Refuting the (Astrophysicist) Critics, Part 5: When Astrophysicists Theologize

It’s been nearly three years since my last article in this series, but I’m returning to it now after being distracted for a while by life’s challenges. Previously, I explored some of the ways astrophysicist and fellow young-earth creationist Jason Lisle inaccurately psychologizes conditionalists, mischaracterizes their position, and philosophizes poorly in defense of eternal torment; now I turn to that which matters more than anything thus far: Lisle’s mishandling of the biblical data. Even if everything else I’ve written is true, the Bible could still teach the doctrine of eternal torment, and Christians would be obligated to accept it. As it turns out, the Bible doesn’t teach the doctrine; it teaches conditionalism—even in the passages Lisle thinks contradict it.

For the reader’s convenience, the texts Lisle discusses are in their canonical order below. Where he treats multiple texts together, or where multiple texts are closely related, I’ve chosen a representative text for the section header and placed the others in parentheses. And because we at Rethinking Hell have dealt with these texts in numerous articles over the years, I’ll cover these only briefly and link to further reading for those interested in a more exhaustive treatment. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of ground to cover, so settle in and buckle up.

Isaiah 66:24 (and Mark 9:42–48)

Lisle cites Isaiah 66:24 as evidence that the “fire of hell is never quenched.”¹Jason Lisle, “The Good News About Hell,” Biblical Science Institute [blog], February 14, 2020, https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/theology/the-good-news-about-hell/; emphasis added. Jesus quotes this text in a pericope (Mark 9:42–48) in which Lisle observes Jesus saying that hell “consists of unquenchable fire,” and he thinks Jesus says its fire “is never quenched” (v. 48).²Ibid.; italics in original. Rarely if ever does Lisle explain how this language supports his view; he simply recites it, as if merely doing so makes his point. Spoiler alert: It does not.

In the text Jesus is quoting, Isaiah depicts the enemies of God being slain and their corpses being irresistibly consumed by fire and maggots—hardly traditionalism’s picture of resurrected immortals suffering in hell! “For by fire,” Isaiah writes, “will the LORD enter into judgment, and by his sword, with all flesh; and those slain by the LORD shall be many” (66:16; emphasis added). Then, as the conclusion to his book, Isaiah says the righteous “shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against” God (v. 24; emphasis added). Anyone who rightly understands what annihilationists really believe will immediately see that the text seems to support their view, rather than challenge it.

Lisle appears to think that Isaiah and Jesus mean the fires of hell will never die out, but that’s not what quench means; it means put out. When God says his fiery wrath will not be quenched, he means no one will be able to extinguish it. And because no one will be able to extinguish it, it will do what the fire is meant to do: completely burn up its target (Ezek 20:47–48; Jer 17:27; Amos 5:6). Thus, Jesus calls hell “the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43; emphasis added), the adjective asbestos appearing elsewhere only on the lips of John the Baptist, who says this fire will “burn up” the chaff (Matt 3:12; Luke 3:17; NASB). The verb is katakaiō, and unlike its root verb kaiō, which means simply “to burn,” katakaiō is more intense and means “to destroy something by burning—‘to burn something down, to burn something up, to reduce to ashes.”³Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida (eds.), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, vol. 1, Introduction and Domains, 2nd ed. (United Bible Societies, 1988), 177–8.

In Mark 9:47–48, Jesus suggests Isaiah’s gruesome scene depicts what will happen in Gehenna (Gk. geenna), a toponym for hell that derives from the name of the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom; it’s therefore reasonable to conclude, as Lisle does, that the unsaved “will be dumped . . . into a place much like the Valley of Hinnom.”⁴Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” However, this valley was not “a dumping ground for the sewage and garbage of Jerusalem”;⁵Ibid. Lisle here repeats a debunked myth.⁶Peter M. Head, “The Duration of Divine Judgment in the New Testament,” in “The Reader Must Understand”: Eschatology in Bible and Theology, edited by Kent E. Brower and Mark W. Elliott (Inter-Varsity Press, 1997), 223; Lloyd R. Bailey, “Gehenna: The Topography of Hell,” Biblical Archaeologist 49 (September, 1986), 189. Rather, Jesus’s Gehenna warnings evoke Isaiah’s picture, in which the lifeless corpses of God’s slain enemies are completely devoured by fire and maggots. They evoke the picture painted by Jeremiah, who prophesies that the valley would one day be called “the Valley of Slaughter,” where “the dead bodies of this people will be food” for beasts and birds (Jer 7:32–33). It’s difficult to imagine a clearer picture of annihilation.

Daniel 12:2

According to Lisle, “Daniel 12:2 confirms that just as believers experience eternal life, so unbelievers experience eternal contempt.”⁷Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” Of course, someone who has ceased to consciously exist cannot experience anything at all. Ergo, if Lisle is right, it’s game over for conditional immortality. In fact, however, Daniel says no such thing.

Daniel does indeed say that the unrighteous will be raised “to shame and everlasting contempt,” but only “contempt” is qualified as “everlasting,” and it’s how the wicked are perceived or remembered, not what they experience. The word dērāʾôn means “abhorrence,” deriving from a Semitic root that means “repel.”⁸Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Clarendon, 1977), 201. That which is dērāʾôn is abhorrent—repugnant, disgusting, revolting—repelling those who therefore experience contempt—scorn, disdain, antipathy. Thus, the word is used in only one other place, where it describes the corpses of God’s slain enemies as an “abhorrence” to the righteous, who remain alive (Isa 66:24). The risen wicked will indeed experience shame, as they are publicly judged and proven guilty of their despicable crimes against God and humankind. But they will be the objects of contempt forever, not its subjects. For after they are executed, never to live or experience anything ever again, they will be forever remembered with disgust by God and his people, the latter having been granted eternal life.

