Lecture - Edward Fudge - The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of Hell

would you join me in welcoming to inaugurate our 2011-2012 academic year series my friend Edward fudge whoever could imagine 800 people come with out on a Saturday night and hear an hour-long lecture in hell but by the grace of God here we are so let us proceed we are thankful that this is a subject of academic interest to all who know the Lord Jesus it's not something we need to be concerned about personally health is very much in the news these days our measuring stick is we talked about it tonight will be Holy Scripture which is the Canon or rule of all of our faith in this hour we will see three views of Hell there are three that have been held through the centuries what is the end of the wicked in the Old Testament in the intertestamental literature and in the New Testament and then we look at church history as the traditional doctrine evolves through the centuries and finally as quiet as this subject matter and willing to talk about three views of Hell the first view I'm listening is the fire that torments forever this is the traditional majority view majority because almost everybody in the Christian world believes it traditional because it's been the view for all the years at least it's Augustine for most people but it raises a question that troubles many people and that question is what it was must we conclude from Scripture that God who gave His Son for sinners will keep billions of them alive forever for the purpose of tormenting them without end if that's what scripture says our answer must be yes we don't have the option of changing that and yet there are many scholars today some of the most highly respected in the world of money of Angelico's as well as other people who are saying no that's not what the Bible really says the traditional view looks for such scriptures as eternal fiery of eternal punishment and the fire that is not quenched and they say this is what these passages mean some of the scholars who have said no that's not what we have to believe based on Scripture and flute FFF Bruce who was probably the best-known Bible commentator of the 20th century john stott who recently passed on to glory Michael Greene who wrote evangelism in the New Testament he earl ellis who taught for several years at Southwestern Baptist Seminary Fort Worth Philippi used reformed me and who taught that a couple of American seminaries Tom Albright who was with us here this evening and by the way he is the first acknowledgement in the fire that consumes because many years ago when I first finished graduate school I wrote and asked him what are some subjects that need further study and he mentioned among others I think he would be interesting he said since the word Gehenna appears only in the Gospels to see how the rest of the New Testament talks about the end of the wicked and eventually that's something I looked at though it didn't bear fruit for several years in my own study John McCrae from Wheaton Graduate School his son Rob is here tonight with his wife Judy and we're glad to have them john stackhouse at Regent College who took the place of J I Packer upon his retirement there fairly recently Dale Moody who taught at Southern Seminary in Louisville for about 40 years John Frankie and Pittsburgh homer hailey at Church of Christ scholar well-respected Tom Robinson from New York who is with us today and the taught at Union seminary of this guest taught at Harvard and Princeton and Abilene Christian and Pepperdine Clark Penta cause of personal friend in the past to glory earlier this year from Canada John Wyndham and evangelical men in Oxford England who was highly respected by Bible believing Christians in England Richard Baulkham at the University of st. Andrews in Scotland now at Cambridge and he wrote the foreword to the third edition of the fire that consumes an NT right who some people say has written more books than he's read that of course is a desti rumor besides the traditional view which all of these scholars among others say is not necessarily what we have to say the Bible teaches two other explanations have also been offered in addition to the fire that torments forever there's the fire that purifies and eventually restores people to God this is what's called universal restoration or the Greek term for it that's commonly used as oppo 'catastasis this is the view that Rob Bell in his book proposes by asking provocative questions though he doesn't really argue for the view in any detail someone asked me recently did you write your third edition in response to rob Bell I said actually not the first edition of my book came out when Rob Bell was in the third grade then there's the addition of the fire that purifies which looks at passages such as God is not willing that any should perish and that he reconciled the world to himself there's the third view which I'm going to say tonight is the most biblically consistent view of all three the fire that consumes which is the title of my book this looks at passages such as God is a consuming fire from Deuteronomy and from Hebrews the wages of sin is death and if that really means what it sounds like God destroys both soul and body in hell and that's the view that I'm presenting this evening suggests two things first of all do not change your mind tonight there been people who have said when they hear the material well I'm just going to have to change my mind well don't change it yet this is too big a subject for one night to change your mind please do challenge your mind tonight and I hope that you will go home with the idea that they're very much more in the Bible on this subject that you previously thought and there's a whole lot to think about it study to make up your mind for sure what can we learn about the end of the wicked from the Old Testament we'll start there it's important to ask the right question we should not go and say what does the Old Testament say about Hell if we say that we'll come back and say it doesn't say anything about Hell because the word hell is not in the Old Testament as its found in the New Testament at least from Gehenna furthermore the Old Testament does not contain a single passage that portrays what the popular traditional image of hell is of everlasting conscious torment so it's quite common for those who write from the traditional point of view to start out by saying we'll talk about Hell in the Old Testament actually the Old Testament doesn't say anything about Hell and that's right that's not the question to ask what we should ask is what does the Old Testament say about the end of the wicked and if we ask it that way the answer will be truck loads and truck loads that require several trips to bring it all home the Old Testament Bible the Hebrew Bible as it was known as divided by the Jews into three parts the law of the Torah the prophets the never Eve and the writings the ketamine Lewis the Psalms or the first of that group and Jesus speaks of these three groups after his resurrection and talking to his disciples when it says that he says to them everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled so he's referring to these three passages or these three provisions of the Old Testament and we'll look at these one at a time as to how they speak on this subject tonight we'll quickly notice from the Torah that there are prototypes of divine judgment and there are two in