Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: All right, let's go ahead and open up with a word of prayer and we'll get started.

Father, we're grateful for today and grateful for the fact that you never change in a world that's in a state of deterioration and in a state of flux constantly. We're grateful that we can come to your word and your church and receive timeless truths that we need for our lives.

We do ask, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would take the truth of God's word today and minister it to the deepest level of need that people have today. A human teacher cannot see those needs, but you know what they are, and they may even be needs that we have that we're not even aware of. So we invite the illuminating ministry of the Spirit, where we can be strengthened, corrected, encouraged. And I do pray, Lord, that we would leave here eternally changed as a result.

In preparation for that ministry, we're just going to take a few moments of silence to do personal confession before you, if need be, not to restore our position, which is eternally secure, but sometimes our fellowship can get damaged when we go our own way. And we need to be made right with you in that sense, so we can receive from you.

Dr. Andy Woods: We're thankful, Lord, of the comprehensiveness of your provision to us. We ask that you would have your way today in your church with all of the different groups that are meeting, even meetings that are going to take place after church is over. So we pray that at the end of the day your name would be lifted up and glorified. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, Amen.

Dr. Andy Woods: Well, let's open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 25 and verse 46, as we're going to try to complete this today. This annihilation versus eternal torment study.

The reason we got into this is this concept of conditional immortality, annihilationism, combo has been floating around for a long time. Conditional immortality is the idea that the soul was never created to be eternal, and people, their souls don't become eternal till they get saved. Which means that what happens to unsaved people is they get annihilated. They don't spend eternity in hell. They just sort of go into hell and then after a period of time, they cease to exist.

Dr. Andy Woods: And I probably, this view is such a minority view, I probably wouldn't have bothered you with it until I saw Kirk Cameron with his millions and millions of followers come out and endorse it. And then people like Eric Metaxas, you know, kind of running interference for Kirk Cameron as he seemed to endorse this position.

Dr. Andy Woods: So from there, we went to Roman numeral two, after introducing the controversy, and we went through the biblical arguments. There's, these are the strongest verses that I know of that go against the annihilationist perspective and teach that hell is, is a real reality and people will be in hell forever that don't know Christ. We went to Roman numeral three, where we dealt with, uh, this gets us out of the text and into the realm of more broader theology. These are the strongest arguments, four of them, that I know of, against the annihilationist point of view.

Dr. Andy Woods: And then we went to Roman numeral four where we let the other side talk, and these are the verses that they use to say that people just disintegrate that are unbelievers. And so I went through all of these verses with you and showed you that they're not teaching what annihilationists argue that they're teaching.

Dr. Andy Woods: And then from there, we went to Roman numeral five, where we started to answer the broader theological arguments that annihilationists use. We finished that last time and then last Sunday was Resurrection Sunday. So we were away from this for one Sunday. But today I want to come back to it in Sunday school, Lord willing, and finish this series.

Dr. Andy Woods: And I just want to give you something that you probably don't get much in your typical local church. It has to, it has to do with examining church history. And the reason I want to talk just a little bit about church history and annihilationism is because I want to communicate the point that if someone is holding a view that almost nobody in church history has held, they might want to rethink their view, okay?

Dr. Andy Woods: Uh, church history is not the same level as scripture. Scripture is inspired by God, but you can use church history sort of as a guide to help you understand, am I really understanding the Bible right, if I'm understanding it to say X and church history says Y? And, um, it's okay to hold positions that go against church history. I mean, Martin Luther did that at the Protestant Reformation.

Dr. Andy Woods: Um, you know, when he was challenged in the debates, the Diet of Worms with Dr. Eck, and Dr. Eck would quote, you know, all of these popes and monks and priests, and Luther would say, "I ask for the sun, and Eck gives me the lanterns." I have an authority that outweighs all the popes and priests, it's the Apostle Paul. The just shall live by faith alone. He called Galatians, Luther did, his wife. The German phrase for that is "Meine Frau," my wife. And Luther famously said, you know, "Here I stand, I can do no other unless I'm convinced by scripture alone and sound reason, I'll not change my belief."