Malachi 4:3

An annihilationist wrote to Lisle, saying, “Malachi clearly states that fire will burn as an oven but at last the sinners will be consumed to ashes.” Lisle responds, “It refers to the physical destruction (death) of unbelievers in this world since it refers to their ‘ashes’ which wouldn’t make sense of their immaterial spirit. The passage does not say that their souls cease to exist.”⁹Jason Lisle, “Denying Eternity,” Biblical Science Institute [blog], January 2, 2023, https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/theology/denying-eternity/; italics in original. This is true, but it’s also moot, and Malachi’s text does indeed present a major challenge to the doctrine of eternal torment.

The traditional view of hell, which Lisle aims to defend, entails the everlasting physical life of the resurrected lost. As I explained previously in this series of articles, “the traditional view anticipates the eternal torment of resurrected immortals, not disembodied, immortal souls.”¹⁰Christopher M. Date, “Refuting the (Astrophysicist) Critics, Part 3: When Astrophysicists Mischaracterize,” Rethinking Hell [blog], February 11, 2023, https://rethinkinghell.com/2023/02/11/refuting-the-astrophysicist-critics-part-3-when-astrophysicists-mischaracterize/. This is true from Athenagoras in the late-second century, who thinks Paul’s language of resurrected immortality in 1 Corinthians 15:54 describes the saved and unsaved alike, to Wayne Grudem in the twenty-first century, who says the resurrected lost will “live forever in hell.”¹¹Athenagoras, “On the Resurrection of the Dead,” 18; Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Zondervan Academic, 2020), 803. Lisle himself admits as much, saying, “Unbelievers will be physically resurrected, but will be cast into the Lake of Fire for eternity.”¹²Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.”

Traditionalists through the centuries have therefore explicitly denied that the bodies of the resurrected lost would be consumed and reduced to ashes. Thomas Aquinas, for example, says their risen bodies “shall never deteriorate and, although burning eternally in fire, they shall never be consumed.”¹³Thomas Aquinas, The Catechetical Instructions of St. Thomas Aquinas, Article 11. Likewise, according to John Gill, “the fire of hell, as it will burn, torture, and distress rebellious sinners, it will preserve them in their beings; they shall not be consumed by it, but continued in it.”¹⁴John Gill, “Mark 9,” An Exposition of the New Testament, vol. 1 (Mathews and Leigh, 1809), 453. The fact that Malachi predicts the wicked will be reduced to ashes in no way suggests he is only talking about this present life, notwithstanding Lisle’s claim to the contrary.

Besides, this passage in Malachi is clearly about final judgment. Leading into it, the Lord acknowledges how unjust it is that, in this life, the wicked often flourish and get away with their evil. “Evil-doers not only prosper,” laments Israel, “but they put God to the test and they escape” (Mal 3:15). But God promises to remedy this injustice one day. “Then once more,” he says to Israel, “you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked. For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze” (3:18—4:1). It’s only at the final judgment that all the wrongs in this world will be righted, when the wicked no longer thrive and elude justice.

Malachi isn’t the only biblical author to warn that the unsaved will be burned up by fire. Peter says that “by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly” (2 Pet 2:6). As previously noted, the Greek word katakaiō means to burn up and reduce to ashes, and Jesus says this is what will happen to unrepentant sinners at the end of the age (Matt 13:30, 40). Unless Lisle wishes to argue for a novel, fringe variation of eternal torment, in which the wicked are never resurrected and instead suffer in hell forever as disembodied souls, his treatment of Malachi 4:3 is seriously misguided.

Matthew 5:29–30 (and 18:8–9; Mark 9:45, 47)

“Christ affirms,” Lisle claims, “that hell is worse than being physically impaired (Matthew 5:29, 30, 18:9; Mark 9:45, 47),” but this isn’t the whole story.¹⁵Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” Yes, Jesus says it’s better to be maimed and to be thrown into hell (Matt 5:29–30), but that’s on the assumption that the one so maimed will “enter life” (18:8–9; Mark 9:43, 47), whereas the one sent to hell will not enter life. As Leon Morris puts it, “it is better to be alive with an impaired body than to be destined for hell.”¹⁶Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 1992), 463; emphasis added. No wonder that Jesus says the alternative to life is to be slain and have one’s corpse ingloriously devoured by fire and maggots, the picture painted by the prophecy he quotes (Mark 9:47–48; cf. Isa 66:24). The choice, then, is not between a good life and a bad one; it’s between life and death—full stop.

In all three of these passages, Jesus identifies the avoidable destination with the toponym Gehenna, which (as explained above) alludes to the OT eschatological picture of God slaying his enemies and destroying their remains. In Matthew 18:8–9, Jesus uses parallelism to identify Gehenna with “the eternal fire,” suggesting that eternal fire is therefore the fatal fire of divine judgment, not fire in which immortals burn alive forever. This is consistent with how the phrase and similar ones are used elsewhere. Isaiah, for example, warns of “everlasting flames,” which are synonymous with a “devouring fire” no one can withstand (33:14). Targum Isaiah even identifies this “everlasting burning” as Gehenna.

Yes, hell is worse than being physically impaired, and it’s called “eternal fire.” But the reason it’s worse than being maimed isn’t because it’s more painful, nor is it called “eternal fire” because its fuel is never depleted. Rather, it’s worse because one who’s maimed goes on living, but hell kills; and it’s “eternal fire” because it issues forth from God, the quintessential eternal, consuming fire (cf., Deut 4:24; Heb 12:29). The doctrine of eternal torment finds no support here.

Matthew 8:12 (and 13:42–43; 22:13; 25:30)

“Jesus also refers to hell as a place of ‘outer darkness,’” Lisle observes, “where there will be ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30).” He goes on to include another text: “Jesus explains that on Judgment Day, His angels will gather the unrighteous like weeds and ‘will throw them into the furnace of fire’ (Matthew 13:42). He continues with His often-used description of the agony of hell: that ‘there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” Lisle’s conclusion? “Hell is clearly a place of agony and torment.”¹⁷Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” A closer look reveals, in fact, that Jesus’s expression captures the sadness and anger felt by those who discover, on the Last Day, that they’re about to finally die forever, rather than live forever in God’s kingdom.

