End Time Finale & What to Do

End Time Finale

The final scene of judgment culminates in Revelation 20:11–15. We see “a great white throne” and “the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.” Then books are opened, presumably the databases on every person’s life. The “book of life,” which first appears in Genesis and indicates who’s ultimately saved and who’s not, is opened. Verses 13–14 need to be stated as they are: “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.” So the sea, whatever that is, gives up it’s dead. Death and Hades give up their dead. And each dead person stands for what can be called a second judgment, essentially a second appearance before God’s throne.

The basis of the second judgment centers on deeds. Yet John’s gospel and Peter’s letter say Jesus preached to the dead, which could indicate that faith also plays into the equation.  Considering general revelation, people who never had an adequate hearing of the gospel, yet lived a life of goodness and integrity in light of what they knew, may have a chance. Here the love and mercy of God is clearly demonstrated—and it does not contradict the gospel mandate of believing in Jesus.

In the end death and Hades get thrown into the lake of fire, which we can confidently equate with images of Gehenna, to be with Satan and his demons.

Verse 15 concludes, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Besides the clear statement on some being thrown into the burning lake, the wording also implies that some people’s names will indeed be found in the book of life, and they would not be thrown in. Would this mean in the very end that people who didn’t make it into Heaven when they died physically would—if they never adequately heard the gospel message, yet, as we’ve seen, lived a good life according to the law written on their hearts and perhaps responded to Christ’s voice in the afterlife—have a chance of redemption at the second judgment? That’s what Scripture seems to imply.

Would that include people who in their earthly life rejected faith in Christ? This is a whole different matter from those who never heard. In his teaching Jesus indicates bad news for those who refuse him, for example when he states in John 3:18: “Whoever believes in [God’s Son] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” So a person who rejects Christ is far worse off than one who hasn’t heard. The former gets a permanent stamp of eternal judgment, presumably marking them for Gehenna.

What about people who don’t outright reject Christ but die without truly following him either? The same overall criteria would apply as it always does. The issue for each particular person is where they fit in—presumably judgment at death with the Hades and second judgment scenario in effect. Yet again, God is the judge—and I’m glad I’m not.

What To Do

Maybe we don’t need to worry about evangelizing everyone. God loves everyone after all, so let’s consider everyone part of the family. Bad idea. First, if we consider Luke 16, Hades is a condition of torment, at least for some. And at best it’s a dark, miserable condition, as depicted in the Old Testament instances of Sheol (often translated “the grave”). Second, there are no promises of salvation, no guarantees, not even a percentage. We are given no idea. To bank on getting into Heaven on the second judgment would be somewhat like playing Russian roulette. Maybe you’ll live; maybe you’ll die. That’s no way to plan for eternity.

So when we see the whole picture, we still find that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. We also see how God’s merciful love continually operates and offers chances for redemption. Jesus is still the way, and God is still a God of love.

And my secretary? She believed. You may also know people like her, wrestling with—or rejecting—the idea of a loving God who sends people to Hell. They too need to know what the Bible really says. It could make the difference between faith and rejection.

My whole treatment of this hellish subject has been rather clinical, I know. That’s the only way I could keep a clear focus on what Scripture says versus the fictions that so many assume. But everything the Bible describes about any afterlife separate from God is hideous—however literally or figuratively we take these passages. Either way the horrors should shake us loose from any presumptions of what a loving God would or would not allow—or what we wish the afterlife would be like.

The prospects of dying without a relationship to Jesus are fearful—yet in his love, God extends mercy to those who will respond. If anyone spends eternity in Gehenna, an unspeakable horror, Scripture seems to say they will have had a hardened heart, one that couldn’t stand being in God’s presence anyway, one that naturally consigns itself to darkness.

Jesus talks more about all this than anyone else, because he loves us. If you love someone, would you also warn them of dangers they should avoid?

Her grandparents had certainly heard about Christianity but had never adequately heard the gospel message. She wasn’t sure she wanted to follow a God who would summarily condemn them to eternal hell. And with so few Christians in Japan, a hundred and twenty million more people were like her grandparents.

As I thought about it, I went one step further: On one hand, Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and Peter says of Jesus that “there is no other name under Heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). So Jesus is the only way to Heaven, and without him I go to the hot and fiery place. On the other hand, the First Letter of John says twice in chapter four, “God is love.” He doesn’t just love believers; he is love.

Isn’t there a contradiction here—like the one repeated ad infinitum of “how could a loving God send people to hell?” In responding to the question, I risk being vilified as a narrow-minded, judgmental Christian. And I risk being vilified as a doctrine-denying liberal.

When I hear people leaning Universalist and letting everyone into Heaven because “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13), I gasp and say, “What about all the times Jesus warned us about hell?” He wasn’t just having a bunch of bad days.

