Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: Father, we're grateful for another day. We know that the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord abideth forever. Lots of things going on today, Lord, being Super Bowl Sunday and lots of entertainment. We just thank you, Lord, that in the midst of all of that, you've given us your word where we can apply ourselves to your word and have an eternal result.

We're reminded of what Jesus said. Why do you labor for that food which spoils? We should labor unto eternal life, and thank you for that opportunity today. Thank you for those that have come today, either in-house or livestream, that have chosen to make that investment.

I do pray that you'll bless our time here at Sugar Land Bible Church, everything that's happening this morning with the different youth classes that are meeting, leadership meetings going on later this afternoon. I pray that when it's all said and done here, it will be said that your name was lifted up and glorified.

We know that you work through the teaching of your word. So, in preparation for that ministry, Lord, we're going to take just a few moments of silence to do personal confession before you so that we can be ready to receive everything that you have for us today by way of the illuminating ministry of the Spirit. Jesus having promised in the upper room that the Spirit would come and lead us into all truth, so we invite that ministry today and in preparation for that, we're just going to take a few moments of silence.

We're thankful, Lord, for the comprehensiveness of your provision for us. As our world, rightfully so, is focused on this missing person report out, I guess, in Arizona, we lift that situation up to you. We also want to lift up the part of the world that has kind of been drowned out where there is massive genocide going on by the regime of Iran, killing, and this is a low number by way of estimate, but the last I heard was 40,000 people in 30 days have been slaughtered by their own government.

So, we lift up that whole situation to you and pray that you'll bring resolution there. Be with our leadership as we try to figure out what to do there. As you do, Lord, your Spirit works in spite of our fallen world and conditions. So, we ask that your Spirit would work there and everywhere in the world where there's slaughter, genocide, and injustice.

We're thankful, Lord, that you're the rock in the midst of all of these things. I pray that you'll bless us now as we study. We ask these things in Jesus' name. God's people said, amen. Well, let's take our Bibles, if we could, and open them to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9. We are continuing our study on annihilationism versus eternal torment.

In our first introduction to this, we introduced the controversy. There's a view that's been around for a while. It's called annihilationism, that the unsaved really will not last forever. They will cease to exist at some point. That is dovetailed with conditional immortality, which is the idea that people aren't created immortal.

Only the Christian is given the gift of immortality at the point of faith alone in Christ alone. So, if unsaved people are not immortal, then they'll go into hell for a season, but eventually they'll be annihilated. You say, well, that's a weird view. Why are you spending time on this? That view has been floating around there as a minority opinion for a long time, but I'm very sad to report that now it's becoming mainstreamed.

It's being introduced as just another viable interpretation within evangelical Christianity. I've known of this view for a while, but the conversion of Kirk Cameron to this view has caused it to move into the mainstream. Kirk Cameron, a famous child actor who became a Christian and has millions and millions of followers and so forth on social media, has just announced back in December of last year his conversion to this. Now he's hosting all of these podcasts and things like that, taking this position and mainstreaming it.

So, that's why I thought since we finished our study on critiquing Calvinism, that we would look into this for a while. We move to Roman numeral two, where I gave you the biblical arguments against annihilation. If you want some of the clearest texts that tell you that not only does hell last forever, but people in hell will be in hell forever, these are my top ten. I'm sorry to make it sound so academic because this is a real reality.

That's part of my concern about this. If this, as I think it's going to become, becomes a mainstream view, it's going to destroy the cause of world missions. It will just destroy it because you lose the urgency in evangelism and world missions. After all, people aren't going to be in hell forever. It's just like a bad weekend trip or something, and then they disappear.

Theology, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective and what you're doing with it, is a seamless garment, dominoes in a row. If you're playing games with one area of the Bible, it will impact other areas of scripture and the life and mission of the church. From there, I gave you what I think are four reasons why hell is forever theologically.

These are not textual arguments; these are just reasons why hell and people in hell forever has to be a theological reality. The last time we were together, I think it was, we were answering the annihilationists' arguments. Maybe I should have called this annihilating annihilationist arguments, something like that. Part of being a good theologian is not just rehashing your own talking points.

