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Sunday School

Lesson 25: Eternal Conscious Punishment, Questions

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Greg Ho

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Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.

Summary

This passage examines the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment (hell) as taught in Scripture. We are reminded that hell is a necessary consequence of God’s holiness, worthiness, and justice, and that understanding this reality should deepen our worship and fuel our evangelism.

Key Lessons:

  1. Sinners continue to sin in hell and never repent — their state is permanently fixed after judgment, making eternal punishment a never-ending cycle of sin and judgment.
  2. Hell is a natural and necessary consequence of three divine attributes: God’s holiness, God’s infinite worthiness, and God’s perfect justice.
  3. A faithful gospel presentation must include the reality of hell and God’s wrath — the good news is only truly good when we understand how devastating the bad news is.
  4. Common arguments for annihilationism (emotional appeals, the word “destruction,” and the reconciliation of all things) do not hold up under careful biblical examination.

Application: We are called to incorporate the reality of hell and God’s wrath into our evangelism with urgency, not apologizing for this truth but presenting it as essential to understanding the gospel. We should also let the weight of what Christ endured on our behalf deepen our worship and gratitude.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does understanding the severity of hell change the way we appreciate Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross?
  2. In what ways might we be tempted to soften or avoid the topic of hell in evangelism, and how can we faithfully present this truth with both honesty and compassion?
  3. If our affections will be fully sanctified in heaven so that we praise God even for His judgments, what does that tell us about how incomplete our understanding of God’s holiness is right now?

Scripture Focus: Matthew 25:46 (eternal punishment parallels eternal life), Mark 9:43-48 (the worm does not die), Revelation 20:10 (tormented day and night forever), 2 Corinthians 5:11 (knowing the fear of the Lord we persuade men), Revelation 19:1-3 (heaven praises God’s righteous judgments), and 1 Peter 2:24 (Christ bore our sins on the cross).

Outline

Introduction

Let’s start out with a word of prayer. Father, we are thankful for this morning that we get to come to your church and we get to open your word and to be edified and to see the wonders within. Lord, I just pray this morning that all the mothers here would be blessed and we thank you for the role they have in our lives.

As we come towards this weighty topic again this morning, pray that you would help us to understand it to the limit that we can understand it as humans and that we can have this truth affect our lives, affect our evangelism and even bring us joy knowing that you have saved us from such a great sorrow.

I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, somebody pointed out that this morning is Mother’s Day and we are talking about eternal conscious punishment, which is a little interesting. But I’ll tell you, in my own study of this topic I’m alternatively depressed and joyful, right? Because when you come to the topic of hell, you don’t want any of the people to go there. You don’t want to go there. You don’t want your worst enemies to go there because of how horrible it is.

But at the same time, you start to understand as you dwell on these things that Christ took this great punishment for you. And the more awesome you see that sacrifice, the more joyful you become. At least for me.

Well, today we’re here to pursue the truth of what the scriptures tell us about hell. What is the accurate diagnosis that the scriptures have of our eternal state? And there’s nothing more important to get right than this.

Review: Eternal Conscious Punishment

We saw last time that the scriptures are clear. The fate of man who is unredeemed, who has not been saved by a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is eternal conscious punishment. This is an unending punishment that will be horrible and will never end. Eternal conscious punishment, eternal conscious torment.

This is set up against some of the other competing philosophies such as universalism, which is everybody eventually makes it to heaven. That’s not taught in the Bible. And also annihilationism, which is the thought that perhaps everybody who doesn’t believe in Christ ceases to exist at some point, either at the point of death or sometime after a resurrection.

That’s also not taught in the Bible.

Some of the verses we saw last time—there were about 40 verses in all of scripture talking directly about hell. Some of the clearest are Matthew 25:46: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” The same word for eternal punishment is used for eternal life. Both are eternal.

Matthew 25:46: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

And Mark 9:43-48 where Jesus quotes the Old Testament in the book of Isaiah: “the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Hell is going to be a place where not only is the fire never extinguished, but the fuel for that fire, which is sinners, will never be consumed. A fearful fate.

We talked about two phases of hell last time. The first phase is from now until Jesus comes back for the resurrection. That’s going to be sort of a temporary holding place that’s also characterized by punishment. But then there is a final state in the lake of fire.

This is again a very disturbing topic. Last time we worked together and saw this whole word scramble of all these words that are used to describe hell. If you are interested, you can go back and look at that. It’s a fearful thing.

One last thing to mention before we get into some of the questions is that most of what we know about hell comes straight from the mouth of Jesus. It’s difficult to sort of sweep it under the rug when Jesus himself is telling us about hell. The same Jesus that died to save us from hell.

