Reason #5 God himself declared: ‘The wicked 'shall sleep a perpetual sleep and NOT AWAKE.’
God himself declared: ‘The wicked 'shall sleep a perpetual sleep and NOT AWAKE'. In Jeremiah 51:36-9, 55-58 the LORD says: 36 ‘Therefore thus says the LORD; Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you (Zion); and I will dry up her sea (Babylon’s sea), and make her springs dry.
37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant. 38 They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps. 39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, says the LORD.
55 Because the LORD hath spoiled Babylon, and destroyed out of her the great voice; when her waves do roar like great waters, a noise of their voice is uttered: 56 Because the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, every one of their bows is broken: for the LORD God of recompenses shall surely requite.
57 And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, says the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts. 58 Thus says the LORD of hosts; the broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.'
No one can be asleep and awake at the same time. Therefore, they cannot be awake, suffering conscious torture in the flames of Hell fire, and be asleep in the second death at the same time.
And since God, who cannot lie, said he would make this ‘sleep’ of death perpetual, they will remain unconscious for all time to come. He put his own identifying name on this! He is the One who said it and then confirmed it with his own signature! Yet we still refuse to believe him. Pity.
It’s permanent annihilation or permanent death and thus Hell is not a permanent place of conscious torture and torment, contrary to popular belief. Again, it all boils down to who are you and I going to believe? Is orthodoxy more important than truth?
I happened to be talking to a pastor about the idea of him giving up on the blasphemous Hell doctrine. Of course he disagreed with me, saying he would not give it up.
I told him ‘Of course you won’t. You can’t because your income is directly tied to it.’ This provoked a defensive response:
He said ‘No. It’s not about the money. It’s about orthodoxy.’ I think what he means by ‘orthodoxy’ and what I mean by it are two different things. He may think it means ‘doctrinal accuracy’ while I think it means ‘traditional accepted practice or belief’.
Tradition is not truth. I want truth and I despise tradition as did Jesus.
Notice Matthew 15: 1 ‘Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, 2 Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
3 But he answered and said unto them, ‘Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? 4 For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and mother: and, He that curses father or mother, let him die the death.
5 But you say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever you might be profited by me; 6 And honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
7 You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, 8 ‘these people draw near unto me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. 9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’
Clearly Jesus hated tradition but loved truth. So should we.
The truth is there is no such thing in the entire Bible as 'eternal conscious torment'. A god that would torture hapless and helpless people (or even purely evil people) for all time to come makes God worse than Satan. This deception is the mother of all deceptions.
It is a blasphemous LIE and should be abandoned by the church. Even Pope John Paul II, speaking about the 'Hell Doctrine', admitted 'We made it up.'
But the Christian church, loved the idea of it so much, they refuse to this day to remove it. Why? because it scares people into the pews and out of their money, while the pastorate laughs all the way to the bank!
They rule the people by making them unsure of their salvation and threatening that the unsaved go to be burnt everyday in the flames of Hell, where they feel pain 100 times greater than anything they could feel on Earth, yet without end or escape.
My question is: 'Where in the Bible would we be able to find even one hint of such an idea?'
The correct answer is NOWHERE!
Then, pastors bring up Luke 16:19-31, the famous Parable Jesus gave us about the Rich Man and Lazarus. But this beautiful parable is not about eternal life in hell. It's about corroborating the validity of the Old Testament. See verse 31.
I cover this more thoroughly in Reason #13.
I once had a conversation with a Pastor who had been teaching this foul and horrible lie for many years. He did not want to talk about it!
He told me 'I don't have time to study into it!' A Pastor, sermon writer and deliverer doesn't have time to study into it?! This to me is a travesty of righteousness. It's an atrocity and an absolute absurdity, bordering on a crime against humanity!
Yet, they are not the least bit interested in truth. The pastors, wanting to retain their jobs, MUST continue to teach the hell myth because they must answer to the Elders of the church and the congregation who started coming to the church believing the dogma.
They cannot make waves or upset the apple cart, or they would instantly loose their jobs. They would suffer getting 'sidelined', ousted, fired, embarrassed and disgraced.
Must we be so frightened by the truth? That should be our first responsibility as Pastors.
Jesus taught us 'Those who worship God, must worship him in spirit and IN TRUTH. It was important to Jesus, but not to us!
Our careers, our costly College educations and our reputations are more important to us than truth. In other words, we love the praise of men more than the praise of God! We love our money and security more than God! This is the definition of IDOLATRY!
Of all people, we Pastors should be better than that. Shame on every one who teaches this blasphemy. We are calling our God more evil than Satan! Will it take the return of Jesus Christ to remove the doctrine from our thinking? I imagine it will.
But even then, we humans are so stubborn, we will have a difficult time believing and accepting this truth! I hope you can let it go, now.