The Doctrine of Eternal Torture in Hell

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[Bible Highlighter]

Infants and children live ungodly? So you don't have a problem with God killing men, women, children, infants, old and young with fire, which must have been agonizing. Your only objection is if it lasts a long time.

But this life is just a vapor. It is just a stage. A show. A holodeck. Temporary or brief pain of this shell or temple or body passing away for a baby or child for them to be in God's loving arms is but a drop in the bucket. It is not unjust for God to put brief pain upon those who appear innocent to us (Because all have sinned in Adam). For there is a difference between a person being tortured in prison their whole life for J-walking versus say a "murderer/ rapist" in being treated in a loving in good way as a part of their evil. Fair justice is about the punishment fitting the crime. It is the same if you do good. God will reward everyone according to their works. If you do good, you will be rewarded. Not every true believer will have the same rewards. Why should we expect it to be any different for the reverse of the wicked in their doing evil? Should not their punishment fit the crime? Would you consider it wrong for parents to torture their child for the rest of their child's life if they lied once to them? Now, imagine them doing that for all eternity. Would you consider them to be loving parents if they did that?

Also, if ECT (Eternal Concious Torment) was true, then abortion should be promoted. For why would you want to take the chance on your child growing up to burn in the Lake of Fire for all eternity?

In fact, there are parents out there who have killed their children thinking they would spare them the horrors of hell. But would they have done this to their children if they truly believed that the wicked will be destroyed and given fair justice? I doubt it.


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[Bible Highlighter]

Jonah was cast into the sea and prayed from hell.
Days later, his soul was put back in his body as a
result of that prayer.
Then Jonah prays again - speaking about his first prayer
when he was in hell -dead.
He tells how God had heard him.
Jonah is not right then asking God to hear him from hell.

No. Jesus compared his being in the heart of the Earth (Sheol or the realm of the dead) with Jonah being in the whale's belly. The soul is the core of WHO a person is. The body is just a shell. If Jonah's soul was in the heart of the Earth and his body was in the whale's belly, then Jonah was technically not in the whale's belly but he was elsewhere. Jesus would have said, as Jonah's soul was in the heart of the Earth while his body laid in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the Earth. But Jesus did not say that, though.


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[vinsight4u]

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[MountainPine]

Hmmm.... interesting. I never thought of the story of Lazarus and the Rich-man in that way before. I do wish that this is true. But I always thought that this real and literal story (in regards to the after-life) that took place during the time of Moses and the prophets because Abraham tells the rich-man that that the rich-man's brothers have Moses and the prophets and that they are to hear them (versus hearing one who has rose from the dead). Abraham did not appear to treat his brothers as being dead and gone (or that they were among him in hell and or in Abraham's bosom). But I would like to hear your explanation on this (because it would help to reconcile the Scriptures in such a way that I never considered before).

Why does it matter when the story took place? Moses and the prophets still stand to this day (Matthew 5:17-19). This is obviously a future event due to the fact that Abraham is conscious, as the Bible records that only Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus were the only ones who never saw corruption.

Please take note that if what you say is true, and the dead do sleep until the resurrection, we have to address the fact that Jesus spoke to the spirits in prison while he was in the heart of the Earth (i.e. Sheol or the realm of the dead) for three days and three nights, too. Who are these spirits that Jesus preached to? Were they demons or they departed souls? If they are departed souls, then Jesus would have had to wake them up out of their slumber to preach to them.

You must be referring to 1 Peter 3:18-21. "Prison" refers to Tartarus, where the nefilim are being held for the day of judgment. he was preaching to them.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

God -is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

I am - the God of Abraham

When Jesus said this to the Sadducees, we have to understand that God's final plan for His people is for us to be alive in the end with God. They were criticizing Jesus thinking we were going to live forever in the afterlife as spirits marrying in heaven, etc. But the Scriptures teach that there will be a resurrection, though. This resurrection will take place for the saints whereby they will be upon a New Earth with God for all eternity. God is the God of the living and not the God of the dead. For the dead will perish. They will be no more. God is not going to be God of souls perishing for all eternity or bodies that are kept alive but yet burning in pain at the same time. The Scriptures say the wicked will be like corpses. These are not living people. Corpses are dead. The wicked will be no more. God is not the God of the wicked. And you have to say that He is the God of the wicked if they will live for all eternity. But God is not of the wicked. God will destroy and annihiate all evil. The wicked will be put under his feet and be like ashes. Dust that fades away with the wind.


