listeners to repentance and faith, reminding them that the gospel is the only escape from judgment and the only route to eternal life.

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Learn more about the hosts of this podcast.
Ray Comfort
Emeal (“E.Z.”) Zwayne
Mark Spence
Oscar Navarro

Transcript

Why Hell Debates Are Surging

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I wanted to come in here and talk about the Bible, right? Because the Annihilationists, the ones that are the most popular today, they're trying to stake out the biblical high ground. They're the ones that are reading the Bible the most carefully. Everybody else is sort of a benighted view of scripture. That's actually not the case. There's another side to this. The majority report in the Christian church is eternal conscious torment. But at the end of the day, our our our consciences are captive to the truth. It's not even to the fact that the church has always held to this. Now, I think it's that's a weighty concern because that means that Christians over the ages have been reading the Bible in a certain way. To me, that's a weighty concern. Okay. But it's at the end of the day, the the ultimate authority is scripture itself. And uh that's what we have to go with.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

In case you haven't noticed, gentlemen, there's been a lot more fuss about the subject of hell lately than usual. And when I say gentlemen, of course, I'm speaking about my fellow co-hosts, Ray Comfort, Mark Spence, and our special guests, guest, Denny Burke, today, who's a lot more gentlemanly than Mark and Ray. True, though. But we'll get into that later. Uh, Denny, I'll formally introduce you in a bit, but you're from Louisville. Let's just say that for now. Low. Louisville. Is that how you say Louisville? Louisville is Louisville is the Louisville. I'm an Arab man. Nobody gets it. Yeah. Louisville, Kentucky. You were saying that earlier, Mark Louisville.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

No, it was like talking to uh Owen Strawn. I said, look, you everybody pronounces your name correctly except for you. It's Owen Stracken. He says Strawn.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, he's got to get it right. Yeah. It's Stran.

SPEAKER_05 1:48

Whatever. See, even you get it wrong. You and Owen together.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

That's right. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, I'll I'll introduce you formally in a moment. But guys, look, our objective today is to deal with and clarify uh the biblical doctrine of eternal conscious torment or punishment, some would prefer to say. And we want to answer the main objections uh that deal with this, uh especially the main objections that are raised by those who hold to the view known as conditionalism or annihilationism. And um, you know, Ray and Mark, this subject is is extremely, extremely important. Um and I would say today in in this relativistic society that we live in, uh it's all the more important because things are treated so casually and we we can easily default to hey, some of these things are secondary issues that we often deal with on the podcast or uh in our videos, but uh there are consequences to ideas and thoughts and theologies. And so I I'll start with the two of you just to kind of hit uh on the point for us why this is important.

SPEAKER_05 2:56

Well, I think listen, I th this topic it magnifies the gospel and it demonstrates what we're saved from, right? That there is a holy reverence attached to this topic. And I think that when we begin to downplay hell and what hell actually is, it creates a uh a strange, a um a downward spiral when it comes to the holiness of God. Uh it downplays our sin, quite frankly, right? When we begin to say, you know, Christ saved me from what? Darkness? You know, Christ saved me. What did he save you from? I mean, where is the consequences attached to what we have done and what we've become? All right, our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. We start talking about total depravity, and we we don't recognize just how depraved we actually are and what we are deserving of. So when we start talking about what hell actually is, that it's not just separation from God, it's not just a quiet room where you can think through what you've gone through. It's not just a place of annihilationism. No, you will be tormented for what you've done. And the example that we tend to talk about a lot, right? Is if I lie to my dog, what can my dog do to me? Well, nothing. If I lie to my wife, I'm sleeping on the couch. I lie to a judge, I'm going to prison. Uh, I lie to God, Revelation 21 says, all liars will have their part in the lake of fire, which is the second death. So when we start talking about the gravity of sin, and we think, well, it's not that big of a deal, that's what we begin to, that's where you have to go. If you begin to think that annihilationism is true and accurate, well, then you're gonna say that God doesn't really care that much about holiness. God really doesn't care that much about what you have done. You'll just kind of cease to exist. Notice back to our example that if I lie to my dog, nothing happens to me, but it's who it is against. And we begin to downplay who God is when we say, I'm just going to cease to exist. If I open up a newspaper, the USA Today, and I see that the headline says, Man has to pay a$15 fine. And I have no idea what he did, I can safely come to the conclusion that whatever he did, well, it wasn't very heinous. It actually wasn't that big of a deal. A$15 fine, listen, write to me, I'll pay your$15 fine.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:26

But if we turn the page and we see that somebody has to pay 17 consecutive life sentences, along with$100 million attached to it, and we have no idea what he did, we can safely conclude that whatever he did was extremely heinous.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:42

It's not necessarily what we've done, it's who we've done it against. Because our sin will always primarily be vertical before it will ever be horizontal. I lie to you, easy. We're gonna have a disagreement. We're gonna go get a cup of coffee, we'll hash it out. I might even get fired, right? But we'll we'll work these things out. I lie to God. God is infinitely holy, he doesn't know how to lie. All liars will have their part in the lake of fire. Uh lie, lying has separated us from him who is truth. Uh, Gene Wilder said, if you're not gonna tell me the truth, well then don't even talk to me. Right? If man sees this as being extremely dangerous and abhorrent, how much more God? This is why this subject is so serious to me, and we need to get it right.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

How do you really feel, Mark? I I can't tell you how I feel. Ray. If hell didn't exist, neither would this ministry. Oh I would have, as a new Christian, after some time, moved my family to a warmer climate, Australia, and laid on the beach for the rest of my life. But when I read the words of Jesus where he spoke of eternal punishment, that horrified me. And I said with the psalmist, horror has taken hold of me because of the wicked who forsake your law. Um This sounds like a small thing, but it's not because it reflects something more serious. I've had respectful arguments for years with my editors because they won't give hell a capital in my books. And I say, Hell's a place. I say, no, it's you you don't give hell a cat. Well, we do with Dallas and New York because they're place names. And I think that reveals an underlying problem with the church. We really don't believe in hell, because if we did, we'd be running the streets mad with rage that sinners are heading for hell. Uh but we don't. We see the church as complacent. Um and hell is what drives my urgency. Uh let me share an analogy. If we talk about the eternal nature of hell as opposed to the temporal nature, and we don't reflect in our lives, we're like a group of firefighters who are sitting in front of a big window talking about saving people from fire and watching a building burn with people in it. It should be reflected. Um, I tell you what haunts me, Jude 22, 23. And others having compassion, making a difference, others save with fear, pulling them from the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. I received a uh uh uh an email years ago from uh an atheist. He said, if you really believed in hell, you'd be running the streets mad with rage, pleading with people to get right with God. And I said, That's what I do. And it should be reflected, what we believe should be reflected on how we live our lives. And it's not with so many. Statistics show us that something like 60% of the church doesn't even share the gospel, let alone warn sinners of hell.

SPEAKER_05 8:35

Yeah, and you think about it, right? If you don't get right with God, well then you're gonna cease to exist and you just won't be with God forever. Well, that sounds like heaven.

Why Hell Shapes The Gospel

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah. Well, Denny, we're we're so excited to have you with us, brother. So, so looking forward to dealing with this. And let me just say this: you know, a lot of people are apprehensive to deal with this subject. I say any subject that God reveals to us in his word that he himself finds important, we should be thrilled about. And and and I hear a lot of people say, you know, I I hate the doctrine of hell. It, you know, it's terrible, terrible. I I can relate to that in a sense, but in another sense, look, anything that that God reveals is real and that ultimately results in his glory, in a way, we should delight in as God's people. And so we're happy to have you with us. As I said, I'll formally introduce you. You are the professor of biblical studies at Boyce College, associate pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church, and president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. And the big reason why you're here today with us is because you're also the contributor to a book titled Four Views on Hell, for those of you watching, which is, man, you really good. Loved your portion uh in this. Yeah, you got four, four other theologians that are here, a part of it. And uh, man, we're just blessed to have you. So jump on in. Why is this important? And um, and then we'll we'll do the breakdown and go from there.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Well, you know, the Lord Jesus said, don't fear those who can kill the body only, but fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. I mean, King Jesus is telling us we are supposed to fear the one who can destroy sinners in hell. Like that is the appropriate response. And if you don't understand what hell is, you're not gonna understand what he's warning about there. He is calling people to fear the greatness of God because the God that we are we've sinned against cannot be trifled with.

SPEAKER_04 10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Like the the the stakes cannot be any higher, which means the gospel can't be any greater because it, you know, the gospel is the good news of salvation for sinners, you know, and God has made a way for us to be reconciled to him. But the Lord Jesus Himself, you everybody knows this, or I hope everybody knows this, but the person who talks about hell the most in scripture is Jesus. He is the one who invokes it all the time. And he he invokes it when he's talking about, say, lust. Um, you've heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I say, whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her with her in his heart. So if your eye, right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. For it could because it's better than for a part of your body to be destroyed than for your whole body to go into hell. You know, and so and so Jesus would speak like this when he was pressing the claims of the truth upon upon sinners. And so if we're gonna have a biblical perspective, we've got to have a perspective on hell that corresponds to what God's word says.

SPEAKER_05 11:31

Yeah, you know, can I also say, guys, that this subject makes me upset? Right? We we are not agreeing to disagree concerning the modes of baptism. Right. How do you want to run your church? Let's talk about ecclesiology. This is not that. Now I'm not saying that we need to grab hold of a conditionalist and have nothing to do with them. I'm just simply saying that this is a lot different than the other theologies that are out there, the the other doctrines rather that are out there. This single doctrine makes me upset when I hear that somebody adheres to it. Because through the reading of a a casual book, perhaps, you know, you think of like Fudge's book, when you when you read that and you begin to think, oh, okay, I I guess he makes a lot of sense. There are repercussions attached to this doctrine that I undoubtedly we're going to get into, but I just want to say from the outset that this one actually makes me really upset that there's a line drawn inside the sand. And you know, I we all understand, right? Wes Huff describing how this is not a point of of heresy, but man, everything within my heart wants to say that it is. Right. So we'll we'll get into that. But I'm I'm just I get angry with this topic. I don't know about you guys.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

So well, I think it's important to triage it. So I don't know if we're gonna talk about that or not.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

We definitely want to do that. And and again, you know, like like I said earlier, we we uh identify it as a secondary issue. Um, but it it does, like Mark is saying, carry with it some heavy weight. And and I want to say obviously we want to be gracious with our brethren, like Mark mentioned. We we want to have charity toward one another as believers, and I believe we can do that, but at the same time highlight, like, like, look, this is important. We can't be casual and light about this. So maybe you can get into, first of all, what does it mean that it's secondary and and why why does it bear great importance in that regard?