The phrase “outer darkness” is not a euphemism for hell; it is “the darkness outside” the wedding hall in a parable’s earthly setting.¹⁸John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Eerdmans; Paternoster, 2005), 891. What will happen there is unstated, but if people are bound “hand and foot” (Matt 22:13) and thrown outside into the dark, cold night in first-century Judea, they are sure to die of exposure, be eaten by beasts, or be robbed and left for dead by bandits (cf., Luke 10:30–32). There is no indication that anyone will live and suffer there forever.

The expression “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is also connected with being burned to death in a “furnace of fire” (Matt 13:42, 50). Lacking divine protection, such a furnace will violently kill anyone thrown into it (cf., Dan 3:19–30). Indeed, “Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire,” Jesus says, “so will it be” (Matt 13:40), interpreting a parable (vv. 24–30) in which weeds are burned up (katakaiō). Moreover, the predicted event’s setting “at the end of the age” (v. 40) suggests that everything Jesus describes, from the furnace to those cast into it, will end with this present age (cf., Luke 13:28). By contrast, the age thereafter will be endless, the creator having lovingly transformed the entirety of his cosmic kingdom (Matt 13:43).

Mateo 10:28

Concerning Jesus’s warning in Matthew 10:28, that God “can destroy both soul and body in hell,” Lisle writes, “this word [destroy] never means ‘cease to exist’ but rather refers to something that is ruined or lost in the sense that it does not function as designed.”¹⁹Jason Lisle, “Interpreting the Bible’s Teaching on the Eternal State,” Biblical Science Institute [blog], January 20, 2023, https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/theology/interpreting-the-bibles-teaching-on-the-eternal-state/; italics in original. Lisle doesn’t cite any annihilationist who claims “destroy” means “cease to exist” here, nor does he point to any lexicons in support of his sweeping claim about the word (“this word never means…”). The only evidence he offers is the fact that the cognate noun “destruction” awaits the beast of Revelation (17:8, 11), “yet Revelation 20:10 states that this beast will suffer forever in the Lake of Fire.”²⁰Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” As we shall see, Lisle’s bald assertions about the language of destruction are questionable and moot, and his evidence from Revelation fails to prove his point.

The Bible may, in fact, use destruction language to say something ceases to exist. Lisle insists otherwise, arguing, “when an animal is killed, its body no longer functions in the way it was created to function; but its body continues to exist.”²¹Lisle, “Interpreting the Bible’s Teaching on the Eternal State.” However, while this is true of some methods of killing an animal, it is not true of them all; if an animal steps on a live landmine, it will be killed and its body will cease to exist as such. Either way, arguably the animal has ceased to exist. Lisle continues, “when a city is ruined, it no longer functions as a dwelling place for people. But its atoms continue to exist.”²²Ibid. This is true, but so what? The atoms once constituting the now destroyed city still exist, but the city itself does not, any more than a log still exists when it has been burned to ashes in a campfire. Similarly, one might argue that burst wineskins (Matt 9:17) are no longer wineskins, and that food that has rotted away (John 6:27) is no longer food. If something’s constituent parts remain after it has been destroyed, the thing itself may nevertheless be said to have ceased to exist.

Even if one grants Lisle’s semantic claim for the sake of argument, it is in fact moot. Annihilationism’s interpretation of Matthew 10:28 doesn’t entail that “destroy” means “cause to cease to exist”; it entails that it means to slay or kill—precisely what Jason Lisle thinks God will never do to the resurrected lost in hell. As explained above (under “Malachi 4:3”), Lisle’s traditional view of hell anticipates the resurrected lost being rendered immortal so as to live forever in hell. But here Jesus uses the word translated “destroy” (apollymi) in the active voice and transitively with a person as the direct object, and in the Synoptic Gospels this use of the word means to kill. Thus, for example, an angel tells Jesus’ father, “Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy [apollymi] him” (Matt 2:13); and Matthew records that “the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy [apollymi] Jesus” (Matt 27:20).

So, God is going to kill the bodies and souls of the risen wicked in hell. What is a dead body? It’s one that’s been rendered inert, inanimate, inactive, motionless, devoid of any life or activity. What, then, is a dead soul? In Christian anthropological dualism, the soul remains conscious after death because, as Jesus indicates in this text, the soul doesn’t die with the body in the first death. But in the second death, if the soul—the person’s substantive consciousness—is rendered as inert, inanimate, inactive, motionless, and devoid of any life or activity as a dead body is, then all conscious experience will come to an end. The person will cease to exist as a conscious being—not because that’s what “destroy” means, but because that’s the result of the soul dying along with the body in the second death.²³This analysis assumes a substance dualist view of human constitution. On a Christian physicalist view, Jesus warns in Matthew 10:28 that humans can kill the body but cannot truly end one’s life (psychē in Mt 2:20; 6:25; 10:39; 16:25; 20:28), while God will finally end the lives of the wicked in hell, and forever.

As for the beast of Revelation, Lisle’s mistake is to ignore the distinction between a prophetic vision’s imagery and its interpretation. This distinction will be explained in greater detail below when treating the passages in Revelation. For now, suffice it to say that while John indeed sees the beast tormented forever and ever (Rev 20:10), that is part of the prophetic symbolism in the vision; the beast’s “destruction” (17:8, 11), however, is foretold by an angel while interpreting what John sees (17:7–18). Lisle is therefore wrong: “destruction” doesn’t describe the beast’s torment, it describes that which its torment symbolizes. The beast’s torment in the symbolism in no way informs the meaning of “destruction.”

