Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome to the final episode in my series on fire, where we've been talking about the different frames that fire inhabits in Scripture and what those mean.
[00:00:30] Now I say this is probably the last episode because we're talking about eschatological fire today. We're gonna be getting into the Day of the Lord. We'll be talking a little bit about hell fire and things like that, I wanted to make sure that I didn't just keep dragging it out at this point, I think that I've said a whole bunch of things that are gonna be helpful and really useful to you. At least I hope they are. And I'm going to be trying to move on to other topics and things. But if you guys have any questions or if I don't quite fully flesh things out for you in this episode, please do let me know.
[00:01:10] I will probably be doing some summary episodes and things like that in the future, because I know I've gotten really deep into the weeds in a lot of these topics, and I don't want them to get lost and to be overburdening you with too much data to the point that you're not understanding the whole picture of what I'm saying.
[00:01:33] So I probably will be doing some summary episodes, maybe some q and a episodes, if there's enough questions that I have. Or maybe I'll just do whole episodes based on people's questions. I don't know.
[00:01:46] But at any rate, I think we are to the point where I can kind of mostly wrap this up, but because the topic of eschatological fire is really, really big, and I mean it's pretty important and people are very interested in it. So I know that a lot of people who are listening are going to wish I had a little bit more information in this episode than I'm gonna be able to get around to. So because of that, I decided to write up a little, well, it's not little, it's really not little, it's like over 40 pages. But I wrote up a little study guide for you guys to look at so that you can look at this topic yourself and really dig into Scripture in the way that I am doing it.
[00:02:32] Yeah, it is really a 40 page document. It's over 40 pages, and part of the reason it is that long is because some of it has material that you could use either for yourself or in a small group so that you can have various resources that you could use.
[00:02:50] So at any rate, you will have the ability to download that from my website. The link will be in the show notes. You'll be able to get into the passages that I'm talking about today. And also, we're gonna be talking about the three main views of the eschatological horizon that Christians have.
[00:03:12] Those views are eternal conscious torment, which is probably what most people are familiar with in at least the American church. The second view is called conditional immortality. The third idea, which is more controversial than even conditional immortality is universal reconciliation.
[00:03:36] Now, a lot of Christians will think that universal reconciliation is actually heretical, so you might be a little bit concerned that I'm even bringing it up here. Well, I understand, but there are some ways that we could look at that, and we should look at it from the perspective of faithful Christians who hold these positions. You don't have to agree with it, but you ought to understand how and why somebody would take that view and how it's going to be defended.
[00:04:09] Our overarching question for today's episode is about the Day of the Lord and hell fire and basically the eschatological horizon. What does the Bible say about that and why do Christians have so many different views? Christians who are trying to take the text seriously .
[00:04:32] I think that if you've followed along with my fire series, you'll kind of understand how and why that is now, because there really are different frames of fire in Scripture. They have different meaning. They have different purposes, they have different targets. Different authors will present them within different scenes.
[00:04:54] So today I'm going to suggest that the Bible's Day of the Lord fire is bigger and more expansive than the idea of hell or hell fire or insert your favorite term there. The Day of the Lord is the public unveiling of God's reign. And sometimes we see it purging, sometimes we see it judging, but in every case, what we see is that things are being set right.
[00:05:27] So before we argue whether eternal conscious torment or annihilation or universal reconciliation is correct, we're going to need to go into the text and map what each text means by fire. And only then are we going to be equipped to really ask those more systematic theology questions.
[00:05:49] And along with that conversation, a really important element is the idea of whether or not fire is only about retribution or is it also God's way of restoring things. And I think we already have an answer there, at least in part because we've talked so much about purification. We've talked about how fire exposes reality, we've talked about how fire tests, and today we're gonna see how all of that leads to a renewed creation.
[00:06:25] But before I get into the meat of all of that, I'm gonna give you five separate questions that you can take into the text yourself to kind of start parsing out what fire is doing in that passage.
[00:06:39] The first question is, what are the different jobs that fire does in these end times texts that we're gonna look at? And there's gonna be many more that you'll either know about or you'll find later.
[00:06:53] Question two, how is eschatological fire different from refiner's fire? You can also compare it with the other frames that we've brought out about fire and purification in general.
[00:07:09] The third question you can ask is, what does God's jealousy mean and what does it target?
[00:07:17] Question number four, does the Day's fire end in destruction or new creation or both?
[00:07:25] And the last question is, how do the big afterlife views of eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality, and universal reconciliation, how do those handle the whole picture?
[00:07:42] Alright, so let's dig into the text where apocalypse is doing exactly what that word implies, where it is unveiling. Daniel seven pulls back the curtain on reality as God sees it. In the middle of beasts, kingdoms, and chaos, this vision in the book of Daniel is showing us a courtroom. The fire here is not primarily torture imagery, and it's not refining imagery either. It is judicial theophany. God's throne is fire and a river of fire flows out from it, and the court sits as the books are opened. In other words, the Day's fire begins as revelation. The true judge takes his seat and reality becomes accountable because of his presence, but also because of the witness that is being brought forth in the books.