Theological Triage For Secondary Doctrines

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Yeah. So, you know, what we're gonna talk about today is the traditional doctrine of hell, which is called eternal conscious torment versus annihilationism. And so the differences there are widely regarded as secondary issues. But I think people make a mistake, mistake here because they think that secondary equals unimportant. Right. Okay, that's not what we mean by that. So what when you're thinking about doctrinal triage, uh, and this is something that Albert Moeller came up with about 21 years ago in a really famous article called Theological Triage. But basically, what we're talking about here is there's primary issues, secondary issues, and then tertiary issues. Your primary issues are theological doctrines about which, if there's a disagreement, it's a difference between whether or not a person's a Christian. So if somebody comes in and says they don't believe in the Trinity, well, you've just made a rejection that puts you outside of the Christian faith. If you say that you reject the substitutionary atonement of Jesus for sinners, you're outside of the camp, you're in a different religion. That's a primary issue, okay? And these um are heretical issues. A secondary issue is not what divides Christian from non-Christian, but it divides Christian from Christian in terms of who can do church together, uh, typically, or like a denomination together. We would we would typically put things like baptism in that category, right? So um I don't know what you guys all are here. I'm a Baptist, um, but I have many Presbyterian friends. And um they're wrong about baptism, okay? Amen, brother. They're they they don't have it right. Um but I'm so happy they believe the gospel. In other words, they affirm the essentials that are necessary for salvation, and they affirm biblical authority. They have so we have so many other things in common. Now, are we able to do church together? No. Um we can't do church together, but there's a lot of things we can do together, right? Um we can sit around a table like this and have a conversation about the gospel and about theology. There's a lot of things we can do together that are useful for the kingdom.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

And Denny, real quick, when you say can't do church together, you're meaning we can't serve in leadership together, sir. Doesn't mean we can't worship the Lord together.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Yeah, so I visit a PCA church. Yeah, you know, um I I had, you know, I don't think she'd mind me saying this. So Rosaria Butterfield fit visited our church not long ago, right? We have we have differences over over baptism, okay? Um so we can worship here and there together, but I'm talking about um like long-term membership, right? These kinds of things that the these issues that keep you from being able to, you know, sign up for the same church, be members together. Um and then your tertiary issues are those issues that Christians may have disagreements over, but they really shouldn't divide you for at any level. In other words, you you can you know have friendly disagreements about it, but you're not gonna divide your church over it. And so now the you know, the the devil's in the details here because uh you know which issues belong in which category, but I think most of us could recognize that you know maybe certain views of how the end times are gonna play out, depending on what church you're in, that could be a th a tertiary issue. Uh a certain interpretation, uh a particular interpretation of a certain scripture, okay, that could uh you know end up being a kind of a tertiary issue. You don't want to to divide over it. You know, in in my church, we have differences of opinion over who can who can be deacon, okay? We're not dividing over that uh with within our church. So you got primary, you got secondary, you got tertiary. Now, the mistake that people make on this is that they say, well, if it's a secondary issue or tertius tertiary issue, that means it's not important. Every issue that's in the Bible is important.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

Yeah.

Eternal Conscious Torment Versus Annihilationism

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Okay. Now, the consequences of disagreement over it may be different based on what it is, but every issue in the Bible is important. And the further you go up that hierarchy, the more significant it is. And so when you come to say a secondary issue, um, it's a big deal if believers can't get it together enough to do church together. You know, I think that's that's a big deal. And the and the fact that, you know, I've we've we've had um a guy who was we were considering for elder once at our church. Um I'm one of the pastors at our church, and you know, he disagreed with us on baptism. Like he couldn't be an elder, he eventually you know left let left the church. That was grievous to us. That wasn't a happy thing. You know, I would rather us have have unity on that thing. And so a secondary issue is is a big deal. And and I I don't know if you want to go into this now, but when when it comes to the doctrines of an I the doctrine of hell uh and it's the difference between hell and annihilationism, most people put that at kind of a secondary issue. Now, the doctrine of hell in general, you can't put it as a secondary issue because if you put it versus universalism, now we're out of secondary and we're more at at a primary place, okay? Uh but when it comes to annihilationism, an annihilate- we should define our terms here. We haven't done that yet. Yeah. Um Let's do that. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

So let's go ahead and do that.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah. So when we think about like eternal conscious torment has been the overwhelming majority teaching of the Christian church throughout all of history, its you know, entire 2,000-year history. And it's the teaching that sinners who die in a state of unrepentance are going to enter into eventually a state of eternal conscious torment. Meaning it's going to be a place where they perish forever, and it's going to be an unending destruction being inflicted by God Himself. And so you're under the wrath of God forever and it's unrelenting. Okay, that's eternal conscious torment, and it's taught, uh, we believe in many different scriptures. Annihilationism is a teaching that had a sprinkling of adherence throughout church history, but it's been a vast minority report. Um, but it kind of made a little bit of a comeback in Western evangelicalism in the latter part of the 20th century. And annihilationism holds that actually there is no eternal conscious torment, that there is a terminal punishment. Eventually, punishment ends because the person who's being punishment ends, they go out of existence. So they do acknowledge.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

They acknowledge some degree of punishment, some annihilationists.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Yes. And I think they're variable on this, depending on who you're talking to. Yeah. I think some of them would say, you know, once a person dies, that begins the deterioration. Some people would say no, they're resurrected again, and then there's a uh an eventual uh annihilation of their their being. Which would be the the number one position. That'd be the number one probably probably position. But um so so yeah, so but eventually the person goes out of existence. And so the they would they would argue that the punishment is eternal because the consequences of annihilation are eternal. You're out of existence forever. But the but so they would argue punishment's eternal, but the torment is not eternal, right? The the conscious torment is not eternal, and that's that's the key difference because when you go out of existence, you're no longer conscious, you're no longer anything, right? You're you're you're you're not there. And so they would argue that you know it it eventually ends. And and they they go to different texts for this. We'll talk about the text here in a minute, but they'll take all the texts in scripture that talk about destruction, death, those are all pointing to an ending point to a person's existence. And uh, and so that that's where that is. And so a lot of people will put the differences between annihilationism, defined as such, and uh ECT, eternal conscious torment, in the secondary category. Um just I'm gonna lay my cards out here where where I am on this. I I do agree with that. I do believe it's a secondary category, but but I also think it's a secondary category that potentially implicates more important things. And so it I it's for me, it it can kind of stake out this little middle position between secondary and primary if if that's possible. Yeah, and the reason is because it implicates your doctrine of God. Um, there are many people. So when in this book that I you know contributed to, um, if you read the Annihilationist in there, John Stackhouse, he thinks that my view of God is sadistic. That's what he says. He says your view of God is sadistic. And so now we're talking about our we're talking about theology proper now. You've just said what you think, what kind of God you think he is, and he wouldn't do this. Okay. So that's what makes it a little bit different than baptism. Okay. Differences over baptism may divide believer from believer in terms of who you do church with. But now when we start talking about the doctrine of God, we're getting at very central things. And so it's not the thing itself, but it's what it implicates.

SPEAKER_05 22:23

And you know what? There's a there's a blasphemous tone attached to that as well, right? Like I've heard somebody say, if if the God of Calvinism exists, he is an evil, misogynistic. And he goes, you know, the whole thing that documents would go through, and you're like, well, well, careful, right? I'm not telling you what side I'm falling on, but I'm just saying you need to be very careful when you begin to put God into a camp that if he falls like this, well, then he's an evil tyrant.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Well, I I mean for me, the big deal is when people start talking about God in ways that dictate the way that he ought to behave. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

Yeah right.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

And so we all have a tendency to do this, but we all need to have a little bit of a governor on our conscience, right? That we don't start dictating to God the way he ought to behave. We have to re- we have to believe what he's revealed to us about who he is. Sometimes we receive that willingly, but sometimes it grates us the wrong way. And we can't respond when it grates us with, well, he just can't be that way. And I'm gonna make him into my own image until I like the way that he is. Right. Who are you, oh man? You don't dictate who God is. He is who he is. And we either reconcile ourselves to that or we get incinerated in judgment. And so that's why this is so important. We have to let God be God, and we can't dictate to him what he ought to do based on fallen human impressions.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah, Ray, I mean, you often you often talk about this. Maybe you can highlight it for us when people say God is love and they run with that, but they miss other aspects of God that Scripture reveals.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Aaron Ross Powell The God that Richard Dawkins believes in, or doesn't believe in, should I say, doesn't exist. He's a figment of his imagination. He went through the Old Testament and got all the offensive doctrines together and created a God that was an evil character and said, If that's the God you believe in, I don't want anything to do with him. But he missed out on the balance of God's nature where his love and mercy was expressed at the cross. So humanity has a leaning towards idolatry. We're talking about implications of this belief. Um Phil Johnson noted that Spurgeon said this regarding annihilationalism. He said, it gives aid and comfort to those who say, Let us eat, eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. Wow. And he said Spurgeon said it becomes an excuse for calloused hearts. And this is what Spurgeon said. What better pillow for the idle head than the doctrine that the final impotent becomes extinct? It's a pillow to lean your head on. Wow. And that that horrifies me because the church is lukewarm when it comes to evangelism at the moment. We don't want to add to that.

Key Bible Texts On Hell

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah. Yeah, and and Danny, man, I love what you're saying. Even highlighting, look, is there like a kind of a middle ground there within within secondary because these things are important. And and what what people end up doing when they begin to lean towards sentimentality. And I don't want to be unfair to our annihilationist friends, because you know, a lot of them will say, no, this goes back to the word, but there are a lot who do lean on sentimentality. I can't imagine God would do this, right? As we're talking about, and therefore he's unjust. Well, what happens with that? I think of a new believer who's fed this sort of line and and is given a false image of God based on sentimentality. They go through the Old Testament, they get it, they get to the Amalekites. What? Wipe out men, women, children, um, nursing, infant. Like, we don't dictate to God who he is. All we know is we know his character. And if he allowed that, it was perfectly 100% just. And so so that that's important to highlight. Let me give us a little structure, which kind of means nothing, right? Because we're gonna we're gonna go where we go. But uh the theologian Matt uh Weymeyer, he highlights four main arguments that conditionalists uh raise against a biblical view of eternal conscious torment or punishment. I think it'd be good for us to kind of address these. So the format again will be free-flowing, but uh we'll and we'll do our best to address though these four things biblical terminology, human mortality, uh, divine consistency, and uh, and then ultimate, ultimate victory. But before we jump in, let me just do this for us, because uh we we need to make God's word central. We don't just want to give lip surface to that. We want to do that. So let me go through the main passages. I know in in the book, Danny, you talk about how one theologian highlights that there's about 10 main passages that basically deal with hell. Let me go through some of them here. So we have Isaiah 66, 22 to 24. I'm just gonna read them. Uh for as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain, and it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched, they shall be in abhorrence to all flesh. So some of these we'll see cited in other places in Scripture. Uh, and we're going to touch on a lot of these, but let me just again go through them all. Daniel 12, 2 to 3. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever. Matthew 8, 16 to 9. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offences come. If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off, cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the everlasting fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Matthew twenty-five, forty-one to forty-six. Then he will also say to those on the left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger, and you did not take me in, naked, and you did not clothe me sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, or stranger, or naked or sick, or in prison, did not minister to you? Then he will answer them, saying, Assuredly I say to you, and as much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me, and these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life. Mark 9, 42 to 48. But whoever causes one of these little ones to believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned, uh thrown into the sea, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed rather than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire, where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Second Thessalonians 1 6 to 10, since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are trouble dressed with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he comes in that day to be glorified in his saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony testimony among you was believed. Jude seven, as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 13, raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame, wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Revelation 14, 9 to 11. Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any one worships a beast in his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascends for ever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name. Revelation twenty ten, the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. And finally, Revelation 20, 14 to 15. Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, and anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. That's a lot of scripture.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

