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Hello, and welcome to the Apologetics
three fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auten

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and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,

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evangelism, and the Christian worldview.
Are you living in the studio mansion?

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Yeah, well not anymore you're not. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

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This is Brian Auten and I'm Chad
Gross, and we're looking forward to

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today's interview with author, debater and
professor Chris Date. We spoke to Chris

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not too long ago in episode one
two about eschatology and how to best understand

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it. That was a really fascinating
and helpful interview, so hopefully we've got

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another one for you today for you
to sync your ears into talking about views

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on hell. So what is the
traditional view of hell? Is it eternal

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conscious torment? Or does it look
different than the traditional view? What does

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the final end of the wicked look
like? So we'll be talking talking to

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Chris Date about this subject today and
we hope you'll find his views helpful.

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Can be a challenging subject, so
if it makes you nervous, we get

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it, but fear not. Just
go back to scripture and check it out

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and get your views from scripture.
But it's a great discussion. We're looking

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forward to it today. Ched any
thoughts before we hop into the interview.

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I am looking forward to talking to
Chris's Conditional immortality is the view he's going

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to be representing, and I think
it's an important one, and I love

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his heart and just wanting to bring
unity to the body of Christ. And

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I agree with you. If you're
a little hesitant, if you're a little

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intimidated, or even if you have
some red flags going up already, hear

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him out and do like the Bahreans
do and search the scriptures to see if

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what he says is true. But
I think regardless, you're going to learn

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a lot. All right, let's
go, let's get ready. Switch me

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on, Chris Date, Welcome back
to the podcast. Thanks for having me.

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It's a pleasure to be back.
Chris, tell us a little bit

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about this subject and why did you
delve into studying. Yeah, so,

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back in twenty ten, roughly I
started a podcast of my own called The

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Apologetics, which is just sort of
a combination of the words theology and apologetics.

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And as part of this podcast,
I would not only do episodes on

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my own where I would teach a
particular view that I hold, but I

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would also invite guests on. And
some of those guests that I would have

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on taught views different from what I
believed at the time, but I considered

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them to fall within the realm of
Orthodoxy, and so I wanted my listeners

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to be exposed to the breadth of
Christian belief that is out there. And

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one of these guests that I had
on the show was a man by the

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name of Edward Fudge, and Edward
Fudge had just published the third edition of

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his book, The Fire That Consumes, And the reason I got him on

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the show is because I was friends
with somebody who's still a friend of mine,

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Glenn Peeples. We sort of did
ministry together with a woman by the

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who by the name of Dede Warren
who hosted a show called The Preterists Podcast,

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and he and I blogged on her
blog, the Press Risk Blog,

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and one time he and I were
getting into conversation. I was pushing back

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on his belief in what's known as
physicalism, which is the view that humans

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have our only physical creatures. We
don't have an an material soul, and

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in so doing, I brought up
some texts and he said, I think

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I brought up Matthew ten twenty eight. I fear not men who can kill

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the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather just fear God who can,

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just fear the one who can destroy
both body and soul and ghana. And

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I said, see, look,
Glenn, clearly we have souls. And

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he said, well, and you
know, we continue to have that conversation.

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But he said, but notice that
this also seems to teach annihilationism.

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And I'm like, A, I
don't know, I don't know about that.

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What about Mark nine forty eight and
I and I you know, I

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pointed to him where Jesus says that
in Gehannah their worm will not die and

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the fire will not be quenched.
And he said, and this is what

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I'm getting. This is what I'm
getting to. He said, why don't

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you look at what Jesus is quoting
from? And it turned out it was

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a passage in the Old Testament that
really got me thinking, Wow, maybe

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I've been misunderstanding this. I still
believed in eternal torment. I had believed

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in eternal torment the entire ten years
roughly that i'd been a Christian, I

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didn't have any problem with it emotionally
or philosophically. I was, at that

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time and still am, a Calvinist, And as you might imagine, being

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a Calvinist, you have to accept
a degree of God orchestrating reality in such

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a way that we might it might, we might struggle to make things make

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sense in certain ways, but we
trust that God is good and that He

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is holy, and that He's going
to do it's right. And I took

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that approach to eternal torment as well. But when Glenn brought my attention to

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what Mark nine forty eight is quoting
from, and I realized that maybe it

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wasn't the proof text I thought it
was, I decided i'd have this Edward

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Fudge guy on because he just published
a third edition of The Fire That Consumes,

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which remains to this day, treatise
the seminal work in defense of Conditional

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Immortality to this day. And in
preparing for and conducting that interview, which

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was a two hour long interview,
I went from being firmly in belief in

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eternal torment to finding myself on the
fence. I found his case powerful,

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and I found his responses to my
objections powerful, and so then I spent

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the next several months. I know
it doesn't sound like a long time,

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and I'm not excusing that, but
I spent the next several months pouring over

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every sermon I could find, watching
every presentation, every debate, reading every

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book, anything I could find on
the topic. And the vast majority of

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these things I was consulting were in
defense of eternal torment, because I wanted

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to go back to firmly believing in
that, because I knew that if I

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ended up becoming a believer in what
I am now, I'd become a pariah

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in certain circles and it would make
my life difficult. But what I found

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as I consulted all of those sources
is that the case for conditionalism just became

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even stronger and stronger and stronger.
The case against from eternal torment weaker and

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weaker and weaker. And so finally, right around the end of twenty eleven

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early twenty twelve, I submitted to
what I understood by that point scripture to

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be teaching and became a conditionalist.
And then kind of the rest takes off

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from there. So you mentioned two
views. Their conditional immortality and eternal conscious

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torment. Just for our listeners,
can you kind of just get give an

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overview of those two contrasting views.
Yeah. So it's important though that we

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first understand what they have in common, because what they have in common challenges

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pop level understandings of the discussion around
helly so, and what I mean by

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pop level discussions, and this is
true of heaven as well. At the

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popular level. A lot of Christians
unfortunately think that we are going to go

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to Heaven or Hell when we die, period, Right, that's it.

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So we will forever be in Heaven
as disembodied souls or in Hell as disembodied

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souls. But that actually is a
non Christian view. I'm not saying that

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it's not Christian to believe that you
go, you remain conscious after death.

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I'm just saying Christianity has never taught
that that's the end of the story.

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At some point in our future,
all Christians believe that Christ is going to

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return and raise the dead back to
physical life. If we have souls that

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go that are di bodied after death, they will be reunited with their resurrected

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bodies in the resurrection. I think
it's so important that you're saying that Chris

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about hey, we're not just going
to heaven, because I just hear this

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from everyone like yeah, you know
if you're if the Lord Jesus saves you,

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you'll be with him in heaven forever. And it's like heaven is the

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end. And I'm like, wait
a minute, I know I held that

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view too, but then I ride
my Bible, you know, and so

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it's just like this popular thing were
just it's almost like if you were to

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kick back on that view, if
someone said that comment, they might get

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offended and be like, what are
you talking about? And I remember giving

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a book to a family member at
one point about heaven and they're like,

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you mean, we're not going to
heaven. There's more So then when you

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talk about hell, like wait,
there's other views and it's not like And

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another thing is that people think that
when you talk about conditionalism, it's almost

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like you're saying there's no hell,
but it's no no the nature of hell.

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I mean, that's how I understand
it. It's like, you know,

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hell is, we still believe in
hell. We're just talking about what

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is the nature of hell? Would
you say that's about right? Yeah,

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absolutely. Yeah, I do believe
in hell, I just don't believe in

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hell. If what one means by
hell is everlasting torment, I believe.

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I believe hell is a reference to
the final punishment of the resurrected lost.

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Absolutely, And going back to this
concept of resurrection, that's where these two

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views agree. We believe that one
day all humankind will have risen from their

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graves. They'll be once again embodied
and physical. And both sides also agree

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that at that point the saints,
those who are in Christ, will be

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made immortal in a physical sense.
Their bodies will become immortal, and they

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will live forever and ever. Period. But that's but now is where the

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two views diverge, because it's at
this point that the doctrine of eternal torment

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could be characterized as universal immortality or
unconditional immortality, indiscriminate immortality, meaning that

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God gives this embodied bodily physical immortality
and everlasting physical life to all humankind universally,

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indiscriminately, without any conditions that they
have to meet. Okay, but

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that's why the view that I have
come to be convinced of and have known

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for defending, is called conditional immortality, because we believe that immortality at the

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resurrection will only be given to the
saints. The lost will rise with bodies

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every bit as mortal as they are
now, and they will be judged,

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and they will be sentenced to death, as we ordinarily understand that word,

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they will literally die a second time. It will be a second death.

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Now. The reason that this view
sometimes is known as annihilationism is because if

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human beings have spirits and or souls
that continue to be conscious after death,

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in the first death, we believe
Scripture teaches that that soul will be destroyed

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along with the body and the second
death, and so the consciousness of the

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entire person will cease. They will
cease to exist as conscious beings forever,

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and so all that will remain are
the saints and a perfected cosmos in which

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in every single atom of which you
know, righteousness reigns. There is no

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sin anywhere cordoned off in some dark, gloomy corner of the cosmos. But

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anyway, that's why it's called conditional
immortality. Only those who meet the condition

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of being saved will rise immortal and
live forever. Those who do not will

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rise mortal and will literally die a
second time and forever. So Chris,

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that's a really great overview. One
of the things I tell a bit of

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a story before to lead up to
this next question. So, when I

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was first a Christian, I'm forty
seven now, I was twenty five at

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the time. I had written a
letter to the editor when I was about

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twenty six years old, and it
referred to eternal conscious torment, because that's

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that's what I was taught. And
you know, I was pretty new in

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the faith, and this gentleman who
live locally sent me a rather long document

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with the view that of condition immortality
or annihilationism, and I remember having just

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this huge reaction to it, being
very you know, put off by it,

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and I remember thoughts like, this
is what the Jehovah's witnesses teach,

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and this is false teaching. And
I remember sending him his email and telling

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him how he was in error and
how I wanted to debate him. And

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now, of course I look back
on that, and if that gentleman's listening,

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I'm so sorry. But I look
back and think, you know,

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I blush and I'm embarrassed even as
I tell the story. But it leads

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up to my question. And the
question, of course is I have noticed

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when I try to fish this view
out to people, if you will,

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and see how they you know,
throw it out there to bait him a

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bit and see how they bite.
They bite back sometimes a little bit like

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a shark. They they're very opposed
to it, and a lot of people

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almost see it as is false teaching, like I unfortunately did. Why do

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you think that is? And before
we start unpacked at what would you say

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to somebody who's listening and right away
that kind of the red flags are going

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up because they haven't heard this.
Yeah, well, I mean, I

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think there are a few reasons why
a lot of people have that kind of

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visceral negative reaction that you're talking about. One of them is because defenders of

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eternal torment have dishonestly characterized our view
as as something that is distinctly Jehovah's witness

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or Christadelphian or Seventh day Adventists or
whatever, as if merely by virtue of

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the fact that those other questionable groups
and in some cases cults like the Jovah's

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Witnesses and Christadelphians, merely by virtue
of the fact that annihilationism happens to be

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something that they teach, or at
least something like it. Therefore it must

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be heresy. But that's of course
absolutely absurd. Islam teaches forms of eternal

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torment, so does Buddhism. You
look up Buddhist Hell and you might be

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a little shocked at what you might
find out. And then conversely, the

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Jehovah's witnesses believe in inerrancy, right, So no, granted they've got a

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really distorted translation in the New World
Translation, but the point is is that

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they leave in on some things that
are Christian and some things that are not.

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Believers in eternal torment in some cases
are heretics or cults like the Westboro

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Baptist Church or Islam, and in
other cases they are Orthodox. So the

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point is we can't dismiss conditionalisms or
annihilationism simply because some questionable groups teach it

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as well, because the reality is
that there have been Christians who've believed in

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this view all the way back since
the beginning of the Church. And we

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can talk about that as we get
into our discussion today and in the nineteenth

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century, that is the eighteen hundreds. Annihilation is a conditional immortality as it

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was called in that era, was
very popular amongst Orthodox Christians in both America

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and in Europe. And this was
prior to the advent of the Jovah's witnesses

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and others. So that reason for
having this visceral reaction, I think is

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illegitimate, and it's caused by apologists
for eternal torment who do this dishonest thing

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of the well or or guilt by
association. But then there are other people

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for whom it's much more understandable.
Why would they would have that visceral reaction

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If you've grown up in the church, and every single pastor that you've looked

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up to, every single Christian teacher
that you've learned from, every single uh

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you know, respected Christian thought leader
that you've read over the sense you know

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from their publications over the centuries,
believes in teachers eternal torment. And then

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you find out that there's this small
group of people that teach otherwise and want

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you to say this is what Scripture
clearly teaches, as I believe is the

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case. They're gonna say, okay, but so you're asking me to believe

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that all these godly people that I've
relied upon and that I've learned from and

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that have edified me are wrong.
I mean that's so you can you can

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understand why that might cause a bit
of a viscerally negative reaction on the part

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of people who encounter this. And
then there are people who have bought into

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mischaracterizations of annihilationism that would cause it
to be heretical if it's in error.