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[Der Alte]

. . . In the original text of the 24th verse there is nothing to indicate whether the preposition should be “in” (this fire) or “from” it. The rich man is awaiting his punishment, at the edge of the flame but not yet in it. He is parched, not burning; a single drop of water is an extremely humble request for someone allegedly being consumed by fire. It is enough to moisten a man’s tongue but not enough to cool his burning flesh....

False information. The preposition in Luke 16:24 is "ἐν/en" which means "in" not "ἀπὸ/apo" which means "from."

Luke 16:24 καὶ αὐτὸς φωνήσας εἶπεν, Πάτερ Ἀβραάμ, ἐλέησόν με καὶ πέμψον Λάζαρον ἵνα βάψῃ τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ δακτύλου αὐτοῦ ὕδατος καὶ καταψύξῃ τὴν γλῶσσάν μου, ὅτι ὀδυνῶμαι ἐν τῇ φλογὶ ταύτῃ. ​

"Apo" occurs in vs. 21 in the phrase "ἀπὸ/from the rich man's table." There is no manuscript evidence for any variations or other readings of Lk 16:24.

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[Bible Highlighter]

Malachi 4:1 is about a day that will come and those that are
proud and do wickedly, shall be stubble..."

This is about people that still lived and never died. They
are still doing wickedly upon the earth.

But won't the righteous be stubble according to your interpretation too? That kind of undermines the whole passage if you ask me. For the point is about the wicked being stubble (not the righteous).

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[Der Alte]

Hell is the grave (sheol). According to the Bible, we all go to the grave when we die (Psalms 90:3, Psalms 104:29, Job 34:15). While we are dead, we are completely unconscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5). . . . Everlasting torment is not Biblical, it is purely a Church doctrine. The only way everlasting torment is possible is that the condemned will receive everlasting life in order to burn eternally, but the Bible makes it clear that everlasting life is not reserved for the wicked. God is not going to create new bodies that last forever for those who lived in sin. That is preposterous. . . .

Among the Jews in Israel before and during the time of Jesus was a belief in a place of everlasting torment of the wicked and they called it both sheol and gehinnom.

Jewish Encyclopedia, Gehenna
The place where children were sacrificed to the god Moloch was originally in the "valley of the son of Hinnom," to the south of Jerusalem (Josh. xv. 8, passim; II Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. ii. 23; vii. 31-32; xix. 6, 13-14). For this reason the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for "hell." Hell, like paradise, was created by God (Sotah 22a); [Note, this is according to the ancient Jews, long before the Christian era, NOT the bias of Christian translators.]
It is assumed in general that sinners go to hell immediately after their death. The famous teacher Johanan b. Zakkai wept before his death because he did not know whether he would go to paradise or to hell (Ber. 28b). The pious go to paradise, and sinners to hell (B.M. 83b).
But as regards the heretics, etc., and Jeroboam, Nebat's son, hell shall pass away, but they shall not pass away" (R. H. 17a; comp. Shab. 33b). All that descend into Gehenna shall come up again, with the exception of three classes of men: those who have committed adultery, or shamed their neighbors, or vilified them (B. M. 58b).
As mentioned above, heretics and the Roman oppressors go to Gehenna, and the same fate awaits the Persians, the oppressors of the Babylonian Jews (Ber. 8b). When Nebuchadnezzar descended into hell, [Sheol] all its inhabitants were afraid that he was coming to rule over them (Shab. 149a; comp. Isa. xiv. 9-10). The Book of Enoch also says that it is chiefly the heathen who are to be cast into the fiery pool on the Day of Judgment (x. 6, xci. 9, et al). "The Lord, the Almighty, will punish them on the Day of Judgment by putting fire and worms into their flesh, so that they cry out with pain unto all eternity" (Judith xvi. 17). The sinners in Gehenna will be filled with pain when God puts back the souls into the dead bodies on the Day of Judgment, according to Isa. xxxiii. 11 (Sanh. 108b).
Link:Jewish Encyclopedia Online​