And uh I did that on purpose. I knew it was gonna take a while, but it's important that it's set in front of us. That this isn't some just kind of you know off-handed doctrine that we traditionalists hold to, but but scripture is replete. Of course, the annihilationists will say, well, interpretation matters, and it does, and that's what we'll get into. So let's jump in first anyway into biblical terminology. And if you wanted to highlight anything, uh you can do that first off. But but but my first question to you is that you know, we we read a lot uh about um uh destruction and um and you know perishing and things of that source uh sort and ruin. And annihilationists will often say, well, um, you know, scripture describes some of these things, but but it literally means to to bring to extinction and to destroy. So kick us off there.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Yeah, so it's that that they're taking that from a number of the different texts that you read, so it's hard to know which one you want to start with. But let me start just with the basic idea of what hell is, okay? Yeah, so um um let me start with the basic idea of that, then come back around to the idea of destruction. So the word hell is appears in the New Testament, first of all, and the person obviously who says it the most is is Jesus. But he's he's uh using a word from the that that's in Greek, it's gehenna, okay? If you if you were to translate it literally or just transliterate, it'd be gehenna. That term gehenna actually comes from the Old Testament. Ge means like land or valley of something like that, and then henom, the valley of Hinnom. And you'll remember from the Old Testament, there was this place outside of Jerusalem called the Valley of Hinnom. Sometimes there was a um a cultic spot associated with it called Topheth, right? But that place was infamous. Um, there's an old legend that it was a garbage dump. It's not true, it wasn't a garbage dump. Um, it that's a wide misunderstanding. The reason that Hinnam was infamous in ancient Israel was because it's where Ahaz and Manasseh uh did participate in an idolatry and in particular did sacrifices to Molech. And if you know anything about Molech worship, what that involved was offering up live babies to an idol, which and we all know that there are demons behind that, and they would offer them up, and they would there uh there was uh we we think that there was some kind of a statue with hands out like this and a fire blazing under it, and these babies would be burned alive to Molech. God hated it, and you can see him the way that he spoke of it when these kings in Israel were drifting into idolatry and they were doing worse than the nations before, but they were doing it out here in this valley of of sometimes called Ben Henam, but the valley of Gehenna, the land of Hinnam. And so that place became associated with fire and with God's judgment because of what happened there with the sacrifice, the sacrifice of these children. And so after the time of the Old Testament and before the time, so in the intertestamental period, people began to use this word, hell, to refer to a fiery place of judgment. Okay, and so it was the primary image that was used for this. And so by the time you get to the New Testament, there's Jesus talking about Gey henna all the time. And what is it, what does he say when he mentions it? He mentions fire over and over and over. Now, at that point, it's an it's an ironic uh turn on the image because it's not talking about the fire that they use to burn up the babies, it's talking about the fire that is coming from God to burn up sinners in in judgment. Okay, so it's it's an idea of retribution. Now, this is coming to your destruction question, okay?

SPEAKER_04 35:12

No.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Because why in the world is fire a part of what God does? Well, the reason is because biblically we know the Bible says, like in Hebrews 12 29, our God is a consuming fire. Uh you can read Deuteronomy 4.24, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire. Isaiah 33, 14. Sinners in Zion are terrified, trembling, has seized the godless. Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning? And so you have this picture throughout the Bible of God's presence like fire. Now, just rewind your brain a little bit and think about how this plays out through Scripture. You think about in the Old Testament, for example, um the children of Israel are wandering through the wilderness, and how do they know where to go? At daytime they see this smoke, and at night they see this fire. Moses goes up the mountain to hear from God. The people are on the ground, and what do they see up there when Moses is up there with God? They see fire up there and they're terrified. Um Moses, you know, God calls to Moses from a bush that's on fire, but it's not being consumed, it's not being destroyed. Um then you've got Nadab and Abihu, Leviticus 10, for example. They offer up a sacrifice to the Lord, which he had not prescribed, and what happens? Fire comes out from the presence of the Lord and consumes them, kills them on the spot. Isaiah has his vision of God in the temple. And what happens? He sees the Lord lofty and exalted. It's a vision, but there's these beings called seraphim around him. They're flaming beings. In other words, there's fire in the presence of the Lord. And so you just go through scripture and you see this idea of fire everywhere associated with the presence of the Lord. And it alternately can have a different effect on people, right? If you're sinning, like Nadab and Abihu, it can be a fire of judgment. If you're walking with God, it can be a fire that's guiding you, like in the wilderness. Um, if you're Isaiah, you'll, you know, in Isaiah 6, you know, he takes a hot coal from the altar and he burns his mouth and it's consecrated to the Lord. So the fire has this sanctifying kind of effect in the imagery that's going on there. So fire, though, is representing the presence of the Lord. And so when hell then is described as this place of fire, it's not supposed to be a surprise to anybody. Because what it means is, is that it's God's presence in judgment. That's what's going on in hell. And this is the widespread misunderstanding about hell that you know, all of your viewers and listeners need to make sure they have this clear in their head. Hell is a scary place, not because the devil is there. All the stuff that you see, like in the far side cartoons and whatever, where you know, Satan is ruling in hell. Satan goes to hell because that's where he's being judged.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Satan is not hell is not terrifying because Satan is there. Hell is terrifying because it's the active presence of God's wrath forever. God is the treasure of heaven, he's the terror of hell. That's what makes it so horrifying, okay? But it's not surprising that when you get to Jesus talking about the the this place called hell, it's a place of fire and of continual burning. Now, he's picking up imagery from Isaiah 66 when he does that. So Isaiah 66 in verse 24 talks about where the place where the worm doesn't die and the fire is never extinguished. And then you, as you read in all those verses, he refers to that fire over and over. The annihilationists, this gets to your point about destruction. Okay, it's all related to the fire. Right. The worm too, but the fire especially. The annihilation, the annihilationists, what they say is that the hell is like this constant incinerator of fire. The fire is eternal, but the fuel isn't. Uh the the the flames are always going to be there, but the people who are under judgment are not. They eventually go away. That's that's their argument. Okay. Now, the the problem with this is that when they're looking at particular terminology in scripture, they're misinterpreting those those terms, in my view. And so a person arguing from a perspective of eternal conscious torment is pointing out to them that you know you're saying that the the people who are being judged in hell are just like mortals are right now, which is if you burn something up, it eventually disintegrates, turns into smoke and ash. Um, that's not the way that the Bible you know portrays this. And I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the resurrection of the dead to portray it that way. Um the Bible teaches that all people are gonna be given a body fit for their destiny, fit to endure what it is that they that God is going to give to them based on whether or not they trusted Christ or not. Um we don't have bodies right now that are fit for our destiny as believers, right? But we're gonna be given a new body, and it's we're gonna be able to be in the presence of the Lord forever. We're gonna be sinless, it's gonna be imperishable, right? The same thing is gonna happen for the damned. They're gonna be raised up, according to Daniel, according to Jesus in John 5. They're gonna be raised up and they're gonna be given a body that's fit to endure their destiny forever. And it's gonna be a little bit like that burning bush where there's the presence of God is there, the fire is there, but that bush is not going away. It's not turning into smoke and ash. It's just there, okay, in the in the in the midst of the burning. And so I I think that's some that's something of what's going to end up happening with the damned in hell. They're gonna be given a uh a body that's fit for the the existence that they are they've been left to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah, and and I think, you know, it's important to highlight as well that scripture touches on things using the same word for destruction, just like the wineskins, right? But but they're they're they're they don't cease to exist. Uh they're they're right, right? I mean, that's important to highlight, and and I think oftentimes that's that's the misconception. And and I think too, Danny, maybe you can touch on this as well, but people often cite old the Old Testament and say we see very little talked about hell or the lake of fire in the Old Testament in terms of of torment. But but I think it's important to highlight that the the New Testament uh ends up clarifying or expanding on maybe doctrines that we see there uh within the Old Testament scriptures.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Yeah, I mean, so the way you need to think about the Bible is that it's it's a progress of revelation. It's not God dumping everything out at the beginning, right? Okay, here's all my revelation, Adam, and there's nothing else. No, it's it's a progress of revelation. And you what you find out at the very beginning is that there's a God who is holy. He has requirements, and when we defy those requirements, there's judgments, right? So Adam and Eve are you know put out of the garden. But what we we learn through the progress of revelation is that there's actually eschatological judgments. There are judgments that occur not just in this life, but also after this life. And you begin to see hints of that and indications of that in the Old Testament itself, right? So in the Old Testament, it says, you you read a minute ago from Daniel chapter 12, you know, super important because it talks about all of those who are asleep in the dust of the ground are one day going to awaken. He's talking about dead people, particular in particular, uh, probably a particular set of dead people who are gonna be awakened, some to everlasting life and blessedness, others to everlasting disgrace and contempt. Right. But now you've got this belief within Judaism, well before the New Testament, if there's gonna be this general resurrection at the end of the age, there's gonna be life after death. We have existence after death. And so that idea gets picked up in the New Testament and completely, you know, expanded and explained. And so Jesus begins talking about what that existence is going to be like. He'll say things like to the thief on the cross, today you'll be with me in paradise. Right? Um so he'll there there's this life that comes, there's this existence that comes after death. I think that Jesus' most some of his most profound words are John 5. When he says that the Father has given all judgment over to the Son, and the Son has life with himself, just like the Father has life within himself. But then there's coming a day when the Son is going to call out and the dead are going to raise, right? And he he basically teaches Daniel 12. He says there's going to be some who are raised to life in blessedness and others to contempt.

