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Back to the Bible Podcast
Episode 116: Then Comes the End, Hell, Part 2
00:30:03
In this episode, we continue our consideration of eternal punishment.
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Back to the Bible. Let it be our plea, God's Word alone, our authority, every word, every step in the name of Christ. Back to the Bible for the way of life.
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Welcome to this period of Bible study and thank you for listening. My name is Larson Plyler and this is the Back to the Bible radio program. And we are thankful for this opportunity to share with you in a consideration of God's Word. If you have questions about what we teach on this program or if you find resources in other places and you have questions about those, we would be happy to talk to you about those kinds of things. We want to be open and we want to be available to talk about God's Word. And if you have questions, especially about what we say, if there's something that's not clear, if there's something that you think is not true, then we want to speak to that, we want to address that. And it may very well be that it would just be a conversation with the two of us or perhaps it's something that I need to address on the program and I don't know, but it may very well be that there's something that I need to change in what I'm saying and I need to make public correction of that. Or perhaps we can work to come to a better understanding together. We are thankful that we have this means and we want to use it in the very best way possible. And I think that demands that we make every effort, first of all to tell the truth and then second of all to be as clear as possible when we're doing that. And if we fall short of the truth, then that's a real problem. If we fall short of being clear, that's a pretty big problem. And I want to make sure that we have both, as accurate as we can be, as clear as we can be, because we want to please God in our efforts here. Thank you for listening. Is it okay for me to make mention of a project that I have been working on and now is completed? I have written a book and it is now available. It's been published through the Truth Books organization. It's available at the CEI Bookstore at Athens. That's the primary place where it would be available and for you to get a copy. You could find it at truthbooks.com truthbooks.com and the book is called Anchors in a Sea of Questions. Now my goal here is not to self promote. I do have a program where I am trying to promote that and want people to listen, but I don't want to do it out of any self promotion, I believe that it will help people anchor themselves in a world where there are lots of questions that are raised. Let me tell you what I was thinking as I wrote the book. I was thinking about my four children and the fact that I don't know all the questions that they're going to have, and I don't know the answer to all the questions that they're going to have for sure. But I know they're going to have questions and I know they're going to face challenges. And so I thought, what are some key things that I want them to be sure of so that when they have those questions, even as they work to find an answer, they don't have to throw everything out because they don't know the answer immediately. And there may even be things that they never know the answer to, especially this side of eternity. And so I wrote a few chapters on the idea of God and Jesus, the Bible, the church, and following Jesus. And I wrote those chapters with this in mind. Here are anchors that if they can set in place whatever questions or challenges they face, they may not know the answer, but they can have an anchor set. And so I don't know, but that it might be a benefit, especially for young people, I hope, who are going off to college or who are trying to make their faith their own, or who are dealing with challenges for the first time. I hope that it would be valuable to those who are trying to teach and guide young people to help them when they do have fundamental questions that they can address those. I hope it's valuable and I have had good folks encourage me all along the way. And if it's valuable to God, be the glory. And if it's not valuable, then perhaps it'll work as fire kindling. I want you to think about purchasing that book. Not for my monetary sake. It will be no benefit to me. I'm sure that there will be a percentage that they will send me, but it will be used for the work. And if that's the case, I have no idea what that's going to look like. But what I want you to do is see if it's a benefit. And if it is, then I would like your feedback because there is more work along those lines that I would like to do, but I don't want to do it in a way that's not good and not helpful. And so I'd love to hear back. It's not available on our website yet, but I will put a link there as well so that you will be able to just go to our website backtothebiblepodcast.com and you'll be able to get there. But it's called Anchors in a Sea of Questions. So if you'll just go to the truthbooks.com website, just type in cei bookstore truthbooks.com then you can just search for my name, Larson, Plyler, or you can search for the title Anchors in a Sea of Questions. I probably spent too long talking about that, but that's been something that's been in the works for almost a decade, I guess. I remember teaching the first classes that idea. I think it was 2017 and it laid low