REASON #20
If a wicked person dies in the flames of Gehenna fire, it will be as though he had never been.
Obadiah 15-16 15 ‘For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as you have done, it shall be done unto you: your reward shall return upon your own head.
16 For as you have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yes, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been.’
This is the ‘day of the LORD’ or ‘last day’ or ‘Judgment Day’ spoken of by none other than Jesus himself in John 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believes on me, believes not on me, but on him that sent me.
45 And he that sees me sees him that sent me.
46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believes on me should not abide in darkness. 47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
48 He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
It is the resurrection day he is referring to. If they are judged unworthy of eternal life they will be ‘as though they had not been.’ Jesus is the Judge and his judgment is righteous. He can kill and make it stick.
This sounds a lot more like annihilation than eternal conscious torment in the flames of Hell. Jesus is the Righteous Judge as it is written in John 5: 22 ‘For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son:
23 that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father which has sent him.’
If Obadiah believed in eternal conscious torment, he should have said something like this: ‘and they shall go to their eternal reward of conscious torment.’ But he did not. Neither did any other writer of a single page recorded in the Bible.
The truth is, this foul, blasphemous dogma is nowhere to be found in the ‘Old’ Testament. It is not in any of the writings of the apostle Paul who wrote twelve of the books of the ‘New’ Testament and when understood properly, it is not in the Bible anywhere. Let it go where it belongs: the city dump. (Gr. Gehenna)