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So for for example, if one
thinks that annihilationism is you are punished with

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ceasing to exist, then it becomes
difficult the loss that is in hell,

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then that becomes difficult to understand how
Christ could have borne that penalty as our

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substitute, because that would mean that
he would have had to have ceased to

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exist. But of course that would
mean that either the Trinity became a byanty

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for three days or the hypostatic union
was violated while the divine person continued to

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exist without his human his human nature, and either those would be heretical.

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So if you think, if you've
heard these mischaracterizations of annihilationism, like that

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the final punishment is the cessation of
existence, then you're going to think that

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that has these heretical implications, when
it in fact does not. So those

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are a few of the reasons,
and there others as well. But what

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would I say to sort of alleviate
those concerns. Well. Number one,

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as I already said, orthodox Christians
from all varieties of denominations and communities in

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the eighteen hundreds in America and in
Europe believed in this view long before the

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cults. Number two, the annihilationism
does not, in any way, shape

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or form, call into question,
or cast doubt on, or challenge the

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orthodox essentials of the faith as defined
by the ecumenical creeds of the first few

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centuries and the testimony of Scripture.
And there are many trusted Christians who do

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teach this view from the sort of
academic world, people like John Stackhouse and

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Terrence Teeson and Preston Sprinkle, although
he's a little bit with a more lay

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level. So the point I'm getting
at is that it's many trusted Christians,

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both apologists, from the apologetic world, from the professorial world, from you

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know, biblical studies, theology,
all across the spectrum. And by the

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way, not just in particular denominations
either. It's not just premillennialists. It's

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not just a millennialists and post millennialists. It's not just dualists or not just

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physicalists. It's not just cessatianists and
continuationists. Any intramural Christian debate, you're

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going to find people who hold to
annihilationism on every side of that issue.

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So for so, don't I just
don't think that there's any legitimate reason for

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having that kind of viscerally negative reaction. Now should that Does that mean that

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they should immediately accept it? Of
course not, But there you have every

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reason. Oh and then one more
thing. Those of us who believe it

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believe it because we think scripture is
teaching it. It's we're doing it because

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of our commitment to biblical authority,
not despite it. So for all those

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reasons, I would encourage listeners to
say, Okay, maybe I can,

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you know, consider it without having
this kind of visceral negative reaction, even

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if in the end I don't end
up being convinced. Yeah, that's good.

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One of the things I appreciated is
when I first started contacting you a

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few years back about it, you
know, and I told you where I

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at the time, where I was
leaning, and you said, you know,

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whether you end up on my view
or not, you know, that's

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okay. Just make sure that you
look into it. And I found that

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incredibly. I appreciated that so much
because it really didn't put any pressure on

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me and also showed me the sincerity
of your heart and the sense of I

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just want you to believe what you
think scripture best teaches. Well. But

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seven having become I'm convinced you'll never
know if I was telling the truth.

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But no, I was. I
was. I tell people that, like

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Mike Winger, for example, whom
I consider a friend, he's going to

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be embarking upon a study of hell
and then not to do some future,

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and I've been encouraging him. Listen, please rely on me for a resource.

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And if in the end you don't
end up becoming convinced, great,

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but at least you'll know you'll at
least you'll be able to deal with what

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our view actually is and not how
it is misrepresented by its critics. And

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yeah, yes, So before we
get into the actual looking at a few

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passages that always come up in this
discussion, the last kind of preliminary question

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I have for you, and you
hinted at it at the end of your

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comments. There is one of the
things that I've heard from a couple different

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pastors, and these are pastors whom
I respect. When you begin discussing this

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view, as they'll often say,
well, those people are just trying to

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soften God's wrath, you know that. Well, they just can't accept that

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God would punish someone for eternity,
and so they're trying to look for a

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way out. And I of course
have heard you respond to this, but

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I would like our listeners to hear
kind of your thoughts on that common accusation.

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Yeah, let me just say as
well, I was I have wrote

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a note here like, hey,
does this soften God's wrath or his punishment

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that you know, there's no fear
now for the inner because they just switch

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off. You know. That would
be what I would think people would be,

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like, what's the what's the danger? Now, what's the punishment?

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Yeah, well, before I answer
that question directly, I'll just point out

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that it really seems like it's the
eternal torment side that is historically been softening

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and air conditioning hell. Right.
Historically, belief in hell was comfortable using

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the word torture to describe a literal, literal burning and fire and hell and

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all these kinds of things. Nowadays, the pretty typical common view, even

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amongst scholars, is some kind of
metaphorical separation from God, which is tormenting

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for sure, but not the kind
of vicious torture that some Christians seemed to

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endorse in the past. And I've
even debated somebody JP holding I think he's

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the guy who runs tectonics Ministry,
and he actually argues that hell is basically

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it's akin to being forced to drink
warm, flat beer forever. It's just

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like a banal, boring existence,
one of shame but not pain. These

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are the kinds of views that strike
me as air conditioning Hell, not annihilationism.

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But of course the tu coke is
how you pronounced the tucope fallacy,

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the U two fallacy well anyway.
But setting that aside, does my view

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water down or air condition or soften
Hell? I don't think so. Number

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One, most of us did not
embrace this view because we didn't like we

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didn't think that the eternal torment view
was fair or just or anything. A

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lot of people start to wonder if
perhaps they misunderstood what scripture teaches because eternal

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torment strikes them as unjust or whatever. But that's not what convinces them that

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what they end up being convinced by
is the Biblical testimony. And in my

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case and in the case of some
others, it was never an issue.

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We never had a problem with eternal
torment being unjust or anything like that.

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And the reason we even began re
examining the case the topic was because of

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what Scripture seems to clearly teach Number
two. There are plenty of us who

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actually think annihilation is the harsher penalty. That might strike people as strange some

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people, but it wouldn't strike all
people as strange. In the first century,

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the Greek historian Plutarch said that his
Greek countrymen, if given the choice

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between eternal torment and like hades,
or annihilation, they would much prefer eternal

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torment, because there was nothing that
the Greek mind loved more than existence than

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life. Augustine, a few hundred
years later, in the City of God,

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said that if you were to offer
to the impenitent sinner the choice between

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eternal torment or annihilation, they would
exuberantly choose eternal torment. And if you

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look at the writings of atheists and
agnostics over the centuries, you'll find them

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terrified of annihilation. There's a twentieth
century agnostic poet by the name of Philip

316
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Larkin who wrote a poem called Albad
and in it he writes in great moving

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prose about a poetry about how terrified
he is of annihilation because that's what he

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believed was awaiting him. Mark Bauerline
was covered by about ten years ago by

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Unbelievable by a premier Christian radio because
he converted to Christianity, or at least

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Catholicism, because he, as an
atheist, was a terrified of ceasing to

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exist. So the reality is that
lots and lots of people are terrified of

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annihilation, even if they're not terrified
of it more than they are eternal torment.

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And so annihilation is a terrible fate, regardless of whether it's worse or

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better than eternal torment. Some of
us think it's worse. And I'll just

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give you one last example. Do
you guys know that? Are you guys

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familiar with Clay Jones and the book
that he published a couple of years ag

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00:23:00,039 --> 00:23:03,359
go called Immortal? Yes? Yes? What is his premise? What is

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the whole point of his book?
People don't want to die, They don't

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want to die exactly. So,
yeah, this idea that somehow being destroyed

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in hell is going to neuter the
Gospel and you know, take the wind

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out of the sales of the Gospel. As Greg Cochele used to say,

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I do hope he used to say, it doesn't still because it's the most

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ludicrous thing I've ever heard him say. Then you know it certainly does not

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do those things. And in fact, I would argue it actually resonates with

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the desires and fears that all humans
already have, which is a desire to

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not die and a fear of dying. We are saying, as conditionalists,

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the Gospel literally can save your life, and I think that's a pretty powerful

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motivator. That's good. So,
Chris, one of the things you do

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00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:51,119
in your debates, which I just
absolutely love, is you take the passages

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that are most often used to argue
for eternal conscious torment and you demonstrate how

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00:23:57,559 --> 00:24:03,599
you believe they better DEMI and straight
conditional immortality. And so what I thought

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00:24:03,599 --> 00:24:06,880
would be fun is if we took
a look at three or four passages.

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But I also want you, because
I know you're very good at steel manning

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the eternal conscious torment position. So
if I leave one out that you're thinking,

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Chad, you know, this is
kind of one of their main verses.

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00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:23,319
We've got to address this when please
feel free to correct me or you

347
00:24:23,319 --> 00:24:26,480
know, put me on the right
track if I get off track. Now,

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one that I was repeatedly brought to
when I was really in you know,

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in the midst of investigating this was
Matthew twenty five forty six. And

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this was one that most people who
hold to conditional immortality, they seem to

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00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:51,599
think this was kind of a slam
dunk, if you will. And so

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just for listeners, I'm going to
start at this is the Sheep and the

353
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Goats, and Jesus is talking here. I'll start in verse forty. He

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00:25:00,519 --> 00:25:03,759
says I was a stranger and you
did not welcome me, naked and you

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00:25:03,799 --> 00:25:06,920
did not clothe me, sick and
in prison and you did not visit me.

356
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Then they also will answer saying,
Lord, when did we see you

357
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hungry or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked or sick or in prison

358
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and did not minister to you.
Then he will answer them saying, truly,

359
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I say to you, as you
did not do it for one of

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00:25:21,839 --> 00:25:25,720
the least of these you did not
do it unto me, and these will

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go away into eternal punishment, but
the righteous into eternal life. And of

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course what I was always told,
the argument that was always made was,

363
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look, there's that parallel with eternal
life. So if life is eternal,

364
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then the punishment also has to be
eternal. What say you, I say

365
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:52,359
it is, Yeah, the punishment
is eternal. There are certainly some annihilationists

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00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:56,119
too, like universalists, want to
try and change the adjective ionios to mean

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something other than eternal, like long
lasting or characteristic of an age to come.

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But many, many of us annihilationists, certainly those of us are rethinking

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hell do not? We think it
just means eternal at least here and in

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many other places as well. So
the question, see, the dispute really

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00:26:11,599 --> 00:26:15,279
isn't the debate really isn't the duration
of the punishment. The debate is over

372
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its nature? What is this everlasting
punishment? And the Greek word colosis that

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is translated punishment there is just like
the English word punishment in that it's very

374
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open to that there are a variety
of different kinds of punishments, and the

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00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:37,000
word punishment alone doesn't tell you which
one is in view, so you know,

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00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:41,759
you could you can think, for
example, of actively ongoing punishments caning.

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00:26:42,039 --> 00:26:45,920
Right, you're you're whipping someone with
a cane and inflicting pain, But

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then you've also got what are known
as privative punishments, where you are depriving

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somebody of something that they that they
have that's valuable. That's what a fine

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is. Just think about this for
a second. If the punishment of a

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00:26:56,839 --> 00:27:00,880
fine, we're just handing over money, then they could just give it right

382
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:04,160
back and you will have been punished. But of course that's not that.

383
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,319
The penalty isn't giving over the money. The penalty is not having that money

384
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anymore. Right, So it's a
privative punishment. And the same is true

385
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,839
of the death penalty, and you
are depriving somebody of life, the punishment

386
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:18,200
is not the dying. The punishment
is the result of the dying. It

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00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,720
is not being alive anymore. And
this Greek word colossis is used in those

388
00:27:22,799 --> 00:27:27,440
kinds of same ways in the relevant
literature. In the septuagen for example,

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there are some texts in which colsis
appears to mean some kind of infliction of

390
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:36,519
pain, but there are other places
where it refers to the death penalty.

391
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:42,519
So the question then is does verse
forty six does this help arbitrate between different

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00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:47,839
kinds of punishments to tell us which
what kind of punishment he's calling eternal here?

393
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And actually I think that there is
something there. There's at least two

394
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things. One is, it's not
just a parallel between eternal punishment and internal

395
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life. The duration is parallel,
yes, but the fates are contrasted.