Matthew 25:41, 46 (and 18:8–9)

Incorrectly assuming that conditionalism and annihilationism posit a final punishment of the wicked that is only finite in duration, Lisle observes that “Jesus says that the fire of hell is eternal (Matthew 18:8, 25:41)” and that “unbelievers ‘will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’ . . . So, if the punishment of unbelievers in hell is not eternal, then believers have no hope of eternal life.”²⁴Lisle, “The Good News About Hell”; emphasis in original. Lisle is right, and this is a compelling argument against universalism, which necessarily entails that final punishment in hell is finite in duration. However, the final punishment of annihilation, inflicted in hell, is infinite in duration; and the passages Lisle cites actually support conditional immortality and challenge Lisle’s own belief in eternal torment.

In conditional immortality, the punishment of annihilation is everlasting capital punishment: the cessation and ongoing privation of life, inflicted by means of execution. The Greek word kolasis, like its English translation “punishment,” is versatile and can refer to various kinds of punishments. Often, it and the cognate verb kolazō, “punish,” refer to the death penalty.²⁵E.g., Wis 3:4; 16:9; 18:11; 2 Macc 4:38; 1 Esdr 8:24; 3 Macc 1:3. In light of humankind’s future resurrection, capital punishment at the hands of men is finite in duration. When God executes the risen wicked, however, it will be an eternal punishment, because they will remain dead forever. In the Talmud, a rabbi thus says that if a mortal king were to kill him, his “sentence of death is not for eternity,” but if God were to do so, his “sentence of death is for eternity” (b. Ber. 28b). Augustine rightly observes that the duration of capital punishment is measured in how long one remains dead after being executed, not in the time it takes to die.²⁶Augustine, City of God 21.11.1. The judicially inflicted and divinely enforced privation of one’s life is therefore an everlasting punishment, by the definitions of both words. And with “eternal punishment” being the alternative to “eternal life,” only the saints can go on living forever; the damned must instead die forever.

The expression “eternal fire” in no way challenges annihilationism. Isaiah’s “everlasting flames” are synonymous with a “devouring fire” no one can withstand (33:14). In the Dead Sea Scrolls, “the gloom of everlasting fire” is synonymous with “destruction” (1QS 2:6–8; 4Q257 2:3–5), the Hebrew kālā(h) meaning “complete destruction, annihilation.”²⁷Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 4 vols. (Brill, 1994–2000), 477. The Testament of Zebulun says “eternal fire” will “destroy” the ungodly (10:3), using the Greek apollymi (“destroy”) in the active and transitive manner that so often communicates execution, as detailed above (in treating Matthew 10:28). As substantiated in detail below, Jesus’ brother Jude uses the phrase “eternal fire” to describe the fire from heaven that killed the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7). Eternal fire need not torment immortals forever; it can—and does—kill and destroy mortals.

Luke 12:4–5 (and Mark 9:42)

Lisle thinks, however, that the punishment of hell cannot be death as ordinarily understood (i.e., physical), because “Christ affirms that hell . . . is even worse than physical death (Luke 12:4–5).”²⁸Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” But this is not quite accurate. Luke 12:4–5 and its parallel in Matthew 10:28 collectively record Jesus saying hell is worse than a death of the body that does not also entail the death of the soul. Even more precisely, Jesus is saying hell is worse than a temporary death, one ending eventually in resurrection unto eternal life. The punishment of annihilation fits perfectly: Whereas the saints will rise from their temporary death and live forever thereafter (for which reason death at men’s hands is not to be feared), the risen lost will be slain in body and soul, and they will never live again.

Lisle’s argument could have appeared stronger had he instead cited Mark 9:42, in which Jesus says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” A surface reading of this text can indeed sound like Jesus is saying the punishment of hell is worse than death. However, this argument would only appear stronger at first, for a slightly closer look reveals its fatal flaw: As the better alternative to hell, being drowned in the sea would be followed by resurrection unto eternal life, which is obviously better than being destroyed forever in hell. In his zeal to rebut a view he doesn’t understand well, Lisle runs with an extremely surface-level reading of the text he therefore also doesn’t understand well.

John 3:15–16, 36 (and 5:24–25; 6:40, 47; 10:28; 17:3)

As a traditionalist, Lisle needs to find a way around the fact that Scripture says eternal life awaits only the saved, while death awaits the lost in hell; so he erects a distinction between physical and spiritual life, arguing that “eternal life” is a spiritual condition not enjoyed by the resurrected lost in hell, even if they physically live forever. Lisle writes, “both believers and unbelievers will be physically resurrected . . . But only believers are spiritually resurrected to enjoy eternal life with God (John 5:24–25, 6:40, 47, 3:15–16, 36, 10:28; Matthew 25:46).”²⁹Lisle, “The Good News About Hell”; emphasis added. However, even if the biblical authors conceived of a difference between physical and spiritual life, Lisle’s maneuver here fails to do justice to the text.

In his parenthetical list of texts, Lisle includes John 3:15–16 as an example allegedly speaking of being raised unto eternal spiritual life, but this reflects a failure to read the text in its context. Verses 15 and 16 immediately follow verse 14, in which the Lord says, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Jesus is referring to the bronze serpent Moses crafted in the wilderness; when Israelites bitten by otherwise fatally venomous snakes merely looked at Moses’ serpent, they would survive (Num 21:9). By comparing himself to this serpent, which (literally and physically) saved Israelite lives, Jesus thereby indicates he (literally and physically) saves lives, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). It’s not impossible Jesus sees himself as saving life in a fundamentally different sense of the word, but Lisle offers no evidence in support of reading Jesus this way; and his choice to begin Jesus’ words mid-sentence, rather than include verse 14, seems suspicious.