particular which you will notice from the prophets there are predictions of final end of the wicked and we'll look at four especially forward images of that and from the writings or the Psalms there are principles of final judgment and we'll say a word about those first the principles of divine judgment are not statements that are absolute in the sense of unequivocal from which as a lawyer I would say you could get a summary judgment this is not going to be that kind of a presentation I do not try to say to people what I'm going to show you is beyond any reasonable doubt and there's no way that tells you a person could think otherwise I could say that but it would be stupid of me to do it because you would so find some reasonable doubt and then you would say I was stupid and didn't know what I was talking about so I'm not saying that but what I am saying is look at it from a standpoint of civil jury preponderance of the evidence what's the greater weight in preponderance of the evidence pointing to and I think you will not find it difficult if you do that to conclude with me if not tonight later that the preponderance of the evidence is Scripture points to the view that I'm disposing rather than the traditional view for example in the psalm 37 of which is one of many such Psalms whether we find these words they're not fret because of evil doers do not be envious about wrongdoers for they will wither quickly like grass and fade like the green herb he will do as will be cut off a little while in the wicked man will be no more you look at his place and he will not be there it will perish they vanish away and then we say well maybe that's talking about this life that the tax goes on to say when the wicked are cut off you will see it but what happens when we don't see it does that mean God's justice is thwarted so I think passages like this simply say to us at least this much God has an inexorable principle of divine justice that those who do evil will finally be cut off in perishing be done away that those who do good will be blessed but it doesn't always happen in this life sometimes it does but it doesn't always and when it doesn't what does that tell us I think it suggests at least this much that there can will come a time later at another age to come when that will take place and so these passages do say something at least indirectly about the end of the wicked the Psalms go and say statements like this God will break the wicked in pieces he will slay them cut them off blot them out of the book of the living rain down fire and brimstone on them they will be like chaff blown away a snail that melts one of my favorite pictures grass cut down wax that melts clay pot broken water that flows away smoke that vanishes stubble before the wind there are at least 70 metaphors assemblies in the Old Testament of that sort and they say the wicked will be like all of these things note please that these are not literal descriptions I don't we're intended to believe that the wicked will finally be ashes per se literally they will not be waxed it melts literally that's not the point but they are not literal but they do correspond but the thing that is stated the reality will correspond to the picture in other words when this happens at the end of the world people will look at what happened and say yes that fits what God told us in advance in other words reality will not be the exact opposite of the pictures if the picture says the wicked will be no more and the wicked lasts forever that's just the exact opposite of the picture if the picture says the wicked will be like a straw that burns and they never resemble anything like straw that burns that would be the opposite of the picture so it's not that somehow it does correspond even though it's not literally the same thing but there's a variety of pictures and from this list of pictures such as the ones we've just need I believe we can say that there is creating a consistent impression and I will just ask you to consider when you read such expressions as these that we've looked at what is the impression that you're given do you have an impression that these people are all finally restored to God do you have an impression that these people are kept in live forever in tormented or do you have an impression that somehow they really are done away with and they're not around anymore this is so suggestive at least for us to consider matoro has these other Psalms rather had these principles in the tour of the books of Moses we have divine prototypes there are two examples that are notable throughout the rest of the Bible from the first five books of the Bible actually both from Genesis of divine judgment and we won't say word briefly about those exhibit one in honor of Mark being a great trial lawyer exhibit one is the flood God says here's something that happened and Jesus says that others say this is a picture of what it will be like for the wicked at the end of the world what happened in the flood we don't have any doubt or question or problem understanding what these words mean when they're used of the flood all flesh perished everything that the breath of life died in this way God blotted out every live and we don't read that and say well actually perish and died don't really mean perish and died it means they never did perish and they never will die but they wish they could and they had a miserable time of it that's not anything anybody ever said about the flood so this is the background of languages such as this as used in the New Testament interestingly the New Testament says this is a picture of what will happen at the end of the world it's a preview of the future Peter says the heavens existed long ago and the world was formed out of water and through which it was water the world was then destroyed with water in the present heavens and earth are being kept for fire for the destruction of ungodly men we have a sense here that Peters makes a flimsy symetrical he said just as the old world was destroyed by water the wicked people at the end will be destroyed by fire and I simply would raise the question are we to think that destroyed by water means one thing and destroyed by fire means the exact opposite or does it make better sense to say just as they were destroyed by water and we know what that means in some way that's a picture of what will happen to the wicked when they're destroyed by fire the second exhibit is Sodom and Gomorrah God destroyed them as well and you're familiar with that story the Lord rained brimstone or burning sulfur and fire out of heaven and there was nothing left at all except rising smoke we're told in the New Testament that was a preview of the end of the world as well Peter tells us that God condemned cities of sodom and gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes he's very explicit about what happened to them having made them an example to to those who live ungodly thereafter in the word example Hoople dagmar is a regular word for a pattern or example or sample of something else Jude says much the same thing maybe even stronger Sodom and Gomorrah Jude tells us are exhibited as an example or dagmar and undergoing the punishment of eternal fire so what happened to sodomy tomorrow they were destroyed with fire there was nothing left except smoke and that is what will happen to the get at the end of the world next group of passages in the profits and we have predictions there are many