for a while and then I've been working on it and appreciate the folks at Truth Books for putting that out there, appreciate my wife Lydia, who did a lot of the reading and the editing, the proofreading. But when you're proofreading, for me, there's a lot of proofreading that has to be done. So any mistakes in it are of course my own and not hers. Alright, I want to turn our attention back to the idea of hell. And the reason that I want to do that is not because we want to celebrate necessarily the idea we don't want to celebrate for sure, the idea that there are going to be people there. And we'll talk more about that in a bit. But I do want to talk about it because God wants us to talk about it, because he wants us to be motivated to not be separated from him forever. Jesus talked about it. And I'm not just talking about it because I have to. I'm talking about it because Jesus, who is the very embodiment, the very picture of love, says, we need to be talking about this. We need to be warned about this. This is one of those things. I don't have a chapter about hell in the book that I wrote. But what I do is I talk about God and I talk about Jesus and I say, if there is a God, and if Jesus died and rose from the dead, then I may not have all the answers about the how and the why of hell, but I can trust God that He is the Creator. I can trust Jesus that He is the resurrected, one redeeming Lord. And if they can talk about hell and can maintain their love and their holiness, then indeed, even in the places where I don't have the full capacity to answer all the questions, then I can say, I'll trust God, I'll trust the Lord. I may mention, as we finished up our time in the first lesson, that there are Several New Testament words that are translated hell. And I do want to just mention those very briefly. Again, the first word that in the King James, at least, that is sometimes translated as hell, I think really should be translated as Hades. And we mentioned that. And that is not a reason not to use the King James Version, for example, but it is something to be aware of, because there are some passages that I think are a little bit more difficult to understand if you're thinking about a place of eternal punishment versus the holding place of the dead. For example, in Acts chapter two, when Jesus dies, it says that he went down into hell. Well, the word there is Hades, and that is he went to the holding place of the dead, which is very different than saying he went to eternal punishment for a period of time. Now, there is a word tartaro, that's only used once in First Peter, chapter two and verse four. But it is talked about there as a place of judgment for spiritual beings, for the angels especially. And I take it to be that that is talking about hell using a different word, because the word that is used for hell, gehenna, used 12 times in the New Testament, 11 times by Jesus, does refer also to a place of eternal punishment. And it is the place that is prepared for the devil and his angels. Now, there are other places that refer to the punishment of the wicked, but don't use the word hell. For example, we're going to spend some time today talking about Second Thessalonians chapter one. Other passages don't use those words, but they still refer to the fate of the wicked. I think that's the case in Matthew chapter 25, where he talks about dividing those on the right and the left, the sheep from the goats, eternal punishment, eternal life. And it's true in Second Thessalonians chapter one. Now, Gehenna, that word that is used, referred to the place of the Valley of Hinnom. And I know I made mention of this last time, but what I want you to understand is that the Valley of Hinnom was a term in their mind that was intended to just communicate a horrific, terrible, awful place. It was a place where human sacrifices had been made and it became a burning garbage pit. It was outside of the city. Now, this image is what's being used. And some people will say, well, we can just dismiss what Jesus has to say about hell, because he was just talking about a garbage pit. He was just saying, don't end up in the Valley of Hinnom. Well, I don't want to go to the Valley of Hinnom. I mean, it might be interesting to see, so that I could talk about this, but I don't want to end up in that. I hope you don't either. But that's not what Jesus is focusing on. Because what we see is that Jesus warns about the Valley of Hinnom not just as a place where we might face physical pain, but where we would face soul pain, where we would face pain beyond the pain of body and even of physical death. Just think about some of the things that Jesus has to say about it. He says, if your right eye offends, you pluck it out. If your right hand offends, you pluck it out. Because it's better to enter into life maimed than to enter hell whole. Well, it's got to be pretty serious for us to go through that kind of pain and suffering. And of course, Jesus is being hyperbolic there, but notice how serious this is. Now, when Jesus says, I think the key passage along these lines would be Matthew, chapter 10, verse 28, where he says, don't fear the one who can kill the body, but fear the one who can kill both body and soul in hell in Gehenna. Now, how is God destroying body and soul in a literal garbage dump? Well, that's not the point, is it? The point is that Jesus is using a horrific scene. He's using a horrific image in order to communicate to them a awful, terrible, horrific thing. Now, what I want you to consider