[00:08:45] Daniel 7, 9 10 says, quote, " I continued watching until thrones were placed, and an Ancient of Days sat, his clothing was like white snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool. And his throne was a flame of fire and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued forth and flowed from his presence. Thousands upon thousands served him and 10,000 upon 10,000 stood before him. The judge sat and the books were opened." End quote.
[00:09:23] The fire is attached to God's throne and God's presence. The stream or the river of fire, flows from the throne outward. It's an extension of divine holiness and judgment that moves out into the world.
[00:09:41] We have a definite court scene here. The books are opened and those are going to record and witness against what's being judged. This is public and it's political and cosmic. This is about beasts and kingdoms and powers, not just about individual afterlife fate. The effect of fire is unveiling plus a verdict. It signals that hidden realities or ignored realities and hidden injustices are coming out into the open, and they will no longer be tolerated.
[00:10:22] All right, so this context here is with the beasts. These are not just vague spiritual symbols, although we might have some discussion as to what nation or political entity or what have you is attached to which beast and things like that, but they are explicitly tied to kingdoms. Daniel seven 17 and 18 tells us about how they are kings and how the holy ones of God will receive those kingdoms.
[00:10:56] Now, here in the context of Daniel, when we see the term "holy ones," we should be thinking about spiritual beings like the members of God's holy council. By the time of the New Testament, that terminology gets applied to believers themselves. So that's an interesting bit of information to keep in mind as you're thinking about this. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go down that route of understanding it through the New Testament lens, but first of all, we have to sit with it in its original context. There's a meaning here, and that meaning is that the kings that are against God, and we'll see how and why they're against God, those get judged and they lose their kingdom, and their kingdom gets in the hands of the holy ones.
[00:11:49] Now, look, we don't have a whole lot of information and data on how that looks and who these spiritual beings are, but there is maybe a subtext we could understand here. First of all, we have the Divine Council, right? And the Divine Council is made up of beings who are loyal to God, but there's also rebellious Divine Council members. Whether they've already been kicked out of the Divine Council is not always clear because that's a really precise question of chronology that maybe isn't something that the text is going to answer.
[00:12:28] But we do have the concept of when you have a king of a nation and that nation is not under Yahweh, then that king is going to be worshiping another deity. That's just what you're going to expect in the ancient world, okay? And when that king is worshiping another deity, that deity is in rebellion to God because he's taking worship that God deserves, and that spiritual being, that god of the nation, is obviously not doing what it should in order to provide justice for the people in that realm.
[00:13:08] That's why these spiritual beings are being judged in Psalm 82. It's not because of the worship precisely, it's because they're not providing proper justice. And that is the same justice and judgment that we get here in Daniel and other places in the prophets as well. When there is no justice being done, it's reflecting a false worship. And while the worship is not supposed to happen, and it's obviously very problematic, the judgment happens because of this issue with justice.
[00:13:46] So when the kings are deposed and their power is taken away here in Daniel seven and it's given into the holy ones, we can presume that there is some sort of exchange here within the Divine Council. And that's really interesting. It is a really interesting little side point that I just wanna bring out for all of the Divine Council worldview people.
[00:14:11] All right, so again, we have this very public court. We have thousands upon thousand, 10,000 and 10,000. So that is an image of a whole reality, right? It doesn't say like literally everybody in creation or anything like that, but that is kind of the picture we get here. The judgment is not secret. It is a public judgment and it is against the beast and its dominion.
[00:14:40] All right, so part of the thing we'll notice here is that, again, this is not about individual afterlife fate of individual people. But here in Daniel seven, it's really about the cosmic justice of the gods of the nations and the nations themselves who do not follow God. And because they don't follow God, they're not doing justice.
[00:15:06] But here we are going to get into our context of the retribution and the restoration. If we look carefully, we're gonna see both things at play. We have the retribution where evil gets its due. Victims get vindicated and oppressors are stopped. When we're talking about justice, we can't just have punishment for the evil doers. We also have to have restoration for those who are under their power and who have been affected by them.
[00:15:40] But in Daniel seven, the restoration is also part of the transference of power from the beasts to the holy ones. Their beastly rule is replaced by God's true kingdom. But even so, Daniel seven leans really hard into that justice- as- retribution aspect. The beasts are not getting rehabbed. They're getting judged and taken down.
[00:16:08] But again, there is that restoration goal. The point of the judgment is not just punishment, but replacement of false rule. So here, fire is not merely destructive. It's part of God's presence that provides this judgment, but also provides the idea that God's presence is now going to be in creation.
[00:16:34] Daniel seven itself tells us that the judgment was given for the sake of the holy ones. And of course in this courtroom scene, we have the one that is like a Son of Man and he is really the ultimate one who receives the dominion and the glory and the kingdom. So the hierarchy remains.
[00:16:55] Daniel Seven's fire is retributive in the most basic sense where we have God's presence. And as God is present and as the books are opened, then the beastly dominion is taken away. The beast is actually destroyed and its body is handed over to burning. In the end, dominion is transferred to the one like the Son of Man, and the kingdom is given to the holy ones.
