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Way back in the mid eighties I watched a movie called
'Burning Hell'. It portrays end-time events from the time of the rise of the Antichrist
to the vast conflagration when the wicked will finally be destroyed (oops, I
mean forever burning) in hell fire.
This provocative movie seeks to bring out the mainstream
position on end-time events, which includes the 7-year Antichrist reign and an
ever-burning hell. We have already looked at the 7-year theory in a previous post
so I won't rehash it here.
We will examine the ever-burning hell theory from the
perspective of reasoning and logic and a few passages of scriptures to exercise
your mind a bit.
According to this theory, every wicked person who will be
punished will have an immortal body whereby they cannot die. Therefore, when they
are cast into the lake of fire, they will be forever tormented in hell because
they cannot die.
I guess the main reason why the proponents of this view hold
to this idea is because the Bible’s usage of phrases such as "everlasting
fire", "everlasting destruction", "fire is not
quenched", and "tormented day and night forever and ever". But
if that is what is in the Bible, why should we blame anyone for believing it?
While these expressions would seem to teach an ever-burning
hell, we need to also recognize that there are other expressions such as the
"second death" and "eternal death". Why would the Bible use
these expressions if the wicked will actually not die!? Remember, according to
this theory, the transgressors are supposed to experience eternal life in
misery!
When I thought about this "eternal hell" teaching,
I cannot help but reminisce about a very gruesome incident where a little girl was
burnt to death. A member of her family was involved in gang warfare and so his
rivals, unable to catch him, decided to turn on his family. So they went to the
house where this little girl was, put a lock on the grill and burnt the house
down with the little girl and her grandmother trapped inside.
When the news came out it sparked a national outrage
condemning the perpetrators as outright evil men who are possessed by demons.
With this condemnation we must bear in mind that this fire only lasted for a
little while, perhaps ended long after its victims were "put out of their
misery"!
Are we now to believe that God is much, much, much more
wicked than that!!? Are we to accept the idea that God is so cruel that He will
not only punish the sinners, but He will work a miracle so that during their
punishment their bodies will not be consumed but immortalized to make sure the
punishment is prolonged - not for an hour, not for a day, not for a year, not
for a century, but for forever!!?
I don't believe that anybody who believes that God's mercy
endures forever and that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked will even
think of associating Him with such attributes - an attribute that not even
Satan, though wicked he be, has the capacity to manifest!
The idea of an everlastingly merciful God and an ever-burning
hell just cannot coexist, unless we want to portray Jehovah as One possessing a
disposition that is worst than Satan!
Any doctrine (however mainstream) that makes God out to be
what He is not must be rejected with every fibre of our being!
And come to think of it, doesn't the Bible teach that both
Satan and his followers will be burnt to ashes (Mal. 4:3; Ezek.28:12-18)? If
that's the case then how does it help the argument of an ever-burning hell?
And, by the way, where are the victims of Sodom and Gomorrah today who were
supposed to be “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire”? Did they not turn to
ashes?. See 2Pet. 2:6, Jude vs. 7.
We need to allow controversies like these to drive us to our
Bibles in search of the truth. The perniciousness of this doctrine is not only
evident in the fact that it contradicts the clear teachings of the word of God,
but it also makes Him out to be someone of whom we should be afraid. When we
are confronted with any teaching that makes God into a being He is obviously
not a red flag should immediately be waving in our minds signalling to us that
the enemy of souls is at work!
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