more in each of these categories than we have time to talk about tonight I've just tried to give you an illustrative sampling but we'll look at four samples from messianic texts here each of these passages by the way is either quoted in the New Testament and applied to Jesus and the Messiah and the end of the world or else that is clearly talking about that in its context in the Old Testament so these are all solid passages I'm not trying to play any tricks on anybody now the first one says the wicked will be broken like pottery some to seven through nine concludes with this statement about the Messiah you will break the wicked with a rod of iron you will dash them in pieces like pottery and you think of taking a clay pot or dishes of stone and throwing them on the ground and shattering them to pieces whatwhat's the imagery there what do you get a picture off that's what Jesus will do with a wicked or a second such passage Psalm 110 verses five and six Psalm 110 verse one by the way is the most quoted the Old Testament passage in the New Testament it's found at least 20 times in Matthew Mark and Luke and acts and Romans and first Corinthians and Ephesians and Hebrews and first Peter and revelation and maybe others that I missed but at least in those the psalm 110:1 the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand until i make your enemies your footstool but it's a bit later in the psalm it says the messiah will do this he will judge the nation's heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth the wicked will be like corpses on a battlefield and then we have this passage in Isaiah 66 24 probably the most familiar imagery in the whole Bible for the end of the wicked the passage says this speaking of the righteous who inhabit the New Jerusalem they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me for their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind this is a picture as the verse clearly says of corpses not of living people dead bodies there in a place like an old-fashioned city dump an open kind of dump with them with dead animals and maggots crawling everywhere that's the worm the worm in Hebrew here's peg arene this is a maggot and then he says that the wicked will be like that corpse is eaten by worms and smoldering fire and they will be a live horse to all mankind of be disgusting you hold your nose when you go there you don't want to throw up it's a disgusting and hard scene in sight and then we have in Malachi this picture for our fourth and final example of prophetic utterances the day is coming Malachi says when the wicked will be the day will be burning like a furnace and every evildoer will be chaff and it will set them ablaze and it will leave them neither root in a branch how much of them is left if they don't have root or branch left the wicked will be ashes under the soles of your feet on that day this is a picture and it's a picture of the end of the wicked from Malachi do we get the picture what do we what do we imagine when we hear such passages as these and again I would say that's that's the same or make the same comments we made before they will be like broken pottery all these pieces of pottery shattered like corpses piled up on a battlefield they will be like corpses dumped in the city dump and maggots and fire consuming them bit by bit till they're finally gone there will be ashes under foot when you see those pictures again do not think of these as literal descriptions they will not literally be eaten by worms I don't think but it's a the reality will correspond to these pictures and what really happens will be something that this is a true picture off and when people will say yes that's what God that said would happen and it really did fit what he said the reality will not be the exact opposite of the picture so when he says there will be ashes under the soles of the feet though that certainly doesn't mean they will never in any way in shape form or fashion resemble ashes under the soles of the feet they will be something that you could call that at least and finally I would ask what impression do these images leave with you do you say well that looks like a picture of people who are tormented forever and ever kept alive for that purpose or do you say that looks like people who are all saved and go to heaven or do you say that looks like a picture of final destruction and extinction in between the Testaments a period of time that we frequently call intertestamental period also known as Second Temple Judaism and those are not exactly the same overlapping times but they cover some of the same period there are the same three views that we've already mentioned that are found in the Jewish literature between the Testaments and we want to notice briefly four types of Jewish literature that are found during this period of time there's the Apocrypha these are the books that are found in we usually say the Catholic Bible but not the Protestant Bible but he goes back farther than that they were found in the Hebrew Septuagint the Greek translation of the Old Testament but not in the hint not in the Hebrew Old Testament and so that's something too just to distinguish these books in that way in the Apocrypha ever every picture of the end of the wicked is of is a consuming fire except one passage clearly different and that's in the book of Judith Judith is a heroine who saves our people from an evil tyrant named hold of furnace and at the end of Judith in the final verse we have this curse against God's enemies what are the nations that rise up against my race the Lord Almighty will take vengeance against them in the day of judgment to put fire and worms in their flesh and they will weep and feel their pain forever now here's a real picture of traditional hell this is a picture of eternal torment it's clear what it's saying that's what it means is there's no doubt about it there's no way around it that's what Judith is saying and so I say you know yes that's what Judith is say but I would observe that Judith changes thoroughly what Isaiah had said she's using his imagery of worms and fire but she changes it entirely Isaiah had corpses Judith has living people Isaiah has them consumed by worm and fire Judith has them tormented by worm and fire Isaiah had worms and fire external to the people devouring them Judith has worms and fire put inside the people to torment them in Isaiah this is a picture of shame its disgust anjuna fits a picture of pain in Isaiah the reaction is discussed in Judith it's pity it's a totally different picture this is the first time in anything resembling biblical literature that the traditional view of hell is clearly pictured and he comes in Judith who totally changes Isaiah quite to the opposite to say it so I have a little tiny check mark by tormenting fire because it's only in one passage in the Apocrypha but the rest of the Apocrypha is a consuming fire if we look next at the pseudepigrapha this is a big word for a big collection of books that are hard to put into a collection or to define either for that matter the word means false writing with it it really is not that they're trying to deceive people but the idea was in their day that all the prophets had finished speaking and if somebody has a new book that they want to present they can't say well this is my book because people would say well you're too late to be speaking from God and so they gave them names from ancient people