SPEAKER_05 44:59

You know, maybe you just uh maybe you just answer that, but uh give you a chance if there's anything else you want to say concerning it. But you know, many annihilationists they appeal to Matthew 10, 28, that says, do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body and hell. What makes us think that the word destroy here doesn't mean completely wiped out, right? If I destroy that in and out cheeseburger, it no longer exists. It is completely done away with.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Yeah, so I think what they're doing there is there's a there's a bit of an equivocation on the word destroy in English. And they're doing the same thing, I think, with the underlying Greek term. So the word there for destroy is this word apolumi. It's used um all through the New Testament. It's in one of the famous verses in the New Testament, John 3.16. You know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, apolumi, but have everlasting life. And so you constantly see apolumi, it's referred in to different things that can be destroyed, like wineskins, okay? But it also is referred to people who are destroyed in judgment. And so then the question becomes um, what does that term mean? When we say it in English as destroy, what does it mean in Greek when we say it in Apolumi? Well, it turns out the semantic range is very similar in this sense. In English, when we say destroy, we don't always mean annihilate, like go out of existence. So if I say, you know, my son just got his license and, you know, in his first test drive, he destroyed our car. I don't mean that the car went out of existence. Okay. The car still exists. It's been rendered inoperable, or maybe it's been totaled. It's been totally ruined. Okay. So if you look up in the lexicons under Opalumi, it doesn't just say destroy, it doesn't say destroy or annihilate, it says ruin or destroy. Like that's your normal semantic range for the term. And so it's the same term that's used of the wineskins. So um in Mark chapter or what what what what verse is that? Uh Matthew chapter 9 and verse 17, where it says that the um if you put old wine and new wineskins, the wineskins will burst and they're opalumied. They're they're destroyed. Well, they don't go out of existence, they're ruined. Yeah, like they're not, they're no longer what they were made for, right? Um human beings were not human beings were designed to image forth God and to glorify God. When they in rebellion and become recalcitrant and don't do that, they become ruined, right? And that ultimate ruination happens in judgment. And it's an eternal consequence because now they're not glorifying God in worshiping him. They're now glorifying him as an object of his judgment. But there's it's an eternal ruination, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they go out of existence. And so I can give you, you know, example after example. Uh Mark chapter 1 and verse 24. Jesus comes into contact with demons and they say, Have you come to destroy us? Now, none of us, nobody on either side of this thinks that the demons believe that the demons are going out of existence. And Revelation 20 says that they're going to be tormented forever and ever, right? So we're everybody believes that they're eternal beings, but they're saying, so they're not asking, are we about to be annihilated or put out of existence? That's a great they're asking, is the is the judgment coming right now? Um, you know, Romans 14, 15, where it's talking about weaker and stronger brothers. And you don't want to do things that would opolumi, destroy your brother. It doesn't mean annihilate him or put him out of existence. It's talking about, is it going to ruin him in in some way? And so there's text after text after text where you look at this destruction language, especially opolumi, and it's not talking about annihilate. It can mean that. It can refer to something that goes out of existence, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. And I'm, you know, this is why the vast majority of Christians, over the entirety of the 2,000-year history of the church, have not thought of this as annihilate. Okay. They're just looking at scripture. And listen, I want to be fair, because we we said a minute ago, you know, these guys are, you know, making emotional arguments and whatever. The the best of the annihilationists are trying to make biblical arguments. Right. Okay? The best ones are trying to make biblical arguments. They're trying to do exegesis. If you read Edward Fudge, for example, if you read, you know, any number of these guys, they're trying to make biblical arguments. I respect that. But and they're I think they're trying to be sincere about this. I just think they're sincerely wrong. I think they're misunderstanding what the text means. And the and the and the vast majority of church history, the democracy of the dead, if they get their vote, they're they're agreeing with what we're arguing here.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

I I I really appreciate that. It was like gold for me. Really appreciate what you said. Mark stole my he's always stealing my notes. That's why I keep this like that. But it was word for word. He took my question I was going to ask you, but the word perish and destroy, that they're kind of the holy grail of the annihilationists. Would you be speaking about everlasting destruction and everlasting contempt in answering that? Is that what that what what how you would answer?

Eternal Punishment In Matthew 25

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Yeah, it depends on what text you're talking about, because they're different terms. So we that was just Apa Lumi, right? If you're looking at at 2 Thessalonians, which is um what I think that you're probably talking about. So 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and verses 6 through 10, it says, God considers it just to replay repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us. Meaning, Paul is telling the believers there, look, you're being persecuted. You remember in Acts, when he left them, it was a bad deal. And he was concerned about them. They were being persecuted when he left them in the book of Acts. And so they they're a persecuted group of followers of Christ, and he's saying that there's coming a time that those who afflict you, they're going to be afflicted. It's going to be just when God does this. Apart from repentance, they're going to be judged. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire. Mmm, more fire again. Inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction. Now that term for destruction is actually a different term for destruction. It's the same in English. It looks like the destroy, but in Greek it's uh holotheros. And again, though, that term there, it's an eternal destruction, but it's not an it doesn't mean annihilation. It's the same term that's used in um 1 Timothy chapter 6 in verse 9, where it talks about ruin and destruction, or in 1 uh Corinthians 5 in verse 5, where it talks about handing um this wayward brother over to Satan for the holotheros, the destruction of his flesh. It doesn't mean the annihilation of his flesh or that he's no longer going to be in existence anymore. In fact, the hope is that um he will be so chastised that his spirit will be saved in the day of Christ Jesus, all right? And so it's not talking about annihilation there. So even when you're looking at holotheros, I don't I don't believe that it entails annihilation. It just entails this kind of ruination, this kind of um um, you know, being rendered inoperable towards the end that it was originally created for. That's what's going on there. And it's going to be happening, happening eternally.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Yeah, and you know, Danny, I think this is really important to highlight. I mean, you cited uh Mark 1.24, where where the demons said, you know, are you are you gonna destroy us, right? You come to destroy us. But in in Matthew 8.29, it's clarified, like the parallel passage, have you come to torment us before the time? That's right. I mean, I think to me that that's one of the strongest points to make because it in essence we're getting the full scope of what they meant by destroy. You know, it's a it's a torment that's that's involved there.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

Well, uh in Matthew chapter 25, let me just give you another term. I'm right, I want to run us through some of this language that's often used by annihilationists to talk about the ending of the existence of a person. So another big one is Matthew 25. I think Matthew 25 is one of the most important texts on the final state of the righteous and the wicked that there is in the Bible. I think it's Jesus elaborating on in kind of a different way the the pictures of judgment from the Old Testament, in particular Daniel 12. Because he gives this dual destiny, right? Daniel 12 is where we get this very pristine picture of a dual destiny of the blessed and the damned, right? And there it involves resurrection. Jesus does the same thing, a similar thing in Matthew 25, where he talks about when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all his angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. So it's a judgment. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate the people one from the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. So there's a final separation going on, right, between the blessed and the damned. It's a very grave thing. He'll put the sheep on his right, the goats on his left. And then he talks about the basis upon which he's going to do this. People's the way people behaved in their lives is going to reveal whether or not they were connected to Christ by faith. There are going to be some people who receive Christ's messengers, and they believe in the message that Christ's messengers bring to them, and they feed them and they clothe them, they receive them and bless them. Others are not going to receive Christ's messengers. They're going to turn them out, they're going to mistreat them, and they're going to persecute them. And Jesus says, even as you've done it to the least of these, my brethren, he's talking about the messengers of the gospel there. Yeah, the least of these are the messengers of the gospel. How did you respond to them? Did you receive them or did you persecute them, reject them? And he says, the people who received them are those who are going to be on the right hand side and be the sheep and enter a state of blessedness. But the those who rejected the least of these, they're going to be ones who are cast out into judgment. And he says, Inasmuch as you've done it to the least of these my brethren, you've done it to me. Which means, um, you know, I'm taking this personally.

SPEAKER_04 55:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

And I think this is where Paul gets his whole body of Christ imagery to begin with, is because Jesus said they are me. Okay. But this is what he says. Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me, then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angel, angels. And then if you uh skip down to verse 46, it says, He'll answer them saying, Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me, and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Now, the annihilationists right here, I think, are missing the nature of what this term means, punishment. So what they will argue is that yes, it's an eternal punishment because they're annihilated, and that annihilation is a ceasing of existence. That by itself is a punishment, and that ceasing of existence lasts forever, so the consequences of their annihilation are eternal. Therefore, it is an eternal punishment. It's just not a conscious eternal punishment. The problem with this is that the term that's used for punishment there is this word colossus. Um, and it's it's got a it's the noun form of a verb coladzo, and colossus just means the infliction of suffering or pain and chastisement. It's not generic punishment, and then you choose your own adventure of what kind of punishment you think it might be. It's a certain kind of punishment. It's the infliction of pain and suffering in chastisement. It's that kind of punishment. And the word, the verb of this, colazzo, is a term that ref that originally referred to pruning. So like you're breaking off branches or breaking things off. And so when this is used, when that literal term is used sort of metaphorically towards people in chastisement, it's talking about the infliction of trauma. Okay, that's what colazzo is all about. So is it a punishment? Yes, it's a certain kind of punishment, it's the infliction of trauma, okay? And so when Jesus says they're entering into eternal punishment, you have to be thinking the eternal infliction of trauma. Okay. So it's horrible. It it's it's horrific to think about that the God of all the universe who is offering mercy to all of all of his creation right now, that people will some time at some point be past a point of no return. And this is how they're gonna know him. They're they're gonna be in a current eternal conscious torment. And um, so it's it's a horrible thing, but it is what the Bible teaches.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

You know, Ray, I'm I'm thinking about um the fact that Jesus seven times in the New Testament talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth. I mean, the the just the street level sort of commonsensical approach to this of like what are his his hearers' understanding? Like, I mean, he wasn't light on the subject.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

Yeah, I was just thinking while Denny was speaking, how I just feel like weeping. Just at the at the horror of it, and how whenever you know, one thing I hate is jokes about hell.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

And often Christians will will joke about it, talk lightly about it, but we should always say the word hell with a tear in our eye. John Piber once responded to Annihilationist, John Stott's views, he said, No, John Scott, scripture does not point to the direction of annihilation. Your emotions do. And that sums what it we just like God to be nice and sweet.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

John Stott said uh one time, um, he said, I find this is a quote, he said, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. The the concept of an eternal conscious torment. I find it intolerable. And I would just say, and look, I know he would make a biblical argument for this, but that statement right there is exactly what Piper's talking about. Yeah. It's I'm forearmed against accepting this because it's just intolerable to me. And I just want to say it's intolerable to me too, in a sense. Like I can't, I can hardly stand to think about this. Who can I mean it's it's like it's like the uh uh the the text says, who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

None of it's unfathomable to think of. But just because it's so horrible doesn't mean that we can put a a stiff arm to up to it as if it's not real. Yeah. When the Bible is depicting it in such stark terms over and over and over.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Absolutely. And and let me say, you know, obviously we respect John Stott. I'm not worthy to undo his theological shoelaces, right? But yeah, but at the same time, right, um, that's ignored in light of the fact that that there are other theologians who Stott would say the same about in terms of exceeding him, who who hold to the traditional biblical view. But let me also say, too, Denny, I I think that there's been a mischaracterization with some that others will cite as being annihilationists who really weren't. They they maybe talked about it. Some things are taken out of context. Um, and like some people will highlight Luther as an example. But but Luther did not become an annihilationist. There were some comments, I believe, he made that that you know he was asking questions about it. But I would say on that note as well, because I think that's the tragedy. Sometimes people will cite authorities and appeal to authority. Sometimes it's it's a logical fallacy. Uh, but but but they won't highlight the fact that some of these authorities may have held the things that we would look at and say, well, that's wrong. It doesn't matter who they were. Like some may highlight even Luther as an example who seem to have some maybe anti-Semitic uh leanings. Right. We don't look at that and say, well, hey, Luther held to that, so that must be biblical, right? We have to be careful there.