396
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:07,279
Right. These are two judicial alternatives, two alternative destinies, and they're mutually

397
00:28:07,319 --> 00:28:11,200
exclusive. You don't get one or
the other. So if one group gets

398
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:15,680
eternal life, then what must the
eternal punishment be? I would argue it

399
00:28:15,759 --> 00:28:19,880
must be death, the death penalty, And of course the common response to

400
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,640
that is going to be well,
but eternal life doesn't mean merely living forever,

401
00:28:22,799 --> 00:28:26,960
and we can get into that if
you want. But I don't think

402
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,599
that's true. I think eternal life
means exactly what it sounds like. It

403
00:28:29,599 --> 00:28:33,480
means living forever. So yes,
it does seem that if the punishment is

404
00:28:33,559 --> 00:28:38,039
death, which seems to be suggested
by the fact that it's alternative is life,

405
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:42,720
and if that death is forever,
then it is an everlasting punishment by

406
00:28:42,799 --> 00:28:47,559
definition, and sure enough we have
plenty of other texts that support that reading

407
00:28:48,039 --> 00:28:51,400
one of the most famous, the
most famous version Scripture John three sixteen.

408
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:53,000
For some who God so loved the
world that he gave his only son,

409
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:56,720
that whoever believes in him would not
live forever in hell. Wait, sorry,

410
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:00,960
I got that wrong, would not
perish, but have everlasting life.

411
00:29:00,079 --> 00:29:03,880
Roman six twenty three. The wages
of sin is torment forever in immortal bodies

412
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,200
in hell. No, the wages
of sin is death. So No.

413
00:29:08,559 --> 00:29:12,559
Twenty five to forty six does not
support eternal torment, and it doesn't challenge

414
00:29:12,559 --> 00:29:17,200
conditionalism. It is actually support for
it. And just as a side note,

415
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,559
we could do a similar exercise on
the verse a few versus earlier Verse

416
00:29:19,599 --> 00:29:23,319
forty one speaking about the eternal fire
prepared for the devilments angels. But I'll

417
00:29:23,359 --> 00:29:26,119
let you decide if you want to
go there. I will tell you that

418
00:29:26,519 --> 00:29:30,839
the first time I heard you talk
about John three sixteen from a conditional immortality

419
00:29:32,039 --> 00:29:37,200
perspective was probably the first stone in
my shoe. So what about Mark nine

420
00:29:37,319 --> 00:29:42,160
forty three through forty nine. I'll
read part of it, and of course,

421
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,359
just I'm saying that for the reader, if they want to look at

422
00:29:45,359 --> 00:29:48,240
the full context of the passage,
it says, and if your eye causes

423
00:29:48,279 --> 00:29:52,240
you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter

424
00:29:52,279 --> 00:29:55,960
the Kingdom of God with one eye
than with two eyes to be thrown into

425
00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:00,480
hell where their worm does not die
and the fire is not quenched, for

426
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,680
everyone will be salted with fire.
And of course you know, the study

427
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,599
notes will say that this refers back
to Isaiah sixty six twenty four, where

428
00:30:08,599 --> 00:30:14,240
it says for their worm shall not
die. Yeah. Well, and I'll

429
00:30:14,279 --> 00:30:18,119
just make the argument even clearer than
you did just by reading the text,

430
00:30:18,119 --> 00:30:21,799
which is the argument is typically look
if the worm, which is which is

431
00:30:21,799 --> 00:30:26,319
a maggot feeding on the corpses,
never dies, and if the fire that

432
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:33,160
is burning the corpses, well,
actually, hold on, I'm I'm getting

433
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:36,039
ahead of myself. The first thing
I understand about this text is that it

434
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:40,480
is quoting Isaiah sixty six twenty four, as you just pointed out. And

435
00:30:40,519 --> 00:30:44,279
that's why I mentioned that the worm
is a maggot eating corpses, because in

436
00:30:44,319 --> 00:30:48,759
Isaiah sixty six twenty four it's explicitly
said to be the pagarim, the dead

437
00:30:48,799 --> 00:30:52,839
bodies, the corpses, the carcasses
of the men who have rebelled against me,

438
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,440
for their worm shall not die and
the fire shall not be quenched.

439
00:30:55,799 --> 00:30:59,880
So that's why I was talking about
this worm being a maggot that eats corpses,

440
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,880
and similarly the fire if it is
if it never dies out, as

441
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:07,200
some translations will say, like the
NIV, I think or the NLT,

442
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:11,759
then the only way if the fuel
for these worms and these and this fire

443
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:18,119
were to be exhausted because it gets
completely devoured, completely burned up, then

444
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:22,160
the worm would die and the fire
would be it would go out. Okay,

445
00:31:22,599 --> 00:31:26,880
So the argument is the reason why
the maggot never dies and the fire

446
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:33,880
is never never goes out is because
the wicked forever continually provide fuel to these

447
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,480
agents. But the problem is,
as I already said, in the text

448
00:31:37,559 --> 00:31:41,559
that Isaiah that Jesus is quoting and
Isaiah, it is explicitly said to be

449
00:31:41,599 --> 00:31:45,960
the corpses of God's slain enemies that
are being consumed by the maggot and fire.

450
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,799
That's number one. Number two.
The text doesn't say the worm will

451
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:55,440
never die or never dies and the
fire never go never dies. It's just

452
00:31:55,559 --> 00:32:00,920
not so. For example, when
Joseph before he reveals his identity to his

453
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:07,839
brothers and he plants some valuable items
in their bags, and then he pretends

454
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:09,200
to catch them, and it's like, look, if you don't want to

455
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:13,200
die, you better go and bring
your youngest son back here. And he's

456
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:15,960
and what he says is, if
you do this, you will not die.

457
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:17,599
Well, what is he doing.
Is he promising them immortality? Of

458
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:21,200
course not. He's saying you won't
die now, I won't kill you.

459
00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:23,839
Right, So it's not die,
not quenched, it's not never. That's

460
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:29,799
number two and number three. The
language of a fire that won't be quenched

461
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,559
is just the language of a fire
that can't be put out and so completely

462
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:37,960
burns up. And this is true
in both Old and in the New Testament.

463
00:32:38,039 --> 00:32:43,640
In the New Testament, for example, in Matthew three twelve, John

464
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:45,440
the Baptist, speaking of Jesus,
says that his winnowing fork is in his

465
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:49,440
hand, and he will clear his
threshing floor and gather his wheat into the

466
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:53,599
barn. But the chaff he will
burn with unquenchable fire. But the word

467
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:58,720
burned there is the Greek word kata
kio. This is important. The Greek

468
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,640
word kyo just meant to but kata
kyo meant to burn up, to completely

469
00:33:02,799 --> 00:33:07,680
be burned to ashes. And that's
why in a septuagent rendition of Exodus,

470
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:12,160
when Moses encarannters the burning bush,
the septuagent says, the bush was kyo.

471
00:33:12,519 --> 00:33:15,279
It was burning, but it was
not kata kiyo, it was not

472
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:21,240
consumed. Well, that's what John
the Baptist says. Unquenchable fire will do

473
00:33:21,319 --> 00:33:25,240
to chaff, it will consume it. Why because the fire is unquenchable,

474
00:33:25,279 --> 00:33:29,039
it can't be put out. This
is important. To quench does not mean

475
00:33:29,079 --> 00:33:32,079
to go out, It means to
put out. And if some fire can't

476
00:33:32,119 --> 00:33:36,680
be put out, then it completely
burns things up. The story I often

477
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:38,480
give, or the analogy is,
imagine you're at work and you get a

478
00:33:38,519 --> 00:33:42,000
call and it's the fire department and
they tell you better run home. Your

479
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:44,720
house is on fire. So you
hang up and you drive home like a

480
00:33:44,759 --> 00:33:47,720
bat out of hades, and you
get home and you find your house is

481
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:53,759
burned to the ground and only smoke
is rising from hambers. And imagine if

482
00:33:53,759 --> 00:33:57,279
the fire department chief for whatever came
up to you and said, hey,

483
00:33:57,279 --> 00:34:00,839
congratulations, I know you'll want to
shake my hand. Quenched your fire,

484
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:05,480
you would spit in their face.
You'd be pissed that they would, you

485
00:34:05,519 --> 00:34:08,360
know, say something so foolish.
It's clearly the fact that they were unable

486
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:12,840
to quench it. That explains why
your house is burned to the ground.

487
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,000
Now, what about the worm that
does not die? Though, well,

488
00:34:16,079 --> 00:34:20,519
this is you got to understand.
Worm will not die, fire will not

489
00:34:20,559 --> 00:34:24,920
be quenched. This is pretty stereotypical
Hebraic parallelism. They are communicating the same

490
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:30,239
concept, but with different pictures,
different words. Fire is an agent that

491
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:35,400
consumes, and if it is not
quenched, it will consume completely. So

492
00:34:35,639 --> 00:34:39,559
likewise, a maggot is a devouring
agent, which, if not stopped by

493
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:45,239
virtue of death, will completely devour. And you can see that exact thing.

494
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:49,920
But instead of maggots, it's birds. In Jeremiah seven. In verse

495
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,000
thirty two of Jeremiah seven, Yahweh
says, behold, the days are coming,

496
00:34:52,079 --> 00:34:55,239
declares the Lord. When it will
no more be called Toefeth or the

497
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:59,079
valley of the son of Hinmham.
That's by the way where we get the

498
00:34:59,079 --> 00:35:02,079
word Gehenna hell or the value of
the son of Him, but the valley

499
00:35:02,159 --> 00:35:07,239
of slaughter, For they will bury
in toe Feth, because there is no

500
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,559
room elsewhere. And the dead bodies
of this people will be food for the

501
00:35:10,559 --> 00:35:14,880
birds of the air and for the
beasts of the earth, and none will

502
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,800
frighten them away. The significance of
not being able to frighten away these scavenging

503
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:24,719
beasts and birds is that they will
successfully devour the carryon upon which they feed,

504
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,440
namely the corpses of God's enemies.
It's the exact same kind of picture

505
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:31,320
as the worm won't die, but
instead of being beasts and birds, it's

506
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:37,239
a maggot. So literally, every
single bit of evidence that you could possibly

507
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:40,079
marshal from this verse in Martin nine, and it's where it's been quoted from

508
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:45,960
lends. It lends these verses two
conditional immortality and annihilationism and challenges eternal torment.

509
00:35:46,039 --> 00:35:51,800
There's literally not a shred of evidence
from these verses that supports eternal torment.

510
00:35:52,079 --> 00:35:54,719
Before Brian goes to the next passage, just in listening to you and

511
00:35:54,760 --> 00:36:00,719
of course over the last few years
and speaking with you and they, one

512
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:02,239
of the things that's always impressed upon
me. How important do you think it

513
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:07,880
is when assessing these New Testament passages
that talk about the fate of the wicked,

514
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:12,159
if you will, is it to
look at them in light of the

515
00:36:12,199 --> 00:36:15,960
Old Testament. I mean, I
don't think that's of paramount importance, but

516
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:21,760
but it is important. And here's
why. So let me let me caveat

517
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,000
this by saying, yes, of
course, New Testament authors, under the

518
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:30,320
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, can
take something that was said in the Old

519
00:36:30,519 --> 00:36:36,360
and and repurpose it to mean something
somewhat different. No annihilationist denies that.

520
00:36:37,159 --> 00:36:42,800
But if a New Testament author simply
repeats the language from the Old Testament and

521
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:49,039
gives no indication that they are changing
its meanings somehow, then then we have

522
00:36:49,159 --> 00:36:52,239
every reason for thinking that they mean
that in the same way that it was

523
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,599
meant, or at least a comparable
way as it was meant in the text.

524
00:36:54,639 --> 00:37:00,000
Whence it comes if because the because
they're the New test Arthur's aren't writing

525
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:05,679
in a vacuum. They are Jews
with the possible but not for certain exception

526
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,800
of Luke. They are Jews steeped
in the Hebrew Old Testament, or at

527
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:15,079
the very least in the septuagen Greek
translation thereof, and possibly the Aramaic Targums,

528
00:37:15,119 --> 00:37:17,679
which also translated the Old Testament.
They are steeped in this language.

529
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,559
And if a New Testament person,
writer, or speaker comes and speaks to

530
00:37:23,599 --> 00:37:29,519
them the language that they recognize from
their Old Testament and they don't give any

531
00:37:29,639 --> 00:37:32,280
indication that they are changing its meaning, what is the hearer going to think

532
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,840
is being said? What is what
was said by what they're familiar with,

533
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,719
namely the Old Testament. Yeah,
so, and if you don't do that,

534
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:45,559
then all you are doing is assuming
that the English translation you happen to

535
00:37:45,559 --> 00:37:51,039
be reading is correct, and number
one and number two that it means what

536
00:37:51,119 --> 00:37:55,440
you think that English expression means two
thousand years after it was originally written.