when God was still speaking as they understood it and then they'll sue the powerful books we have both tormenting fire there's no doubt about it and we also have consuming fire there's no doubt about that and it's probably about 5050 so under pseudepigrapha we check both of those with about an equal size mark then there's the Dead Sea Scrolls when though the first edition of the father consumes came out in 1982 there were eight that's the number between seven and nine eight scrolls from the Dead Sea available in English to non-specialists authors now in the third edition of the father consumes know it to check on that there are eight hundred and the chief scholar who is in charge of all of those is a man whose pictures on the next slide dr. Florentino Garcia Martinez he has put out a two-volume study edition as thirteen hundred fifty pages with Hebrew on one side in English on the other I read through all the English pages and then lo and behold those say the same thing that the eight Scrolls did 30 years ago and that is that in the debts escrows the consistent picture of the end of the wicked as total destruction after I had used dr. Florentino Garcia Martinez books he is a man who lives in Belgium I was in the linear theological library one day and the the librarian came over and said I want you to meet this gentleman this is dr. Florentino garcia martinez and in the picture he's talking to Charles Mickey about a Dead Sea scroll so I got to meet the man in person and I said to him tell me is this what you understand the scrolls to be saying he said yes it really is we should not be dogmatic about the scrolls because they're a bit ambiguous at times but I think if you be general about it this is a fair statement to say that's what they say so the Dead Sea Scrolls in our tick marks are totally consuming fire and they've got a great big mark by them and then finally the rabbinical literature from the rabbi's of the Jews in the Babylonian Talmud in the Jerusalem Talmud the mission of these some of this came later than this period of time but some of it was back in this period and in the rabbinic writings according to struck and bitter back at least all three views are held and there's one very interesting example in which rabbis picture universalism they have a scene in which the people in hell are suffering but they're listening and in heaven they're having a great praise celebration in they sing it's wonderful song of praise and the people in Hell say that's a good song we should sing it too so they start seeing it also and then God hears them scene and says to somebody where's that coming from and they say that's the people in Hell he said well if they can see that's all they should come up here so they all come up there well that was what one rabbi said that wasn't be Jewish view but it was a view held among the other two were the other two and the point of all this is the Jewish people between the times of the old and new Testament held all three views at one place or another and it is not as though there was a Jewish view that everybody held so when Jesus comes along we cannot assume that he held a certain view because everybody else did they didn't all whole view we have to read what he says ask what it means examining the light of the Old Testament and other Christian literature as well and then decide for proper exegesis what Jesus is really saying so with that said we move on to the next little section what is the end of the wicked in the New Testament what does the New Testament say let's explore together quickly one person at a time first John the Baptist John the Baptist in announcing Jesus and presenting him to Israel says that at the end of the world he will be the Great Harvester he will gather his wheat into the barn he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire what does it mean unquenchable fire quenches to put out or extinguish and these are some quenchers at work this thing is old fire they're putting the fire out that's what it means to quench unquenchable fire as fire they cannot be put out or resisted and if it cannot be resisted what does it do it does what fire is intended to do it burns until everything is gone and so unquenchable fire doesn't mean fire that burns forever it means fire that cannot be resisted or put out until it does what fire is intended to do in this case he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire this is a common warning throughout the Old Testament God says to various peoples I will come against you with my fire of judgment and you cannot quench it in other words you cannot resist it it will be destructive you can't stop it it is inexorable it will do what it's intended to do then we have Jesus himself who uses a bit of a different language this is a very familiar passage and one it's quite straightforward the Lord says don't fear those who can kill the body but are unable to kill the soul but rather fear God who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell the word he uses for Hell here as again so as Gehenna this word has found 12 times in the whole Bible 11 of them in the Gospels one of them in the book of James which says the tongue is set on fire by hell all the eleven that speak of final punishment are found in the Gospels they're all in the mouth of Jesus they're all speaking to Jews who live in or around Jerusalem it's never used of Gentiles has never used outside the Gospels it's never used talking anybody who doesn't live in or around Jerusalem why is that because you Henne is a place in the Jewish Theological mind that takes its name from a literal place outside Jerusalem called the Valley of the sons of Hinnom this is what it looks like today it's not a bad place to go right now but you wouldn't want to go there in the eschatological sense at the end of the world Jesus uses this word eleven times in the end a speaking of the place of final punishment but he says don't fear men who can kill the body but not the soul fear God who can destroy both soul and body in hell what does it mean to destroy of soul and body it must be something similar to what he means when he says don't fear man who can kill the body that's the cessation of existence and so if man does that but God does the total job forever with soul and body it seems to be just more of the same in the greater sense and the expensive kind of meaning then Jesus speaks of perishing in the familiar passage John 3:16 whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life it's a contrast eternal life on the one hand perish on the other what does perish mean what does destroy mean traditionalist authors frequently say destroy and perish don't always mean annihilation they are used with figurative senses sometimes we read of ruined wine skins and it's the same Greek word spoil to food it's the same Greek word they say that doesn't mean the wine skins are gone they're just not fit for use anymore doesn't mean the food is annihilated or destroyed in the literal sense it's just not fit for eating well is that what they what Jesus means is he used it I would suggest and we don't need to think that the most of the time in the Gospels when this Greek word is used upon me it's used in a sense of clearly in the context of death of really dying of people being assassinated or or wiped out and these are examples here the disciples about to perish in the storm the Pharisees trying to destroy Jesus the vineyard owner