So Many So Wrong for So Long
What will happen at the judgment day to an unbeliever who rejects the grace offered by Christ?
Christ says in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both soul and body in hell. In Matthew chapter 13, Christ says that this person will be like weeds that are thrown into a fire. In John chapter 15, Jesus says that an unbeliever will be like dried branches that are thrown into fire. In Acts chapter 3, Peter says that this soul will be utterly destroyed. In his own book, Peter says that those residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were destroyed by fire from heaven, serve as an example of what will happen to an unbeliever at the final judgment day. Other passages from John and Paul and the writer of Hebrews clearly teach this same truth – that total destruction awaits the unbeliever at the judgment day.
Many Christians, however, believe something different than what we see in those passages. They teach that unbelievers will live forever, eternally existing in a state somehow separated from the omnipresent God. In fact, most of those who take the Bible as their moral authority hold to this belief – a belief in some sort of eternal torment for unbelievers.
I’ve had discussions with many of these people. I have tried to methodically examine scripture with them. (You can read about my own examination of scripture in this essay.) During those discussions, I have realized something. In almost all cases, a certain notion holds great sway over these people. That notion could be summarized this way:
How could so many Christians be so wrong about this doctrine for so long?
From my observations, this is the single most powerful argument motivating Christians to cling to the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. It's as if this argument is embedded somewhere deep in their soul, and powerfully influences the way they interpret the scriptures. To these people, it is almost unconceivable that God would allow his people, those who take the Bible for their authority, to have believed something so wrong for such a long time.
How long? Historians differ, but I believe most would concur that eternal torment for unbelievers has been the dominant doctrine since at least 500 AD. That means it has been the dominant doctrine for at least 1500 years. Of course, many would say it has been the dominant doctrine for longer than that. Regardless, almost everyone agrees that it has been the dominant doctrine for a long time. I don’t dispute that.
What I will dispute is this notion that God would not allow those he loves to believe something that is wrong.
I suppose most of us have watched astronomy documentaries that animate what it might look like to fly through space. I have often seen those animations start at the far edge of the universe and zoom forward, passing billions of galaxies on the way to our own. Once our own is pictured, these animations continue to zoom in on our own solar system, and then settle upon a view of our own planet earth. These illustrations do a good job of depicting the enormity of the universe, and of giving us a strange sensation of our planet floating isolated in this vast universe.
With that image in mind, we can almost imagine looking at this planet from the perspective of God. We know that there are now perhaps 7 billion people on this earth. Those 7 billion people are divided into countless cultures. Many of those cultures, like Judaism, Buddhism and Islam, have existed for centuries. In each of those cultures, certain beliefs are passed on from one generation to the next, century after century. The core beliefs of those countless cultures are often drastically different.
Even within our own Christian faith, differences abound. We Christians differ in our understanding of the authority of the church, the authority of the Bible, whether miracles happen, and innumerable other doctrines.
Do any of these cultures get all of the essentials correct? At most, one of them does. All the others are wrong on at least one essential doctrine.
Could anybody deny this truth? God has created a world where most people in the world are taught doctrines with significant errors. These doctrines are proclaimed as true by the leaders of the culture, and are taught to children, and are preserved throughout the centuries. And since these doctrines are so drastically different, they can’t all be right.
Please consider that and let that sink in. As God looks down on this planet, every single culture believes something that is seriously wrong. This is the world that God chose to create – a world where the vast majority of his children believe ideas that are drastically misguided, and they continue to pass those beliefs on to successive generations.
Now, let me ask this question:
Would God allow those he loves to believe lies for hundreds and even thousands of years?
Unequivocally, yes.
This idea of people in ignorance was a central concept in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Acts chapter 17. Here is that passage, with my emphasis added using underlines:
Note that Paul uses the word ‘ignorance’ twice. First, he says that they are worshipping in ignorance, and then he says that God has overlooked the times of ignorance. Also, note that God is hoping that all men will grope their way to him, and that He is not far from each one of them.
As another verse says, “For God so loved the world…”
God loves all men, and is not far from every man, and yet he has allowed countless men throughout the ages to live and die in ignorance. To some degree, he will overlook that ignorance.
There is great debate about what will happen to those people who never hear the gospel of Christ. I don’t want to delve into that topic deeply in this essay, but I do want to draw out one thought. Take note of what Jesus says in John 15:22 regarding his enemies:
We have two related concepts here. First, there is some degree to which God grants leniency to those that are ignorant. Second, those who have heard the truth are held accountable for their response to the truth. That is a sobering thought. It has many ramifications. Among them is this: If you have previously believed that God will torment people for all of eternity, you might have assumed that was the only acceptable position for a Bible-believing Christian. It isn't. In reading this essay, you have now heard someone suggest another alternative.
