Those that teach death is an eternal life of torment are as one writer said, “Forced to argue that a horse could not die so dead that it must keep dying deader.” The dead must keep on dying; the destroyed must keep on being destroyed.
Why would God say one thing to us and mean the opposite of what He said? Why would He say the wages of sin is DEATH if the wages of sin is LIFE? How could the wages of sin be death to a soul that cannot die!
LIFE AND DEATH IN ROMANS CHAPTERS FIVE AND SIX
DEATH OF CHRIST
“For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commended his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Romans 5:6-11). Can anyone read of how Christ was put to death, was burred, and resurrected on the third day and say His death was not a real death? His death was not just a “lost of well being.” Death is death, not any kind of life anyplace, Christ died for us.
ALL DIE
“Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned; for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:12-19). Death. When a person dies and is burred, without the resurrection that person is really dead and will forever be dead without the resurrection of all because of the death and resurrection of Christ, a resurrection to judgment, then endless life or endless death, the second death.
DEATH BY SIN,
“The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 5:20-21).
LIFE IN CHRIST
“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:1-14).
SIN BRING DEATH, NOT TORMENT
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death” (Romans 6:15-21).
“But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:22-23). TO MAKE DEATH NOT BE DEATH IS A DELIBERATE CHANGE OF GOD’S WORD.
(3) DIE "If you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live" (Romans 8:13). The immoral soul doctrine must make die to mean exactly the same thing as live, just live in two different places; therefore, die and live both mean eternal life!
1. “You” must be changed to “your soul” will live after “you” are dead.
2. “Die” must be changed to eternal life with torment.
· It must be changed from speaking of you that will die if you live after the flesh, to your soul that will live forever in Hell if you live after the flesh. This passage is speaking of you the person; there is nothing about a soul that cannot die in it.
· The way many read this is: “If you live after the flesh, your soul must live forever in torment; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, your soul shall live in Heaven.” If you sin, it is not you that will be torment in Hell, but the soul that is now in you will be tormented for your sins after you are dead.
Die and live must both be interpreted to both means to live forever! Who can believe it? It is obvious that die is only interpreted to mean "eternal life in torment" when it serves the purpose of the doctrine of eternal torment, and all other times "to die" really means "to die"; just as obvious that we must have someone tell us when "die" means "eternal life in torment" and when "die" really means "die"; and without this help we could never know when God intended us to understand the opposite of what He said, and when He intended us to understand what He said in the way He said it. When “die” is used of the death of animals, then the animal is really dead, but when the same word is used of a person, then the person is not at all dead, but is somewhere more alive than before the person died but did not die.
(4) DESTRUCTION must be changed to be only a loss of well-being. The traditionalist argument is that the words "destroy" and "destruction" should not be taken with their established meaning, but be interpreted as "a loss of well being," or an "irreparable loss." How could anyone know this without a revelation from God? How can the Scriptures speak of the destruction of the lost if they are not destroyed? The word destruction would be meaningless if there is not a point where the destruction is complete. Why would God say He were going to destroy the lost if He knows the soul is immortal and He could not destroy it? Destruction has been changed to existing forever in torment. For destruction to mean existing in torment they much find a way to somehow have a destruction that will preserve the destroyed person in tact. Preserve the destroyed person undestroyed!
E. D. Slough: “’But these as natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption’ (2 Peter 2:12). What is the plain and natural sense of perish? Is it not a literal destruction? The people of the flood perished. Sodom and Gomorrah perished. Fifteen hundred in the great Titanic tragedy perished. Five hundred people in the Iroquois Theater fire perished. And thousands, tens of thousands, perish annually in one manner or another. Oh, Yes. We too keenly realize what the plain and natural sense of perish means. But does Willis urge it here? No, never. Peter says they shall “utterly perish,” utterly, completely, absolutely, put an end to. Why not plead for the plain, natural sense of the word then? Listen, reader, he knows his theory would “utterly perish” that instant.” Indictment of Eternal Torment – The Self-negation of a Monstrous Doctrine. Evangelist Church of Christ, F. L Rowe Publisher, On line at: www.robertwr.com/EternalTorment.htm
(5) DESTROY must be changed to mean to preserve forever. "Can never be" must be added to destroy and make it read, "Can never be destroyed." They argue that an immortal soul cannot die; therefore, "destroy" cannot mean "destroy," and the Bible did not really mean "destroy" when it said "destroy," just as "death" cannot really mean "death," but these words must mean something; therefore, they are changed and given a meaning that is the opposite of their true meaning; many words must always be changed and used with a meaning that is the opposite of what the words mean. They argue that nothing can be annihilated in the scientific sense, that nothing is annihilated by fire; it just changes its form. They overlook the fact that the Bible is not a scientific book, and is not written in today's scientific language, and that God made all things out of nothing, and all things will go back to nothing. Those to whom Paul was writing would not have thought that if a book were burnt up that it was not destroyed. Just as they would not have thought the elements that the book was made of was a book before the book was printed. When destroy is applied to things it is always the end of them.
In Matthew 10:28 there is no figurative language, but we are told that one word must be taken out of it’s literal context and used in a figurative way to mean just the opposite of its true meaning, that the one word "destroy" must be changed to mean "an eternal life of torment for souls;" one word must be made figurative, even when nothing is figurative in the context that the word is in. There is no figurative language in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, but two words, "destruction" and "perish" must both be changed to figurative, that both words mean "an eternal life of torment."
· In the Old Testament God destroyed many cities and nations. Sodom was completely destroyed, not just lost it’s well being; it is an example of the destruction that is coming to the lost (2 Peter 2:6).
· The lost will be destroyed, not live forever in torment.