[00:17:22] So this isn't just about payback or punishment for the sake of punishment because they did wicked. It is about replacement. It is about vindication.
[00:17:36] And notice the difference from the refiner's fire. In Malachi three, which we mentioned last time, the fire is first aimed at purifying priestly service so that worship can be restored. Here, the fire is within the court of heaven, going out from God's throne, and it is about verdict and the end of beastly domination.
[00:18:00] All right, so now we're gonna move into Zephaniah chapter three. So Daniel seven gives us that apocalyptic fire in the courtroom verdict. Zephaniah is going to give us something similar, but in some different kind of imagery.
[00:18:18] This is the jealous flame, fire as the heat of covenant holiness that confronts the world bent on violence and idolatry. And Zephaniah is really important for our core question about retribution and restoration because we have a fire that consumes, but then from that, something new emerges.
[00:18:43] Zephaniah three is one of the clearest places where wrath fire is followed immediately by language that sounds almost like Pentecost. People with purified speech are calling upon the name of Yahweh together.
[00:18:57] Let me go ahead and read Zephaniah three verses eight and nine, quote, " Therefore, wait for me, a declaration of Yahweh, for the Day of my rising as a witness, for my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out my wrath upon them, all my burning anger, for by the fire of my anger, all the land shall be consumed. Because then I will make the speech of the nation's pure that all of them might call on the name of Yahweh to serve him in unison." End quote.
[00:19:37] Other translations here at the end might say something like, with one accord. There's a literal Hebrew idiom that is underlying this text and it says with one shoulder.
[00:19:49] So if we're tracking themes and we're looking at common vocabulary between Zephaniah three and Daniel 7, there's quite a few things that match up. Now again, we're gonna be careful not to transfer the meaning of one text into the other, just wholesale. But this means that each text is going to call upon the other text for some kind of purpose, and it's something we should notice.
[00:20:16] So let's look at what Zephaniah three is saying. First of all, even though it doesn't say Day of the Lord explicitly, it is Day- type language, uses the word day. Says for the day when I rise up.
[00:20:34] We have explicit wrath and retribution language. It's being poured out in the heat of God's anger. And this is also cosmic and wide ranging in scope because the land is going to be consumed.
[00:20:50] The speech of the people is going to be purified, not just the people in Israel, but the nations. The nations are gonna call on Yahweh and serve him with one accord or one shoulder. They are to come and to worship Yahweh. The judgment is followed by new communal worship reality, and that is just absolutely fascinating and a little bit surprising.
[00:21:21] Zephaniah's jealousy fire here is covenant Logic. Yahweh's holy love refuses all rivals because those rivals are going to destroy people. They lead to violence. In Zephaniah, the objects of judgment aren't merely individual sinners who broke some set of rules. Zephaniah is full of public sins. We have violence, complacency, corruption, religious syncretism, exploitation.
[00:21:55] This is why jealousy shows up the way that it does. It is the response of holiness to what is corrosive to God's world and God's presence. If you want to look at that, you are gonna go back into Zephaniah chapters one and two and see what those chapters are talking about. We have idolatry. We have injustice. Complacency, violence, and prideful arrogance.
[00:22:22] The text mentions Baal and priests who are into idolatry. We have astral worship, worship of the host of the heavens. We have split allegiance where people are swearing by Yahweh and also swearing by Milcham or Molech. We have people turning back from following Yahweh and not seeking him. All of that is in the first part of Zephaniah chapter one.
[00:22:49] Again, jealousy fire is covenant logic. Yahweh will not share worship with rivals that deform people and communities. There's also a really interesting complacency, or we might even say a type of practical atheism. Now, people back then weren't atheists in the way that we have them today. People didn't really disbelieve in the existence of God or gods, but they might think that those gods aren't doing anything.
[00:23:22] That's what we have in Zephaniah chapter one, verses 12 and 13. People are saying in their hearts that Yahweh will not do good, nor will he do evil. So basically they're saying God or Yahweh is irrelevant.
[00:23:38] And there's probably a reason that they're saying that because they're doing violence and they're defrauding their own people and they're lying to them. And this is all also tied up into economic realities, by the way as well. There's economic injustice and dishonest gain. Merchants and traders are brought to nothing.
[00:24:01] Zephaniah frames the Day as the undoing of what people are trusting in. There is a war cry against fortified cities and lofty battlements. In Zephaniah chapter one. Silver and gold cannot deliver, and there's a measure of prideful ambition amongst the nations.
[00:24:22] Particular places are actually called out. We have the land of the Philistines, we have Gaza, we have Moab and Ammon, Cush, and Assyria, and Nineveh. Those are all mentioned explicitly. These would be places that the people of Israel would be familiar with. Places that have literally oppressed the people of Israel. But they're also a set of typologies that span the length of Scripture as well.
