Why eternal torment

At one point he says there are two gates that people pass through Matthew The other is broad and easy, and therefore commonly taken.

The wrong path does not lead to torture. So too Jesus says the future kingdom is like a fisherman who hauls in a large net Matthew After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field Matthew He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weeds into a fiery furnace.

They are consumed by fire and then are no more. Still other passages may seem to suggest that Jesus believe in hell. Most notably Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment Matthew Some are said to be sheep, and the others goats. The good sheep are those who have helped those in need — the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner.

So the punishment is annihilation. Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. Because it will never end. These people will be annihilated forever. And so, Jesus stood in a very long line of serious thinkers who have refused to believe that a good God would torture his creatures for eternity.

But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers; they emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold to the Jewish notion of a future resurrection of the dead. These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immortal and would survive death. From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul. Even though the human body dies, the human soul both will not and cannot.

Later Christians who came out of gentile circles adopted this view for themselves, and reasoned that if souls are built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well. It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment. It was a strange hybrid, a view held neither by the original Christians nor by ancient Greek intelligentsia before them. Socrates himself expressed the idea most memorably when on trial before an Athenian jury on capital charges. Socrates openly declares that he sees no reason to fear the death sentence.

On the contrary, he is rather energized by the idea of passing on from this life. The phrases containing this word should not be rendered literally, but consistently with its sense of indefinite duration.

As should be plain, a precise definition of this Greek word proves extremely difficult. Dogmatism on it is not advisable. As long as they remain breathing, they will suffer excruciating pain as their just reward, and in an indefinite time, they will pay for their sins with death. However, Jesus—or for that matter, the Bible—never explicitly makes such a statement. Our Savior may be referring only to those angels who remain His faithful servants, to whom He has granted continuing life.

Tartarus, then, is a holding place—this material world—where the demons are awaiting their final judgment. So, can demons die? The evidence of Scripture does not disallow it. Therefore [because of your iniquities] I brought fire from your midst; it devoured you , and I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.

All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you; you have become a horror, and shall be no more forever. Taken at face value, this passage tells us that God, who created the angels who chose to sin, can extinguish their lives through an annihilating fire. Trying to explain verses as a metaphor for Satan and his demons being imprisoned in darkness forever makes a mockery of their plain sense. In fact, the words of Ezekiel 28 sound amazingly like death in the Lake of Fire.

Ritenbaugh in the January-February issue of Forerunner. Thus, if those suffering torment in Revelation are Satan and the demons, they, too, will experience the torture and excruciating pain of the fervent heat of the Lake of Fire.

Perhaps with them, being composed of spirit, it will last for a longer, though still indeterminate, time before they expire. Perhaps they will suffer some form of torment while imprisoned in the abyss see Isaiah His judgments are flawless; He demonstrates perfect justice and mercy at all times.

And will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.

If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;.

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor? If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. While the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.

They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. These arguments merely demonstrate how careful we have to be when basing conclusions on metaphors.

Some theologians say that Jesus meant 'eternal torment' and others say he meant 'destruction' ie. Both groups are right.

Both interpretations of 'eternal punishment' can be true if the punishment of hell involves torment followed by destruction though it means that the torment suffered must be for a limited time.

How long are people tormented in hell? Instead he told a parable which implies that suffering will be proportional to guilt. He said: a master returned unexpectedly and when he found his chief servant drunk and other servants misbehaving, the master punished them.

But the one who did not know, and did things deserving punishment, will be beaten with few blows" Luke This amazing parable tells us not only that suffering in hell will be proportional to the amount of evil committed, but also that it will be proportional to how much the person understood about right and wrong.

If they definitely knew their actions were wrong, they will suffer more than if they merely acted thoughtlessly and without deliberation.

For the Jews this kind of teaching was utterly scandalous because it suggested that Jews who knew the most about what God wanted would be punished more than the Gentiles!

But Jesus was absolutely clear: the Jews would not go to heaven simply by being born Jews. Punishment in hell is eternal — there is no release after a period of torment because it also involves eternal destruction. However, the amount of torment is proportional to the amount of sin and guilt, because the person who did what they knew God had forbidden was considered more guilty.

The devil and his angels, who know exactly what they are doing, will be tormented for eternity Revelation , but most humans are much less evil.