On the Prospect of Eternal Damnation of a Second Death

The concept that lost souls will not experience eternal conscious torment could be viewed as either very pleasing or extremely harmful, depending on whether it accurately reflects the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and its historical precedents, traditions, and beliefs.¹ If it is indeed true that descriptions, stories, and predictions about never-ending, unending pain and suffering are simply metaphors or exaggerated language, rhetorical devices, and symbols, then one could argue that those who are lost will either stop living at the time of their death or, at most, their judgment.

But if the opposite is true, and it can be established that the Bible's warnings about the continuity of consciousness apply not only to the righteous, but also to the wicked, then we will be able to reinforce a concept that we believe was intended by God to serve as a warning for safety and precautionary purposes for both the people of God and mankind in general.²  

Eternal Punishment: Warning,

Safety, and Regulatory Information

In the last forty years, it has become a trend to preach against the concept of hell as if it were an obviously repulsive and false doctrine created solely by men to instill fear and horror. However, it is actually a genuine warning about the severity of God and a real danger that the prophets, Apostles, and Son of God urge everyone to avoid. The message is meant to divert people from a legitimate destination for the lost.³ 

In this essay, our goal is to have the courage and strength to speak out against the no-hell doctrine, regardless of who supports it.

We will provide twenty-two reasons why the disbelief in eternal conscious punishment is not supported by the Bible or the broader context of traditions and beliefs about the afterlife that were prevalent in the Ancient Near East, particularly within the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism (which is believed by some scholars to be its true source).

To start with, we argue that the angels who sinned in ancient times continue to exist, as supported by Genesis 3:1, Revelation 12:9, Job 1:11, Isaiah 14:12, Ezekiel 28:12-19, Zechariah 3:1-7, Matthew 4:1-11; 25:41, John 8:44, Acts 5:1-11; 19:12-17, 2 Corinthians 11:14, 1 John 4:1, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6, and Revelation 16:12-14.

Additionally, we argue that the Antediluvian humans who perished in the Great Flood during Noah’s time, over ten thousand years ago, also continue to exist and were visited by Christ during his crucifixion (as per Luke 23:43 and 1 Peter 3:19-20).

Thirdly, the Tanakh teaches that the core essence of a person persists after death - as evidenced by passages such as Genesis 11:10-26, 25:8, 1 Samuel 28:3-25, 2 Samuel 12:23, and 2 Maccabees 12:38-46.⁴

In 2 Maccabees 12:38-46, it is written that the Jewish priesthood officials, led by Judas the Maccabee, offered sacrifices in the Second Temple for Jewish soldiers who had died in battle. However, it was discovered that these soldiers had secretly been wearing idolatrous amulets. This demonstrates that the Hasmonean priests believed that the dead soldiers still existed in the afterlife. The sacrifices were offered to appease God for the grave sins committed by these soldiers while fighting to resist the Seleucid incursions against the practice of Judaism in the Holy Land, which was then under tyrannical Greek domination.

Fifth, in Matthew 10:15 and Luke 10:12, Jesus states that the punishment that Judæan cities will face will be “more tolerable for Sodom” in comparison. It is worth noting that Sodom and its inhabitants were completely destroyed by fire (as documented in 2 Peter 2:6). If God destroyed Jewish cities, towns, and villages in the first and second centuries, and burned them to ashes, then the query arises as to how the destruction of Sodom could be considered “more tolerable” if it was the same thing?

Sixth, in Matthew 11:21, Jesus states that Tyre and Sidon will be treated more tolerably than Chorazin on the day of judgment. This statement only makes sense if the Tyrians and the Sidonians continue to exist on that day.

Seven, similarly, in Matthew 11:23, Jesus condemns Capernaum for unbelief but indicates that it will be more tolerable for the Sodomites on the day of judgment. Once again, this implies that both groups exist on that day.

Eighth, in Matthew 12:41, Jesus notes that the citizens of Nineveh will rise up in judgment with the current generation. This statement implies that the Ninevites continue to exist in some form.

Ninth, in Matthew 12:42, Jesus references the Queen of Sheba who lived a thousand years before his time.⁵ This suggests that she still exists in some way beyond death.  Jesus said of this queen,

“The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.”

The Lord predicted that, at the judgment, the Queen of Sheba would accuse his contemporary generation and condemn them. This was because the Queen of Sheba had gone out of her way to hear the wisdom of Solomon, yet Jesus (being God) was far greater than Solomon!

Tenth, how can it be explained that according to Jesus in Matthew 23:14, some individuals may receive a greater damnation due to greater culpability, if there is no existence of hell?  What could possibly be greater if everyone is unilaterally and uniformly annihilated?

