In this episode of Becoming Outlaws, host Ken McMullen delves into one of Christianity's most controversial and challenging topics: the doctrine of hell. While many hold to the traditional view of hell as eternal conscious torment, deeper study reveals that the early church considered alternative, biblically-based perspectives—perspectives often deemed taboo in modern discussions.
Ken is joined by guest Steve Gregg, a renowned Bible teacher, author, and host of The Narrow Path radio program. With decades of teaching experience, Gregg discusses his book, Why Hell?, which explores the three main biblical views of hell with clarity and theological depth.
Together, they unpack the complexities of this topic, offering insights for those questioning traditional teachings and those seeking a deeper understanding of how to share their faith. This thought-provoking episode challenges listeners to engage with difficult questions and explore how theology shapes faith and community. www.thenarrowpath.com
www.becomingoutlaws.com
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Counted among the outlaws who said come follow me.
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People from all walks of life since have been becoming
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outlaws. Like many, I grew up with a
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traditional view of hell. And a traditional view, just in
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super brief summary, is an eternal conscious torment for
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those basically who are not, didn't make heaven, didn't
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accept Christ. And it's easy to slip by that
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sentence or those few words to describe it.
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And if we do, it's because in our conscience we're able to
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tuck that down and not grasp the reality of it.
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The reality of it is, I don't know of a living person, pastor,
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present, a dictator, anyone who's committed genocide or has
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tortured people and killed them, that their victims didn't die.
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As horrific as it was, the suffering ended.
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So what you're talking about is a doctrine which is biblical and
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could absolutely be true, but let's not miss the horror of it
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is that it goes on forever. That if this was back in
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antiquity and some enemies were suffering, they would still be
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suffering today and it would only be the beginning.
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It's hard to comprehend. So we typically don't think
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about it. And I've also had thoughts maybe
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on the on the edge of heresy, I don't know.
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But I'm voicing it out loud as I've I've had thoughts over the
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years of Jesus. Crucifixion is terrible,
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painful, but can six hours pay a penalty of sin for all mankind
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if their penalty for not receiving that atonement is
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eternal suffering? And then that sin is never
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actually paid for, it's always being paid for.
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So these are questions that I think are common sense if people
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think about, but yet not discussed much if it, if at all.
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So with these thoughts in my mind, I began to study more
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deeply and discovered to my surprise that even from the
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early church, they seem to be open to alternatives, not
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alternatives to hell. So what we're talking about is
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biblical, the biblical hell, but from Scripture, different
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beliefs of what that means coming out of it and from the
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earliest times and the earliest believers there were three and
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traditional wasn't necessarily the dominant view, which is now
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the dominant view. So it's so taboo.
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As a matter of fact, I've even tried to discuss with friends
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who are Bible study friends and Bible believing that defends the
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Bible at all costs, which I do as well.
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That will quote a few scriptures and done.
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The conversation doesn't really go much further and I just think
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it it deserves a a little at least deeper look than that.
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Paul in the early church didn't seem to reference as a fear of
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torment a main part of their preaching the gospel.
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They focused on the love of God. Would we would love him 'cause
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he first loved us. It is opposed to.
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I grew up with plays in the church where literally we would
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watch people being thrown by demons into hell and being
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burned, and lots of people would come to an altar after that.
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And right or wrong, I don't know.
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But that doesn't seem to be how the apostles in the early church
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did Christianity or evangelism. So if you've had similar
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thoughts as mine ever, whether you're afraid to voice them or
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you did voice them, this is a podcast for you.
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If you're sure and you're certain of your viewpoint,
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whether it's traditional or not, this is still a podcast for you
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'cause most likely you're not an expert on all three views.
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And just for sharing the gospel sake and witnessing, it's good
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to have as much information as you can As this doctrine of hell
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is, is one of one of the doctrines that really pushes
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people away from Christianity. And if we could explain it
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better or explain it right, or make sure, maybe they'll just
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validate what you already believe, which is always a good
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thing too. I've waited to discuss this
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topic until I felt I found the right guest who has the
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knowledge without bias to share his, his or her insights at the
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time into a discussion of hell and hopefully answer some of
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our, or at least my questions. And I believe I have that
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person. Steve Gregg is a renowned Bible
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teacher, author, and host of the Narrow Path radio program and
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ministry with decades of teaching in a heart for deep
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theological inquiry, Steve has written one of his books, Why
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Hell, a book that examines 3 main biblical views of hell with
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clarity while maintaining a respect for Scripture.
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Welcome, Steve. Thanks for having me.
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I'm I'm really glad you're here. How is my intro is are those
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thoughts you've had at one time or another?
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Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I'll tell you this, I
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was like yourself, raised with the traditional view of hell.
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I was raised Baptist, very conservative, and I entered the
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ministry in the Jesus movement in 1970, Calvary Chapel Costa
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Mesa and, you know, teaching through the Bible verse by
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verse, a very, I'm very much a strong Bible believer.
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To me, the Bible is the absolute authority in all things, but I,
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I, I had very few doubts about the traditional view simply
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because I had been told that's what the Bible teaches.
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And if if someone had asked me if the Bible teaches it, there
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were at least three or four verses I could think of right
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off the top of my head that seemed like they said that.
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And what are they? What?
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What are the typical verses that the traditional defaults to
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well? One of them would be Matthew
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2546. The sheep and the goats that
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says they shall go away to everlasting punishment, but the
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righteous to everlasting life, everlasting punishment sounded
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like the traditional view to me. Second Thessalonians 19 says you
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know that these these will suffer the punishment of the
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eternal. I think it says eternal
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punishment from the presence of the Lord is what it says.
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And and then you've got a couple of places in, in Revelation, you
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know, the devil and the false prophet, the beast are thrown
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into the lake of fire where they're tormented day and night,
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forever and ever. In Revelation 2010, I believe it
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is. And Revelation 1411 said, you
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know, they, they should be tormented with fire and
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brimstone in the presence of the Lamb and of the holy angels and
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the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they
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have no rest day nor night. So those would be 4 verses that
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I knew off the top of my head, that's all.
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Use the word eternal or something very much like it with
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respect to punishment. And so I just, I, I fit those
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into a paradigm that I had accepted from youth, namely that
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hell is a place of eternal conscious torment.
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And those verses seem to speak about that.
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Now there are many other verses like the verses that mentioned
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there. There should be, you know,
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wailing and gnashing of teeth. There's several verses like
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that. Or they should be thrown into a
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furnace of fire. The the, the tares that are the
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wheat and the tares parable and lots of places of fire.
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Even even that place that in Mark Chapter 9, which is quoting
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from Isaiah 66, which says that the their worm does not die and
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the fire is not quenched. Now, none of those verses I just
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rattled off say anything about conscious torment.
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A person might be thrown into a fire that has never quenched,
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but it doesn't, you know, a fire that's kept burning for, for,
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for days. If I were thrown into it, I, I
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wouldn't last for days, you know, I'd be, I'd be burned up.
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So that fire might last a lot longer than I would.
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So I mean to to mention eternal fire doesn't quite say eternal
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torment consciously, but if you already have that paradigm in
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your head, you can slide it into those verses too.
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So you end up having a somewhat inflated number of verses that
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support your view. But actually the ones that I
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mentioned first, the first four I mentioned are the ones that
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really kind of sound as if they they teach an eternal conscious
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torment. Wait. 1st to me is more
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convincing and it reminds me of my childhood with all the plays
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where it's the end of it's the judgement day.
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You go before the White Throne. Yeah.
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And then literally it's where he says I never knew you.
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And they're screaming what you did know me.
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And then demons run around and they grab these poor people and
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they throw them into a burning fire and assumingly they're
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tortured for forever. And the verse you said sounds
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pretty convincing. Yeah, well, it does, but there
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are explanations from the other views.
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That's the point. I, I taught the traditional view
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for at least 25 or more years of my ministry.
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I've been in the ministry for 5054 years now and maybe maybe
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the 1st 30 years I taught the eternal conscious tournament
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view. I, I knew there were other
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views. I knew that those Jehovah's
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Witnesses, for example, I didn't believe in an eternal conscious
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tournament and the 7th Day Adventists didn't.
