Why I believe Hell is not eternal punishment, but rather total annihilation

Christ speaking:

Matthew 25:46
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."

"aiōnios kolasis"

Forgive me...

Dirk1540 said:

I like what he says in the beginning, he tells the audience please don't even make a decision tonight, just chew on the alternative viewpoint that you've probably never heard before.

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His viewpoint has been roundly rebutted many, many times by many Bible scholars. A simple Google search will reveal all of the rebuttals made to the notion of annihilationism. It stands on very shaky legs scripturally.

I'll say this.

If the doctrine of annihilationism is correct, what is point of being saved in the first place?

Sure, I'd be in heaven, but if I knew for a fact that after 1 year, or 10, or even 1,000,000 years, I'd burn up into nothing. Why be saved in the first place? The lake of fire would hold no fear? At best it would only be temporary.

Just a thought.

God Bless

Till all are one.

Dirk1540 said:

Eternal bliss vs DEAD!! I'm pretty sure that nobody would argue in here that Heaven will be better than being eternally on Earth as a young looking, rich, athletic, super high IQ adult who will never get sick. So, something MUCH BETTER than that fate for eternity is Heaven, and even the first fate on Earth would be pretty awesome...vs dead! I can't even relate to how you wouldn't see the point in being saved. Being dead will completely suck!! And the alternative is completely awesome!!

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I agree. Being in heaven with the Lord for all eternity would/will be awesome.

But that comes back to the notion in Christianity that one must be saved to get that.

On the other hand, the lake of fire, the place scriptures say was never mean for man, where the devil and his angels will be forever, is the same destination for the unsaved.

From the JW's perspective, they teach the doctrine of annihilationism, whereby you go there and stay until your sins have been paid for, then you burn up into nothing. Essentially, you are given an "escape clause" for eternal punishment.

So, like I said: "Being in heaven with the Lord for all eternity would/will be awesome."

But if annihilationism is true, there is no eternal punishment for sins, that after who knows how many years, I can escape, why bother to be saved anyway.

Live anyway you wish, sure you'll pay for your sins, but its only temporary.

Being dead, in the sense you take it, means theres no pain, no torments, no worms eating on you, no thirst, no more weeping, no gnashing of teeth, none of what scriptures describe of that place.

Having been an EMT, I know that man, no matter how painful an injury is, if he knows there is relief coming, he can endure any amount of pain.

Same with the doctrine we speak of. No matter how bad scriptures say it will be, if I know sooner or later there will be an end to it, no matter how long it is, I could endure it.

So why be saved? I could theoretically live any way I want. I could murder, rape, rob, adultery, do anything I want. I wouldn't be punished but only for a temporary time.

Sure, I'd miss out on heaven and being in God's presence, but by the same token, I wouldn't be punished forever either.

God Bless

Till all are one.

Dirk1540 said:

I think you posted before I edited my post with this outtake, not saying that you will agree with it but for instance he does get into examinations of words like punishment and eternal...

An outtake from video...

Exolothreuo - "To destroy utterly, root out"
OT - Greek version used by early church
* regular word used for capital punishment
* word used in flood story
NT - Destroyer (1 Corinthians 10:10, Heb 11:28)

Paul's major words of description...
Death (Romans 6:23)
Perish (Romans 2:12)
Destruction (1 Corinthians 3:17, Phil 1:28, 3:19)
eternal destruction (2 Thes 1:9)
He gets into words like 'Eternal', Greek meaning that the 'Result of
an action is eternally set' As an example he asks such questions as
"When Jesus eternally redeems us does that mean he's redeeming
over & over & over...for eternity? No, it means 'The result' of
redemption is eternal"
Also (Paul)...
Wrath, anger, trouble, distress (Romans 2:6ff)
anathema/accursed (Gal 1:9, 1 Cor 16:22)
not enter God's kingdom (Eph 5:5-6)

The words wrath, anger, trouble, distress...this reminds us that those who perish in Hell don't necessarily do all these things instantaneously. They may be there awhile first. There's infinite room in this view for degrees of punishment based on perfect divine justice. In the process of destruction God may have a variety of types of suffering, duration of suffering, and intensity of suffering, before finally being ultimately destroyed.

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I will not debate this.

I gave my view on why it wrong.

Plain and simple.

I will not debate it.

Besides:

"Other Christian non-Nicene topics may only be discussed in the Controversial Theology forum. The Controversial Theology forum is open to Christian members only (faith groups list). These unorthodox topics include (but are not limited to):

• Universalism
• Open Theism
• Full Preterism
• Annihilationism
• Gnosticism

Rule

Lets just say you have your view, and I have mine.

But I absolutely will not debate it.

God Bless

Till all are one.

I wish annihilation were true. For me, the weight of the Scriptures and tradition (gasp--I'm an evangelical) indicate otherwise. Add to that, this: it is hard to imagine a place that exists solely to hold non-existence.

What the heck... I've said this before but the night my own father died, he appeared ("materialised") in my bed room in the unit where I was living at the time. He started with an apology for the way he treated me, we argued and talked, and at the end he gave this almighty, terrifying scream.

