“23 Minutes in Hell”
Nothing has caused more confusion about the doctrine of final punishment than the erroneous idea that all men are born with immortal “souls” that live forever! Perhaps no lie of the Devil has been more widely accepted. I will deal with this in more detail in a separate article, but for now let us focus on the next most confusing issue, the word aionios, usually translated “eternal” or “everlasting”.
Eternal Fire - Eternal Punishment
In our western way of thinking, these words elicit thoughts of a timeless existence which is incomprehensible to the human mind. The same Greek word “aionios” is used for eternal, or everlasting life (zoe aionios). Have you ever tried to imagine FOREVER? It makes you dizzy doesn't it? Although the word aionios does carry with it the idea of perpetual, ongoing, the more proper understanding of it is “age” (as in time), particularly used for the future.
In this light then, eternal life is better understood as “life in the age to come”! It is not so much life without time, as life in a future time (age). Insomuch as the age to come has no revealed or foreseeable end in Hebrew thought, it is described as perpetual – never ending. But to say that “time is no more” is inaccurate for it is really only time outside of the present age.
The main point to understand about aionios is that it speaks of a future age. It is my understanding that scholars have argued this point for many years, but for some reason it hasn't been accepted or understood by the general bible-reading, church-going public. But if this is correct, then just as eternal life is to be thought of as life in the age to come, so should eternal fire and eternal punishment be understood as referring to the age to come.
Consider the following passage of Scripture in Jude...
“Don't forget what happened to those people that the Lord rescued from Egypt. Some of them did not have faith, and he later destroyed them. You also know about the angels who didn't do their work and left their proper places. God chained them with everlasting chains (note that everlasting here is a different word - not aionios) and is now keeping them in dark pits until the great day of judgment. We should also be warned by what happened to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the nearby towns. Their people became immoral and did all sorts of sexual sins. Then God made an example of them and punished them with eternal fire.” -- Jude 1:5-7 (CEV)
NOTE: Some (very few) translations use the name Jesus in place of Lord here. ASV, NASB, KJV, WEY, RV and most others render verse 5 "the Lord" saved a people out of Egypt. Not Jesus. Lord is the correct translation of kurios which is the word used in the Greek text here. The NET correctly notes (24) "The reading ᾿Ιησοῦς (Ihsous, “Jesus”) is deemed too hard by several scholars, since it involves the notion of Jesus acting in the early history of the nation Israel." - (NET footnotes on verse 5). Yet they argue that "Jesus" is supported by many early witnesses, while noting that there were many scribal variants.
Here Jude reminds his readers that God “destroyed those who did not believe”; this was their punishment – total destruction! And he uses the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah as an “example” of eternal fire! It is evident that Sodom and Gomorrah are not still burning. If you go to that place on the map today you will not find any human souls writhing in torment in the fire. No. Jude uses the destructive punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah as a symbol of the fire which is to come. In other words, just as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by raining down fire and brimstone from heaven, so He will do to the ungodly in the judgment of the coming age! To solidify this truth, consider what the apostle Peter said...
“if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly” -- 2 Peter 2:6 (ESV)
Can it be any clearer than that?
The Bible seems to be quite specific about the fate of the ungodly and unbelieving. They will suffer extinction! While there are some Scriptures that seem to suggest that souls suffer perpetual torment in a burning hell, closer examination reveals that God has other, more merciful and just, plans for them.
Consider also what Paul has to say about the subject...
“They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from (or destruction that comes from) the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.” -- 2 Thess 1:9-10 (ESV)
The usage of the phrase “eternal destruction” here is the same as that of “eternal fire” in Jude. It is symbolic of the punishment which is coming in the next age. If this were not the case, we would have Paul teaching that souls will be in a perpetual state of destruction, yet never actually being destroyed. Unfortunately, there are some who believe that exactly! But this really makes a muddle of the language and (in my opinion) does great injustice to the nature of God.
It is interesting that in all of the New Testament, there are but a few places that actually deal directly with final punishment. They are 1 Thessalonians, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. The others are found in the gospels, where Jesus talks about “hell fire” and “everlasting fire”. The everlasting fire we have already dealt with as being fire representative of the age to come. The imagery of “hell fire, worms, and unquenchable fire” in the gospels, are all references to gehenna, the refuse dump of Jerusalem. Jesus used this place (that would be clear to any Jew) to illustrate the destruction of the wicked in the age to come, where the fire cannot be put out until it has completed it's job – total destruction. Complete information about gehenna can easily be found in any good Bible dictionary.
The doctrine of final punishment, as taught by Christian “orthodoxy”, is not “right thinking” at all (the meaning of orthodoxy is right thinking)! The evidence for final destruction, as opposed to eternal punishment, is overwhelming when one simply takes the time to study it. But for some reason, many orthodox believers are more eager to defend the traditions than to believe the truth. They find destruction to be too merciful a punishment for sin, and of course, extinction is impossible because of the supposed immorality of the human soul. And as we suggested at the first, this may well be the most devious lie that Satan has perpetrated on mankind!
Keith Dyer
