Jun
20.
And here it is, episode 7, the final part in the three part series on hell. This is the longest episode that I have ever done, and it is the longest I ever plan on doing. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a pattern, but I wasn’t about to do a fourth part, so I had to fit everything into this one.
As always, your comments and questions are welcome. Drop me a line – podcast at beretta-online.com – You can even send your comment or question as an audio clip, and I’ll play it on the show.
Similar Posts:
- Episode 026: In Search of the Soul, part 1
- Coming up…
- Episode 003: Religion in the Public Square, Part 2
- Episode 006: Hell, part 2 – Tradition Strikes Back!
- Trying to get famous
- What's in the next podcast series:
Tags: annihilationism, hell, podcast
I am really enjoying the podcast series so far. The only suggestion I have is of a technical nature; your podcast files are really big, the last one was over 40 MB. Most other podcasts I listen to are about 10MB and was wondering if you had experimented with testing out the different quality settings when publishing. I guess it doesn’t really matter for those with a big hard drive and on broadband, however, I’m in Nigeria and still on dial-up speed and it took me almost 4 hours to download that last episode.
Anyhow, no biggie, just a thought.
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Hey Tim, thanks for listening! That last one was especially large, just because it was nearly an hour long. Most of the casts I listen to are about 20 MB for a half hour show, so mine are about average. I had to sacrifice sound quality to get it to that size though – a bitrate of 96kb per second. I might experiment with lower bitrates to see if the quality is good enough to use. Thanks for the comment.
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Hi Glenn, I thoroughly enjoyed your teaching on annihilationism. Traditionalism has never sat right with me – not because of emotional reasons, but because I have felt it always plays down the actual death of the soul. I don’t know if this is a correct correlation, but traditional teaching has always made me wonder back to Genesis, where the serpent claimed that you won’t really die.
Anyway, your explanation of Rev 20:10 didn’t fully sit right with me. Perhaps it is just a case of we shouldn’t take it as literally as most do, but unlike Rev 14:11 we don’t have another scripture to help interpret it, and so we’re left with just the fact that this book is a vision. But even so, I believe we have to take at least some things literally – it begs the question of just how deep we go with explaining the book away as simply imagery.
To get to the heart of the matter of my question to you regarding Rev 20:10, could someone not regard the beast as the people of the Godless kingdom? You stressed that the beast is a kingdom, as interpreted for us in Daniel 7, but this could in fact represent a conscious group of people. Dan 7:11 says that “the beast was slain, and his body destroyed.” Maybe I’m reading too deeply into it, but could it be that the body of the beast is the ungodly people, much like the opposing body of Christ is the group of believers in the one true God?
Perhaps the annihilationist’s argument still is that the body is completely destroyed, but I feel a traditionalist could still use their spin on it, with reference to Rev 20:10, that destruction here means eternal torment.
I’m almost fully convinced that your view is correct, but I’m still uneasy with this verse. What are your thoughts?
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“but unlike Rev 14:11 we don’t have another scripture to help interpret it, and so we’re left with just the fact that this book is a vision.”
Well I’m not so sure about that, Jeff. In Revelation 20 we’ve got the Beasts, the false prophet and the devil being tormented forever in the lake of fire. That’s the vision.
We have at least two other considerations to draw on here. We know from other parts of the book of Revelation that the lake of fire represents destruction. For example, nobody has a problem seeing that when death is cast into the lake of fire, that means the end of death. So that’s one passage to help interpret Revelation 20.
The other is actually in the book of Daniel. As I noted (I think… it was a long time ago), in Daniel those beasts, representing kingdoms, were pictured as slain and their bodies burned. This was interpreted, in Daniel, to mean that those kingdoms would actually be no more. But here in Revelation we have those same beasts, and I submit, the same message. I think it’s fairly clear that the author intended to draw on Daniel to make the same point, but the imagery is different.
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Sorry, what I meant by having no supporting scripture for annihilationism is in regards to the understanding of “torment” and “forever and ever.” Rev 14:11 with its imagery of smoke ascending forever and ever was an easy one to clarify, as you pointed out. I think you showed that in the story of Edom – the scripture used the same imagery, although we know that the smoke isn’t (visibly) continuing to rise, and so we understand to not take the phrase literally. So you safely, and rightly I believe, applied the same understanding to Rev 14:11.
However, when it comes to Rev 20:10, there is no scriptural basis to interpret “torment” as anything but that which detrimentally interferes with a conscious entity. You explained this torment away based on the fact that the beast is a system or government – which us therefore without conscious – and therefore the torment applied to it could not be seen in the usual sense of the word. However, I think it can be strongly argued that the beast is a conscious group of people, whether that be the government or the nation of the prophet, or perhaps another possibility.
You could take the vision of Daniel 7:11 as a literal destruction, but then that would deny Rev 20:10 as literal. Both of visions, so how can we be certain to take Dan 7:11 on face value?
I feel that comparing the point that death was thrown into the fire, signifying its end, is a weak one. Death is simply thrown in, whilst in contrast the devil, beast and false prophet are “tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Also, there is no scriptural support, at least from the NT I think, to suggest that “forever and ever” is not a reference to literal eternity. In your attempt to explain why this phrase is used, you seemed to struggle, with only being able to suggest that it was used merely for conveying the shock and horror, rather than telling us that this was a literally eternal torment.