Eleventh, in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus declared that the righteous would enter their kingdom inheritance, while the wicked would enter everlasting fire. Both sentences are presented in the same parallel way using the same Greek words, and therefore, stand or fall together.

Twelth, in the so-called Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Luke 16:19-31, Jesus describes a scene using real names and real people, depicting conscious regret, suffering, and torment after death. The rich man requested mercy at the hands of Lazarus, but Abraham declined, stating that the rich man had enjoyed lavish conditions in his lifetime and was now tormented. An impenetrable barrier existed between the righteous and the wicked in Paradise, and those on the bad side could not flee to the other side for relief. The rich man turned his thoughts to his father's house, where his five living brothers lived in ignorance of this “place of torment,” but Abraham declined to help

“They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen to them,” he said.

But the wealthy man knows that his brothers do not believe in the Tanakh. Therefore, he says,

‘Nay, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent.’

However, Abraham had the final say as he forebodingly prophesized,

‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.’  

It is expected that those who don't believe in the concept of punishment after death, whether it be permanent or not, will attempt to misinterpret this passage in a ridiculous manner. Actually, the passage is simple to comprehend, but a prejudiced and emotion-driven opposition to what it symbolizes is a rejection of its obvious meaning and purpose.  Moreover, Jesus described the situation of damnation as being final.

In this narrative, he even suggested that the five brothers of the Rich man should take heed of the warnings of Moses and the prophets during their lifetime, as even if someone was to rise from the dead (for example, Jesus himself), they still wouldn't be believed.⁷

Thirteenth, regarding Judas's upcoming betrayal of our Lord, Jesus said, 

“The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

If damnation means annihilation, resulting in nothingness, how could Jesus say that it would be better for Judas if he never existed?  Would it not be more precise to say that it will be as if he had never been born?

Fourteenth, the Apostle Paul describes that Satan will be defeated by the Church and placed under their feet in a short period of time (Romans 16:20).  However, this only results in him being imprisoned in the bottomless pit (Revelation 20:1-3).  This confinement is only temporary and does not impact his existence (Revelation 20:7). The Bible ultimately assigns Satan a permanent state of suffering in a lake of fire where the beast and false prophet were previously thrown (Revelation 20:10).

Fifteenth, in Revelation chapter 14, during the time of the Jewish civil war, an angel of God proclaimed that Babylon had fallen because she had made all nations drink the wine of her fornication and wrath. Following this, a third angel warned that anyone who worshipped the beast and received his mark on their forehead or hand would drink from the cup of God’s wrath and be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of holy angels and the Lamb. The smoke of their torment would ascend forever and those who worshipped the beast and his image and received his mark would have no rest day or night. It is believed that these worshippers of the Beast are now being punished, even after two centuries, for their actions. As believers in the Word of God, we do not judge or blame God for the punishment He inflicts upon His creation.  What is your belief on this matter?

Sixteenth, the lake of fire, which Jesus refers to as ‘the second death’, exists after the first heaven and earth of the Second Jewish Commonwealth pass away, following the failed messianic revolt of A.D. 132-136 - as written in Revelation 20:7-15. Even in the new heaven and new earth, this fearful lake remains a potent reality, as revealed in Revelation 21:8, 27 and 22:14-15 and 18-19!

Seventeenth, even though some Bible scholars and researchers claim that the concepts of Sheol, hell, and eternal punishment were borrowed from the Zoroastrian religion, none of these ideas in the Bible contradict the Zoroastrian beliefs about that place in any significant way - which is interesting.⁸

Eighteenth, only the Sadducean Jewish beliefs about hell and punishment (preserved for us in Josephus’ works) align with the beliefs of those who argue that there is no hell and describe what the afterlife is like.  However, the Pharisaic beliefs about the afterlife closely resemble the New Testament’s idea of an ongoing and perpetual punishment. 

Nineteenth, advocates of the no-hell belief in the nineteenth century tried to make their interpretation of eternity after death seem more approachable, but in truth, their stance is more perilous. The author of Hebrews states that anyone who falls into the hands of the living God will suffer a punishment worse than death (Hebrews 10:28-29), and the Bible throughout depicts this as a timeless, enduring condition (Romans 2:4-11 cf. Jude 7) rather than a fleeting one (Revelation 2:11; 14:9-11 and 20:10).

Twentieth, those who support the no-hell doctrine are reckless and unsafe because their misguided beliefs could lead some to continue to sin believing that the most severe consequences are being burned and then ceasing to exist.  This assumption is flawed, and the teachings of the Bible and common knowledge from the past suggest that it will lead to genuine and permanent danger.

