Destruction Of The Wicked On The Judgment Day

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Emanuel12

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What do you think about that many Protestants believe that dead people dont go to heaven or hell but remain dormant until the Judgemend Day. And when the Judgemend day comes, the wicked will be burned in hell but only until they turn into ashes. In other words they will be destroyed and not suffer an eternity in hell. Is this truly biblical ?
 
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Emanuel12 said:
What do you think about that many Protestants believe that dead people dont go to heaven or hell but remain dorment until the Judgemend Day.
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What Protestants believe that today ? Just curious, as I am not familiar with US Protestantism.

At the time of Reformation, John Calvin wrote a rather incendiary book against that belief (Psychopannychia), which was then hold by a few Anabaptists, and which, by the way, had been explicitly condemned by the 5th Lateran council a few decades earlier.
 
According to JW’s it is biblical.

In my opinion they water everything down. Jesus is god not God, mighty God not Almighty God, created not full creator ( He is highest angel).

Heaven is only for 144,000, paradise on earth, like Adam and Eve’s garden is for the rest of believers. Hell is only temporary, until you are extinguished.

Man is not intrinsically eternal…the soul and spirit can die, as in hell, or when we die.

Communion is only once a year, and can only be had by very few today, one of the annointed 144,000, who were born by 1925, when number was reached.

So they water down the nature of God and Jesus, the nature of man, the nature of our destiny.
 
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Emanuel12 said:
What do you think about that many Protestants believe that dead people dont go to heaven or hell but remain dormant until the Judgemend Day. And when the Judgemend day comes, the wicked will be burned in hell but only until they turn into ashes. In other words they will be destroyed and not suffer an eternity in hell. Is this truly biblical ?
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You’re conflating two separate beliefs here. The first is known as “soul sleep”–the idea being that when we die we “sleep” until the day of judgment when we then go to either heaven or hell.

The second belief is known as annihilationism–the idea that God does not damn people to hell eternally but that they are destroyed (i.e annihilated).

Both of these beliefs I would consider fringe beliefs. They aren’t beliefs held by any major Protestant denominations.
 
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What I think is that my business is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my mind, and with all my strength, and to love my neighbour as myself. 😉 And I hope that God will raise me up to eternal life, not eternal death.

And I’ll leave it until then to find out precisely what “eternal death” entails. We know that one way or another it’s a ‘don’t want it’ situation, haha – so let’s just focus on the pragmatic steps to avoiding it!

If you want to play intellectual gymnastics though, hm. What I think personally is that the Bible (and specifically, Jesus’ words) does not seem to support the annihilationist view. For just one example (see Luke 14:15-23) the parable of the Wedding Banquet. This parable is told in two versions, one in Matthew, one in Luke. In Matthew, Jesus describes those who were invited to the feast (but reject the invitation) as thrown outside into darkness, where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. In Luke, Jesus describes that those who were initially invited to the feast (but refused to attend) will still, in the end, be forced to attend (because God desires His “house to be full”) – but they will not be able to taste the banquet itself.

Both endings of the same parable really jive, to me, into one kinda horrific, consistent picture. Think of those who were invited to the wedding banquet (Christ’s flesh and blood, in the Eucharist, by which we will be fed with eternal life, and live in one-body ‘marital’ union with Christ for eternity, bridegroom and bride) – but rejected the invitation. Christ does NOT say that those who reject the invitation will just cease to exist. Rather, he paints a picture of continued existence and presence (because God desires His house to be “full”, and will indeed compel the continued presence of all His created beings, to persist in existence) – but with those who reject the opportunity to feed at the wedding banquet of life (Christ himself), the continued presence will be a sorrowful lurking in darkness at the outskirts of the room; weeping and “gnashing teeth” which sounds to me like trying to chew on food but there is no food between one’s teeth.

It may be a “hard teaching”, but many of the truths Christ taught us were. I think when we first accept the truth of Jesus Christ, and know his love, we can be prepared to understand how seemingly horrible things can actually be part of the good plans of a truly good God. I hope you can avoid this being a stumbling block for you, if it currently is one (and again, in the end: I would focus on the bottom line which is, love God and love neighbour as yourself! Trust and obey Christ as part of your love for him. Seek your own salvation, and that of others. And wait to find out all the detailed specifics of the next life, in the next life).
 
Edit: to summarize, I think Jesus himself settles this question pretty decisively, and maybe spending some time in prayer with the words of God Himself might help you as you consider this question?
… “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”
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Jesus says both that in the end, God’s house will be full (with EVERYONE who was invited to the banquet – not just those who accepted the invitation) – but that those who didn’t accept the invitation will be unable to eat of the banquet, and will persist in their presence, weeping and gnashing their teeth in darkness.

I don’t honestly think there’s any way to start from the Bible, or to start from the universal and unchanging teachings of the Church Jesus founded, and come to the conclusion that the wicked get to evade suffering by simply being erased from existence. I think the only way people hold that position, is they start with wanting it to be true, and then they try their hardest to justify that belief, trying to find any way it could possibly be true (and ignoring the mountains of evidence that it isn’t true). I think we can all relate to the emotional impulse (of thinking we know better than God, or that anything that seems good to us MUST be good in God’s eyes, as if we are the measure of what is good, rather than God being the measure) – but that is a false and dangerous premise to form one’s beliefs on, and seems to lead away from Christ and the truth, not towards him.
 
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