How will you respond? If you wish, you can review various detailed examinations of scripture on this topic, including the one I’ve done on this website.
But perhaps you will choose not to do so, for some reason or another. Beware, because you will no longer have an excuse for that decision. In the old board game called Monopoly, there was a card a player could receive called ‘Get Out of Jail Free’. If a player found himself in jail, he could use this card and immediately be released. In a similar way, men have ‘ignorance cards’. To some degree, God will allow us to play our ignorance cards and have our punishment reduced. But you will never again be able to play the ignorance card in regard to the fate of unbelievers.
If you choose to remain ignorant from this point forward, it will be a willful ignorance, and that kind of ignorance is not overlooked by God. With this statement I am now making, I am not arbitrarily assuming to be right on this topic. All I am doing is making it clear that there are positions that differ from the one embraced by your tradition. In doing so, I have snatched the ignorance card from your hand, and you no longer have one to play.
But let’s get back to this topic out hand. In Paul’s sermon in Athens, he was addressing the Greeks. From that sermon, we can conclude that the Greeks existed for many generations in a state of ignorance. But we can also consider the Israelites, God’s chosen people. They received the law from Moses, and were chosen as a special race to receive revelations from God. How did they respond to these revelations? Anybody who’s read the Old Testament knows that they repeatedly rejected the revealed truth of God. Time and time again, they rebelled from the teachings of God. Time and time again, God sent prophets in an effort to bring them back to his truth. These Israelites, God’s people, strayed so far as to even sacrifice their own babies in a fire as an attempt to appease the gods of their surrounding cultures.
Would God create a world where his chosen people go astray?
He certainly did. He wasn’t pleased about this rebellion, but he chose to create a world where rebellion is possible, and often occurs. Evidently, he cares so much about honoring the freedom that he’s given his children that he allows them to use that freedom to go just about wherever they want to.
But some would stop me here. “Wait!”, they say. “Sure, most of the religions of the world are wrong, but God sent Christ to teach the truth, and those who follow Christ are following the truth.”
“Yes”, I would reply, “Christ taught the truth. But that doesn’t mean man embraced the truth of Christ, nor that his followers through the ages continued to believe the truth that Christ taught.”
Did rebellion continue to happen after Christ?
We all know it did. Even a few years after Christ, we have this incident that is described by Paul in the book of
Galatians:
Just a few short years after the visit of Christ, Christian leaders were already drifting into error. Peter himself was being influenced by misguided leaders. This was man that Christ exhorted to ‘feed my sheep’.
In later years, followers of Christ burned other followers at the stake. They tortured those who disagree with them. They offered salvation for money. They rejected teachings at the very core of the gospel message – this message that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Even to this day, followers of God reject his ways, with some leaders brutally misusing their power and abusing even young children.
What, then, is the source of your confidence in your particular Christian tradition? How would you argue that your own tradition has been spared from a false belief? If God has always allowed error to persist, for billions of people in the world, why do you think your own culture is immune to that possibility?
Consider this scenario. Assume that you shared the gospel with a Muslim friend. That Muslim friend was intrigued and partially persuaded by your arguments that Christ is the true son of God. But then, to gain clarity, he questions his Muslim teachers and peers. What will they say? Will they affirm his pursuit of Christ? Of course not. They will show him verses from the Quran. They will pile upon him arguments against the Christian religion. They will threaten him with excommunication, and maybe even worse. They will likely try to scare him that he himself will be subject to eternal torment if he flees the faith that they embrace.
Imagine he returns to you and says, “I respect your arguments, but I must rely upon the shepherds that God has led me to.”
How would you respond? Will you argue with him? Do you use a similar argument? Do you rely primarily upon the shepherds that God has led you to? If you deny the validity of that response to him, how can you cling to it for yourself?
If one finds himself in a culture that is seriously mistaken, what must he do to escape and find the truth? Should he rely upon his teachers and peers? He might consider his teachers and peers, but his teachers and peers must not serve as his primary source for truth. Your Muslim friend will not find the truth by relying primarily upon his teachers and peers. In the same way, please acknowledge that you may not find the truth on this issue by relying primarily upon your teachers and peers.
This essay is directed at those who take the Bible as their primary source of moral authority. For us, the way to find the truth on this is to go directly to the revelation that was breathed by God himself. If your tradition teaches that God will torment unbelievers, I believe your tradition is mistaken. Essentially no biblical evidence exists to support this teaching.
Please examine the scriptures on this topic, armed with that humility that comes when we recognize how easy it is for each of us to go astray. It is so easy for us individually, and corporately, to go astray.
So Many So Wrong for So Long.