Before we get started into some questions today, as I was thinking about hell and what it might be like, I remembered a fear I had as a child. I had this fear of being buried alive. The thought would keep me up at night.

Hell, I think, is somewhat like that. It’s darkness, it’s loneliness. It’s never any hope of escaping.

But then there are other adjectives that are added in there. It’s fire. It’s brimstone. So not only are you in this place of darkness, but there is fire causing you pain, brimstone, worms eating your flesh, and this lasts forever. I think if you think about that for too long, you risk going insane.

But anyways, you guys have submitted some awesome questions about hell, and today we’re going to try to go through about eight of them. If we can get through eight of them, I will be pretty happy. During each question, we can see whether or not you have some brief comments or some brief questions you want to follow up with. We have about 10 minutes for each question.

Question 1: Do Sinners Continue to Sin in Hell?

Probably six minutes for each. We’re going to try to move a little bit efficiently and quickly. The first question somebody asked was, “Do sinners continue to sin in hell?” And the answer to this question is clearly yes.

Sinners continue to sin in hell. Some verses show this. While not talking directly about hell, they show what’s happening during the judgment on earth and how suffering that judgment affects sinners. In Revelation 16:9, “the people were scorched with fierce heat and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues and they did not repent so as to give him glory.”

In verse 11, “they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.” In verse 21, “huge hailstones weighing about a talent each came down from heaven upon people, and people blasphemed God because of the plague of hail because the hailstone plague was extremely severe.”

I remember when Pastor Bobby preached on this passage, what struck out at me is that you would think perhaps the suffering, you would think perhaps the punishment would cause people to repent. By and large, this does not happen. In hell, this will never happen. Judgment in fact hardens people.

“Judgment in fact hardens people.”

Here’s another verse. This one is particularly poignant. In Revelation 22, you have to kind of look at the context here. Revelation 22 is describing a time after judgment has happened.

A Fixed Eternal State

And here it says, “Let the one who does wrong still do wrong and the one who is filthy still be filthy and let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness and the one who is holy still keep himself holy.” This verse is interpreted to mean that whatever state you’re in after judgment, that’s it. You’re going to stay in that state.

If you’re holy, you’ll stay holy. If you are filthy, you’ll stay filthy. If you do wrong, you’ll do wrong.

The time for repentance will be passed. The time for taking advantage of Christ’s offer of taking your sins and him taking your sins and you taking his righteousness, that’s gone. And now you are in the state that you are in and you will still do wrong. You will still do sin.

So this eternal state in Revelation 22 is a fixed state. This eternal state is now fixed. You are fixed in either your sinfulness or in your holiness. And this division is now permanent.

“The time for repentance will be passed. This eternal state is now fixed.”

Well, we’ll see that again in some other scriptures.

Sin Heaps More Judgment

But then obviously, if you think about this enough, you realize that this is part of why eternal punishment is just—the wicked never stop sinning. That sin in hell, even in hell as they blaspheme God, as they rail against God and hate God, that sin will continually heap upon judgment.

And so that cycle will never end. You continue to keep on wrath on yourself.

“The wicked never stop sinning, and sin in hell will continually heap upon judgment.”

And this goes back actually to a lot of themes that we talked about in this Sunday school series on determining doctrinal distinctives. They all fit together. Maybe two months ago or three months ago, we talked about sovereign election and how even election, how even your faith is a gift from God, right?

Your faith—and that was determined before the foundation of the world and that was given to you by God. And you will see that here there is no possibility of repentance because there is no more grace. There is no more—the gift of faith is no longer being offered.

So you cannot repent, and in fact you will not want to repent if you are there in hell. It’s a frightening thing. Anybody have anything to add here before we move on?

Well, they’ll bow the knee. But then it will not be a willing bowing of the knee. It will be a forced bowing of the knee. This we’ll come back to later. Christ wins the victory, right? And he has enemies by which he subjects, but they don’t convert, right? Yeah. So it’s a frightening thing.

Arthur, my question is: are the righteous going to be aware of this?

Yeah, wait. Two questions. Okay. Maybe three questions. Hopefully we’ll get there.

Question 2: How Should We View Hell Properly?

All right. Question number two: How should we view hell properly?

This was, I think, from Mark. How should we view hell properly, particularly knowing that God is perfect, holy, and good? And how can we avoid downplaying or apologizing for an attribute of God that we struggle with?

I think this question comes from a demonstrated tendency in modern evangelicalism to sweep under the rug when people are interviewed. They tend to give a roundabout answer. I think Joel Osteen did that recently in a very public interview. Instead, how do we think about this in a way that honors God’s attributes?