Dr. Andy Woods: And so Luther, you know, had to take a stand against the pattern of church history because the scripture clearly taught justification by faith alone, which the Roman Catholic hierarchy rejected. So, I mean, it's okay to have a view that goes against church history, as long as it's clearly taught in the Bible. But having said that, this doctrine of annihilationism is not clearly taught in the Bible, as I've tried to communicate. And so if I'm going to hold to it anyway, in spite of the evidence from scripture, and in spite of the evidence from church history, then I'm probably going the wrong direction.

Dr. Andy Woods: So that's how you can sort of use church history. You don't hold it up to the same level as the Bible, but you can kind of use it to check if your biblical interpretation is correct. So with that in mind, I wanted to expose you just a little bit to church history and what church history has to say on this subject of conditional immortality and annihilationism. I mean, is this a view that everybody embraced? The answer is no. It's a splinter view that hardly anybody embraced throughout the last 2,000 years of church history.

Dr. Andy Woods: So let me give you some quotes from Dr. Norman Geisler, giving you the kind of general overview of church history on this subject of conditional immortality and annihilationism. He writes this, and this is in his, all these quotes that I'm going to give you here are in his book, "Systematic Theology, Volume 4, Church and Last Things." And he just does a great job here with showing that church history is not in favor of this annihilationist perspective.

Dr. Andy Woods: He says, "Also, already having been earlier condemned by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 BC, the denial of hell was condemned by the Fifth Lateran Council in 1513." And then he says, "The last nine anathemas," that's anathema is a strong view. It's a, a word. It's a condemnation. He says, "The last of the nine anathemas of Emperor Justinian, 483 to 565 AD against Origen," now Origen was a spiritualizer. He was not known for taking the text literally, and Origen was one of the promulgators of this annihilationist view.

Dr. Andy Woods: But Geisler says, "The last nine anathemas of Emperor Justinian against Origen reads as follows: 'Quote, if anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons or of impious,' meaning non-sanctified people, unbelievers, in other words, 'is only temporary,' which is what annihilationists are saying, 'and will one day have an end, let him be anathema.'" So there the church early on anathematized Origen for promoting this annihilationist view.

Dr. Andy Woods: Geisler goes on and he says, "As stated previously, annihilationism was condemned as heretical by a Constantinople synod in 543, by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, and by the Fifth Lateran Council in 1513. The traditional orthodox doctrine of hell as the eternal conscious punishment of the wicked has been upheld by most of the church's great fathers, theologians, including," here's this long list of luminaries, "Tertullian." You can see the dates when these people lived. "Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards."

Dr. Andy Woods: Um, by the way, you guys ought to go see the movie that just came out called "The Great Awakening." Has anybody seen that? Yeah, we're going to try to actually show it here at the church if we can get everybody on board with that. I think that's one of the topics at our elder board meeting this afternoon. It's just a great survey of what was happening in the American colonies before the American Revolution. And there was a guy named George Whitfield at that time, who was a very prominent evangelist. And there's a scene in the movie where Benjamin Franklin, his grandson, later in time, after the Revolution, says, "Who was this guy?" because Franklin had all of George Whitfield's notes and diaries and things of that nature. His grandson is looking through all this stuff, because Benjamin Franklin owned a printing shop. And he said, "Who is this guy Whitefield?" He says, "No, it's Whitfield." "Oh," the grandson says, "Was Whitfield part of the American Revolution?" And Ben Franklin in the movie, it's so well done, says, "George Whitfield was not part of the American Revolution. George Whitfield was the American Revolution." In other words, without the evangelistic Christianization of the colonies, the American Revolution would not have happened.

Dr. Andy Woods: And Benjamin Franklin travels overseas and tries to explain this to King George, or one of his emissaries, and says, "You know, these people in the colonies, they believe that they can recognize the tyrant within," you know, "because of their Bible-based views. And because they can recognize the, the tyrant within," the tyrant of sin, "they could recognize the tyrant across the Atlantic. So you better think twice about, you know, not letting these people have their independence."