[00:24:54] Zephaniah's Day of the Lord fire is aimed at very real named nations and named evils with compromised worship and split loyalties and violence, fraud, predatory gain, and the complacent assumption that God is irrelevant. All of the nations are seen to be arrogant and prideful against Yahweh. They are setting themselves up as rival gods and beastly systems, but in the end, all they give is ruin and oppression and violence. And this is where that judgment comes in.
[00:25:36] And so you see, it's not really just about God needs all of the worship because he's God. I mean, that's true, but there's a reality that outflows from that. If God isn't receiving proper worship, then people aren't being conformed to who God is and they're being conformed to something else, which is not good. Literally not good.
[00:26:02] Zephaniah chapters one and two establish a pattern. God's judgment is targeting things that destroy covenant life, but also just real life, actual life. Idolatry and split loyalties lead to violence and fraud and exploitation, and oppression, All of those things stem from improper covenant life. So God's heart is against corruption and oppression and things that bring violence and death.
[00:26:37] The Day of the Lord is meant to be something that is going to remove the things that corrupt worship and that corrupt the community so that both the worship and the community can actually exist in good standing and in right ways again. There's a warning here. Judgment is coming and they are to seek God. They're to seek that righteousness, the humility that is going to provide the path to rightful covenant worship.
[00:27:08] Let me go ahead and read the first three verses of chapter two, quote, "Gather yourselves together. Now gather together, O Nation having no shame. Before the birth of the decree, the Day flies away like chaff. Before the fierce anger of Yahweh overtakes you. Before the Day of the anger of Yahweh overtakes you. Seek Yahweh, all you afflicted of the land who have fulfilled his law. Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you'll be concealed on the Day of the anger of Yahweh." End quote.
[00:27:45] So here's our purpose and our intent. The change from retribution to restoration is available to all who seek Yahweh. So the Day's fire is not just about paying back people who have sinned, because if that was the case, then there would be no mercy and no call to seek Yahweh and no ability to escape it.
[00:28:08] The real core here is about that turning. The fire is exposing the lie and summoning people into realignment with Yahweh. But the nations are not only targets, they're also drawn into worship language just like they are in other places in Scripture.
[00:28:27] Now, let's talk about this purified lips business. Why is it described like that? Why lips? Well, with your mouth or your lips, you are speaking oaths, and as we see there is split allegiance here. They're swearing by Yahweh, but they're also swearing by other deities. So there's a religious compromise.
[00:28:51] There's fraud and there's taunting and there's arrogance, and so having purified lips is a direct reversal of the social poison that we have that is described in total. That includes things like idolatry, but it also includes all of the other things that we have going on.
[00:29:11] So this is also about cleansing the lips of the people who are now going to be only providing pure oaths, pure confessions, not boasting in themselves, not taunting, not deceiving. And the end goal is the one shoulder we should all be a part of. If we are living in a united way, then we're not domineering over each other. We're not trying to defraud each other, we're not trying to do violence. And again, there is rightful worship that leads to those things and is wrapped up in proper worship.
[00:29:51] Okay, so this is an obvious place to come to where we see that judgment or justice is not just retribution. But it has to include some form of restoration as well, because this is the heart of it. This is why God is even bothering, because he wants to bring people into relationship with him that is going to produce a good and healthy output.
[00:30:17] People are purified in their speech, so they can call on Yahweh, they can serve him together. We can live together in harmony and peace without the violence and oppression.
[00:30:29] There's a lot that we could say about the purified speech aspect along with worship language, covenant loyalty language, probably prayer and truth telling. We're no longer justifying evil because we want to, we're no longer shaming people or exploiting them, and we can use our lips and our mouths to bless and heal instead of corrupt and oppress. What we're going for is the end of speech patterns that sustain beastly society.
[00:31:03] All right, so we've talked about Daniel seven and the courtroom, we've talked about Zephaniah three and jealous fire. Now we're going to expand the picture. We're gonna look at second Peter chapter three, and this brings all of that into creation itself. We've already seen that the Day of the Lord is public and it's cosmic, that it's aimed at people and at powers. But now let's look at how all of that plays into creation.
[00:31:35] I'm gonna go ahead and read two Peter chapter three, starting in verse seven, quote, "But by the same word, the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the Day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people. Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that one day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day. The Lord is not delaying the promise as some consider slowness, but is being patient toward you because he does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will disappear with a rushing noise and the celestial bodies will be destroyed by being burned up and the earth and the deeds done on it will be disclosed. What sort of people must you be in holy behavior and godliness while waiting for and hastening the coming of the Day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by being burned up and the celestial bodies will melt as they're consumed by heat. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness resides." End quote.
[00:32:54] By the way, this is in contrast to Peter bringing up the flood and the world being destroyed by water. Now it is going to be destroyed by fire and there are different images here. Fire and water are both destructive here. And I would challenge you to find any passage about fire at all that does not also include some form of purification or restoration or renewal. Now, those two things do not have to be targeted toward the same creatures or the same thing that's going on necessarily, but nonetheless, you will see them connected intimately in all of these passages.