This is why a lot of conversations in life are like this. It's just one side has their talking points and they rehash them, and the other side has their talking points and they rehash them, and neither side is really interacting with what the other side is saying. Part of being a good theologian is actually hearing your opponent, understanding what it is they're saying. What verses do they have? They must have some verses or this thing wouldn't have any traction. It's not just going to your favorite proof text to support your view; it's interacting with the arguments that they're promoting.

So, that's what we're doing here in Roman numeral four. We dealt with the subject of the second death. To them, death means cessation of existence. We tried to explain that that is a 20th or 21st-century definition of death. But that's not what the Bible means when it uses the expression death. What the Bible means is separation, not cessation of existence.

Here's the Hebrew word for death, from the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, where death is defined as a separation from God. Here's the Greek word for death, thanatos, which defines death as a separation from God. So, just saying people go into the common grave where they die and cease to exist, that is using the word death in a way that the Bible never uses the word. The Bible never uses death as cessation of existence. It always means separation.

So, what then is the second death that's described in the book of Revelation chapter 20 and Revelation chapter 2? Well, the second death is an eternal separation from God. Just as the first death, physical death, if we're not the rapture generation, is an absolute reality and that doesn't mean cessation of existence, neither does the second death. The second death is people after physically dying go into the lake of fire to experience eternal conscious torment.

That's why we use this expression: if you're born once, you'll die twice; if you're born twice, you'll die once. Meaning if you're born physically only, but you're never born again spiritually, you've never trusted Christ as your savior, then not only do you have the prospect of physically dying, but you have the prospect of spending eternity separated from God in the lake of fire. By contrast, if you're born twice, the worst thing that could happen to you is you only die once.

So, if you're physically born and then there reaches a point where you become a Christian because you hear the gospel and you're born again spiritually, then what's the worst thing that can happen to you? Physical death. Even that's kind of a favor when you think about it because absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, but you have no part, the Bible promises you, in that second death, the lake of fire.

This becomes the whole impetus for world evangelization. We talk about being saved. Hey, I'm saved. When did you get saved? Part of that is understanding what we're saved from. We're saved from the second death. The first death, I might not even have to go through either if we're the rapture generation, which I can't guarantee, but I would if I could guarantee that to you.

Part of their argument is not just the second death, but we looked at the second argument they use, which is "to destroy." We saw that last time through the word phtheirō and also the prefix added to it, diaphtheirō. I tried to show you that that word destroy never means you don't exist anymore. Yes, it's a fate for the unsaved, but it never means non-existence.

Two verses I didn't show you, because I guess I was in a hurry last time, is 2 Corinthians 7 verse 2. Paul the apostle says, "Make room for us in your hearts. We wronged no one and we corrupted," that's phtheirō, "we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one." So, when it says of Paul he didn't destroy them, he didn't take advantage of them, no one in their right mind would believe that if he had taken advantage of them, that the people he had taken advantage of wouldn't exist anymore.

I mean, if someone robbed you, they just took your money, but you're still there without any money. You still exist. This is how phtheirō, destroyed, is used. It doesn't mean cessation of existence. Then I did not have a chance to show you last time Ephesians 4 verse 22, where Paul says that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old man which is being corrupted, that's phtheirō.

The old self which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit. So, I'm living in a, I have an old nature that's corrupted and it's getting more corrupted every day. But does that mean my old nature stopped existing? I mean, it's still there, right? So, that's how phtheirō, destroyed, is used in the Bible and they don't want you to know this. They want you to just focus on the English word, the English translation, and they want destroyed to mean cessation of existence.

From there, let's move into the next argument that they use. Dealt with their second death argument, their destroy argument. Let's move into 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9 where you find this expression "everlasting destruction." Here the Greek word is olethros. It's used in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9. So, let's take a look at that.

By the way, I'm hoping I can get a little air up here. All this talk about hell makes me break out into a sweat. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9. It's always more comfortable to talk about hell with the air conditioning on. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9 says, "These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction," olethros, "away from the presence of the Lord, from the glory of his power."