Twenty-first, those who advocate for no-hell will not be able to comfort anyone they have convinced since they do not hold the keys to the lake of fire entrance, nor can they redeem the situation for anyone who may end up there due to their teachings (Titus 1:11 cf. 1 Timothy 4:16).⁹

Twenty-second, God’s thoughts are not the same as ours, and vice versa.  As it says in Isaiah 55:8-9 and in Psalms 18:26 and 50:21, God’s ways are far beyond our ways, just as the heavens are above the earth. Isaiah and David both make it clear that our thinking and reasoning cannot compare to God’s. Therefore, when it comes to topics such as judgment, condemnation, hell-fire and eternity, we must not make the mistake of thinking that something the Bible explicitly says will happen to those who are lost will not actually happen.  To do so would be a grave error.  We must speak the truth and not lie, as we have demonstrated.

Summary

The angels who committed sin, including Satan and other angelic beings, were expelled from Heaven but were not destroyed. They carried out various roles in several books of the Bible, such as Genesis, Job, Kings, Chronicles, Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zachariah. Additionally, they played a role during Jesus' life on earth, during the 33-year ministry of the Apostles (from A.D. 33-66), and even during the sad and destructive Messianic uprisings that occurred at the end of the Israelite State (in A.D. 132-136). 

During the golden age of the Maccabees, Levitical priests believed that sinful souls could be forgiven for mortal sins committed against God during their lifetime. However, it is not clear from the Bible whether Judas's attempts to console the dead were authorized or effective because God did not command him to do so.

Then there is the issue of Sodom, Tyre, Sidon, Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba. Their condemnation of the disbelief and stubbornness of late Second Jewish Commonwealth people makes little sense if Jesus is not implying that these ancient cities and individuals would rise up to accuse wicked Judæa.

Additionally, we have discovered that the righteous entering eternal life is similar to the unrighteous entering everlasting punishment. How can the unrighteous cease to exist while the righteous continue to live on?

The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man is a depiction of a real situation unlike any other parable told by Jesus. It includes specific names such as Lazarus, Abraham, and Moses, as well as places like Abraham’s Bosom, Hades, and Paradise. The story also references real-life elements such as a place of torment, prophets, and events like Lazarus being carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom and the rich man being buried. Furthermore, it mentions Jesus rising from the dead and Rich man’s five brothers who disbelieved in Moses and the prophets.

We also realized how pointless it is to attempt to hide the fact and ultimate punishment of Judas Iscariot, the son of damnation. If Judas were to be reduced to nothing, how is it any different from never having existed at all?

In the Book of Revelation, the path of the Beast, False Prophet, and Satan's destiny are divided. The Beast and False Prophet go straight to the lake of fire according to Revelation 19:21, but Satan goes directly to the bottomless pit as stated in Revelation 20:1-3. However, later on, Satan is also thrown into the lake of fire with the Beast and False Prophet, where they will be tormented day and night forever and ever as Revelation 20:10 describes.

The destiny of the worshippers of the beast and the new phenomenon of the second death combine to insinuate provisions for continuity of severe incarceration and punishment, even after the end of the world.

What is more, alleged non-Jewish sources for apocalyptic, angelology and penal repercussions are borrowed without any meaningful repudiation of their overall claims; no-hell proponents are hard-pressed to explain to us how not existing is a punishment ‘worse than death.’  Is there a way around this when just that prospect tells us that there are things that can happen to us that transcend even death, annihilation, and oblivion?  These outcomes, therefore, are not what the New Testament advocates or represents to us.

When it comes to caution, safety, and protection, we reflected on the fact that no-hellers are powerless to rescue anyone they have duped to believe that there is no hell.  If a person dies and goes to the lake of fire, nothing man could do would be able to alter such a person’s fate or free them from the darkness or the flames.  This means that this issue should be taken up with solemnity, caution, and gravity, for it is all too easy to assume that just because a doctrine seems appalling, terrible, and severe that that harshness and starkness also means it can’t possibly be true.

My own personal testimony where I angered God and then saw a servant of God whose job was to be a tormentor against me, God used a moment to bring me back to my senses, (and the rest of the story I choose to keep private out of embarrassment) is the least of the reasons why I would caution anyone living a life that might lead God to condemn them to be forever lost should be assiduasly avoided AT ALL COST.  Do not play with God because the end of it will not be a joke! 

This has everything to do with our choices, what we want to do, what we choose to say, how we choose to live, and what we think about.  God wants us to be a new creation, glorifying the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

Every idea, doctrine, and teaching in the Bible is susceptible to being distorted into a configuration of what we would rather believe.  We pray and ask God to give us, not only the wisdom but also the humility to accept what the Bible says as little children would: Without guile and without a desire to conceal or alter what may strike our finite human minds as appallingly stark and severe.

