How Could We Have Been So Wrong?

“Go to hell!”

That's what one senator snapped at another during a heated debate.  “Mr. Chairman!” the offended target yelped, appealing to the Senate president for help.  After a thoughtful pause the chairman looked up from a volume he had been leafing through and dryly replied, “I looked in the rule book.  You don’t have to go.” 

That quick-witted chairman was future president Calvin Coolidge.

I’ve looked in the book and hell isn’t forever.  Ok, I know that goes against the traditional majority view.  And how could everyone have been so wrong for so long?  That’s a fair question.  And a common one.  If the Bible really doesn’t teach endless torment, how could so many Bible readers and teachers have embraced and perpetuated it all this time?

Absorption.  That’s the answer.  

I believed in endless torment for many years, but I never actually embraced it- I absorbed it.  I can’t remember the first time I learned of hell.  Can you?  Hell as a place of eternal agony was an unquestioned (and unquestionable) truth.  No one had to prove it; why would anyone doubt it? 

We Christians subconsciously soaked up the specifics and assumed their veracity as easily as a sponge absorbs water.  This dogma is deep-dyed in our doctrinal DNA.  It’s in the bone marrow, hard drive, and warp and woof of our Christian consciousness.   

 

And, admittedly, there are phrases, images, and texts in the Bible that seem to support our certainty- the rich man and Lazarus; the lake of fire; weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth; unending smoke, undying worms and unquenchable fire- all indelibly engrafted in our creedal core. 

Like slides in a vintage View Master, these vivid pictures click one after another on a virtual river ride through Dante’s Inferno.  This is our hell.  If an incensed senator tells you to go there, this is the place he has in mind. 

Eternal conscious torment is one of the few doctrines that hundreds of diverse Christian sects have held in common.  Followers of Jesus might divide over mode of baptism (dippers, dunkers, and dousers), debate the meaning of grace (hypers, hard shells, and free willers), split prophetic hairs (pre-, post-, and a-), and fall out over the color of the carpet, but they’re fiercely united on the duration of damnation.

  

How are they wrong?  How was I wrong?  Other chapters will carefully address each and every fiery phrase, infernal image, and alleged proof text, but for now I will simply tell you how it was that I was wrong. 

After over twenty years of faithfully upholding the traditional view, and with a pillow soaked with tears of agonizing contemplation (I took it very seriously), I privately wrestled for ten more years with increasing doubts of hell’s eternality. With complete confidence in the final authority of Scripture, I diligently searched to see "whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11).  

My journey was a very individual and isolated one- I hid my uncertainty and concealed my search.  And looking back, I think that was a good thing because it kept me free from external influences that could call in question what I believe now is an unbiased and entirely Biblical conclusion.  I joined no group, read no book, felt no pressure (except not to tell anybody).  I simply wanted to know, and wanting to know is the essential first step.  

The following discoveries led to my ultimate departure from what I had absorbed and assumed: 

• I could find no Scriptural validation for the immortality of the soul, but rather abundant testimony against it.  

• I found that the Bible clearly and consistently taught that the wicked will perish, burn up, die, be destroyed, consumed, and be no more.  

• I was overwhelmed with the continual presentation of eternal, everlasting life as the gift of God given only to those in Christ, and this in constant contrast to the fate of the wicked who would finally and truly perish.

But as these scriptural revelations began to unravel my “orthodoxy”, I didn’t entirely bolt the traditional fold.  What about the rich man?  Or torment day and night?  Everlasting punishment?  And all the other standard references from any statement of faith?  I began to examine them one by one, and quickly realized the blinding power of absorbed assumptions.  Once the positive truth of conditional immortality was understood, it took little more than a reflective glance to see that all of our proof texts for endless torment did nothing to contradict that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

This is not to say that I only gave it a reflective glance.  Au contraire, as you will see in this book, I sifted through the smoke, sorted through the haze, and overturned every rock.   Again, I wanted to know.  And with confidence that the Bible does not contradict itself, I was blessed and impressed to see how completely consistent the Scriptures are!

How was it that I was wrong?  For one, I was quite sure that the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) taught endless torment.  But does this story negate the plain teaching of John 3:16?  Not at all. Even if it were a literal lid-lifting peek into hell, it is silent as to the duration of the final punishment.  Later we will delve as deep and wide as the “great gulf fixed” into this satirical parable aimed at covetous Pharisees, but for now be aware that there is nary a word about how long.  Without any testimony as to time, Luke 16 gives no evidence for timeless.  None.