Well, I’ll answer it this way. I think there are three things that we have to remember when it comes to hell, and it is a natural consequence of three things.

The first thing that is a natural consequence of is God’s holiness. I have to remember that we as humans, as limited humans today, cannot fully understand God’s holiness. And we also don’t really understand our sinfulness in a full way.

Hell Reflects God’s Holiness

And the fact that we don’t understand God’s holiness and we don’t understand our sinfulness means that it doesn’t seem like hell is necessarily a just thing. That’s just because of our human failing. We don’t understand God’s holiness. We don’t understand how much God hates sin. We don’t understand how God abhors sin and how sinful sin is.

Hell is as unending as God is holy. How holy do you think God is? That’s how unending hell is. If you take even a moment off of hell, then you’re taking away from God’s holiness. In a real sense, hell is a natural necessary consequence of God’s holiness.

But there’s another thing that I think hell is a natural consequence of, and that’s God’s worthiness. God is infinitely holy and you’ll see in Revelation that the angels cry out “holy, holy, holy” and then the 24 elders say “worthy is the lamb.” These two concepts are connected. The holiness that leads to the worthiness, and the worthiness means that God is of infinite worth.

We even understand today that sin incurs a punishment proportional to how worthy the thing is that you sinned against. If I go to one of your houses, assuming you’re not a billionaire, and I break one of your vases, well, you might not be very happy with me, but it wouldn’t be a big deal.

“Hell is as unending as God is holy.”

You probably wouldn’t go to jail for that.

Hell Reflects God’s Worthiness

But if I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I break one of those vases, well, that’s a priceless work of art, right? That’s a treasure. You probably would go to jail for that.

And so sin against an infinitely worthy God will incur a great punishment, a very severe punishment. And so that means that if you shorten the duration of hell and minimize the worthiness of God, you’re saying God is really not that worthy.

“Sin against an infinitely worthy God will incur a very severe punishment.”

He’s not infinitely worthy. And another way of saying it is if hell were finite, then God’s worthiness would also be finite. That means you could be finished paying for your sin. That means it’s a finite amount of sin. And that means God’s worthiness is finite. You can put a price tag on it, right?

Hell Reflects God’s Justice

So again, these two things are basically—if you think about it enough, you realize that hell must be unending. And finally, there’s one more, and that’s God’s justice.

Hell is not a cruel and unusual punishment as some people would say. It is God’s being perfectly just. In Deuteronomy 32:4, he says all his ways are justice, for his ways are just, a God of faithfulness and without injustice.

Righteous and just is he. How many times did you hear the word justice there? I mean, it’s like just in that one verse, four times he’s talking about how he’s just, faithful, without injustice, and righteous and just. And then Psalm 55 actually says, “The boastful will not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do injustice.”

So one way of thinking about this is we tend to think of hell being filled with people who are generally good. And so, well, that’s not really a good thing that you’re putting good people in hell. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, hell is not full of good people.

“Hell is not full of good people. Biblically, these people are wicked.”

We’re thinking about it wrong, right? Hell is full of wicked people. Biblically, these people who are in hell are wicked.

One Day Our View of Holiness Will Be Fixed

That’s one way we can think about this. One of the things is that one day we will have our view of holiness fixed. I think the reason we don’t see these things in an intuitive way is because our view of God’s holiness is flawed. But one day we will have that view of holiness fixed.

I think we read a verse last time in Revelation 14, which I think we’ll be able to see again later on in a different question. When people are being judged, Jesus is right there watching them. In fact, Jesus and the angels are sitting there watching the people be judged. It’s not something that they’re doing hidden out of view.

“One day we will have our view of holiness fixed.”

It’s right in full view, and it is something that is presented as a righteous and a good thing.

Question 3: Should We Preach Hell in Evangelism?

Okay. I’m not going to pause this one. We’ll pause the next one maybe. Question number three: Won’t proclaiming the unpopular message about hell prevent people from believing, and shouldn’t we just preach about God’s love instead?

I massage this question a little bit. I think it was a little bit different than this, but anyways, obviously we don’t like to tell people about hell. It’s just not something we enjoy. It’s not an enjoyable conversation when you’re going to impact this.

But I want to maybe challenge you guys to think about this in a different way. I think that a right presentation of hell is essential for effective evangelism. And maybe we’re not doing it right if we’re not doing that. It should be an essential part of the gospel presentation because we should honestly be afraid of God’s wrath.

Without—I’ll just tell you a sort of personal testimony. I was sharing the gospel with somebody a few weeks ago and talked about sin, and then we talked about the gospel. At the end, they were just nodding like, “Okay, great,” and what I felt from that conversation was that I didn’t seem to have communicated any sense of urgency. I think I failed to do that in that conversation.