Lisle’s citations of other passages here seem intended to substantiate that “eternal life” must be a spiritual condition enjoyed by the saints in the here and now, but this again betrays Lisle’s facile, surface-level reading of the text. Yes, these texts say the believer “has eternal life” (John 3:36; cf. 5:24; 6:47), but this doesn’t mean the redeemed presently possess it, as Lisle assumes it does. Elsewhere, Jesus assures hearers that it is “in the new world” that they “will inherit eternal life” (Matt 19:28–29), or as Mark records him saying, they will receive it “in the age to come” (Mark 10:29). You see, the saved have eternal life now in the sense described by Paul in Ephesians, saying, “In him we have obtained an inheritance . . . [and] were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Eph 1:11–14; emphasis added). Eternal life is ours as a promised inheritance, one we will receive “in the new world” and “in the age to come.”

Though Lisle never cites John 17:3, many traditionalists claim it as support for Lisle’s contention that “eternal life” is a spiritual condition, but this is another facile and therefore failed reading of the text. Jesus says, “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Traditionalists take Jesus to be defining “eternal life,” but he is in fact identifying that which results in eternal life. The copula “is” often identifies the source or cause of something, as in the closing number of the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown: “Happiness is finding a pencil . . . is learning to whistle . . . is playing the drums . . . is walking hand in hand.” This is true in Greek, too:³⁰D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 57–58. Paul tells the Thessalonians, for example, “you are [eimi] our glory and joy!” (1 Thess 2:20), which Jeffrey Weima explains as meaning they are “the source of [Paul’s] pride and joy.”³¹Jeffrey A. D. Weima, 1–2 Thessalonians, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 205; emphasis added. See also Rom 8:6, where the copula is implied. Elsewhere in the Gospel of John, when Jesus uses the copula eimi with zōē (“life”) as a predicate noun, he links them to convey source or cause, not identity. In one of them, Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are [eimi] spirit and life [zōē]” (6:63), meaning “they bring life.”³²Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, NICNT, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 341; emphasis added. On the other occasion, Jesus says his Father’s “commandment is [eimi] life [zōē]” (12:50), which means it “leads to eternal life.”³³D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Apollos, 1991), 453; italics in original. Likewise, in John 17:3, Jesus indicates that knowledge of himself and his Father results in eternal life; or as he says in John 6:51, “Whoever eats of this bread”—that is, whoever comes to him (v. 35)—“will live forever.”

John 11:25–26 (and 8:51; 10:28)

Lisle also thinks Jesus promises his followers that, from this very moment on, they will “never die”; and since they do all physically die, Jesus must have spiritual death in mind. Explains Lisle, “Jesus can say of those who are saved, they will die but will live again (physically), and will never die (spiritually)—see John 11:25–26.”³⁴Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” English translations do indeed render Jesus’ words here as, “everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (ESV); and similarly, they translate him elsewhere saying they “will never see death” (John 8:51; ESV), and “they will never perish” (John 10:28; ESV). However, a slightly closer look shows that, in his zeal to defend his tradition, Lisle neglects the context of Jesus’ words and the original Greek with which Jesus’ biographers capture them.

Even if Jesus promises that his followers will “never die” and “never perish”—a claim I will dispute shortly—he’s saying they will never die after being raised from the dead. This is all but explicit in John 11:25–26. “Whoever believes in me,” Jesus explains, “though he die, yet shall he live.” So, the believer will die and then “live,” be raised back to life in resurrection. Jesus continues, “and everyone who lives and believes in me”—that is, those believers who will have come back to life in resurrection—”shall never die.” As traditionalist Leon Morris puts it, “believers will not die in the sense in which death has eternal significance. They will not die in the age to come.”³⁵Morris, The Gospel According to John, 489; emphasis added. Lisle’s failure to consider the context leads him to misread Jesus’ words.

Still, the translations “never die,” “never see death,” and “never perish” are dubious to begin with; something like “never die forever” is more accurate. Jesus says the redeemed ou mē apothanē, “will never die” (John 11:26); a believer thanaton ou mē theōrēsē, “will never see death” (8:50); and believers ou mē apolōntai—“will never perish” (10:28). But each of these expressions continues with eis ton aiōna, “into the age” or “forever.” The double negative ou mē is what gets translated “never,” and most translations ignore the subsequent prepositional phrase eis ton aiōna. Faithlife’s Lexham English Bible is an exception, translating the prepositional phrase “⌊forever⌋” in each verse. However, it encloses “forever” in lower corner brackets because the translators think it’s an unnecessarily literalistic translation, the underlying prepositional phrase thought to go with ou mē as part of an idiom meaning “never.” Yet, the same translators evidently thought it necessary to translate the phrase in John 4:14, in which Jesus says one who drinks his water “will never [ou mē] be thirsty for eternity [eis ton aiōna]” (emphasis added). Meanwhile, when John writes ou mē without eis ton aiōna, translators typically still render ou mē “never” (4:48; 6:35, 37; 8:12; 10:5; 20:25). If ou mē by itself is so frequently enough to translate as “never,” the prepositional phrase eis ton aiōna surely means something: Christ-followers will never die forever; they will never see death forever; they will never perish forever. They will die, but they will one day rise immortal and live forever thereafter. But when the lost rise and are judged guilty of their sins, they will die again, and forever—contrary to Lisle’s traditionalist position.

Romanos 6:23

In a dialogue with an annihilationist that Lisle published (hopefully with his interlocutor’s permission), Lisle claims to have no idea why annihilationists cite Romans 6:23, in which Paul says, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In response to his interlocutor arguing from this text, Lisle begins, “Why Skylar thinks this somehow supports annihilationism is a mystery.”³⁶Lisle, “Interpreting the Bible’s Teaching on the Eternal State.” In reality, what proves to be a mystery is just how Lisle thinks his subsequent response qualifies as any sort of meaningful rebuttal. It really isn’t; and Romans 6:23 is indeed a challenge to the tradition of eternal torment.