Dr. Andy Woods: And I bring all of that up because one of the names that's dropped through this whole movie is Jonathan Edwards that's mentioned here, 1703 to 1758. Uh, Jonathan Edwards was also one of the leaders in the First Great Awakening through his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," if I've got my history right. But at any rate, none of these luminaries held to this doctrine of annihilation.

Dr. Andy Woods: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, you recognize that name, one of our Protestant reformers, uh, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, William Shedd, B.B. Warfield. And then Geisler writes, "One of the orthodox position's best defenses is 'Hell on Trial' by Robert A. Peterson, published," or he was born in 1948. "And there is no more magnificent literary expression of the doctrine than in 'The Great Divorce' by C.S. Lewis." You've heard of C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis was not on board at all with this doctrine of annihilation, as I'll show you some quotes from C.S. Lewis in a little bit.

Dr. Andy Woods: Geisler says, "The historical evidence against annihilationism is the same as the historical argument for eternal conscious punishment. That is, the historical evidence against annihilationism is identical to the evidence for hell, already summarized. Annihilationism is opposed by most orthodox teachers in church history from the beginning to the present. We saw earlier that annihilationism was roundly condemned by the early church." And Geisler summarizes it this way, he says, "In one example, the last," and we read this a little earlier, he's kind of repeating himself at different places in his systematic theology, but he says, "In one example, the last of the nine anathemas of Emperor Justinian against Origen reads, 'Quote, if anyone says that the punishment of demons and of impious men," um, that's just another way of saying unbelievers, "impious men, 'is only temporary,'" that's what annihilationists are saying, hell is just temporary, "'and will one day have an end, let him be anathema.'"

Dr. Andy Woods: And then it goes on and it says, "Before the Reformation, the Fifth Lateran Council, 1513, also condemned the denial of hell." So I had one fellow, um, that was, he saw that I was doing this series against annihilationism and he, he sent me his email, and they always try to sell you on their view, and he, he made a statement in his email where he said, "You know, we're just like the Protestant Reformers where we're, we're going back to what the text really means." And I usually try not to respond to these types of emails because I get upset about it and I don't want to get carnal on the guy.

Dr. Andy Woods: But this particular time, I wrote him back and I, I said, "Are you really comparing yourself to the Protestant Reformers? I mean, can you name one Protestant Reformer that held to this view that you're promoting?" And I haven't yet got a response from him on that. So, you've got the sweep of church history that is against this conditional immortality, annihilationist view. And I don't mind people holding it if the biblical text supports it, because church history is not the final court of arbitration in settling theological controversies. Um, but you better make sure the Bible is on your side. And in this case, the Bible is not on their side. And one of the clues that the Bible is not on their side that you could look to is look at the sweep of church history that has condemned this over and over and over again as heretical and pronounced actual anathemas on people that promote it.

Dr. Andy Woods: So that's kind of the general overview of church history. Let me take you here to sub-letter B into some of the early church fathers, and how they totally rejected this doctrine of annihilationism. Um, one of them is Polycarp. Polycarp should get your attention. You can see in parenthesis when he ministered. Polycarp was a direct disciple of John. Like the John. The John who wrote the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John, wrote the Gospel of John, wrote First, Second and Third John. John is the one, according to John 13, around verse 23, that leaned against the chest of Christ. John in his Gospel keeps referring to himself over and over again as the disciple whom Jesus loved. So there, there probably is not a closer relationship human-wise that Jesus had with anyone other than John.

Dr. Andy Woods: I mean, the inner circle was Peter, James, and John. You'll see them as the inner circle. And of that inner circle, John, it looks to me like, was the closest of the three. And what you have to understand is Polycarp was a disciple of John. So Polycarp is connected to the Apostles. And Irenaeus, whose name shows up in Geisler's work condemning annihilationism, was a disciple of Polycarp. And so the strand goes like this, from John the Apostle, but let's put Jesus first, right? From Jesus to John, from John to Polycarp, from Polycarp to Irenaeus. And so you remember the EF Hutton commercial? When EF Hutton talks, people listen. When Irenaeus talks, you should listen because of this chain. When Polycarp talks, you ought to listen because of this chain.