[00:33:41] All right, so let's look at this chapter in second, Peter. We have things stored up and reserved for fire. Explicit Day language, the Day of judgment, the Day of the Lord. Again, a cosmic reality with the heavens and the earth and the elements. The outcome is a new creation.
[00:34:02] But also, let's not forget, and let's not ignore the aspect of morality here and right behavior. People are to behave in holy ways because all of these things are being destroyed. Like there's a connection there. It's fascinating that there is.
[00:34:21] Peter's fire is tethered to the Day and to new creation, and it's deployed to produce holiness in people right now, today. Before the eschaton happens, before the actual Day happens.
[00:34:37] What does it mean that the celestial bodies will be destroyed? That's really dramatic kind of imagery, right?
[00:34:44] But look, what we have going on here in Peter's very day is people are scoffing. They're living as if nothing will change. And Peter is responding to that. He is warning them that the Day is coming and it will not delay. It will come on God's due timing. And when it does, it will expose the world as it truly is.
[00:35:09] The heavens will pass away, elements will dissolve. Earth and its works are going to be dealt with, and the fire is doing what fire pretty much always does: it reveals, and it burns away things that cannot endure. Hidden things don't stay hidden. We have a verdict. We have removal of things that just cannot remain in a holy place. And all of that leads to a new world order, new heavens and a new earth.
[00:35:41] Now, this is where I'm going to bring out the idea that faithful Christians can read this passage in different ways. Not because they don't take the Bible seriously or anything like that, but because they're coming at the passage from different perspectives. Do we have things that are being burned up or do we have things that are being exposed? Is it incineration and destruction? Possibly even torment. Or is it exposure or is it both things at once?
[00:36:16] The question we have to wrestle with is whether the Day's fire is mainly about eradication or destruction, or is it exposure and reckoning that is really just the necessary step in order to get to that new creation.
[00:36:34] In either case, what's clear is that the old order cannot continue as it is, and that God's goal is a world where righteousness dwells.
[00:36:45] Again, it's not that it comes without retribution because clearly there's a Day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But also clear is that site of restoration. Again, let's call back to that refiner's fire, which is about purifying people and their work so that God's dwelling is fitting for him. And in second Peter three, the logic is pushed out to all creation. Not only are people refined, but the whole cosmos, and that is absolutely necessary for the dwelling of God throughout the entire cosmos.
[00:37:26] Okay, so now we're gonna go bring that into the last chapters of Revelation. Revelation is going to give us two things that second Peter is holding together as well. The final verdict, as well as that new creation. Revelation places the lake of fire and the second death inside the final judgment sequence right alongside the unveiling of the New Jerusalem.
[00:37:53] I'm gonna start reading in Revelation 20 verse nine, quote, " And they went up on the broad plane of the earth and surrounded the fortified camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet also are. And they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. And I saw a great white throne and the one who was seated on it from whose presence earth and heaven fled and a place was not found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it and death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And each one was judged according to their deeds. And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven, and the first earth had passed away, and the sea did not exist any longer." End quote.
[00:39:23] Okay, so again, lots of imagery that we've seen before. We have the courtroom setting. We have the cosmic unmasking, the apocalyptic scene here. What we have in the cosmos can no longer function as it has before in deception and things that don't align with God's holiness.
[00:39:47] It's universal in scope. So there's judgment and it's absolutely cosmic. This is the most cosmic language we could possibly find where the sea is no more, and death and Hades themselves are thrown into that lake of fire. But not just them, but also humans. Anyone who is not found in the book of life is going to also be thrown into the lake of fire.
[00:40:13] Okay, so here's our tough questions. What kind of fire is this? We have a judgment scene. There is a outcome and a verdict. Is it eternal conscious torment? Is it a fire that these people go into and they are conscious and they are there being tormented literally for all of eternity from that point forward? Or is it a fire that is truly destructive and they are thrown into it and they are consumed and destroyed, they no longer exist.
[00:40:49] Or is it a refining fire where they are thrown into it and they experience that as that refiner's fire that will ultimately purge them and eventually they will be restored and in God's embrace again?
[00:41:06] Well, we don't have that explicitly here, but what we do have is that trail of refiner's fire that we've seen over and over and over in Scripture. I know a lot of people, again, are not really a fan of thinking that universal reconciliation is even a possibility.
[00:41:26] And I will be honest, I have a really hard time seeing how you can make a very solid case for it from an exegetical perspective. I think that a lot of people who go down the route of universal reconciliation do so for philosophical reasons. But nonetheless, I'm bringing that out as an option because again, people who are thinking that way are still trying to take Scripture seriously.
[00:41:56] Now, what about retribution and restoration? Well, people are judged according to what they had done, and there is a clear, decisive, non-negotiable outcome that is associated with that verdict. And restoration is implicit in this because death itself is abolished.
[00:42:18] Okay, so in Revelation 20 we have the Day's judgment, the courtroom scene, the books of life. We have the fate that we have with the lake of fire and the second death, and those are adjacent to one another. So in at least some texts, the matrix of the fire in the Day of the Lord does include a hell fire like outcome category, whatever you're going to do with that.
