Annihilationism or Eternal Torment

I don't intend to avoid anything. What do you think I'm avoiding?

Jesus was not "a mythmaker," He was a teacher (among other things) and used parables to teach. The parables were not necessarily "literally" real/historical, but they illuminated the truths Jesus was teaching.

He probably would have responded with a question, or another parable.

 

The preposterous falsehood of th story/concept, if your view is right. Its like telling a kid if he won't share that the bogeyman is going to whip him with a million stripes, with a million times a million to go.

 

I don’t understand what you are trying to say.

Are you making an allusion to Luke 12:47-48?

“And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accordance with his will, will receive many blows, but the one who did not know it, and committed acts deserving of a beating, will receive only a few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.”
​

Have you assumed that I believe there will be no punishment for evil? If so, that’s incorrect. There will be punishment and then total death.

Note that this passage mentions “a few blows,” which is not something that can be said if eternal conscious torment is real.

 

That is a decidedly powerful point for Annihilationists.
If the Bible teaches Eternal Conscious Torment, then degrees of punishment is nonsense.
If people are doomed to an eternal state of of torture, than regardless of the amount of inflicted degree of said punishment, there is no limit to what they will suffer.

There is no finality between "few" blows or "many" blows..........there's only an infinite amount of blows one way or the other.

After 600 trillion years of constant beatings and torment, someone (who was sentenced to "few" blows) might ask themselves the rather important question whether the phrase "Few" blows means 600 trillion years of torture, and what precisely "many" means if he knows he will be beaten with blows for eternity....and so also will be the one supposedly sentenced with "many" blows. They are both beaten constantly for eternity.
It's nonsense.
E.T.C. is not just un-biblical, it's also stupid.

 

what did Jesus mean when He says, "Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town" (Matthew 10:15)?

 

Those caught up in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah suffered a quick death. It won't necessarily be a quick death for everyone in the Day of Judgment.

 

are those who were destroyed in Sodom and Gomorrah, still suffering punishment, or were they annihilated?

 

In our present earthly terms, they suffered a quick death. When they are resurrected (embodied again) to face final judgment, the unrighteous will suffer as long as God determines, but they will eventually cease to be.

I do not know the current state of the wicked dead. If we interpret the parable of Lazarus and the rich man as representing the state of the dead during this transitional time (which was not the focus of the parable), then the wicked are suffering according to their wickedness. Potentially, their suffering is simply being "undone" in the white heat of God's uncovered glory.

If we interpret the parable of Lazarus and the rich man as the retelling of an older cultural story with a twist concerning God's care for the poor and contempt for the selfish rich (as in Sodom, see Ezekiel 16:49-50), then wicked people may simply be physically dead and spiritually unconscious until the day of judgment. The Bible doesn't give much information.

 

Not a parable. ". . . They have Moses and the prophets; . . ."

 

It could mean degrees of punishment, although I'm not overwhelmingly convinced of it.
The larger point is that explaining how degrees of final punishment are meted out for either view is difficult and seemingly contradictory:
Infinite suffering is infinite suffering and that is the key element to Eternal Conscious Torment. Accounting for degrees of punishment is very difficult. Just the fact that they are spoken of in numerical and finite terms is hard to explain. How many hundreds of quadrillions of years of constant blows will qualify as "few"?
Similarly, since these blows remain a constant and never ending reality, how does anyone ever receive "more" than another person? After all, the person sentenced to "few" blows will never, ever, receive their last and final blow.
But, Annihilationism's job here is not overly simple either. Some suggest that their death is perhaps meted out painfully and even over time. That is to say a possibly long, terrifying and painful death sentence vs. a comparatively quick and largely painless one for those sentenced to the "least blows". Being cast into a deadly Lake of Fire can sound rather painful after all. it is also accounted for in terms of the shame and derision felt for the worst of the damned.
However, the suggestion goes somewhat against the very fundamental tenant of Annihilationism (or better Conditional Immortality) in that it makes the wages of sin "torment" and "pain" not The overwhelmingly obvious Biblical teaching that it's actually death. I.O.W. The very notion of degrees of punishment implies the wages is pain not death. That feeds into the idea of E.C.T. which seems unaware of the fact that the wages of sin is death. But, lest the E.T.C. crowd begin taking a victory lap too early, they believe in an infinite amount of blows for absolutely everyone......so, no help for them either. At least the Annihilationists at least have a not inherently self-contradictory explanation even if it seems somewhat underpowered to me personally.