When Emotion Fights Biblical Authority

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

Yeah, or everything has to be measured by scripture at the end of the day. Yeah. I mean, our consciences have to be held captive to scripture, which is why I wanted to come in here and talk about the Bible, right? Because the annihilationists, the ones that are the most popular today, they're trying to stake out the biblical high ground. They're the ones that are reading the Bible the most carefully. Everybody else is sort of a benighted view of scripture. That's actually not the case. Um, there's there's another side to this. The majority report in the Christian church is eternal conscious torment. But at the end of the day, our our our consciences are captive to the truth. It's not even to the fact that the church has always held to this. Um, I think it's that's a weighty concern because that means that Christians over the ages have been reading the Bible in a certain way. To me, that's a weighty concern, okay? But it's at the end of the day, the the ultimate authority is scripture itself. And uh that's what we have to go with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:53

That's almost like a Gnostic insight, right? That I I have some, I finally, well, when we're at Bible college, what was it? It's like if it's new, it's not true. If it's true, it's not new. But all of a sudden we have this insight that nobody else kind of has, and there's ministries entirely given over to this, which which absolutely kind of blows my mind. Uh, you're gonna head at a different angle?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Or yeah, you have something else to say though. I was trying here. I always gotta move to the next point, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:16

Uh, let me bring up a point here. Um, what does Paul mean in 1 Timothy uh chapter 6, verse 16, when he says that God alone has immortality? Right, is he saying that only God is immortal, or is he referring to something else? Right. I think of also, you know, the passage when in in Genesis, uh read this in Genesis 2.17 says, Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Yet we know that Adam did not die on that day. So either this is a contradiction or or it means something else, or there's greater meaning to what happened here. And I like what the way one professor had worded it. God did not say, Adam, where are you? Because he didn't know where Adam was at, but he wanted Adam to see where Adam was at. Adam, look how far your sin has taken you. So when we come back to our passage here in 1 Timothy 6, 16, that God alone has immortality, what is he referring to here?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Yeah, and and I think this is a good shift into the next section, which is dealing with human mortality, and we can get into that. Like, yeah, what what what is that all about? Like that God only gives immortality to those who believe versus you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:34

So let's let's take 1 Timothy 613 or 6 uh 15, 6.16 for a second here. Notice he says uh in verse 13, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things. Okay, don't don't forget that part. God who gives life to all things. What are we talking about there? We're talking about creation. Okay, we're and there's only one creator, right? There's a great divide in the world, in the universe, between the creator and the creation. We all inhabit the creation half of the creator creation divide. Everything on the other side of that divide is God. Okay, and so God alone is the one who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the proper time, he who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in inapproachable light. Now who's he talking about there? He's talking about Jesus. So he says, God is the one who gives life to all things, and now he's saying Jesus alone possesses immortality and dwells in inapproachable light. He's, I think, in a very real sense, just put Jesus on the creator side of the creator creation distinction there. And I think what he's saying, when he says he alone possesses immortality, I don't think he's trying to say that no one else has eternal life. That's not what he's trying to say. Of course, people do, other people do have eternal life. When he says immortality, he means I think something like what um uh Jesus says in John 5. Just as the Father has life in himself, so also he's given the Son to have life in himself. He's talking about a deep inner triune reality that all that God is, the Son also is. Right? And just like the Father is creator, so also the Son is creator. Just as the Father is the Lord and life giver, Jesus is Lord and Life Giver, right? And so in the unique way that the deity possesses immortality and life, I think that's what he's referring to here. He's not saying that God doesn't raise the dead or grant eternal life to other beings. Okay? It's but he's talking about singularly what it means to be God, right? And he alone possesses immortality. And then he says right after that, and he dwells in unapproachable light. Remember, God from God, light from light, and then I seen creed, right? We're talking about the nature of God here. And it's saying that just as God is light, so Jesus is the same thing. Um, and it says, whom no man can has seen or can see, to him be honor eternal dominion. Amen. So that's where I would go with that. I don't think it's an argument for annihilationism.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:27

Do you think that if we we consider 1 Corinthians 15, 53, where it says this, the mortal must put on immortality, right? That this shows that humans can receive immortality, which means Paul's not denying the possibility of creatures living forever, right? That when we talk about that God alone has immortality, that in himself he's got it, right? We talk about aseity, that he is not reliant upon anyone or anything, whereas creation is. So when we start bringing this distinction, we we bring this to light that yes, God alone has immortality because this is a reflection of who he is, but you as well, because he gives it to you. Yeah, it's a gift.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:09

Yeah. Yeah. So he give we're not immortal by nature. It's something that that that's given to us. Now the annihilationists will say, well, he only gives it to the to the elect or the blessed or the whatever. That's actually, I think they're misreading this. And so we may want to go to these other texts, but they're there, I think they're misreading the nature of uh of immortality.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

Yeah, let's do that. Go to those texts, Denny, that that that deal with that, the the whole issue of the fact that the unbeliever isn't necessarily now uh in a special state in terms of immortality as the believer is, right? So so there's no there's no confusing the two. There is a distinction, but but that it's not now something that we look at the unbeliever in and say, oh, well, God can't do this because immortality is only for those that believe. So so take us down that road. How do we how do we differentiate?

Immortality, Resurrection, And John 5

SPEAKER_02 1:09:05

Yeah, so what the new what the Old Testament teaches, actually, in sort of uh general terms, gets really fleshed out in the New Testament that human beings are made to be immortal in the sense that they're gonna be not um they're not gonna be annihilated, they're gonna exist forever. And God is going to give that to every single human being. And I would argue that it's a part of the our orthodox confessions that we believe that that Christ Jesus is gonna return and that that He is going to quit He's going to quicken or He's gonna bring back to life the quick and the dead, right? Which means He's going to give immortality to both people who are in the grave and people who are still alive. And everybody is going to come back to life. It's a it's the doctrine of the general resurrection from the dead. Where do we get that from? Well, it's not it's not something that we're just you know making up, it's in explicit scripture. So look at Daniel 2. In Daniel 2 2, in chapter uh Daniel 12, it's in verse 2, it says, Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt, and those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above. Now, what is Daniel saying there? Now, a lot of people will point out that you know, in context, there's a specific group of people that he's talking about who are going to be raised up, and this is not a general resurrection. I think that's the wrong way to read this. The reason he's saying it about these particular people who've been judged and who are going to be raised up, and some to blessedness and some to elsewhere, is because of a belief in the general resurrection at the at the end of the age. And so Daniel is saying this, and then this is the fact that this does ultimately point to a general rev resurrection is confirmed by the fact that Jesus basically explains this in John 5. So I alluded to this a minute ago, but I need to give you the exact words from John 5. Because Jesus says, truly, truly, this is John 5 25, truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live. Remember, just as the Father has life in himself, the Son has life in himself. God says, Let there be light, and there is light. Jesus says, He's gonna call forth, and those who hear his voice are gonna come to life. His word is gonna call things into being, just like the fathers did. For just as the Father has life in himself, just um even so he gave the Son also to have life in himself, and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he's the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs. Some of the ones in the tombs? No. All the ones who are in the tombs. The damned, the blessed, all of the ones who are in the tombs, he says, shall hear his voice and shall come forth. All of them. Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment. Now you want to talk about conditional immortality? God doesn't grant immortality just to everybody, it's conditioned. He gives it to everybody right there. At the final judgment, Jesus is going to call people back to life. And what is he doing there? He's not innovating, he's explaining Daniel 12. Wow. Right? That is what Jesus is doing. So good. And so he is going to give eternal life. Now, here's the thing you don't I think a lot of believers get confused about this, unfortunately, because everybody's a Platonist now. And they only think about the immortality of the soul. The soul being that immaterial part of us. I believe we have an immortal soul. I think you it to be a Christian, you need to affirm that people have immortal souls. But we are a body and flesh unity. God made us not immortal souls, but whole people. So, like this right here, this is me. This is not some mortal coil that I shuffle off and it's secondary and not a part of my essence. This is me right here. And what Jesus is promising us is not some platonist vision that we're gonna have immortal souls that go to heaven forever. He's promising us he's gonna raise me up, body and soul, spirit complete, it says in 1 Thessalonians, right? He's gonna raise us up, body and soul complete. And so we're looking towards a resurrection of the dead, which means, yeah, immortal souls in immortal bodies, right? And Jesus is saying that he is gonna be the one who does this, he's gonna call forth, and that all of the people in the tombs are gonna come forth. And it's gonna be the damned and it's gonna be the blessed. It's gonna be all of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:07

Ray, you often uh highlight for people on the streets the fact that scripture talks about how people are in constant fear of death all their lifetime, right? How important is it for us to speak of the realities of hell, to come alongside you talk about the conscience being um one that that is sort of our our helper when we're we're speaking to the sinner. But do you think this can happen with with hell? They're afraid of death, but now to help them understand what's on the other side of it.

Is Eternal Judgment Disproportionate

SPEAKER_01 1:14:40

Absolutely. I often have the thought uh sinners are fearful of death, which they are, terrified because of the haunting fear of death. How great will be the terror as they stand before the lake of fire? And that should motivate us to say with Paul. Wherefore, knowing the terror of the Lord, do we persuade men? But God's given us tools, weapons of warfare that are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. And what we can do with the help of the Holy Spirit and following what Jesus did is open up that divine law. That's what causes a sinner who doesn't believe in hell, who thinks lightly of hell to suddenly tremble. When you open up those commandments, whoever looks upon a woman, like Denny mentioned, to lust after her has committed adultery already with her in his heart. When we go through the commandments, it makes Paul's words in Romans 2 make sense, that every time we sin, we store up wrath that's going to be revealed on the day of wrath, and it's just wrath. And that motivates me to share the gospel. I I think there are certain passion and passages of scripture that I just don't even want to read. One of them is Deuteronomy 28, when it speaks about the consequences of a nation, particularly Israel, turning against God. It just makes me quiver with fear. And then Psalm 50, verse 22 Consider this, you who forget God, lest this is God speaking, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. That gets rid of our idolatrous understanding of God being the guy that's reaching out from heaven and wearing a pink nighty, playing touch fingers with Adam. Wow. It shapes a God that we fear so that we can say with Paul, wherefore, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

So good, Ray. Yeah. I mean, honestly, guys, look, we're talking about this and we're getting theological and we're, you know, getting into the exegetical elements of the scriptures. But when you talk about like reality, we're talking about people going into an everlasting, eternal lake of fire. Like this, it should cause a visceral reaction in us, you know, and that should move us in a practical sense with love, with compassion, and also blow our minds at how holy God is. And I think, Denny, this is a good place to segue into our third part here, and that that's divine consistency. You know, the annihilationist will often highlight what Mark touched on earlier, and that is like, look, this is disproportionate. I mean, come on, men are committing sin in a temporal world and they're going to be punished eternally. So, how do we how do we address that? How do we deal with it?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:13