So I gave them the gospel and they were like, “Yeah, I’ll think about it,” right? But really, what I should have communicated was: you don’t have time to think about it. This is too serious of a thing for you to sit on the back burner for the next ten years. You have to understand that judgment is imminent and judgment is terrible, and you never want to go into a place like hell.

The good news is really only good when you understand how bad the bad news is.

“The good news is really only good when you understand how bad the bad news is.”

I think Mark sent out this article from A.W. Pink, which basically boils down to this: a God without wrath is not the God of the Bible. When you present the gospel without the wrath of God, think about it this way. You may be presenting the wrong God, because the God of the Bible is one of wrath and hatred of sin.

In fact, Jesus is the one who preached hell more than anyone. We talked about this.

The Fear of the Lord Persuades Men

This is how Jesus evangelized. He brought up hell constantly. In fact, in every interaction he could, he brought up the idea of hell. And this is just one example. Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” Jesus is not softening hell in any way.

And Paul also has the same tendency. He says, “For we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, Paul is saying we should be afraid.” And in fact, this fear is what will persuade men. This is what you should use to persuade men. It’s the fear of the Lord. It’s not just the love of the Lord. It’s not just warm and fuzzies. But we need to bring the fear of the Lord into our gospel presentations.

And if you get anything out of this sermon, maybe you just want to memorize 2 Corinthians 5:11. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.

2 Corinthians 5:11: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.”

Thinking about that a lot. In summary, I don’t think we should be afraid of talking about hell in evangelism. In fact, that is really what we should be using to persuade men. It’s supposed to be terrifying. It’s supposed to push us to repentance.

Anybody have any comments or questions on this one?

Somebody wrote who? Abigail. Go ahead.

Urgency and the Love of God

Yeah, that’s a great point. And it’s interesting because in preparation for this, I listened to the whole—well, I mean, at least I read the transcript of the whole three-hour conversation that Kurt Cameron had about annihilationism versus eternal conscious punishment.

One of the things that they said was evangelism, or I guess coming to repentance—I suppose the motivation of that should be the love for God, right? I don’t think that’s that simple. And when you look at how Jesus presented it, he doesn’t appeal to that as much. I mean, he does say “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” but he talks about hell a lot more than that, in fact.

And I think obviously that’s not the only motivation. It’s not only escaping punishment. But we want to come to Christ because it’s the right thing to do and look at what Christ did for us and we all love God and what he did, and of course that’s right and good.

But as I said, I think if you don’t—if you only present those things and you leave out the concept of judgment, there’s no urgency to your gospel presentation. Then people will just say, “That’s a nice thing to say. Thank you,” and walk away.

“If you leave out the concept of judgment, there’s no urgency to your gospel presentation.”

Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Amen. Quickly got to move on.

Yeah.

In the verse where Jesus says “destroyed body and soul,” that word “destroyed”—because that’s where—yeah, this is our next question. Yeah, we’ll talk about this right now.

Oh, you’re anticipating all my questions.

I wanted to bring up for those of us who were not brought to the faith by evangelism because that was my experience. I read the Bible and because we believe in the sovereignty of God, that God has chosen—as he did something in my heart.

Question 4: Best Arguments for Annihilationism

Pastor Mark was mentioning that when I was reading the Bible, I really believed it. The idea that when I read the parts about it really scared me—something in my heart again—looks like God’s sovereignty in salvation is definitely still true. But we have to look at how Jesus presented it.

To your first question here are some answers. Question number four was: what are the best arguments for annihilationism, and why do we not believe these best arguments? I went and tried to find all of the best arguments.

Well, conditionalism annihilationism—just again, it means that all people are resurrected for judgment. But whereas you might be conscious for a time during judgment, they believe that the final state of the redeemed is destruction of body and soul. So you are no longer conscious or aware.

Any suffering you undergo as a sinner in annihilationism is finite. The punishment is just irreversible loss of consciousness.

We saw a little bit last time why that’s not biblical. But let me give you the best three annihilationist arguments, and then we’ll talk about them because you might hear these.

This is the one that first came up for Kirk Cameron. In fact, this is the reason why he himself stated that he was tending towards annihilationism. He says that annihilation is more in alignment with God’s nature of love, and eternal conscious torment seems disproportionate and cruel.

Argument 1: God’s Love Seems Incompatible with Eternal Hell

This is a common argument for annihilationism: that a good God couldn’t send people to an eternal hell, and it just seems that a loving God would not do that. This always comes up essentially when annihilationism is debated.

The simple answer to this question is that it’s not about our feelings at all. We don’t get to decide what’s fair or just based on how we feel. We can only read what’s in the Bible.