Either way, the idea of degrees of punishment is difficult to account for in either view, and doesn't help much.

 

It's a parable....sorta; but a unique one Actually, it's also a prophetic story about the heart of those who will never believe.
Think about the exact statement you JUST quoted, and finish the statement.
They won't believe even if Abraham sent to his brothers a man named what?
What miracle did Jesus perform almost immediately after telling this story? (You can deduce this if you harmonize the gospel accounts)
What was the name of the man Jesus performed said miracle for?



Start reading the gospels carefully....and slowly, the answers are all in the text and they require digging.

If you get it right, then you get the meaning of the story.
It isn't a play-by-play of the intermediate state. (It can't be the final state B.T.W. because it is not a Lake of Fire, and the final judgement has not occured)

That story is under almost no condition whatsoever a true accounting of real events. If they are true, then, it is at least a rare and irrelevant coincidence that they are, because the point is lost on those who think this is a play by play of the inner workings of "hell" (or whatever).
That idea is not merely in error, it betrays someone who has no clue how to study the gospels at all, or at least has never bothered to put those skills to use in studying this passage and the relevant passages which allude to it.

 

It is notable that it is not said that the servant who did not know his master's will shall be assigned a place with the unbelievers, as the one who did know the master's will but refused to carry it out. Anyway, the one who knew, at least, 'fell from grace,' or lost his salvation. The only alternative I see is purgatory; a concept in which I do not believe, unless that's what this current rotten world is.

 

There are a number of issues here.
Luke does not say the account Jesus gave was a parable. Abraham, Moses, the prophets are real persons.
Therefore interpretation that it is a parable I reject as an unbiblical interpretation.
The miracle I would guess was Lazarus being rasied from the dead. BTW, there is an interpretatiion that they are the one and the same Lazarus.
The place where the rich man, Lazarus and Abraham where is in the last judgement cast into the Lake of fire, Revelation 20:14.
A side issue, C. S. Lewis believed in Purgatory.

 

So you believe people are currently in the lake of fire?

 

The gospel writers record many parables without introducing them with "he told them a parable"....many of them. Often because they are imbedded in a series of stories and sayings and other parables, just like this one is. It wasn't told in a vacuum.
So what if Abraham, Moses and the prophets are real persons? Is there some rule which states that no parable can reference real people, places etc? Who wrote that rule?
It is more than a simple parable, it makes many points. Baptist Believer is correct that in many ways it has a lot to do with the rich man's treatment of the poor etc...it is more than that. It's not as simple as the lost coin parable, but then, the last coin parable was also imbedded in a larger narrative as well.

Is that really why you reject it as a parable? My guess is that that isn't the real reason.
If you are anything like many many Christians (including myself) you reject it because you were trained to by fundamental preaching to reject the idea as unique to modernist, liberals, Hell-deniers etc......and having sought evidence to prove your preconceived assumptions, you now list them as your proofs. I was taught the same way, and used to reject any idea that it wasn't an historical event as well, I sought the proof arguments and (like the fact that it uses proper names) and unquestioningly adopted them as my reasons.

They aren't great reasons because they prove absolutely nothing....there's no reason a parable can't have proper names, or reference real persons or anything else. We just don't want to be liberal hell-denying softy heretics and so we cling to what keeps us safe.
The conclusion line from Abraham is clearly it's most important teaching, that if they won't hear Moses and the prophets, they won't believe even if someone were to come back from the dead........a point Jesus quite literally proved true by soon after raising a man quite coincidentally named Lazarus back from the dead. They aren't the same Lazarus. Jesus named the guy in the parable Lazarus (which he was free to do because he was making it up) for a reason. The reason was to prove his point that the hard-hearted he was addressing would deny truth no matter what he did. His point was proven true. They even sought to kill Lazarus because so many believed on Jesus for Lazarus' sake.

Whatever the totality of all the truths contained in the story are......the most hyper-Westernized, short-sighted, less likely and hermeneutically flawed interpretation is that Jesus was telling it to give people an idea of what "hell" was like. That was the farthest things from Jesus's mind, and his initial audience did not take it that way, nor should they have. But, they were not in the "Lake of Fire". That would prove the story unequivocally to be a fiction because no one is now in the Lake of fire. They were in hades. The story takes place in the intermediate state prior to the final judgment. No one is in the Lake of Fire.