[00:42:49] So a lot of passages, it's not really clear that the Day of the Lord is necessarily attached to some actual fire after that Day. But here it is absolutely unmistakable. The final courtroom scene is attached to the lake of fire and the second death, but the scene also does something strangely hopeful.
[00:43:16] Death and Hades are thrown in, too, so the fire isn't about only punishing the wicked. It's also about ending the reign of death so that new creation can actually be new and will no longer be threatened by what it's been threatened with before.
[00:43:34] Then you go into Revelation 21 and Revelation 22, and you have a world where death is gone and the fire is going to totally shift from that threat to God's glory light. But even there, we still have boundary markers that are mentioned. But importantly, at that point, they're no longer seen to be any kind of a threat.
[00:44:03] So let's take a look at that for just a second here. Revelation 21 gives us the new creation announcement. We have the dwelling of God that is now with humanity. We have explicit restoration outcomes. There's no more death, there's no more mourning or crying or pain. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death, mourning, or wailing, or pain will not exist any longer. The former things have passed away and all things are new, but as I said, there's still a boundary list that appears.
[00:44:39] Revelation 21, verse eight says, quote, quote But as for the cowards and unbelievers and detestable persons and murderers and sexually immoral people and sorcerers and idolaters, and all liars, their share is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." End quote.
[00:45:02] Now here is really where we get into that nitty gritty detail of individual fates in the afterlife. And people, especially atheists who want to challenge Scripture will say, look, God just wants to throw people in hell for all of this list of sins right here.
[00:45:24] What that conversation is missing, however, is how these things are outpourings of improper worship. Nothing has fundamentally changed. We don't suddenly have this idea that, oh, now people are going to be judged for their individual sins, and it really is not connected to anything in particular in regards to covenant or worship. Absolutely not. All of these things happen because the people have been formed by anti worship and anti covenant.
[00:45:59] I don't think the picture we have here is that somebody made a mistake. Now they're going to be thrown into the lake of fire for that. The picture here are people who are formed in rebellion. They're formed in a state where they are out of covenant with God. They reject God. God has given them possibilities and called them back and they have refused. I think that is the picture we're supposed to have here.
[00:46:28] And again, worship of Yahweh and true following allegiance to Jesus, it is tied to our morality and our behavior, absolutely, but we're not being saved because we've suddenly decided to be good people. We are being saved because we are following Yahweh and he is forming us into his people in holiness.
[00:46:54] That might sound like the same thing to some people. If you don't have this context in your head and you're just not really seeing the picture . And you can't force people to see that. The important element to really understand is that idolatry is not just wrong for the sake of idolatry. It is wrong because it is forming people into something that is anti-God.
[00:47:22] Do I think that that means that every follower of another deity is, like, some malformed person who doesn't have any connection to God or holiness. I actually don't think that because there is a sense in which people are actively deceived, right. That's why it's important also to look at this beastly rule language that we have in the Old Testament.
[00:47:54] What is the major targets there? The major targets are the rulers. It is the oppressors, and so you cannot tell me that somebody just living their normal existence trying to eck out their normal life within a pagan society who has no way of accessing the truth of Yahweh and true worship because they live somewhere else. A lot of those people are going to be in a state where they are actively trying to seek the good, they're actively trying to pursue the knowledge of God that they have, but they might not have what somebody else over in Israel has, right? And so those people do not know what they don't know. Those people are in the category of the oppressed. They're in the category of the deceived.
[00:48:51] And let me ask you this, we live in what we might call a post-Christian world today. Does that mean that everyone today, if you live in America or the West or you know that kind of a situation, does everyone around you really know God? Does everyone around you understand the gospel? Does everyone around you know the story of Jesus who came to us to create this world in a way that is right and true?
[00:49:25] Does everybody know that? Because I don't think they do. I think a lot of people have this narrative that God is out only for vengeance and retribution, and they don't see the mercy and restoration side, which is really the true heart of God.
[00:49:46] I think it matters what somebody knows. I think it matters what they've been taught. And I think that there is a lot of ignorance, deception, and true oppression in the world. And the ones who are the oppressors, they are the ones who know what they're doing. The deceivers, they're not deceiving out of ignorance, they're deceiving out of intention.
[00:50:15] And this is the narrative of Scripture. This is what we have in it. It is all through the Old Testament, the story of God pursuing people and trying to get them to the point of being able to restore them in right relationship and right worship, not simply because God is arrogant. The point is that worshiping Yahweh is the path to lead to proper justice and right order and good living. It is the way you defeat the oppression. It is the way you are rescued from corruption, from forces and powers that are against you.
[00:50:58] God's glory is definitely about his presence, his honor, his name. But the reason we need to see those things and have them in our lives is because of the actual impact they have on creation. It's not just about ego. It's not just about fame, it is about right order and proper justice, which can include the retributive elements.
