Is this REALLY what the Bible says about Hell? Responding to Allen Parr

[0:00] Alan Parr is an extremely well-known well-respected well-liked Christian YouTuber teacher and theologian for whom I have a ton of respect both in terms of the way that he teaches his heart of reconciliatory attitude and the way that he's managed his own YouTube channel and succeeded God has clearly been very good to Alan Parr in his ministry and I'm grateful for him but he put out a video yesterday called will a loving God really torture people in Hell forever five views on hell that I really wanted to dive into because this is obviously a very important topic this is obviously a very sensitive topic and it's something that we need to handle very carefully with regard to the scriptures and we need to exclude any idea that doesn't come from the scriptures exclusively now I'm going to warn you right now this

[0:47] will probably make you uncomfortable I'm going to outline a view scripturally that I think most people intuitively feel like they need to reject because it's very different from what most of us have heard but I'm also going to show that what most of us have heard isn't actually based on the scriptures so much as it is based on philosophy that was done in the hundreds of years after the Bible was completed long after the church had been influenced by a lot of platonic thinking Greek thinking ideas like the immortality of the soul and then all of that was laid on top of the Bible and then even a millennia later people built medieval thinking and medieval philosophy on top of that what should matter to all of us more than anything is what the Bible actually has to say we're Bound by that if we call ourselves Christians and we want to say that God's word is true that is the ultimate Arbiter of what's true and

[1:35] what's not true and so we need to try to make a case that isn't beholden just to philosophical ideas or what we think is appropriate we need to make a case that is strictly biblical now Alan usually does really really good work he tries his best to be even-handed I really appreciate that about him that he's pretty ecumenical he tries to make uh he tries to portray other views that aren't his own in a pretty uh kind light he tries to steal man his opponents rather than straw man them usually um he did some interesting stuff in this video so let's just go ahead and skip to the part that I think is relevant uh he started with the traditional view of hell then he moved to something that he called the metaphorical view of hell and then he arrived at this spot we're going to start on here and I want you to just hear what he has to say torture now let's move on to view number three which we'll call conditional mortality or the flip side of that is annihilationism now

[2:25] I'm gonna pause him here you may never have heard these terms before and it's actually conditional immortality or annihilationism and this is a whole big nuanced discussion that can go in a lot of different directions I'll just simply start by saying this is the view that I hold and I'm not here to convince anybody of that view I'm not trying to persuade anybody I'm trying to explain why it's a view that I hold and Alan Parr no less a a kind-hearted Soul than Alan Parr he treats it in there's some you know rhetorical sleight of hand you'll see him use um that aren't really becoming of this kind of uh open spirit so we're gonna we're gonna watch the rest of this video but I just want you to know ahead of time this is the view that I hold and I want you to listen closely to what he says and I'm going to give some

[3:11] responses now this is an interesting view that has gained quite a bit of popularity and so for that reason we're going to camp out here a little bit and we're going to explain this in detail essentially you could summarize this view with the phrase Let the crime determine the time so that's that's a cute phrase um I don't necessarily disagree with it but this isn't this isn't the starting point I we don't start from this as like an axiom as the basic philosophical assumption that in undergirds what what we believe if you're a conditionalist if you're an annihilationist um that is maybe a helpful shorthand after you've done all the establishing work but let the crime determine the time simply means that if a person lives 80 years and sins a finite amount of times

[3:58] what he's what he's articulating here is that the annihilationist would say that the the natural justice-oriented you know you want to let the the punishment fit the crime you would want to be able to say that the the amount of time the person is suffering is somehow commensurate with how badly they disobeyed God in the here and now which isn't wrong but it's just not true enough so we're gonna let it keep going and see what else he has to say I'm so let's go back they start with the premise that no one is Immortal except God if you don't know what the word immortal means it means the ability to live forever right for all eternity so God is the only Immortal being and so therefore God grants some people I.E Christians that's hopefully you and I the gift of immortality but by default when you come into this world you are

[4:45] not Immortal your soul is not Immortal and so that's the base that you come into the world with right so if you die apart from Christ you're not Immortal you never were and so therefore it's impossible for you to burn up or assume it's impossible for you to be portrait and tormented throughout all eternity because you were not Immortal immortality was a gift that comes from the only Immortal one God himself to those who follow Jesus Christ that would be you and I we get that gift of being the living eternally by those who are uh unredeemed or non-redeemed they are not Eternal and they're not uh they're not Immortal and therefore they will not spend eternity in hell oh that makes sense so essentially you go to hell based on whatever level of crimes or wrongs that you've committed during this life and once you've paid your time once you have been severely punished based on how you live your life you cease to exist you burn up you are destroyed you perish and you don't know

[5:35] anymore right and so that is the Crux of this conditional mortality argument or Annihilation now the logic behind this is pretty obvious it's the idea that how do you harmonize or or uh reconcile if you will this moral problem that we have with God is what they would say is that hey if God is a good god it's impossible for him to torture people throughout all eternity especially when the top the crimes that were committed were committed in time so why would their punishment have to last for all eternity so if you only live for 70 years you could have only committed 70 years worth of crimes or 70 years worth of sins does it make logical sense for God to then punish somebody for 70 billion years and even then you're only in heaven for one second like it doesn't seem to make logical sense is inconsistent with the character of God is what they would say

[6:22] now for scriptural support they will basically say that hey if we're going to take the Bible literally like traditional uh view number one would say that we have to look at words like perish and destroy or destruction because when we use these words in our English language it doesn't mean that something is going to last forever food perishes right or when something is destroyed it doesn't mean that it's still around it's gone right it is destroyed it's completely consumed now let me give an example John 3 16 for this is how God loved the world he gave us one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish right but have eternal life happy that parents ceasing to exist right being annihilated is what they would say uh let me give you another example Matthew chapter 10 verse 28 don't be afraid of those who want to kill your body Jesus said they cannot touch your soul fear only God who can destroy both soul and Body in hell