537
00:37:55,679 --> 00:38:00,039
And that doesn't seem like a very
good, a very solid way to understand

538
00:38:00,079 --> 00:38:04,320
what's being said. But again,
I want to reiterate, just because there's

539
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,039
some people who miss coons true what
we're saying. We're not saying that the

540
00:38:07,039 --> 00:38:10,639
Old Testament interprets the New and we're
not saying the New Testament can't change the

541
00:38:10,679 --> 00:38:14,400
meaning of what was said in the
Old We're just saying that in examples like

542
00:38:14,519 --> 00:38:19,280
this, you know Jesus doesn't say
anything before or after quoting Mark nine or

543
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:22,199
quoting Isaia sst Six twenty four that
would suggest that he's using this language to

544
00:38:22,199 --> 00:38:27,719
mean something fundamentally different. That's helpful, thank you. There's this idea of

545
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,320
things being completely burned up, completely
consumed, completely eaten up. That makes

546
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:35,519
a lot of sense to me,
where these are word pictures to describe that

547
00:38:35,639 --> 00:38:39,440
there's basically no rescue. You're gonna
start burning up, and you know it's

548
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:45,320
gonna this fire is going to accomplish
its purpose without interruption. Same with the

549
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,559
worm, same with these birds eating
up the corpses. So visual representation of

550
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:52,880
there's no rescue, there's no coming
back from this. It's going to be

551
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:57,760
complete now. But there's also the
idea, though, and read another scripture,

552
00:38:57,800 --> 00:39:02,320
you can respond to the idea of
torment. Not only is there the

553
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:08,920
traditional view one of being eternal,
but it is one of torment and often

554
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:15,800
flame. So you've got something like
Revelation fourteen nine through eleven, where it

555
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:20,199
says their smoke of their torment goes
up forever and ever, and they have

556
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:23,199
no rest day or night. These
worshipers of the beast and its image,

557
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:28,639
and whoever receives the mark of his
name, and just maybe another one to

558
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:30,599
throw in there would be something like, I'm sure people could think of this

559
00:39:30,599 --> 00:39:35,679
one the parable of the rich Man
and Lazarus, where you know, the

560
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:40,960
rich man is receiving his punishment at
the same time Lazarus is receiving his reward,

561
00:39:42,519 --> 00:39:45,639
and he's like, hey, I'm
being tormented. Here, dap your

562
00:39:45,679 --> 00:39:49,119
finger in the water, you know, just to ease my pain. And

563
00:39:49,199 --> 00:39:54,000
so clearly you know he's being tormented, this is his punishment. The other

564
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:59,000
guy is getting a reward. So
how can you have a view that takes

565
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,800
away this torment, this punishment that
seems to go on forever and ever?

566
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:06,599
Sure, how would you respond to
that? Well, let's take the easier

567
00:40:06,599 --> 00:40:09,320
one first, and that's the story
of the rich Man, Elazarus, and

568
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:15,159
Luke sixteen. Chad introduced this by
saying that I often do this thing where

569
00:40:15,159 --> 00:40:19,400
I argue from the texts that are
typically cited in support of eternal torment.

570
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,159
And the way that I introduce that
argument is by saying the following, with

571
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:29,079
virtually no exception, every proof text
historically cited in support of eternal torment proves,

572
00:40:29,119 --> 00:40:32,079
upon closer examination to be better support
for annihilationism. This text here in

573
00:40:32,159 --> 00:40:37,679
Luke is the reason why I put
the word virtually there, virtually no exception.

574
00:40:37,159 --> 00:40:40,960
The reason I say that is because
this text Luke sixteen nineteen to thirty

575
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,880
one is indeed one of the most
popular proof texts in support of eternal torment.

576
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:49,880
But it doesn't, upon closer examination, better support my view. Why

577
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,760
because it doesn't have anything whatsoever to
do with Hell. Now you might be

578
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:57,639
surprised to think that it sounds like
it. We've been sort of taught to

579
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,519
think that way. But just look
at some of the tales here verse twenty

580
00:41:00,519 --> 00:41:05,320
two, the poor man died and
was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.

581
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:08,760
The rich man also died and was
buried, So this is after their

582
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:14,400
death, not after their resurrection.
And then verse twenty three and in Haites,

583
00:41:14,519 --> 00:41:15,679
this is not Gahanna, this is
not the lake of fire. This

584
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:21,360
is the intermediate state, the equivalent
to the Hebrew Old the place of the

585
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,760
dead. And in Hades, being
in torment, he lifted up his eyes

586
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:28,960
and saw Abraham far off. So
already we have every reason for thinking that

587
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:31,760
this is something that, even if
taken in a woodenly literal way as possible,

588
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:36,239
is taking place in the time between
death and resurrection, not what happens

589
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:39,320
after resurrection, which is when hell
takes place. And if that weren't enough,

590
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:43,719
I'll add one more detail. At
the end of the story, this

591
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:47,320
rich Man pleads with Abraham to go
warn the rich Man's still living brothers so

592
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:52,840
that they don't come to this fate
as well. Now I'm telling you that

593
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:55,000
on a day of judgment, there
will be nobody who is still going about

594
00:41:55,039 --> 00:42:02,400
their lives blissfully unaware of their impending
doom. This is clearly in time prior

595
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:07,880
to the resurrection and final judgment.
So this is this does not support for

596
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:12,920
annihilationism, but it's also not support
for eternal torment. At best. It's

597
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:16,639
support for a conscious intermediate state and
some kind of substance dualism. Okay,

598
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:21,280
And I want to make clear notice
that I didn't there try to argue that

599
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:23,679
it's a parable even I'm saying,
look, grant that it's a little historical

600
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:27,920
record or something happening. It's still
happening in Haites, not Hell. Okay,

601
00:42:28,119 --> 00:42:30,800
So now let's talk about Revelation,
and I want to we need to

602
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:34,760
set the stage a little bit for
this, because I think a lot of

603
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:40,320
Christians misunderstand how a Biblical vision like
the one recorded in Revelation functions. Most

604
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:45,719
Christians, I think, think of
this kind of vision as John sort of.

605
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:51,320
It's as if a camera in the
future had recorded this series of events

606
00:42:51,559 --> 00:42:53,880
and the recording of it was passed
back in time to John, who sort

607
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,800
of popped it into a blu ray
disc or driver or something like that and

608
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,639
put it up on a TV screen
and watched it. But that's not how

609
00:43:00,679 --> 00:43:06,280
this works. Biblical visions of the
future like this one, they don't depict

610
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:12,679
the future at all. They present
all these perplexing and symbolic scenes that symbolize

611
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:19,320
future events. And these are so
often so difficult to understand that divine interpreters

612
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:23,199
in the vision itself have to explain
its meaning. As an example, and

613
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:27,119
there are many examples of this,
but I'll give just one, when Joseph

614
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:32,519
is taken out of prison by Pharaoh
to interpret his prophetic dream. And dreams

615
00:43:32,559 --> 00:43:37,760
and visions in the Bible are interchangeable. There's no meaningful distinction other than perhaps

616
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:42,119
dreams or while you're sleeping, and
visions are why you're waking. But anyway,

617
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:45,800
Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream, and in
Pharaoh's dream he sees seven healthy cows

618
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,239
come up out of the nile,
and then seven six cows come up out

619
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,880
of the nile and eat the first
seven. And when Joseph interprets it for

620
00:43:52,920 --> 00:44:00,760
Pharaoh, he says, the seven
the seven cows are seven years of prosperity,

621
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:04,440
and then the next seven cows are
seven years of famine. You see

622
00:44:04,599 --> 00:44:08,519
this and plethora of a plethora of
other examples in scripture are examples in which

623
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:16,480
the vision portrays perplexing scenes that symbolize
future realities. And we see this even

624
00:44:16,519 --> 00:44:20,760
in Revelation itself. You guys are
probably going to be familiar with where earlier

625
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:25,880
in Revelation Jesus is talking about the
seven lamp stands and he says those are

626
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:31,920
the seven churches. He talks about
golden bowls full of incense, and the

627
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:36,320
text in Revelation says that those are
the prayers of the saints. Right,

628
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:43,360
this is stereotypical way in Biblical visions
of saying that what the seer sees symbolizes

629
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:46,079
this other thing in reality. And
so all of that is just to say

630
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:50,480
that the question when we come to
Revelation fourteen, or Revelation twenty for that

631
00:44:50,519 --> 00:44:54,679
matter, is not what is depicted, but what does it symbolize in reality?

632
00:44:55,159 --> 00:44:58,559
Now, before I attempt to answer
that question, do you guys want

633
00:44:58,559 --> 00:45:00,079
to push back on that at all? Or do you think you can agree

634
00:45:00,159 --> 00:45:04,280
largely with what I've said so far? No? I think that's a good

635
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,880
So then consider the symbols that converge
here in Revelation fourteen nine to eleven.

636
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:14,480
You've got being made to drink God's
wrath, You've got being tormented with fire

637
00:45:14,559 --> 00:45:17,599
and sulfur, and you've got smoke
from their torment rising forever and ever.

638
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,760
Now, if I told, if
I could show you that all three of

639
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:28,679
those symbols converge elsewhere in this very
same book, and it clearly there communicates

640
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:31,679
a fate of destruction and death.
Do you think that that would give you

641
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:36,360
at least reason to think that perhaps
that's what's going on here as well.

642
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,480
Yes, So, in Revelation eighteen
we have this picture of Mystery Babylon,

643
00:45:40,599 --> 00:45:44,559
this blood drunk vampiric prostitute, which, by the way, is another T

644
00:45:44,679 --> 00:45:46,119
shirt that I told I need to
have because I say that so often.

645
00:45:47,119 --> 00:45:53,079
She's called Mystery Babylon. And in
verse six God tells the church to mix

646
00:45:53,119 --> 00:45:57,679
a double portion for her in the
cup that she mixed, and scholars,

647
00:45:57,800 --> 00:46:01,400
including traditionalists like GK. Beale,
say that this is being made to drink

648
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:07,000
God's wrath. Just like we saw
in Revelation fourteen, we see her tormented

649
00:46:07,039 --> 00:46:12,159
with fire. We see that in
places like verse ten, they will stand

650
00:46:12,199 --> 00:46:19,199
far off in fear of her torment. We see it again in verse fifteen.

651
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:22,320
The merchants of these wares who gained
wealth from her, will stand far

652
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:27,440
off in fear of her torment.
And we see her burning in verse nine,

653
00:46:27,559 --> 00:46:30,199
the smoke of her burnings. We've
got the burning in fire, just

654
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:32,119
like we do in a tormented in
fire. I mean, just like we

655
00:46:32,119 --> 00:46:38,199
have in Revelation fourteen. And then
in Revelation nineteen, verse three, Hallelujah

656
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:43,440
chorus cries out, the smoke from
her goes up forever and ever. So

657
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:47,239
we've got all three of those same
symbols that we saw in Revelation fourteen applied

658
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:52,039
to this woman, this Mystery Babylon. So then, what we should ask

659
00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:57,760
ourselves. Do these symbols converge to
mean in this passage? Well, in

660
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,280
eighteen twenty one, a mighty angel
took up a stone like a great,

661
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,840
great millstone and threw it into the
sea, saying, so will Babylon,

662
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:08,760
the great city, be thrown down
with violence and will be found no more.

663
00:47:09,559 --> 00:47:15,480
So all of these symbols that to
us evoke picture of ongoing burning symbolize

664
00:47:15,559 --> 00:47:21,719
right here in Revelation eighteen and nineteen
the destruction of the city that this woman

665
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,280
represents and the deaths of many of
her inhabitants. So then why wouldn't those

666
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:30,159
symbols converge to communicate the same idea
in Revelation fourteen, especially when there's a

667
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:37,360
relationship between those beast worshippers and this
woman who's riding the beast. So all

668
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:39,440
of that is just to say that
those symbols appear to converge your Revelation fourteen

669
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:44,840
to communicate the death and destruction of
those who follow the beast, rather than

670
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:47,159
their everlasting torment. And by the
way, that's assuming that it's about final

671
00:47:47,159 --> 00:47:52,960
punishment at all, and not all
annihilationists agree that it is. For reasons

672
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:55,280
that we don't have to get into
here now, Chris, I got one

673
00:47:55,280 --> 00:48:00,440
more, and then I'll ask you
to offer any that you think you know,

674
00:48:00,599 --> 00:48:04,920
you guys should have brought this one
up if you want to argue for

675
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,679
your view. So I'm in Jude
dah. Yes, yes, you probably

676
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:12,280
knew this one was coming. Jude
uh, particularly here five through seven.