Dr. Andy Woods: And obviously, when John talks, you ought to listen because he wrote inspired scripture and he's the one that had this intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. So, if Polycarp and Irenaeus are saying something completely different, and people do this with the date of Revelation also. There's a bunch of people out there called preterists, and they want to date the Book of Revelation in the 60s because they want to make it a prophecy that was fulfilled in AD 70. Uh, preterist means past or gone by. And you can't make Revelation a prophecy about AD 70 if it was written 25 years after the fact. So, why would I reject the preterist argument and date the Book of Revelation in AD 95, which would destroy preterism, versus AD 65? It's because of this guy right here, Irenaeus. Irenaeus says it was written during the reign of Domitian towards the end of his reign. And Irenaeus is connected to Polycarp, and Polycarp is connected to John. So, why in the world would I hold a position on something when this, this direct chain says the book was written in AD 95, not AD 65, which, you know, completely destroys the doctrine of preterism? Revelation can't be a prophecy about AD 70 if it was written 25 years later.

Dr. Andy Woods: So, I'm kind of doing the same sort of thing with this doctrine of annihilationism. I mean, how, how do I know that hell is forever for unbelievers? It's because of Polycarp, who's connected to John, who's connected to Jesus Christ. So Polycarp says this, "Thou," and here he's speaking, Polycarp is, to his people that are trying to burn him to death. So these guys early on had a rough go of it, let's just put it that way. There were martyrdoms all over the place until you get to Constantine and his Edict of Milan, about AD 313, when Constantine ascended to the, the throne of Rome and made Christianity the official religion of Rome. Until that happened, all of our forebears were experiencing, uh, martyrdom and persecution.

Dr. Andy Woods: I think it was, uh, was it Tertullian? One of those guys said the, the, uh, blood of the saints is the seed of the church. In other words, the church is growing because of a seed that's put, put in the ground by these martyrs. Famous statement. But anyway, in the midst of all of this, here's what Polycarp said in the 2nd century. He says, "Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour and after a little while it's extinguished. But art," you detractors, you people that are trying to kill me, "but art ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly." So you want to burn me to death? Go for it. It's going to last an hour, which would be a horrible way to die. "But the fire that's coming upon you," speaking of hell, "uh, that you're going to experience will never be put out."

Dr. Andy Woods: So in the process, he's rejecting annihilationism. He's saying, "You're going to go into an eternal damnation." Now that's Polycarp speaking. Another, um, early church father is a guy named Theophilus, who ministered, um, about AD 130 to 190. And this is what he says. He says, "Admitting therefore the proof which events happening as predicted, I do not disbelieve, but I believe, obedient to God, whom if you please, do you also submit to believing him, lest if now you continue unbelieving," So what happens to people according to Theophilus that continue unbelieving? "You'll be convinced in the next life hereafter, when you are tormented with what punishments? Eternal." I mean, there's no annihilation here. There's no disappearance of the unbelieving soul.

Dr. Andy Woods: "Which punishments they had been foretold by the prophets," So Theophilus is building his case on what the Bible says. Maybe he's thinking of Isaiah 66 verse 24, one of the verses I've shown you in this series. "The latter born, uh, the latter born poets and prophets," who apparently some of them believed in eternal damnation. I think Plato did. But Theophilus says, "The philosophers and the poets got this idea from the prophets," eternal damnation. "The latter born poets and philosophers stole from the Holy Scriptures to make their doctrines worthy of credit."

Dr. Andy Woods: So, if you die without Christ, um, you're going to go off according to Theophilus into eternal punishment. And I'm getting this idea from the prophets, and yeah, some Greek philosophers taught this too, but they stole the idea from the Bible, is what he's saying. So I'm wondering what prophet he has his eye on. I'm thinking probably Daniel 12:2, which is a very clear, uh, eternal damnation passage. Um, he might have his eye on Isaiah, I want to say it's 66, verse 24, right around there. "The worm dieth not." So clearly these early church fathers did not embrace this doctrine of annihilationism.