[7:11] so let's say hey look here it is God can destroy your body make it cease to exist in Hell one strong opponent of this view whose name is Clark he writes this Everlasting torture is intolerable from a moral point of view because it pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies whom he does not even allow to die how can one love a god like that I suppose one might be afraid of him but could we love and respect him would we want to strive to be like him in his mercilessness now he might say wait wait brother Alan how do those who hold this view explain passages that talk about eternal death well they kind of use a loophole to get around it and they'll say well uh let's just say somebody ceases to exist their punishment is eternal they will be eternally separated from God so that is their punishment so

[8:00] they'll say yes they will eternally die because they won't be Eternal eternally tormented but they will be eternally separated from God so their punishment is still Eternal even though their torture component of that punishment is temper so they would argue that this would reflect a fairer perspective on how and how long people are going to be punished in health now even though this view sounds good the concern here is that are we making this argument more from a place of reason or logic or opinion or what we feel God should be doing in our finite minds of what Justice looks like or are we actually using the scriptures to get to our argument so to summarize this view they would say that hell is basically a place that one day is going to be completely empty because those who will go there are going to go there and they are going to pay their time and then cease to exist now the fourth view of Hell okay

[8:47] so I wanted to let him say all of that before I started to respond because I want to make sure that there's no cutting in and out chopping things up I wanted to make sure that he he had his word here um so there's a few things he he alluded to scripture um and I won't deny that there are some people who hold this view Who start from sort of a moral intuition starting point and then go in search of the scriptures to kind of back up as other proof texts to back up their point that's not the route that I took I actually had no problem with Eternal conscious torment it was profoundly sad as it should be if that's the view that you hold if you really stop and think about it I don't know how anybody if they really believe that that's the truth um without heavily you know pushing the truth down if that's what you believe the truth is I don't know how you get out of bed in the morning to be honest if you think that people are just suffering internally at 150 000 people and that's how many people die every day by the way 150 000 people a day a significant chunk of those are just

[9:34] gonna be tortured forever um but he's assuming that the way that you arrive at this position is you have to be convinced of it through moral logic and reasoning first and then you go looking for scriptures to provide you know a backing for it to bolster it to kind of be proof text that you use to just kind of supplement your claim um I came about it from the exact opposite direction I studied the scriptures I was not looking for this at all it arose naturally from passages that I read so he said something kind of at the beginning of this where he said that uh the annihilationists will start with the premise that God Alone is Immortal well I don't start with that premise scripture does so a classic example is actually here in first Timothy chapter 6 verse 16 where Paul is in the middle of this doxology that the end of this passage he says uh he who is the blessed and only Sovereign the king of kings and Lord of lords who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has seen or can see to

[10:23] him be honor and eternal Dominion amen so Paul just comes right out and says it no one possesses immortality except for God but I think the more interesting example is actually all the way back at the beginning of your Bible back in Genesis chapter three so if we look at Genesis 3 God has let's let's talk about this this is where this really started to become real for me um we all have an image of the Garden of Eden the way that it works the way that that whole passage that whole first you know three or so chapters of the Bible work um there is not one wasted word in that entire passage uh in the entire first three chapters of your Bible there's not one wasted word it is exquisitely designed it is a work of literary genius and it's really important to take it for what it is actually saying so this gets into the question of whether or not the Garden of Eden was actually perfect and and exactly the way that God wanted it

[11:12] to be or whether it was a starting point from which he intended to partner with humans to take it someplace beautiful now I think the text pretty self-evidently uh espouses the latter view where it's not perfect in the way that it was it was he brought order to chaos and he brought he brought life out of nothingness and it was good he said I mean you can't get away from the word good the word good in Hebrew and in every other language doesn't have that metaphysical perfect language and perfect idea loaded in on top of it where there's literally nothing that could be better it's good and God saw everything that he made and he called it good but he created humans and the purpose he gives to humans right at the beginning he says let us make Mankind in our image according to our likeness and let them

[12:00] rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the Earth so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them he blessed them said to them be fruitful and multiply fill the Earth and subdue it just this alone he's created humans he's made everything he's called it all good but until the humans have done what they were designed to do to rule over the Earth to fill it and multiply and subdue it even the garden was not perfect yet there was there was something lacking it needed more Humanity to go out and spread over the world and then work with God as partners to bring about his Rule and it would increase and and and go ever closer toward Perfection okay this is a very important idea it wasn't perfect perfect now what happens is when he made the man okay when you get to this in Genesis 2

[12:51] because Genesis 1 and 2 are both kind of stacked on top of each other two different perspectives on the creation narrative so when God makes the man down here in verse seven we've talked about this before this is what's called the biblical anthropology a lot of people when we use the word Soul just as an example when we use the word Soul we think of that as the non-physical non-material part of me that lives on in either Heaven or Hell after I die and the only problem with that is the Bible so the Hebrew word for the word soul is nephesh and believe it or not the first time that word is actually used is in Genesis 1 and it's not used to describe human beings it's used on day four and it's used to describe I'm sorry day five and it's used to describe fish okay and said God let abound the waters with

[13:40] an abundance of creatures living okay living creatures right that word nephesh if you go anywhere else in the Bible you'll be able to find this look I'll just click it and show you here we are creatures creature creatures but this word is used uh 115 times in just this form all the souls of his sons persons uh persons person person life uh the feelings or the heart this is more like the embodied experience uh that's kind of a weird way to translation to translate it but if a soul uh any one person so this is what's what's interesting about this is that it gets pretty plastic the way that the word is used however the first time this word is used about humans is right here in verse seven so then the Lord God formed the

[14:27] man of dust from the ground okay he formed his body Out of the Dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life the word breath is is ruach which means spirit it's the same word in Hebrew for breath uh wind uh and spirit they're all the same word okay so a Jewish person would look outside and see the trees blowing and swaying back and forth in the wind and they would call that God's ruach at work his Spirit uh so he takes about body and a spirit and the Man became a living person now the word person here you can see in this little footnote says or soul okay so in the Bible humans are dirt and divine breath and they are put together to make the soul now what was he made out of and where was he made he was made out of the dust from