677
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:15,559
But it says uh, just as
Sodom and Gomorah and the surrounding cities,

678
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:22,679
which likewise indulgent sexual immorality and pursued
unnatural desire, serve as an example by

679
00:48:23,039 --> 00:48:30,199
undergoing a punishment of eternal buyer.
Right there it is, so there,

680
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:32,320
yeah, there it is right,
so yeah, actually there there, My

681
00:48:32,519 --> 00:48:37,360
view is exactly, and let me
explain. So, first of all,

682
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:44,039
it's important to understand that Jude is
not here referring to something that is currently

683
00:48:44,079 --> 00:48:47,480
befalling the people of Sodom and Gomorah. Some people try to argue that it

684
00:48:47,519 --> 00:48:51,760
is because they have they know just
enough Greek to get themselves into trouble.

685
00:48:52,599 --> 00:48:55,519
And what they argue is that the
verb translated serve as an example, which

686
00:48:55,559 --> 00:49:00,599
is pro k may is in the
is in the present tense, and so

687
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:07,599
too is the word translated undergoing the
word Whopeco is also in the present tense,

688
00:49:07,639 --> 00:49:10,960
albeit in a participle. And so
what is often said by some people

689
00:49:12,039 --> 00:49:14,760
who believe in eternal torment and who
know just enough Greek to get themselves into

690
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:16,880
trouble is that undergoing is in the
present tense. So clearly they are right

691
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:21,000
now being punished with eternal fire.
Er go, eternal torment is true.

692
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:27,079
No, that's not quite right.
So when a participle has a tense like

693
00:49:27,119 --> 00:49:30,000
this, what the tense tells you
is the if anything, it tells you

694
00:49:30,039 --> 00:49:36,320
the relationship in time of the participle
to the governing verb. And in this

695
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,920
case, like I said, it's
prockmi meaning serve as an example. So

696
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:43,559
what that means is, to be
a little bit clearer, is that the

697
00:49:43,679 --> 00:49:49,920
undergoing is happening at the same time
as the serving as an example. Okay,

698
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:52,480
now, it doesn't mean that it's
happening right now necessarily, it means

699
00:49:52,519 --> 00:49:58,679
that it's happening contemporaneous with the serving
as an example. But that doesn't solve

700
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:02,039
my problem because serve as is in
the present tense as well. So as

701
00:50:02,159 --> 00:50:07,599
Jude is writing, Sodoma Gomora are
serving as an example, and they are

702
00:50:07,639 --> 00:50:12,599
serving an example in the present undergoing
a punishment of eternal fire. So I'm

703
00:50:12,639 --> 00:50:14,639
still in the same boat that I
was in, And one would think,

704
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:17,760
but I don't, But that's actually
not the case. So, first of

705
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:24,119
all, Jude is making a very
similar case here to what Peter is doing

706
00:50:24,199 --> 00:50:29,840
in Second Peter two. In fact, plenty and plenty of scholars acknowledge that

707
00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:35,320
either Jude is drawing upon Peter or
vice versa, or they're both drawing upon

708
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:37,760
some shared tradition. And if you
look through Second Peter two and Jude,

709
00:50:37,840 --> 00:50:42,400
you'll see a lot of the same
structure, a lot of the same examples.

710
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,239
And what does Peter say in the
parallel to what Jude says in Second

711
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:50,280
Peter two six? He says,
if by turning the cities of Sodoma Gomora

712
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:54,679
to ashes, he condemned God,
condemned them to extinction, making them an

713
00:50:54,719 --> 00:51:00,440
example of what is going to happen
to the ungodly. So Peter is clearly

714
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:06,280
talking not about something that's currently happening
to the dead inhabitants of Sodom Angamora,

715
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:08,679
but rather to something that happened in
the past, namely Genesis nineteen, where

716
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:14,400
fire is sent by the Lord out
of heaven to Sodoma Gomorah and destroys them.

717
00:51:14,559 --> 00:51:17,599
And there's more than that. There
are a lot of these kinds of

718
00:51:17,639 --> 00:51:24,719
examples. It's a whole tradition in
the Intertestamental Jewish world of taking historical examples

719
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:30,000
of divine punishment and listing them and
saying, look at the examples that you

720
00:51:30,079 --> 00:51:36,000
have, these should warn you not
to be not to get yourselves into the

721
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,960
same problem that would result in you
meeting the same fate. And everywhere in

722
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:46,119
the Intertestamental period when these lists of
examples include punishment of Sodom a Gomorah,

723
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:52,079
they always are talking about the fire
that destroyed Sodoma Gomora in the past in

724
00:51:52,119 --> 00:51:55,719
Genesis nineteen. So and so does
Peter, as we just saw. So

725
00:51:55,760 --> 00:52:01,840
there's no reason for thinking whatsoever that
jew is doing something different. But then

726
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,800
how do we explain the fact that
he says they serve as an example in

727
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:12,599
the present. Well, the first
century Jewish historian Josephus, he also speaks

728
00:52:12,679 --> 00:52:16,239
about a past to him event as
serving as an example in the present,

729
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:22,519
and he does so using the exact
same grammar as we see, or relevantly

730
00:52:22,079 --> 00:52:28,159
same grammar as we see in Jude
seven. In Wars Are the Jews six

731
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:34,480
' one oh three, Josephus says
he's pleading with John of Giscala to save

732
00:52:34,519 --> 00:52:37,920
the Jewish Temple. Remember this is
talking about the seventy eighty destruction of the

733
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:42,639
Temple thereabouts. And he's pleading with
John of Giscala to save the Jewish Temple

734
00:52:42,679 --> 00:52:45,280
by surrendering to the Romans. Right, So the argument is, look,

735
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:50,079
just surrender to the Romans and they
won't destroy the temple. And he gives

736
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:55,239
John an example of somebody who did
something the same kind of thing and thereby

737
00:52:55,280 --> 00:53:00,920
save the temple. He gives the
example of Jehoiakim. What he says is

738
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:05,960
that Jehoiakin quote serves as and that's
the present tense Prockemid, just like we

739
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:09,280
have in Jude, serves as a
good example. Well, wait a minute,

740
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:13,400
how does jehoia Kin, who lived
and died hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

741
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,599
of years before Josephus's writing, how
does he serve as an example in the

742
00:53:16,639 --> 00:53:22,280
present, Well, in the collective
memory of the Jewish people and in the

743
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,480
record of what he did in the
scriptures. It'd be sort of like it's

744
00:53:25,679 --> 00:53:30,719
you know that famous painting of George
Washington crossing the Delaware. Imagine if you

745
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:35,760
pointed out painting and he said,
look, we see here George Washington crossing

746
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:38,599
the Delaware. Why am I speaking
about that in the present tense? He

747
00:53:38,639 --> 00:53:40,800
wouldn't. He didn't do it today. He's not doing it now. He

748
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:45,800
did it a couple hundred years ago. It's because it's being presented right here

749
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:51,159
before our eyes in pictorial form.
And this is the same kind of concept

750
00:53:51,199 --> 00:53:55,800
that Josephus and Jude are both doing. They're saying this event in the past

751
00:53:57,400 --> 00:54:00,920
serves as an example now, and
because that's in the present tense, that

752
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:06,320
he uses the present tense for the
participle undergoing that right now serving as an

753
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:09,960
example in the minds of his readers, as because it's recorded in scripture,

754
00:54:10,519 --> 00:54:15,039
and because it's serving as an example
right now, he uses a present participle

755
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:21,320
to describe the eternal fire punishment that
they're suffering in the pages of scripture,

756
00:54:21,599 --> 00:54:24,519
which is the record of an event
hundreds of years earlier. If Jude is

757
00:54:24,599 --> 00:54:29,639
talking and Peter are talking about the
destruction of Sodomagmora hundreds of years earlier,

758
00:54:30,679 --> 00:54:35,159
and the deaths of their many inhabitants, and they say that is an example

759
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:38,800
of what awaits the ungodly. In
fact, if Jude calls that punishment the

760
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:44,000
punishment of eternal fire, then why
should we think that eternal fire means something

761
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:46,920
else when referring to the eternal fire
of hell. We would have no reason

762
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:51,440
for assuming that, especially given as
I said, Jude and Peter both say

763
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:55,079
this is an example of the eternal
fire awaiting the wicked. So no,

764
00:54:55,239 --> 00:55:00,599
these verses Jude Jude does not challenge
my view, It teaches it. So

765
00:55:00,679 --> 00:55:04,920
far, what we've been doing is
looking at all the different scriptures that are

766
00:55:05,599 --> 00:55:09,480
used for making a case, or
when people would read it, they would

767
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:14,280
say, oh see, this is
a clear scripture teaching about the traditional view

768
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:17,920
of nature of hell being a place
of conscious eternal torment. And what you've

769
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:23,360
shown is that no, these are
actually better interpreted showing that the end of

770
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:29,639
the wicked is a snuffing out,
an obliteration, final, full stop.

771
00:55:30,079 --> 00:55:34,599
So I hate TikTok, and I
hate Facebook reels, and I hate you

772
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:37,760
know, YouTube shorts. But if
you had to make a positive case,

773
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:40,960
because maybe someone's listening to this and
they're saying, okay, well, you've

774
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:46,320
done is deflected all the you know, change these around into things arguing for

775
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:50,199
you your view. But what if
you read the Bible? How would you

776
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:53,079
and you weren't trying to just change
these verses for you in your favor,

777
00:55:53,440 --> 00:55:57,880
how would you make a case for
your view? How would you put that?

778
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,079
Could you make a concise case?
And then let us unpack it a

779
00:56:00,119 --> 00:56:05,280
little bit more after sure, So
I would start with a couple of verses

780
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,639
that they already very likely know.
For God so loved the world that he

781
00:56:08,639 --> 00:56:12,800
gave his only son in the river
leisonim would not perish, but have everlasting

782
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:15,920
life. And indeed, in the
verses immediately preceding that fourteen fifteen of John

783
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:21,159
three, Jesus compares himself to the
bronze statue of a serpent that Moses made

784
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:24,480
in the Old Testament, which if
Israelites, who had been bitten by otherwise

785
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:30,840
fatally venomous snakes looked at that serpent
staff, they would literally have their lives

786
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:35,559
saved. That is what Jesus does. He literally saves lives. Or Roman

787
00:56:35,599 --> 00:56:37,800
six twenty three, the wages us
in his death. The free gift of

788
00:56:37,800 --> 00:56:39,880
God is eternal life. In Christ
Jesus, our Lord, so hopefully that

789
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:45,000
would pride the pump. And then
I would say, consider four bodies of

790
00:56:45,159 --> 00:56:46,920
biblical evidence, and I won't give
I won't spend too long on this,

791
00:56:47,039 --> 00:56:53,440
but consider these four independent but mutually
supporting categories of texts. Number one text

792
00:56:53,519 --> 00:56:58,840
to talk about immortality. So Adam
and Eve are they have access to the

793
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:01,880
Tree of Life in Genesis in the
early chapters of Genesis, and they sin,

794
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:06,320
and then toward the end of Genesis
three, God kicks them out of

795
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,400
the garden of Eden explicitly so that
they can't eat from the tree of life

796
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:14,000
and there by live forever. And
then that tree of life reappears in the

797
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:16,800
closing chapters of the Bible in Genesis, where only the saved have access to

798
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:21,400
its fruit. So this seems to
be a picture that immortality is coming only

799
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:23,760
to the saved. And that's why
Jesus says in Luke twenty to the sad

800
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:30,960
you sees that those who are counted
worthy of resurrection will be unable to die

801
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:34,039
anymore, implying that those who are
not counted worthy, who are not the

802
00:57:34,039 --> 00:57:37,039
sons of God, as Jesus calls
them, there, will be able to

803
00:57:37,079 --> 00:57:39,519
die, and it's why. In
One Corinthians fifteen, Paul, talking about

804
00:57:39,559 --> 00:57:45,800
the righteous alone, says that they
will put on immortality because immortality is needed

805
00:57:45,800 --> 00:57:47,599
to inherit the kingdom of God,
and on and on and I could go.