who executes murderous tenants the troops that destroy murderers the crowd was to destroy Jesus the insurrectionist who perished at the hands of Rome and some perished in the rebellion of Korah these are all clearly - in a literal sense of perish and destroy and there's no good reason I suggest to think that these words are mean something different when Jesus uses them at the end of the wicked RF Weymouth who was a New Testament translator and the Greek scholar makes this powerful statement my mind fails to conceive a grosser misinterpretation of language than when the five or six strongest words in the Greek tongue signifying destroy or destruction are explained to mean maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence to translate black is white there's nothing to this that was what this particular Greek scholar thought about it what about the other phrase is thought to suggest conscious unending torment in the gospel such as gnashing of teeth this is found seven times in the Gospels about Jesus three times it's in speaking of people who are thrown out the door by the bouncer at a party on the hillside twice it's used of being expelled from the kingdom of God and twice it's used of people who are put in a furnace of fire the gnashing of teeth in these seven passages is not even in a context of fire except two times out of the seven as far as it's explicitly stated but it has something in common in all seven places they're all expelled they're all cast out they're all given reason to be quite upset with their condition and they all are gnashing their teeth are in the NIV grinding their teeth what does it mean to grind the teeth think of this example that has nothing to do with hell Stephen is about to be killed by his murderers he tells them you have become the murders and betrayers of God's holy one and their reaction is yes they were cut to the quick and began gnashing their teeth of them her grinding their teeth they ready to pounce on him like a wild animal and chew him up they're not in pain he's about to be that's what gnashing of teeth means it's not a picture of pain it's a picture of anger and then there's this very wonderful passage in the Old Testament song says the wicked will see the righteous rewarded and be vexed he will gnash his teeth and melt away the desire of the wicked will perish and even as they are gnashing their teeth at God they disappear like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz Jesus speaks of eternal punishment what does that mean well the word eternal notice first has two meanings in the New Testament first it's a quality of the aides to come the Greek word for age as I own the greek word for eternal is i o'neill's it means something that belongs to the age to come and so we have other words for example with this word eternal eternal salvation salvation of the age to come eternal Redemption eternal destruction eternal judgment these are not talking about earthly present-day redemptions or earthly present-day destructions or judgments these are the end of the world kind the aides to come sort the eschatological type the the quality of the age to come and in that sense we can read and understand eternal punishment Matthew 25:46 eternal punishment is punishment of the AIDS to come but eternal means more than that it also sometimes points to results of an action that do not ever end and so I believe that the eternal punishment will be just as long as the eternal life but it's talking about the result of the action not the action itself and so we have for example eternal salvation that doesn't mean God is forever saving it means he saves and when he's finished saving the salvation lasts forever we have eternal Redemption Nibiru's 9 Lord not that God is forever redeeming but once redeemed the redemption is forever eternal destruction 2nd Thessalonians 1 same thing eternal judgment Hebrews 6 to the day of judgment not the forever and ever time of judgment but the judgment judging takes place the judgment last forever the outcome of it eternal punishment the result of the punishing lasts forever and so with this eternal punishment means both quality and quantity but it's the result it's talking about I'll just quickly add this that this is not just something I made up and in fact nothing I'm presenting or not it's just something I made up but this is not and if you go to Greek grammars you can find the discussion of these result words which usually have a certain kind of suffix in Greek just as in English certain suffixes indicate result like M ent and tion in the words we looked at there but furthermore what about the word punishment somebody says eternal punishment one one traditionalist writer says if they're not suffering conscious torment there's no other kind of punishment that's the only thing that qualifies as punishment what is punishment punishment I suggest is simply the pin or Consequences of wrongdoing imposed by judicial authority on the basis of law and so in Texas for example there's all kinds of punishment for breaking the law you may have a fine to pay you might go to jail you could go to the penitentiary worst case our governor tells us is capital punishment which happens every once in a while in Texas and so these are all punishment but they're quite different from each other and it's not what they what they do what they consist of it makes them punishment but the fact that they are consequences of wrongdoing imposed by a judicial authority on the basis of law what is the eternal punishment of which Jesus speaks he says there will be eternal punishment Lord what is that punishment well he's already told us God can destroy soul and body in hell and I say that's a good answer to the question but Paul is even more specific in 2nd Thessalonians 1 he said when Jesus comes the wicked will be punished with everlasting destruction he will destroy them he will punish them with destruction they will be destroyed they'll be destroyed forever and that is eternal punishment because they are only punished the result lasts forever it is never undone st. Augustine disagreed with what I'm saying tonight but he said this statement which I think is a very good statement and I borrowed it from him with it without his permission because I liked what he said he said when a very serious crime is punished by death and the execution of the sentence takes only a minute no loss consider that minute as the measure of the punishment but rather the fact that the criminal is forever removed from the community of the living and so those who go to hell and are destroyed forever are forever removed from the Society of those of the living the kingdom of God the eternal Kingdom the blessedness of all those who are saved they miss out on it that's a great part of the punishment by itself then there's eternal fire what is eternal fire first of all its eternal quality fire its fire of the age to come second of all its unending result fire and so we have Jude again in Sodom and Gomorrah are exhibited as an example of eternal fire our Sodom and Gomorrah still burning no they're not there were legends in the early years that they were but they were mistaken they the fire went out a long time ago in Sodom and Gomorrah but the result lasts till the fire had eternal results and Jude says Sodom and Gomorrah are an example of eternal fire so when Jesus speaks of eternal fire he me he means fire that has results that lasts forever James