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They believed in annihilation, or what we call conditional
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immortality, the idea that humans are not naturally
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immortal, that left to themselves they will perish and
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be destroyed and not exist anymore, but that immortality is
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available conditionally upon belief in Christ and which is
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really kind of what it sounds like in.
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Well, I was going to say, John 316 says so much.
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There's Scriptures or even Jesus teaching that.
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If you didn't have, like you said, that paradigm already in
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you or a pastor or teacher that had that paradigm teaching it to
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you and you just never heard anything and you read the New
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Testament for yourself or the Bible, I don't think you would
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come up with the traditional view.
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You would believe that you could get eternal life by believing in
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Christ and so you don't perish, which would be means you perish
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and you would read that the God can destroy body and soul and
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it's those are all against traditional.
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It just seems so clear. What makes it muddy is, is is
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what's preconceived in our cult, the evangelical culture, isn't
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it? That's right.
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I mean you just alluded to Matthew 1028 where it says do
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not fear him who can kill the body and could do no more, but
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fear him after he has killed the body can destroy the the soul.
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In that is huge. Yeah.
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And now of course, when I believed in the traditional view
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very strongly, I knew answers to all those.
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And that's the thing, both those views and the third view we
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haven't discussed yet all have lots of scriptures that they
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think helps them, and all of them have explanations for the
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scriptures that the other views use to support themselves.
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In other words, this is something that in my opinion, I
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don't know in my lifetime if I will be able to settle on a, a
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solid conclusion as to which one is correct.
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I have, I've, I've come to have very, very deep doubts about the
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traditional view. I, I really don't see a strong
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scriptural case for it. And there's other problems
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besides even just this, the weakness of the scriptural case.
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So I feel the same about the third view.
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What? What's the third view You
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haven't mentioned yet? The. 3rd view is the view that
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Origen taught and apparently Alex Clement of Alexandria
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before him, and that is that hell is a place where God
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continues to seek to bring the unbeliever to repentance.
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So that if this lifetime is not enough to bring a person to
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repentance, then once they are in hell, God continues to work
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on them, continues to hope that they will repent.
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And, and, and Origen thought that given enough time, since
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human beings don't have infinite resistance because we're not
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infinite beings like God is, that all people will eventually
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come around, all people eventually.
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Just like some people don't come around until near the end of
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their life. You know, they they live a happy
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life without God or an angry life God.
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But when things get really hard for them, sometimes they get
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serious and sober start thinking about God.
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Sometimes not till very near the end of the life.
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Do they like the thief on the cross?
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Do they turn to God? But but when they do, God
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accepts them. And you know, this third view is
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that well, if God would accept them right on their deathbed, if
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they repented, would he have trouble accepting them a moment
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later when they're dead, if they repent?
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When does God draw the line for this?
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Does God want everyone to repent or doesn't he?
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The Bible says God wants everyone to repent.
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He doesn't want anyone to perish.
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So the idea is if that's really what God wants, does he really
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cut off the opportunity at some point?
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And if so, why? Who's making him do that?
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I mean God has sovereign, he can do whatever he wants to and if
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what he really is the salvation. Then I think I know your slant
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on this. Not that you have to admit
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slants, but just by the verse you use for your ministry, which
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is comes from that. Why does the gate of
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destruction, yeah, excuse me and narrow is the gate.
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There's few that find the truth, but it's wide and the majority
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don't find the truth, which doesn't line up with that.
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That'd be eventually they all find the truth, or they submit
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to the truth at some point. Well, yeah, it depends on
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whether Jesus in Matthew 713 about the wide gate and and the
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narrow gate so forth. If he's if we're making a
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prediction or is he making an observation because he used his
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present tense verge. So it's hard to know.
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Is he saying there will ultimately be few people who
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find life or is he simply saying there are few who are finding
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it? You know, Hey, you do Michaels.
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We, we live in a religious world here in Israel.
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They've got the temple, they've got the Pharisees have a lot of
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respect. The chief priests run the
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country. So we've got a lot of religion
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here, but not many are really finding the way of life.
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It's a narrow path and not many are and.
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To to clarify for those who are listening if if these are new
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terms, universalism or universal view, it's not the universalism
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that all religions are just different paths leading up a
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mountain to God. This is within Christianity that
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Christ is the only way. It's true to doctrine.
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People that believe either of these 3 views don't disqualify
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them as being Christian. They're just views on an
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afterlife. That isn't clear.
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It just means that universally everyone ends up getting saved
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in before you die or in the afterlife and.
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Be saved by Christ, right? See that there are liberal,
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liberal Christians, as they call themselves, and and non
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Christians who believe in a universalism.
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That is, as you you mentioned, you know God's too good to
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condemn anyone. All religions.
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You know, if you follow sincerely, you know that's
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they'll save you whatever. Certainly the Bible doesn't
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teach that and and evangelical universalists don't believe that
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evangelical universe believe what every evangelical believes
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that you can't be saved about Christ.
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You have to come to faith in Christ or you'll never be saved.
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They simply believe that God doesn't cut off the opportunity
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to do that at the point of death necessarily.
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Now people usually think of Hebrews 927.
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It's appointed unto man once die and after this the judgement and
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they say we'll see right there after you die, you can't come
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back. Well, that doesn't actually say
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that there. It says it's appointed on
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demand, wants to die and after they die, they go to judgement.
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OK, well you stand for God and be judged.
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It doesn't tell you what happens at that judgement.
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What is the verdict? What is the sentence?
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What is the result? You know, obviously we all know
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people will be judged and there'll be punishment for sin,
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but but the exact nature of that punishment is what is disputed
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among these 3 views. So I think all views agree that
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those whose names are not found written in the book of life are
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cast into the lake of fire in Revelation 20, verse 15, The
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question is OK, after that, what?
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You know, after in the lake of fire, what happens?
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Do they stay conscious, tormented ever and ever and
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ever? Do they do they suffer somewhat
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proportionately to what they deserve and then they're
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annihilated and they don't feel anything again.
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They're not alive anymore or, or in the lake of fire.
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Does God keep working on them until they come to repentance?
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That's that's really the the views.
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All three views believe in hell. All three have a view of the
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lake of fire. The question is what happens in
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the lake of fire? What is it made for?
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Now? My my book is called Why Hell
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and it examines the three different views critically and
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it doesn't come out advocating any of them.
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I don't, I don't advocate any one of the views.
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I just want people to know what the biblical case is for and the
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biblical case against each of the three views.
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Steve is the general answer. Maybe I'll say a layman's answer
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to a question why hell would be the consummation of God's plan,
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the riddance finally of sin, which the traditional view, the
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sin never gets paid for and it goes on.
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He's sustaining people's life and continues the punishment,
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which never is satisfied, which doesn't line up with any pattern
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of character of God or justice in Scripture, right?
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OK, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say I
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don't agree with the universal thing, but I do see where if you
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look at, I think scripture defines scripture.
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So if you go back, what's the use of fire and scripture
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typically it's they could say it's to refine and get out
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impurities which may fit their thing, but it also is a
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consuming fire and that it consumes.
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Right. Yeah.
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And it also is very painful if you have to be thrown in.
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So I mean all all three views take serious stock of what the
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fact there is fire, but recognize that fire accomplishes
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different things in different situations.
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You know what I was going to say is why hell suggests that
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there's a reason for hell, that God does things only for a
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reason. He doesn't do anything randomly,
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and therefore when he created hell, he created it for
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something. The question is for what?
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Now, if you hold the traditional view, the only answer to that
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can be, well, he did it to, to eternally ventilate his fierce
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and fiery wrath toward his enemies forever and ever.
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You know, Diane's, Diane's too good for him.
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You know, hanging's too good for him.
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They, they should be kept alive forever and ever and tortured.
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OK, That's, that's what hell is for in that view.
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But in the second view, conditional mortality or
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annihilationism, hell is simply it exists for the purpose of
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getting rid of the trash. You know, I mean, like an
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incinerator. You got smelly garbage that's
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sitting around and fouling up your home.