So, they will use that to say, well, that means people are destroyed; they just cease to exist. Then you ask them, well, what do you do with the word forever? Because it doesn't just say destruction; it says destroyed forever, destroyed eternally. They'll say, well, that's the afterthought of a destroyed person. I actually had someone email me telling me this. Stalin isn't here anymore, but boy, we sure think about him a lot. What a bad man.

Hitler isn't here anymore, but boy, we sure think about him a lot. What a bad man. So, they want that to kind of be the remembrance of the destroyed person. That's how they interpret eternal destruction through the use of this word olethros. If you look over at Acts 3 verse 23, there the same root is used as a verb. Nouns and verbs come from the same root and here it's exolethreuō.

It's used that way in Acts 3 verse 23. Acts chapter 3 verse 23 says, "And it will be that every soul that does not heed the prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people." So, how are they handling exolethreuō? They're handling it as the people that wouldn't listen to the prophet are just destroyed like the Death Star shooting the laser beam at the planet Dantooine or Tatooine, one of the two, where the planet just explodes and ceases to exist.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, I think it is, says, "I sense a disturbance in the Force." It was a bunch of people all crying out and then it stopped. Not that you want to get your theology from Star Wars, but that's just like the best thing I can think of to describe annihilation. So, that's what they think happens to people that won't listen to the prophet in this case.

They say this word destroyed is totally incompatible with the view that we represent, eternal conscious torment. Once again, you ask them, well, what do you do with eternal destruction? Basically, that's eternal remembrance of a destroyed entity. How would I answer that? Well, go back to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9 and it tells you exactly what is meant by destroyed.

It has nothing to do with ceasing to exist. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 9 says, "They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction," and it tells you what eternal destruction is: "away from the presence of the Lord." See that? That's what eternal destruction is. It's not ceasing to exist, but you are forever, this is what's meant by the second death, death meaning separation, you are forever away from the presence of the Lord.

So, there's no need to read annihilation into that passage because it tells you what eternal destruction is. This word olethros, olethron, it doesn't mean ever cessation of existence. Let me give you some examples of why it doesn't mean that. Notice 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 5. First Corinthians, Ray Stedman called First Californians.

It's talking about church discipline on carnal or fleshly Christians. Here's a case where a man is actually involved in an incestuous relationship and everybody was just kind of acting like nothing, no big deal, nothing to see here, folks. Paul says you need to kick this guy out of your church so that he can repent and then once he repents, bring him back into the church.

In the process of describing that, Paul uses this word olethros or in this case olethron, same word. He says, "I have decided to deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." So, Paul's saying, what are you guys doing, you leadership in Corinth? You guys should have after confronting him, you should have kicked him out of the church. That's called church discipline.

If you got kicked out of, by the way, the first church at Corinth, there was no like second church of Corinth to go to. I mean, today if you get kicked out of first Baptist, you just go to second Baptist. Get kicked out of second Baptist, I'll go to 17th Baptist because we have churches on every corner. But we're dealing with the Greco-Roman world; if you were out of the church, I mean, you were out and you were totally in the domain of Satan.

The point is not to destroy a person; it's to shame the person into repentance, the various steps of church discipline. So, as Paul is explaining this, he uses this word, "the destruction of his flesh," olethron. Now, anybody reading that would understand that the person kicked out of the church didn't stop existing, right? I mean, what was happening was his sin nature was being brought into control, but the sin nature and the human being were still there.

That's how destroyed is used in the Bible. Because in the second letter, 2 Corinthians, Paul says, "Let the guy back in; he's repented." There's an argument to be made that it's the same guy. So, either they, it's kind of funny how people are in ministry; either they wouldn't do anything to fix the problem or when they tried to fix the problem, they were so heavy-handed that they forgot that the goal of church discipline is restoration, not to beat the person so far into the ground that they'll never see the light of day again.

So, Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 6, "Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority." In other words, you kicked him out for the destruction of his flesh, there's our Greek word olethron, but obviously the guy didn't stop existing because now you're supposed to when he's repented, let him back in. I mean, you can't let a person in that doesn't exist anymore. See that?