Yeah, so I mean, he brought this up just a you know at the very beginning, but there is this thing that goes back at least to in terms of being explicitly articulated, at least to Anselm, called the status principle. And the status principle is this notion that um the the gravity of sin is not measured so much by the sin itself, but by the one that it's committed against. And if you think about it for just a minute, it's pretty obvious that we all recognize this. And in in my chapter in the book, I brought up the example of just imagine that you're you're outside, you see a guy sitting on a curb, and he's just pulling the legs off of a grasshopper. Right? He's pulling the legs off of a grasshopper. You'd think that's weird. You'd move on quickly, okay? But then you'd probably forget about it. Rewind the tape. You walk past the guy, he's not pulling the legs off a grasshopper. This time he's got a bird. He's pulling the legs off of a bird. You see that, you probably don't care enough about the bird to intervene, but you're gonna you're probably gonna move on a little bit quicker. Let's say you come by and he's trying to pull the legs off of a puppy. You're probably gonna feel like you need to do something. You may call the police, but you're you're you're not just gonna walk by. That's genuinely disturbing. Let's say you walk by and the guy's trying to pull the legs off of a baby. If if it's a woman and it's a and she confronts a man like that, she's gonna move heaven and earth to stop that man and to save that baby. Even a woman would do that. Now, what's the deal here? It's it's the same sin. Just pulling the legs off. Same thing. Just pulling the legs off. The only thing that's different is the one you're doing it against. That's the only difference. And the difference between a grasshopper and a baby is infinite, right? Well, guess what? The difference between a baby and God is infinite. Wow. Right? And the reason that people do not think that sinning against God deserves an infinitely heinous punishment is because their view of God is way down here. It's just not that big of a deal that we would violate his holiness. It's just not that big of a deal. Whereas throughout scripture, God is saying it is the most important thing in the universe that people are violating my holiness. And God has said that he is going to defend his honor, he is going to be glorified. And he is warned everywhere that the consequences of defying him and of suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. He's warned everywhere that the consequences are grave and eternal. So we have to understand that the seriousness of sin is not just measured by the sin itself, how long it took, um, you know, all the different details of what the sin was, but who it is that you're sinning against. Um, you know, I think it's fascinating. When you think about the status principle, um, I think you see this reflected in different places in scripture. So, you know, David sins with Bathsheba, and he sees this woman on her roof, bathing. He's hot after this woman, so he has her brought to him. It's the wife of one of his closest friends, one of his mighty men, Uriah the Hittite. Sleeps with her, gets her pregnant, tries to cover it up by bringing Uriah home. And Uriah won't go home to his wife to enjoy home while his comrades are out in the field. And so David comes up with plan B, and plan B is let's have Uriah murdered. He tells all of, he tells all of it, he tells his other army comrades to pull back from him so that he's killed. And so he basically murders Uriah, he commits adultery with Bathsheba, they have a child together, and it's this huge sin. And then, of course, Nathan comes and confronts David with this parable, and he says, You're the man. And then God says to David, Why have you despised me? Why have you despised me? Meaning when David was sinning, I mean, you could say he was despising Bathsheba, he was despising Uriah, he was sinning in the most egregious ways against these people. And God confronts him and says, You despised me. And when David confesses this in Psalm 51, what does he say? Against you, and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Now, I don't think that David is denying that it was a sin against Bathsheba or against Uriah. I don't think he's denying that. What David is saying is that in any sin that we commit, the most offended party is God. Because he is the only one who's completely holy. He is the only one who's completely innocent. He is the only one who's completely good and righteous. He is the creator of all things, he's the only one to whom we own all honor and glory. He's the only one. And so to sin against him is worthy of an infinitely heinous punishment, precisely because he's the most offended party in any sin that we commit. And so when you read like a Leviticus 24, 16, the one who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. Well, that's not the case for other people that you blaspheme. It's only when you blaspheme the name of the Lord. Why? Infinitely higher status. 1 Samuel chapter 2, verse 25. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? Right? That's the status principle right there. And sometimes the annihilationists say, well, the status principle is not biblical. I disagree.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:29

Yeah, and you know, Denny, as well, on that note, the passage you cited about David, Nathan ends up saying to him, You've given the enemies of God an occasion to blaspheme, right? Speaking of blasphemy, how it relates and affects, you know, the Lord. And, you know, Mark, I'd love for you to touch on this. You know, to see how serious sin is in the sight of God, all we have to go do is go back to the very beginning. I mean, you think about what happened, right? A man and a woman in a garden thousands of years ago literally bit into a piece of forbidden fruit, and here we are, with the fallenness of man, with destruction and chaos and and misery and suffering and death, and even the annihilationists will agree, and hell, though they'll view it differently, but some form of punishment, right? All because a man and a woman ate a piece of forbidden fruit thousands of years ago in a garden. That's how quick it took. But there's more to it, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:24

Well, the the seriousness of sin, I don't think any of us grasp how serious sin is. You know, recently reading Job, that uh it was that God is so merciful that he even causes you to forget some of your sins that it would overwhelm you. That if we had a grasp on the the true seriousness of sin and the way God views sin, I don't think that we would be able to handle it. I don't think we can get a glimpse into hell and be able to survive. I don't think that we'd be able to understand this. And we see this when we're out witnessing that people minimize their sin.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:00

So we start talking about, listen, you want to lie, white lies, exaggerations, half-truths, fibs, anything other than the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you, God, is a lie. We talk about stealing. You know, you cheat on your taxes, you cheat on your homework, you take an 11-minute break when you should have taken a 10-minute break. And these are things that we can relate to, but we begin to think that they're not that big of a deal. So when I'm on the college campuses and I say, how many people would like to see God get rid of all the sex traffickers in the world? Right? Well, why do evil things, uh why do good why do evil things happen to good people? And it seems to be the the number one question, the number one objection that I get out there, the theodicy, right? The problem of evil. And so people raise their hands and they say, Yes, I think God should get rid of all the sex traffickers. How many people think that God should get rid of all the murders? Absolutely get rid of all the murders. Rapists? Absolutely. Liars?

unknown 1:25:52

Oh.

Revelation 14 And The Lake Of Fire

SPEAKER_05 1:25:53

Right? Stealing? If you looked with lust, you're an adulterer, right? You stub your toe and you said OMG. I mean, how much detail do we have to go into here? Because we begin to minimize our sin because we hang out with people that are like us. I want to feel good about myself, so I hang out with Ray. Right? You hang, you want to feel good about yourself, so you hang out with me. And the example that you give often, and I understand that it's not original, about uh we look at that sheep in the grass and we think that's a very white sheep, but then it begins to snow. We compare ourselves amongst ourselves and we think we're pretty good, but when we compare ourselves to God, we're not good. An illustration that I like to use when we talk about the holiness of God and God being a consumed fire, Hebrews 12, we begin to say, well, if I were to put a dried-out leaf next to a match that is on fire, what will the fire do to the leaf? It'll consume it. Why? Because the fire hates the leaf? No, irrelevant. The nature of the fire is different than the nature of the leaf, and it must consume the leaf. And then I'll pull out a couple of leaves. I'll take a leaf that's attached to a branch and I'll pull it out and I'll take a dried one on the ground. I'll say, what's the difference between these two? And people say, well, one's alive, one's dead. And I'll say, no, they're both dead. One just doesn't know it yet. And this is what's happening when we start talking to non-believers, right? We minimize our sin and we think it's not that big of a deal. Why? Because we don't see that execution come quickly. We don't see the punishment happen rapidly. And we think God maybe winks upon my sin. And it's the toy manufacturer's fault. God made me this way. And I begin to rationalize away certain things. Let me bring up something here else here. Um and how how would we argue this? What would we say? I think I know what I would say concerning this, but some conditionalists they argue that eternal punishment means evil is never fully defeated. It's not eradicated, which means God never actually eradicated evil. So I've talked to an annihilationist, a conditionalist, who said, listen, it makes sense if God is going to get rid of evil, if he's going to rule supreme, if he is the king of kings and lord of lords, if he rules supreme as the judge of the universe and the judge of the living and the dead, and when that gavel comes down, the court is dismissed. He'll have the always have the final word because he is the word. He doesn't need wisdom. He doesn't need counsel, as uh Sproul said. If he needed wisdom, you would not know about it. Right? And we bring about Romans 9. Who are you, O man? Who you're gonna try to understand the mind of God when it comes to something like this, and you want to explain it away through your acrobatic gymnastics with your with the verbiage that is being brought up here? We need to be so very careful. Revelation 2010. The devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. In Scripture, victory over evil does not always mean the elimination of the existence of the offender, right? Often it means the complete and irreversible defeat, the exposure, the judgment of that evil. So another angle worth considering here is the scale of the final judgment in Scripture. In John 5, 20 to 29, it teaches us that all the dead will be raised, some to the resurrection of life and others to the resurrection of judgment. Acts 24, 15, it says the same thing. But if the wicked are raised bodily, brought before a public judgment, exposed according to the book, sentenced, and then simply cease to exist, well then this whole scene begins to feel just strangely thin and illogical, irreverent, irrelevant, even, right? Compared to the massive emphasis that scripture places on final judgment. Here's some natural questions that arise, right? Why the resurrection of the wicked at all? It's not making any sense. We're going to raise you up only to annihilate you. That doesn't make sense, and it's not consistent as we see inside scripture. Why the public judgment? Why the opening of the books? Why the exposure of deeds? One final way for God to say, aha, told you so. Aha, I just wanted it. I just wanted to remind you that you were wrong. It doesn't make sense. Why the sentencing language? Why the repeated warnings about outer darkness and weeping and anguish and shame and exclusion and wrath and recompense? Annihilationists certainly have answers to these questions, and I'm not negating that. But we have to remember just because somebody says something doesn't mean that's an answer. Even if they say something with confidence, doesn't mean it's an answer. Yeah. I remember, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:38

Well, I was just going to say, I when they when they answer Revelation 20, they say, well, you know, it's the beast and the false prophet. And then it says death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Um if anybody's name was not found written in the book of life, they were thrown in the into the lake of fire. But the only ones who are being tormented day and night there are the beast and the false prophet. It doesn't say anything about um, you know, the damned in general. And the problem with that is Revelation 14. Right. Which is the one that I I honestly don't think they answer well. They have an answer. And I was just looking at Edward Fudge's answer in a piece he wrote um you know yesterday, and I'm I don't think it's very compelling at all. But if you if you look at Revelation 14, it says if anyone worships the beast in his in its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they will have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name. Now, this is all of those people who have bowed the knee, they are going to be tormented, just like it says that the beast and the false prop prophet are in chapter 20. It says all of these people are going to be tormented, and it's this word basinidzo, which you know what it means? Torment. It means torture. Okay? It means it means to subject somebody to severe distress. And it says it's going to the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. They'll respond and they'll say, Well, it's just the smoke goes up. No, the text says it's the smoke from their torment goes up, not the incinerator by itself with them out of existence. It's their personal torment that's producing the smoke going up forever. I feel like we're splitting hairs here, but we kind of have to because that's what they do with these texts. But the text is very clear here in Revelation 14 about eternal conscious torment. I think it for me, this is the text that's their big biggest obstacle. It's the one they fail at. Yeah. Explaining.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:09