[00:51:26] It can include punishment. No one's saying it doesn't, but is that punishment owed to people who don't know any better? That's not the story I see in Scripture. People aren't punished out of ignorance. What we have instead are people who are warned, are people who are ,taught either rightly or not rightly, in which case they're being deceived, and the ones who are deceiving them and oppressing them in leading them towards that violence, well, they have a nasty fate awaiting them.
[00:52:02] In Revelation, the nations are not destroyed. The nations still exist, but they're now walking by the light of God's glory. Kings aren't destroyed either entirely. They're still kings of the earth, but there're abiding and walking in God's life. There is no longer anything unclean. There is no longer anyone who practices abomination and falsehood, and there is healing, healing for the nations.
[00:52:33] Is it really about you did something wrong, you went against the law, therefore you're going to be punished. Is that the story?
[00:52:43] In the end, what we have is fire, that is glory, that is illumination for all of creation so that we can live together in God's shalom with God himself without the corruption and violence and opression. That's the hope. That's what we have. And that is the intention from day one. Literal day one. Genesis one.
[00:53:12] Retributive justice is not just there for itself, but it's part of that safeguard to get to the point where we no longer have that oppression.
[00:53:23] All right, so I haven't answered the question about eternal conscious torment and conditional immortality and all of that, but I think the important thing for myself, at least, that I think that we really need to drill down into is the hope that is provided here. Is there warning? Is there judgment? Is there retribution in wrath? Yes, there is. The picture is death itself is thrown into the lake of fire and there is healing for the nations. There is healing for people.
[00:53:59] Across the text that I've talked about, the Bible's Day of the Lord fire is not just a single picture, but a matrix of images that all serve the same end. The public unveiling of God's reign.
[00:54:14] So ultimately the fire is the Day's way of making reality accountable and creation fit for God. So is it retribution or is it restoration? I think that the texts force a both/ and. They don't mix them in identical proportions all the time. Sometimes the text will really emphasize verdict and removal, but sometimes the emphasis is on purification and renewal and mercy and restoration.
[00:54:46] The goal is a world where worship is now rightly ordered, where we are now purified to the point where righteousness is truly present within our midst. So yes, there's retribution toward things that destroy that, and it's restorative towards those who turn to God and seek him. We can't forget that repentance is part of this matrix. It's part of that logic.
[00:55:15] When God's reign is unveiled, then every false refuge is going to collapse, and we have to have a response for that and everyone will.
[00:55:25] All right. Now I will give a few words here about the ideas of eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality, and so on. If you really want to lean into eternal conscious torment, because there is so much language that is wrapped up in the idea of destruction and actual consumption and things like that, there's actually not that many places where you can go to find eternal punishment.
[00:55:56] One of them is Matthew 25. This is the story of the sheep and the goats, and there's the separation. And the goats and the people on the left are going to be going into eternal punishment and the righteous into eternal life. Now, if you read that in English, it just seems really clear that there is eternal punishment.
[00:56:20] How do you come away from the text without anything except eternal conscious torment? Well, first of all, again, there's just not that many texts that give us this. So that alone should put a little bit of caution on what we're doing. And second of all, Matthew 25 is an explicit public Day scene.
[00:56:42] The Son of Man is coming in glory and all of the nations are gathered. It's a courtroom because we have a separation, we have verdict, we have inheritance and exclusion from inheritance. We also definitely have that fire language, eternal fire, eternal punishment.
[00:57:01] But again, the fact that we only have a couple of these verses that mention punishment that is eternal and lasts forever, is that how we should see it? Well, if you go into my study notes that I will be providing for this episode, I'm not giving you any explicit answers there, but there is a lot there that you can dig into , and you should probably go talk to other people with different vantage points as well and see how they answer questions.
[00:57:31] One of the things we could ask here is whether or not we really have to equate eternal life with eternal punishment as two things that both continue forever.
[00:57:43] And let me show you another text. We go into Mark nine, and this is Jesus' warning about Gehenna and the unquenchable fire. We have the language of the worm that doesn't die, and the fire that's not extinguished, that calls back to Isaiah 66. Well, people think of unquenchable fire and that sounds an awful lot like eternal conscious torment, but really the emphasis is on that unstoppable judgment.
[00:58:13] It's not unquenchable torture. It's unquenchable fire. The fire can't be extinguished, but it doesn't say that all of the fuel is going to last forever. And if this is calling upon the prophetic callings of these kinds of ideas, well, they're full of hyperbole. Things like smoke and flames and worms that don't die, that is clearly metaphorical language.
[00:58:42] if you look at that language in the Old Testament, we're not like, well, there's a fire that's actually literally still burning from those judgments. No, that's not what we see. And we have some of those judgements that actually happened. They're just not at the end of times yet.
[00:59:00] You bring that into Revelation 20 with the lake of fire and the second death. Well, is there an end to something there?
[00:59:07] Now look, here's a way to look at it. If you have listened to Dr. Heiser about eschatology and you've heard him talk or write about things like the rapture, he talks about whether or not you are a joiner or a splitter. Now a joiner is going to look at two separate passages and join them together with the interpretation that they are talking about the same event. A splitter is going to look at those two passages and think that they're talking about two separate events.
