Eternal Hell! Heaven's Loving Purpose!

Part One: Potential Purification in Scripture

Chapter #1, The Purpose of Fire in Hell.

A. God's View of Fire.

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in...2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: 3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. 4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years. 5 And I will come near to you in judgment...

Luke 3:16 John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:

Acts 2:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Hebrews 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire. (This is the concluding verse of a chapter about God’s correction of us being like the correction of children by parents.) 1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: 13 But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

Hebrews 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire. (This is the concluding verse of a chapter about God’s correction of us being like the correction of children by parents.)

1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: 13 But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

In these verses, which are not about Hell, we know a literal, physical fire is not meant for these reasons::

(1) Malachi says Jesus at His first coming will be “like” fire. Acts says the Holy Ghost Baptism looked “like as of” fire. Luke doesn’t say the Baptism was “like” fire but it describes the same event which Acts specifies was “like as of” fire.

(2) Malachi uses two opposite metaphors for the same purifying process: fire, which is dry and hot, and soap, which is wet and, in those days, cold. (The Hebrew words for “fuller’s soap” describe trampling on clothes in a tub, using a lye soap made from plants.) Spiritual reality is far enough from the physical analogy that nearly opposite physical examples may be used for metaphors. The only thing the two have in common is that they both remove impurities. The New Testament uses a similar double metaphor for two levels of the same purifying process: John introduced Baptism of water, and Jesus brought what John called the “baptism of fire.”

(3) The object of Malachi’s analogies is Jesus at His first coming. He really did “purify the sons of Levi”; His attacks on the Pharisees and Sadducees became the greater part of the Gospels. But He never employed physical fire; in fact when James and John asked His permission to bring physical fire down from Heaven upon people who wouldn’t welcome them, He rebuked them, Luke 9:54-55. “Who may abide [endure] the day of his coming”? What is this horrible, impossible-to-endure experience of which God warns? The destruction of the Earth by fire? Armor-plated locusts the size of horses with scorpion tails at Jesus’ Second Coming? No! God is talking about the mere preaching of Jesus at his first coming!

(4) In the case of Hell fire, (verses about Hell will be examined later), tradition is correct in saying there is at least this difference between burning in Hell and a physical body burning in a physical fire: it burns forever, which a physical body in a physical fire cannot do. Physical fire consumes complex physical molecules, reacting chemically with them to turn them into simpler molecules: for example, protein to ash. Anything in a physical fire that burns at all is thus chemically altered over a period of time. Given enough time, all the molecules subjected to this process will be altered, leaving nothing of the original object being burned. It is impossible for a physical fire to chemically transform a finite supply of physical molecules forever. For a physical fire to consume forever, the supply of physical molecules must be perpetually refreshed. That is not a property of physical bodies as we experience them. But if the body is not physical, will it not take something other than a physical fire to hurt it? In fact, if the body is not physical, will the pain be physical? Therefore, the scenario of a physical body burning in a physical fire is a metaphor at least to this degree.!

(5) A preacher is said to be “on fire”. Who would interpret the fire as physical? If a news reporter hears it, and reports that the deacons doused him with gas and lit him up, what will viewers think? What a bizarre interpretation! Perhaps those who heard Jesus would have thought it bizarre to interpret His descriptions of Hell as literal physical fire. Traditionalists suggest the “fire” metaphor is used because Jesus meant to describe the worst possible experience, and fire is the worst experience on Earth. For example, Mark 9:43-48 says cutting off your own hand is better than being in Hell Fire. Will the theology professors step forward to defend the crazy reporter, explaining that what he meant to say was that the pastor gave the worst possible sermon, beyond the capacity of human words to describe, so the reporter described it using, for his metaphor, the worst possible human experience: fire? The Bible doesn’t even say “fire” is the worst possible experience. It says “fire” describes the first coming of Jesus. Was Jesus’ first coming the worst possible experience? Well, for the priests whom he came to purify, it was as hot as “hot” gets!

Hell is hotter than mere physical fire.

Be careful. Don’t think, just because “fire”, in the Bible, is a metaphor of something else, that it is a metaphor of something gentler. Abandon hope!

Judging from the reaction of Jesus’ enemies, who included the religious hierarchy, Jesus could have thrown them all into a lake of literal fire and they wouldn’t have screamed any louder.

The purification in Malachi is described as a terrible experience. “Who may abide” the pain? Doesn’t that description of the process of purification have a lot in common with the experience of Hell? Yet those purified are God’s Levitical priests!

Fire benefits those burned. It purifies.

Purification, Malachi 3. Sanctification, Luke 3. Correction, Hebrews 12. Glorification, 1 Peter 4. These are the benefits, to those burned, of fire. We will see later that some of the verses about Hell fire describe some of these purposes. For now, I challenge you to think of any verse which says the purposes of Hell fire do not include purification or any of its synonyms.

The fact is that whenever the Bible specifies any purpose for fire, whether in or out of Hell, it is some form of purification. Never does the Bible specify that God uses any kind of fire, anywhere or at any time, without this purpose.