is that there are other passages. There are other words that are also imagery words. So, for example, think about paradise. When Jesus talks about paradise, what is he referring to? Well, the word there is literally the idea of a beautiful garden. But when we think of the word paradise, perhaps we are thinking about the place of the dead, of the righteous. You think about Zion. You know, sometimes we sing songs of we're marching to Zion, O Zion, lovely Zion, I long to dwell in thee. Those ideas are the city Jerusalem was first identified as Zion. And so the garden or this city of God. Those are images that we use to talk about the place where we want to go. Now, let me make mention here, there will indeed be people there. In second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 7 through 9. There, Paul talks about the fact that they will go away into eternal punishment, away from the glory of the Lord and from the presence of his mind. Now, hell is just punishment and it is just suffering. When I say just, I don't mean only. I mean it is righteous. It is just. And the idea there is that there will be some who will Doubt God here, that that would be just or right. Now, again, let me emphasize this. Whatever the explanation is, I may not be able to satisfy your mind in explaining that it is just and right. You might say, I just can't wrap my head around that. Alright? I can't wrap my head around God. I can't wrap my head around the God of all the universe, embodying Himself in the person of Jesus Christ and then being resurrected to reign as Lord. That just blows my mind. It exceeds my capacity to understand all of the way that that works. Was Jesus fully man and fully God? Yes. How is that possible? I am limited in my capacity. But what I do know is that God is faithful, he is righteous, and that he loves you and me. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. We must allow God to determine what is just and not try to dictate to him. Nobody's going to go to hell arbitrarily because refusing salvation is our choice. We will be lost only if we deny the will of God. God created hell, but it is not his will that you go there. Now sometimes people say, you mean God will allow something to happen that's against his will? Yes, yes. And maybe that seems like I'm making God weak or that I'm making God small. That is not true. God made Adam and Eve and it was against his will that they eat of the tree. And they did. And we see throughout Scripture God's will for the people of Israel. We see it continually being thwarted and pushed against. God's will is not always done. Now his ultimate purpose is always accomplished and he will have a people of his own. But along the way, people continue to make decisions, make choices that leads them to death and not to life. There are going to be people in hell. And the Bible describes it as worse than being drowned, worse than being maimed. Verse 43 of Mark 9, and that it never ends In Matthew 8, verse 12, 1342, verse 50 talks about the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. I think that passage in Mark 13 is important to look at because what we have here is we have a parable of the righteous and the wicked. And this is how that parable is completed. Verse 41. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks. And those who commit lawlessness and will throw them into the fiery furnace in that place There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear letters, let him hear. Do you see that division? Now, the suffering is conscious suffering. If not, how could it be worse than death? How could it be worse than earthly suffering? How could it be filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth? How could it be a place of misery if we just go to sleep and we don't ever wake up? You know, the Bible describes hell as destruction in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and verse 9. And I really think that this passage, we could just do a textual study of this and make cross references and get a lot of insight into what we're talking about. Verse 9 of 2 Thessalonians 1, talking about those who don't know God and who do not obey the gospel and what they will receive at the second coming. The text there says, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his mind. Now, there is a position that is called conditionalism or annihilationism. And it says that rather than suffering being eternal, that the destruction here is being annihilated. And the word destruction, maybe we would use that to talk about the. The blowing up of a building. It's being destroyed, it's facing destruction. And we would say, see, it ceases to exist. There was a man named Ed Fudge. He wrote a book called the Fire that Consumes that was probably one of the primary advocates of this view. And the text there he wrote, he said, what took my breath more than once is that the Scripture so consistently and emphatically teaches that the nature of everlasting punishment is utter extinction into oblivion forever. Now where is he getting that idea? Where is he getting the idea that eternal punishment is utter extinction into oblivion forever? You might say, where is he getting that from Scripture? He's getting it from his interpretation of, of the word destruction. The word destruction does not refer to annihilation in the Scripture. It refers to a person or a thing that has lost the essence of its nature or its function. As far as I can tell, it is never used, never used to talk about something that ceases