806
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:52,719
Second category is texts that talk about
the vision, the Biblical vision of

807
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:59,519
eternity. There is no evidence in
scripture that the Biblical vision of eternity is

808
00:57:59,519 --> 00:58:04,360
one in which sin and evil continue
to exist in some dark corner, dark

809
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:07,519
gloomy corner of the cosmos. The
Biblical vision of eternity is one which,

810
00:58:07,559 --> 00:58:10,480
according to Paul. I don't remember
the exact citations, but Paul says that

811
00:58:10,519 --> 00:58:15,039
God will be all in all Christ. In One Corinthians fifteen itself, Paul

812
00:58:15,079 --> 00:58:20,559
says that Christ will destroy all enemies, including the last enemy that will be

813
00:58:20,559 --> 00:58:22,599
destroyed, namely death, and then
he will hand over the kingdom to God,

814
00:58:22,639 --> 00:58:27,239
who will be all in all.
So the language of scripture, or

815
00:58:27,280 --> 00:58:32,320
take Isaiah sixty six, after the
wicked are destroyed and their corpses are left

816
00:58:34,079 --> 00:58:38,920
ingloriously exposed to fire and maggots,
and are completely destroyed, then all flesh

817
00:58:40,519 --> 00:58:45,840
there is no all flesh are the
righteous there are no sinners left. So

818
00:58:45,159 --> 00:58:49,320
the biblical vision of eternity is one
in which there is nowhere where people are

819
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:54,440
sinning any longer. Number three,
consider the biblical teaching of substitutionary atonement.

820
00:58:55,440 --> 00:59:00,400
The Biblical teaching of atonement is that
it is substitutionary, meaning that what was

821
00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:05,760
deserved by one person is meeted out
upon another in their place. It's what's

822
00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:08,920
going on in the Mosaic sacrificial system, including the Day of Atonement. The

823
00:59:09,119 --> 00:59:14,000
Israelites deserved to die. A goat
is killed, or sheep or lamb is

824
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:16,400
killed in their stead, and so
it bears their punishment. And the New

825
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:22,360
Testament calls Jesus our sacrificial lamb,
and it says repeatedly using these Greek prepositions

826
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,800
on tea and hupeer that mean,
instead of in place of to say that

827
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:30,519
Jesus died for us, he died
in our stead. So what punishment did

828
00:59:30,599 --> 00:59:37,559
Jesus bear on the cross in our
stead? It was not at least primarily,

829
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:39,840
at least primarily, but I would
say exclusive. It is exclusively,

830
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:44,719
but at the very least it is
not primarily torment. Is it is death,

831
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:51,880
and it's not if he had suffered
and then you know, for a

832
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:54,159
few hours and then gotten off the
cross alive. He wouldn't have he wouldn't

833
00:59:54,159 --> 00:59:59,679
have finished his work. So it
is his death that is the substitute.

834
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:04,679
It is in dying that he substituted
for us, not living forever in torment.

835
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:08,760
And so the picture and so Atonement
itself is an argument for the final

836
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:13,639
death of the lost rather than their
everlasting life in torment. And then fourth

837
01:00:13,679 --> 01:00:16,840
and finally, I would just point
to myriad passages in scripture that talk about

838
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:21,239
the fate of the wicked in terms
of death and destruction. Matthew ten twenty

839
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:23,280
eight. Don't fear men who can
kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

840
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:27,519
Rather fear God, who fear the
one. And it's obviously God.

841
01:00:27,559 --> 01:00:30,679
I don't know why Anti Right argues
otherwise, it's obviously God can destroy both

842
01:00:30,719 --> 01:00:35,760
body and soul. And Gehenna.
Peter says that the wicked will be destroyed

843
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:38,559
like animals that deserve to be destroyed, right, And nobody thinks they mean

844
01:00:38,599 --> 01:00:43,639
animals deserve to be eternally tormented.
It's everywhere we already quoted some of the

845
01:00:43,679 --> 01:00:45,039
most famous ones will not perish,
but have a livid, lasting life.

846
01:00:45,039 --> 01:00:49,840
The wages of sin is death.
So what I would say is, if

847
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:52,960
you look at all the Biblical data
on what happens to the wicked, ninety

848
01:00:52,039 --> 01:00:58,079
nine plus percent of that data will
talk about the final death and destruction of

849
01:00:58,079 --> 01:01:00,320
the wicked. And when you combine
that with what the Bible says about immortality,

850
01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:02,639
what the Bible says about eternity,
and what the Bible says about the

851
01:01:02,679 --> 01:01:08,239
atonement, you have every reason for
believing in conditional immortality and rejecting eternal torment.

852
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:13,159
Very helpful. I mean, it's
like it's probably about ten YouTube shorts,

853
01:01:13,199 --> 01:01:15,559
but I'll take it. I know, for me, that's a short

854
01:01:15,559 --> 01:01:19,320
thought. Oh yeah, I know, I know, but you know it's

855
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:22,440
all good. You know, for
me, I really find that, you

856
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:28,280
know, starting at Genesis where they're
expelled from the garden lest they eat and

857
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:32,079
live forever. To my mind,
that's almost like almost like the foundation for

858
01:01:32,199 --> 01:01:36,480
me. Could you talk a bit
about this role of the idea of people

859
01:01:36,480 --> 01:01:40,119
having any eternal soul, what role
that plays in them may be assuming the

860
01:01:40,239 --> 01:01:44,679
traditional view without even thinking about it, it's like the default view because they

861
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:47,400
just assume you have this eternal soul. What are your thoughts on that.

862
01:01:47,599 --> 01:01:51,119
Yeah, and if I could piggyback
on that real quick, Chris. Yeah,

863
01:01:51,280 --> 01:01:53,519
one of the things I was always
taught when, especially when I was

864
01:01:53,559 --> 01:01:58,599
first saved, is you know,
everybody has any eternal soul. It's just

865
01:01:58,639 --> 01:02:01,360
a matter of will it be with
Jesus or will be in hell. Yeah.

866
01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:08,880
So people tend to assume that we
do have eternal souls, and for

867
01:02:08,960 --> 01:02:12,960
some of them, they will take
that pop level view that I described.

868
01:02:13,239 --> 01:02:15,679
Your disembodied soul goes to heaven or
Hell when you die, and that's where

869
01:02:15,679 --> 01:02:20,119
it will remain forever. We've already
discussed how that's not Christian. The Christian

870
01:02:20,199 --> 01:02:22,760
view is that even if we do
have souls that go disembodied into a conscious

871
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:28,199
intermediate state, they will one day
be reunited with their bodies. But somebody

872
01:02:28,239 --> 01:02:31,360
could then make the argument, yeah, but the soul is eternal, and

873
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:37,280
it wouldn't make any sense for God
to destroy their resurrected bodies a second time,

874
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:40,199
you know, and then punish them
as disembodied souls forever because they wouldn't

875
01:02:40,199 --> 01:02:43,519
be fully human. They would only
be partly human, right, They wouldn't

876
01:02:43,559 --> 01:02:46,559
be the body soul unity that they're
meant to be in scripture, and so

877
01:02:46,679 --> 01:02:51,760
the argument would go, so God
just makes them immortal in body as well,

878
01:02:52,079 --> 01:02:55,480
so that they can be punished for
all eternity as a whole body and

879
01:02:55,519 --> 01:03:00,679
soul person. But number one,
the Bible never come anywhere even close to

880
01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:07,480
suggesting that the soul is eternal.
The closest I've seen people try is in

881
01:03:07,599 --> 01:03:14,360
Ecclesiastes, where the writer says that
God is hidden eternity in people's hearts.

882
01:03:15,239 --> 01:03:20,239
But the picture there seems to be
that God has placed a yearning for eternity

883
01:03:20,239 --> 01:03:23,000
in our hearts, not that he
has made us eternal. So no,

884
01:03:23,119 --> 01:03:29,800
there is no biblical evidence that God
has given us eternal souls in that sense.

885
01:03:30,039 --> 01:03:35,920
But some people, instead of saying
eternal souls, we'll talk about immortal

886
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:38,280
souls, and what they really mean
is essentially the same thing. But here's

887
01:03:38,320 --> 01:03:43,599
the thing. When people talk about
immortality, often what they mean is just

888
01:03:43,679 --> 01:03:49,559
that it can't naturally die. So
think for example, about the Highlander movies

889
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,360
right, or vampire movies right.
In all these cases, people are called

890
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:57,519
vampires are called immortal, but that's
just because they don't naturally die. They

891
01:03:57,519 --> 01:04:00,000
can still be killed. You can
be head a highlander, and you can

892
01:04:00,159 --> 01:04:02,239
put a stake in the heart of
a vampire and destroy them for good.

893
01:04:02,639 --> 01:04:05,960
So they're not immortal in the sense
of being incapable of dying. They're just

894
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:10,480
immortal in the sense of not naturally
dying. And if that's what our soul

895
01:04:10,679 --> 01:04:15,320
is, then that doesn't preclude God
from destroying it in the final judgment either.

896
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:17,519
So number one, the Bible doesn't
say we have an eternal soul,

897
01:04:17,559 --> 01:04:20,360
and number two, even if it
says we have an immortal soul, meaning

898
01:04:20,400 --> 01:04:24,760
that it doesn't naturally die, that
wouldn't preclude God from destroying it, as

899
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:28,800
Jesus seems to say God will in
Matthew ten twenty eight. Does that answer

900
01:04:28,800 --> 01:04:30,840
your question, Brian? Sure?
Sure. And one of the things that

901
01:04:30,960 --> 01:04:33,960
maybe it was in the fudge book
is that you know, that's a more

902
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:38,079
of a I don't know, a
Greek Greek idea or something like that.

903
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:40,119
Well, I mean, no,
no, there is some truth to that.

904
01:04:40,239 --> 01:04:44,280
So the Platonists believed in the eternality
of souls, and this is it's

905
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:47,159
important to note. They didn't just
believe it was everlasting like future eternal.

906
01:04:47,159 --> 01:04:51,039
They believe it was eternal in the
past as well. Not unlike what Mormons

907
01:04:51,079 --> 01:04:56,039
believe. You know, Mormons believe
that intelligences are eternal and they just go

908
01:04:56,119 --> 01:05:00,599
from form to form or whatever.
It's the most polytheistic religon in the universe.

909
01:05:00,639 --> 01:05:04,360
But anyway, so they believe that
the souls were eternal, both past

910
01:05:04,440 --> 01:05:10,440
and future, and people like Gustin
and others come into the Church and they

911
01:05:10,519 --> 01:05:15,199
it's obvious that the past eternal nature
of souls can't be true because only God

912
01:05:15,239 --> 01:05:18,280
is eternal in that sense, and
God created humans, and so they're able

913
01:05:18,280 --> 01:05:24,280
to reject that aspect of this platonic
vision of the soul. But they don't

914
01:05:24,559 --> 01:05:29,800
question whether the soul will be eternal
into the future, and they just read

915
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:32,760
that into texts about eternal punishment and
eternal fire and so forth. And yeah,

916
01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:38,239
I do think with Fudge that that
is a large part of what prompted

917
01:05:38,679 --> 01:05:44,079
many converts to Christianity to understand scripture
in the way that they do. Now,

918
01:05:44,400 --> 01:05:46,599
do I think that that's what's going
on today. I actually don't think

919
01:05:46,639 --> 01:05:50,880
that's going on as much as some
annihilationists might claim it is. I don't

920
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:58,599
think most Christians that react negatively to
this view are thinking consciously or otherwise well,

921
01:05:58,639 --> 01:06:01,480
annihilationism can't be true because the soul
just is eternal, right, or

922
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:08,239
something like that. However, they
have inherited a reading of the relevant text

923
01:06:08,599 --> 01:06:12,239
from people who did think that way
in my view, namely people like Augustine

924
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:14,599
and others. So maybe that's kind
of what you were getting at, Brian.

925
01:06:14,639 --> 01:06:17,239
I'm not sure. Yeah, people
who do believe in eternal conscious torment.

926
01:06:17,920 --> 01:06:23,400
One of the arguments that I was
always kind of fed that I just

927
01:06:23,480 --> 01:06:27,360
swallowed, hook line and sinker it
was this, and I think it comes

928
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:31,360
I think I've tracked it back to
Anselm where he said, doesn't sin against

929
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:36,320
an infinite god merit and infinite penalty. And I'll tell you a really funny

930
01:06:36,360 --> 01:06:39,800
story about this real quick, and
then I'll let you respond to that,

931
01:06:40,480 --> 01:06:43,920
Brian. The first time I met
Brian, I flew out to Michigan when

932
01:06:43,960 --> 01:06:46,800
he was visiting his parents and hung
out with them, and we were driving

933
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:49,840
back from the airport. I don't
even know if he remembers this, and

934
01:06:49,960 --> 01:06:56,320
he was looking into conditional immortality at
the time, and this is when I

935
01:06:56,400 --> 01:07:00,760
was still very like apprehensive to even
consider, and so I was asking him

936
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:04,280
questions and I had read Norman Geisler
say something like this, you know that,

937
01:07:05,039 --> 01:07:09,480
you know, sin against an infinite
God merits an infinite penalty or something.

