Comment on Lazarus and the Second Death
It was the soul of the rich man that was in hell, not his body. His body had died and was buried somewhere in Israel. His soul was in hell. It was conscious. It could think. It could communicate. It could feel. It could suffer. It could be tormented. It was alive.
Ultimately the rich man's soul will be judged and, as a result of that judgment, it will be thrown into the lake of fire and there it will die. This is what scripture refers to as the "part" that unbelievers have in the lake of fire is the "second death."1 The second death is called the "second" death because that is exactly what it is. The first death was the death of the body and the second death is the death of the soul. That is the reason why the scripture teaches that the final judgment is the second death.2 How can we be sure that the soul that sins will die? Because scripture teaches it explicitly. It could not be more clearly stated:
Behold all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die.3
It is death that awaits at the soul's end, not eternal torment. Scripture repeatedly uses "death" to describe what ultimately happens to the soul of the unredeemed sinner."4 Redeemed sinners will not be harmed by the second death because Jesus Christ paid their penalty for them.5
Jesus Himself tells us that He saves us from death, not eternal torment.6 Throughout His entire ministry, Jesus never mentions eternal torment. Sinners who have turned to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all sin are spared the second death. They suffer only the death that all men must die, the first one.7
An eternal, conscious, sentient existence in a state of eternal torment is not death. It is life in eternal flames. This is precisely the opposite of death. The doctrine of eternal torment teaches the exact opposite of scripture.
There are numerous repeated warnings throughout the entire Bible that sin causes death,8 and none of these scriptures even mention eternal torment. Every scripture in the Bible that addresses ultimate punishment for sin says that the punishment is death.
Some of the scriptures that teach death as the final result of sin are Revelation 2:119 (the second death), Revelation 21:810 (the second death), Ezekiel 18:4 (the soul that sins shall die), John 11:2611 (trusting in Christ saves us from death).
Those who advocate eternal torment do not clearly address these scriptures in the context of the final judgment although every one of them addresses the final judgment. The entire purpose of the ministry of Jesus Christ was to save us from the death that is the result of the final judgment.12
The doctrine of eternal torment is based upon scriptures that do not mention eternal torment but are broad enough to include it.13 In the entire Bible eternal torment is mentioned only once and that is to define the eternal state of Satan.14
The eternal torment argument would have arguable merit if there were any scripture (just one) that actually teaches eternal torment, but there is none. Every single scripture that describes the punishment of unbelievers teaches that the punishment is death.15 All of the other relevant scriptures are general statements and conclusory, all of which are the subject of this book. We are therefore left with John’s choice of words in Revelation 21:8 that describes the final state of the unredeemed as the second death-and 49 other scriptures that teach the same thing.
The conventionally visualized picture of eternal torment in hell is clearly expressed in the doctrines of the Catholic church which are not based upon scripture. For instance, the Catholic church teaches the vision of ten year old Lucia Santos (Sister Lucy of Fatima) as truth. Unfortunately many biblically oriented protestant churches have tacitly adopted Sister Lucy's view.16† But even Sister Lucy does not presume to say that the punishment that she "saw" is eternal. The Catholic Church also teaches that the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter is equally authoritative when it says that in hell blasphemers are hung by their tongues. Neither of these is scripture.
The line that separates Catholic mythology from the Book of Revelation may appear blurred, but it is not. The line of demarcation between the two is bright and clearly defined. On one side we find the visions of children and errant accounts in the Apocrypha. On the other side we find the Bible, which is wholly inerrant and filled with a consistency that is clearly miraculous.
The Parable of Lazarus contains a scriptural picture of hell. But it is a parable. When dealing with a parable, it is tenuous to base any theology upon anything in a parable except the argument. For instance, the parable of the sower sowing seed is a parable of evangelism;17 the parable forms a excellent foundation for theology associated with evangelism, but not for conclusions related to the composition of fields. We are on an equally insecure foundation when we construct a theology of eternal torment on the back of a parable that was given for the purpose of teaching the resurrection of Christ. For purposes of this book, however, we will treat the Parable of Lazarus as an accurate description of hell because Christ would not have painted an inaccurate description of hell. But description He gave was probably framed so as to serve the purpose of the parable rather than to describe the interior of hell.
The final judgment had not yet occurred in the Parable of Lazarus. This is evident is because the eternal state does not occur in hell; it occurs in the lake of fire18 and that Parable of Lazarus occurs in hell. The soul of Lazarus was in hell, not the lake of fire. Therefore, the Parable of Lazarus does not address the eternal state that follows the final judgment. Hell is a holding place where souls without Christ will bear their sins as Lazarus did until they are finally judged and are cast into the lake of fire where they will meet the ultimate of all tragedy, the eternal cessation of existence: eternal death, the second death.19 Eternal death is the eternal punishment that Christ speaks of in Matthew 25:46 and eternal death is the eternal destruction mentioned in Second Thessalonians 1:9.
The only mention of eternal torment in scripture is in Revelation 20:10 where the eternal punishment of Satan is clearly described as eternal torment. The eternal torment of Satan does not occur in hell. It occurs in the lake of fire, which is radically different from hell, as discussed later in this book.
2
1. Revelation 21:8 "But for the …unbelieving…and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burn with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." See Comment on Chapter 6 relating to the grammatical context of the "part" that unbelievers have in the lake of fire.
2. A doctrine that teaches that nothing actually dies in what is clearly referred to as "death" (θάνατος) has departed from the scriptural text. See Appendix 3.
3. Ezekiel 18:4
4. See Appendix 1, which lists all the passages stating that death is the penalty for sin.
5. Revelation 2:11 " He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death."
6. John 8:51 " Those who keep My word will never see death." See also Hosea 13:14 "I will redeem them from death."
7. Revelation 9:27 "It is appointed for men to die once…"
8. See Appendix 1 - Scriptures Teaching Death as Final State page 146
9. Revelation 2:11 "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death."
10. Revelation 21:8 "…the unbelieving shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
11. John 11:26 "And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
12. John 3:16 "for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish (die), but have everlasting life"
13. See Appendix 2
14. Revelation 20:10 " And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."
15. See Appendix 1
16. "The souls of the damned were like transparent burning embers…they were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames…now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair…The demons [appeared in the likeness of] frightful and unknown animals.…” Memoirs, Sister Lucy of Fatima. † Sister Lucy's given name was Lucia Santos. She was a Portuguese nun who died in 2005 who claimed to have seen hell when she was 10 years old during World War 1 (in 1917). It is difficult to conceive of a more potent device for the creation of a religion that only the most credulous would follow and support. And, if one wished to incorporate a statement that would ultimately disable the faith of many others, it would certainly be this one. This description is nowhere in scripture.
17. Matthew 13:3-8. In this parable Christ describes the evangelist as being like a man sowing seeds in a field.
18. Revelation 21:8 "…the unbelieving shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
19. See Revelation 21:8 in Appendix 1.