HELL

[jriccitelli]

No such vision of eschatological judgment is found in the Old Testament (Steve, above)

My argument, like many would agree, is that eschatological judgment 'is' found in the Old Testament. Because:

Judgment is understood by most as judgment on sin, yet the OT deals primarily with Israel. Their covenant was broken, now the Gentiles are included under the New Covenant, but I do not think many believers see gentiles as absolved from the wages of sin and judgment simply because they are not Israel. A reader of the Bible would have to quickly surmise that ‘all’ alike are guilty before God, thus what happened to Israel is ‘our’ Example and Warning. The OT was written to the Israelites, but the NT implies that we all are alike.

Apart from that verse, it is not really very controversial to say that the Old Testament is fairly silent about the end of the world (ibid)

Preterisim may be in a different camp, but like every other good promise to the Israelite seems to be generally accepted as ours in Christ, every bad promise is generally understood as the warning and definitions associated with unbelief, and unfaithfulness. Thus the OT warning is for us ‘all’ alike.
The judgments are portrayed often through ‘real’ people, places and real life events, but that’s the real point (and this amazing point of the Bible is what sets it apart from other supposed 'holy' books), God portrays His will as His-story. And all the OT contains real historical pictures and types to ‘explain’ the workings of God (and man), good news and bad alike.

You have had many opportunities to prove this wrong, if it can be done. So far, I have seen no evidence from your posts to suggest I am mistaken about this. (Ibid)

I have pointed out that the OT describes a great and final day of judgment, and is commonly referred to as That Great and Terrible Day, the Day of The Lord, etc. and that all the verses relating to this are so intertwined that it cannot be solely defined as only applying to Israel or 70ad. The NT writers quote from the OT without caution as to what judgment they glean from in describing a personal and individual judgment for all and each individual. I have also quoted the many OT passages that refer to all this along with the NT references to them also. I have also noted the verses specifically Psalms 96, 98, and a few others with little response, so I waited. I also noted the verses concerning Blotting ones name out of the book, and removing ones name from the book of life (Deut.29:20, Ex 17:14, etc.), I do not remember one response to those verses.

When I refer to the OT it seems I generally unleash the apocalypse rather than a response to the verses (just joking, kinda). I will have to go back and find the references to them in posts such as 'Visiting the iniquities of..' and 'Barclay was convinced' threads, but I can find them if need be as they are also on my word processor.

[steve]

jriccitelli,

I'm sorry, but I can't see anything in your post (above) that amounts to anything resembling an argument relevant to the point under dispute. When you re-read your post, do you think you find there something that brings out a case for postmortem judgments in the Old Testament?

One reason that you have received no response to the verses you give is that they are not relevant to the topic. Are you saying that, when Deuteronomy speaks of being blotted out of God's book, that the hearers were just supposed to import some unstated postmortem destiny into the statements?

[jriccitelli]

‘Millions’ see it my way, and I do not see why you make it seem as if I’m the only one defending this, again:

I do not think many believers see gentiles as absolved from the wages of sin and judgment simply because they are not Israel. A reader of the Bible would have to quickly surmise that ‘all’ alike are guilty before God, thus what happened to Israel is ‘our’ Example and Warning. (me)

Besides that point, the judgments in the OT describe God destroying, annihilating, and bringing about a ‘final’ and eternal judgment (eternal death) and I believe a total elimination of the sinner. The OT defines and uses these terms extensively, if one is eliminated and blotted out then there is 'no hope’ (besides cut apart, burned, torn apart, forgotten, eaten, etc, etc.), it is final (even if you had a NT understanding of this pre-NT, the people judged there in still have no hope or return suggested by any verse OT or NT. God’s Word must stand. Still further I have pointed out that the NT writers use the OT as their reference to judgment and final judgments, so the OT must be defining post-mortem judgment also.
“May they be blotted out of the book of life And may they not be recorded with the righteous” (Psalm 69)
“And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev 20)
Same book.

[jriccitelli]

The hearers didn’t have to import some unstated postmortem destiny into the statements as the statements themselves were pretty final in of themselves, with no hope beyond such Judgment or death for the unfaithful. The final Judgment is primarily to warn those that ‘suppose’ they will escape punishment simply because they die without being punished. The unrighteous sinner is still dead and will remain so, regardless of a final judgment (the second chance is a NT idea, if plausible at all).

[steve]

The hearers didn’t have to import some unstated postmortem destiny into the statements as the statements themselves were pretty final in of themselves, with no hope beyond such Judgment or death for the unfaithful.

So your argument is entirely from silence? Okay, you can do that, but it certainly isn't anything like evidence for your position. All the verses, I think you will acknowledge, seem to speak of death of the mortal body at the end of this life. The fact that the verses are silent on the matter of any postmortem changes is your idea of a positive argument against the belief that eternity may involve some such reversals.

Actually, you could as easily take the silence (as Jehovah's Witnesses do) to indicate that physical death is all there is (since nothing beyond it is mentioned in any of these Old Testament passages), and that such people as those killed in the flood, Sodom, Canaan, or Babylon will never face a future judgment at all. The silence of these passages could as easily tell us this.