As I said last time, I would be very happy if hell wasn’t a thing. If hell wasn’t real, I wouldn’t have to struggle with the fact that I have a bunch of unsaved family members and friends who may be ending up there, which is a horrible thing to think about.

I would rather not think about that. But the Bible says otherwise and we just have to submit ourselves to that. This is an emotional argument, and it’s very effective because it’s very emotional.

“The Bible says otherwise and we just have to submit ourselves to that.”

Most people don’t want that to be true, right? We don’t want that to be true.

This is an argument from emotion, and it comes from not fully understanding the holiness of God. We can’t really in this life fully understand that and the sinfulness of sin.

Argument 2: The Bible Uses ‘Destruction’ and ‘Death’

Okay. The second best annihilation argument is that the Bible uses the word destruction and death for hell often.

I’ll just read a few to you. Arthur mentioned one, but Matthew 10:28 says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” Matthew 7:13 says, “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter it.”

We talked a little bit about this last time, but the word destruction and destroy—there are actually two words used for this, and there’s actually a spectrum of meaning in these words if you look at how they are used in other parts of the Bible. So it doesn’t have to mean obliteration.

1 Timothy 6:9 says, “For those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge people into ruin and destruction.” He’s talking here about the love of money and how it plunges people into destruction. Same word, destruction. Is it talking about annihilationism? Is it talking about being annihilated if you struggle with the love of money? No, it just talks about ruin.

It’s talking about the ruin of anything that is useful, right? We’ve talked about how it’s used for old wineskins that had new wine in them. Well, that wineskin is no longer able to be used. It’s going to leak and it’s no longer useful, right? So it’s a loss of usefulness.

Baldness is another example. It’s used to talk about baldness. It’s talked about in Matthew 26:8 when the disciples saw that the perfume was being wasted that was being poured on Jesus. They said, “Why this waste?” Well, that word waste—the same word destruction. Why is this waste?

So the word destruction can mean different things in different contexts, and it depends on the context, but it simply doesn’t fit the context of hell.

“The word destruction can mean different things in different contexts.”

When we talk about hell, we see the word destruction. Let’s talk about 2 Thessalonians 1:9. I’ll just read this to you. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says, “To those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, these people will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power.”

Think about the context. You’re going to pay the penalty of eternal destruction. If that word means annihilated, if that word means ceasing to exist, why would you even add this next point which is away from the presence of the Lord? How could you be annihilated away from the presence of the Lord? You can only be away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power if you exist.

The Word ‘Death’ Means Separation

When you look more carefully at a lot of these verses, you understand that he’s using the word destruction in a way to talk about ruin or loss of usefulness or even basically a waste, right? You’ve wasted your life.

When you talk about the word death, it’s a similar thing. These words have a range of meaning and need to be interpreted from context. But I’ll talk briefly about the word death because you’ll hear this word a lot and they’ll bring up annihilationist arguments. They love to bring up Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life.”

So here you say, well there’s eternal life and then there’s death. Those are the two things that are contrasted. And it’s true that humanly speaking, we have trained ourselves or we generally come to understand death as an ending or a loss of consciousness. But does it have to be that way? Does it always have to mean an ending or a loss of consciousness?

Well, no. Because you were dead in your transgressions and sins, right? Were you annihilated in your transgressions and sins? No. What that word death is meaning in that context is simply separation from God. You’ve been separated from God.

In the same way, when he says the wages of sin is death, it’s talking about a final separation from God, from God’s goodness and from God’s grace. And after all, was Jesus’ death the only thing that really saves us?

“You were dead in your transgressions and sins — that word death means separation from God.”

Well, what did he say before the cross? He says it is finished. Right? So in fact it is the suffering that he took upon himself, taking the wrath of the Father before even the physical death, that was the basis of our substitutionary atonement.

So it’s not necessarily talking about physical death or loss of consciousness when it talks about death here.

The Second Death in Revelation

And the last verse they like to bring up is Revelation 20:14, where it says death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death. They’ll talk about this and take that word “second death” and say, well, this is the second death, so that means annihilation. But all they have to do—remember we talked about this a little bit last time—is turn back about four verses to Revelation 20:10.

So what does Revelation 20:10 say?

It says the devil who deceived them were thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. So you have the devil and then you have at least two other things: the beast and the false prophet. And they are tormented day and night forever and ever.

So who are the beast and the false prophet? Well, we generally understand these to be real people. There are people who have been thrown in the lake of fire for which they describe they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. And then it talks about that being a second death.