It’s difficult to discern Lisle’s logic in his rebuttal to Skylar. “The eternal life believers enjoy in Christ,” Lisle writes, “does not mean that we don’t physically die. Rather, after death, we are resurrected to eternal life with God.”³⁷Ibid. Well which is it, Lisle? The first of these sentences suggests you think believers possess eternal life now, but the second suggests you think we receive it in the resurrection. If you think it’s the former, then the second sentence is superfluous and adds nothing, and I’ll simply point you to my treatment of John 3:15–16, 36 above. But if you think it’s the latter, and we receive eternal life in the resurrection, then eternal life does mean we don’t physically die, because we won’t physically die after being resurrected unto it. And in this case, Skylar’s argument for annihilationism is obvious: if only the saved will rise unto eternal life—physical life forever—then the risen lost must not remain physically alive forever; they must instead literally die a second time, “death” being “the wages of sin.”

Setting aside Lisle’s unintelligible rebuttal, the fact is that when Paul says “the wages of sin is death,” he means death as ordinarily understood: physical death. As most Christians are aware, the original text of Scripture included no chapter or verse divisions. This means that Paul’s words in Romans 6:23 are immediately followed by his words in 7:1–2. In them, Paul says “the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives,” and “if [a wife’s] husband dies she is released from the law of marriage” (emphasis added). What, then, does Paul mean by “life” and “death” only a few words earlier? Exactly what they sound like: life and death as ordinarily understood—physical life and death. Therefore, as punishment for their sins, the risen lost will literally die, whereas the resurrected saints will live forever.

2 Thessalonians 1:8–9

By now it should be clear that Lisle doesn’t really understand the view he’s critiquing, and his treatment of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is a case in point. He writes, “note that 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that unbelievers will ‘pay the penalty of eternal destruction.’ So, the kind of destruction that unbelievers experience in hell lasts forever. They do not cease to exist after a finite amount of time.”³⁸Lisle, “The Good News About Hell”; emphasis in original. Sadly, Lisle exhibits no evidence of having tried to find out what we conditionalists think about this passage. Evidently, he assumes that we think the destruction meted out in hell will be finite in duration, and that the “destruction” Paul has in mind is a process of destroying living people who never die because the process is never completed. Both assumptions are mistaken.

Nearly ten years before Lisle published his articles, Edward Fudge published the third edition of The Fire That Consumes, which would have disabused Lisle of his mistaken assumptions had he taken the time to consult it. Fudge is clear that the destruction meted out in hell is indeed everlasting. Paul’s “everlasting destruction,” Fudge writes, is “a non-existence as eternal as the eternal existence of the redeemed to whom God gives immortality and eternal life.”³⁹Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, 3rd ed. (Cascade, 2011), 197–8. Critically, the noun “destruction” sometimes refers to a process of destroying, but other times it names the result of that process. Thus the definition, “the act of destroying something, or the state of being destroyed.”⁴⁰Collins English Dictionary, s.v. “destruction,” accessed December 31, 2025, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/destruction; emphasis added. For example, when a news headline says something like, “Tornado leaves trail of destruction,” the noun “destruction” refers to the result of a tornado destroying everything.⁴¹“Tornado Leaves Trail of Destruction in Macon County as Cleanup Efforts Begin,” FOX Illinois, published December 29, 2025, https://foxillinois.com/news/local/tornado-leaves-trail-of-destruction-in-macon-county-as-cleanup-efforts-begin. Fudge applies this observation to the text in question: “The adjective ‘eternal’ does not describe the action of a verb. It modifies destruction—a noun that names the result of the action that the noun necessarily implies (‘destroy’). The punctiliar action (annihilate) is not ‘eternal’ but its consequence (non-existence) is.”⁴²Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 198; italics in original. Lisle gains nothing by observing what conditionalists like Fudge already acknowledge, that final punishment consists of truly everlasting destruction.

Lisle’s second assumption, that Paul has in mind a never-completed process of destroying living people, is likewise mistaken;⁴³It’s not clear this concept is intelligible to begin with. What sense does it make to speak of destroying something perpetually if it is never destroyed? for Paul’s allusion to the OT makes clear he has in mind the result of a process that kills the wicked. Leading into the verse in question, Paul writes of “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire [en puri flogos], inflicting vengeance [didontos ekdikēsin]” (2 Thess 1:7–8; emphasis added). The italicized expressions appear together in only one other place, namely, the LXX translation of Isaiah 66:15. There, readers are told, “the Lord will come as fire, and his chariots as a storm, to render his vengeance [apodounai ekdikēsin] with wrath, and his rebuke with a flame of fire [en flogi puros].” The expressions are the same, notwithstanding minor grammatical differences. Then, the next verse says, “those slain [traumatiai] by the Lord shall be many” (v. 16; LXX), and the scene ends with “the corpses [kōla] of the men that have transgressed against” God (v. 24; LXX). Paul’s allusion to this passage makes clear that by “everlasting destruction” he means having been slain and destroyed forever—which Lisle thinks will never happen to the risen wicked.

Hebrews 6:2

Lisle makes the same mistakes when he comes to Hebrews 6:2. “Hebrews 6:2 likewise teaches that the judgment of unbelievers is eternal,” he writes.⁴⁴Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” But again, Fudge is clear in affirming a truly everlasting judgment: “The act of judging will certainly not last forever. However, the judging (action) will produce a judgement (result)—and that result will never end.”⁴⁵Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 40. Lisle evinces no familiarity with this standard annihilationist reading. And Fudge is right: “The Bible pictures the judging as taking place on a specific ‘day’ fixed by God (Acts 17:31; Rom 2:16; 2 Tim 4:8; 1 John 4:17).”⁴⁶Ibid. Even Revelation 20:11–15 depicts a judging process finite in duration, after which the lost are thrown into the lake of fire forever. Lisle’s seeming assumption, that the author of Hebrews has in mind a never-ending process of judging, rests on thin air.

