Hi Guys! (Sorry if one or more of you are gals),
I appreciate very much how much effort you've put into responding to my notes, especially Clete! However, some of my notes have been very long, so I thought I would limit myself to just one question this time. The email is still kind of long, but it's made up mostly by Bible verses
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The question is about an alternative, yet biblical, view of hell, the idea that hell is not about eternal suffering, but death. It's been in the back of my mind when looking at the verses in the Bible describing hell. I already brought up Matthew 13: 40: "Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!"
There are many verses describing how the "weeds" or "chaff" will be burned, while the good parts saved. See Matthew 13:30 "Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn." Also Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17, John 15:6. Just as weeds are destroyed, so hell is not a place where souls suffer forever, but are simply destroyed. Souls go to heaven for eternal life, they go to hell to die.
Matthew 10:28: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Destruction, not eternal suffering.
Matthew 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it." The easy road leads not to eternal suffering but to destruction.
In Matthew 25:46: "And these [the goats] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” The opposite of life is death, perhaps the "eternal punishment" is simply death. The soul dies and is dead for eternity.
And I would be remiss not to mention the famous verses from Romans 10: "21So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Once again, death, not eternal suffering is the opposite of eternal life.
There are a few places in Revelation in which it is clear that the suffering will go on forever, but only for specific individuals. For example, Revelation 14: "10they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever." There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” This certainly sounds like a unique condition: It only applies to those who worshipped the beast and it's image and received the mark. And these are punished in the presence of Jesus and the angels.
Revelation 20:10 "And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." Again, specific individuals who are tormented forever. Other sinners are thrown into the lake of fire, but I don't see any mention of eternal suffering for them.
The Hebrew Bible doesn't have a joyful afterlife for one set of people and suffering afterlife for another. The only mention of afterlife is Sheol, a place of almost complete emptiness and inaction, where everybody goes, the righteous and unrighteous. So it has been a puzzle to me that the Jews, listening to Jesus, weren't wondering what He was talking about, one afterlife for the righteous and another for the sinners. A little study informed me that, at the time of Jesus, many Jews believed in an imminent time of judgement when God would destroy His enemies and resurrect the dead. The unrighteous would be resurrected along with the righteous, but the former only to face their judgment and be put back to death. God's Kingdom would be established on earth, and all who enter would enjoy a utopian existence. The important point here is that Jesus was not teaching something new; the Jews had some familiarity with what he was talking about; and that the ultimate fate of the unrighteous was not eternal suffering, but simply death.
But, of course, I am not a Bible expert and even (or especially?) Bible experts disagree. So my question is, are there any other verses in the Greek scriptures that clearly state that eternal suffering is the fate of all who end up in hell?
Thanks for any response you care to give,
Gary