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You, you burn it up and now you've got a clean home.
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And that's how you get rid of all the.
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The defilement all the sin, the third.
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View. I'm sorry.
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Go ahead. The third view simply holds it
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The purpose of hell is to refine and to reform and to bring to
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repentance, which would also end the sin problem.
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See the second view and the third view will solve the sin
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problem in the universe eventually, but the first you
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never would. Yeah.
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And when you say what is hell for, what was it created for?
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I think in people's minds listening, if they know their
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scripture, it's going to pop in created for Satan and his
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angels. Right.
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So then I think the assumption is and mixed with other verses
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is that it was created for their punishment.
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But since he's the God of this world and he's our master
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basically until we find Christ, then we have the same
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punishment. The same thing, Yeah.
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In that statement, which is Matthew 2541, it says that the
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goats who didn't visit Jesus in prison or when he was sick and
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didn't feed him when he was hungry and so forth, they are
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cast into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
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angels. So it's prepared for the devil
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and his angels, not for people, but people end up going there
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too. But the question is, what would
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be the purpose of throwing them there?
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Is it to burn them up? Is it to torment them or is it
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to, you know, turn up the heat, as it were, in terms of pressure
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to repent? You know, that's that's those
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are the three different possibilities.
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It seems to me that either the second one or the third one
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would be consistent with what we know about the character of God.
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He's just and and therefore for him to if the wages of sin is
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death and people don't repent of their sins and they just end up
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dying and don't exist anymore, that's a just punishment.
00:22:02
That's a just punishment. It's not a cruel 1 any more than
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when you put down your rabid dog.
00:22:07
You know your your dog is not going to get any better.
00:22:10
You know he's going to die. He's a danger to others.
00:22:12
So you just shoot him. It's not that you don't love
00:22:14
him. You just can't fix him.
00:22:16
So he's got to go. That would be like the second
00:22:20
view. The third view would be
00:22:22
questioning, well, really, can't they be cured just because they
00:22:26
didn't, just because they weren't fully cured in 70 years
00:22:29
or 80 years in this world? Is there no length of time
00:22:33
during which they could be cured?
00:22:34
And and this I think the main argument that people use for the
00:22:39
third view is that the Bible frequently says that Jesus, Of
00:22:44
course, Calvinists wouldn't agree with this, but I believe
00:22:46
the Bible teaches that Jesus died for everybody, that he died
00:22:49
for the sins of the whole world, that he tasted death for every
00:22:52
man, that he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
00:22:55
whole world. That that his atonement was for
00:22:58
the human race, but no one benefits from it unless they
00:23:02
repent and believe. So the question is, did Jesus
00:23:06
pay for the whole human race but he only gets a small portion who
00:23:09
repent and believed or or would he be not satisfied with that to
00:23:13
pay for it all and get only a small portion of what he paid
00:23:15
for? If Jesus did set things up that
00:23:19
way? So that he really ends up being
00:23:20
kind of the cosmic loser because he paid for everything but the
00:23:24
devil gets most of it and Jesus Lucas most of it.
00:23:27
Ultimately whether and that'd be true in the 1st or the 2nd view,
00:23:30
he loses most of it. But if that is the case, that's
00:23:34
fine. I mean, God can.
00:23:35
God could certainly have set that up, but it would be make it
00:23:38
hard to know why this is the spoken of as a victory on Christ
00:23:41
party you know, or. Why He put us in a world where
00:23:45
he has outlaw spiritual beings waiting for their demise to even
00:23:50
get involved with us to complicate the matters.
00:23:53
If it was all going to end up, we're all getting saved anyway,
00:23:56
Why put us through this 70 years of torture?
00:24:00
Well, the way I would see it and this, this would not require
00:24:04
being a universalist to see this.
00:24:05
I mean, you, the way I view things, the purpose of this
00:24:08
life, it's it's vetting. God has made humans with the
00:24:12
intention that they can reign with him forever.
00:24:15
And yet you can't, you can't put some in that kind of position of
00:24:19
authority unless you vet them. This life, I mean the Garden of
00:24:22
Eden for Adam and Eve and all the temptations of this world,
00:24:26
that the devil is the tester. That's what the Bible means.
00:24:29
The tempter means tester. So, so we are subjected through
00:24:32
a a brief lifetime. Paul said it's about for a
00:24:35
moment compared to eternity, but for a brief lifetime, we're put
00:24:40
through testing just like, just like somebody would be.
00:24:44
If they're training to be a brain surgeon, they have to go.
00:24:46
They have to get classes, then they have to test.
00:24:49
Now, the professor might want everyone to pass.
00:24:52
He might want everyone to become a brain surgeon.
00:24:54
But those who aren't qualified, we hope they don't pass because
00:24:57
you don't want to. You don't, you know, progress
00:25:00
them forward into brain surgery if they don't know what they're
00:25:01
doing or if they can't be trusted, you know, but you don't
00:25:05
want to put someone on a throne if you don't know if they're
00:25:07
going to be loyal or not. So this life, the time in the
00:25:11
Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve and and our lifetime for all of
00:25:13
us is a testing time to see will we qualify to reign with him if
00:25:16
we are faithful and to death will receive a kind of life.
00:25:21
Now, I believe that's true no matter which view of hell is
00:25:23
true. I don't I don't really see that
00:25:26
that explanation tied to any particular view of hell.
00:25:31
But it is more an answer to what is this life for, you know, I
00:25:34
mean, if, if eternity is what matters most, then what's this
00:25:38
little, this little Migeon of life for?
00:25:41
Well, it's for qualifying. It's for qualifying.
00:25:44
For qualifying, yeah. For.
00:25:45
Testing. You know, with the traditional
00:25:50
view, another thing that gets me is the obvious questions that
00:25:56
come up in rational people's minds.
00:25:58
If traditionalist, you know, eternal conscious torment is how
00:26:02
could I enjoy knowing that's happening to people I care
00:26:06
about? So what happens is it goes off
00:26:11
of Scripture and becomes, and in my experience, you've been told
00:26:17
that this is the case and it's just made-up that, well, you're
00:26:21
going to either be erased of memory and you don't even
00:26:24
remember those people or what's happening, or you're going to
00:26:28
see God's justice and understand it like you couldn't in a human
00:26:32
life and understand that justice is being served and you're going
00:26:37
to enjoy it. I've even heard that from Reform
00:26:41
teaching. Oh yeah.
00:26:42
Oh yeah, reformers. But I look at that's not in
00:26:46
Scripture, those kinds of thoughts.
00:26:47
What is in Scripture is a comparison between God and us as
00:26:51
children. And if you wouldn't give a bad
00:26:54
gift or only give good gifts to your kids, just think how much
00:26:57
more so I have a child, I had two, I have one.
00:27:00
Now I have a hope of seeing the other one, but I would rather
00:27:05
burn eternity and how whatever that feels like to think that
00:27:08
either one of them is going to spend there.
00:27:11
If the comparison is of of a parent, I don't see the
00:27:15
comparison. I don't.
00:27:16
I hope I never think and find joy in them suffering.
00:27:22
Well, you're, I think it fits. You summarize well the two
00:27:26
arguments that people give who believe in the traditional view.
00:27:28
When you ask, well, how can I be happy, you know, in in salvation
00:27:33
and in heaven, knowing that my loved ones, my grandma, my
00:27:37
grandpa, my children perhaps are burning in hell because they
00:27:40
didn't accept Jesus? Yeah, one view is that God will
00:27:44
wipe it from our minds. But that suggests that God's
00:27:48
plan is so horrible that he has to erase our minds so that he
00:27:54
can't let us in on it because we would never approve of it.
00:27:57
The idea is in order to get our approval for his plan, he has to
00:28:01
kind of use like the men in black, you know, memory eraser
00:28:05
on us so that we don't remember any people because because it's
00:28:09
just nasty. Well, that that doesn't speak
00:28:12
very highly of the wisdom and goodness of God's plan if he has
00:28:14
to hide it from us, or else we would never approve.
00:28:18
And it doesn't make sense. The, the, the main thing, I'm 54
00:28:22
and the majority when I view, when I think now, if this was my
00:28:25
last day, what was the best things and most important things
00:28:28
about that? It was raising my kids.
