Welcome to a Revelation of Jesus. In the previous video, we looked at the 1000-year millennium after the Second Coming of Christ. During this time, Satan and his fallen angels are “chained in the bottomless pit,” confined to the earth, which has been destroyed by the great tribulation. The redeemed are in heaven, orienting to God’s kingdom and carrying out the “judgment [that] was committed to them” (Revelation 20:4). They will have an opportunity to look into the “books of record” so that they can see for themselves that God has been fair. This work is a precursor to the final executive judgment, the second death, that takes place “when the thousand years are over.”
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“[John] saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And [he] saw the dead, small and great, standing before God; and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books… Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).
“The dead” who are raised in the second resurrection will stand before the “great white throne.” The “books” will be “opened” and they will come face to face with “those things which were written in the books.” How this will happen technically with billions of people all at once is not clear—perhaps it will be something like the experience people have when they almost die, and the events of their life “flash before their eyes” in a moment.
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Those whose names are not “found written in the Book of Life” will be “cast into the lake of fire.”
This brings up one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Bible: the doctrine of hell and the second death. Some have felt that God’s nature of love excludes the possibility of His destroying anyone; that the many references, such as this one, are either metaphorical or threats designed to frighten people into good behavior. Others have concluded that hell is simply eternal separation from God, and the fire and torment that are mentioned represent the mental agony of those who will not be in His presence.
But many Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, have persisted in the traditional view that the fires of hell are literal, and that the “immortal souls” of those who do not repent will be subject to fiery torment for all eternity. The medieval church depicted this suffering in graphic detail, with writers such as Dante and artists like Hieronymus Bosch creating an explicit and terrifying prospect for those who would dare to refuse God’s love and mercy.
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Revelation 20 clearly teaches that not everyone will be found written in “the Book of Life.” These unfortunates will be “cast into the lake of fire,” which is called the “second death.” Jesus referred to both the first and the second death in Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body [the first death] but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The destruction of both body and soul is the second death.
It is clear from this verse that the soul in hell suffers the same fate as the body in hell: Jesus said that God will “destroy both soul and body in hell.” Does the body go on living, perhaps separated from God for eternity? Not according to Malachi. “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, that will leave them neither root nor branch… they shall be ashes” (Malachi 4:1,3). The fate of the body is total annihilation, reduced to ashes, and according to Jesus, that which happens to the body also happens to the soul.
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This is clearly taught in Ezekiel 18:4: “Behold, all souls are Mine… The soul who sins shall die.” Some have argued that “soul” in the Old Testament has a different meaning than in the New Testament, but the apostle James confirms Ezekiel’s words: “He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death” (James 5:20). Peter taught the same thing, quoting Moses, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear… whatever He says to you. And it shall be that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed” (Acts 3:22,23). Souls are not immortal; they can die.
Actually, most of the misconceptions about hell reflect a basic misunderstanding of what the soul is. Many Christian denominations teach that man has an immortal soul, but of the 458 instances in which the word “soul” is used in the Bible, there is not a single intimation that man has an immortal soul. In fact, the Bible clearly teaches that it is God, “the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality” (1 Timothy 6:16). We can only have immortality if God gives it to us; it is not an intrinsic part of our nature. This means that there is no such thing as an independently immortal soul separated from God—the soul must be continually receiving life from God, or it will cease to exist. It is inconceivable that God would continually infuse life into souls that were eternally separated from Him in hell.
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The account of the creation of man in Genesis 2 shows what a soul is. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). The combination of dust (the physical body) plus the breath of life (the spirit) created a soul. The soul is simply the whole person, and the word soul is used repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments for person or life. When a person dies, the opposite happens: the breath of life returns to God, the body becomes dust again, and the soul ceases to exist. “If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (Job 34:14,15).
Nor is there any indication that the “spirit” or “breath of life” is an intelligent entity, the “real inner person” which has an existence apart from the body. This idea is from Greek philosophy and gradually pervaded Christian theology, but it is foreign to Biblical thought. Since the soul is the whole person, the human spirit is simply a part of it, along with the body, mind, heart, emotions, personality, inner self, that which seeks after God or turns away from Him. Peter made it clear, speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, that it is the soul, not just the body, that is resurrected. “Concerning the resurrection of the Christ…His soul was not left in Hades [that is, the grave], nor did His flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:31). When a person dies the first death, the soul, the whole person, sleeps in the grave, awaiting the resurrection. The resurrection is the rising out of the grave of the soul. And in the case of the unrepentant, it is this resurrected soul that is destroyed in hell, as the following texts emphasize.
“The Lord preserves all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy” (Psalms 145:20). “The wicked shall be no more; indeed you will look carefully for his place but it shall be no more…into smoke they shall vanish away” (Psalms 37:10,20). “Those who war against you shall be as nothing, as a nonexistent thing” (Isaiah 41:12). “You have destroyed the wicked; You have blotted out their name forever and ever…Even their memory has perished” (Psalms 9:5-8). These texts and many more emphasize the complete obliteration of those who are destroyed, with no hint of an inner spiritual entity that continues to live on.
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The judgment that results in the destruction of the unrepentant is an act of righteousness and justice. God has extended His mercy, he has pleaded with those who have turned away from Him, but through the choices of their lives, the unrepentant have demonstrated that they do not want what God wants to give them: Himself forever. Heaven, in the overwhelming presence of a pure and holy God, would be eternal torment—even when they see Him coming they call out for the mountains and rocks to hide them from His face (Revelation 6:16). When God puts an end to sin He will grant what they really want: destruction, which is the only way they can be separated from God in that day when “all the earth [and the whole universe as well] shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Numbers 14:21).