I’m not really trying to refute your position, because I don’t know where to stand myself. I’m hoping your answers will help me reach a conclusion – one way or another.
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Oh OK. You’re right – the word torment isn’t used in another text to clearly mean destruction, no.
The reason I think we’re safe to take Daniel literally is that it’s not just a vision. There’s the vision of the beast being slain and burned, but then after that there is the explicit interpretation of the vision, stating that it refers to a kingdom that will be done away with one day. So it’s not that both are visions: One is a vision which is explicitly interpreted (Daniel), while the other is a vision that is not interpreted. So here we have a real-world application of a kingdom that ceases to exist, and yet the book of Revelation describes that kingdom being tormented (something that doesn’t even make literal sense).
And I daresay, the fact that death is thrown into the lake of fire is not weak. Remember, the writer doesn’t say what happens to death in the lake of fire, but all traditionalists recognise what it means: The end of death. So that raises the question that needs to be answered: What, in light of this fact, does the lake of fire signify?
And you’re right, there’s no example in the NT where forever and ever means only for a while. But then, I don’t think that the events of the vision are literally real. The fate suffered by these entities in the vision is not the same as the real world application, it’s just a vision presented in a very figurative way. It’s like a political cartoon. The beast suffering forever in the lake of fire signifies a kingdom being ultimately overthrown and destroyed.
What’s more, a kingdom can’t suffer sensible pain and suffering. That idea makes no sense. So whatever the lake of fire represents, it must be a fate that can be applied to non-personal entities like a kingdom – or like death. If my understanding is correct that death is destroyed, and the kingdoms are destroyed (which does make sense, even for non-personal entities), then the lake of fire, when interpreted and applied to the real world, signifies destruction.
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I feel you’re missing my main point. I believe you can view the beast as being a conscious collection of people opposed to God. A kingdom can be hurt, in pain etc, because it’s the people who consist of it, not just the land, the cities etc.
And there remains a stark contrast between those conscious entities – the devil, the beast, and the prophet – who are tormented forever and ever, as opposed to death, which is not subjected to torment, but is simply cast into the lake of fire.
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Jeff, I do indeed see your point. Your point (or at least one of them), is that death is only said to be cast into the lake of fire, but the beat is said to be tormented there. This is different, you say, and so one cannot explain the other.
You now elaborate on the nature of the beast being conscious. I assume this wasn’t your main point, as you’ve just mentioned it now. However, I think it’s a mistake to see the beast as an actual conscious being in history. Rome, for example, is not a conscious thing. Rome doesn’t feel physical pain, Rome doesn’t speak words, Rome isn’t a creature of any kind. The beast stands for a kingdom. Of course I understand that the issue isn’t the land, cities etc, but the point is that a kingdom is a corporate entity, not an actual being. Corporate entities do not not have consciousness.
Think of a political cartoon showing an eagle, representing America. Now imagine that in the cartoon, the eagle is shown sharpening its claws, ready to attack, and that this symbolises the fact that America is preparing for war. Obviously each American is not sharpening his or her claws. That doesn’t even make sense. That’s because America here would be a corporate entity, where what is depicted is the actions of the nation as a whole in terms of the direction it is taking.
Now consider the corporate entity in the book of Revelation represented by the beast – a world kingdom. Showing that beast being thrown into a lake of fire and suffering torment clearly does not mean that every individual member of that kingdom will be thrown into a lake of fire and tormented. Again, the beast is symbolic of a corporate entity.
Well then what does it mean? And here is where both Daniel and the other parts of the book of Revelation come to our aid. In Daniel we see a similar vision, where the beast is slain and burned. (“I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.”) But then after the vision comes the interpretation, “the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever.” That’s the fate of the beast – or rather, the kingdom. And that can help us see what Revelation 20:10 refers to.
And you really are brushing off the fat of “death” much too quickly. I don’t think you’re seeing how significant it is. Nothing is said about what happens to death after it goes into the lake of fire. Not a word. And yet we all agree that it refers to the destruction of death. What this shows us (just as it did in the case of the beast) is that the lake of fire is a fate that can befall non-personal and even abstract entities. This means that the lake of fire cannot signify something that requires personal consciousness. Destruction does not require this, but endless torment does. And – look at the fat of human beings who follow the beast. They are said to be cast into the lake of fire, and likewise – exactly as in the case with death being cast into the lake of fire – nothing is said about what happens to them after they are cast in. Now, I take the fate of these people – and that of the beast – and that of the devil – to be the same. That fate is the lake of fire.
* We all agree, I hope (taking Daniel into account as well), that the kingdoms that oppose God’s kingdom will actually be no more.
* We agree, I hope, that death, according tot he New Testament, will be no more.
* I am saying that we should say the same of the devil and those who follow the beast in Revelation 20, since they all likewise go into the lake of fire.
* And lastly – I didn’t mention this before – the writer of the book of Revelation himself adds that the lake of fire “is the second death.” So in the vision, it’s a lake of fire, but what does it point to in the real world? The second death.
So I think there is a smorgasboard of biblical clues, both in the book of Revelation and in the book of Daniel, that can come to our aid in interpreting Revelation 20:10.
What’s more, if the other arguments for annihilationism – drawn from a very wide array of biblical passages in the Old and New Testaments – is as good as I have tried to show it is, then this one remaining passage should certainly not hold you back.
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