00:28:29
And to think my kids are going to be erased.
00:28:31
And if I ever look back at my life, I'll think, where's this
00:28:34
void? My life was like nothing.
00:28:36
It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, Yeah, The other, the other
00:28:40
view is that, well, we'll, we'll approve of it because we'll see
00:28:43
them as God sees them then. But wait a minute.
00:28:46
How does God see them? I think he loves them more than
00:28:48
we do. It's, it's becoming more like
00:28:51
God means we become less compassionate toward people's
00:28:54
suffering, right. That means.
00:28:56
I can't possibly love my kids. I can't possibly love my kids
00:29:01
more than God does. But it puts you in that position
00:29:05
to accept that fact. It it does, it means you're God
00:29:09
doesn't love them and have his and have their well-being in
00:29:12
mind as much as you do. And that's a strange thing since
00:29:15
he is love and you are not, you know, I mean, you have love, but
00:29:19
God his love. So how could how could you love
00:29:21
them more than he is? So to get down to practical, if
00:29:25
I was hearing these for the first time and as a matter of
00:29:27
fact, I was texting a good friend of mine who's a pastor
00:29:30
and A and a Bible teacher and holds a traditional, which I'm
00:29:34
not saying I don't, I don't think I do anymore.
00:29:36
I can't read it. I can't Unsee what I've taught
00:29:40
and taught or learned and but the two main things when I say
00:29:47
talking, talking nowadays is texting when I got texted back.
00:29:50
So I want to hit these because if he thought it, that means,
00:29:52
you know, he represents a lot of people.
00:29:55
They came back and said, I understand what you're saying,
00:29:59
but I can't get away from. And he mentioned like the verses
00:30:03
you did at the beginning, they're thrown away into or cast
00:30:07
away into eternal torment and the rich man and Lazarus as an
00:30:10
example of torment, which I I texted back and said, well, if
00:30:16
that's real story, it is not people being thrown into hell in
00:30:23
a final judgement. It was a story of where people
00:30:26
go when they die, pre crucifixion, pre resurrection.
00:30:31
Yeah. And so it's.
00:30:32
Certainly pre pre resurrection, but because the man's the man in
00:30:37
Haiti's there his brothers were still living.
00:30:41
You know, this was not after the day of judgement.
00:30:44
This was after the man died and and Hades itself where he was in
00:30:49
the in the story in Luke 16, that rich man was tormenting
00:30:52
flames in Hades. But in Revelation Hades is
00:30:55
thrown into the lake of fire. So the Lake of Fire is different
00:30:58
than Hades? And I texted that too.
00:31:00
I said hell was actually thrown into the lake of fire.
00:31:03
You can't. But that that just shows that
00:31:05
even educated people in Scripture have a preconceived
00:31:09
idea that it's not. And those are educated people
00:31:13
where culture has that Satan sitting in flames right now
00:31:16
ruling down there and he wants you to come.
00:31:18
He's not ruling where he's going to spend a tortured eternity.
00:31:21
He's up. He's up here messing with us.
00:31:24
Walking to and from the earth, yeah.
00:31:27
Yeah. So if we could address those two
00:31:29
things I mentioned. So just real briefly, you know,
00:31:33
it's easy to throw out Rich Man and Lazarus, but what is that
00:31:36
story? What's your view on it?
00:31:39
And does it? I think I, I view it a little
00:31:42
differently than you and listening to.
00:31:44
So I listened to your book 2 1/2 times by the way, but I'd I'd
00:31:51
like to hear your your just explain to people what that
00:31:54
story is. The story of Lazarus and the
00:31:57
rich man is about two men, a rich man and a beggar, who both
00:32:00
die. And one of them, the beggar,
00:32:02
ends up in Abraham's bosom, which in the Jewish cosmology
00:32:07
was one part of Hades, where the righteous went, where Abram
00:32:10
went. When people died before Christ
00:32:13
died, if they died in faith, it was understood that they went to
00:32:17
a portion of Hades which was not unpleasant and where the
00:32:21
righteous were. And they called it Abram's bosom
00:32:23
or paradise. And Jesus said to the man of the
00:32:25
cross or the thief on the cross, you'll be with me in paradise
00:32:27
today. The other place was the the
00:32:31
rabbis called it Gehenam, which is like Gehenna, but.
00:32:36
Can I pause, pause you for a minute, Steve?
00:32:37
Just pause you. I like to pause where I think
00:32:39
about your average person listening in their car.
00:32:41
And I like to add a little bit tidbit.
00:32:43
So don't forget where you're at. But even when I talk to
00:32:47
Christian people, even when I interview Christian people and
00:32:50
authors, sometimes they, they just talk about heaven and hell.
00:32:53
You know, all Christians die and they and they go to heaven and
00:32:55
they always have. I like to remind people that
00:32:59
nobody went to heaven. Jesus himself said only one
00:33:03
person came from heaven and that was him, that everyone else was
00:33:06
in a holding. But nobody could have a
00:33:09
relationship and live with God. That's the whole point of him,
00:33:13
of him coming. And you're talking about a a
00:33:16
story or a parable about a place where they were held.
00:33:20
OK, unpause. How's mine?
00:33:21
Yeah, yeah. In Hebrews 10 it says that we,
00:33:24
we can go to God in heaven by a new and living way that Jesus
00:33:28
consecrated through his death. So we have access to God now,
00:33:31
which wasn't available to people before even during the lifetime
00:33:34
of Jesus. But the the point is that the
00:33:37
story of Lazarus and the Richmond, I always thought of it
00:33:40
as a true story and, and it could be, it could be a true
00:33:43
story. But the main reason I thought so
00:33:44
is because it had a man's name in it.
00:33:46
And the parables of Jesus usually don't have its names in
00:33:49
them. It was possible I thought it
00:33:52
could be a parable, but if it was, it must be at least true to
00:33:55
life because Jesus parables were about real life situation.
00:33:58
So I figured we could get a good idea of what, you know, the
00:34:02
afterlife is like from this, whether it's a true story or
00:34:04
only a parable based on realities.
00:34:07
But I didn't know until I was researching for my book that
00:34:10
most evangelical scholars today, and I don't, that's not the same
00:34:15
as most evangelical pastors. But the, you know, those who are
00:34:18
in the Academy studying this kind of stuff, the New Testament
00:34:22
full time, most of them believe that Jesus was simply re
00:34:28
repurposing a rabbinic story. Because there's something like,
00:34:32
I forget the number like 7 or more stories in the Talmud that
00:34:37
have been found that are very similar to it where they're not
00:34:40
true stories. They're parables told by rabbis
00:34:42
about people who died. And before they died, they were
00:34:46
in opposite circumstances from each other, one privileged and
00:34:50
the other not. But after death, their roles
00:34:52
were reversed and they could talk to each other and things
00:34:55
like that. And that that scenario, very
00:34:57
much like the story of Lazarus or Richmond, was a popular
00:35:00
scenario in rabbinic stories. And so some feel like Jesus is
00:35:05
not telling literally a true story or even an original
00:35:08
parable so much as he's simply repurposing a very common
00:35:12
rabbinic parable and making his own points from it.
00:35:16
He gives it his own details and makes his own points from it,
00:35:20
but it's not really a true story so much as it's an illustrative
00:35:24
story. And so I mean, we that's, that's
00:35:28
up in the air. That's up in the air.
00:35:29
Steve, Steve, let me add to your argument, then I'd like to make
00:35:33
a comment about it or your viewpoint in the book.
00:35:35
You also go a step farther and say that before the rabbinic
00:35:38
traditions that it had come similar stories out of Egyptian
00:35:42
culture. And then you pose the question,
00:35:46
would Jesus really be pulling? What would cultures like Egypt
00:35:52
and then even the rabbis have more information you know than
00:35:56
Jesus would and such kind of did I get that accurate of your
00:36:00
thought? Yeah, the way I put it is this,
00:36:02
that the Old Testament tells us nothing of the, of the nature
00:36:07
afterlife world. OK, the the, the inspired
00:36:10
prophets were told nothing but the Book of Enoch a couple
00:36:14
centuries before Christ brought into Judaism ideas from the
00:36:17
Egyptian Book of the Dead and from and also from Greece
00:36:20
philosophy about Hades. And basically the rabbis had
00:36:24
picked up on it. They picked up on it from the
00:36:27
Greeks and from the Egyptians and possibly the Persians,
00:36:30
because Zoroastrian among the Persians they are.