Through the ages God has done many things which could seem to human beings to be above and beyond the call of duty: He destroyed all but 8 people 10,000 years ago in a flood of worldwide proportions; he struck a man dead who sought to steady the Ark of the Covenant so it would not fall down to the ground; allowing the Jewish State to come under the heavy hand of a maniac like Antiochus IV Epiphanes, or a psychotic like Herod the Great, forsaking the Temple and the nation the madness of John of Gischala and Simon Bar Giora only then to have the Holy Land fall to the might of the Romans in A.D.70.

Or why did many of that nation still not see in Jesus the fulfillment of his prophecies of the Destruction of Jerusalem and accept him, but instead fell for ‘The Lie’ a second time and believed in the claims of the imposter, Bar Kokhba, inviting more trouble and allowing Hadrian to cut down myriads of Jews and Israelites thus reducing the nation to a paltry shadow of its former greatness for eighteen long centuries?

How could God allow the Holocaust to go unchecked until 6 million or more Jews had been barbarically murdered at the hands of Adolf Hitler―under no circumstances can we debate or discover answers to questions that, in reality, are beyond finding out (as in ‘Why would a loving God . . .?’).

But we agree with the Apostle Paul when he exclaims,

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:13).

The only thing we can do is accept what God allows and carry out our reasonable service to him within parameters he has told us he considers permissible, commendable, and praiseworthy.

But teachings that countermands what God has plainly declared he will do, is neither right, fair, or appropriate to advance or to promote.  As they who teach such things and those who succumb to it eventually will meet conditions of existential surprise, trouble, and agony, the final result (sadly and tragically) will be a terrifying trap from which there is no possible way to deny, control, or escape.

This no-hell teaching, therefore, should be scrutinized, judged, and rejected on these grounds and more, once it is determined that this doctrine is both a philosophical preference and a wholly superficial interpretation of Biblical information and the antecedent traditions from the world of the Bible which none of the prophets, Jesus, or the Apostles saw fit to contradict in any important way.

Endnotes

¹ A formal inquiry into wider Ancient Near Eastern sources on beliefs in the afterlife and cosmology, both Zoroastrian and otherwise, is a proper question, but also it is important to determine in the Biblical authors use those concepts in the same way, or if not, how did they treat the material differently?  This investigation would treat pseudepigraphic texts, such as the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, Ezra Apocalypse, and Jubilees as a source of motifs but to determine whether or not the use of such materials reveals that the borrowing is inclusive of outside views or selectively exclusive to them.

² The prospect of incurring an incurable punishment, from which there is no escape could easily instill a natural reluctance to commit excesses or to impose oneself on the Deity presumptuously and without scruples.

³ The ability to deflect and blame what Christians traditionally believe about after-life cosmology on influences outside of the Bible, when here (in Luke 16) it is JESUS himself who frames the issue in this particular way, is truly remarkable―and telling! 

⁴ A contrary view of life after death seems to be put forth by King Solomon in his Ecclesiastes writings, but the category of his thoughts pertains to life realities as they are “under the sun” (Note that Ecclesiastes 9:5 seems to contradict Ecclesiastes 4:2, but no one can be ‘happier’ if they do not exist! Still, the overall context of this genre of writing is life as it appears from an earthly perspective). 

⁵ The Queen of Sheba death approximation, Queen of Sheba Wiki.

⁶ Although in Matthew 25:46 the English (KJV) wording differs (e.g., everlasting/eternal), the Greek Interlinear wording is identical - κόλασιν αἰώνιον (punishment eternal) and ζωὴν αἰώνιον (life eternal).  

⁷ Josephus’s Discourse Concerning Hades should be required reading for anyone wanting to know what contemporary Jews believed about the afterlife in the late Second Temple period.  The entirety of the text of his thoughts can be found in Josephus’s Complete Works, pp. 974-976.  Unsurprisingly, what he writes manifests no difference from anything said by Jesus or the Apostles in the entire New Testament.

⁸ Many liberal scholars wish to attribute developing Jewish eschatology and angelology to Second Temple contacts with the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia (Iran) during the Post-exilic period.  We can neither affirm nor disprove this contention, but rather note that the inclusion of such beliefs and their absorption into the fabric of Jewish thought, coupled with their tacit acceptance and application in the teachings of our Lord and the Apostles, does not exclude, contradict or countermand the basic assumptions which were standard ideas in the fire-worshipping religion of the Medes and Persians.

⁹ We believe the no-hell doctrine is patently dangerous, for the aforementioned twenty-two reasons, but not because we think or suspect anyone is doing it for financial gain, so much as to imagine an eternity free of anything they adjudge God would not dare do, which the Bible says he has already prepared.  We believe the no-hell appeal is an emotional one, but not one, ultimately, based on what the Bible reveals about God’s penal arrangements and stated intentions, as he has plainly warned and declared.

Caption: A sulfur fire at a Wyoming State recycling plant. Source: The Washington Post