938
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:12,400
And I remember Brian just casually,
he's driving, and he kind of

939
01:07:12,519 --> 01:07:17,000
kind of casually just looked over at
me and went why. He just looked

940
01:07:17,039 --> 01:07:20,320
at me and went why would that
be? And I remember being like,

941
01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:25,760
uh, I had no I had
no response, like, yeah, that's

942
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:28,559
a good question, like why would
it? You know? But anyway,

943
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:31,159
I have heard that brought out a
good bit, and so I know it's

944
01:07:31,199 --> 01:07:36,280
not necessarily spelled out in the Bible
that way, but it is a common

945
01:07:36,360 --> 01:07:39,840
point, and so I was just
curious of what you thought of that.

946
01:07:41,559 --> 01:07:46,440
Yeah, so let's assume for a
moment that it is legitimate. I've never

947
01:07:46,719 --> 01:07:49,800
I don't. I don't make a
point to argue against that logic. And

948
01:07:49,840 --> 01:07:54,719
the reason is because it doesn't challenge
my view, and I want to and

949
01:07:54,719 --> 01:07:58,280
I want to I want to approach
it from that point first. See,

950
01:07:58,880 --> 01:08:01,840
as we've already talked about, well, both sides of this debate believe that

951
01:08:01,880 --> 01:08:05,760
the punishment of hell, the punishment
inflicted in Hell, will be everlasting.

952
01:08:05,920 --> 01:08:10,880
Okay, well, if it is
an everlasting punishment that it is by definition

953
01:08:11,079 --> 01:08:17,279
infinite just infinite duration. Right,
So I do believe in an infinite penalty.

954
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:20,960
And so if it's the case that
any sin against an infinitely holy God

955
01:08:21,039 --> 01:08:25,279
merits an infinite penalty, well then
annihilation qualifies. Boom. I'm done.

956
01:08:25,479 --> 01:08:30,239
I don't need to say more.
But now, having said that, what

957
01:08:30,279 --> 01:08:32,159
do I think about the argument?
Well, I think it's got some flaws.

958
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:35,319
Number one, as I think I
understood you to be saying a moment

959
01:08:35,319 --> 01:08:40,880
ago, it's kind of just a
bald assertion, right, that a sin

960
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:43,560
against an infinite old hill of God
must be met with an infinite penalty.

961
01:08:43,640 --> 01:08:45,520
Yeah, that's what. Yeah,
that's what I realized when Brian asked me

962
01:08:45,560 --> 01:08:49,600
that question of right. I had
just bought it and not really thought about

963
01:08:49,600 --> 01:08:53,239
it too much. I just don't
think it does go further than that.

964
01:08:53,359 --> 01:08:58,920
It's just a claim. I'm aware
of no valid syllogism, for example,

965
01:08:59,039 --> 01:09:01,960
that would lead to the conclue usion
that a sin against an infinite holy God

966
01:09:02,039 --> 01:09:06,520
merri it's an infinite penalty. But
so that's number one. But number two,

967
01:09:08,199 --> 01:09:12,640
it seems to me that that argument
relies exclusively on the status of the

968
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:16,720
offend. Dead and completely neglects the
status of the offender. And here's what

969
01:09:16,760 --> 01:09:20,119
I mean by that. Very often
traditionalists will say, they'll walk you through

970
01:09:20,119 --> 01:09:26,199
a mind a mental exercise. They'll
say something like this, Imagine somebody kills

971
01:09:26,199 --> 01:09:28,800
an aunt. What punishment did they
get? Well? Nothing? Well,

972
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:30,600
what if they kill a dog.
Well, that's gonna be a little bit

973
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:34,279
harsher, but not too terribly severe. Well what if they what if they

974
01:09:34,880 --> 01:09:39,239
kill a child? Well, now
you're going to start getting much more severe.

975
01:09:39,279 --> 01:09:41,640
What if they kill the President of
the United States? Right now?

976
01:09:41,680 --> 01:09:44,640
Okay, now we're getting really severe. Right, So they get this example

977
01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:47,800
where depending upon the status of the
of the offended party, the punishment gets

978
01:09:47,840 --> 01:09:50,720
worse and worse and worse and worse
and worse. But let's look at it

979
01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:58,000
from the other way around. If
the president is assaulted by an adult,

980
01:09:58,119 --> 01:10:00,840
a mentally competent adult, then penalty
is going to be pretty harsh. But

981
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:05,640
what if he's assaulted by a five
year old girl. What if the president

982
01:10:05,720 --> 01:10:13,359
is assaulted by a free by a
seven month old toddler? Right? My

983
01:10:13,479 --> 01:10:18,159
point is is that the disparity between
the status of the offended and the offender,

984
01:10:18,960 --> 01:10:25,399
that disparity also plays a role in
what the punishment is that is deserved

985
01:10:25,479 --> 01:10:30,079
by the offender. Just because the
president has this incredibly high status doesn't mean

986
01:10:30,079 --> 01:10:32,520
that a five year old girl is
going to be punished every body as harshly

987
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:39,079
as an adult. Well, so, what is the disparity in status between

988
01:10:39,199 --> 01:10:45,119
us and God? It's infinite right, It would seem like that should also

989
01:10:45,159 --> 01:10:47,960
play a factor in how much punishment
we deserve as well. The fact that

990
01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:56,000
we are so infinitely inferior, so
infinitely less wise, and less smart,

991
01:10:56,079 --> 01:11:00,000
and less knowledgeable, and less pure. In all these things, the punishment

992
01:11:00,199 --> 01:11:04,560
that we would get arguably should be
less harsh, just like the punishment coming

993
01:11:04,560 --> 01:11:08,279
to the five year old girl for
assaulting the penalty that the president would be

994
01:11:08,359 --> 01:11:13,079
less than the punishment awaiting an adult
who did so. So what I consider

995
01:11:13,119 --> 01:11:15,600
those factors. What I come away
thinking is I don't have any good reason

996
01:11:15,640 --> 01:11:21,560
to accept this and sell me an
argument. But if I were to will

997
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:25,319
my view still qualifies, and I'm
happy to leave it there. But I

998
01:11:25,359 --> 01:11:29,079
will say just one more thing.
I think it's interesting. I think it's

999
01:11:29,159 --> 01:11:38,399
telling that this argument did not has
never been an argument for belief in eternal

1000
01:11:38,439 --> 01:11:46,760
torment. It arose and continues to
serve as a justification for a for a

1001
01:11:46,800 --> 01:11:51,359
belief that one already has in eternal
torment. If you believe eternal torment is

1002
01:11:51,399 --> 01:11:54,359
what awaits lost, you're going to
try to come up with some way to

1003
01:11:54,439 --> 01:11:57,199
justify that. And this is how
it is often done. And I think

1004
01:11:57,199 --> 01:12:00,520
that's the case with Anselm as well
well. But of course I don't believe

1005
01:12:00,520 --> 01:12:02,520
in eternal torment, and so I
don't see any reason to try to justify

1006
01:12:02,840 --> 01:12:05,960
my belief using that argument. Yeah, it's more of a way to make

1007
01:12:06,039 --> 01:12:10,319
sense of it if it's true,
rather than, oh, because of this

1008
01:12:10,479 --> 01:12:14,359
now I believe conscious torment. It's
just sort of like a making sense of

1009
01:12:14,399 --> 01:12:15,960
it sort of an argument. It's
kind of like a the odyssey, yeah,

1010
01:12:16,039 --> 01:12:20,239
sort of. Yeah. The early
Church, one of the things I've

1011
01:12:20,319 --> 01:12:24,960
heard brought up in a lot of
your debates and discussions is, of course,

1012
01:12:25,119 --> 01:12:28,760
the presumption is always yeah, but
the Church is always believed in the

1013
01:12:28,760 --> 01:12:32,479
conditional view, excuse me, the
traditional view, eternal conscious torment. Whereas

1014
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:36,840
you challenge that, can you talk
a bit about what the early Church believed

1015
01:12:36,880 --> 01:12:43,119
and when kind of eternal conscious torment
began to become what we know now is

1016
01:12:43,119 --> 01:12:46,960
the traditional view. Yeah, so
it's fairly undisputed that our Nobias, so

1017
01:12:47,079 --> 01:12:51,720
Sika in what I want to say
is the fourth century taught annihilationism. So

1018
01:12:53,199 --> 01:12:57,800
and although our Nobias had a lot
of other challenging or odd let's say,

1019
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:01,359
questionable views, nevertheless, he is
one of the church fathers and was respected

1020
01:13:01,399 --> 01:13:05,119
and continues to be so by in
some circles. But he's not the earliest.

1021
01:13:05,279 --> 01:13:10,399
What I'm about to say is my
subjective assessment of the historical data.

1022
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:14,560
People are welcome to push back on
this, but if people want to see

1023
01:13:14,279 --> 01:13:16,720
the conclusions I've come to and why, they can go to a playlist on

1024
01:13:16,760 --> 01:13:23,640
the Rethinking Hell YouTube channel called Conditionalists
in History and What. And I cover

1025
01:13:23,680 --> 01:13:26,479
a number of different Church fathers in
the course of that that I have come

1026
01:13:26,479 --> 01:13:30,239
to conclude, based on the evidence
available, actually tard our view. And

1027
01:13:30,279 --> 01:13:32,720
they begin at the very turn of
the first century, right around one hundred

1028
01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:36,439
and eightd with Clement of Rome and
Ignatius of Antioch. Both of them appear

1029
01:13:36,520 --> 01:13:41,720
to have been conditionalists rather than believers
in eternal torment. Right around that same

1030
01:13:41,720 --> 01:13:44,399
time, give or take a few
decades, are the de Decay and the

1031
01:13:44,399 --> 01:13:47,560
Epistle of Barnabas, both of those
appear to teach my view. In the

1032
01:13:47,640 --> 01:13:51,159
latter half of the second century one
hundred and fifty to two hundred AD,

1033
01:13:51,239 --> 01:13:56,079
you've got iran As of Leon,
he's the author of Against Heresies, and

1034
01:13:56,159 --> 01:14:01,880
he is seemingly teaching conditional immortality or
annihilationism. But it's also right around that

1035
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:05,720
time, that one hundred and fifty
to two hundred time period when the other

1036
01:14:05,800 --> 01:14:11,880
two views that Christians identify with arise, namely eternal torment on the one hand,

1037
01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:13,960
and universalism on the other hand.
And I know that we're not really

1038
01:14:14,039 --> 01:14:16,119
talking about universalism in the show,
and that's fine, but the point is

1039
01:14:16,439 --> 01:14:20,479
it's in that second that latter half
of the second century that you get Tacian

1040
01:14:20,520 --> 01:14:26,199
of Aaddi Albene and Athanagaris of Athens
teaching eternal torment pretty clearly. And then

1041
01:14:26,359 --> 01:14:30,560
on the other side you've got Clement
of Alexandria and Origin of Alexandria both teaching

1042
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:32,920
universalism. And this is right around
the same time that Iranaus of Leona's teaching

1043
01:14:32,960 --> 01:14:38,960
conditionalism or annihilationism. So up until
this point, the history seems to be

1044
01:14:39,000 --> 01:14:41,800
one, and I've got other examples
in that playlist that I mentioned. It

1045
01:14:41,880 --> 01:14:47,720
seems to be that the post Apostolic
Christians were Annihilationists for the next one hundred

1046
01:14:47,840 --> 01:14:53,680
years roughly, and then there continued
to be annihilationist Christians, but then also

1047
01:14:53,720 --> 01:15:00,800
alongside them arose eternal torment believing Christians
and universalist Christians. What's is interesting is

1048
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:04,760
that as the ecumenical creeds were formed
in the decades and centuries from then on,

1049
01:15:05,279 --> 01:15:08,800
they didn't land on any one of
these three views. They didn't defend

1050
01:15:08,800 --> 01:15:12,880
any one of these particular views as
the orthodox view and or condemned the others

1051
01:15:12,920 --> 01:15:17,399
as heretical. Even Augustine, when
he speaks about believers in universalism or annihilationism,

1052
01:15:17,720 --> 01:15:21,640
speaks of them with some degree of
disdain, but not as heretics,

1053
01:15:23,319 --> 01:15:27,960
so that the Church seems to tolerate
these three views for a while. And

1054
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:31,800
then Augustine he puts his stamp of
approval on eternal torment. And I'll talk

1055
01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:35,039
about why I think that was in
a second. And you know, Augustine,

1056
01:15:35,039 --> 01:15:38,199
people don't know this, but he
isn't just a church father. He's

1057
01:15:38,239 --> 01:15:41,800
one of I think four of what
are known as the great fathers of the

1058
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:44,279
church. I think it's like two
East and two West, and he's one

1059
01:15:44,319 --> 01:15:48,279
of the four. So he had
tremendous influence and I think rightfully so.