what does he say about the end of the wicked well he says it will be death destruction riches consume flesh like fire fattened for the day of slaughter and save a soul from death if you turn the center from his way what do those things sound like do they sound like people who are restored to salvation they sound like people who are kept alive for eternal torment or do they sound like people who are completely wiped out in the book of Acts if there ever was a New Testament book that we would expect to find a graphic picture of hell maybe the book of Acts would be that book they're going out preaching the gospel surely they must warn people what the azar if they reject it this is the time to have it I mean where do you have Hellfire and brimstone preaching if it's not in evangelistic sermons and so surely must be in the book of Acts in fact a couple of traditionalist writers in one of the compendiums of books recently issued makes the statement that in the book of Acts the early disciples go throughout the world preaching the gospel warning people of eternal torment well what does the book of Acts contain first of all it only contains three references of any sort to final judgment two of them don't even say anything about Hell at all one is acts 17 Paul says God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world by Jesus whom he raised from the dead then we have acts 23 or 24 where Paul talks with Felix about judgment but it doesn't say anything about what it consists of there's only one passage in the book of Acts it says anything about the substance of the punishment and that's Acts 3:23 where Peter says that whoever does not listen to Jesus as the prophet of Deuteronomy of 17 or 14 18 what's the chapter scholars okay he says that Jesus is that prophet and whoever does not listen to him will be utterly cut off or utterly destroyed from among the people the word that he uses there is the Greek word ex hold through oh that means to utterly destroy or root out in the Old Testament Greek version used by the early church this is the regular word for capital punishment it's the word used in the flood story it's a word that in the background usage in Scripture clearly meant annihilation what about Paul how does he describe the end of the wicked Paul's major words are these three or some form of them die perish and destroy those in fact are the major words to follow up on dr. Albright's suggestion many years ago found throughout the New Testament die perish and destroy but Paul also has a couple of other phrases he speaks of wrath anger trouble and distress and this reminds us that those who died perishing are destroyed in hell don't necessarily do all those thing instantaneously they may be there awhile first there's infinite room in this view for degrees of punishment based on perfect divine justice in the process of destruction God may have an enormous variety both as two type of suffering duration of suffering and intensity of suffering but there's room for all of that and they still finally die perish and are destroyed and then Paul also speaks of it as of the people being anathema or a curse in the Old Testament Greek Testament this translates the Hebrew word kerim which you have to be careful not to be too close to someone when you say but this was a word that was used of what happened to akin for example after Jericho and it means total wipe out and then Paul finally also speaks of those who do not enter God's kingdom which reminds us that even if there were no punishment in the city in the sense of torment and pain at all it would be a terrible punishment if this is all their work to it that they miss out on God's kingdom but that's not all there is to it there's much more as well Paul and Plato by the way use the same Greek words when they talk about death or destruction or corruption or perishing or dying the difference between Paul and Plato is this for Paul these words portray the destiny of those who live and die rejecting God for Plato these words will never describe the immortal soul and we'll come back to that in just a moment the book of Hebrews speaks of this as the end of the wicked worse than physical death cursed and burned raging fire that consumes destroyed consuming fire again is this more like number one picture number two picture or number three picture Peter and Jude we've already seen some of this they tell us that the end of the wicked will be like what happened in the flood he'll be like what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah blackest darkness I think of a black hole here and total annihilation into that John who writes the gospel in the epistles in Revelation lake of fire what is that he says that the wicked will be in the lake of fire and brimstone the origin of this is sodom and gomorrah that's a it's pictured as well as the lake of fire brimstone and fire that's what Sodom and Gomorrah had the second death John says the lake of fire is the second death the contrast is to have their names in the book of life the book of life in those times is a picture of a city register of the living all the living citizens have their names written in the book of life of that city the book of the living citizens of that city and if someone dies their name is taken out of the book of the living and so the final choices in Revelation are either your name is written in the book of the living in the eternal city of the living or you're in the lake of fire which is the second death it's life or death in the larger Johannine literature eternal life is the contrast John also speaks of smoke ascending this comes from word Sodom and Gomorrah again the next morning after Abraham I has known the city to be destroyed he goes out and looks where the city used to be and it says all he could see was the smoke of the land ascending like a furnace it's like a mushroom shaped cloud there's no pain anymore there's no suffering going on there's no sound of anyone in agony if there's nothing but silence and rising smoke and that's what smoke ascending means in the Bible sometimes it speaks of the smoke ascending forever if we go to Isaiah chapter 34 in the destruction of Edom we see where that comes from it simply means that once destroyed the city is always desolate and never is inhabited again and again it's the results so the big question comes if the traditional doctrine is not required by the language of Scripture where does it come from and how did it become so popular the answers are clear in church history which the second half of my book goes through it's a matter of Greek philosophy versus Bible teaching Socrates and Plato had taught that every human has a mortal body inhabited by an immortal soul that was not held by all the Greeks but it was held by many of them the Bible on the other hand portrays the human creature is totally mortal in the beginning we're told in Genesis 2:7 God formed man dust of the earth we think of this is his body he breathed into him breath or spirit of life and he became a living soul living soul is used of animals as well in Genesis living soul means a living United whole being it's not that we have a soul is that we are a soul and in the King James Version on one occasion at least you know when the Assyrians are killed when Sennacherib tries to come and God rescues them by thousands hundreds of thousands of Assyria soldiers dying it says that people of Israel go out and look of Judah and behold dead