Last week I addressed one of the verses that the idea of eternal, conscious, punishment may come from. This week, I address the other two (or maybe three). One is Revelation 20, where John envisions a great and final judgment: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life…And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was throw into the lake of fire” (vv. 12, 15).
The Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD), we may remember, says that those who do not believe in the Gospel will suffer eternal, conscious, torment, and apparently, this text is supposed to offer support. There are two important reasons that it does not. The first is that only a few verses later, John mentions which individuals are not in the book of life: “…the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable,…murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars…” (21:8). This list does not refer (at least exclusively) to those who have prayed the sinner’s prayer, as the EHD would have us expect (I have blogged about the relevance of character in another series, ‘A Theology of Love’). Thus, Revelations 20 and 21 cannot be used to support the EHD.
The second is that the result of being thrown in the lake of fire is frequently and simply referred to as “death” (v. 14). And since the text nowhere says or implies that those thrown in the lake of fire suffer eternal, conscious, torment, it would be quite a leap to believe that John meant to say that they experience eternal, conscious, torment, but just never got around to saying it. Such a detail is too important to leave out.
John actually does mention some who will experience eternal, conscious, torment, namely, the worshippers of the beast: “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name” (14:11). There are three others mentioned in chapter 20: “the devil…was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (v. 10). Thus, John specifically mentions that the devil, the beast, the worshippers of the beast, and the false prophet will suffer eternal, conscious, torment. And so are we to believe that John forgot to mention that detail just 5 verses later when describing the fate of those not in the book of life?
I want to emphasize that there are several other passages (in addition to Rev. 20) that imply that those who are not reconciled to God die, or perish, or are destroyed, in contrast to being tormented. I will consider those passages next week.
