Life And Death

Greg

Many Christians believe the Bible teaches that once a person dies, the spirit is a conscious part of him that is alive in heaven or hell.  Other Christians, myself included, believe the Bible teaches conditional immortality.  I acknowledge the influence of the late Edward Fudge and others in helping me to come to this conclusion.

I believe that when a person dies, he is dead (Daniel 12:2). The Bible describes this as “sleeping” (Matthew 27:52-53; John 11:11; Acts 7:60; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 2 Peter 3:4). The sleep of death is an unconscious existence in which people have no awareness of time as creation awaits the return of Christ and the resurrection. Christians that hold to conditional immortality believe the scriptures when it says that God alone possesses immortality (1 Timothy 6:16), but God will grant immortality (eternal life) to Christians at the resurrection. This gift is already theirs as followers of Christ, but they must abide in Christ, then they will be clothed with immortality once Christ returns.  In contrast, the lost will be raised, judged, and then cast into the lake of fire where they will perish. To perish does not mean to live eternally in an alternate form of existence – it means to die.  The lost will die the irreversible and everlasting second death.  Both soul (conscious being) and body will be destroyed in the lake of fire, just as the Lord Jesus warned (Matthew 10:28).  This view opposes the idea that the wicked will burn forever in eternal conscious torment since one has to go beyond reason to explain how a person can perpetually perish. While the punishment of the ungodly is described as eternal, I believe this refers to an irreversible punishment that is eternal in consequence.  

 In Mark 9:43-44 we read:

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched (see also verses 45-48). 

Some may not know that the Lord’s words are a reference to what Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 66:24.  Isaiah wrote:

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

This is a description of the righteous going out of the city of Jerusalem, after God’s judgment of the wicked, and viewing dead corpses in the dump where maggots (“the worm”) and a fire are consuming them. Isaiah is writing about dead corpses, not living beings that are being tortured.  The picture involves shame, or contempt, not pain. 

Throughout the Bible, unquenchable, or inextinguishable, fire refers to flames that consume whatever is being burned.

...and say to the scrub land of the Negev, ‘Listen to the Lord’s message! This is what the Sovereign Lord has said: Look here, I am about to start a fire in you, and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The flaming fire will not be extinguished, and the whole surface of the ground from the Negev to the north will be scorched by it. And everyone will see that I, the Lord, have burned it; it will not be extinguished” (Ezekiel 20:47-48 NET).

...but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beer-sheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nought.” Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel (Amos 5:5-6 RSV).
 
No one thinks that the fire Ezekiel referred to is still burning, or that the fire in Amos is still burning, though we would say the fire could not be resisted and was unquenchable, or inextinguishable, in that it would continue until it had accomplished its purpose. No one could stop it.

When the Lord Jesus used this language from Isaiah 66:24 for his own teaching, we should consider the verse he quoted so we can understand what he means.  Isaiah was clearly referring to total destruction, being consumed by fire, not eternal conscious torment.