Don’t be one of them.
Christ says in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both soul and body in hell. In Matthew chapter 13, Christ says that this person will be like weeds that are thrown into a fire. In John chapter 15, Jesus says that an unbeliever will be like dried branches that are thrown into fire. In Acts chapter 3, Peter says that this soul will be utterly destroyed. In his own book, Peter says that those residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were destroyed by fire from heaven, serve as an example of what will happen to an unbeliever at the final judgment day. Other passages from John and Paul and the writer of Hebrews clearly teach this same truth – that total destruction awaits the unbeliever at the judgment day.
Many Christians, however, believe something different than what we see in those passages. They teach that unbelievers will live forever, eternally existing in a state somehow separated from the omnipresent God. In fact, most of those who take the Bible as their moral authority hold to this belief – a belief in some sort of eternal torment for unbelievers.
I’ve had discussions with many of these people. I have tried to methodically examine scripture with them. (You can read about my own examination of scripture in this essay.) During those discussions, I have realized something. In almost all cases, a certain notion holds great sway over these people. That notion could be summarized this way:
How could so many Christians be so wrong about this doctrine for so long?
From my observations, this is the single most powerful argument motivating Christians to cling to the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. It's as if this argument is embedded somewhere deep in their soul, and powerfully influences the way they interpret the scriptures. To these people, it is almost unconceivable that God would allow his people, those who take the Bible for their authority, to have believed something so wrong for such a long time.
How long? Historians differ, but I believe most would concur that eternal torment for unbelievers has been the dominant doctrine since at least 500 AD. That means it has been the dominant doctrine for at least 1500 years. Of course, many would say it has been the dominant doctrine for longer than that. Regardless, almost everyone agrees that it has been the dominant doctrine for a long time. I don’t dispute that.
What I will dispute is this notion that God would not allow those he loves to believe something that is wrong.
I suppose most of us have watched astronomy documentaries that animate what it might look like to fly through space. I have often seen those animations start at the far edge of the universe and zoom forward, passing billions of galaxies on the way to our own. Once our own is pictured, these animations continue to zoom in on our own solar system, and then settle upon a view of our own planet earth. These illustrations do a good job of depicting the enormity of the universe, and of giving us a strange sensation of our planet floating isolated in this vast universe.
With that image in mind, we can almost imagine looking at this planet from the perspective of God. We know that there are now perhaps 7 billion people on this earth. Those 7 billion people are divided into countless cultures. Many of those cultures, like Judaism, Buddhism and Islam, have existed for centuries. In each of those cultures, certain beliefs are passed on from one generation to the next, century after century. The core beliefs of those countless cultures are often drastically different.
Even within our own Christian faith, differences abound. We Christians differ in our understanding of the authority of the church, the authority of the Bible, whether miracles happen, and innumerable other doctrines.
Do any of these cultures get all of the essentials correct? At most, one of them does. All the others are wrong on at least one essential doctrine.
Could anybody deny this truth? God has created a world where most people in the world are taught doctrines with significant errors. These doctrines are proclaimed as true by the leaders of the culture, and are taught to children, and are preserved throughout the centuries. And since these doctrines are so drastically different, they can’t all be right.
Please consider that and let that sink in. As God looks down on this planet, every single culture believes something that is seriously wrong. This is the world that God chose to create – a world where the vast majority of his children believe ideas that are drastically misguided, and they continue to pass those beliefs on to successive generations.
Now, let me ask this question:
Would God allow those he loves to believe lies for hundreds and even thousands of years?
Unequivocally, yes.
This idea of people in ignorance was a central concept in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Acts chapter 17. Here is that passage, with my emphasis added using underlines:
- So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."
Note that Paul uses the word ‘ignorance’ twice. First, he says that they are worshipping in ignorance, and then he says that God has overlooked the times of ignorance. Also, note that God is hoping that all men will grope their way to him, and that He is not far from each one of them.
As another verse says, “For God so loved the world…”
God loves all men, and is not far from every man, and yet he has allowed countless men throughout the ages to live and die in ignorance. To some degree, he will overlook that ignorance.
There is great debate about what will happen to those people who never hear the gospel of Christ. I don’t want to delve into that topic deeply in this essay, but I do want to draw out one thought. Take note of what Jesus says in John 15:22 regarding his enemies:
- If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
We have two related concepts here. First, there is some degree to which God grants leniency to those that are ignorant. Second, those who have heard the truth are held accountable for their response to the truth. That is a sobering thought. It has many ramifications. Among them is this: If you have previously believed that God will torment people for all of eternity, you might have assumed that was the only acceptable position for a Bible-believing Christian. It isn't. In reading this essay, you have now heard someone suggest another alternative.