So you have to understand that second death is in the context of being tormented day and night forever and ever. The summary for this one—it’s definitely something you have to look at all the descriptors—but it’s a range of meaning and it doesn’t necessarily mean a sensation of consciousness.

Revelation 20:10: “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Okay, we did this one already.

The devil and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. There’s a second death. Just turn back four verses and you see that’s talking about tormenting day and night forever and ever.

Argument 3: God Reconciles All Things

And okay, argument number three.

This is the argument that gave me pause a little about it. I was like okay. But then after further thought I realize it sounds convincing, but it’s not actually convincing when you think about it.

God says that he will reconcile all things to himself in Colossians, and that sin and death is defeated. But if hell is eternal, there will never be an end to death and sin because you will have sin, and then that will incur more judgment, and then sin and then judgment. So sin never ends. And this is brought up as an argument: well, then did God really reconcile all things to himself? And is sin and death really defeated?

At first you might think this sounds like a good argument. But as Mark was saying before in Philippians 2, it says every knee will bow and every tongue confess Christ as Lord. Well, this can mean unwilling or defeated confession, right?

So what we have to understand here is that the Bible only talks about the elimination of sin and death in the new heavens and earth. But it doesn’t preclude the idea of a lake of fire. And in fact, if you look at Revelation, you see that the lake of fire—at least those three entities that we just read—are being tormented day and night forever and ever.

So there is a place where at least somebody is being tormented day and night forever and ever. It’s definitely not the case that the Bible says there will never be any sort of punishment or bad things in the eternal state, because the lake of fire and the new heavens and the earth are existing simultaneously. Both are forever and ever.

So if somebody ever brings up this argument, you say, well, it’s true that the angels are actually being tormented day and night forever and ever. So it cannot be talking about the fact that in the eternal state there will be no hell, there will be no suffering. So people in hell are still brought under subjection and bow the knee. Sin is conquered.

“The lake of fire and the new heavens and earth are existing simultaneously.”

The fact that angels undergo eternal conscious torment is not controversial. Right? We just read that in the text. Nobody can really argue that.

And so this ruins the entire argument.

Okay. Do you mind if I go a little faster? Unless somebody has a real question on this one. Yes.

Right. It’s resolved it. And in fact, it’s displaying God’s attribute of justice, which is also reconciling.

Question 5: What Is Soul Sleep?

Okay. Really fast. I’m going to try to move for the next one fast. This is soul sleep. What is soul sleep? And what does the Bible teach about soul sleep?

There was a time where this was a very popular thought and idea, and this is held even today by Jehovah’s Witnesses, by Seventh Day Adventists, and by Christian Delphinism. I don’t think I’ve ever met any Christian Delphinists, but I’m sure somebody there has. There’s people there.

So this is the doctrine that once you die, the soul sleeps unconsciously between death and the resurrection. You die and your consciousness winks out until you’re resurrected.

So in support of that idea, people will bring up verses like Daniel 12:2, which is: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, those to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.” He’s talking about while they’re sleeping.

1 Corinthians 15:6: “Jesus appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.”

There’s a few other verses like this. “We do not want you to be uninformed about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as indeed the rest of mankind do.” That’s 1 Thessalonians 4:13.

So people will take these verses and say, well, that means that people have lost their consciousness like you would if you are sleeping. But when you think about it a little bit deeper and look at more of the scripture around it, you would realize that when they’re talking about sleep here, what are they talking about?

They’re talking about physical death. They’re talking about the fact that when somebody dies, like if somebody dies in front of you, they look like they’re asleep. It’s the physical reality of what’s happening here.

Scripture Teaches Immediate Consciousness After Death

It looks like they’re asleep. But scripture clearly teaches that you are conscious even right after the point of death. And in fact, this is a wild thing to think about: if somebody dies right now, if you happen to drop dead right now, you would not lose your consciousness. You would be conscious right after the point of death.

So how do we know that? Well, Luke 23:43, Jesus talks to the thief on the cross and it says, “Today you will be with me in paradise”—not when the resurrection comes thousands of years in the future, but today you will be with me in paradise.

In 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, the Apostle Paul tells us, “Absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.” Right? So once you’re absent from the body, you’re at home with the Lord.

Luke 23:43: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

It’s not that you’re absent from the body and then several thousand years pass until the resurrection and then you’re at home with the Lord. This is an immediate conscious presence. And I think when pastor Bobby preached through Revelation 6, we saw these disembodied souls who are under the altar and they are not sleeping. They’re awake and they’re demanding judgment.

They’re like, “How long are you going to let this sin go on in the world?” Right? They’re martyred. They’re disembodied souls. And they are conscious and they are demanding judgment.

And I think the main nail in the coffin here is Matthew 17:3 during the transfiguration.