I know what C.S. Lewis believed. He believed a lot of things.....he believed a lot of wrong things. He was adamant about few of them, because he was Theologically humble and didn't seek to convince anyone about anything but what he called "Mere" Christianity. I don't care if he believed in Purgatory. Some really intelligent and knowledgeable people have believed in Purgatory. They are mistaken, but they still have much to share. That's why you eat the meat and spit out the bones.

 

Annihilation or Eternal Punishment? by Robert Peterson


Annihilationism is the view that lost people in hell will be exterminated after they have paid the penalty for their sins. Its proponents offer six main arguments.

First is an argument based on the Bible’s use of fire imagery to describe hell. We are told that fire consumes what is thrown into it, and so it will be for the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8)—it will burn up the wicked so that they no longer exist.

Second is an argument based on texts that speak of the lost perishing or being destroyed. Examples include unbelievers perishing (John 3:16) and suffering “the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:8).

Third is an argument based on the meaning of the word eternal. In hell passages, it is claimed, eternal means only pertaining to “the age to come” and not “everlasting.”

Fourth is an argument based on a distinction between time and eternity. Annihilationists ask: how is it just of God to punish sinners for eternity when their crimes were committed in time?

Fifth is an emotional argument that God Himself and His saints would never enjoy heaven if they knew some human beings (let alone loved ones and friends) were perpetually in hell.

Sixth is an argument that an eternal hell would tarnish God’s victory over evil. Scripture declares that God will be victorious in the end; He will “be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). We are told that this idea seems hard to reconcile with human beings suffering endlessly in hell.

I will answer each of these arguments in turn. First is the argument from hellfire. Many passages use this language without interpreting it. It is possible, therefore, to read various views into such passages, including annihilationism. However, we do not want to read our ideas into the Bible, but to get our ideas from the Bible. And when we do, we find that some passages preclude an annihilationist understanding of hellfire. These include Jesus’s description of hell in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as a “place of torment” (Luke 16:28) involving “anguish in this flame” (v. 24).

When the last book of the Bible describes the flames of hell, it does not speak of consumption but says the lost “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 have no rest, day or night” (Rev. 14:10–11).

Second is the argument from passages that speak of destruction or perishing. Once again, when Scripture merely uses these words without interpreting them, many views may be read into them. But once again, we want to read out of Scripture its meaning. And some passages are impossible to reconcile with annihilationism. Paul describes the fate of the lost as suffering “the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:8). Also telling is the fate of the Beast in Revelation. “Destruction” is prophesied for him in 17:8, 11. The Beast (along with the False Prophet) is cast into “the lake of fire that burns with sulfur” (19:20). Scripture is unambiguous when it describes the fate of the devil, Beast, and False Prophet in the lake of fire: “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (20:10). So, the Beast’s “destruction” is everlasting torment in the lake of fire.

Third is the argument from the word eternal. In hell passages, it is claimed, eternal means only pertaining to “the age to come” and not “everlasting.” It is true that in the New Testament, eternal means “agelong,” with the context defining the age. And in texts treating eternal destinies, eternal does refer to the age to come. But the age to come lasts as long as the life of the eternal God Himself. Because He is eternal—He “lives forever and ever” (Rev. 4:9, 10; 10:6; 15:7)—so is the age to come. Jesus plainly sets this forth in His message on the sheep and goats: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46; italics added). The punishment of the lost in hell is coextensive to the bliss of the righteous in heaven—both are everlasting.

Fourth is the argument that it is unjust of God to punish sinners eternally for temporal sins. It strikes me as presumptuous for human beings to tell God what is just and unjust. We would do better to determine from His Holy Word what He deems just and unjust.

Jesus leaves no doubt. He will say to the saved, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). He will say to the lost, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (v. 41). We have already seen John define that fire as eternal conscious punishment in the lake of fire for the devil (Rev. 20:10). A few verses later, we read that unsaved human beings share the same fate (vv. 14–15). Evidently, God thinks it just to punish human beings who rebel against Him and His holiness with everlasting hell. Is it really our place to call this unjust?