00:36:34
There's also this kind of picture of Hades with two
00:36:36
compartments. So in other words, these Pagan
00:36:39
cultures had come up with these ideas about the afterlife, the
00:36:42
inspired prophets of the Old Testament, Moses and the
00:36:45
prophets said nothing about it. And if Jesus is telling a true
00:36:49
story, rather than simply borrowing a popular image and
00:36:56
making you know a spiritual lesson from it, if he's telling
00:36:59
a true story, or if it really is that way, we'd have to say these
00:37:02
Pagan cultures guessed correctly about what no man can know what
00:37:09
happens to people after they die when the prophets in the old
00:37:12
person didn't know anything about it.
00:37:13
So I mean, here's here's my view on that.
00:37:16
This is one of my rare disagreements in your book and
00:37:21
you could be right. So I'm not 100%, but here was my
00:37:23
thought on it where I thought I would have added this.
00:37:27
And I understand that perspective, but I also think
00:37:31
that these Pagan cultures were being influenced by, you know,
00:37:36
God's, Satan's the God of this world.
00:37:39
So the Egyptians, even with the story of Moses, sure, they have
00:37:43
like they're weird statues they're praying to and it's
00:37:48
their own religion. And it's not all accurate, but I
00:37:51
would argue demonically inspired to the fact that they're
00:37:55
magicians were even doing magic or miracles that were equaling
00:38:00
Moses's to some level. In that the demonic world does
00:38:06
have some knowledge of the afterlife and possibly Hades and
00:38:12
whatnot. And that some of those stories
00:38:13
may not be 100% accurate, but it's not that an Egyptian writer
00:38:18
is writing something and then the Son of God then believes it
00:38:21
or whatever. I think it's more that some of
00:38:23
those things could actually be 75% true because it's coming
00:38:27
from demonic inspiration into their religion.
00:38:31
I feel the same. I feel the same about like the
00:38:34
whole ancient alien thing, You know, how do we have pyramids
00:38:36
all over the world, different images and carvings and things
00:38:39
when they couldn't have communicated together?
00:38:42
It must be aliens. But then when I hear those
00:38:46
facts, I look at the facts with biblical view and I think, well,
00:38:50
it's a demonic world influencing humans in different parts of the
00:38:53
world with information of the heavens and mathematics and
00:38:59
different things. Therefore it all comes out very
00:39:01
similar. That's that's how I view.
00:39:05
So to me, I'm not 100% on the Lazarus thing.
00:39:08
I really lean towards it being real because of the first things
00:39:12
you said. He doesn't present it as a
00:39:15
parable, and I and I leave room for that demonic inspiration of
00:39:19
stories. Possibly, yeah.
00:39:20
The the main thing that you're of the points your friend made
00:39:24
that we were discussing is that the Lazarus and the rich man
00:39:28
story is the least significant argument because it doesn't deal
00:39:32
with the Lake of Fire at all. You know, even if we take the
00:39:35
Lazarus and the rich man story as 100% factually true in every
00:39:38
detail, which is fine, fine with me if it is, it still doesn't
00:39:43
tell us anything about the lake. He's.
00:39:44
Pulling out of it that the guy was tormented, but it's not a
00:39:47
torment in a lake of fire and as much in later in scripture.
00:39:52
Exactly. I mean, it's entirely possible
00:39:54
for a man to be tormented in flames in the, you know, interim
00:39:59
between his death and the resurrection, but then to be
00:40:02
thrown into the lake of fire, which is the ultimate after the
00:40:05
judgement when Jesus comes back. So I mean whatever.
00:40:11
We're told of different levels, we're told of different levels
00:40:14
of punishment. And Hitler won't get the same as
00:40:17
Mother Teresa, but if they didn't receive Christ, annihilus
00:40:22
would be. Eventually they all end up just
00:40:24
being annihilated in the Lake of Fire.
00:40:26
But there could be these lengths of various uncomfortableness.
00:40:29
I'm not into indicating that Mother Teresa's.
00:40:31
I don't think she's. Yeah, I know.
00:40:33
I know most most people who believe in the second view that
00:40:36
is conditional immortality do believe that the Sinner will
00:40:40
suffer proportionately to to their what is to serve before
00:40:45
they're annihilated. Now some don't.
00:40:48
Chris Date is a friend of mine. He's very involved with the
00:40:50
Rethinking Hell website. He's an annihilationist and but
00:40:54
he believes that there's no punishment beyond the grave at
00:40:57
all. They just they're just
00:40:58
annihilated now. Now that too these two different
00:41:01
views about conditional immortality, one is like the
00:41:05
Jehovah's Witnesses have and 1 is like what the 7th Adventists
00:41:08
have. Now the fact that they have
00:41:09
their associations doesn't tell us whether they're true or not,
00:41:12
because not everything these people believe would necessarily
00:41:15
be false just because they believe it.
00:41:17
But the idea that you know the wicked, once they die, they're
00:41:22
never punished or punished conscious way.
00:41:25
They're just annihilated. That would be agreeable with
00:41:28
what the Jehovah's Witnesses have taught, the idea that the,
00:41:31
the unbeliever is punished for a period of time proportionate to
00:41:36
his own guilt, as you're saying, each one having their own custom
00:41:41
made sentence, you know, based on what they did, because the
00:41:44
Bible says everyone will be judged according to his works.
00:41:48
That that's, that will be the kind of it that the Jehovah that
00:41:51
the some of the Adventists believe also, I'm neither.
00:41:54
I don't believe in some of the Adventism or in Jehovah's
00:41:57
Witnesses, but those are different varieties of the
00:42:02
annihilationist view. And some will receive many
00:42:05
stripes, some will receive few. It seems clear.
00:42:08
That's an important passage, yes.
00:42:10
Yeah. So going back to I wanted to hit
00:42:12
these main things at least my friend brought up.
00:42:14
So back to some of the first scriptures that I thought were
00:42:16
very convincing, like the the goats going off into eternal
00:42:21
torment. How do we understand some of
00:42:23
those in context? Does it help to to look at the
00:42:27
Old Testament of and then compared to New Testament?
00:42:31
Has a New Testament done this injustice by translating the
00:42:35
word hell, for instance? Well actually you know Matthew
00:42:39
25 that has that statement of the goats and the sheep doesn't
00:42:42
even mention hell by name. It just there's two references
00:42:46
to hell in the story. 1 is verse 41, Matthew 2541.
00:42:50
They should go into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
00:42:53
his angels. The word hell doesn't appear.
00:42:55
But and then in verse 46, it says these shall go away.
00:42:58
The the the sheep shall go away to eternal life.
00:43:01
He says the goats will go away to eternal, eternal punishment.
00:43:04
Now the the now the view annihilationism.
00:43:11
They would point out it doesn't say that they they go away to
00:43:16
eternal punishing, but they go to a a punishment which is
00:43:20
forever and that we annihilation death.
00:43:23
For them, the second death is forever.
00:43:26
So it's eternal. It's an eternal punishment, so.
00:43:28
It's like, so for people listening, see if I got this
00:43:31
right. So it's like even today with the
00:43:33
death penalty, someone's given the death penalty.
00:43:38
They receive death as the judgment and that judgment
00:43:42
remains forever because they will never live again.
00:43:45
It doesn't mean we're killing them for eternity.
00:43:49
Right if if, if Jesus said these go away into eternal punishing,
00:43:53
then it would suggest that the act of punishing them will
00:43:56
continue forever but an eternal punishment may be a moment in
00:44:01
time a a punishment which never is reversed ever.
00:44:04
So it's forever, it's an eternal one.
00:44:06
It's it's an eternal loss of life, you know, with God now if.