“During the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear — they are not sleeping but talking to Jesus.”

So Jesus calls Moses and Elijah and they appear to Peter. Are Moses and Elijah sleeping? No, they’re walking around talking to Jesus. So soul sleep is not biblical, right?

Okay, I think I’m going to move on to the next one. I’m going to try to get through this as fast as I can. Oh, sorry, I forgot my slides.

All right, those are four things.

Question 6: Will People in Heaven See People in Hell?

Okay. Maybe we’ll not get through all of them. Will people in heaven be conscious of people in hell? Arthur, I think this was something you just talked about in the beginning. So how could there be no crying and weeping in heaven for people if we see our loved ones in hell? Are people in heaven conscious of people in hell?

I believe the answer to this question is yes. We are conscious, and a lot of these things we have to kind of extrapolate from scripture. We can’t be completely dogmatic on it, but I still believe the answer is yes.

Let me see if I have any of these verses. I’ll try to do this better this time.

Lazarus and the Rich Man

Okay. The first example that we have is Lazarus and the rich man. In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells this parable. There was a rich man and then there was Lazarus, a poor man. The poor man died and in verse 22 it says he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

Both of these two people are alive and conscious. In Hades, he lifted up his eyes being in torment and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. He cried out and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.”

Abraham says, “Child, remember that during your life you received good things and likewise Lazarus deserves bad things, but now he is being comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed so that those who wish to come over here will not be able.”

You see here there’s Lazarus and then there’s the rich man in Jesus’s parable. Even though there is a fixed uncrossable chasm in this parable, they can see each other at least in this particular example.

“Even though there is a fixed uncrossable chasm, they can see each other.”

A lot of people will look at this and say, “Well, this is just a parable. Maybe it’s not true.” But you have to think about whether Jesus tells parables that are not true. Is Jesus telling a parable that is fictitious? Is this fiction that Jesus is talking about?

Maybe. But I don’t think that Jesus would give such a wrong idea of the afterlife if it was indeed wrong. So this is the first example.

The second example of the awareness of people suffering in hell is in Revelation 6. We talked about this already—the martyrs under the throne. They’re aware of the injustice on earth and they’re crying out that God would hasten the judgment. So obviously these martyrs are aware in this case, not necessarily of hell, but of injustice on earth.

So awareness of injustice and sin is not taken away from your head. I think this one is the one that strikes home the most to me.

Torment in the Presence of the Lamb

This is Revelation 14:10. I’ll just read to you Revelation 14:10. He says he will also drink.

If anybody worships the beast and the image, he will also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Here you see the torment is happening in this particular scene in Revelation in the presence of the angels. So in the presence of Jesus. Jesus in fact is aware of what’s going on in hell, and so are the angels.

The angels are also aware of what’s going on in hell. You have to realize that both angels and Jesus are holy, and their awareness of what’s going on in hell is not scrambling their brains, right?

Revelation 14:10: “He will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

Heaven’s Response: Praise, Not Sorrow

And then this is one I think is another nail in the coffin: Revelation 19:1-3. This is heaven. The multitudes in heaven have just witnessed God’s judgment. They’ve just seen God’s judgment, right?

Their response is not weeping, right? Because the idea here is like if we see people in hell, that would make us sad. But in fact, when judgment happens, the multitudes in heaven do not weep. In Revelation 19, it says this. They say hallelujah four times.

It says, “After these things, I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, hallelujah, salvation, glory, and power belong to God because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great prostitute who was corrupting the earth with her sexual immorality. He has avenged the blood of his bondservants on her.” And then they say again, hallelujah, her smoke rises forever and ever.

You see that the emotion of the multitudes in heaven, which include people, is not sorrow, but it’s actually praise and triumph at God’s judgments, praise at God’s avenging. I think the answer is that in heaven, our affections will be so sanctified and so rewired that even when we see God’s judgment, we will give praise and glory to God. It will not be something that brings us sorrow or pain.

We’ll say that is a right thing that God did. That is a just thing that God did. We will agree with God’s verdict and we will admire God’s justice and also his mercy to us forever and ever.

“In heaven, our affections will be so sanctified that even when we see God’s judgment, we will give praise and glory to God.”

Does that make sense?

Yes.

God’s holiness. In our state right now, we can’t fully understand it. If we are to experience God’s holiness, God as holy, then we’d also have to experience his wrath because the two are tied together, right?

Yeah. It makes sense to me that we have to experience that wrath forever. We experience God’s holiness forever.

Yeah.

Again, the two are tied together. You take one out, then you have to take out the other, right?

Yes.

Righteous to eternal judgment, eternal destruction. Yes. Eternal punishment.