Dr. Andy Woods: Now, here's Tertullian. He ministered, uh, AD 155 to 225. This is what he writes. He says, "Oh, ye heathen, whom have and deserve our pity, behold, we have set before you the promise which our sacred system offers. It guarantees eternal life to follow and observe it. On the other hand, it threatens with," what kind of punishment? "Eternal punishment, involving fire." What kind of fire? "Unending fire to those who are profane and hostile while to both classes alike is preached a resurrection from the dead." He's, he's obviously referring, I think, to Daniel 12:2, uh, Matthew 25:46, which I had you open up to. I think he's referring to John 5:28 and 29. And I think he's also referring to Acts 24:15. I mean, those are passages that teach, there's a resurrection for everybody. Saved and unsaved. Uh, saved to experience eternal bliss with God forever. The unsaved in a resurrected body to experience eternal damnation.

Dr. Andy Woods: So, so Tertullian is saying, "If, if eternal life is eternal, then so is eternal punishment." He talks about unending fire to those who are profane and hostile. Both classes alike go off into eternity, he says. Some into eternal life, eternal bliss, some into eternal damnation. And language like this, obviously, there's not a shred of evidence that he believed in the soul being not designed by God to be immortal, and it only becomes immortal at the point of faith alone in Christ alone, and therefore the soul goes into hell and just ceases to exist. I mean, he never, Tertullian never would have taught such a thing.

Dr. Andy Woods: You don't want to believe something because Tertullian or whoever says it's true, but if these early church fathers are this aggressive about this, and I'm coming up with some view that's the opposite, maybe I should second guess, not the scripture, but whether I'm interpreting the scripture correctly. Here is Justin Martyr. You can see the dates when he ministered, AD 100 to 165. And he wrote, "Since God in the beginning made the race of angels and men with free will." So from the beginning, angels were different because they had a free will, that's why a third of them used their free will to rebel against God. Revelation 12:3 through 8 indicates that. And also who else has free will? Human beings do. And the reason we have a free will is because we're made in God's image.

Dr. Andy Woods: What does it mean to be made in God's image? We share in many of God's shareable, communicable attributes. God doesn't share his all his attributes, but he shares some of them. And one of them is volition and free will. God has free will, so do human beings. So what happens if I use my free will to rebel against the creator and I spend my whole life rejecting him, and I die in an unbelieving state? What happens to me then? Well, Justin Martyr says, "Since God in the beginning made the race of angels and men with free will, they will justly suffer in what kind of fire? Eternal fire and the punishment of what sins they have committed." So if you won't accept Jesus, who paid your sin debt for you, then you're going to spend all eternity paying off your sin debt in eternal fire. And that's the way it is, Justin Martyr says. You notice there's not a lot of seeker-friendly talk in these church fathers. I mean, these are like get-down-to-business-quick kind of guys.

Dr. Andy Woods: Um, so, and it needs to be that way is what he's saying, it's because you have a free will to change your destiny. So that's a general overview of church history. We've looked at some of the early church fathers. Let's switch here for a moment to look at some of the medieval fathers. Here is Augustine, who messed up a lot of things. I'll be the first to admit it. Um, the doctrine of amillennialism comes from Augustine in his book, "The City of God." But I'll tell you something about Augustine, he was exactly right on this doctrine of eternal punishment. Here's what Augustine writes, and he ministered from 354 to 430 AD. He says, "If the soul live in eternal punishments, by which also those unclean spirits shall be tormented, that it is rather eternal death than eternal life, for there is no greater or worse death when death never dies." So what Augustine is saying here is death is eternal separation from God. It doesn't mean cessation of existence. "But because the soul from its very nature being created what? Immortal."

Dr. Andy Woods: So every single human being, whether they're saved or unsaved, is created immortal because they're, they can't die, like the angels, because they're made in God's image. So for God to suddenly take them out of existence because of eternal suffering would be for God to deny how he has manufactured them as image bearers. So this is exactly the opposite of what Kirk Cameron and all of these people are teaching related to the soul doesn't become immortal until you get saved. That is not what Christendom has advanced. It may be a a kooky splinter view somewhere, but it's not the voice of church history.