[15:16] the Dust have you ever heard that phrase before uh you know from the dust we came to the dust we return right that's biblical dust is an image of mortality everywhere in this in the scriptures now if you go out a little bit further to verse seven I'm sorry verse 8 the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden and there he placed the man whom he had formed so God created Adam and Eve Out of the Dust and then he creates a garden in the east in Eden and then puts them there so they're not even in the garden yet this is humans by their ontological nature are mortal things okay now let's keep going the very next verse out of the ground the Lord God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing to the sight and good for food the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and

[16:04] the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil now just follow the logic here God takes dust mortal stuff makes a human being create a garden in Eden takes him and puts him there and then the tree of life is there okay now the tree of life is you know depending on if you take this literally if you take this metaphorically the meaning is the same it is this is where God's own life flows into the human creatures right the tree of life is what allows a human to live forever now I'm just going to skip ahead to Genesis 3 here and show you because obviously we know that Adam and Eve are deceived by The Serpent and then they uh Paul would say later in Romans that sin entered here and then death entered through sin but here's what he means by that down in Genesis 3 verse 22. then the Lord God

[16:53] said behold the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil and now he might reach out with his hand and take fruit also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken so he drove the man out and at the east of the Garden of Eden he's stationed to the cheddarbeam and the Flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way the tree of life so what is being deprived of humanity here an opportunity to have eternal life meaning they were already not mortal or not Immortal they were already mortal beings they were made Mortal then God created the garden and put the tree in the center of it and then the next phase in the story is them eating of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and to keep them from living forever God blocks off their access to the tree of life and Exiles

[17:42] them from the garden so they were mortal already and they forfeited a chance at becoming ontologically Immortal beings God separated them so that they would not live forever in a state of sinfulness okay let the implications of that sink in for a second God does not want human beings to exist forever in a state of sinfulness he does not want that he prevented it explicitly at the at the very beginning of the story okay so I don't start with the premise that God Alone is Immortal and that humans are mortal beings by their ontological nature the Bible starts with that premise and it establishes it really clearly on the first few pages nor does this perspective stay on the first few pages of your Bible in fact I've heard so often from people who are you know Eternal conscious torment proponents who are all believers okay

[18:30] I'm not going to judge the content of people's hearts obviously this is not a commonly held view that I'm explaining I think it's the biblical one but I'm great I'm grateful to call these people Brothers and Sisters in Christ uh they often do not extend that same uh that same generosity of spirit back to me but that's a completely different issue uh these are Brothers and Sisters in Christ but I've often heard them say almost in passing as though this were a normal thing to believe well the Old Testament doesn't mention hell uh which you know even if it were true that would be a very strange thing wouldn't it like as though as though the first three quarters of your Bible were completely silent on the fate of the wicked and the unrepentant um because that you just assume the end of the Fate the end fate of the wicked and unrepentant is hell but it's not silent about the fate of the wicked it

[19:17] just it just doesn't say anything about eternal conscious torment or burning eternally in Hellfire it does say over and over in fact that the wicked will be destroyed uh like like Alan said again to his credit he said some of these things he was he was making this case but he was making it in a kind of a backwards way from what you should make it uh it does say that the wicked will be destroyed burned up blown away like chaff uh dissolved like a snail made to be as nothing crushed killed trampled underfoot um all sorts of ones right and that you will be unable to find them that they will be no more Psalm 37 is actually a really good example of this uh it's not just the Psalms it's not any one particular genre it's everything but if we go and just read this starting in verse 1 of Psalm 37 do not get upset because of evildoers do not be envious of wrongdoers for they will wither

[20:05] quickly like the grass and Decay like the green plants trust in the Lord and do good live in the land and cultivate faithfulness delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart commit your way to the Lord trust also in him and he will do it he will bring out your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noon day rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him so he's talking to the wicked and the righteous he's saying okay righteous person you wait you trust you hold on to God it might look like the wicked or prospering you see this theme all over in this Psalms it might look like the wicked or prospering but just be patient there's coming a day of judgment where you'll be exalted and they will be destroyed rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him do not get upset because of one who is successful in his way because of the person who carries out wicked schemes cease from anger and abandon wrath do not get upset it leads only to evil doing for evildoers will be

[20:53] eliminated but those who wait for the Lord they will inherit the land okay it eliminated in the sense that they will be completely done away with and that's established by the second point because then you'll take in the land that they were stealing you will inherit the land the one who waits for the Lord the land that was just vacated by the people who were wiped out will be yours yet a little while and the wicked person will be no more you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there but the humble will inherit the land and will Delight themselves in abundant prosperity the wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth the Lord laughs at him for he sees that his day is coming the wicked have drawn The Sword and bent their bow to take down The Afflicted and the needy to kill off those who are upright in conduct their sword will enter their own heart and

[21:40] their bows will be broken better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many Wicked for the arms of the wicked will be broken but the Lord sustains the righteous the Lord knows the days of blameless and their inheritance will be forever they will not be ashamed in the time of evil and in the days of famine they will have plenty but the Wicked Will perish and the enemies of the Lord will be like the glory of the pastures they vanish like smoke they vanish away so and it continues on the point is that all throughout the Old Testament the whole thing uses this image of Destruction death Brokenness breaking down Annihilation elimination becoming like dust and Vanishing Away With the Wind okay or even like chaff that gets burned up and Blown Away by the wind now the mechanics of this can get pretty technical so I'm gonna try my best to sort of explain the way that this stuff works biblically speaking so there is sort of four pieces of info and data

[22:31] that we need to take in okay there is the What's called the intermediate State and then the Eternal State and then we also need to take into account that that there's an intermediate state for those who are in Christ and those who are wicked those are the only categories that the Bible gives us the intermediate state for those who are in Christ when they die is heaven okay the intermediate state I'm sorry the Eternal state of those who are in Christ is the new heavens and the new Earth this would be what we would call the full overlap okay um this is what we've talked about most about on the channel is okay there's sort of a difference between the intermediate State and the Eternal State and then what what is this little event that causes the transition from the