Jude 7, 13

Lisle thinks his tradition finds support in the little Book of Jude. “Jude 7,” Lisle insists, “indicates that the sinful inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah will experience ‘the punishment of eternal fire.’”⁴⁷Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” And furthermore, “Jude 13 states that the darkness has been reserved for the wicked forever.”⁴⁸Ibid.; italics in original. But as it turns out, Lisle gets Jude completely wrong.

Jude 7 does not, in fact, say the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah will receive the punishment of eternal fire; it says they already did. The verse is translated, “Sodom and Gomorrah . . . serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Lacking the definite article and matching the nominative case of its subjects, the participle hypechousai, “undergoing,” is adverbial and tells readers how the cities serve as an example. Throughout Jewish literature, Sodom and Gomorrah’s punishment, with which readers are assumed to be familiar, is their destruction by divine fire from heaven (Gen 19:24–25).⁴⁹Gen 13:10; Deut 29:23; Is 1:9; 13:19–20; Jer 49:18; 50:40; Lam 4:6; Amos 4:11; Zeph 2:9; Mt 11:23; Lk 17:29; Rom 9:29; 2 Pet 2:6; Wis 10:6; Sir 16:8; 3 Macc 2:5; 2 Esdr 2:8–9; T. Ash. 7:1; T. Benj. 9:1; Jub. 16:5–6; 20:5–6; 22:22; 36:9–10. Indeed, by citing them alongside the Exodus (v. 5) and the angelic rebellion in Noah’s day (v. 6), Jude reproduces a series of examples frequently used in intertestamental literature;⁵⁰Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1983), 46. and in it, the past destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by divine fire is always what serves as the example (Sir 16:8; 3 Macc 2:5; Jub. 20:5). Since Jude writes “to remind” readers of what they already know (v. 5), the “punishment of eternal fire” (v. 7) must be death and destruction by divine fire.

As for Jude 13, Lisle appears to mistake the metaphor for that which it represents. Beginning in the preceding verse, Jude utilizes a string of metaphors to variously describe blasphemers. “These are hidden reefs,” “shepherds feeding themselves,” “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees,” “wild waves of the sea,” and finally “wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” The expression “wandering stars” translates asteres planētai, referring to the planets whose movement through the night sky seemed far less regular, far more erratic, than that of the stars. Their wandering, planētai, makes them an apt metaphor for false teachers who wander from God’s ways and cause others to do likewise; or as Paul puts it, are “deceiving [planōntes] and being deceived [planōmenoi]” (2 Tim 3:13). And “the gloom of utter darkness” is part of Jude’s metaphor, referring to the dark night sky in which the planets seem to wander aimlessly forever.

Even if “the gloom of utter darkness” that “has been reserved forever” is a reference to the final punishment awaiting blasphemers (rather than a continuation of the astronomy metaphor), darkness forever is a fitting description of everlasting lifelessness and non-being. Job, for example, in the throes of misery, says, “Let the day perish on which I was born . . . Let that day be darkness . . . Let gloom and deep darkness claim it” (Job 3:3–5). In other words, Job is “seeking to remove the day of his birth from existence”;⁵¹John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 92. of course, this would remove his own existence, too. As a teenage atheist, I believed in no afterlife, and when I tried to imagine not existing any more after my death, all I could picture was endless darkness. If the fate of the wicked is to be slain and destroyed—as Jude has just said happened to Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of final punishment—consignment to utter darkness forever is an appropriate way of characterizing that fate.

Revelation 14:9–11

Finally (in terms of canonical order), Lisle appeals to the Book of Revelation as support for his traditionalist view, beginning with Revelation 14:9–11. “Those in the Lake of Fire,” Lisle writes, “experience eternal agony: ‘And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day or night’ (Revelation 14:11).”⁵²Lisle, “The Good News About Hell”; emphasis in original. But Lisle does not even attempt to exegete the text; he simply quotes it, evidently assuming John’s vision literally records future events. In fact it doesn’t, and Lisle’s choice not to do any exegesis leads him to misinterpret the text.

Where Scripture records prophets being shown the future, it is always by means of perplexing symbols. Joseph sees prostrated bundles of grain and celestial bodies, symbolizing his family’s future submission to him (Gen 37:1–11). In Pharaoh’s dream, gaunt cows devour healthy cows, symbolizing prosperity-interrupting famine in Egypt’s future (Gen 41:14–32). Nebuchadnezzar sees his and future kingdoms symbolized by parts of a giant motley statue (Dan 2:31–45), while Daniel sees them as terrifying beasts (Dan 7). Likewise, in Revelation, John sees stars symbolizing messengers, and lampstands symbolizing churches (1:20); incense symbolizing prayers (5:8); and a beast whose heads and horns symbolize a series of kings (17:9–12). When readers come, then, to scenes recorded in Revelation, they should ask what these scenes symbolize, not merely what they depict.

The images that converge in Revelation 14:9–11 do so again just a few chapters later, where they symbolize death and destruction. There, a blood-drunk, vampiric prostitute (17:3–6), symbolizing “the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (17:18), suffers a remarkably similar fate. Like the beast-worshipers (14:10), she is made to drink from a cup of God’s wrath (18:6);⁵³For the cup containing God’s wrath, see G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 902. like them (14:10), she is tormented in fire (18:7, 10, 15); and like them (14:11), smoke is said to rise from her forever (19:3). Observing this, traditionalist G. K. Beale concludes, “It is perfectly natural that ungodly individuals whose lives were inseparably linked to the great city should also suffer the same fate as that city.”⁵⁴Ibid., 929. Indeed! Yet, that fate is not eternal suffering: an angel interprets the imagery for John, throwing a stone into the sea and saying, “Babylon the great city will be thrown down and will be found no more” (18:21). Yes, the harlot suffers fiery torment in the imagery, but it symbolizes the destruction of the city she represents and the deaths of many of her inhabitants. Readers are given no reason for thinking differently when it comes to the beast-worshipers’ fate depicted earlier.