Dr. Andy Woods: Everyone is created to last forever. Saved and unsaved people last forever. It's just the quality of existence between the two is different. Augustine says, "But because the soul from its very nature being created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its utmost death is alienation from the life of God in what kind of punishments? Eternity of punishments." Here is Anselm, another medieval church father, he, you see the dates when he ministered, AD 1033 to 1109. He writes, "So then nothing can be seen to follow more consistently, and nothing ought to be believed more assuredly, than man's soul was created in a way that it despises loving the supreme being." In other words, man's soul, humanity's soul is created in such a way that if you reject God, reject Jesus Christ, then you will suffer wretchedness eternally, crystal clear.

Dr. Andy Woods: "Consequently, just as the loving soul will rejoice in eternal rewards, so the despising soul," who would that be? "Unbelievers, "will grieve in eternal punishments," not just punishments, "eternal punishments. As the former will experience immutable sufficiency, so the latter will experience inconsolable need." Both groups are going off into eternity. Both groups exist forever. It's just believers experience eternal bliss with God, and unbelievers experience eternity under his wrath, and it doesn't stop.

Dr. Andy Woods: You might have heard of Thomas Aquinas. He ministered from AD 1225 to 1274. This is what he writes. He says, "The suffering of eternal punishment is in no way opposed to divine justice." See, this is one of the arguments that annihilationists use. "How could God punish someone forever when their sins took place in a finite period of time?" Thomas Aquinas actually answers this. He says, "The suffering of eternal punishment is in no way opposed to divine justice." How could God be a God of love if he's going to punish someone forever for sins that they committed over, if they live to 90 years old, a 90-year period? Aquinas says, "Even in the laws men make, punishment need not correspond to the offense in point of time. For example, one may commit murder in a minute, but deserve a lifetime in jail." And I think that brackets part was added by Geisler just to get the point across. But even in our justice system, you know, you take someone and you, you put them away with a life sentence, I mean, they can't stand before the judge and say, "Why are you going to put me away in a life sentence? I mean, it only took me 30 seconds to, to kill so-and-so." I mean, what kind of logic is that? So in the same way, God is more than just to give someone an eternal punishment, even though the sins that they committed against him take place in a finite lifetime.

Dr. Andy Woods: So not to get too deep in all that kind of stuff, but I'm just trying to show you that this, this is how the, the church has handled this subject of annihilationism. In other words, you're not weird, you're not wacko, you're not out on a limb, you're not mean, you're not unloving if you hold to eternal punishment because this is what the, this is the voice of church history for 2000 years. And then we come to the Protestant Reformation, uh, 16th century. The two most famous Protestant Reformers were Martin Luther and John Calvin. Uh, Luther lived from 1483 to 1546. And Luther said this about eternal damnation. He said, "The fiery oven is ignited merely by the unbearable appearance of God and endures," how long? "Eternally. For the day of judgment will not last for a moment only, but will stand throughout eternity, and thereafter never come to an end. Constantly the damned will be judged. Constantly they will suffer pain. Constantly they will be a fiery oven," that is. "They will be tortured within by supreme distress and tribulation."

Dr. Andy Woods: I, I, these things make me just as uncomfortable as they make you. Um, but I don't, I don't think these guys could be clear on this subject. I mean, Luther from his reading of the Bible, and he translated it from Greek and Hebrew into German. I mean, he knew a lot about the Bible. Without Martin Luther, you don't have a Protestant Reformation. I mean, he clearly rejected this doctrine of annihilation, clearly rejected it. Uh, the second most famous Protestant Reformer is John Calvin. Again, Calvin, like Augustine, I guess I have some differences of opinion with. We did a whole series on Calvinism, Neo-Calvinism versus the Bible. But John Calvin gets this one totally right. And this is what he says in "The Institutes of the Christian Religion." He says, "On the other hand, God proclaims not only that iniquity is hateful in his sight, but it will not escape with impunity because he will be the anger of his insulted majesty. That he may encourage us in every way, he promises present blessings as well as eternal felicity to the obedience of those who shall have kept his commands." And obviously the most important command to keep is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ so as to be saved.