For sure. I agree. Revelation 14 and 20, uh, they're definitely the Achilles heel. And I just I don't know how they can really get around it. I like we said, and and again, some of these are our dear friends that we love and care about. We're not trying to be demeaning in any way, but but again, we have to be honest and say, come on, guys, look, you know, and and then we have to remember Revelation 21, 8 makes it clear that there's that in general, unbelievers are going to be cast into the lake of fire, which is a second death, which is which is where all these are, you know, because some will try to scapegoat and say, well, you know, these are the just those that didn't bow the knee, maybe, or how could it be for all? But but it's clear.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:48

If if God meant annihilation, this would be a strange way to say it. Yeah. In other words, it's I know.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:57

I really think this is like a selaw point right here. Yeah. Right? Because God he doesn't need to mince words here. He could just say it outright and very clearly.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:04

If he meant annihilation, why would he say that the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever? Why would he say he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and they will have no rest day or night? Why would you say when you say they have no rest day or night, you're saying it's going to be this continual, unending torment. So uh it doesn't make any sense to me. And if God meant annihilation, that is a weird way to say it. I mean, it's it would almost be a deceptive way to say it, in my view, it would kind of be a deceptive way to say it. So I I just I just don't see that that's what it means. I don't think that's what John meant. I think if you're dealing with authorial intent, it's talking about eternal conscious torment.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:46

Yeah, and and I would say, you know, look, where where there's a struggle in in being able to find clarity on other passages, man, I would say Revelation 14 and 20 should be those that help bring clarity to the others because they're so explicit. Yeah. You know. And Ray, one of the things you often highlight too is people will say, well, uh, you're saying God's gonna send me to hell because you know I don't believe in Jesus. But you correct that understanding, right?

Evangelism, The Law, And Urgency

SPEAKER_01 1:35:12

Yeah, it's it it's it theologically doesn't fit uh to say that sin is not believing in Jesus, because you can find tribes in the heart of the Amazon that have never heard of Jesus. So therefore they're not sinners because they haven't not believed in Jesus. No. The sinners because sin is transgression of the law. 1 John 3, whatever. Um That's how I did it. 3.8, I think. Um Yeah, sin is transgression of the law. And that's why God will punish sinners because we've violated his law. You know, I hope this teaching doesn't give Christians uh food to say, aha, we've got an we've got an aha m aha moment with those who believe in in temporal punishment. I hope we go away and say, what can we do to awaken the unsaved in the reality of hell? And I know I am just so excited, and have been for 40 years, that God's given us his law to awaken sinners and show them that sin is exceedingly sinful. And again and again I say to people, do you think you're a good person? They say, Yes. Could you be going to hell? Absolutely not. Three minutes later they say, and I'm going to hell. Why? Because all I've done is imitate what Paul did with Felix. He reasoned with him. Yeah. He reasoned with him. And what the law does is it makes hell reasonable where Felix trembles. So we need to give Felix his trembling. We need to give the Philippian jailer his own personal earthquake and put the fear of God into people so they flee to the cross. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:41

Well, I want to say something. Um I'm a guest here. I never met Ray or any of you before coming to California for this. I just want to say I'm so grateful for this ministry and I'm grateful for what you guys stand for. And I know about you because of evangelism, because you're doing this stuff. And, you know, it's encouraging to me, okay, and it's emboldening to me to be a better evangelist. And I think if we're thinking about the doctrine of hell correctly, that's what it should do for everybody. Instead of like when you find something emotionally troubling about the doctrine of hell, uh a temptation will be to revise your view of God or to revise your view of the Bible to make you feel better about it. A better thing to do would be to do what Ray just said. You is to is to get a fire in your bones to see people come to Christ. That is that would be the better response to this. And to the degree that it bothers you that there's a place called hell should be the degree to which you but have a certain intensity about seeing people not go there and having some role in stopping them. There's a quote I want to give uh Charles Haddon Spurgeon. You guys know this one? Oh yeah. Uh the wailing of Riska from his sermon 1860. He said, Uh, O my brothers and sisters in Christ, if sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies, and if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay, and not madly to destroy themselves. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:31

Amen. Ray, you often quote that, and uh each time I I hear it, or each time I've read it, uh, it's it's sobered, it has sobered me up, and that's what it should do for us. And you know, we we segued into the final section Mark naturally took us there, which is ultimate victory. Uh, and that is, you know, the the claim of annihilationist, and I'd love for you just to touch on this as we start to draw to a close, and and that is that you know, if sinners continue in hell forever, then evil is not ever fully defeated. And so they'll often point to, well, people must be annihilated so that it's done, it's over with, it doesn't continue. How do you answer that, Denny?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:14

Well, I I think he answered it just a minute ago because um I don't think that evil fully being dealt with has to meet mean it's annihilation if the Bible depicts its defeat as something else. Right? And so if the Bible is depicting, it is depicting evil's ultimate defeat as eternal conscious torment, and you know, that means the devil, his angels, the unelect, um, then that's what it is. And we can't say, well, a better way would be if they just went out of existence. Um so the what the Bible depicts is what is it is the right way. Now I do think in scripture there's a logic to that. Um I think God's the glory of his righteous justice is gonna be vindicated forever in the way that eternal conscious torment is gonna play out. Um he's gonna be you know glorified in this. In fact, there's a there's a sermon that affected me about as much as this quote is as this uh statement from Sir uh Spurgeon. It was by Jonathan Edwards, and it was um the end of the wicked contemplated by the righteous was the name of the sermon. And um he's talking about Revelation chapter 18. Let me read to you Revelation 18 and verse 20. Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her. Now, he's talking about Babylon being thrown down, and then all the people who had attached themselves to Babylon, they're all being thrown down. There's this great lament, and then it says, at some point, a voice turns to all of the saints and says, Rejoice over her after she's been cast down in judgment. O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her. Meaning this world that's been set against you and is in set to some extent been persecuting you, God's going to vindicate you by judging her, and now you rejoice over her judgment. Now, Jonathan Edwards' um sermon was about the end of the wicked contemplated by the righteous. And he says, He said, There's coming a day, he's talking to sinners, right? He's talking to sinners who are lost. And he says, I want you to think about what this means. If you have a mother right now who's a Christian who loves you, who's been praying for you, tenderly exhorting you to come to Christ, if you have a father who's been admonishing you, you need to believe in Christ because he loves you and he's been disciplining you with a loving hand. If you have a grandmother or a grandfather or an aunt or an uncle or a friend, all these dear sweet Christians who are who love you, who've wept in prayer for you to come to Christ, you need to understand that one day God is going to wipe all of their tears away. And they're not gonna cry for you anymore. There's not gonna be anybody left to weep for you anymore when you are under God's judgment. There will be no pity in the universe for you anymore. And then Edward says, Why would you let it come to that? Why would you let it come to that? And so the the horror of it, he says in the very end, he uses it as a present inducement for for the lost to believe and to be saved, right? So, but the horror of it is really what it is. There is coming a time an ultimate victory of God's gonna cast down Babylon and all those who are attached to her. And guess what? There's gonna be no mercy anymore. And it's not depicted in Revelation as their annihilation, it's depicted as God's great victory over her. It's depicted as as uh vindication. And in fact, it says in chapter 19 and verse 1 he hears a multitude in heaven saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God because his judgments are true and righteous, meaning that you've got this assembly of the righteous praising God for his justice in the damnation of the wicked. Do you think we're gonna resent God because of the way he judges the wicked at the end? You are not reading the same Bible I am if that's what you think. All of our affections, all of our feelings are gonna be completely reconciled and right to him. And we're gonna feel about things the way he feels about things. And you say, Well, how can that be? I can't imagine that. You're fallen right now. All of us are. It's hard to imagine that. But there is coming a day when he's gonna wipe all those tears away, and we're gonna be transfixed on him and how glorious he is in his righteousness and judgment, even in his judgments. And so to say that, well, it has to go away in order for it to be glorious and right. I don't think that's the way the Bible depicts it at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:31

Wow. You know, Ray, um Denny um mentioned Jonathan Edwards. I remember the first time I read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Um, I think I kept trembling for years after that. I mean, it just so shook me to my core. And we all know Edwards has been celebrated as one of the greatest thinkers America has ever produced, some say the greatest, and definitely one of the greatest theologians of all time. And he didn't shy away from talking about hell. Ray, that's one of the things I've noticed about you is your frustration when you have read a gospel tract that doesn't mention hell or someone is preaching the gospel and they don't allude to hell. J just a quick exhortation on how we can't take hell out of our message. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:17

It's a wonder if I've got any hair left because I want to tear my hair out when I read things like that, where the modern church has substituted the word hell with the words eternal separation from God or Christless eternity. If I make my bed in hell, behold you're there, you're not going to get away from God. When we talk about the word hell, sinners know exactly what we mean. And we need to be clear about it and to water down our messages, to water down the medicine so it loses its curative properties. I got a question, Danny. Um it may be irrelevant to what we're talking about, maybe it's not, but do you think there is time as we know it in eternity?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:58

Yeah, it it's gonna be different. Um God sits, I think, outside of time. I don't know how we do. In other words, if we experience as creatures, there's no way for us to experience existence apart from a succession of events. And so um so even though God sits outside of time, I don't know how we could we would. So um, so it's got to be some sort of succession of events. I don't know, I don't know how else to say that. And I I'm just thinking in terms of you know, when Jesus is raised from the dead, you know, he eats with his disciples, they touch him, they he has a body, you know. And the New Testament teaches that our resurrection is gonna be like his. And so I don't know how an embodied existence is anything other than a succession of of events. And I think in in eternity it's gonna be, you know, indefinitely and infinitely extended forward, right? And I think there'll be increasing joy forever. Um and so there's all of that, but I don't know how you could so it depends, I guess it depends on what you mean by time, but if it's if it's this continual succession of events, I think that that's gonna continue in some sense in the age to come.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:20

In reference to what you were saying, thank you, Danny. Um easy um sinners in the hands of an angry God. I think it was RC Sproul that talked about God in the hands of angry sinners. And that sums up what we tend to do. We just want to shape God to suit what we think he should be like, and that goes back to a violation of the first and the second of the Ten Commandments. You should have no other gods before me. Don't make yourself a grave in image. And uh beware of idolatry, flee idolatry, scripture says.