So, that's how this word destruction is used. Notice 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 3, here's olethron again. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 3, talking about the tribulation period, and it says, "While they are saying 'peace and safety,' then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child." There's actually a double negative there at the end of verse 3 translated "they will not escape," meaning once the tribulation period starts, there's no way the inhabitants of the earth are getting out of it. It's the strongest negation you could have in the Greek language.

So, there's our word again, destruction, the same one used in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, the same one used in Acts 3:23. Obviously when you read this, it's not talking about the judgment's coming upon the earth and the people where they won't exist anymore. Because when these judgments hit, we know that the earth will continue. These judgments will continue for seven years, and then this earth will be kind of renovated, and then that will pave the way for another thousand years.

So, the earth has around 1007 years left. Paul is not saying when this destruction happens to the inhabitants of the earth, there's a cessation of existence. So, that's how you can recognize that they're using this word destruction wrongly, because as it's used elsewhere, it doesn't mean not to exist anymore.

Norman Geisler on this point writes this: "The Bible uses several pictures to speak of hell. What is hell? Well, here's some word pictures the Bible uses: it's darkness, separation, which is the true meaning of death, weeping, gnashing of teeth, punishment, fire, death, and then it uses the word destruction.

The first five in no sense, Geisler says, coalesce with the idea of annihilation. When properly understood in context, neither do the last three. As applied to hell, then, destruction clearly does not mean annihilation but connotes the punishment of something still in existence. Punishment is precisely what Paul called the action taken on the excommunicated man, which we just looked at, using the same word in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 5. You can't eternally punish someone that's not there to punish. See that?"

So, that's how to handle this word translated destruction. Let me take you to another one. It's the idea of burning up. Notice Matthew chapter 3 verse 12. The fire imagery associated with hell. Matthew chapter 3 verse 12. This is I believe John the Baptist being quoted. It says, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor and he will gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

So, actually, an annihilationist will use Matthew chapter 3 verse 12 because they say the purpose of the fire is to consume and not to punish. Since fire consumes, you reach a point, I mean, if your house is on fire, you reach a point where the house is gone, right? So, if the purpose of fire is to consume, then at some point what the fire is consuming won't be there anymore.

But of course, you see the big problem with that. It says unquenchable fire. Isaiah 66 verse 24, which I think is being quoted here in Matthew 3, says, "And they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for the worm will not die." Look at that. So, the worm continues on. So, if the animal continues on, I would think that the human being continues on as well. That's why the fire can't be put out because it never finishes consuming.

For the worm will not die and the fire will not be quenched, and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind. So, rather than this being kind of a proof text for annihilation, I think the verse teaches the exact opposite. Many times in scripture, hell is analogized to being in flame. You remember the man that died in unbelief in Luke 16 verse 24, and I've told you already why I don't think this is a parable as many try to turn it into.

But it says this in Luke 16 verse 24: "He," that's the unbeliever, "cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the finger of his water, his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'" So, here's a man in flame and there's no sense in which he ceases to exist. I mean, there's no sense in "hang tough, guy, because within ten years it's all going to be over," right?

I mean, that you have to completely read that into the passage to make flames sound like something temporal. The flame here is obviously not something temporal at all; it's something that's eternal. The flame is what the Antichrist, who by the way is a person, we've talked about that, the number of his name, the number of a man, Revelation 13 verse 18, the Greek word anthrōpos. When the Antichrist is finally defeated, he will be put into a fire.

Notice Revelation 19 verse 20 describes this. Revelation chapter 19 verse 20 describes the fire that the Antichrist will be placed into. This is right at the end of the seven-year tribulation period. It says here, "And the beast was seized and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast or those who worshipped his image, and these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone."

Now, is the fire here something temporary? Obviously not because a thousand years pass, that's called the millennial kingdom. See, what I'm looking at here happened in Revelation 19 right at this point. But when you take prophecy literally, which we do, a thousand years happen and then finally Satan, who God uses as his instrument because the devil is God's devil, to reveal the rebellion happening at the end of the millennial kingdom by the descendants of those in their mortal bodies as believers who repopulated the earth and still received a sin nature, we've talked a little bit about that.