[00:59:43] Both of those are interpretive moves, and there's nothing inherently telling you in the text whether or not you have to join or split a text together.
[00:59:55] And so I would suggest the same kind of thing here when we're looking at eschatological texts in regards to how eternal conscious torment views things and how conditional immortality views things.
[01:00:10] Are you taking the ideas of fire in the text and are you joining them together or are you splitting them apart? I think it's the same kind of idea, because we've seen that the Day of the Lord fire is broader than hell fire. Are you bringing in the idea of the refiner's fire into it? Because there's nothing inherently saying when a fire is refining or whether it's destroying, because you will get that destruction language in places where it's clearly still also at least talking about the refiner's fire.
[01:00:52] They're not necessarily separate. Maybe they're together, maybe they're separate. It's an interpretive move you have to make in order to decide on a position here. Not that you have to decide on a position, because I haven't, I don't think you have to do that, but if you want to land somewhere, that's what you're doing. You're either joining imagery together or you're separating it out, and there's a whole bunch of different ways you can do that.
[01:01:23] Again, in my document I list a bunch of terms that we have to wrestle with, including unquenchable, which is really the idea of unstoppable judgment. That doesn't mean it can't attach itself to that eternal conscious torment or punishment idea, but again, how does Scripture talk about punishment?
[01:01:48] What is punishment? Who is actually being tortured forever, do we see that in previous texts before Matthew 25? Is the king of Babylon understood to be under torture? Or do we understand punishment to be destruction?
[01:02:07] I mean, again, it's gotta be an interpretive move you're gonna make. We have the idea of eternal or forever, which is obviously very hyperbolic language, and it can attach itself in a lot of different ways to what we're thinking about in regards to, do we have eternal like God is in mind?
[01:02:30] Or do we have eternal in the sense of there is a memory that is going to last forever. There is a judgment that will not be undone because you've gone so far to the point that you're no longer going to receive mercy? These are options here.
[01:02:49] How do we understand the second death? Well, that might depend on how you understand the first death. Is what happened with Adam, a literal death or is it a spiritual death?
[01:03:01] Does Scripture even talk about spiritual death in the way that modern theologians talk about it? I hope you're starting to see just how very complex this imagery is and how every time we end up wanting to settle into a view, we have to make interpretive moves, and that simply means that the text is not that obvious.
[01:03:28] Once you see that the Bible uses multiple types of fire images, then I think it's a lot easier to understand why different Christians will land differently on the final fate question. And different models are going to privilege different parts of the data set, and we shouldn't pretend there's no tension.
[01:03:50] We shouldn't pretend it's super obvious and we need to be honest about what each view emphasizes. And then wrestle with that. Eternal conscious torment is going to lean on all of those texts with the explicit torment and forever language, and particularly the couple of passages that seem to suggest eternal lasting punishment. Conditional immortality or annihilation is going to lean on that language of death, destruction, being consumed, and the idea of the second death. And then universal reconciliation is going to lean on the language of restoration of all things and new creation. Purification can be part of God's reconciling purpose and intent and motive.
[01:04:44] And I'm gonna say, I don't hold any of these positions. I really kind of don't care because I think that what our focus should be on is worshiping God and being in his covenant. And you just, that's what you wanna have your eyes on. The alternative is going to be whatever it is, and it's not gonna be good.
[01:05:07] You don't want the alternative. I mean, even in the sense of universal reconciliation, you don't wanna be that purified, right? The purification that happens with the refiner's fire is not really pleasant. You don't wanna go through that.
[01:05:25] So my point here is that each of these views really is trying to honor Scripture. The question is how each one is going to account for the whole fire map, the courtroom, the jealousy, the sorting, the cosmic renewal, and the final boundary.
[01:05:44] I think what we can say with a lot of confidence is that the Day of the Lord is not reducible to a single doctrine of hell. There's just too much involved in it. It is a picture that the Bible is giving us of God's reign being unveiled, evil being judged, idols and beastly dominion being consumed and destroyed, and creation becoming a place where righteousness and holiness truly dwells.
[01:06:14] We have plenty of hellfire texts, but those are all separate. And again, I forget if I've mentioned this, but I've gone through a lot of that context of Gehenna and like the deep and Sheol and things like that. If you want a companion episode to this one, I suggest you go check out episode number 55 where I talk about a lot of that stuff.
[01:06:41] Alright, so I'm just gonna go ahead and leave you to my study guide and again, if there's anything that I can answer for you further in another episode, I am happy to do that. I just know that this series has lasted way longer than I ever expected it to, although it's been a lot of fun and I have learned a lot and I hope you have as well.
[01:07:03] If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me through my website at genesis marks the spot.com, and you can also come and join my biblical theology community at On This Rock, and I will leave links to that in the show notes.
[01:07:21] As always, I appreciate you guys listening. I appreciate you guys sharing the episodes with other people and a big shout out to all of you who support me financially or through my community. I really deeply appreciate it. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
