Chapter Five

Excerpts from Chapter Five Death: It really is a severe punishment

“I remember the first time that my father told me, as a little boy, that someday I was going to die. Somehow the thought had just never occurred to me. But when he told me that, it filled me with terrible sadness and horror, and I just cried and cried and cried.” - Dr. William Lane Craig, theologian and Christian apologist, during a question and answer session with Ravi Zacharias

            This quote was from a man who was raised by nonbelievers, so as a child, it was probably not the prospect of eternal hell that grieved him so when his dad told him he was going to die. It was most likely the thought of no longer being. Death is indeed horrible and sad, and I think a child’s perspective is most interesting, and probably the least tainted by multitudes of theories and ideas about the afterlife with which adults have been inundated.
            I can relate to Dr. Craig’s experience. I remember one day when I was young – I don’t know what age…maybe nine or ten, and I was staying at my grandmother’s house for the day during the summer as I often did, and shortly after coming in from play, we got the news that the next door neighbor had been killed less than an hour earlier when he was electrocuted while touching his back fence. A power line had fallen on a fence a couple of houses over and there were a number of “hot” fences in the neighborhood. I suppose I should have been most upset about the man who just lost his life, but I was a child, and I had only even seen him a couple of times, and didn’t know him at all. And perhaps he wasn't all that old, but to children, all grownups seem old. To me, the elderly man next door that I didn't know, and really couldn't even picture, had died. I did feel sad about the man, but if I'm honest, what upset and struck me the most was that me and a couple of other boys had been playing right next to the same network of fences that were electrocuted, right at the same time the man was killed. We literally came inches away from dying that day, and as I thought about it, I became extremely distraught. I remember crying and crying at the thought that my life had almost ended that quickly and easily, and I finally persuading my grandmother to let me call my mother at work so I could tell her about everything. Unlike Dr. Craig, I was raised in a Christian home, but for whatever reason, I just don’t think I was paying attention in church for a number of years, and didn’t come to any substantial knowledge of Christ until my teen years, and I don’t consider myself to have been saved until into my 20s. And when I got so upset that day, I was not thinking that I may have gone to Hell, or that I should have been happy because I would have been in Heaven. I was just thinking that I almost died. My life, the only life that I could comprehend, my “eternal” life (as far as I knew), had almost ended.

                Death is sad, and death as a punishment is severe.

     I recently attended the funeral of a friend of mine’s mother. I didn’t really know her, having only even been in the same room with her perhaps twice, yet I became very sad and emotional during the service. By reading entries from her diaries and recounting conversations he had with her, the pastor gave us much reassurance that she was in fact saved. And although I didn’t know her, even I was confident of this after he spoke. But I was still sad – sad for the loss of her life – sad for those who knew and loved her.
      I believe God has designed us this way, even believers, such that even though we have a blessed hope, and can know that our loved ones who have put their faith in the Lord have eternity waiting, we still feel the pain and sadness of death. It serves a purpose. The loss of this first life at the death of our flesh and the surrounding sadness is an object lesson to us of the much more grievous sadness that should be, and will be, felt for the ultimate death of a soul. If we are as sad as we are when a saved person dies, even a person that we don’t know well, or a person that we know we’ll see again, how much more grief should we have for those who will die ultimately and never be seen again? And shouldn’t this inspire us to tell those who are headed for death about Christ? Ezekiel 33 8-9 says:
      “When I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die; if you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked one shall die in his iniquity; but I will require his blood at your hand. But, if you warn the wicked of his way, to turn from it; if he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your soul.”

Clearly it is an approaching death that we are to be warning people of, not eternal torment. The Bible nowhere, Old or New Testament, tells us to warn of impending eternal torment for human souls, but we are required to rescue those who are perishing.

           Death as a punishment is a dreaded and harsh one. You wouldn’t know it to hear some traditionalists speak of it. Non-traditionalists like myself who choose to believe the multitudes of Bible verses that predict death as the final end of the wicked are often portrayed as trying to create a softer image of God and His wrath than what in reality exists, but the fact is, there is nothing soft about a God who destroys and brings his enemies to naught.
    I’ll give you an idea of what I’m referring to. I’ve heard similar statements in different forms from a number of traditionalists, but the one that struck me most recently was when pastor Robert Jeffress said,

“If unbelievers are simply destroyed, that takes a little bit of the sting out of hell, doesn’t it? I mean, after all, if you’re not a Christian and you’re wrong, the worst that happens to you is, okay, you die, you cease to exist. It takes a little urgency out of sharing the gospel with your non-Christian friend or family member because after all, I mean, if they don’t accept Christ, they won’t be in heaven, but they won’t be in pain forever. They just simply cease to exist.”