00:44:11
Your punishment was to lose a limb.
00:44:14
That's forever. As long as you live, you're not
00:44:17
going to keep losing it. You've lost it, and that
00:44:21
punishment continues as long as you live.
00:44:23
A, a punishment that is irreversible like that would be
00:44:27
an eternal punishment because it's, it's, it's executed one
00:44:31
time, that's the punishment, but it's never going to change.
00:44:35
So it's it's going to be that way forever.
00:44:38
Now, as a scholar, do you feel like that is being, if you were
00:44:42
here a traditionalist hearing that would and they're hearing
00:44:45
this argument, what do you think?
00:44:46
Well, that's really stretching it.
00:44:48
They're really trying. Or do you feel that that is
00:44:50
legitimately possibly how that is written and meant to be
00:44:54
understood? Well, I will say this, that when
00:45:01
I was a traditionalist, I, when I, until I heard much about
00:45:07
these other views, I probably, if you told me that particular
00:45:10
argument, I was thought, well, that's a stretch because I would
00:45:12
have thought, I would have thought there's a lot more in
00:45:15
the Bible that points toward eternal conscious torment than
00:45:19
there is toward annihilation. But I would have thought that
00:45:22
because I hadn't studied it. The truth is, as I said, there
00:45:26
are about four verses which sound like they may be teaching
00:45:30
eternal conscious torment, which by the way, if it is a true
00:45:34
doctrine, it's surprising. It's such a counterintuitive
00:45:37
doctrine and such an objectionable director,
00:45:39
surprising it wouldn't be mentioned more than four times
00:45:41
in in 66 books of the Bible and not at all in the old text.
00:45:45
And that God when he and when he told that when he don't eat of
00:45:47
that tree, because in the day you do, you're going to die.
00:45:50
Why didn't he say in the day you do, you're going to you're going
00:45:52
to earn eternal conscious torment.
00:45:54
You'll never die. You'll just wish you could.
00:45:57
You know, that's I mean, if you just said you're going to die,
00:46:01
well, I mean, we could say here's the thing.
00:46:04
As a traditionalist, I would have interpreted die as
00:46:09
separation from God, you know, or, you know, destroy would be
00:46:14
ruined. You know, you can destroy
00:46:16
something without annihilate if he if your soul is destroyed in
00:46:20
hell, maybe you're just ruined, not just not annihilate.
00:46:23
See, that's the way once you have a view in your head that
00:46:26
it's a way you can, you can fit all of these other words and so
00:46:31
forth in other verses into your paradigm.
00:46:33
If you're willing to say, well, we're going to say death means
00:46:37
this and we're going to say that destroy means this.
00:46:40
And who can stop you from doing that?
00:46:42
No one can stop. You can do that if you want to.
00:46:44
But the question is, is that really what it says?
00:46:46
Now the same thing is eternal punishment.
00:46:49
Did Jesus mean a punishment that simply its consequences last
00:46:53
forever? Or does he refer to a punishment
00:46:55
that's going to be an ongoing punishment forever and ever, or
00:46:59
punishing, punishing going on forever and ever?
00:47:01
Well, it depends on what the Bible seems to teach to you
00:47:05
elsewhere. You know, I mean, you're going
00:47:07
to probably fit verses like that, which could go either way,
00:47:11
into the paradigm that you think is best supported.
00:47:14
You know, the problem is we often think that whatever view
00:47:18
we hold is the one that's best supported in Scripture prior.
00:47:21
If we look carefully, obviously Proverbs 18 says he that is
00:47:25
first in his own cause seems right until his neighbors comes
00:47:28
and examines him. And certainly the views you
00:47:30
heard first, even if there's only a handful of verses that
00:47:33
seem to support him, it seems right because you don't know any
00:47:36
other view. And but when someone comes to
00:47:38
wait a minute, aren't there a lot more verses that talk about
00:47:41
destruction and perishing and dying the wages of sin is death
00:47:45
the. Wages of sin is death and you
00:47:47
receive Christ so that you don't perish.
00:47:50
Like if you didn't have that preconceived paradigm, it would
00:47:53
be hard to get to traditional from there.
00:47:57
It it would, it would. Now, as you know, on that verse
00:48:00
in Matthew 2546, they should go to everlasting punishment.
00:48:05
What the universalist would say is, well the word punishment is
00:48:08
colossus and originally in the Greek language colossus meant
00:48:11
pruning a limb off a tree or or later it meant correction.
00:48:16
So these go away into everlasting correction.
00:48:18
Now the word everlasting is ionius which is used many times
00:48:22
in the New Testament and unfortunately the English word
00:48:26
everlasting or even eternal conveys an endlessness to us
00:48:30
that the word ionius did not inherently possess.
00:48:33
The word ionius could refer to things that last for our last
00:48:37
Father or like the eternal life of the computer or whatever that
00:48:40
that's he lasts for every reason Ionius.
00:48:42
But it also was used to refer to many things that were not
00:48:44
eternal but were simply long lasting.
00:48:47
One only has to do a word study on this in the Bible to realize
00:48:50
that there are words that our Bibles translate as everlasting
00:48:55
are used to mean things that don't really necessarily always
00:48:57
mean that. And the lexicons would say
00:49:00
ionius means pertaining to or lasting for an age because the
00:49:04
word ion is the word for age and ionios is simply the adjective
00:49:08
based on that noun. And so I have a chapter
00:49:12
obviously in my book where I talk about the different
00:49:14
scholars views of ionios, which suffice it to say, no one will
00:49:19
reasonably say that ionios always means everlasting it.
00:49:24
What it seems to literally mean is lasting beyond the horizon,
00:49:29
beyond the point of we can't see the end from here.
00:49:33
The the the Hebrew word in the Old Testament is olam.
00:49:36
Every time you read of everlasting or eternal in the
00:49:38
Old Testament or forever is the word olam.
00:49:41
And olam means hidden or hidden beyond the horizon, which means
00:49:45
you can't see the end from here. There might be an end or there
00:49:49
might be no end, but you can't tell from here.
00:49:51
And that's what I in the Septuagint, Ion and Ionius are
00:49:55
used to translate olam, and the lexicons will tell.
00:49:58
That's pretty much what Ionius means.
00:50:00
It might as well be eternal because you can't see the end
00:50:03
from here. But there are some things that
00:50:05
you can't see the end of, but they do have an end eventually.
00:50:08
And you'll, you'll read for example, in like in Isaiah
00:50:13
chapter 32 verse 15, I think it's verse 14 and 15 talks about
00:50:17
how the, the desert be a waste forever until the Spirit is
00:50:21
poured out and the desert becomes blossoms and blooms like
00:50:24
a rose, you know, so, so it's going to be a desert and a waste
00:50:27
forever until it isn't, you know?
00:50:30
Until it isn't. Yeah.
00:50:32
Exactly. What about the example you gave
00:50:34
with Sodom and Gomorrah in in the context of a forever
00:50:39
punishment? And it wasn't forever.
00:50:41
Yeah. Yeah, Joe, Jude talks about how
00:50:46
it says Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the judgement of
00:50:49
Eternal or Ionios fire, that they'd be an example to others
00:50:53
who would effort live ungodly. Well, he's obviously he can't be
00:50:57
talking about Hellfire because how would that be an example to
00:50:59
the unbelievers? They don't see what goes on in
00:51:01
the next life. You know, there's a visible
00:51:03
judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah, which is said in Jude to be
00:51:07
everlasting fire. Well, OK, so in some sense it's
00:51:11
Ionius fire, but it's not still burning there.
00:51:14
Now if you go to that southern Dead Sea area where Sodom was,
00:51:18
there's no fire burning there. Now it but it could mean Ionios
00:51:22
in the sense that it had eternal repercussions.
00:51:27
It could be Ionos in that it comes from the Ionios God comes
00:51:31
from the eternal God. Our God is a consuming fire and
00:51:34
it was just a manifestation fire flashing in a moment there to
00:51:39
destroy that city. There's other ways that can be
00:51:41
understood, but it certainly is not the case that the fire that
00:51:44
consumed Sodom Gomorrah is not eternally burning in soccer.