Then he just disappeared. It was however quite obvious something was coming for him as he was screaming. Sheer terror - it was so frightening I started to scream, and all I could see was his fear.

I was an atheist back then. Since then I've become Christian, first Protestant and now Catholic.

I also believe in the approved apparitions of Mary, and I think Fatima on the 13th October 1917, when World War I was at its height, with the "Christian" nations of the West slaughtering each other's young men by the million, was the most relevant to our times.

There were also three, not one, miracles at that time -

1. The well known and most publicized "dancing Sun", witnessed by 70,000 people.

2. The fact people were staring at the "dancing Sun" for about 10 minutes on end, without a single case of reported eye damage. They were all and individually protected, since normally you risk permanent damage after 10 seconds, not 10 minutes.

3. It had been raining for hours beforehand and the ground and their clothes were saturated (and dirty). Suddenly (instantaneously) the ground and their clothes were dry, and not only that, their clothes were clean. Since water has a high specific heat, scientists have calculated that the energy required to do this in such a short time was of the order of a 10 megaton nuclear explosion. But everybody merely felt comfortable, and they certainly weren't vaporised.

During the proceedings, Mary showed the three children a vision of Hell, as follows -

Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.

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I believe that description was accurate. That's why my father screamed that night.

The business of hoping that Hell is annihlation is not based on Scripture, but on our humanitarian instinct. It's so horrible that we think God couldn't possibly allow it to happen.

He has so far allowed the Holocaust, 2 atomic bombs, the Black Death, Genghis Khan, hideous diseases, crucifixions, tidal waves and rotting corpses on the beaches and in the bush, 2 World Wars, the Wars of Religion which tore Western Europe apart in the 16th and 17th century (with Germany's population dropping from 16 million to 6 million, with France suffering 3 million dead), the Gulags, Stalin's millions, Pol Pot and any number of other tyrants.

If God's so soft, then why does He allow all this evil as part of His plan? I don't like it, and I don't even like God much sometimes for more personal reason.

But I know this much - He isn't soft. The price for our salvation was the crucifixion of His own Son.

I wonder what that cost Him? And if we just throw it back in His face, then we will pay the price.

he-man said:

! Thess 2:9 DESTRUCTION EVERLASTING

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1 Thessalonians 2: KJV
9"For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God."

Dirk1540 said:

A Google search will no doubt also reveal all the points in favor of annihilationism by many Bible scholars...time to do the best thing you can ALWAYS do, watch some head to head debates!!

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I have had such debates myself many times.

(Disclaimer: I didn't take the time to listen to the video.)

There is one issue connected with this question that rarely gets discussed in much detail. That is the basis for immortality of the human soul.

Are we immortal beings that will always exist in some form or state because we were created as eternal souls? Or is eternal life something that flows from God alone and depends completely on our abiding in Him?

My *anecdotal* observation is that most people I've known (who in all other matters are quite mainstream in belief) who thoughtfully lean toward annihilation (or some type of non-existence or eternal death as "being dead forever with no resurrection") view eternal life as something that has its ongoing source in communion with God rather than something inherently eternal in our nature.

vinsight4u said:

Revelation 21:27

“And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.” Matthew 5:20“For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

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Goats on the left, sheep on the right.

/nvm

vinsight4u said:

The wicked dead will soon be raised - it is time for the new earth soon - and the ones that had still been living and judged to be goams will end up in the lake of fire. The sheep inherit the kingdom - new earth/seen as having been righteous people. They will join the saints for the new earth. What bugs me though are some things that don't seem to be mentioned...such as - what about the babies unborn at the time of the sheep and goats getting split up and why did John say that he saw the small and great - when the dead are raised just ahead of the new earth.

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The great are the ones in the first resurrection, the small are us who are raised after. It mentions babies as those who are with child to flee to the mountains.

Dirk1540 said:

#1 i do not choose to believe in annihilation because i WANT it to be true. If that were the case I would choose universal salvation. Also if that were the case I would not have gone many years believing in eternal punishment as being true.

#2 how sweet it is to be able to simply point to a lecture that can describe why I believe it much better than I'd be able to articulate it!! Not to mention that substituting an hour long lecture with writing would be one incredibly LONG post...


I like what he says in the beginning, he tells the audience please don't even make a decision tonight, just chew on the alternative viewpoint that you've probably never heard before.

EDIT...let me add something that will make it more intriguing to wanna watch, I'll list the people that he mentions as ALSO believing in total annihilation, it's probably not too enticing for you guys to read that 'Dirk1540' believes this lol...some of the more accomplished scholars who believe this view...

FF Bruce
John Stott
Michael Green
E. Earle Ellis
Philip E. Hughes
Thomas Olbricht
John McRay
John Stackhouse
Dale Moody
John Franke
Homer Hailey
Thomas L. Robinson
Clark Pinnock
John Wenham
Richard Bauckham
NT Wright

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I saw this video a while back...and I generally agree with it. But, we can't really discuss annihilationism in the General Theology forum.

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

Dirk1540 said:

#1 i do not choose to believe in annihilation because i WANT it to be true. If that were the case I would choose universal salvation. Also if that were the case I would not have gone many years believing in eternal punishment as being true

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Ditto