[23:22] Eternal state sorry the intermediate state to the Eternal state is the day of the Lord hopefully you can read my awful handwriting uh bear with me now this is what's interesting about the wicked okay they're not in Hell immediately okay when again I'm not denying hell I think hell is a real place I think hell is a place of punishment of destruction of death it is not someplace you want to go it is enormously unpleasant it could be that you are punished for years and years and years that you are suffering in torment it could be um it could be literal Flames okay there's all sorts of things that this could that could be true on this view but what's interesting is that even the Bible would explain any any other person any other person would hold any any other view aside from universalism would say that the fate of the wicked in the

[24:09] meantime is the grave okay it's not this could be all in the Hebrew Hades in the Greek either way they're not in that you don't die and immediately go to hell you are sent to the grave but it's this day of the Lord okay the day of the Lord is when judgment happens there's a resurrection of everyone both the in those who are in Christ and those who are not there's a resurrection to Judgment at the end when God is judging and putting everything to rights he's he's rightly dividing People based on whether or not they accepted the free gift of Salvation or whether they want to atone for themselves in their own sins and on that day those who are in Christ will will inherit the new Heavens the new Earth and those who are not in Christ will be judged and thrown into helped in the meantime they're in the

[24:57] grave you could think of that as kind of like a holding cell in the meantime in in biblical terms they're they're in the grave waiting their court date okay and then when they are when they get to their court date then they are judged and again I would put annihilated if you're in Eternal Eternal conscious torment view you should probably you would probably agree with everything else about this picture but you would nevertheless say that in that fourth square instead of annihilated you would put Eternal conscious torment now I'm going to explain a little bit more about why I don't think that that works and again my case is biblical so the there are three verses we're going to get to them in a minute that are called The Big Three uh and these big three are the the verses that seem to on the surface make the best case for Eternal conscious torment because there's a

[25:45] hundred 300 400 500 verses over here that say destroy perished you know burned up trampled underfoot and those seem to make a really clear case especially when you take it and as the preponderance of the evidence over and over and over again um clear words are used that mean a marked end where there's no existence beyond that but there are three verses that seem to teach eternal just torment really really clearly there two of them are in Revelation one of them is in Matthew so let's go there now this one's in Matthew 25 these are Jesus's own words so let's look at this uh we'll start in verse 45 so 25 45 and 46. then he will answer them uh this is the King on that day truly I say to you to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these you did not do it for me either these will go away into Eternal punishment

[26:32] but the righteous into eternal life okay so if you're an eternal conscious torment proponent or you're just we'll call that a traditionalist if you're a traditionalist you hear that and you think oh yeah clearly eternal life you go on living Eternal punishment you go on being punished that's you're being tortured forever yeah I got it uh the only problem with that is the Greek so once again let's go into the actual original languages here now earlier we were doing Hebrew so we were reading right to left now we're going to be reading left to right but we're going to go all the way to the end here and look at these actual words that are in usage so and we'll go away these into punishment that's kolasin okay we'll break this down in a minute Eternal but the righteous into life eternal okay zoing ionian so ionian is is unto the age or um here let me get this back up on the

[27:20] screen for you so you can see it so punishment is colas in okay colas in and then life is zoing now neither of these are verbs okay so it doesn't say that the uh that these will go away into Eternal living and it doesn't say that these will go on into Eternal punishing okay it's a noun in fact you can see it right here it's an accusative feminine feminine singular noun okay an eternal life life now this is a this is what's called a noun of action in Greek uh English language other languages have this too where you have a noun of action that can mean the one thing it doesn't mean is ongoing verbal action it's speaking to the fact of an action at one point in time and referring to that that

[28:08] thing as a noun so uh other passages like in Hebrews I think it's Hebrews 9 12 in fact we should just go there too while we're at it Hebrews 9 12. yeah Hebrews 9 12 nor by Blood of goats and calves through however the own blood he entered once for all into the holy places Eternal Redemption having obtained okay so lutrasin or litrasin right um Eternal Redemption okay that word are you eternally in the process of being Redeemed by what Jesus did are you you'll never actually be fully redeemed no you have a Redemption that is a one-time fact it's an act it's a it's uh the any word that ends in sin or CIS like this in Greek is is a noun of action so Genesis isn't beginning forever it is the beginning okay a point

[28:59] in time after which everything else followed um here in this case Redemption there's a point of redemption after which an eternal life of redemption follows where you are redeemed it's a fact of time in history and then your life follows on from there uh there's another passage in Hebrews actually let me go back a couple of chapters I think it's in verse 9. Hebrews 5 verse 9. yeah and having been perfected he became to all those obeying him the author of Eternal salvation Okay so are we eternally in the process of being saved are we in the process eternally of being redeemed uh even eternal life are we eternally in the process of receiving more and more life that never really becomes eternal life or are we given an eternal life in fullness that we then go out to live out the implications of forever in

[29:48] that same way that we understand all of those same words and we use the Bible at its face value to understand those words Eternal punishment is the same way these go into a punishment that is a moment in time that has Eternal consequences that are unending that never stop so it's capital punishment if a person who uh who commits some horrible heinous crime and is given the death penalty and they're given a lethal injection is there a punishment temporal or eternal well in a sense it's Eternal they were killed in a moment in time they were they were they were given the lethal injection in a moment in time but then they are eternally unliving from that point forward ultimately I'm hoping that you can see that I'm arriving at this position not from philosophy but from exegesis actually breaking down what the verses mean what the words mean how the grammar actually works and how these passages all speak so let's go to the

[30:35] big three uh the other the other parts of the big we've done Matthew 25 now let's look at the other two so here we are in Revelation 14 I'm going to look at verses uh 10 and 11 really I think or maybe maybe we go up to nine and go for it yeah nine is going to give us some context and another Angel a third followed them saying in a loud voice if anyone worships the Beast and the image of it and receives a mark on the forehead of him or upon the hand of him also he will drink of the wine of the anger of God having been mixed undiluted in the cup of the wrath of him and he will be tormented in fire and brimstone before the Angels holy and before the lamb and the smoke of the torment of them to ages of Ages goes up okay so before we get to the other two passages notice that three