00:51:49
What makes sense is something like you're saying along the
00:51:51
lines of even the fire of his judgement is forever, but the
00:51:56
people burned up. Yeah, yeah.
00:51:59
I mean, God is consuming fire and he is eternal.
00:52:02
So if he, this fire is sent to, that's the eternal fire because
00:52:07
it's he's eternal and it's him. It's his judgement, you know?
00:52:11
And so you know, I, I do in my book, in the chapter about what
00:52:15
Ianios means and I quote a great number of very respected
00:52:19
evangelical scholars, there's like 4 different views that they
00:52:23
have held on it. Like FF Bruce for example,
00:52:28
believe that Ionius just means pertaining to the age meaning
00:52:32
pertaining to the messianic age. So that Ionius life and the
00:52:37
Ionius punishment in Matthew 2546.
00:52:41
They are both a life that pertains to the messianic age
00:52:44
and a punishment that pertains pertains to the domestic.
00:52:47
Don't talk about how long it lasts, but the age which is
00:52:51
which of which it is a part. It is.
00:52:54
It doesn't really necessarily have to talk about the duration
00:52:57
the the words. There's an incredible amount of
00:53:00
study being studied Smallers evangelical scholarship.
00:53:03
I mean, some might say, Oh yeah, a bunch of liberals want to get
00:53:05
rid of the eternal torment. Now that we're talking about the
00:53:07
not just eternal torment, but the words eternal used in all
00:53:10
ways in the Bible, Olam in the Old Testament, Ionius and Ion in
00:53:14
the New Testament. Scholars are are writing a lot
00:53:18
about that right now because they're understanding a lot more
00:53:20
about it from the various ways in which it's used.
00:53:25
So anyway, that's, that's an open question.
00:53:27
I would say that that the the the annihilationist and the
00:53:33
evangelical universes would both have their different ways of
00:53:36
describing that these shall go into everlasting punishment or
00:53:41
Ionius. You know, a couple of closing
00:53:44
thoughts that are more, I don't know if you say philosophical or
00:53:48
more personal than just like maybe actually scripture based.
00:53:52
But I think about the I gave the Mother Teresa wasn't the best
00:53:56
example, but you know, the good person, let's say that didn't
00:54:00
receive Christ all the way to the genocidal dictator or
00:54:03
whatever. So they'll receive different
00:54:05
levels of punishment and then they all burn forever.
00:54:07
Well, burning seems like the worst punishment you could ever
00:54:11
have. Who cares if you get a few
00:54:13
stripes or more? That both of those are so finite
00:54:18
compared to the equal torment for eternity seems the same in
00:54:23
the long run. That doesn't really make sense
00:54:26
to me. Then the other thought is the
00:54:29
other thought of mine is that, and this is just more of a
00:54:31
personal observation, I wouldn't hang my theological hat on.
00:54:35
It is, you know, as a believer, a spirit filled believer, when I
00:54:40
see Christmas programs, not all of Santa Claus or whatever, but
00:54:43
if it really portrays the incarnation of Christ in some
00:54:46
respectful way, I don't care how old I get.
00:54:50
I tear up. Something in me is struck deep
00:54:54
within that this is true and beautiful and I can't help it
00:54:58
that to me it's, that's not proof, it's true, but it's that
00:55:03
inner witness that that is a truth that came from Scripture.
00:55:06
The same with the crucifixion or Easter place.
00:55:09
If it's if the passion is presented properly it affects a
00:55:15
believer. Yet every time I hear a
00:55:18
traditional view or have ever thought about it presented of
00:55:23
hell, I have the opposite. A stomach wrenching.
00:55:27
This can't be right. But when I hear in a nihilist
00:55:32
view it seems to be scriptural. It seems to have justice and it
00:55:40
seems to answer everything about people who never got to hear the
00:55:44
gospel and why it's important to reach them.
00:55:46
But they're not going to be tortured eternally for it.
00:55:49
They're just not going to be able to, like Scripture says,
00:55:52
have a life with Christ in the eternal life.
00:55:55
So let's get as many people as we can.
00:55:57
It's it seems Scriptural and it sits well to me.
00:56:02
Yeah, well, sometimes people bring it up, you know.
00:56:05
Well, if it's, if they're, if it's not eternal torment, then
00:56:08
why would we evangelize them? You know, why do, why would we
00:56:11
go to any trouble to evangelize them if they're not, they're not
00:56:13
going to suffer forever anyway, I think, well, if you have
00:56:17
friends or children who are on the path of criminal behavior
00:56:22
and you figure, you know, if they keep on that behavior, they
00:56:25
may go to jail for, who knows, 10 years.
00:56:28
Well, you'd do anything you could to prevent that from
00:56:30
happening. There doesn't have to be a
00:56:32
threat of eternal suffering. Yeah.
00:56:35
To motivate you to get someone to not want to go there.
00:56:38
You know, how, how long would you want to stand in a burning
00:56:40
house, you know, surrounded by flame, by flame for you, you
00:56:44
know, how long would you want to hold your hand over a candle
00:56:48
flame and, and not move it? Not very long at all, you know.
00:56:51
But if you know, and even burning up quickly would be
00:56:56
something you would do a great deal to avoid if it was
00:56:59
something that was, I mean, you'd do almost anything to
00:57:02
avoid burning up. It's presenting to me the gospel
00:57:05
with, with the life insurance that you might as well believe
00:57:08
this because because if we're right, you're going to save
00:57:12
yourself from an eternity of torment if we're wrong.
00:57:15
And to me that's not a saved person.
00:57:16
A saved person is someone that came, heard the gospel story and
00:57:23
was drawn by the love of Christ, not by the judgement of Christ.
00:57:29
But. The prodigal son came home, but
00:57:32
he didn't come home because he was thinking about how much
00:57:34
punishment his father dishes out to the disobedient.
00:57:38
He came home because how good his father was to his servants.
00:57:42
He said father is good to his service.
00:57:44
I want to go back there. You know, he didn't think, well,
00:57:47
if I stay here, my dad's going to hunt me down and torture me.
00:57:50
Now that wasn't why he came home.
00:57:52
He came home because he had a loving father and he wasn't in a
00:57:55
very loving situation at the moment.
00:57:58
I'm just in a negative way amazed at the lack of this
00:58:03
conversation or that pastors aren't presenting different
00:58:11
information because there isn't 100% surety.
00:58:16
And to me, like you mentioned the evangelism part, well we
00:58:18
weren't told to end that to an evangelism story.
00:58:21
I don't think we but Jesus taught hell, so we should too to
00:58:24
an event to a degree, but Paul didn't make it a major thing.
00:58:30
The New Testament didn't make it a major thing.
00:58:32
It seems like we've it's it's odd to me that the closure of
00:58:38
ears to even hear different perspectives as if it's a
00:58:41
different religion or a heresy. Like you want to hold on to the
00:58:46
thought this of eternal. I want people to be conscious
00:58:51
and torturing forever. That's what it feels like.
00:58:53
I had AI heard on the radio just the other day he self-proclaimed
00:58:57
apologist, a local personality on Christian radio who talks
00:59:00
about things as an expert. I know you are I don't think he
00:59:04
is but and someone called in he's taking calls and he they
00:59:09
they asked can I still be a Christian and not have the view
00:59:13
of hell that people are burning for eternity?
00:59:16
And his answer was, well, I don't Christians should believe
00:59:24
the Bible, but I can't say in their heart they're not saved.
00:59:27
And in my mind, I'm thinking, does he not know there's other
00:59:31
biblical views? We're not saying something the
00:59:33
Bible and what's it have to do with Romans.
00:59:35
It says if you confess, you know Jesus is the Lord and believe in
00:59:39
your heart and confess it Christ that God rose him from the
00:59:41
raised him from the dead, you are saved.
00:59:43
It doesn't say you have to believe in a version of hell and
00:59:45
specifically this one and these are so-called apologists.
00:59:49
That question make you question if you're even saved if you're
00:59:53
going to question something that is so mind boggling horrific.
00:59:59
Yeah, well. I I If it's true, it's true.