When that whole era is finished, God at that point takes Satan and throws him into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown in a thousand years earlier. In the process of describing that, it says this: "The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire," see it's still fire, "and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are." They're still in there.

Therefore, you can't define fire as some kind of temporary thing that's just designed to consume someone, or else it would have gone out a long time ago. This is a thousand years later. And if all of that weren't clear enough, it says where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night how long? Forever and ever. I mean, does that sound like a temporary consumption and then they cease to exist? How do you harmonize forever and ever with that idea? And yet this is what the Kirk Camerons of the world are trying to convince evangelicalism of today.

Let me take you to a fifth argument that they use and they want to focus on Revelation 14 verse 11 which just talks about eternal, in their minds, eternal results. They say this is talking about an eternal result and not a process. It's what they're doing with the Stalin example. You know, Stalin was annihilated, but we never forgot him because he was such a terrible man.

So, they're saying the results of annihilation continue, but the process of punishment stops when the person stops existing. Believe it or not, they use Revelation 14 verse 11 to try to get this across to people. It says, "The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image and whoever receives the mark of his name." Now, to me, that's a very strong text favoring eternal conscious torment.

But the annihilationist actually uses that because they say, look, it's just the smoke that goes up forever and ever. See that? In other words, the person stopped existing and that penalty was so severe that God perpetually calls attention to it through smoke going up forever. Not the person; they say it's the smoke, not the person that goes up forever and ever. I actually heard Clark Pinnock, who's a very well-known evangelical, say that.

So, it's not the person; it's the smoke. Well, as the old saying goes, if there's smoke, then there's fire. If there's smoke going up forever and ever, that means the fire keeps going up forever and ever, which means the fire must never stop consuming the person. But you know, this actually becomes one of the arguments that they try to use. I think the whole thing is demolished when it says forever and ever.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. And the punishment, see that? Now we're not talking about fire anymore. Whatever you believe about fire, fine, but the torment, that's the punishment, never stops. So, they want your attention to be focused on the lack of fire, not the punishment that goes on forever and ever. So, it's not just dealing with the smoke going up forever and ever; it's dealing with the punishment going on forever and ever, and you see the same thing in Revelation 20 verse 10.

Let me take you to a sixth argument that they use and that's the word perdition, which also is translated destruction. So, it's a slightly different Greek word than the ones we've talked about so far. This particular one is apōleia, I think is how you say that, apōleia. You'll notice that this word is applied to the unsaved over and over again.

So, a few verses on this that they like to use: Matthew 7 verse 13. Matthew chapter 7 verse 13. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction. That's apōleia and they of course define destruction as ceasing to exist. Notice Romans 9 verse 22.

By the way, do you ever wonder why a Jehovah's Witness can come to your typical evangelical door and tie them in a theological pretzel in about 22 seconds? Because the Jehovah's Witnesses do at Kingdom Hall what I'm doing with you here, where I'm training you and teaching you. Your average evangelical church isn't doing this kind of thing. They're not training and teaching.

They're not teaching their people how to interact with the other side. So, when they come to the door, we're obviously caught flat-footed because we don't know what the other side even thinks. As much as people come to this church, they say, this is like really a weird church. I mean, do you stand up there for an hour and teach the Bible like that every single week? Well, actually I don't do it for an hour; I do it for a little more than an hour and I actually do it twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday.

The Jehovah's Witnesses do this all the time. What we do here is normal for the Jehovah's Witnesses. So, you know, it was a famous saying from the late Walter Martin: he said, are you willing to do for the truth what the cults will do for a lie? I mean, we've got the truth and yet they have the lie and they're training their people, and our side, we don't train people. We don't prepare people for combat, theological and spiritual warfare.

So, this is not weird what I'm doing. It may be weird with American evangelicalism, but it's what churches are supposed to do and the kingdom of the cults, they do this stuff all the time with their people. Notice Romans 9 verse 22. This is a good one that is a segue into the sermon today about Pharaoh. "What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?"

