Punishment before Judgment?

Grandma Abby dipped snuff. She loved to read good books, write long letters, and gum a pinch of fine Scottish tobacco. 

We know so much about her because thirty-four of those long letters survived for posterity. Born in London in 1696 she grew up in colonial New York City after her German parents crossed the big pond. Motherless at eleven, married at sixteen, mother to nine and Grandmother to a double dozen, Abby died in her sixtieth year.    

Does punishment precede judgment? Adherents of endless torment think so. They believe unbelievers have been burning for hundreds, even thousands of years, and if the day of judgment were today, they would have burned for that long before its solemn convening. 

According to their view, not only did Grandma Abby go immediately to hell upon her last breath, she also has been tormented non-stop ever since.  

This means Abby was already unbearably burning for over four times her lifespan and nearly two incomprehensibly excruciating centuries when Adolph Hitler joined her. What an unfathomable injustice if she were really suffering that long before the maniacal orchestrator of the slaughter of her people felt the first sting of fire? Yes, Grandma Abby was a devout Jew. She tolerated Christians, but wasn’t one, and broke off contact with her oldest daughter for marrying one.  

I’m well aware that a sentimental appeal is especially unappealing to most traditional apologists. But I make no apologies. This entire book is an appeal to the Scriptures, so I will happily make an appeal here on behalf of Grandma Abby. 

Yet while my opponents rely on their handful of proof texts, absorbed assumptions, and creedal cliches, they also repeatedly make a sentimental argument. An inverse one, but sentimental nonetheless. And I’ve heard them ardently make it many a time. 

Their sentimentality is also for grandmas. I ask why would God have grandmas like Abby tormented for so long before the judgment, and without end afterward. Of course, I don’t believe God will have them tormented at all. Traditionalists ask how someone like Hitler could murder so many grandmothers and not be tormented eternally. They have such a soft heart for the innocent Jewish grandmas that they are incensed at the thought that Hitler could get off easy. That wouldn’t be justice. 

It’s a weirdly bewildering equation that defenders of endless torment are so rightly repulsed that a hideous Hitler could eliminate so many a Grandma Abby, but have no such revulsion that God will have her be tormented for ever and ever... eternally... without end… on and on and on and...          

And they’re equally certain she has already been and is still being tormented long before the judgment day. But again, are people punished before being judged? That is my question. If so, the day of judgment is not so dreadful, but rather a brief reprieve between the jail of hell and prison of the lake of fire.   

Scripture, however, teaches that the day of judgment is the day of punishment. Punishment is not before the judgment; punishment is at the judgment. Peter sufficiently summarizes: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished" (2 Peter 2:9). Not to be sentenced, but to be punished. This truth smokes out the fallacy of punishment before the day of judgment, and the myth of endless torment afterwards. The unjust will be punished at the day of judgment.

The day of wrath is the day of judgment- they are one and the same: “after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:5); “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition (destruction) of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7). Wrath and destruction is the judgment of that day. This not only makes sense, it is the sense of the wording of scripture. Punishment before judgment makes no sense. 

Hebrews 9:27, “As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” is often quoted in sermons, but alone, separated from verse 28: “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” 

 The parallels would be that “it is appointed unto men once to die” and “So Christ was once offered;” and “after this the judgment” with “he shall appear the second time.” The judgment happens at His appearing. 

Notice that it is not “it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the punishment.” There is a consistent pattern in these passages that punishment does not come before judgment. And judgment comes when Christ appears. I know of no one who would contend that there is some kind of individual private judgment immediately after the unjust take their last breath that sentences them to the punishment of hell fire. But anyone who believes the Bible at all knows it speaks of a future and final judgment. And that day of judgment is when the dead are raised and Christ appears.

Paul says “that day” is “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe... in that day. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).” It is that day when unbelievers are “punished with everlasting destruction.”  

Proponents of perpetual pain invariably miss this because they separate the punishment from “that day.” They oddly suppose that Christ comes in flaming fire to take vengeance but doesn't take it, that His being revealed from heaven with his mighty angels is just a flair for the dramatic, that the glory of his power is only relative to his absence, and that the punishment actually comes afterward and away from his presence. 

This interpretation is in spite of the fact we are told exactly when this happens - “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed… when he shall come.” A “when” is on either side surrounding the punishment. He is very present! This punishment does not take place away from his presence, but from his very presence and the glory of his power. The punishment happens when Christ comes in judgment. 

Peter speaks the same way: “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men… the day of the Lord will come… the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:10. 12).  

Psalm 50 sounds so very much like Peter and Paul in describing a coming judgment: 

“Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself” (Psalm 50:3-6). 

The judge is executor; the punishment is at the judgment and is the judgment; the punishment is not before, separate from, or ongoing after the judgment.  

The fallen angels also await the judgment: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). It is 'the judgment of the great day" - that great day brings the judgment. 

The context of the unjust being “reserved unto the day of judgment to be punished” says the same about the angels: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment” (2 Peter 2:4). Hell is a dark holding cell, not a fiery torture chamber. 

Consider the consistency of these texts:

to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished

treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God

reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men

reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day

delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment

While awaiting the judgment, they are “reserved”, not tormented; it’s darkness, not fiery flames. Punished, wrath, fire, and perdition (destruction) are words describing the future day of judgment, not an intermediate state beforehand. If in any of these cases punishment was already taking place, these texts wouldn’t make any sense.

Revelation paints the same picture of punishment at the judgment, not before: “Death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works” (Revelation 20:13). They deliver the dead, not the tormented. And they deliver the dead to be judged. Consistent with the other passages, the punishment of the “lake which burneth with fire and brimstone... which is the second death” happens at the “great white throne” judgment. "Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:11-15; 21:8). 

Again, punishment is at the judgment. The dead are raised, judged, cast into the fire, and die the second death. This is so very consistent with the whole of Scripture that it not only gives witness to one coherent interpretation, but also bears testimony to one Divine author.

But how did we miss this? How did we persist in ignoring the profusion of passages showing that the coming “day of the Lord” is the very day of judgment and punishment? What would that even be talking about if not? How did we insist that punishment takes place before the judgment, and that a certain Jewish Grandma has been suffering all this time? 

It’s time we talk about a certain Jewish rich man.