souls dead bodies dead people that's all the word soul means in that context god alone possesses immortality we're not naturally immortal we don't have an immortal soul we depend on God for existence every moment and if God doesn't keep us alive we won't stay alive every time the New Testament speaks of human beings immortal three things are always true and three things are never true first of all it's always speaking of the saved it's never speaking of the lost there's not any passage in the New Testament that uses the word immortal immortality of lost people always a saved secondly it's always hold the whole person never a disembodied soul or spirit and third it's always in the resurrection never something that happened at creation or that happens in this life so we go to the Apostolic fathers and now we're going to take a whoreo in tour through church history and wind this thing up and you will you'll say well we're through I couldn't think of a good word to put in that last blink we hear first from the Apostolic fathers these are the people who lived after the apostles but many of whom were taught by the apostles when they speak at the end of the wicked in books like the dinner key Barnabas Ignatius in Clement they talk about a fire that consumes they use language which to me is clearly talking about anihilation the tradition astride Irsay they use language which is clearly talking about eternal torment that's because when we read the Bible we read the Bible with different interpretations they stuck to biblical language so whatever you think the Bible teaches is what you think they teach but of course I'm right I think the other guys think I'm not then we hear from the apologist they come in the century following the Apostolic fathers and these are men like Nathan a gross and Tertullian these are converted Greek philosophers who bring with them into the church the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul and so we have such things as this Plato first goes to church I say in Nathan a gross and who says this for example since the cause of man's creation is perpetual existence he must be preserved forever and he reasons philosophically that all human beings must live forever in eternity because that's what God made us for doesn't have Bible of course he's using Greek philosophy Tertullian his greatest largest book was dannimal which means the soul and Tertullian says such jewels is this the soul does not need saving because it's immortal already of its own self Jesus came to make the body immortal so that in the resurrection the body could join the immortal soul and we could live forever that was what they're totally thought about it and he goes on to say and when he's discussing Matthew 10:28 then when Jesus says fear God who can destroy soul and body in hell we must not think that Jesus means that God will destroy the soul for we all know that souls are immortal they cannot be destroyed whether souls are immortal it cannot be destroyed then my view is wrong something's got to happen to them either they get converted and go to heaven or they roast forever in hell which is what came to be held as that as the view of Scripture after after the apologists come the Alexandrians of Clement of Alexandria Origen of Alexandria and they suggested nothing God does is wasted or without a purpose if there's a hell of punishment in fire you must serve a purpose the purpose must be to reform the people who are there to teach them better so they can all finally be saved and they ended up teaching what came later to be called universalism or the oppo 'catastasis when we're from our nobis those of her character who rejected platonism Schrute of immortal souls and also its fruit of conscious entity tore me sometimes traditionalist authors say our nobis was the first person to teach anihilation ism that's not true but he was the first to teach it on the basis of thoroughly rejecting Platonism in all of its parts then we have the great st. Augustine his book City of God has one large section called book 21 which is devoted to this subject I have a whole chapter on that in my book he lets just say this about it he endorsed Tertullian view of eternal torment and when Augustine said he agreed with it that kind of said that's what's going to be orthodoxy for the next thousand years but there come a couple of other important people between this and the next thousand years first Anselm in the 12th century reasoning from futile ideas of justice he said the God is an infinite being we are finite creatures if a finite creature violates an infinite being it's a it's an infinite sin and an infinite offense requires an infinite punishment but a finite person cannot pay an infinite punishment in a finite period of time therefore finite humans who offend the infinite God must suffer infinite punishment through an infinite period of time which means unending conscious torment well if so what's pretty interesting there's just a few things wrong with that first of all it comes from feudal justice not from the Bible secondly it contradicts what the Bible does say in the Old Testament when God gave a Criminal Code to his people the Jews he did not say the punishment that you rendered for people who do wrong things to other people depends on the on the stature and the influence and the wealth of the person in the community so if a poor man does something bad to a rich man off with his head but if the rich man does it to the poor man so much for that and instead he says as you all know the phrase an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth treat everybody the same regardless of who they are that was God's plan and Sam is basing his own futile justice they contradicted that finally it occurred to me a number of years ago that even if n Sam's principle was proper which it isn't and even if it were true which is not that it would still not apply to prove his point because if you if a human being were to perish entirely and forever that would be infinite punishment that is unlimited as to scope and entirety and duration and then and for me to say that amounted to what a cup of coffee would that would be worth if you had a nickel and that's all but found in the process of doing research for this third edition there was a great reformed theologian named Herman wit seus in the 17th century who was highly regarded in his day ball the Calvinists of Europe and he said by the way folks and Sam's argument is full of beans he didn't say that he wasn't from Texas but he said this is not true and if a man is destroyed forever and entirely that would be infinite punishment anyway then we hear from Saint Aquinas who's highly regarded by just about everybody 13th century he said the soul suffers first because the soul is the one that sins first your soul decides to send and your body carries it out and so when you die your soul goes to hell immediately and you get a head start on suffering and your body catches up later that was something he contributed to the doctrine then we have another a in our series better known as his first name Dante he wrote the inferno or the Divine Comedy interestingly his lowest level of a pit which is reserved for the very worst sinners of all is freezing cold and if people have thought about that the expression would be cold as hell and then we come to the Reformation the Reformation is quite interesting on this point will the cover of point very quickly here