Dr. Andy Woods: "While he threatens transgressors," that's unsaved people, "with present suffering, as well as the punishment of what kind of death? Eternal death." He's defining death not as cessation of existence, but what the term actually means, separation from God. So Calvin believed just as the righteous, the saved, go, go on for eternity, the same is true with the, with the damned. No hint here of annihilationism. And then I'll finish this list here. We've looked at the early church fathers, medieval fathers, Reformation leaders. How about the post-Reformation leaders? How about some of the prominent teachers in church history that had ministries after the Protestant Reformation? What, what did they think about this doctrine of eternal damnation? Well, one of them is named John Wesley, the foundations of Method, the Methodist Church.

Dr. Andy Woods: Uh, John and his brother Charles Wesley had a huge impact for God in Europe. And they're also featured in this movie that I've been talking about, "The Great Awakening." They're actually the ones, when George Whitfield was being picked on and bullied, I think at Oxford, they kind of came alongside him and, uh, actually washed his feet as you, as you'll see this in the movie. And they actually are responsible for the conversion of George Whitfield. And George Whitfield went on and came from across the Atlantic to the United States of America. And, um, Ben Franklin, and I don't know if Ben Franklin was, was saved or not. But he sure likes what's going on. You know, the, the early, some of our early founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, you know, did they ever get born again? Did they ever get saved? I mean, I don't know, only God knows. I think many of them were saved. I think there's evidence that George Washington, for example, was saved. Um, others of them kind of had fuzzy views on the Trinity, uh, Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. But they loved this Christianity stuff because Christianity was teaching people how to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. That's what they saw in it.

Dr. Andy Woods: And if people can govern themselves, then you don't have to have this massive super state government, uh, to monitor people from cradle to grave. So if people can govern themselves, then it's okay to have an experiment with liberty and a limited government, which is what our Declaration of Independence and, um, United States Constitution are, are about. So whether Franklin and Jefferson were born again, I don't know. I have a tendency to think some of them were. But they love Christianity, they were not hostile to Christianity because they saw in Christianity, um, this capacity for people to self-govern, which means that government could govern less over people that regulated themselves. And so you have Ben Franklin using his printing office, his business, to print Whitfield's sermons.

Dr. Andy Woods: And that's why Franklin's grandson in the movie is looking through all these sermons from Whitfield, he calls him Whitefield, and asked him, "Oh, was this guy, you know, in the Revolution?" And that's when Franklin said that Whitfield, corrects his pronunciation, was the Revolution. So anyway, that's the link between Wesley and Whitfield and the American Revolution and Benjamin Franklin. So John Wesley is a pretty important voice, would you not agree? I mean, you don't have the Methodist Church without, without John and Charles Wesley. And they clearly rejected annihilationism. Let's see, I have one more quote, oh, two more quotes for you. You, you know Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the prince, prince of preachers. He ministered from 1834 to 1892. And here's what he says about eternal retribution. He said, "It hopeth not, it knoweth no escape." He's describing hell. "It gesseth not of deliverance, it pants for death, but death is too much its foe to be there. It longs that non-existence would swallow it up." He's describing people in hell. They want it, they want it to end.

Dr. Andy Woods: But Spurgeon says, "But this eternal death is worse than what? Annihilationism." So obviously, Spurgeon rejected annihilationism as a doctrine. "The soul pants for extermination as the laborer for his Sabbath. It longs that it might be swallowed up in nothingness, just as would the galley slave long for freedom, but it cometh not, it is eternally dead." And dead doesn't mean cessation of existence, it means eternal separation from God. Now, Jonathan Edwards, Massachusetts, famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," had, read a sermon like this where he, you can download it online and read it. And from, from what little I've read about this, it was not a great oratorical pizazz. It was kind of, we would today call it boring. He got up there with his manuscript and he just read it in front of his church. And, uh, what happened? The First Great Awakening happened from that sermon. The, the power of the Holy Spirit on that sermon was so profound that even people at sea, you know, in the Bay, could, could, could sense the guilt of their own sin and their need to trust Christ as Savior.