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Talmud -Tractate Rosh Hashanah Chapter 1.
The school of Hillel says: . . . but as for Minim, [follower of Jesus] informers and disbelievers, who deny the Torah, or Resurrection, or separate themselves from the congregation, or who inspire their fellowmen with dread of them, or who sin and cause others to sin, as did Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his followers, they all descend to Gehenna, and are judged there from generation to generation, as it is said [Isa. lxvi. 24]: "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men who have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." Even when Gehenna will be destroyed, they will not be consumed, as it is written [Psalms, xlix. 15]: "And their forms wasteth away in the nether world," which the sages comment upon to mean that their forms shall endure even when the grave is no more. Concerning them Hannah says [I Sam. ii. 10]: "The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces."
Link:Tract Rosh Hashana: Chapter I.​

When Jesus taught about,

• “Then shall he say … Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:” Matthew 25:41
• "go away into eternal punishment, Matthew 25:46"
• "the fire of hell where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die, Mark 9:43-48"
• "cast into a fiery furnace where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” Matthew 13:42, Matthew 13:50
• “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6
• “woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. ” Matthew 26:24​

These teachings tacitly reaffirmed and sanctioned the existing Jewish view of eternal hell. In Matt. 18:6, 26:24, see above, Jesus teaches that there is a fate worse than death or nonexistence. A fate worse than death is also mentioned in Hebrews 10:28-31.

Heb 10:28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.​

Jesus used the word death 17 times in the gospels, if He wanted to say eternal death in Matt 25:46, that is what He would have said but He didn’t, He said “eternal punishment.” The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, they knew that everybody died; rich, poor, young, old, good, bad, men, women, children, infants and knew that it had nothing to do with punishment and was permanent. When Jesus taught “eternal punishment” they would not have understood it as death, it would have meant something worse to them.
…..Jesus knew what the Jews, believed about hell. If the Jews were wrong, when Jesus taught about man’s eternal fate, such as eternal punishment, He would have corrected them. Jesus did not correct them, thus their teaching on hell must have been correct.
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The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. A.D. 1200). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources (Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 5 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-56], 4:2:1030). Also a more recent author holds a similar view (Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," Biblical Archeologist 49 [1986]: 189.
Source, Bibliotheca Sacra / July–September 1992
http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted...BSac-NT/Scharen-GenenaSyn-Pt1-BS.htm[/indent]
Note there is no “archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, [that Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump] in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources” If Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump there should be broken pottery, tools, utensils, bones, etc. but there is no such evidence.

“Gehenna is presented as diametrically opposed to ‘life’: it is better to enter life than to go to Gehenna. . .It is common practice, both in scholarly and less technical works, to associate the description of Gehenna with the supposedly contemporary garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom. This association often leads scholars to emphasize the destructive aspects of the judgment here depicted: fire burns until the object is completely consumed. Two particular problems may be noted in connection with this approach. First, there is no convincing evidence in the primary sources for the existence of a fiery rubbish dump in this location (in any case, a thorough investigation would be appreciated). Secondly, the significant background to this passage more probably lies in Jesus’ allusion to Isaiah 66:24.”
(“The Duration of Divine Judgment in the New Testament” in The Reader Must Understand edited by K. Brower and M. W. Ellion, p. 223, emphasis mine)
G. R. Beasley-Murray in Jesus and the Kingdom of God:
“Ge-Hinnom (Aramaic Ge-hinnam, hence the Greek Geenna), ‘The Valley of Hinnom,’ lay south of Jerusalem, immediately outside its walls. The notion, still referred to by some commentators, that the city’s rubbish was burned in this valley, has no further basis than a statement by the Jewish scholar Kimchi (sic) made about A.D. 1200; it is not attested in any ancient source.” (p. 376n.92)
http://www.btdf.org/forums/topic/20113-the-burning-garbage-dump-of-gehenna-is-a-myth/​

 

[Der Alte]

But won't the righteous be stubble according to your interpretation too? That kind of undermines the whole passage of you ask me. For the point is about the wicked being stubble (not the righteous).
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Malachi 4:1 is about what happens to people in this world on one day. They will be like stubble.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Why does it matter when the story took place?