Certainly the doctrine, that each and every person who goes to Hell will remain there forever, implies that Hell never rehabilitates or purifies, since it would seem unreasonable for God to keep someone in Hell who has been purified. But the assumption that Hell’s purpose is pure torture, without any potential purification or rehabilitation of any kind, imposes on theology a purpose never given by God and contrary to the only purposes God ever gave.

The linguistic link between the Biblical word “fire” and the concept of purification is the fact that the very Greek word from which the KJV “fire” is almost always translated is spelled, in Greek, (pur), which is almost the same as our word “pure”. The French spell their word for “pure” the same way the Greeks spell their word for fire: “pur”. In Latin, it’s “purus”.

It is traditionally assumed that many verses describing Hell fire are describing a fire which does not purify, whose only purpose is to torture. But no verse specifies either that Hell fire does not purify, or that even the primary purpose of Hell fire, much less its only purpose, is to torture. (The word “torment” will be examined later.) However, the Bible makes clear that the fire God is talking about is the occasion of great pain to those who resist it, though it is not clear that the pain is physical. (Article #2 will show how the same purifying pain is caused by rebuke and by “light”.)

Fascinating, that the purifying qualities of fire, as used in the Bible, are often acknowledged by traditional voices, so long as such fire is not allowed in Hell. The Interpreter’s Bible, always ready to tease the authority of the Word of God but never willing to depart the comforts of Tradition, toys with this irony in its exposition of Isaiah 33:14:

[Hell Fire is just not going to go over very well today but] the fire of God need not involve any crude insistence on literal flames of judgment; for fire has other uses than that of destruction, and judgment is only one aspect of the work of love. ...Fire purges: that is true, and it can be made both personal and social in its application. Fire refines: and we have seen men and women emerge from trial, discipline, suffering, as pure gold; for a man shall be saved, “yet so as by fire” (1Cor. 3:15). Fire warms and comforts: untold multitudes of cold and lonely spirits have know John Wesley’s experience of the heart “strangely warmed” by the fire of God’s love. Fire illumines: sometimes in lurid light, as a great conflagration reveals the disintegrating structure of a building: sometimes in softer beauty, as when the flaming glory of a sunset sky lights the earth with its radiance....

[George Adam Smith is quoted as asking if we are right to confine] “our horror of the consuming fires of righteousness to the next life?...Righteousness is not an occasional spark; righteousness is the atmosphere. Though our dull eyes see it only now and then strike into flame in the battle of life, and take for granted that it is but the flash of meeting wits or of steel on steel, God’s justice is everywhere, pervasive and pitiless, affecting the combatants far more than they have power to affect one another....When we behold fortune and character go down in the warfare of this world, we ought to remember that it is not always the things we see which are to blame for the fall, but that awful flame which, unseen by common man, has been revealed to the prophets of God.”

Metaphor of Torture and Hope!

Purification is torture to impurity.

Truly, the very teachings which tortured the Pharisees are what we call “the Gospels”, which means the Good News!

Truly, the very Truths which light up the hearts of God’s Children, are the very Flames of Hell to God’s enemies!

This “fire” burns whenever any good idea, judgment, or deed appears in such a way that a contrast is apparent between it and something inferior.

Jesus describes Hell as “Gehenna”, a transliteration of the Hebrew for “Valley of Hinnom”. That was where parents once burned their children to death, sacrificing them to the devil they named “Molech”. In Jesus’ time it was a garbage dump. So the other connotations of Jesus’ metaphor were unspeakable abomination and stench.

Not from the fires! The fires were set to control the stench and disease. Gehenna is not a metaphor of clean, decent people thrown among stench and abomination. Gehenna is a metaphor of stinking, disgusting people, who have not had a bath for decades and scream at the very sound of running water, thrown kicking and cursing into a spiritual shower!

Just picture the rage of an ACLU lawyer over a nativity scene, past which he is racing at 40 miles per hour, and you get a glimpse of his agony in Hell surrounded by the “Consuming Fire” which is God. (Hebrews 12:29)

The maggots and germs didn’t like Gehenna’s fires. Sensible humans didn’t like Gehenna’s maggots and germs. Just so in Hell.

For spiritual maggots, Hell will be far worse than any fire! Fire merely hurts physically, but Hell will really – but more about that later.

Today Gehenna is a lush garden outside Jerusalem. In fact, this very land which Jesus chose as a metaphor of Hell is, today, the only valley adjacent to Jerusalem which has lush grass, trees, bushes, and flowers! Did Jesus mean to choose a metaphor of hope?

“Fire” in Malachi is a metaphor of hope! In sight is not the pain of which the dross screams, but the gold made pure! Fire is a wonderful experience for gold! How can fire in Hell not remind us of the gold being purified? The hope of spiritual adults transcends the childish screams of spiritual tantrums punished in Love.

B. Light, Fire, Reproof: for All.

What is it about mere Truth and Love that causes lovers of darkness to scream so? (This sample does not include the rest of this section.)

But if Hell Fire has no power to inflict torture except to the extent of our resistance to it, why should saints avoid Hell?