So, they say destruction means ceasing to exist. That's your Greek word apōleia. Notice 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 1. This is dealing with unsaved false teachers. Peter says, "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves."

There's apōleia and the annihilationist, whether it's a Seventh-day Adventist or a Jehovah's Witness or now a Clark Pinnock or a Kirk Cameron, will just say that that means ceasing to exist. They think the idea of destruction is not consistent with the eternal conscious torment perspective on the afterlife for the unsaved. Notice Philippians 3 verse 19, here's another use of that word apōleia translated destruction.

Philippians 3 verse 19 of false teachers, it says, "Whose end is destruction." And this one hurts a little bit: "whose god is their appetite." I went out to dinner last night, that's why it hurts a little bit. "And whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things." So, when it says "whose end is destruction," they say, come on, don't talk about an eternal hell. It just means ceasing to exist. Everybody knows that's what destruction means.

And then the one that kind of you see in parenthesis up there is 2 Peter 3 verse 7. "By his word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of ungodly men." See, ungodly men, they don't go into an eternal hell; they're just destroyed there, they're annihilated.

So, is this a legitimate use of the word apōleia? And I'm going to tell you that that's not how that word is ever used, ever, in the Bible. What it means is ruin, not ceasing to exist. Let me give you this example. You can take your car, let's say you want to get rid of your car and you take it to the junkyard to do what they want. They, you know, smash the windows out and I don't know those giant compactors that they have, they make it a great big square of metal which is totally useless.

You can't do anything with it; it's in an irredeemable state. But the metal never went out of existence. It's in a ruined, apōleia, destroyed state. That's what hell is. It's an existent state which is irredeemable, which is useless; you can't do anything with it, but it's still there. That's what destruction means. It never, ever means ceasing to exist.

As much as emotionally I would love it to mean that. Emotionally, that's where I am, that's not what the word means. Let me show you what it actually means. Notice Matthew 26 verse 8. Look at this, this is apōleia. Matthew 26 verse 8 has to do with Jesus being worshipped; they're pouring expensive ointment on him and Judas doesn't like it.

"But his disciples were indignant when they saw this and said, 'Why this waste?'" That's apōleia. You're pouring ointment on Jesus, what a waste. Don't you know we could have taken that and sold it and made a lot of money? So, when you see this word waste, you could easily put in there the word destroyed, although in English it carries a different meaning, but it's the same Greek word.

Nobody is going to say that the ointment that was poured out on Jesus stopped existing. It's just in the minds of the carnal, it was a waste of time or resources, I should say. Look at Mark 14 verse 4. See, this word apōleia means a wasted state, not cessation of existence. Mark 14 verse 4, same account.

It says, "But some were indignant, remarking to one another, 'Why has this perfume been wasted?'" Apōleia. The perfume didn't stop existing; they just felt it could have gone to a better cause, very sadly. And this word is used of the Antichrist, apōleia. Look at Revelation 17, look at verse 8.

Revelation chapter 17 and verse 8 describing the Antichrist: "The beast that you saw, who was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to what? Destruction." So, the Antichrist is going to apōleia. He's going to destruction. Look at verse 11: "The beast which was and is not is himself also an eighth and one of the seven, and he goes to his destruction." There's apōleia again, same word.

We know enough in our doctrine and understanding of the Antichrist that the Antichrist doesn't cease to exist, ever. The Antichrist, Revelation 19, is thrown into the lake of fire, and when it comes time a thousand years later to throw the devil into the same lake of fire, it says, "where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."

So, obviously if apōleia means ceasing to exist, the word doesn't mean that because the Antichrist is destroyed but he continues to exist. Well, then what does this word destroyed mean? It means he's in a destroyed state. It's like taking your house and you want to get rid of it or someone wants to, like a developer for example wants to build, and so they take existing structures and collapse them.