[31:25] two of The Big Three uh that seem to just slam dunk speak about uh Eternal conscious torment notice the two of them are in Revelation Revelation in general has flummoxed Christians for a long time and especially in sort of the Greek thinking world you can't really make sense of Revelation because what Revelation is not a Greek book Revelation is a thoroughly Jewish book that draws on all kinds of Old Testament imagery if you don't understand what a beast is what a lampstand is what uh what the stars mean what what deep waters are what horns mean all of these things come from Old Testament imagery and if you don't understand what those are referring to you actually can't understand what the author of Revelation is saying right and everybody should agree about that this isn't this is you're not able to just

[32:13] interpret Revelation in a vacuum uh because words don't mean what they mean uh unless people mean something by them words don't mean anything in fact people mean things by words that they use and and John has basically just taken all Old Testament prophetic imagery and toss them into a blender and hit the liquify button and Port it out onto the page with his ink okay now what I will not say is that this is a slam dunk verse for conditionalism okay what I will also but what needs to be said is that there there is a conditionalist interpretation there's also a traditionalist interpretation and both of them have pretty good footing here even if this is saying Eternal conscious torment it's in Revelation which is a book of symbols it's a book of symbolism it is a book of lurid imagery it is not a book that you

[33:03] should take literally if you have any kind of literary sense it's a book that has a lot of symbol symbolic meaning behind words that we should weigh carefully against the rest of the evidence of scripture that is more clear and spoken in a more propositional truth kind of a way Revelation is not a book of propositional Truth Revelation is a book that you experience and that you need to understand through symbols and I would also argue Revelation is a book that was written to a community of churches around the Mediterranean Rim in the first century about events that were going to take place soon that doesn't mean all of it some of it is John wants them to have an eye toward the Eternal future as well waiting for the new heavens and the new Earth this is a conversation about you know preterism versus futurism that's a whole other thing now this verse does

[33:50] not actually say that people will be tormented forever and ever that's Revelation 2010 we'll get there in a minute uh what this passage says when taken literally is that you know a group of people will be tormented in Fire and sulfur and that the smoke will rise forever and ever so the reason the eternal torment is read from this passage is basically there's there's a logical flow here The Burning Alive of the worshipers of the Beast creates smoke that rises that smoke Rises forever and ever and if the smoke Rises forever and ever then the source the burning must continue forever and ever the burning causes torment therefore the unsaved are tormented in fire forever and ever now I I should point out that most traditionalists today who appeal to this passage don't believe there's literal fire in Hell which creates its own set of problems uh some don't even believe there's an actual physical pain or other externally imposed misery that's you know imposed on the unsaved

[34:39] by God in his wrath um which creates even more problems but it does make sense that one would read this and then infer that it teaches Eternal burning and therefore eternal torment that is if the language is meant literally and is not referencing any sort of Old Testament idiom you know that referred to destruction but the Old Testament background changes everything Rising smoke uh the idea of smoke Rising forever is not a new testament thing it's not something John invented In this passage it's something that he borrowed from another book I think probably the best passage is the one in Isaiah to be totally honest a lot of this language comes from Isaiah I think we're talking around verse nine go look for it yeah it's talking about Edom okay and uh and shall be burned it streams into pitch and it's dust into Brimstone

[35:27] and shall become its land pitch burning night or day not it shall be quenched forever shall Ascend its smoke from generation to generation it shall lie waste forever and ever no one shall pass through it but shall possess it the Pelican and the porcupine and The Owl and the Raven shall dwell in it and he shall stretch out over it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness notice where he took this metaphor where he took this language so God pronounces a judgment on the kingdom of Edom he destroys it with fire it's burning it's it's said uh you know if you were to read another translation it's you know everything's turn to pitch the loose Earth is turned into Brimstone uh its land will become burning pitch it will not be quenched night or day and its smoke will go up forever and ever

[36:15] from generation to generation it will be desolate none will pass through it forever and ever but then what does not happen is it still burning when The Owl and the Pelican and the Raven and the porcupine come and live there or is it made a Barren desolation from a fire that can't be quenched quench doesn't mean go out it means put out you can't put the fire out with water you can't smother it and the fire goes away but that doesn't mean that the fire will necessarily go on burning forever and ever in fact the smoke of it rises forever and ever is an image in this case of the finality of its judgment Edom is judged in such a way that it will never come back Edom is destroyed and removed from the face of the Earth and other life comes in to take over the space where it used to be this is what's going on in

[37:02] Revelation 14 these people are destroyed in fire in the imagery of Revelation 14 whether you think that's a literal fire or not they're destroyed and their smoke goes up forever and ever he's literally quoting this passage there's no real way around that now where else is eternal fire image reused I've got a couple really good examples one is in Jude okay verse one uh there's only one chapter so Jude verse seven but again to give it some context let's go up to verse six the Angels not having kept their own domain but having left their dwelling he keeps for the Judgment of the great day in Chains of gloomy Darkness whole other thing there just as okay so these angels who who disobeyed God are being kept in Chains of gloomy Darkness there's our

[37:49] there's our uh grave again or there's our holding cell for Judgment Day In Chains of gloomy Darkness just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in like manner have indulged in sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh are set forth as an example of Eternal fire right the penalty undergoing so Eternal fire that burns eternally uh you is what you would expect okay ionios could also mean by the way from the next age okay from the age to come from the Eternal age not necessarily eternally Burning uh ionio I only you is the same thing but our Sodom and Gomorrah is still burning or were they burned once and then never came back

[38:37] they were burned by Eternal fire and they were destroyed and that was the example that was set Peter makes it even more clear if we go to Second Peter it's a letter that Peter is writing towards the end of his life uh let's go to chapter two I think verses four starts at four I believe so yeah if for God the Angels you know if if God did not spare the angels having sinned but in Chains of gloomy Darkness having cast them down to Tartarus all other things this comes from Enoch delivered them for judgment being kept and the ancient world not he spared but one of eight Noah of righteousness a Herald preserved the flood upon the world of the ungodly having brought in and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah

[39:26] having reduced to Ashes to destruction he condemned them as an example of what is coming on the ungodly so again Sodom and Gomorrah here in Peter's words are used as an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly and he uses the word he doesn't use the word Eternal fire here I don't think Jude uses Eternal fire and describes it as what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah when they were destroyed and Peter says it's an example of what's going to happen to the ungodly so this isn't slam dunk language okay there's these three verses and we're gonna get to Revelation 2010 in a minute but this is not slam dunk for the traditionalist these are three verses that you can use if you kind of ignore the context and you don't ignore and you ignore where

[40:13] the citations are coming from back in the Old Testament where these images are being used two of them are in Revelation which is a very highly symbolic book and the other one we already showed from the Greek that a noun of action can't mean that thing is ongoing eternally forever it's a single time thing that has ongoing Eternal implications like eternal life you're given life that you then live out actively you're given Redemption that you then live out as a Redemptive as a redeemed person you're giving an eternal salvation in a one-time thing that is then lived out you are saved forever it's a it's a the switch is flipped you're here and then Eternal implications follow in the same way you're punished okay you are there's a punishment that's a noun of action and then there are Eternal implications which follow let's go to Revelation 20 verse 10 and look at the context there this is the

[41:02] the uh the infamous Millennium passage from uh Revelation 20 which is where we get the idea of the Thousand-Year reign of Christ and uh someone once said that Revelation 20 uh and the Millennium is a thousand years of Peace the Christians like to fight over so we're not going to get into that debate today but we're going to look at and here we go and the devil diabolos okay or diabolas depending on which Greek pronunciation systematic you use and the devil the one deceiving them was cast into the Lake of Fire and of sulfur have we heard these images before Brimstone sulfur right where are also the Beast and the false prophet and they will be tormented day and night to the ages of the ages okay forever and ever uh notably absent from

[41:51] that passage uh are any people uh the devil's in there the Beast is in there now the beast in in Revelation imagery isn't an actual massive monster coming up out of the ocean like a Kaiju or like Godzilla or something the Beast is a world system any kind of political power entity or something of the like that exalts itself over and against God and his way of ruling that then begins to behave in really beastly and and violent and evil and and disgusting ways so the Beast could be uh Pharaoh in Egypt the Beast could be the Assyrians the Beast could be the Babylonians it's often the Babylonians in fact in fact John uses Babylon all the time as the image of a beast in this very letter uh the Beast could be Rome in fact I think

[42:39] Rome is often what's in view here in Revelation but either way that's not a person is it it's not an individual person being tortured forever that's an entire political system not the people that inhabit it but the system itself that's being tortured and burned forever and ever in this imagery and then the false prophet even if that is a person I think it's again there's different ways of uh different ways of of interpreting this I think that false prophet is an entire religious system that purports to speak for God but does so falsely does not actually speak on his behalf and they're the ones that are tormented day and night to the ages of the ages where are the humans in this passage where are the people who all of One all of the ones who have rejected God where are they in this passage well it's interesting because they actually are in the previous verse before any Eternal torture happens this is about the the

[43:29] Satan the Devil is released after his time of confinement and he goes out to deceive the Nations and here the he the way that in which he deceives them is that he Rouses them up into a rebellion and these are among all the peoples of the world that have not yet trusted in Christ and he in the imagery of Revelation he Rouses them up into a militia to go and March on the Beloved city of God and go into attack God and his people but before this Rebellion really gets off the ground verse 9 happens and they marched up over the breadth of the earth and encircled the camp of the Saints and the city having been beloved but came down fire out of heaven and devoured them so even the the people in this scene the human beings in this scene even if you wanted to somehow grant that the devil will be tortured forever and that'll be a

[44:16] feature of the kingdom of God and we'll all enjoy watching the devil being tormented forever uh if you want to grant that uh the the Beast which is not people but a political system somehow is tortured forever and ever uh and the uh the the false prophet the false religious system will be tormented forever and ever if you want to take those literally that's fine the human beings In this passage are not tortured forever and ever they are devoured by fire from heaven just like Sodom and Gomorrah just like Peter said they would be an example of what's coming to the unrighteous okay this isn't a loophole in Alan parr's words these aren't loopholes this is exegesis and I love Alan again I have an enormous respect for Alan he is uh he's one of the OG YouTubers the Christian YouTubers uh he obviously loves the Lord he is very passionate about representing him

[45:05] well and he wants to show love to other people but sometimes when someone disagrees with the doctrine of his he doesn't always do the full steel man thing and almost nobody does it's not his fault it's much more common to straw man your opponent and sort of build up a false version of what it is that they believe rather than actually you know engaging with their arguments and what it is that they actually believe you you create a false version to then knock down or burn up uh for lack of a bit of phrase but Alan seemed to insinuate that the only way that you would arrive at this position is if you don't believe scripture that you have to come with philosophical assumptions where you're you're elevating your moral judgment over what God's moral judgment is and obviously in this view in God's moral judgment Eternal conscious torment in hell is Justified and is right because that's what they think the Bible teaches and

[45:51] again I'm Bound by what the Bible teaches if I think that the scripture talks about eternal conscious torment and teaches that I'm beholden to that if I'm a Christian I'm not I don't have any grounds on my own upon which to stand and be high and mighty and judge God if that's what the Bible says that's what the Bible says and we would need to find some way of framing it that isn't morally reprehensible and debilitating to the point where you're just bedridden with grief over 150 000 people dying every day and getting sent there okay um all that to say that the the ultimate Authority on this is the scriptures not our own moral intuitions and then a whole host of other bad reasons for believing this view come out to the fore people will Trot out all sorts of things that they believe uh that those things are not rooted in scripture in order to say that the traditional view is still something that we should hold to but this is a scriptural case so let me