When I hear people proclaim that anyone who does not confess Christ goes straight to eternal damnation, I sigh and say, “What about all the places where the Bible talks about God’s mercy?”

To say it’s a mystery is partly right, because there’s much we don’t know. Deuteronomy 29:29 sets the standard: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” Some things we’re meant to know; some we’re not. But a lot of us ignore what’s actually been revealed to us.

The Problem with Hell

I wish we could take the word hell out of our English vocabulary—not because it’s unpleasant, but because it creates so much confusion.

Hell is originally an English word derived from Old English, referring to the place of the dead. It is not a biblical word. Whenever we take a single word outside of the Bible and impose it on several different biblical words, we can expect confusion. And that’s exactly what we have.

The mindset of applying hell to all the bad people who don’t make it to a nice place in the afterlife is universal and deeply rooted, even in the minds of Bible translators. After the Reformation and the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, two of the earliest and most important English versions of the Bible were published—the Catholic Douay Reims Version and the Protestant King James Version. In these Bibles, both Sheol and Hades, together with Gehenna, appear as the English word “hell.” And it’s theorized that these translations were both influenced by Saint Augustine’s theology.

As a result, most English Bible translations uses “hell” for the words Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus. For a long time the only version that did not was Young’s Literal Translation, published in 1862. As with everything else in his translation, Young keeps intact all the Greek words referring to the afterlife. But with all the modern versions dumping several different terms into one hell basket, it’s no surprise that we have hundreds of millions of English speakers who view hell simplistically and unbiblically. Thankfully, more modern translations are now properly distinguishing Hades from hell, or at least adding notations. Gehenna is almost always rendered “hell.”

The word and concept of hell are used with countless religions, taking on all kinds of images and metaphors. Ancient mythologies and contemporary folk religions on every continent, as well as the major religions of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism all have concepts of hell. And they’re all different. Images of other religions’ hells, as well as comic-bookish depictions of demons in red suits with pitchforks, get confused with biblical distinctives.

If we have to keep the term hell, and I can’t imagine it going away, we should at least be careful which biblical word we apply it to. That one word—and only that one—is Gehenna.

What the Gehenna?

Every city needs a garbage dump. And before recycling, places like Jerusalem burned their garbage—day and night for millennia. In this same place, Kings Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their own sons (2 Chronicles 28:3 and 33:6). The dump was the valley on the south side of Jerusalem, the Valley of Ben Hinnom (son of Hinnom), or the Valley of Hinnom, in Hebrew Ge Hinnom. Jesus takes this imagery of refuse, perpetual fire, and human sacrifice, along with the name, to describe for us the eternal destiny of the damned, rendered in Greek as “Gehenna.”

With the exception of one reference in James 3:6 (by Jesus’ brother), Jesus is the only one in the Bible to use the term Gehenna. We should take to heart that the One who loves us the most is the one who gives the scariest warnings.

When Jesus recommends ridding ourselves of our hands and eyes rather than sinning, he uses the imagery of “eternal fire” and “the fire of Gehenna” (Matthew 18:8–9) to describe the judgment. Mark 9:43’s version reads, “Gehenna, where the fire never goes out.” Mark adds that the “worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (9:48). Matthew 25:41 says Jesus will tell the people on his left to go to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Revelation 20:10 identifies this as “the lake of burning sulfur,” and says people will be thrown in it, three times calling it the “lake of fire” (20:14–15).

Jesus is also the only one to use the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” for end time judgment—and only in Matthew. He uses the phrase in six different occurrences, every time in a parable. The phrase is joined with images of “the fiery furnace” (13:42, 50) and “darkness” (8:12; 22:13; 25:30). And it makes sense: Though fire produces light, a furnace is always considered a dark place. This is also the place of “hypocrites” (24:51). Is Jesus talking about Gehenna? Consider this: In direct expository teaching he always uses the place name Gehenna. But in parables he speaks consistently in the genre of narrative, and instead of saying Gehenna, he uses the imagery of fire, darkness, and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The term “judgment,” referring to God’s end-time judgment, is all over the Bible. It is the phrase Paul uses instead of describing hell directly when he says to those who are stubborn and unrepentant, “You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). The Book of Hebrews brings the two together, saying that if we deliberately keep on sinning, we have “only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire” (10:27).

Gehenna, then, is what most people really mean when they say hell: judgment, punishment, fire, eternal misery. But we do not see anything about the devil or demons poking people with pitchforks or anything close to that. According to Scripture, these fallen angels will suffer in Gehenna too—but only at the end of time (Revelation 20:7–15). Now they’re in Tartarus (more on that in another article).

Today the Hinnom Valley is a city park. No surprise that not much was built there, and it’s the city’s main venue for outdoor rock concerts. You can imagine all the jokes that go on. But the Gehenna we can’t see is no joke.

—
Art credit: Gerd Altmann | Pixaby