Yet, I assume you (like "millions" of others—including myself) also believe that the New Testament speaks of a resurrection, both of the saved and of the lost. Is it your opinion that scriptures speaking of sinners being "cut apart, burned, torn apart, forgotten, eaten, etc, etc." are describing the treatment of the resurrected bodies of these people—or that the original readers (who may have known nothing about a future resurrection) would have viewed these verses that way?

[Homer]

JR has cited Psalm 69:28, and there are a number of allusions to names recorded in the book. What reason would there be to not see them as all referencing the same idea? The following are all from the NASB:

(1) Psalm 69:28 “May they be blotted out of the book of the living, and may they not be recorded with the righteous.”

(2) Daniel 12:1 “Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued.

(3) Luke 10:20 “...but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven”.

(4) Philippians 4:3 “...the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

(5) Revelation 3:5 “...I will not erase his name from the book of life.”

(6) Revelation 13:8 “...all who dwell on the earth will worship him (the beast), everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.”

(7) Revelation 17:8 “And those who dwell on the earth will wonder, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come.”

(8) In Revelation 20:12 “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.”

(9) Revelation 20:15 “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Considering them together it seems the burden of proof should rest on the person who denies Daniel 12:2 is about the final judgment.

[steve]

Neither Psalm 69 nor Daniel 12 appear to make your points.

"The book of the living" (Ps.69:28), without additional information being offered to the contrary, would seem to be a register of all who "are alive" (the most natural meaning of the word "living"). To be blotted out of that book would seem to be an idiom for dying and no longer being registered among the living. The righteous, however, are expected (here and everywhere in the Old Testament) to be protected and have their lives prolonged. Thus the book's ultimate contents would include the righteous people only.

The same is true of Daniel 12:1, which mentions those who are to be "rescued"—the ones written in the book are the righteous, and God will preserve them, while wiping out the wicked. I believe that this rescue is from the holocaust of AD70, but even if you prefer to place it at the end of the world, there is no clear reference to anyone being rescued from postmortem hell. Again, I am not questioning whether there is a postmortem hell—only whether there was any reference to it in the Old Testament.

Just so we don't forget what we are discussing: I have told my correspondents here that I do not believe the Old Testament references to being "consumed," "cut in pieces," "melting like the snail," "vanishing like smoke," or otherwise being "killed" give any indication of a post-resurrection destiny. If there is anywhere in the Old Testament a strong indicator of the general resurrection, followed by damnation of the wicked, it would have to be Daniel 12:2—which, for contextual reasons, I do not think is about the final day of resurrection and judgment.

Even if it is about the last-day resurrection, Daniel's vision of "everlasting life" (the only occurrence of this term in the Old Testament) and "everlasting contempt," comes later than all but three of the Old Testament prophets (Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi), and thus comes too late to inform the interpretation of the multitude of earlier judgment passages for their generations.

Even if the New Testament encourages us to see this Old Testament "book" as the same book as that which contains the names of those "registered in heaven," this is importing New Testament information to clarify something that is in no way clear in the Old Testament references. My point is not that postmortem fates were nonexistent in Old Testament times, but rather that they were not revealed in the Old Testament, which mean there would be no reason for the readers to see final, postmortem annihilation in references to temporal judgments.

Immortality is a reality that was not clearly revealed in the Old Testament, which is, no doubt, why Paul said that "life and immortality" were brought "to light" by Christ through the gospel (2 Tim.1:10). Though my criticisms of the traditional view of hell may be controversial in the modern evangelical climate, this is not the case with these claims about the hiddenness of postmortem fates in the Old Testament. This has been observed by evangelical Old Testament scholars for at least the past 45 years that I have been reading them. I am surprised to hear this challenged.

[Roberto]

Didn't Jesus, when discussing Gehenna, use words from Isaiah? Is it possible that Jesus interpreted Isaiah as speaking about a postmortem situation?

[dwilkins]

Didn't Jesus, when discussing Gehenna, use words from Isaiah? Is it possible that Jesus interpreted Isaiah as speaking about a postmortem situation?

One of the most famous reference in Isaiah is to the end of chapter 66:

Isaiah 66:22-24 (NKJV)
22 "For as the new heavens and the new earth Which I will make shall remain before Me," says the Lord, "So shall your descendants and your name remain.
23 And it shall come to pass That from one New Moon to another, And from one Sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship before Me," says the Lord.
24 "And they shall go forth and look Upon the corpses of the men Who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, And their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh."

There, the apostate members of the covenant nation were to be put to the sword, while the good guys who survive go throughout the world to places that've never heard of God and create "priests and Levites". The apostate will be killed and the good guys will remain. The role of the apostate at that point is to be a memorial for all time for those who reject God. There is no explicit declaration that they will be tortured for infinity, only that their destruction would be a memorial against rebellion.

Doug

[Roberto]

Could Jesus have reinterpreted that, in the same way that the NT writers do in other places?