[46:39] first sum up the scriptural case I think that God in his word clearly states that human beings are mortal by their very nature and that they had an opportunity to accept immortality by eating from the Tree of Life they did not have that chance God seeing the danger of them catch this wording eternally existing in a state of sinfulness and Brokenness wanting to avoid that outcome he cut them off from having access to the tree of life he exiled them from the garden and placed a a an angel to guard the gate back into the garden where they would then have access to the the fruit of the tree of the fruit of the tree of life again wanting to avoid them existing forever in a state of sinfulness what is eternal conscious torment it's a state of eternally existing sinfulness and so they're saying that

[47:29] God's plan ultimately the traditionalist is saying that God's plan ultimately is to do what he was preventing in the beginning what he wanted to keep from happening because this was such an awful fate that he wanted to prevent Adam and Eve from taking of the tree of life and living forever in a state of sinfulness he cut them off they're saying that that's what he's ultimately enshrining as his will ultimately um and by the way in the Revelation 14 passage those people are tormented day and night uh then the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever in the presence of the holy land and of the Angels meaning that if you ever wanted to uh walk into the The Throne Room of God you to go and see Jesus he'd be there forever he's never allowed to be anywhere else he's always in their presence of this he's supervising you know flipping Sinners on the barbecue in the in the great throne room of God and so you have to walk around this the idea

[48:18] would be if this were literal you'd have to walk around this enormous pool of screaming and misery to get to the throne of God to see him uh face to face I I you can't really hold to that view I don't think God Alone is Immortal humans are not Immortal they are made Mortal by their nature God made them out of the Dust then he made the Garden of Eden then he made the tree they did not get a chance to eat of the tree they were exiled exiled from the garden and they returned to a life of constant death uh but God grants immortality to those who are in his presence um if you die if you're not saved you go to the Grave you await that judgment and that judgment is described as Eternal fire which is an example of what will happen to the ungodly and Sodom and Gomorrah are the example used they were wiped off the face of the Earth by fire they are no longer anywhere in existence and the great preponderance of the evidence over 400 verses use the phrases

[49:07] destroyed annihilated eliminated uh burned up trampled underfoot words that describe destruction not Eternal existence so that's the scriptural case now there are some objections that arise okay um this is the traditional view after all this is the view that most modern Western Christians have held uh it was all three views were possible and present in the early church fathers in the first 100 years or so but then after about the time of uh of Augustine this really became the dominant View and and it lasted for you know forever and ever it has become the traditional View but uh does that make it true is that an argument for its truthfulness um views that are widely held aren't always true right the majority of people claiming the name of Christ down through history have been Catholics so should we

[49:54] therefore say that Catholicism is the correct view or how about Pato baptism which is baptizing children right there's really no scriptural support for the baptizing of infants but it's by far the more dominant view over against you know Credo Baptists anabaptists other positions of people who who would would talk about baptism Pato baptism is by far the more more dominant view but it's not scriptural even among the Protestants the majority of historical denominations have held that the church should be ruled by Bishops so do we therefore think that the church should be ruled by Bishops or do we go to the scriptures and what they actually say even if the widely held view has a lot of staying power okay the traditionality of a position doesn't make it true the scriptural veracity is what makes it true and you know every verse I've ever seen used to

[50:42] support Eternal conscious torment either straightforwardly teaches conditional immortality when taken in context or it has an equally plausible interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek as written which leaves open the possibility okay again this is not a loophole this is exegesis people will then say well what about the effect that'll have on missions in on evangelism don't you have to teach hell in order to get people to believe the gospel they need to be so afraid of hell that they're going to choose to trust in Jesus to avoid that punishment well again if we're going to use the scriptures as our guide where do you think we would go let's let's just imagine we have an Evangelistic project that's being described here in the modern day so if we were to take our marching orders from some certain passage of scripture where do you think we would go in order to see what the first Christians did I think the book of Acts would be a good place to go when you search for gehenna Tartarus any of these like Hellfire

[51:33] eternal torment language in Acts you don't see it anywhere in fact they don't really talk about punishment much at all they talk about Jesus and the message of Jesus and they talk about his kingdom and how you're invited to join his kingdom and receive eternal life and to save yourselves from this wicked Generation Um but the only the only time that anything really negative as a warning is given is when Paul talks about judgment he talks about judgment uh on his in his sermon on Mars Hill where he says that God has appointed a man to judge the world and that's Jesus and none of that language is eternal torment you won't find it anywhere so so that's just not true if if we're talking about evangelists it needs to be used as Evangelistic tool I have actually found that the idea of Eternal conscious torment is an obstacle between people

[52:20] who are considering faith in Christianity faith in Christ and converting to Christianity and actually pulling the trigger right they they think well I don't want to believe in a God who does that and and we because we think it's the truth we're convinced it's the truth we have to make an apology for it we have to make an answer for it we have to defend God from this horrible implications of this view when it's easier to straightforwardly say no that well you've heard that but that's that's actually not what the Bible says the Bible the Bible says the people who have not accepted Christ are destroyed forever they they don't exist anymore they're allowed to pass out of existence this is where the degrees of punishment thing comes in Hitler I think deserves more punishment than let's say an Anne Frank who if she denied Christ and did not have the opportunity to accept him

[53:10] she doesn't deserve to face the same level of punishment that Hitler does and this is where the moral intuition comes not before the scriptural case but after the scriptural case okay now there's one more passage that some of you are probably thinking of that I've got to deal with even though it has nothing at all to do with eternal torment in any way I have to bring up this passage because people are going to cite it in the comments if I don't address it and it's this rich man in Lazarus and I'll know the people who didn't watch the video all the way to the end because they're the ones who will cite this in the comments the rich man in Lazarus remember all of the language we just read in all of these other passages where it says uh they're being kept for the day of judgment in Chains of gloomy Darkness or they're being they're awaiting the day of judgment or on that day they will be raised right to eternal life and eternal punishment

[53:58] the the meantime experience of someone who has died without Christ is not eternally burning in hell it's not even Annihilation that doesn't happen yet they're in the grave okay they are waiting for their judgment in the Eternal on the day of the Lord leading into the Eternal State okay the day of the Lord is when hell happens whatever you believe leave hell to be as long as you're actually keeping these categories straight so people will say but what about the rich man in Lazarus this is some of the most lurid language you'll find in the entire New Testament and it's Jesus telling a parable now people use this because it sounds just like the traditionalist view there's a bad guy who dies and goes to a bad place where there's hell and there's fire and it's burning and he can't escape okay there's no relief and there's no escape the first and most important point we have to look at here is that he is not in hell