It would explain how God does not torment the wicked who have been in hell for thousands of years vs. (versus) the wicked being tormented in hell for a shorter amount of time just because they live closer to the time of the resurrection and Judgment.

Currently I believe in a partial soul sleep. Meaning, I believe that the departed souls in Sheol experience both conciousness at certain times and sleep at other times.

Moses and the prophets still stand to this day (Matthew 5:17-19).

...as the Bible records that only Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus were the only ones who never saw corruption.

No man has ascended to heaven but the Son of Man (Jesus) (John 3:13). However, this will change at the Pre-Trib Rapture, though. Anyways, Moses died. Elijah also died. For Elijah went up to the 1st heaven (the sky or high in atmosphere) and he did not go to the third heaven (Which is a parallel of Philip and the Ethiopian Enuch's story in Acts 8; For both stories involve chariots and a believer being wisked away by God from one location on the Earth to another). For Scripture records that Elijah lived later. As for Enoch: he was directly translated to be within paradise in Sheol or Abraham's bosom. In fact, all true believers who die in the Lord today go to Abraham's bosom. Then when the pre-Trib Rapture takes place, believers who die in the Lord will go directly to Heaven.

This is obviously a future event due to the fact that Abraham is conscious,

While I would like to believe that, I am not convinced that this is the case because Abraham acts like the rich-man's brothers are still alive to hear Moses and the prophets. For if this was the future, Abraham would have said they already chose their fate long ago and that some or none of them accepted what Moses and the prophets said.

You must be referring to 1 Peter 3:18-21. "Prison" refers to Tartarus, where the nefilim are being held for the day of judgment. he was preaching to them.

What good would it do for the Nehilim to know of the gospel if they could have never accepted it? To me, Jesus speaks to those wicked departed souls who rejected Noah's message of salvation in him being a preacher of righteousness. They did have a chance to believe but they rejected God and his way of escape. Granted, it is also possible Jesus simply spoke to all souls in Sheol about why He has come down into the heart of the Earth, too.


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[MountainPine]

False information. The preposition in Luke 16:24 is "ἐν/en" which means "in" not "ἀπὸ/apo" which means "from."

Luke 16:24 καὶ αὐτὸς φωνήσας εἶπεν, Πάτερ Ἀβραάμ, ἐλέησόν με καὶ πέμψον Λάζαρον ἵνα βάψῃ τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ δακτύλου αὐτοῦ ὕδατος καὶ καταψύξῃ τὴν γλῶσσάν μου, ὅτι ὀδυνῶμαι ἐν τῇ φλογὶ ταύτῃ. ​

"Apo" occurs in vs. 21 in the phrase "ἀπὸ/from the rich man's table." There is no manuscript evidence for any variations or other readings of Lk 16:24.

You've missed the point. Where in the bible does it say that God is going to give the wicked new bodies that will last forever in order to burn forever? Apply some common sense. A spirit cannot burn. A material body that burns will eventually be consumed to ashes.

Those in the flesh at the time of the new earth -will do this.

Go forth and look at the carcases of the wicked.
their worm dieth not
See the last verse of Isaiah chapter 66.

Ashes and carcases are not the same thing. Some verses in
the Bible even use both words in them.
The holy people looking at these ones that disobeyed God will be abhorred.
This is the same word as "contempt" that Daniel 12 applies to the ones that rise to shame - and everlasting
contempt.

Contempt does not equal torment. Everlasting contempt means those who will be allowed to live in the Kingdom, but will never be trusted or favored by God. You cannot have contempt for someone who is dead, whose memory is forgotten. As for "worm dieth not", it means they will be dead forever, not dying forever. Everlasting torment is a Church doctrine that was made up because the clergy wanted "heretics" to suffer eternally, and apparently so do you.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

You've missed the point. Where in the bible does it say that God is going to give the wicked new bodies that will last forever in order to burn forever?

While I believe the wicked will be annihilated or erased from existence, I believe that both the just and the unjust will have a bodily resurrection before the Judgment.

“And shall come forth; …they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
‭‭(John‬ ‭5:29‬)

“...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, ...of the … unjust.”
‭‭(Acts‬ ‭24:15‬)

“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, ...some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
‭‭Daniel‬ ‭12:2‬

“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, …” ‭‭(Revelation‬ ‭20:6‬)


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