            Apparently, for Jeffress, God’s stated judgment of death for the wicked is just not severe enough. I think this is a slap in the face of God who apparently thinks highly enough about humans attaining eternal life and avoiding eternal death that He would send His Son to a suffering death in order to help us attain it. But Jefress says that there is less urgency if a person’s end is only death. Jefress is not the only one. There are many Bible teachers who state such things, all of whom I respect as it concerns their position on and their general promotion of the gospel, but whom I heartily disagree with on this issue. Ceasing to exist just doesn’t “sting” enough for Jefress to feel an urgency to witness, apparently. Earlier in the same broadcast Jefress stated that the doctrine of “annihilationism simply says that an unbeliever doesn’t live forever. After the great white throne judgment, he is cast into the lake of fire and he’s simply destroyed.” Yes, this is precisely what this author believes because that is what the Bible says. There is no consciousness noted or predicted for humans after they have been cast into the lake of fire. Also in the same broadcast, Jefress said that the suffering which will take place in hell defies description, but that the only way he “could possibly even describe it would be to say, it’s like having your flesh on fire forever and ever and ever.” I don’t know how he knows this since this is never predicted anywhere in Scripture, but Jefress went on to say that God was too loving not to allow this kind of torment for all eternity. What a sick and twisted teaching this has become. And Jefress isn’t alone, and I’m certainly not trying to single him out. I’m sure he is a man who reveres God, as he understands him. But he, like many others, is not accepting the plain language of the Bible, and is instead helping to perpetuate lies that damage people’s understanding of who God really is. God is a harsh judge, but not a twisted maniac who requires the everlasting feeling of being on fire for all eternity for those who failed to accept His grace. Death is enough. It will satisfy God’s wrath. And as we've noted before, what else could? If those who reject God do not come to an end, then God's judgment is never really complete - a scenario that very simply does not line up with most of our understandings about God, and the finality of His actions.
             Others have expressed similar feelings as Jefress, regarding ceasing to exist being too light of a punishment, at least for some offenders, as if we were not all guilty before the Lord. Christopher Morgan, in Hell Under Fire,(Page:208) a book defending the traditional view of hell, favorably quoted Mark Talbot as saying:
“Hitler, as the ultimate perpetrator of the Nazi Holocaust, ought not to be able to escape being brought to account for his crimes against humanity by just blowing out his brains…. Indeed, something would be profoundly wrong with a world where its Hitlers could, when the time of reckoning drew near, just step off into nescience.”
      There are a number of problems with this statement. First, he fails to see Satan, who the Bible calls a murderer from the beginning, as the ultimate perpetrator of the crimes of the Holocaust. Paul reminded us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against invisible forces.(Ephesians 6:12) And James 2:10 tells us that if a person could keep the whole law, yet stumble in just one point, then he is guilty of all. I’m not denying the concept of varying levels of punishment (in an intermediate state awaiting final judgment, or even at the time of final judgment). But whether or not final judgment involves true death, or whether it involves eternal torment, Hitler is no more guilty and deserving of it than any other soul. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and there is only one sacrifice that will save our souls from death. But with death being the primary and ultimate punishment meted out throughout Scripture, how can Talbot speak of it as if it is no punishment at all? I regret to say it, but I think we just don’t value life the way God does, and that is why we come to conclusions such as these. But the other problem with Talbot’s statement is that it ignores what we studied in chapter four. We saw that the Bible makes it clear that while ultimate death is the final penalty for uncovered sin, the strong possiblility for an intermediate state of consciousness in hell, for at least some period of time, is very real, and those who have not accepted Christ will, it seems, in fact suffer consciously there prior to judgment. And it stands to reason that those who have offended more will suffer more. So if Hitler in fact died without Christ, because of the multitudes of sins against humanity, he likely will be in great torment as he awaits final judgment and ultimately death. But I think it is also dangerous to assume we know who is in Hell and who isn’t. Remember Jeffrey Dahmer? He was the man who used to kill people, store their body parts in his refrigerator, and eat them. If you are a believer, he is your brother in Christ now, if we are to believe his testimony. This may repulse the reader, but he found Christ in prison before someone murdered him there. God showed him mercy. Paul, who penned much of the New Testament, considered himself to be a murderer of Christians because of how he pursued them and supported their deaths, even though we do not know that he personally killed anyone. And God showed him mercy as well. God saves unlikely people who do very bad things. I am not defending Hitler, and I am not claiming he was saved late in life. I don’t know the condition of his soul at the end of his life. It is my tendency to believe he is in Hell(conscious or unconcious) awaiting judgment. But we don’t know this. So it is not only presumptuous to imply that Hitler and those like him deserve an eternal hell, when God clearly shows that he is willing and able to extend salvation to even murderous humanity, but when we make such arguments, we are saying that some people’s offenses are greater than our own, in terms of what those offenses should gain a person ultimately, and nothing could be more unbiblical. We are all guilty of the same crime: sin – regardless of whether it is one sin or ten million. And “the soul that sins, it shall die”(Ezekiel 18:20). This is its punishment. And forgive me for being so bold, and again I am in no way defending the atrocities of Hitler's regime, but at least Hitler's enemies ultimately were put out of their misery.  Death is a severe punishment, but if there is one point I'm trying to make in this volume overall, it is that eternal ceaseless conscious suffering with no hope of end is the one thing that is worse, and would be a most merciless act. But most traditionalists, with virtually no credible biblical evidence, and against mounds of Scripture verses to the contrary, claim that our loving and merciful God, for all eternity, is going to burn His enemies such that they would wish for the punishment of eternal death.
            Sinclair Ferguson, in Hell Under Fire,(p.226) wrote this, defended the reality of Hell:
“…if we take seriously the significance of [Christ’] death on the cross as a sacrifice of atonement (Rom. 3:25), what, short of the reality of hell, explains the necessity for and nature of his sufferings? It would be folly to think that all he went through was merely exemplary or, for that matter, unnecessary.”

Why would it take the reality of an eternal hell to bring necessity to Christ’ sacrifice? He is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9). He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). He did what He did so we could ultimately escape the eternal punishment of death. Ferguson is correct that it would be folly if His death on the cross was unnecessary. But His sacrifice was not made necessary because of an eternal hell, but so death would be defeated (1 Corinthians 15:54).

Note: The full chapter will explore more facets of this idea that so much of modern day preachings' thoughts that death is a soft punishment come from our overall societal loss of the value of human life. And there will be multiple Biblical references to many verses that maintain death and non-existence to be the ultimate punishment for rejecting the One True God.