01:00:04
Yeah, I can kind of relate with the apologist attitude from an
01:00:07
earlier time in my life. I can't relate with it in my
01:00:10
present time in my life. That is to say, I can remember a
01:00:13
time when I wanted to be able to answer everyone's questions.
01:00:15
So I learned what the answers are supposed to be.
01:00:18
And I I had them all memorized, you know, and any question
01:00:22
people would ask, I would I hadn't memorized the answer.
01:00:25
Where later in life I realized that some of my memorized
01:00:29
answers maybe were a little weak.
01:00:31
And so I started thinking three things for myself and that was
01:00:33
really an adventure. I mean, I, you know, the book I
01:00:37
wrote before, the one on Hell is the book Revelation 4 Views, a
01:00:41
parallel commentary came out back in 1997.
01:00:45
And I don't advocate one view there either, but I studied 50
01:00:48
commentaries from 4 different views and, and digested it into
01:00:51
4 commentaries in one volume. And, you know, that was a, that
01:00:56
was beginning to think for myself because I had been taught
01:01:00
a certain view of Revelation, never heard another view.
01:01:03
And I discovered them and then I realized, hey, other people need
01:01:06
to hear these. Same thing happened with Hell.
01:01:08
I was never told differently with hell, except I was told
01:01:11
that Jehovah's Witnesses believe a different one and that the
01:01:14
universe Unitarians believe difference.
01:01:17
And I knew they were cults. So I mean, yeah, I just thought
01:01:21
I could just not have to give them any thought at all.
01:01:23
But then I realized, I mean, I didn't know that there were lots
01:01:26
of evangelical Christians and church fathers who believed each
01:01:30
of these views. You know, the 1st 4 centuries
01:01:34
this question was not settled. And, and there were church
01:01:37
fathers of equal standing on all who held each of these 3 views.
01:01:42
There was not a, a standard view on what the Bible taught because
01:01:47
it is more ambiguous than we are usually told.
01:01:50
And so obviously for the 1st 400 years a person could believe
01:01:53
different things on hell and still be a Christian.
01:01:56
So why would that be? Any question about that now?
01:01:59
Yeah, and for those listening, it's OK to question things we're
01:02:02
not questioning. This isn't in the Apostles
01:02:04
Creed. This isn't something that like
01:02:06
we're we have the early church thought.
01:02:08
You have to believe this. That's a modern thought that we,
01:02:12
if you think that way, you've just been taught that way and
01:02:17
it's OK to study some other ideas.
01:02:21
Not that Jesus isn't God, not that nothing about salvation
01:02:25
that stays firm And I would be just like that apologist on the
01:02:28
radio and say you know, you're not saved and God Jesus is the
01:02:31
only way to heaven. There's no other name that for
01:02:33
sure. These other issues, some aren't
01:02:36
really relatively important. I think this one is a
01:02:40
peripheral. It's pretty important.
01:02:42
Lot of people don't come to the faith solely based on this.
01:02:46
I don't think it helps evangelism.
01:02:48
I think it hurts it, but if it's true, it's true, but it may not
01:02:52
be. And one last thing, Steve and
01:02:55
talking to the people listening is you know, I grew up, I'd say
01:03:02
evangelical Armenian. I don't want to confuse people,
01:03:05
but not Calvinist, not Reformed and but I was so isolated in the
01:03:10
teaching. I thought predestination was
01:03:12
just for Calvinist when it's actually a doctrine in
01:03:15
Scripture. You get so far from other groups
01:03:18
and I ended up getting a master's in biblical studies
01:03:21
from a Reformed perspective and all it did for me was firm up my
01:03:27
original beliefs and salvation. And I find limited atonement
01:03:31
repulsive personally, but I know it didn't hurt me learning it,
01:03:36
just it widened my view of predestination.
01:03:41
I just don't agree with John Calvin and John Edwards on that,
01:03:47
but it helped me. Just like I don't agree with a
01:03:49
lot of Catholicism, but Mary is blessed among women in
01:03:54
evangelical circles. You wouldn't think so.
01:03:56
And. The Trinity is and the Trinity
01:03:59
is. That's right.
01:04:00
Interesting. Yeah.
01:04:01
So it's OK, you need to have get sound doctrine from the New
01:04:06
Testament, but you can learn from other groups that are also
01:04:10
believers and it expands in like learning different viewpoints of
01:04:15
hell isn't going to hurt you. You may change your mind or may
01:04:19
just make it more solid, but you're for sure going to be
01:04:21
better at people who come with questions that you otherwise
01:04:24
wouldn't be ready for. And Steve's book is where I
01:04:27
would start. So this is just like a touch of
01:04:31
it, but you can have the verses you have questions about.
01:04:34
He mentions all of them. I think it's really good.
01:04:38
I've listened to the audio one. I'm almost three times through
01:04:40
it just because I want to know it as well as he does.
01:04:43
I want to know these scriptures in the answers to them.
01:04:46
And I don't have a dog in the fight.
01:04:48
I just know that I, you know, my son who began to question one of
01:04:53
his first questions on Christianity was, do you really
01:04:55
believe in hell? And my answer at the time, which
01:05:00
wasn't that long ago, was of course it's in the Bible, but I
01:05:05
hope I'm reading the verses wrong about it.
01:05:10
I felt it wasn't right, but I didn't have the knowledge
01:05:13
because I know there's verses there that make it look right
01:05:16
and. I know you got.
01:05:20
Let me just put something in perspective here.
01:05:22
There's very few verses, relatively speaking, in the
01:05:24
Bible on hell. There's several different words
01:05:28
in Greek that are translated hell, but still none of them are
01:05:31
found in any of Paul's writings. Paul never uses any of the words
01:05:34
for hell. They're not found in first Peter
01:05:38
or, you know, they're not found in in the epistles.
01:05:41
Generally speaking, almost all the references to hell are in
01:05:44
the teaching of Jesus or the Book of Revelation.
01:05:46
But when you find but Jesus didn't mention very many times,
01:05:50
possibly on 4 occasions he mentioned it out of 39 recorded
01:05:54
days of his life. So Jesus didn't emphasize it
01:05:57
either, and neither did Revelation.
01:05:58
But but it's in there. It's, it's a, it's a biblical
01:06:01
doctrine, but it's not talked about anywhere near as much as
01:06:05
we might think it would be. And if you'd go through the book
01:06:07
of Acts and look at the evangelistic sermons Paul and
01:06:10
Peter preach, there's at least a half a dozen total of
01:06:14
evangelistic sermons. They never mention heaven or
01:06:16
hell in their preaching to unbelievable.
01:06:19
They don't, they don't threaten them with hell, they don't bribe
01:06:21
them with heaven. They tell them about Jesus and
01:06:23
and that Jesus is the Lord and that God expects people to do to
01:06:27
be serious about that. I preach Christ and him
01:06:30
crucified, right? And that's how he reached the
01:06:33
world, Paul. Amen.
01:06:37
All right. I really thank you for your time
01:06:41
and for this conversation. And where do you have a
01:06:44
preference where people find your books or is just Amazon or
01:06:46
do you have something better than that or your website?
01:06:49
I don't sell them myself. Amazon sells them.
01:06:52
If you look at my name, Steve Gregg, I have several books.
01:06:55
One is the 4 views about Revelation. 1 is the 3 views of
01:06:57
Hell and there's some books I wrote on the Kingdom of God
01:07:00
called Empire of the Recent Sun just.
01:07:03
Look at that one. That one next.
01:07:05
Yeah, that's, that's a very important book, I think.
01:07:07
And so anyway, there my website isthenarrowpath.com, which is my
01:07:15
my radio show. I've been on the air daily for
01:07:17
28 years nationally. It's called the Narrow Path.
01:07:21
The websitesthenarrowpath.com, all my lectures, thousands of
01:07:24
them are there free. Everything's free, but my books
01:07:27
I don't sell there. You have to get those from
01:07:28
someone like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
01:07:32
All right. Thanks again, Steve.
01:07:33
Appreciate it. All right, Kevin, among the
01:07:36
outlaws who said come follow me. People from all walks of life
01:07:41
since have been becoming outlaws.