That's what the Bible means by destruction. The building is collapsed. You can't use it for anything. But the parts of the building that used to form something useful are still in existence. See, that's hell. Hell is continuing to exist, but you're in a state that's useless, you're in a ruined state, you're in an irreparable state, you're in an irredeemable state, but there's no such thing as non-existence.

Another argument that they use is what Jesus said of Judas: "It would be better for him if he had never been born." So, notice Mark 14 verse 21. This is a favorite of the annihilationists. Mark chapter 14 verse 21: "For the son of man is to go just as it is written of him, but woe to the man," speaking of Judas, "by whom the son of man is betrayed. It would be good for that man if he had not been born."

So, they define "never been born" as "never existed." Since Jesus says it would be better for a man if he had never existed, when Judas did his thing, betrayed Christ, went to hell as an unsaved person, he went back to a state of non-existence, according to the words of Christ. Jesus himself said it would be better for him if he had never been born.

Notice that that verse doesn't say it would be better for him if he had never been conceived. You see the difference? Life begins biblically speaking from conception. It doesn't start from birth. It's like people saying, "Gosh, Billy Graham died at the age of 99. I just wish he had made it to the age of 100." And I say he did make it to 100. You don't chart his beginning from his birth; tack on nine months to that, he made it to 100. Yay, right?

As Christians, we believe life begins at conception. I realize the whole pro-abortion everything denies that, but it's what the Bible says. Life begins at conception. So, if Jesus was trying to say that non-existence is better than existence, he wouldn't have used the word born; he would have used the word conceived, which he does not use here.

So, the only thing Jesus is doing with Judas is he's making a comparison: in the womb, out of the womb. That's all he's doing. It's not non-existence versus existence. In the womb, Judas was a lot better off than out of the womb. Because out of the womb, he betrayed Christ, he died in unbelief according to John 6, and it would be better for him if he were still in the womb. See, there's nothing here about non-existence.

Norman Geisler refutes this use of annihilation as follows: "First of all, if taken literally, Jesus' declaration is not a comparison of Judas' perdition to his non-existence before conception. It is a comparison to his existence in the womb before he was in the womb. Jesus did not say it would be better of Judas if he had never been conceived, but if he had been born."

So, I realize some of this sounds like I'm micro-managing words, but as the saying goes, the devil's in the details. And that's kind of literal, isn't it? What Jesus is doing here is he's not making an argument that Judas stopped existing; he's using a hyperbole. Judas' fate is so bad that it would be better for him if he were still in the womb, is what Jesus is saying.

That's called a hyperbole. It's an exaggeration to make a point. Judas is not well off right now is what Jesus is communicating here. We certainly interpret the Bible literally whenever possible; we want to argue for a plain literal interpretation of the Bible. You take words and phrases at face value.

But there are obvious times when the Bible is speaking figuratively. Plain literal speech is called denotative speech. Figurative speech is called connotative speech. We do this all the time in normal communication. My wife says, "How did you sleep last night?" I said, "Great, I slept till 8:00 AM and I slept like a log."

When I say I slept till 8:00 AM, that's denotative speech, right? She doesn't take that as a symbol of something. And when I say I slept like a log, the word like thrown into the sentence tells me that we're dealing with a simile. She doesn't say, "Did you really turn into a piece of wood last night? I know your name is Woods."

So, since language functions that way, that's how you approach the Bible. You take words at ordinary value unless the text tells you otherwise. If you didn't have these rules to agree on, we couldn't even communicate with each other. It gets difficult when someone wants to be understood figuratively and you interpret them literally, or someone wants to be understood literally when you interpret them figuratively. That's where it can get a little dicey. See, there's a figure of speech right there.

So, I leave my coffee cup in the microwave with coffee in it and it's heating up, and I forgot to hit the timer. So, it just heats up indefinitely and it starts to bubble over the sides. My wife says to me as I'm in the other room, having forgotten about my coffee cup in the microwave, she says, "Honey, your cup is overflowing."

And I said to her, "You know, praise the Lord, my cup is overflowing. I am just blessed in this life and man, God has been so faithful and so good, my cup..." No, your cup is overflowing. So, she wanted to be understood literally, I interpreted her figuratively. That's where communication starts to break down.

