This is confirmed in:
Mark 9:43, "And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell [Gehenna] to the unquenchable fire" (ESV).
Gehenna was used symbolically by Jesus as the final place of torment for unbelievers who will go to this place of unquenchable fire. There is no end to it. We can deal with the nature of this fire in another thread.
The Gehenna Valley was thus a place of burning sewage, burning flesh, and garbage. Maggots and worms crawled through the waste, and the smoke smelled strong and sickening (Isaiah 30:33). It was a place utterly filthy, disgusting and repulsive to the nose and eyes. Gehenna presented such a vivid image that Christ used it as a symbolic depiction of hell: a place of eternal torment and constant uncleanness, where the fires never ceased burning and the worms never stopped crawling (Matthew 10:28; Mark 9:47–48) [source:
What is Gehenna?]
(ESV) confirms that Gehenna, the final location of unbelievers, is a place (by analogy) where the worm does not die and the fire does not go out - it is unquenchable. There is no end to it.
Oz
v. 49 "For everyone will be salted with fire."
Nothing there says tortures are endless. Instead it refers to a fire and worm. And a fire that is not quenched can end or burn out on it's own, as proven by:
"Let us see how the word "asbestos (unquenchable) was used by the Greeks. Strabo calls it the lamp in the Parthenon, and Plutarch calls the sacred fire of a temple "unquenchable," though they were extinguished long ago. Josephus, the Jewish Priest who saw the destruction of Jerusalem says that the fire on the altar of the temple at Jerusalem was "always unquenchable" abeston aei, yet he was there when the fire on the altar was forever extinguished. Eusibius, the church historian who lived in Constantine's day says that certain martyrs of Alexandria "were burned in unquenchable fire." The fire was put out within an hour! Homer speaks of "unquenchable laughter" asbestos gelos, (Iliad, I: 599)"
Bible Threatening Explained
Nothing there says they stay in Gehenna for endless ages, so can't come out. Neither does it say that while in Gehenna there is no salvation. In the book of Revelation the gates into the city of God are always open. God says He is making "all" new (21:5).
Unquenchabe is limited not endless...ancient examples given here:
A key to Universalism
"Mark 9:43: "into Gehenna, into the unextinguished fire." First, the word "unquenchable" in the Bible is translated from the Greek word asbestos which simply means "not quenched." In itself, that is not the same as "not ABLE to be quenched" or "unquenchable." It is similar to God's judgments being without appeal "until they have finished all his plans:"
"The fierce anger of the LORD will not diminish until it has finished all his plans. In the days to come, you will understand all this.."(Jer 30:24)."
As for an immortal worm that never dies, some ECT commentators say it refers to the immortal soul. ECTers can't agree amongst themselves what it means & Jesus didn't elaborate. In Isaiah 66 the worm is spoken of in the same verse that speaks of "corpses". So, they could be eating dead bodies during the millennial age eon.
"Perhaps unbeknownst to many traditionalists who cite this verse...Jesus is quoting Isaiah 66:24 here, in which it is said explicitly that it is corpses being consumed by fire and maggots—not living beings. Those traditionalists who are aware of this nevertheless insist that the worm is depicted as never dying and the fire as never going out. But this is not what these idioms communicate."
"The phrase “does not die” is used several times in the Hebrew scripture and does not mean will never die (Genesis 42:20; Exodus 30:20; Jeremiah 38:24). It means that someone or something will not die at a particular time or in a particular context."
how do people who believe in eternal torture in fire
So such references could be about eating sinners sins or evil flesh nature till it is gone.
"Interesting aside, for what it may mean to anyone... Maggots are making a comeback in modern medicine. They gently debride wounds in a way no surgeon, however subtle, could possibly achieve. (
Medical Maggots™ (maggot therapy, maggot debridement therapy, MDT, biotherapy, biosurgery, biodebridement, larval therapy) | Monarch Labs - Advanced Wound BioSurgery) They nibble away the dead and decaying cells, allowing healthy, new, regenerated cells to thrive instead. Maggots only eat dead tissue, leaving the living tissue to thrive. I think there's a big parallel there, but maybe I'm taking the "book of nature" to extremes. My husband's doctor at Mayo told me they had them there, available by prescription only--special hygienic ones, of course! :lol: "
"All these things we consider to be bad (by knee-jerk reaction at least) can also be seen as good--judgment, brimstone (aka sulfur & also used in medicine then and now), even maggots. Fire also is used in scripture as symbolic of purification--and we mustn't forget the nature of our God, who is, we're told, "a consuming fire."
Login
"Now, salt too, just as the divine fire, is associated with the eschatological test in Mark 9:49, a text I have already analysed, where this fire is presented as purifying and performing the disinfecting function of salt: “all will be salted by this fire,” if they have lost their salt in this life." (Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Brill, 2013. 890 pp., p.53)
"Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there [Gehenna] until you have paid up the last cent. The word - until - unmistakably confirms Gehenna is of a limited duration. Once the penalty is exacted, release follows, but not before. Note He addressed these words to a mixed audience of believers and unbelievers (Mt. 5:1;7:28; 8:1). (See also Mt. 18:34-35)."
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf
Jn.1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
John 12:32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Minimal Statement of Faith for Evangelical Universalists
Statement of Faith -- Please Read
7 Myths About Universalism
7 Myths About Universalism
The Evangelical Universalist: Responses to evangelical objections to the orthodoxy of universalism
The Evangelical Universalist: Will Hitler be Saved?
The Evangelical Universalist: How Universalism Has Impacted my Life