Dr. Andy Woods: So Spurgeon's, um, teaching sounds a lot like Jonathan Edwards as he's describing hell here. And then the last quote I have for you is C.S. Lewis. You know him. Um, what is it, "Mere Christianity," "The Great Divorce." Was he "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"? Yeah. So he's a like a famous Christian author, and he clearly rejected annihilation. He says, "In a sense, it is better for the creature itself, even if it never becomes good, that it should know itself a failure, a mistake. Even mercy can hardly wish to such a man his what? Eternal contented continuous continuance in such a ghastly illusion." Now he quotes Thomas Aquinas, who also rejected annihilationism. "Thomas Aquinas said of suffering as Aristotle had said of shame that it was a thing not good in itself, but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances." Um, so when he uses this word eternal and continued existence, he's rejecting annihilation. And then C.S. Lewis has something very interesting. "I willingly believe that the damned are in one sense successful rebels to the end." Now listen to this very carefully. "That the doors of hell are locked on the inside." See that? He's acknowledging that they're in hell because they put themselves there.

Dr. Andy Woods: "You know, I don't believe in a God that sends people to hell." Well, I don't really believe in that either. People send themselves to hell. The doors are locked on the inside, you know, because they, they reject what Jesus did for them 2,000 years ago. So there's the general overview of church history, early church fathers, medieval fathers, Reformation leaders, post-Reformation leaders. The last part of this study is conclusion. So what, who cares? I've tried to explain why we should care, and it does matter because it's dominoes in a row. You knock over one domino, it's like a seamless tapestry. Other dominoes, if they're in a nice, neat row, start to fall. So, look at all of the different doctrines that have been impacted by this study that we've done here in, um, uh, annihilationism true. It affects your soteriology, as I'll explain in a minute, doctrine of salvation. It affects your eschatology, what happens to the unsaved at the Great White Throne Judgment. It affects your anthropology, the study of man because they're saying the soul is not created forever. They've got a different anthropology. There's probably others I could put up there.

Dr. Andy Woods: But that's why this kind of thing is a big deal. If annihilation is true, you have just thrown a wet blanket over missionary activity. The incentive and the urgency to reach the lost just got taken away. Because you know, why should I share my faith with the waitress at lunch today? I mean, you know, she's just going to go into hell for a kind of a weekend trip and disappear. It's not that bad. But if you understand that she's going to be in hell forever, uh, therefore that adds to my urgency to share the Gospel with her. And so that's what bothers me about Kirk Cameron and all of these people running around teaching all this stuff because they're throwing a wet blanket over evangelism and missions work. Why, I mean, we give this church 20% around of our budget to missionary, missionaries, missionary activity. We screen our missionaries, making sure that they're actually doing actual missionary work and not social gospel or something masquerading as missionary work.

Dr. Andy Woods: I mean, why go to that rigor and trouble if hell is not as severe as the Bible says it is, and people are going to die without Jesus and they're going to spend an eternity separated from him? Um, why would you be a missionary? I mean, you go through your whole life learning another culture so that you can penetrate a foreign culture with the hopes of sharing the Gospel with the lost. Why even do that? I mean, people are just going to die, and it's going to be a bad weekend trip, and it's no big deal. Well, the Bible is saying, and church history is saying, it is a big deal. So if, if hell stops being what the Bible portrays it as, then the dominoes start to fall over, and one of those dominoes is world missions. World missions takes a beating if, um, annihilationism is true.

Dr. Andy Woods: So there's the whole series. Seven major points: introduction to the controversy, biblical arguments against annihilationism, theological arguments against annihilationism, answering the biblical arguments against that annihilationists use, answering the theological arguments that annihilationists use, what does church history say, and then the conclusion, so what, who cares? I've tried to explain why we should care, and it does matter because it's dominoes in a row. Now I'm not going to say I hope you enjoyed this series because I, I didn't really enjoy it, to be frank with you. But it's one of those things that's needed, right? Some things are a little bit harder to take in, but they're necessary. So that's what I tried to do with this series. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for your word, grateful for your truth. Help us not to be compromisers in these last days. Help us to stand with what you've revealed in your word. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, Amen. Well, we're going to study next is the Book of Hebrews, so we'll start that next week.