You have the same battle in ordinary language; you have the same battle in scripture. You take words at ordinary value unless the text tells you otherwise. E.W. Bullinger wrote a classic book on this called "Figures of Speech Used in the Bible." It was written 100 years ago, more than 100 years ago. It's 1000 pages long.

If somebody writes a book that people still use as the key book on this 100 years later, you've done a good job, shall we put it that way? He covers every figure of speech you'd ever encounter in scripture. Figures of speech you haven't even heard of: apostrophe, simile, metaphor, on and on, page after page of these figures of speech.

One of them is hyperbole, where you're exaggerating to make a point. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. You're just saying you want something to eat. I don't think you're going to try to eat a horse. I've tried, but it didn't work out very well. And so the Bible uses hyperboles, not all the time, but sometimes.

For example, Jesus made this statement at the end of John's Gospel after giving us the seven signs that Jesus performed. He said in John 21:25, "And there were also many other signs which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books written thereof." What he's saying there is Jesus did a lot of other stuff that I'm not even telling you about. To communicate that point, I'm going to use a hyperbole: the books themselves could not be contained by the world.

If you look at Psalm 6 verse 6, you'll see a hyperbole there. You don't just willy-nilly convert things to hyperboles unless it's sort of obvious in the Bible. Psalm 6:6, the Psalmist writes, David, "I am weary with my sighing. Every night I make my bed swim. I dissolve my couch with my tears." He's saying, I am so upset and I'm crying so much that you know what? I think my couch is going to float away.

Obviously, that's a hyperbole because there's not enough water in the tear ducts to cause your couch to dissolve, right? What he's saying is I'm just really upset is what he's saying. He's using a hyperbole to get his point across. So, that's what I think you have here in Mark 14:21.

Jesus says if you compare Judas when he was in the womb versus out of the womb, it would actually be better for that guy if he was still in the womb. That we may be able to say it's hyperbolic, arguably, because that guy's fate is really bad. But there's zero here about non-existence, and the annihilationist wants to turn that into a passage about non-existence.

How about perishing? Somebody sent me Kirk Cameron's video and I can only watch it for like 15 seconds or I'm going to tear my hair out. Now there's a hyperbole for you. I mean, this stuff so frustrates me, I just want to start screaming at the computer, which is not really productive. But I watched it for about 15 seconds and sure enough, he goes to Psalm 37 verse 20 about the wicked perishing.

Just like clockwork. Psalm 37 verse 20: "But the wicked will perish and the enemies of the Lord will be like the glory of the pastures; they vanish away like smoke, they vanish away." There it is in the Bible: the wicked stop existing, they're annihilated. Along these lines, they will use Psalm 68 verse 2, which says, "As the smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before God." They're just going to perish, they're just going to disappear, they're going to vanish, no eternal conscious torment here.

Notice Psalm 112 verse 10: "The wicked will see it and be vexed; he will gnash his teeth and melt away. The desire of the wicked will perish." So, the wicked are just going to melt away and that's it. What would I say to that? Well, that's the Hebrew word abad. Did you also know it's used of the righteous vanishing?

It's used of the righteous vanishing in Isaiah 57 verse 1. Something the annihilationist says can't happen. See, they've got the righteous living forever and the wicked disappearing using this Hebrew word abad, but the same Hebrew word abad is used of the righteous perishing and not existing. What I'm seeing here is an inconsistent use of the word, which shows me something's wrong with their grid that they're running all these things through.

When people are approaching the Bible in such a disparate manner, it's a revelation that there's a problem. Isaiah 57 verse 1 says, "The righteous man perishes and no man takes it to heart, and devout men are taken away while no one understands. For the righteous man is taken away from the evil man." That's abad also.

They don't think that the righteous just disappear. You can jot down Micah 7 verse 2. You'll see abad there as a reference to the righteous disappearing. So, I'm out of time and we'll pick it up right here next week. Lord, we thank you for your truth, your word. Help us to defend it and rightly divide it in these last days. 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. Have a great day.