How was it that I was wrong?  I was pretty certain "Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched" demanded unending torture.  But does this phrase neutralize “able to destroy both soul and body in hell”?  No, it confirms it.  In Mark (9:44, 46, 48) Jesus is directly quoting Isaiah 66:24 concerning "carcases" in the context of when “the LORD will come with fire” (66:15) and the wicked will be "consumed together (v. 17).”  Christ’s warning gives the obvious contrast between “enter into life” (Mark 9:43, 45) or “be cast into hell”, and “that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29, 30).  Life or perish- sounds like a restatement of John 3:16, not a witness to perpetual pain.  And it’s undying worms and unquenchable fire, not undying souls and unquenchable sinners. 

How was it that I was wrong?  I was firmly convinced that “weeping and gnashing of teeth” bore witness of ongoing agony.  But this does not take place in hell but rather at the judgment “when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:28).  It happens in the context of being cast into “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30) and being “cut asunder” (Matthew 24:51), hardly a depiction of burning forever.  And, as with Luke 16, there is nothing in these texts about how long.

And so it goes with other proof texts. Ever-rising smoke always bears witness to complete consumption (Sodom- Genesis 19:28; Idumea- Isaiah 34:10; Babylon- Revelation 18:21; 19:3), not continual torment. The "punishment" is "everlasting" (Matt. 25:46), but what is the punishment?  It's punishment, not punishing, and is in contrast to "life eternal." Scripture consistently defines that punishment as "everlasting destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Matthew 7:13; Romans 9:22; Philippians 3:19; Cf. Job 21:30; 2 Peter 2:9, 3:7), not endless agony.  The result is everlasting, not the process.

The last and most figurative book in the Bible is an apocalyptic picture book and does not contradict the literal language of God's jurisprudence in the previous sixty-five, but clearly contrasts those who are written in the “book of life” from those who "have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death" (Cf. Revelation 20:6, 15, 21:8).  And then "there shall be no more death" (Revelation 21:4).  And the day and night torment of beast worshippers in Revelation 14 places that supposed hell in heaven "in the presence of the holy angels, and… of the Lamb" (v. 10) six whole chapters before the "great white throne" judgment.

These are short, summary answers.  Each of these will have at least an entire chapter devoted to a thorough and honest examination.  During my search I began to discreetly share these discoveries with trusted friends, and eventually confessed that I was becoming persuaded that "conditional immortality" is true. Further intense study continued to sway until I was fully convinced, not by the writings of men, but by the powerful and plain words of God:

• The fact that God is a consuming fire, and that when the fire of God fell in judgment it always consumed its prey, was impressive.  

• The silence in the prophets and epistles concerning torment in Hell (whether Sheol, Hades, or Gehenna) was compelling.  

• That the penalty for sin as revealed in the New Testament, the sacrifices for sin required in the Old, and the vicarious atonement for sin accomplished by Christ, all comprehensively pointed to death- a miserable end of life, not an endless life in misery- was confirming.

• The persistent pictures in Scripture of chaff, stubble, tares, thorns, and dried branches being completely devoured, consumed, and burned up in unquenchable, eternal fire was unmistakably clear (chaff is not indestructible, especially in fire that is unquenchable).  

• That the Scriptural testimony is that God's holiness compels His mercy, not His wrath, caused me to praise the Just Judge Who has given such a wonderful written revelation of His righteous character.  

• But it was an exhaustive cataloging of every single Scriptural usage of some form of perish (154 times) that was conclusive beyond doubt, revealing that the Divine Author never used any such word to describe a process without an understood end, and certainly not to describe endless torment.

I've been through four stages of departure from the traditional dogma to an embracing of conditional immortality: (1) private questioning; (2) growing persuasion; (3) conclusive certainty; (4) enthusiastic advocacy. Though I am both grieved and puzzled by the fiery antagonism and smoky arguments of many ardent defenders of perpetual torture, I am nevertheless thankful for any opportunity to share with others what I genuinely believe is the truth of Scripture.  That, of course, is the purpose of this book.

So how could we have been so wrong?  It was our absorption of creedal assumptions reinforced by alleged proof texts.  No doubt endless torment has been the traditional view of the majority, but that majority is not measured by noble Bereans who searched to see if it were so, but by creedal parrots who were sure they knew what the Bible meant before they ever carefully read what it actually said. 

I mean no unkind slight- for most it was innocent ignorance, not a willful rejection of  truth.  I should know-  I was one of them.  And that’s exactly why I was so wrong.  Until I looked in the book.