Repent And Trust Christ Today

SPEAKER_00 1:47:50

It's interesting because we often will reference that, Ray, in relation to the unbeliever creating a God in his own image. But we need to be careful as believers that we don't do that. And again, we we've highlighted the fact that we can all sympathize with that terror that strikes some of our annihilationist friends who say, Man, I I can't even think about that. Of course we relate to that. And and yet we have to grasp that we we don't understand the ways of God. Look, I can't control my own hiccups most of the times, right? I I can't help but my heart beat. I can't change that. I can't deal with my digestive system and what it does or doesn't do. You know, if we as men could control anything, right, we'd stop the hair growing out of our ears and off our backs. We can't even do that. And we we expect to understand the wonders of an infinite God. Like there comes a point where we just have to stop and say, I'm not even gonna go there because that leads to all kinds of mischief. I I can't even head in that direction. Uh I want to wrap us up, Mark, here in just a bit, but I know there are some that that are listening or watching right now that just happened on this recording that we've done. And I say that loosely. We know they didn't just happen on it, right? We know God is divine and how he orchestrates things. I don't want us to leave this having talked around the gospel without the gospel being proclaimed. And so I want you to speak to that person who's listening now, who's maybe just internally, pardon the pun, tormented thinking, what is gonna happen to me if I die? Speak to them.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:33

Yeah, let me preface it with um uh an urgency attached to this as well. You know, we talk about the famed magician Penn Gillette, who somebody gave an evidence Bible to, uh, your evidence Bible to him, and his response to getting that Bible and our friend uh giving that to him, Penn Gillette said, you know, I've always said that I don't respect people who don't proselytize. I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell and people could be going to hell or not, if well, excuse me, and people could be going to hell or not, getting eternal life, and you think that it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, well, how much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize? And then he continues with his illustration. He says, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn't believe it, there's a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that. See, even as an atheist, he recognized the logical urgency of a literal hell.

unknown 1:50:36

No.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:37

We we go out. Our ministry is based, is is birthed from this from the idea that the gospel is right. Yuan Gileon mentioned 77 times in the New Testament. This proclamation of this good news of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ who was born of a virgin. But the question is why? Why? Was he bored? Did he have nothing to do? Absolutely not the case. And really, for reasons known only to God, he created man. We can try to understand it, we can try to explain it, but but in all reality, we we simply don't know why he did it. He loved man for reasons known only to himself. Our sins have separated us from God. We talked about lying and stealing and licking with lust, which is adultery, hatred, which is murder, covetousness, which is the tenth commandment. And these sins have separated us from God. And because our sins are so great, they deserve to be judged. But God doesn't punish sin. What is sin? It's not this black diabolical goo that floats around the universe, attaches onto us, and then we tell a little white lie. What is it? Luke 6. It comes from within. It is the wellspring of our very heart. We are of our Father, the Father of lies. We do what he does. That is our flesh. That is our adamic nature. This is what we long to do. And because of that, we've been separated and we deserve, deserve to be judged. And this is what doesn't make sense to me. Because the one doctrine in the Bible that actually makes sense to me is hell. That rises to the top of this makes sense because my sins have separated me from God. And if God gives me that just reward, yes, I'm going to be an ember in the pit of hell. Every idle word a man speaks, you'll have to give an account thereof on the day of judgment. Every white lie, every half-truth, everything, everything, and that it is shameful the things that are done in darkness. God's arm is not short that he cannot reach. His ears not dull that he cannot hear. But this sin has created this chasm, and so God made a way where there seems to be no way. And he sent his son Jesus Christ, and he died a cruel death, with a beard ripped from his face and this crown of thorns put upon his brow. And he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. They know not what they do. And I'm thinking, I knew what I was doing, I just didn't know the ramifications of what I was doing. And this is why hell makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:05

Yeah.

Penn Jillette And The Truck Warning

SPEAKER_05 1:53:07

And what separates Christianity away from all the other worldviews, all the religions, all the cults, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, is Jesus Christ. We talked about John Stott. John Stott said, you cannot properly preach the gospel if you do not properly preach Christ. So let's talk about him. He's the Alpha and the Omega at the beginning and the end. He's the first and the last. In his presence, the mountain melts, the mountains melt like wax. He's our shepherd, our sustainer, our buckler. He is the one in whom he calls us no longer when you become a Christian, he no longer calls you servants, but he calls you friends. He called Judas a friend. Judas betrays him with a kiss, and that's not what lips were designed for. Your lips were designed to bring glory and honor to the king of kings and the lord of lords. And we think that God is just going to annihilate us. That's craziness. Even Pen Gillette recognized this. And we talk about grace, right? God's unmerited favor to the infinitely ill-deserving. I like what Matthew Henry said. You're at the closest moment of receiving God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness when you begin to realize that you can't do anything right. We talked about Matthew Henry saying, if your hand was cut off, you would bleed corruption. Or Joseph Aline, every unconverted man would kill God all over again if he could just get to him. We talked about Jonathan Edwards, right? God sees nothing in man to turn his heart, but he sees plenty in man to turn his stomach. This is what our sin has done. And what Christ has done is he paid a debt he did not owe because we owed a debt we could never pay. When he died on that cross and he had me in mind and he had his children in mine, and he would do it all over again. And what comes next is the acceptance of that payment by Jesus rising again from the dead. Because there's no other true story where the hero dies for the villain. I'm the resurrection and life who believes in me, though he dies, he will live. And then he asks this question, we treat it like it's rhetorical, but then he says, Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Because if you believe this, you're going to act differently. And listen, I've never met they're out, I'm undoubtedly they're out there, but listen, I've never met a conditionalist who has an urgency to share the gospel. I'm sure it exists, but I just haven't seen it. And we remove that urgency as we downplay hell. This little four-letter word. I think it's not that big of a deal. Listen, repent and place your trust in Jesus, or you're just gonna cease to exist. Yeah, I think I'm fine sleeping with my girl. I think I'm fine sleeping around. Paul Washer said the only reason why there's not eight billion Adolf Hitlers in the world is because of God's grace. There's a common grace attached to that. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. Mercy is God holding back with that which you deserve, and justice is you getting exactly what you deserve, and you don't want that. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Fearful thing. Why would it be fearful? I'm just gonna I I don't I don't want to be with him anyways. So the story is God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ, his great love for sinners, which doesn't make any sense to me. And he who knew no sin, he became sin so that we might become the righteousness of Christ. We receive our righteousness through the life of Christ. And he he he didn't come and die just to give us fire insurance, and that is the misnomer of the message today. He he died so that we could have a relationship with a God who knows how to do what he does, and he does all things well. He knows how to save people. He saved us so that we could have a relationship with him. Come to your senses, come clean, confess your sins. He's faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. Confess him. He doesn't need your acceptance. He is accepted. This is not an invitation to get right with God, this is a declaration. Unless you repent, you will perish. You will, you will perish. We invite people to come. Repeat this prayer after me. But in all reality, listen, he doesn't need you. You need him because without him, there is literal hell to pay. And that scares me. And Danny, I could listen to you all day, brother. Absolutely loved what you had to share here.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:36

Man, praise the Lord. Amen. Yeah, and uh, and and those of you who just heard Mark share that, we want to echo the words of scripture, and that is flee from the wrath to come. Friend, it is wrath, and it's hot wrath, and it's definite wrath that's coming. And we care about you and want you to know the savior. Mark, you highlighted Pen Gillette and Denny. You probably don't know the story, but what ended up happening was Ray, after praying for a long time that he'd get the opportunity to share the gospel with Pen Gillette, got that opportunity. Uh, we were in DC, and Ray was going to interview Lawrence Krause, the famous physicist for one of the movies that we had produced. And we get out of the car, and there's Pen Gillette standing there with Lawrence Krause. And I remember we go up into the hotel room, Ray does an interview, and Ray, maybe you could pick it up from there. And then Ray says, Penn, come sit down, sit down. Let me let me interview you and pick it up, right?

Closing Encouragement To Share The Gospel

SPEAKER_01 1:58:39

Yeah, I couldn't believe what had happened because I prayed for him so many. Didn't he know he was that he it was the evidence bible, our evidence study Bible he was given. And uh I saw Pendulette standing there. We'd run out of interview space because Lawrence Krauss said, You can only ask me ask me four questions. I don't want anything else. He said, He's a big chicken. And so I said to uh Pendulette, come and sit down, talk to me. And he wouldn't do it. He's six foot fifteen. And he got to his knees and he wouldn't come and talk to me. But the wonderful thing is that Easy and I left, went downstairs, and he followed me. And uh he wanted to talk. And we spent, what, 10 or 15 minutes on the sidewalk, and I shared the entire gospel, went through the commandments, told him how he could know God exists. An atheist believes the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything. It's absolutely insane. And I shared all that, and horror of horrors, he turns to the cameras, he said, I don't give you permission to show this footage. Because that wouldn't be good for an atheist to be seen hearing the gospel and nodding in agreement. But he just he left and I said, I want to thank you. And this is in the our movie called The Fool, which is online. I said, I want to thank you for that illustration when he talked about warning a man if a truck was heading for him. And I says, I'm warning you today because I love you. And that was the end, and then he turned around and was almost killed as he stepped onto the road by a vehicle. I'm not kidding. He said, A vehicle hit the pants leg of the guy who was standing next to him. It was uh an actor, and uh it was a very moving experience. Yeah, it's goosebumm when you watch the video.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:20

It's amazing. Ray just got done reminding him of his own illustration about you know tackling someone when a vehicle's coming for him, crosses the street, we hear screeching of tires, we look up, we see him and his friend like this. And later on a podcast, he talked about it and shared what Ray shared. It almost hit his friend's leg, hit the pant leg. And it was like a living illustration for him. And so I share that to say that our whole heart in all of this is to bring this all down to the street level. We gave a literal example of street level. He comes down to the street, talks to Ray, and that happens. And Danny, I just want to say, brother, that the the big reason why you're here is uh is because of what you had written at the end of your opening section here. And you said, second, the biblical doctrine of hell compels believers to see the urgency of evangelism. Have you considered the great mercy of God toward you in Christ? Have you begun to fathom what he rescued you from through Christ's sacrificial death on the cross? If his mercy was big enough and wide enough to include you, it is not sufficient for you. If is it not sufficient for your neighbor as well? Shouldn't the terrors of the damned move you to share the mercy of God with those who have not experienced it while there's still time? And then you quoted Spurgeon, which you quoted here for us today. And so, brother, you didn't know us personally, we didn't know you personally, we'd all heard of one another. And how kind of the Lord to bring us together to talk about this important topic. And I believe this recording here is going to impact believers for generations to come and stir them to speak the truth and love to those who are lost. And we tried to do that today, again, for our annihilationist friends. We've tried to speak the truth and love. We care about you, we love you. And we want to encourage you to re examine the scriptures because these things matter. Amen. So thanks for being with us, brother. Thank you, brother. And may the Lord uh continue to be glorified through us as we proclaim the everlasting gospel.