Readers in the twenty-first century might think such imagery is a strange way to symbolize death and destruction, but first-century Jewish readers, steeped in the OT, would not have been puzzled by it. Drinking God’s wrath, as if from a cup, is used there to describe judgment, sometimes in the form of death-dealing destruction (Obad 16; Jer 25:27). Fiery sulfur kills the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:24; cf., Deut 29:23; Ps 11:6) and functions in prophetic metaphor to consume the Assyrian king’s corpse on a funeral pyre (Is 30:33). Rising smoke frequently signals death and destruction (Gen 19:28; Josh 8:20–21; Judg 20:40). In fact, the land of Edom is turned to sulfur from which smoke rises forever (Is 34:10), a picture of “annihilation” that Beale admits is directly drawn from in Revelation 14:11.⁵⁵G. K. Beale and Sean M. McDonough, “Revelation,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, eds. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 1132. It strains credulity to suggest that these symbols represent the torment of living immortals in Revelation 14:9–11, when later in Revelation and in the OT they instead communicate death and destruction.

Revelation 20:10–15

The other passage in John’s Apocalypse, cited by Lisle as support for eternal torment, is Revelation 20:10–15. “Those who reject God,” he insists, “will . . . pay for their treason for all eternity (Revelation 20:15).”⁵⁶Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” And the “Lake of Fire is also called ‘the second death’ (Revelation 20:14) . . . for hell is the opposite of the eternal life enjoyed by God’s people.”⁵⁷Ibid. Once again, Lisle seems to think Revelation contains a literal record of future events, and he chooses not to do any exegesis, with the result being abject misinterpretation.

Lisle thinks the lake of fire is called “the second death,” but this is an error arising from the choice not to do any exegesis; rather, the lake of fire is interpreted as symbolizing “the second death.” Apocalyptic visions like John’s are notorious for involving “mysterious signs and symbols” and for being so “highly symbolic” that their meanings must be explained to those who see them “by an otherworldly being.”⁵⁸John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1998), 26; 40; 5; italics in original. This process, of explaining the hidden meaning of bizarre visions, is also called interpretation. The “three branches” in the cupbearer’s dream, and the “three baskets” in the baker’s, “are three days” (Gen 40:12, 18); Nebuchadnezzar is told that the tree in his dream “is you, O king” (Dan 4:20–22); the “four great beasts” in Daniel’s vision “are four kings” (Dan 7:17, ESV). Revelation itself contains several other examples: stars “are” angels, and lampstands “are” churches” (1:20); incense bowls “are” prayers (5:8); the heads of a beast “are seven kings” (17:9). So, when John (in 20:14) and God (in 21:8) say the lake of fire “is” the second death, they are telling readers what the lake symbolizes—they are interpreting the vision.

Of course, by its very nature, interpretation of dreams and visions works by explaining in more straightforward or familiar terms the meaning otherwise concealed in the perplexing imagery. Therefore, the phrase “second death” must straightforwardly mean dying a second time; indeed, it will be the second time the vast majority of lost humanity dies. John may also be evoking a proto-targumic tradition in which readers would have understood the phrase to mean literally dying a second time. Traditionalist David Woodington thus reckons the targumim’s occasional use of “second death” to be “the best evidence” for annihilationism, because it is said to preclude life in the coming age (Tg. Onq. and Tg. Neof. Deut 33:6; Tg. Neb. Jer 51:39).⁵⁹J. David Woodington, “Crafting the Eschaton: The Second Death and the Lake of Fire in Revelation,” JSNT 41, no. 4 (2019): 504. Consistently, all of the targumim that mention the second death describe it as an event which ends the lives of the wicked, albeit possibly slowly.

Revelation 20:10–15 does appear to depict eternal torment, but its treatment of death personified demonstrates that it symbolizes the end of all God’s enemies. Earlier in John’s vision, he sees death personified as a horseman and Hades following him like a squire (6:8). Now, death and Hades join the devil and his minions in the lake of fire (20:14). What will happen to them is unstated, but this is true of unsaved humans, too (v. 15), who traditionalists assume will be tormented forever because they’re cast into the same lake of fire that eternally torments the devil, beast, and false prophet (v. 10). Since death and Hades are personified as conscious beings, this assumption should apply equally to them, but their fate in the fire symbolizes the absolute end of the existential threat of death. As a voice from the throne says a few verses later, “Death will be no more” for it has “passed away” (21:4; cf., 1 Cor 15:26; 2 Tim 1:10). The message of Revelation is clear: death will be eradicated. Since the risen wicked are depicted being thrown into the same lake of fire, it must symbolize their eradication, too, and that of all God’s enemies. The lost meet their symbolic, fiery fate (20:15) at basically the same time as death and Hades do (20:14) because they go hand in hand: once the risen saints have been made immortal and the last of God’s enemies have died a second time, the event of death will never again occur.

Conclusión

There is one thing (at least) that Lisle gets right: Christians are called to bend their knee to Scripture and accept the truths it teaches. “Reality does not depend on our wishes or desires,” Lisle rightly observes. “It depends on what God says . . . So, if we want to learn what actually happens after death, we must turn to God’s Word.”⁶⁰Lisle, “The Good News About Hell.” Amen! We at Rethinking Hell could not agree more heartily!

But as we’ve seen here, God’s word consistently, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, and in a variety of ways, teaches that the final punishment awaiting the unsaved in hell will be death—the cessation and ongoing privation of embodied life. And since their souls will be slain along with their bodies (unlike in the first death), their entire conscious existence will come to an end. God will not allow evil to mar his creation forever; he’s too holy for that. The day is coming when his patience will expire, and he will kill and destroy all those who impenitently persist in sin, thereby annihilating wickedness altogether, leaving only goodness and light.

Indeed, even the existential threat of death will finally come to an end. The saints will rise immortal, and they will live forever in a beautiful and glorious cosmos, no longer in a position to fear their impending demise, for they will never die again. Death, like the rest of God’s enemies, will have been destroyed.

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