Luther stretches the envelope Luther says things like when when I die it will be like a sweet sleep and I will lie in my grave and sleep until my savior comes and knocks on the grave and says dr. Martin get up and then I shall rise and be with him forever Luther said things like that Luther said things like the philosophical arguments for the immortality of the soul belong on the great dung heap of Roman decreed oh sorry John Michael Luther said it not me but Luther said that Sir Thomas More being a seasonal man for every occasion says to Luther you're not right at all that he defended the traditional view Tyndale the Bible translator came to Luther's defense Calvin meanwhile turns his attention to the Anabaptist in the Anabaptist who everybody else hated we're saying that when the wicked die they are are they they're totally dead the resurrection when they're raised they go to Hell where they're totally destroyed they don't have an immortal soul they don't live forever unless God gives them immortality in other words they're there the Anabaptist some of them were saying just what I'm saying tonight Calvin did not like the Anabaptist for many reasons and this was one of his major ones his first religious book was called psycho Pinocchio which is a Greek word that means the soul stays awake all night long and Calvin in his usual tactful manner said things like this he said these cursed had a cat of Baptists whose very name is too damn anything that they say are spewing forth this from the pits of hell which we thought was stamped out but here it is again and he was vmi in his denunciation some of his buddies said hey Cal you need to tone this down Luther's leaning this way on some of these things and he wrote a new forward to his book and said there's some good men who err not from malice but from lack of information and so forth but Calvin taught his views to Heinrich Bullinger who wrote what's called a second Helvetic confession or Swiss confession in 1566 then in this doctrine that was the traditional Catholic doctrine was written into the first Protestant Creed our major Protestant Creed and it became a model later for the Westminster Confession and later doctrines and statements of faith came to America became part of fundamentalism and so you had in fundamentalism the Liberals who said there ain't no hell and the fundamental said to hell there ain't and and and for about a fifty years or so nobody could even study about held-out with except under the bedsheets because if people saw you studying how they would say you must be a closet liberal but these days that's different of course and everybody's talking about the subject Alister McGrath who was here a while back had this wonderful statement seems to be a general feature he said of the history of Christian thought that a period of genuine creativity is immediately followed by petrification and scholasticism orthodoxy merely guarded the ashes of the Reformation rather than tending the flame and so McGrath says they should have continued the Reformation many scholars today in many parts of the Christian Church are saying that the Reformers did not finish the job the area they never got to completely was eschatology which includes hell and it's up to us to carry forward with that today and so these men we mentioned earlier and others like them are doing that and that's what I hope to be a small part of as well we must finally ask what difference does you make anyway want to take up an hour of my time on Saturday night talking about Hell why does it matter I suggest three reasons first of all it's not a Salvation issue you're not going to hell they're not going to hell depending on what you believe about how it's how you deal with the Lord Jesus Christ it's not a fellowship issue there should not be any division among Christian people because of this as to fellowship unfortunately there is my nephew Aaron fudge who is here tonight from California was refused admission into a graduate school program in one evangelical seminary because he believed this view of Hell and that's not a while I would think of the institution of higher learning would do to exemplify the kind of open-minded study of Scripture that they supposedly stand for so what does it matter it is important first of all it matters because we speak in God's name if we tell people I'm telling you what God says on the subject we need to be careful to try to really say what God says there are plenty of things in the Bible that indicate that God is not very happy when people say I'm speaking for God and then they make up what they say and don't say what God said so we need to be care just because we're speaking in God's name secondly it matters because this impacts evangelism there are many atheists who say I'm an atheist because I can't believe in the Christian doctrine of Hell as they have commonly understood it that doesn't mean we should change the doctrine just because some people keep taking if a Bible teaches the traditional view then that's what we should say no matter what the results but if the Bible doesn't teach it then it's a great reason for changing it because it's impediment to evangelism and third it speaks about God's character again if this is what the Bible teaches that God will keep people alive forever to torment them forever then it doesn't matter what I think about it and if I don't think that's a good God or a fair God tough luck I'm just a pile of dirt and ashes anyway but God is God on the other hand if what the Bible really teaches is what I'm saying that it's a terrible slander against God to say that he will keep people alive forever to torment them without end it would be much the same as if you had a babysitter who tells your little children in your absence if you disobey me I'll tell your parents and when they come home they're going to take scissors and cut off all your fingers then they're going to cut your heart out with a butcher knife and then they're going to put you in the microwave until you pop I don't think you would be hiring that babysitter again you and you would not like the way they represent you to your children so if the traditional view is not what God says how does God feel when people say that's what your really is going to do especially when it makes atheists out of those who cannot believe it in conclusion the teaching we have examined tonight and that I presented is not tricky there's nothing here you got to remember so it comes out right it's all pretty face value there's nothing difficult about it it's simple and easy to understand there's nothing complicated about it in fact you already know in to scripture verses that you memorize long ago everything I'm wanting to send home with you tonight the first one is Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord finally it's death or life those are the choices the second one is John 3:16 God gave his son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life the choices are perishing or life it's that simple too straightforward it's life or death and God says to us choose life

Channel: fleetwd1

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Keywords: Edward Fudge, Doctrine of Final Punishment, fleetwd1, Mark Lanier, Lanier Theological Library, LTL, Lecture Series, hell, Lecture - Edward Fudge

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Length: 62min 45sec (3765 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2011