1060
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:51,800
And I think that because he put
a stamp of approval on that view,

1061
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:56,720
it became the one that that became
to dominate. And you know, as

1062
01:15:56,800 --> 01:16:00,479
people are raised in a church in
a community, teach which is that this

1063
01:16:00,520 --> 01:16:02,039
is how they should read scripture.
That's how they're going to read scripture and

1064
01:16:02,039 --> 01:16:06,319
pass it on to their next generations. Now, why did Augustin put his

1065
01:16:06,359 --> 01:16:12,520
stamp of approval on eternal torment?
I think that it's because of the baggage

1066
01:16:12,600 --> 01:16:15,680
that he brought with him from his
past. So, and I want to

1067
01:16:15,720 --> 01:16:18,640
be clear, I'm a Calvinist,
I'm an Augustinian in the areas of so

1068
01:16:18,760 --> 01:16:21,600
teiology. So I'm not like throwing
him under the bus. I'm just saying,

1069
01:16:21,800 --> 01:16:26,479
sure, he was formerly a Platonist
and a Manicheist, if I'm not

1070
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:30,680
mistaken, and he brought with him
into his reading of scriptures as a Christian

1071
01:16:31,119 --> 01:16:36,920
a belief in the immortality of souls, and so when he comes to texts

1072
01:16:36,960 --> 01:16:41,680
that talk about eternal fire, eternal
punishment, smoke from torment rising forever and

1073
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:45,840
ever. He's naturally going to read
those texts through the lenses that he's wearing,

1074
01:16:45,399 --> 01:16:49,159
having worn those lenses, lenses as
a new convert to the church,

1075
01:16:49,319 --> 01:16:54,079
because he had dawned them in his
previous world views. So I think he

1076
01:16:54,199 --> 01:17:00,399
was influenced to read the scriptures in
an eternal torment favorable way by his pagan

1077
01:17:00,640 --> 01:17:02,119
past. I want to be clear, I'm not like condemning him for that.

1078
01:17:02,399 --> 01:17:06,319
I was when I became a Christian. I immediately believed an eternal torment

1079
01:17:06,840 --> 01:17:11,880
because the surrounding culture told me that's
what Christians believe, and I did for

1080
01:17:11,880 --> 01:17:15,359
the next ten years. It's just
the water you swim in. So of

1081
01:17:15,399 --> 01:17:18,079
course, anytime you convert to a
new worldview, there's going to be some

1082
01:17:18,159 --> 01:17:23,600
baggage you immediately are able to detect
as not consistent with your newfound worldview.

1083
01:17:23,880 --> 01:17:27,720
But there are gonna be other things
that you never even realize that you continue

1084
01:17:27,760 --> 01:17:30,039
to believe until you know when God
reveals to you one day, oh,

1085
01:17:30,119 --> 01:17:34,199
actually, that you needed to change
that too, but you mistakenly didn't.

1086
01:17:34,279 --> 01:17:38,920
So anyway, that's my read of
the history. It was annihilationist right after

1087
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:42,359
the close of the Cannon up until
about the latter half of the second century,

1088
01:17:42,399 --> 01:17:45,319
and then all three views compete for
popularity within the church, and then

1089
01:17:45,359 --> 01:17:49,359
eventually eternal torment becomes a dominant view. Chris, is there anything else we're

1090
01:17:49,439 --> 01:17:54,920
leaving out that you want to just
tell our listeners we've left out and point

1091
01:17:54,960 --> 01:17:57,560
them to where they can find more. There are some texts that we didn't

1092
01:17:57,600 --> 01:18:01,520
get around to discussing Revelation ten to
fifteen, where the devil to Beast and

1093
01:18:01,560 --> 01:18:04,239
the false prophet are tormented forever and
ever in a lake of fire, and

1094
01:18:04,279 --> 01:18:10,039
then human beings are thrown into the
lake of fire as well. So that's

1095
01:18:10,039 --> 01:18:13,640
one text. But this again is
a text that I think actively teaches my

1096
01:18:13,760 --> 01:18:16,039
view rather than challenging it. But
you know, we've already spent a long

1097
01:18:16,039 --> 01:18:19,680
time and all just encourage people to
go check out the YouTube channel a Rethinking

1098
01:18:19,720 --> 01:18:24,079
for Rethinking Hell, and they'll be
able to find that. We also didn't

1099
01:18:24,079 --> 01:18:27,479
talk about Second Tessalonians one nine,
where Paul says that the loss will be

1100
01:18:27,520 --> 01:18:30,479
punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord. A lot of translations

1101
01:18:30,680 --> 01:18:34,840
do a disservice to the Greek preposition
upa and translate it away from or even

1102
01:18:34,880 --> 01:18:41,239
worse, separated from when it doesn't
carry those connotations. And anyway, but

1103
01:18:41,600 --> 01:18:44,359
the point is they think, well, if it's everlasting destruction, it must

1104
01:18:44,359 --> 01:18:47,399
be everlasting torment, as if as
if they were as if that even made

1105
01:18:47,399 --> 01:18:50,640
sense, and I don't it doesn't. But anyway, again, this is

1106
01:18:50,680 --> 01:18:54,479
a text that actively teaches my view, It doesn't challenge it. We didn't

1107
01:18:54,479 --> 01:18:58,119
talk about Daniel twelve two. Some
will awake to everlasting life and others to

1108
01:18:58,239 --> 01:19:01,279
shame and everlasting contempt. But again, this is a verse that I think

1109
01:19:01,760 --> 01:19:04,760
lends itself more to my view than
to eternal torment. So there are these

1110
01:19:04,760 --> 01:19:09,560
few other verses, and again lots
of resources at rethinkinghell dot com, at

1111
01:19:09,560 --> 01:19:12,840
the YouTube channel for Rethinking Hell,
and at my own website, Chris date

1112
01:19:12,920 --> 01:19:16,439
dot info. But suffice it to
say that I think all those texts,

1113
01:19:16,479 --> 01:19:20,159
and whatever few others there are that
are cited in support of eternal torment,

1114
01:19:20,319 --> 01:19:24,640
they are better support for my view. I think. The only other thing

1115
01:19:24,640 --> 01:19:28,760
I would say is just that the
reason why I have devoted so much time

1116
01:19:28,800 --> 01:19:32,800
and energy to this topic isn't because
I care particularly much about it. It's

1117
01:19:32,840 --> 01:19:40,399
because I care about how the topic
is dividing the Church. I have heard

1118
01:19:40,479 --> 01:19:45,159
from or know personally countless people who
have lost friends, who have been kicked

1119
01:19:45,159 --> 01:19:48,439
out of churches, who have lost
jobs, or who, in order to

1120
01:19:48,520 --> 01:19:54,640
keep their jobs, have to keep
silent, people kicked out of their faith

1121
01:19:54,680 --> 01:19:59,800
communities, shunned by their faith communities, all because in some cases they don't

1122
01:19:59,840 --> 01:20:01,880
even It's not even that they reject
eternal torment, it's just they question it.

1123
01:20:02,159 --> 01:20:10,680
And I think that when so many
Christians treat this particular view mine on

1124
01:20:10,840 --> 01:20:15,199
Hell as cause for division. When
it doesn't violate any of the essentials of

1125
01:20:15,199 --> 01:20:18,039
the faith, when it doesn't violate
any of the historic creeds, when it's

1126
01:20:18,119 --> 01:20:23,720
advocates are firmly committed to the authority
of Scripture and to all the orthodox beliefs

1127
01:20:23,760 --> 01:20:29,680
that define Christianity, there's no reason
for Christians to divide over it. And

1128
01:20:29,920 --> 01:20:32,720
I think when we do, I
think it grieves God's heart because not only

1129
01:20:32,720 --> 01:20:36,880
does it make us unable to enjoy
the blessed love and unity that we're called

1130
01:20:36,920 --> 01:20:43,119
to, but it also stymies our
attempt to carry out our mission in the

1131
01:20:43,159 --> 01:20:45,800
world. When we are united arm
in arm on the essentials of the faith,

1132
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:49,680
We're going to be far better able
to take the life giving gospel to

1133
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:54,680
a dying world that desperately needs it. And so my hope is that your

1134
01:20:54,680 --> 01:20:58,520
hearers, even if they aren't convinced
by what I've said, even if they

1135
01:20:58,560 --> 01:21:02,159
think that I'm using verbosity right,
maybe word salad they might say, or

1136
01:21:02,199 --> 01:21:05,760
something. Even if they think that
I'm jumping through hoops to make the text

1137
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:10,359
sound like it teaches my view,
Fine, you can think that, But

1138
01:21:10,720 --> 01:21:15,439
consider the possibility that what I've said
is evidence that this isn't cause for division,

1139
01:21:15,279 --> 01:21:17,880
That if it doesn't violate any the
essentials of the faith, if it

1140
01:21:17,880 --> 01:21:21,439
doesn't violate the creeds, et cetera, et cetera, Then even if you

1141
01:21:21,439 --> 01:21:25,159
don't hold my view, why can't
you accept me as a brother and be

1142
01:21:25,199 --> 01:21:30,000
willing to fellowship with and minister alongside
of me. Amen. And that's what

1143
01:21:30,079 --> 01:21:33,239
I hope your hearers take away now. If they go on to accept my

1144
01:21:33,359 --> 01:21:39,079
view, that me's fantastic. If
they go on to better understand and remain

1145
01:21:39,159 --> 01:21:42,359
firm in their own view, that's
awesome too. As Chad said, that's

1146
01:21:42,399 --> 01:21:45,039
all. That's the main thing.
I want from people is to just go

1147
01:21:45,119 --> 01:21:48,199
and research scripture and better understand what
you think it teaches, whether you end

1148
01:21:48,279 --> 01:21:51,920
up believing me or not. But
if those things happen, great, I'd

1149
01:21:51,920 --> 01:21:55,960
love for those things too. But
if all that happens is that they're more

1150
01:21:55,960 --> 01:21:59,279
willing than they were before they heard
this to think of me as a brother

1151
01:21:59,319 --> 01:22:01,720
and be willing to fellip with a
minister alongside of me, then I've done

1152
01:22:02,119 --> 01:22:06,760
all I could hope to do super
well. It's been super fascinating discussion.

1153
01:22:08,039 --> 01:22:12,159
Chris, It's been great having you
on the show again. I'm thinking what

1154
01:22:12,319 --> 01:22:16,239
can we talk about next? So
maybe we'll hit you up for something in

1155
01:22:16,279 --> 01:22:21,279
the future, but we'll point people
to your resources rethinkinghell dot com and Chris

1156
01:22:21,399 --> 01:22:25,279
date dot info. Thank you so
much for your time. You've been very

1157
01:22:25,279 --> 01:22:29,439
generous and again, great discussion.
Yes, it's been my pleasure and honor,

1158
01:22:29,560 --> 01:22:31,000
and as I've said, i've you
know, I've been a fan of

1159
01:22:31,000 --> 01:22:34,680
Apologetics three fifteen for quite some time, and so I'm grateful that I get

1160
01:22:34,720 --> 01:22:38,239
the opportunity to be on it again. Thank you for having me, Thank

1161
01:22:38,279 --> 01:22:42,560
you, thanks for listening to the
podcast. If you have a question,

1162
01:22:42,600 --> 01:22:45,840
you'd like us to address or just
a message for us. Feedback good or

1163
01:22:45,920 --> 01:22:49,920
bad. You can either email us
at podcast at apologetics three fifteen dot com

1164
01:22:50,159 --> 01:22:55,920
or leave a voice message for us
using speak Pipe. Just go to speakpipe

1165
01:22:55,960 --> 01:23:00,680
dot com slash apologetics three fifteen to
leave us a message. And remember,

1166
01:23:00,720 --> 01:23:03,399
if you include a ghostbuster's quote in
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1167
01:23:03,399 --> 01:23:08,880
it on the podcast. We also
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1168
01:23:09,239 --> 01:23:13,039
Also, if you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leave a review in iTunes

1169
01:23:13,079 --> 01:23:15,920
or the podcast platform in your choice, and please share this episode with a

1170
01:23:15,920 --> 01:23:20,000
friend if you've found it useful.
Remember you can find lots of apologetics resources

1171
01:23:20,039 --> 01:23:26,079
at apologeticspree fifteen dot com, along
with show notes for today's episode. Find

1172
01:23:26,159 --> 01:23:30,920
Chad's apologetic stuff over at truthbomb apologetics. That's truthbomb dot blogspot dot com.

1173
01:23:31,159 --> 01:23:35,159
This has been Brian Auten and Chad
Gross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast,

1174
01:23:35,239 --> 01:23:36,199
and thanks for listening.