“Destroyed” cannot be made to mean both (1) death, going out of existents and (2) eternal life, never going out of existents.
(6) PERISH like destruction and destroy, perish must be changed to mean, "can never perish, or never be destroyed, but to live forever in an unhappy and miserable condition in Hell." Forever perishing, but imperishable! To say “to perish” is to “live forever” is a complete contradiction.
Do you wonder why the writers of the Bible said the lost will die, be destroyed, perish, but today we are told the souls that were in the lost cannot die, cannot be destroyed, and cannot perish?
“If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in our sins. Then those also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1 Corinthians 15:14-18). Certainly Paul did not say that those who are asleep in Christ are alive and in torment if there is no resurrection; he clearly said that they have perished if the dead are not raised, that they would forever remain dead, they had perished. Perished cannot be made to mean one thing when it is speaking of the saved, those in Christ, and another thing when it is speaking of the lost.
Perished cannot mean both life and death.
· Death, no resurrection, therefore no life after death (“have perished”) when it is speaking of those in Christ if there is no resurrection.
· Eternal life in torment, life with a loss of well being that can never perish when it is speaking of the souls of the lost.
H. L. HASTINGS: “We shall be guided by the literal meaning of these word, refusing to give them a strange or unusual signification for the purpose of saving or up building a cherished theory.”, “After The Verdict,” 1982, page 4.
JACOB BLAIN: “When I read that all who came out of Egypt over twenty years of age—of the fate of Sodom and Pharaoh’s army—of the 2,000 swine which ran into the sea, I shall not go to the learned to find out whether they died, or were only made miserable, when it is said the “perished” and were “destroyed.” If perish and destroy means to live in misery, as preachers say, then beasts live in endless woe, for the terms are often applied to them. It is a perfect contradiction in language to say a thing is to be “consumed,” “devoured,” “burned up,” &c., if it is indestructible, as divines say the soul is. Page 21, “Death Not Life: Or, The Theological Hell and Endless Misery Disproved,” Public domain.
· “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
· If there is no resurrection, “Then those also how have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1 Corinthians 15:18).
1. Perish would the same to both, neither one would have eternal life with a lost of well-being. “Whose end is destruction” (Philippians 1:28). “End” cannot be changed to “endless.” “Destruction” cannot be changed to eternal life with “a lost of well being.”
(7) FIRE destroys useless things like chaff, we know what fire is and what it does, fire consumes, devours and destroys; fire is used in the Bible as a symbol of utter destruction, never as a preservative. For today’s theology to be true fire must be changed into figurative language of something that is nothing like fire, something that is altogether different from fire, something that preserves and cannot consume. With the kind of "fire" that we are told will be in Hell you would only have to put wood in your fireplace one time and it would heat your house forever. It took some thought to come up with a fire that does not do what fire does, a fire that burns but never burns, which consumes but never consumes. Fire destroys, consumes; in figurative language there is always a parallel; if it were figurative language, just as real fire consumes the chaff, the wicked will be consumed, devoured, destroyed by the wrath of God (Hebrews 10:27). In neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament fire is not used by God to eternally torment an immortal soul after the death of the person it had been in.
Fire in the Old Testament
1. Consumed the burnt offering, no one thinks the burnt offering was torment (Leviticus 9:24).
2. Consumed Nadab and Baihu, “And they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 11:1-2)
3. “Fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense” (Numbers 16:35), consumed, not tormented.
4. “And it shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him.” Zerahites, his family, and all that belonged to them were burned with fire (Joshua 7:15-26).
5. “Then the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty” (2 Kings 1:10-12).
6. "Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah: Behold, mine anger and my wrath shall be poured out upon this place, upon man and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched" (Jeremiah 7:20). If this was the Lord’s anger being poured out in Hell, it would make beasts, trees, fields, and the fruit of the ground be in unquenchable fire in Hell. In Jeremiah 17:27 it is “the palaces of Jerusalem” that would be destroyed by an unquenchable fire; are “the palaces of Jerusalem” now burning in Hell or any other place?
7. Ezekiel speaks of Judah burning using the imagery of a forest burning. "And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, son of man, set your face toward the south, and drop your word toward the south, and prophesy against the forest to the field in the South; and say to the forest of the South, Hear the word of Jehovah: Thus says the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall consume every green tree in you, and it shall devour ever green tree in you, and ever dry tree; the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burnt thereby. And all flesh shall see that I, Jehovah, have kindled it; it shall not be quenched" (Ezekiel 20:47-48). This fire that could not be quenched by mankind was not in Hell, it was God using Babylonian to destroy Israel for their sins (Ezekiel 21:19; Nehemiah 1:3).
8. Living people on this earth go out to look at dead bodies that were slain by the Lord and were being consumed by an unquenchable fire (Isaiah 66:15-24). No one could put it out, but when it had did what the Lord wanted it to do it went out, it is not burning today.
9. Cities, nations, people, Israel, Israel’s enemies, and fortresses were consumed and destroyed by fire, Hosea 8:14; Amos 1:7; 1:14; Jeremiah 17:27; 49:27; Numbers 21:28; Obadiah 18; Joel 2:2-3; Isaiah 1:31; 34:6-15; 47:14; Malachi 4:1-3; 1 Kings 14:10; Ezekiel 20:47-48.
Fire in the New Testament
· Fire will burn up the useless chaff of wheat (Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17)
· God will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Luke 3:16-17)
o When fire burning up broken off branches, dead weeds, and stubble, they are already lifeless and worthless; it is not torment but the outcome of being useless. Chaff, tares, weeds, stubble, dry branches are highly combustible materials that are soon completely destroyed by the fire, but the “figurative fire” of today’s theology is nothing like fire and the “figurative fire” burn up nothing.