[54:45] we started verse 24. uh and then we'll read a little bit more he says and he cried out and said Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue for I am in agony in this flame now I'll look at a different translation that's going to render this a little bit uh more clearly back in verse 23 he says and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom but that's just not what it says and in Hades Hades he lifted up his eyes it's the only time it appears in this structure it appears in other places Hades hell that's just not what this word means so let's go to the Strong's Greek number 86 what is this the Abode of departed Spirits the Unseen World okay this is not the place it's Hades technically um the present Dwelling Place of all the Departed this is not the Lake of Fire

[55:34] this is not the eternal torment that you're reading about when you when you think you're talking about um on Judgment Day afterwards this is the place that the dead people are now this is the grave this is in fact if you go to the Septuagint which is the uh the gra the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible the word that they will translate from which is grave straightforwardly grave where dead people go in in the Hebrew Bible to wait their punishment they will translate when they take the Hebrew and translate it into Greek they'll replace okay when Jesus usually speaks of hell as we think of it the final place of the wicked that that Judgment Day burning he uses the Greek word gehenna which is a different word and place altogether Hades is the place of the Dead between death and the resurrection okay that occur prior to the beginning of the Eternal statement in fact I think

[56:21] let's go uh oh goodness this is gonna be rich Let's go to Revelation 20 again yeah if you look at it here verse 13 and gave up the Sea the Dead who were in it and death and Hades gave up the Dead who were in them and they were judged according to the works of them and death and Hades were then cast into the leak the Lake of Fire okay so these are separate places it's just straightforwardly the the rich man in Jesus's Parable is not in Hell he's in the grave okay he's not in Eternal burning he's in the holding cell the context of that story is also really important right the story of rich man and Lazarus also implies that speaking of the intermediate State prior to the resurrection and judgment neither Lazarus nor the rich manner said to be at the resurrection instead they die and they go to a place right after

[57:07] furthermore the rich man's brothers are still alive on this side of Eternity right or at least the rich man believes this to be the case and this is evidenced by the fact that he speaks them to be able and willing to repent if shown a dead man rising from the grave okay so even if we take the story of the rich man and Lazarus as being a true story as opposed to like a parable intended to explain something or at least reflective of the true nature of things the rich man is not in the final state to begin with this passage can't tell us whether or not hell is a place of eternal torment it's not even speaking about hell so what are we left with guys the important Point here is that I don't I don't want to convince you of this view I want you to show that this I wanted to show you that this view is something you can arrive at biblically speaking that it's not based on loopholes it's not based on feeling morally yucky when you think about

[57:55] eternal torment it's based on scripture it has scripture to back it up these aren't proof texts these are inferences that naturally arise from scriptures taken in the fullness of context now once I'm there because again I think the Bible is the ultimate Authority for these things once I'm there and I've laid that Foundation then I can start to see a little clearly oh yeah well actually now that I think about it the moral intuition does start to take on new shape here I do start to think wow yeah that makes a lot more sense with the character of God and his goodness and I I don't have to do all the mental gymnastics of explaining why Parish doesn't mean perish uh Eternal punishment actually means eternal life in torment uh I don't have to explain why God wanted at the beginning to prevent humans from existing in an eternal state of sinless or sinful life uh and that somehow in the end he he

[58:43] wants that for those who have rejected him anyway I don't have to do the mental gymnastics because this this view prevents that for me um but I'm not ultimately trying to convince you what I want is that if you're a traditionalist I want you to be more charitable to people who hold a different view I want I want the body of Christ to be United not undoctrine but on Christ okay Christ is what unifies us if the if the if the thief on the cross had the sufficient qualities to be considered worthy of God's kingdom or to be to be invited into God's kingdom through Jesus he didn't he probably couldn't articulate to you the Trinity he probably didn't have a robust doctrine of hell he probably didn't have a really clear view on predestination and foreknowledge and he probably didn't

[59:31] have a great knowledge of the background of of Hebrew Jewish thinking okay he didn't have all of these things he saw Jesus he knew he was the king he submitted himself to Jesus as king and had Faith to say remember we when you come into your kingdom that is the only basis upon which we should be excluding brothers and sisters if they can affirm that Jesus is who he says he is and they have faith in him that he can rescue them and he will rescue them that's all but I see a lot of people on the traditionalist side frankly excluding or calling them false teachers which is a really weighty claim that we're gonna have to break down here in another week or two that's a really weighty claim and you're going around kicking people in and out of the Kingdom based on their interpretation of these passages so if

[1:00:20] you have any questions about this drop them in the comments I'm happy to go through anything you might have any objections any thoughts uh but let's be charitable to our Brothers and Sisters in Christ I want to charitably deal with Alan Parr again for whom I have a ton of respect I know he's in the Kingdom I'm grateful that he'll be resurrected on the last day and that I'll be alongside him worshiping the same God forever and ever um but I'm also grateful that I've stumbled onto a way of interpreting these scriptures that doesn't necessarily teach that people will be suffering forever and ever and ever and this does nothing to deal away with my Evangelistic fervor in fact this makes me want to spread the good news more and more because God is more good and more loving and more merciful uh than we ever even really imagined that he was there is still a judgment there is Justice there's putting things right not

[1:01:08] everybody gets out of there's not a get out of hell free card that everybody accepts God made that offer available to everyone but some freely choose to reject it meaning that Jesus either atoned for their sins by dying on the cross to to pay for them or they will atone for their own sins by dying and paying for them themselves and that's all there is to it so I've probably made a lot of enemies I've probably made a lot of people really uncomfortable it's okay God is still King uh and if you have any questions at all or any objections or pushed back receive it all of it welcomingly and I look forward to hearing more from all of you guys but until the next time further up and further in