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Jesus, looking down the panorama of history to the great day of judgment, spoke in Matthew 25 of the same scene that is presented in Revelation 20: “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another.” Just as in Revelation, they will be judged “according to their works”—did they feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, or did they instead turn away from Jesus in the person of those in need? (vs. 35-45). “Then He will also say to those on the left hand [who had not had compassion on the needy], ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’…And these will go away into everlasting punishment” (vs. 41,46).
These last verses that mention “eternal fire” and “everlasting punishment” have caused some to believe that the unrighteous will be tormented forever, but a comparison with other scriptures shows that they actually teach just the opposite.
Jesus said that the unrighteous would go “into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). In the book of Jude, there is actually an example that shows what eternal fire is. “Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, having given themselves over to sexual immorality… are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 7).
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The story of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah is found in Genesis 19. Lot, the only righteous man in the city, was saved out of it with his family, and “the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah…. and the smoke of the land…went up like the smoke of a furnace…when God destroyed the cities” (Genesis 19:24-29). Obviously, the “eternal fire” which destroyed Sodom is not still burning—it was not quenched or put out prematurely; it continued to burn until it had completely done its work of destruction. In the same way the “eternal fire” which will destroy the unrepentant will destroy them forever. They do not burn eternally; the results are eternal.
This interpretation is verified by the fact that the “eternal fire” that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 25:41 is “prepared for the devil and his angels.” This means that the eternal fire will do the same thing to unrepentant people that it does to the devil. The fate of Satan is described in Ezekiel 28. “[Lucifer] became filled with violence within and sinned” and so was “cast as a profane thing out of the mountain of God” (vs. 12, 16). God said of him, “You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities…Therefore I brought fire from your midst, and I turned you to ashes upon the earth… and you shall be no more forever” (vs. 18,19). The “eternal fire” that Jude and Jesus mentioned reduces both body and soul to nothingness.
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Jesus called the “eternal fire” which completely destroys the devil and the unrepentant “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:41,46). Again, this does not mean punishment that continues forever, but rather punishment that has everlasting results. The apostle Paul made this clear in 2 Thessalonians: “The Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10)
The Bible clearly teaches that the first death is a sleep in which there is no consciousness. I will include some links in the description that support this concept. The point is that the sleeping dead will “wake up” with the resurrection, either to the “first resurrection” at the Second Coming of Christ, or to the “second resurrection” which takes place 1000 years later. At that time, the dead will be judged, and those who are not found written in the Book of Life will be cast into hell, “the lake of fire,” which will annihilate them.
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Many Christians are afraid to let go of the idea of a hell of eternal torment, fearing that there would be no motivation for the sinner to turn away from his sins if the consequences were simply an end to his existence. But there is nothing simple about the final destruction of the unrepentant. It will be a fearsome experience when the fullness of their guilt will be in vivid contrast with the full revelation of the glory and holiness of God. But even more basic is the fact that fear does not motivate love. “We love [God] because He first loved us,” not because we are afraid of Him (1John 4:19).
The use of fear to force obedience is the very opposite of God’s character. It is the beast who threatens those who “refuse to worship the image of the beast to be killed” (Revelation 13:15). It was godless Nebuchadnezzar who proclaimed that “whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace” (Daniel 3:6). Most Christians today are appalled by the torture that was inflicted on “heretics” by the church during the inquisition of the Middle Ages, but this was only the logical extension of the doctrine of eternal hell. If God will torment forever those who reject Him, why shouldn’t their torture start now, in this life, especially since before death there is the possibility of repentance? If eternal hell is true, God is even more unjust than the inquisitors, since He, according to this doctrine, tortures without a possibility of repentance and escape from torment.
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The concept that God would create man, knowing in advance that he would sin, and then consign him to an eternity of punishment when he does sin violates all standards of love, mercy, and even justice. Our God-given sense of justice rejects the notion of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Those governments that submit their criminals to torture are considered barbaric; how much worse would be one which not only continued the torture for the entire lifetime of the offender, but devised ways to prolong the life of the transgressor so that his torment could continue. And yet this blasphemous charge has been leveled against God by His church!
Defenders of the doctrine of eternal punishment claim that sin is such an infinite affront to a holy God that the sinner deserves an eternity of affliction. But it is not God’s purpose with hell to give people what they deserve. One of the most basic characteristics of God is that He does not give sinners what they deserve, but rather tries to find ways to bring them to salvation, taking upon Himself the punishment they deserve.
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Hell is not a way of “getting back at” sinners, but is simply a way of bringing an end to sin and suffering. If hell were for eternity, sin would never come to an end; for all eternity, there would be a dark corner of the universe where sin and sinners were preserved. But thank God, sin and evil will not be immortalized. “Death and Hades” will be “cast into the lake of fire.” All forms of death will be eradicated. This includes the first death—there will be no more people sleeping in the grave, oblivious to the reality of God’s kingdom. It also includes the living death of separation from God that the Apostle Paul calls “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). And the second death, destruction of the soul, will also be abolished—no one will ever again face the wages of sin, because sin and everything connected with it will be gone. “For [Christ] must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:25,26).
God will create “a new heaven and a new earth” where there will be “no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1,4). “The elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (2Peter 3:10). With sin permanently abolished, God will then renew His creation—”We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (v. 13). There will be no dark corner of the universe where sin, suffering and death will continue. Everyone and everything will forever be in harmony with God.
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Since God will not force the unrepentant to love Him, but He will bring an end to all sin, there must be a hell, and sinners will be destroyed. But even this destruction is so foreign to God’s nature that it is called His “strange, alien work” (Isaiah 28:21). God’s great heart of love pleads with every soul to turn away from the destruction of hell, to allow their names to be “written in the book of life” so as to avoid being “cast into the lake of fire.” “Therefore, I will judge you, everyone according to his ways,’ says the Lord God. ‘Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies’, says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn and live!” (Ezekiel 18:30-32).
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