How will you respond? If you wish, you can review various detailed examinations of scripture on this topic, including the one I’ve done on this website.
But perhaps you will choose not to do so, for some reason or another. Beware, because you will no longer have an excuse for that decision. In the old board game called Monopoly, there was a card a player could receive called ‘Get Out of Jail Free’. If a player found himself in jail, he could use this card and immediately be released. In a similar way, men have ‘ignorance cards’. To some degree, God will allow us to play our ignorance cards and have our punishment reduced. But you will never again be able to play the ignorance card in regard to the fate of unbelievers.
If you choose to remain ignorant from this point forward, it will be a willful ignorance, and that kind of ignorance is not overlooked by God. With this statement I am now making, I am not arbitrarily assuming to be right on this topic. All I am doing is making it clear that there are positions that differ from the one embraced by your tradition. In doing so, I have snatched the ignorance card from your hand, and you no longer have one to play.
But let’s get back to this topic out hand. In Paul’s sermon in Athens, he was addressing the Greeks. From that sermon, we can conclude that the Greeks existed for many generations in a state of ignorance. But we can also consider the Israelites, God’s chosen people. They received the law from Moses, and were chosen as a special race to receive revelations from God. How did they respond to these revelations? Anybody who’s read the Old Testament knows that they repeatedly rejected the revealed truth of God. Time and time again, they rebelled from the teachings of God. Time and time again, God sent prophets in an effort to bring them back to his truth. These Israelites, God’s people, strayed so far as to even sacrifice their own babies in a fire as an attempt to appease the gods of their surrounding cultures.
Would God create a world where his chosen people go astray?
He certainly did. He wasn’t pleased about this rebellion, but he chose to create a world where rebellion is possible, and often occurs. Evidently, he cares so much about honoring the freedom that he’s given his children that he allows them to use that freedom to go just about wherever they want to.
But some would stop me here. “Wait!”, they say. “Sure, most of the religions of the world are wrong, but God sent Christ to teach the truth, and those who follow Christ are following the truth.”
“Yes”, I would reply, “Christ taught the truth. But that doesn’t mean man embraced the truth of Christ, nor that his followers through the ages continued to believe the truth that Christ taught.”
Did rebellion continue to happen after Christ?
We all know it did. Even a few years after Christ, we have this incident that is described by Paul in the book of
Galatians:
- But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
Just a few short years after the visit of Christ, Christian leaders were already drifting into error. Peter himself was being influenced by misguided leaders. This was man that Christ exhorted to ‘feed my sheep’.
In later years, followers of Christ burned other followers at the stake. They tortured those who disagree with them. They offered salvation for money. They rejected teachings at the very core of the gospel message – this message that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Even to this day, followers of God reject his ways, with some leaders brutally misusing their power and abusing even young children.
What, then, is the source of your confidence in your particular Christian tradition? How would you argue that your own tradition has been spared from a false belief? If God has always allowed error to persist, for billions of people in the world, why do you think your own culture is immune to that possibility?
Consider this scenario. Assume that you shared the gospel with a Muslim friend. That Muslim friend was intrigued and partially persuaded by your arguments that Christ is the true son of God. But then, to gain clarity, he questions his Muslim teachers and peers. What will they say? Will they affirm his pursuit of Christ? Of course not. They will show him verses from the Quran. They will pile upon him arguments against the Christian religion. They will threaten him with excommunication, and maybe even worse. They will likely try to scare him that he himself will be subject to eternal torment if he flees the faith that they embrace.
Imagine he returns to you and says, “I respect your arguments, but I must rely upon the shepherds that God has led me to.”
How would you respond? Will you argue with him? Do you use a similar argument? Do you rely primarily upon the shepherds that God has led you to? If you deny the validity of that response to him, how can you cling to it for yourself?
If one finds himself in a culture that is seriously mistaken, what must he do to escape and find the truth? Should he rely upon his teachers and peers? He might consider his teachers and peers, but his teachers and peers must not serve as his primary source for truth. Your Muslim friend will not find the truth by relying primarily upon his teachers and peers. In the same way, please acknowledge that you may not find the truth on this issue by relying primarily upon your teachers and peers.
This essay is directed at those who take the Bible as their primary source of moral authority. For us, the way to find the truth on this is to go directly to the revelation that was breathed by God himself. If your tradition teaches that God will torment unbelievers, I believe your tradition is mistaken. Essentially no biblical evidence exists to support this teaching.
Please examine the scriptures on this topic, armed with that humility that comes when we recognize how easy it is for each of us to go astray. It is so easy for us individually, and corporately, to go astray.
So Many So Wrong for So Long.
Don’t be one of them.