Sure.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Sure.

Right. Yeah. Steve brought up the point that holiness is really what undergirds all of the attributes of God, and that’s definitely true. In fact, holiness is the only attribute that’s mentioned—holy, holy, holy—not justice, justice, justice, right? That’s a great point.

Yeah. Okay, we got four minutes. I’m just going to do one last one. This will be the last question. We’ll deal with this a little fast. I think somebody asked this, so I wanted to talk about this specifically.

Question 7: Are There Degrees of Punishment in Hell?

Somebody says, “I sometimes like to think of hell as having different levels, like a prison where worst offenders are thrown into the darkest area, but the ones who were misled or never heard about Jesus are thrown into a roomier place.” What does scripture say about that?

Well, I think a lot of what our modern conception of this comes from is Dante’s Inferno, which is a great book, but it’s not scripture. But nevertheless, even though the details might be wrong, I do think there are degrees of punishment in hell. I think that scripture talks about this just as there are degrees of reward in heaven, right?

The more faithful you are in this world, the more reward you get in heaven, but obviously the converse is true as well. Some of the places we see this is Luke 12:47-48.

So here I’ll just read the bold part.

Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.”

From everyone who has been given much will be required, and to whom they have entrusted much of him they will ask all the more. So here it seems like there are different levels of expectation, and this expectation will translate into judgment. The master will ask the servant who is faithful—I guess who knew his master—receives many stripes, and the one who didn’t few stripes.

Okay. And the next one is, oh man, is this like out of batteries? I think it might be. All right, just press down if you can.

Greater Knowledge Means Greater Accountability

All right, one more. Matthew 11:20-24. Here it talks about woe to you, woe to you Bethsaida. For if the miracles that occurred in you had occurred in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.

So here, Tyre and Sidon are gentile territories that didn’t have the knowledge that Jews did. And Jesus is saying it’s going to be more tolerable for them because they didn’t—they weren’t given all the oracles of God. They weren’t given all of the knowledge of the truth. You were given that and look at what you did with it.

So here from both of these verses, we see that more knowledge means that you are more culpable. And often I don’t think this is the right way to think about it, but I’ve thought about it in this way: if somebody is on their way to judgment, perhaps it’s better for them not to hear the gospel. Because if you hear the gospel and you reject it, the judgment on you is more severe.

“More knowledge means that you are more culpable.”

Can you go to the next one? See if it’s going to work. Okay, all right. Hebrews 11:29. Here, how much more severe do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God? Same thing.

And next one, last one. And let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we incur a stricter judgment.

So we know that in scriptures we are judged according to our deeds. Revelation 20:13. So we are judged for what you have done. And you incur greater judgment if you are given greater revelation and you reject that, and also greater sin. The greater the sin, the greater the judgment it incurs.

Closing: The Cup Christ Drank for Us

But that said, I don’t think any part of hell is roomy or pleasant, right? All of it will be terrible. All of it will be horrible. All of it will be fire and judgment.

For our last minute, I just want to end our time talking about eternal conscious punishment with this thought. To many of us, it’s a depressing thing to think about, but I do think that last week when we had communion, it gave me a greater understanding of what Christ did for me.

No wonder then Jesus prayed in the garden, “If possible, let this cup pass from me.” What cup was he talking about? He was talking about the cup of judgment. In fact, scripture talks about this in Psalm 75:8: “For a cup is in the hands of the Lord, and the wine foams. It is well mixed and he pours out of this. Certainly, all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink its dregs.”

He’s talking about the cup of judgment that the wicked will drink. And Jesus took that for us. In 1 Peter 2:24, he says, “He himself brought our sins in his body up on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you were healed.”

As we end our time talking about this, I just want to remind you of John 3:36: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. He who does not obey the Son does not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

As we go to the mall or even in personal evangelism, we have to understand that this is the message that people urgently need to know. They need to know that judgment is not only possible for them, but is imminent and is coming if they continue on the path that they are on in their sins.

“Judgment is not only possible but imminent for those who continue on in their sins.”

Closing Prayer

And with our understanding of the bad news, I pray that the good news to you will be all the more sweet. It will be all the more sweet and will drive us to worship with a renewed joy and a renewed zeal because we’ll understand that the gospel is good news indeed.

Let’s close in a word of prayer. Father, we are thankful for your teaching here. Even though we are not—no part of this makes me want hell to exist because nobody. I don’t want anybody to go there. We know that you also don’t want anyone to perish.

But Lord, it is the reality. Help us to have the opportunities and to have the wisdom to know how to warn people of this reality in our evangelism so that sinners can come to you and be delivered and experience so great a salvation.

I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

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