I will treat the fifth and sixth arguments together. The fifth is the emotional argument that God and His saints would never enjoy heaven if they knew loved ones and friends were forever in hell. The sixth is the argument that an eternal hell would tarnish God’s victory over evil. It is noteworthy that universalists use these same two arguments to insist that God will finally save every human being. God and His people would not enjoy the bliss of heaven if even one soul remained in hell, they argue. In the end, everyone will be saved. And God would suffer defeat if any creatures made in His image were to perish forever.

I regard these arguments for annihilationism and universalism—from emotion and from God’s victory—as rewriting the biblical story, something we have no right to do. I say this because the Bible’s final three chapters present the eternal state of affairs. The resurrected saints will be blessed with God’s eternal presence on the new earth (Rev. 21:1–4). And, interestingly for our present discussion, each of Scripture’s final three chapters presents the fate of the unsaved:

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. (20:10)Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown in to the lake of fire. (vv. 14–15)But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. (21:8)Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (22:14–15)
The Bible’s story does not end by saying, “And the unrighteous were destroyed and exist no more.” Neither does it say, “And in the end all persons will be gathered into the love of God and be saved.” Rather, when God brings His story to a close, His people rejoice in endless bliss with Him on the new earth. But the wicked will endure never-ending torment in the lake of fire and be shut out of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, which is the joyous dwelling place of God and His people forever.

We have no right to rewrite the biblical story. Rather, we must leave it to God to define what is just and unjust and what is commensurate with His being “all in all.” He does not leave us in doubt about hell because He loves sinners and wants them to believe the gospel in this life.

How kind and merciful of Him to include this invitation at the end of His story: “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Rev. 22:17). All who trust Jesus in His death and resurrection to rescue them from hell will have a part in the Tree of Life and the Holy City of God. All who do so with all the saints can say now and will say forever:

Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just. (19:1–2)

Annihilation or Eternal Punishment? by Robert Peterson

 

No.
I did not say any such thing. Hades with death will be cast in the lake of fire at the judgement, Revelation 20:11-14.

 

We disagree.
I believe that account cannot be a parable, Abraham, Moses, Deuteronomy 32:22 and the prophets such as David, Psalms 86:13.

 

Ok well that which you are saying is not a parable casts some in hell. You cannot have it both ways

 

Why can it not be a parable???
I know it references real places and events....what argument do you have that any story which references real places, people, or events cannot be parabolic???
Ever heard of the literary genre "Historical Fiction"?
When did Abraham begin answering prayers?
Are we to believe that the lost can speak to Old Testament Saints and expect answers from them?
Not being Catholic myself, I do not believe that Saints answer prayers. Must we now believe that in hell or the Lake of fire the lost can have protracted conversations with them?
That is certainly a novel Theological idea which Baptists have not traditionally believed.
The mind reels.

Sure, fundamentalist preachers make this argument because it's uncomfortable to explore God's Biblical truths new and afresh, but what is the argument which states that referencing real people renders the plot of a story as historical?
There is no such argument, just a blanket assertion with no evidence.
It's simply a denial because it's uncomfortable to imagine that Eternal Conscious Torture is unbiblical because clearly only a liberal sissy denies that "hell is real" or whatever bumper-sticker phrase is being bandied about.

Here's the thing: E.C.T. adherents NEED this story to be an historical account, because there is essentially zilch biblical evidence that their contrived belief is true.
Annihilationists don't need it to be fiction....because the whole of Scripture from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 screams Annihilationism from the hilltops in simple, literal and undeniable language which they take literally and simply.

Even if that story were an accounting of true events, it proves very little, because it isn't the final state of the wicked.
All it would entail is details about the intermediate state (which is actually irrelevant to the conversation).
What gives anyone the impression that Christ's intent for telling the story was to give details about the punishment of the wicked?
Why wouldn't he have said: The fate of the wicked is like unto...........
Why the irrelevant background information about dogs licking sores and stuff?
Why the emphasis on the Rich man's opulence and Lazarus's poverty?
Why the last line about how the brother's would not believe even if a man named LAZARUS came back from the dead?
These details are, after all, superfluous if Christ's purpose was to give us a play-by-play of the fate of the wicked. Why did Jesus waste time on them?

You were on to something when you partially quoted Christ's main point of the story.....too bad your theology (which desperately needs this to be a description of actual events in all of it's details) renders you unfree to explore such beautiful deep truths.

I believe the wages of sin is death, just like God's Word says it is.
Even if the story were historical, it changes nothing really....except, perhaps, that we should apologize to the Catholics for denying that Saints answer prayers.