to exist. The destruction is never talked about, something that is annihilated. For example, in Ezekiel 6:14 and in verse 14, chapter 14, verse 16 in the Septuagint, that word for destruction is used. And it's used there to talk about barren land, land that will not grow food. Now think about that. It's not that the land ceases to exist, it's still there. You could still use it for something, but it won't grow food. It will not accomplish its proper purpose. In Matthew chapter 26 and verse 8 and Mark 14:4, perhaps you remember this scene where the woman comes and she pours out the ointment on Jesus. The disciples, especially Judas, seems to be angry and says that this ointment was wasted. That's the idea of this very word. It was not that that stuff ceased to exist. It was, you could smell it on Jesus, but that it was not used, they were saying for its proper purpose, that it was wasted. The idea. In Luke 5, perhaps you remember Luke 5:37, there's the parable of the new wine being poured into old wineskins. And Jesus warns against that because in the natural expansion of the grape juice, it would expand and the wineskin would burst. It would no longer be usable. The text there describes that as the wineskins being destroyed. The very same word that's used in 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 9, it is used to describe the lost coin. In Luke 15, in verse 9, when the woman has the ten coins and loses one, that lost coin, the word lost there is the same word as is used to talk about destruction. And also in the world after the flood, second Peter 3. 6 says that world was destroyed. Now let me ask you this. When that world was destroyed, did it cease to exist? No, we are still on that planet. We're still on that globe. It was not, not did not cease to exist, but it was destroyed. It did ceased to be what it was, what it was supposed to be. Now, the text here, all of these verses show us that in none of these cases do the objects cease to exist. They cease to be useful, to exist in their original intended state. Now, Vines Dictionary, an older Bible dictionary, says the idea is not extinction, but ruin. Loss, not of being, but of well being. That's utter loss, ruin, waste. One writer said that that word, Apollemi, in the New Testament never means annihilation. Now somebody would say, how can you talk about living in hell? I don't know that that's the word I would use. I think I would talk about it as eternal death, eternal separation. That's the way it seems to be described in the script. You know, there's a difference between living and existing and death. Throughout the Scriptures is used to describe separation, separation of the body from the spirit. And I think that's the very sense in which we talk about hell as death. It is Separation, it's banishment. In Matthew 7:21, when those people stand before Jesus and they say, lord, Lord. And he will say, why do you say to me, lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say? And they say, did we not cast out demons and in your name prophesy and do many wonderful works? And then I will say unto them, Jesus says, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness, depart. 2nd Thessalonians 1, verse 9. They will be away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. God's active judgment will be to separate us from everything except his wrath and and judgment. And it will be worse than simply non existence. I want you to think about this passage along those lines. In Matthew chapter 26, in verse 24, Jesus is referring to Judas, the one who would betray him. And he says, Matthew chapter 26:24, that it would be better if he had never been born. Now, Ed Fudge in his book the Fire that Consumes says that the idea of hell is that we will cease to exist. But my question is, if Judas ceased to exist in eternity, then why would it have been better for him not to have been born? Because if he just goes out of existence, he is not affected by that. It would be as if he had never been born. Don't you think if you go out of existence? Now, in his book the Fire that Consumes, he uses that word consumption. There. The fire that consumes our God is a consuming fire, referencing Hebrews chapter 10. And he almost always refers to it as eating. But you know, when you eat something, you not talking about annihilating. When you're talking about consuming it, you're talking about swallowing it. And the idea of our God being a consuming fire is. It's the idea of being engulfed in it or a fire being consuming, of judgment being consuming. So all that is to say is that we are not talking about conditionalism or annihilationism, and we need to understand that hell is eternal. Now why does it matter? Notice In Matthew chapter 25 and verses 41 and 46, he talks about eternal life and eternal punishment, that it's everlasting fire. Now why does it matter if the fire is eternal, if the suffering is not? Both refer to an eternally experienced state. Now, the word for punishment doesn't indicate unconsciousness, but torment. In Revelation 14, verses 10 and 11, the passage There talks about the smoke going on forever and ever. But it's not just the smoke. The torment is going on. They have no rest day or night. Well, there's more to say about all of this. But until next time, we bid you a pleasant good day.
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Back to the Bible. Let it be our plea. God's word alone, our authority, every word, every step. In the name of Christ. Back to the Bible. For the way of life.