The Story Behind Hell and Mr. Fudge

When I was ten years old, I decided to be baptized. Despite a godly upbringing in a truly devout Christian home, it was not love for God or His love for me that dragged me down the aisle to do this. It was raw and naked fear.

I knew that someday my final destination would be either heaven or hell. By hell, I mean the traditional view of hell that included conscious, unending torment. The very thought of hell sent chills racing down my spine. As the invitation song played, I pushed my way to the front and blurted out, “I do not want to go to hell. I want God to forgive my sins. I want to be baptized.”

On that Sunday in 1954, I could not have known that a quarter century later I would be hired to research the final fate of the wicked, culminating in a 500-page book titled The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment. When it was published, I certainly had no hint that God would use that book to help spark a restudy of the doctrine of hell among Bible-believing Christians on several continents. And I would have laughed in disbelief had anyone suggested that the story of that book would inspire a feature movie titled Hell and Mr. Fudge.

Nor could anyone have been more astounded at the things I found throughout the Bible during my course of study. It required a change of my own mind that I did not desire. Indeed, I would have happily avoided the entire matter and the chain of events it set off had there been any honest way around it. But in the end there was not another honest way, for truth is more important than anything in this world.

Jesus speaks of some people who “will go away into eternal punishment” and others “to eternal life.” Matt. 25:46, NKJV.¹ The question is not whether the wicked will suffer “eternal punishment,” but what that punishment consists of. Is it unending, conscious torment of an immortal soul, as most of the Christian church has held since at least the time of Augustine? Or might it be to die, perish, and be destroyed in the most ordinary and literal meaning, as the Bible often describes it?

The doctrine of everlasting, conscious torment strikes countless numbers of people, ranging from devout believers to militant atheists, as intuitively and irreconcilably inconsistent with fundamental justice and morality. Noted atheists such as Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew identify the traditional Christian doctrine of hell as a primary reason for disbelief in God and in Jesus Christ. This fact alone does not prove everlasting torment wrong. The only legitimate measure of its truthfulness or falsity is the testimony of Scripture. And so, it is to Scripture we turn.

Hell in the Old Testament

Advocates of conscious unending torment often say that the Old Testament (OT) is silent on the subject of hell, and they are partially correct. The traditional view of hell is nowhere to be found in the OT. On the other hand, the OT regularly and graphically affirms the total destruction of the wicked, and it never hints at anything remotely resembling conscious, unending torment.

Principles: Every time the OT describes the final destiny of the unrepentant, the picture is one of destruction, extinction, and extermination.

The Psalms repeatedly say that the wicked will go down to death, their memory will perish, and they will be as though they had never been.² Proverbs likewise warns that the wicked will pass away, be overthrown, be cut off, be no more, and their lamp will be put out.³

In other passages, the end of the wicked is described as pottery vessels broken to pieces (Ps. 2:9), ashes trodden underfoot (Mal. 4:3), smoke that vanishes (Ps. 37:20), chaff carried away by the wind (1:4), a slug that melts (58:8), straw that is burned (Isa. 1:31), thorns and stubble in the fire (33:12), wax that melts (Ps. 68:2), or a dream that vanishes (73:20).

Prototypes: Old Testament history gives actual examples of God’s judgments against sin. When the first world became too wicked to continue, God used a worldwide flood to wipe from the face of the earth all but the eight humans inside the ark. Gen. 6:7; 7:4. This is a model, Scripture says, for the fiery judgment awaiting the lost at the end of time. 2 Pet. 2:5; 3:3–7; Matt. 24:38, 39.

When Sodom became too sinful to endure, God rained down fire and brimstone (burning sulfur) from heaven. The obliteration of the entire wicked population, and even the vegetation, took place in a moment so terrible that the rest of the Bible memorializes it as an example and prototype of divine judgments within history and also at the end of the world.⁴

Prophecies: The prophets also speak of God’s wrath against sinners. Details of actual judgments against cities and nations later become symbols for the ultimate divine visitation. These prophetic scenes provide much of the later vocabulary of judgment: fire and storm, tempest and darkness, and wrath, corpses, and worms.⁵

New Testament Language

Do the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament (NT) writers require us to expect the conscious, unending torment of the wicked? Only if we ignore the entire OT background to the NT vocabulary involved and then proceed to define the NT language by later definitions from pagan Platonic philosophy.

Enter Tertullian, a late second-century convert from the followers of Plato and Socrates who retained his pagan belief that every human being had a mortal body and an immortal soul. What did Tertullian do with Jesus’ warning in Matthew 10:28 that God could destroy the soul? He reasoned that Jesus really meant that the soul would suffer conscious torment in hell. Scripture does speak of human immortality, but it is received at the resurrection, not before. 1 Cor. 15:51–54. If the church had remembered this, the idea of unending torment probably never would have developed.

When studied carefully across the whole Bible, the fate of the wicked is described as total destruction, not as unending punishment.

Unquenchable fire: Traditionalists assume that the “unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:11, 12) means unending, conscious torment. In truth, the expression comes from the OT, where it has the frequent and regular sense of “destruction that cannot be resisted.” Quench means to “extinguish” or “put out” a fire (Ps. 118:12), but God’s fire of punishment cannot be quenched or put out.⁶ Jude 7 equates it with “eternal fire.”

Undying worms: What of the “worm [that] does not die” in Mark 9:48? For centuries, traditionalist interpreters have ignored the biblical background of this phrase and have made it mean everything from a tormenting conscience to an everlasting parasite. Our Lord’s expression comes directly from Isaiah 66:24.

In Isaiah 66, God executes judgment “by fire and by His sword,” and when the visitation is ended, “the slain of the Lord shall be many.” V. 16. The wicked “shall be consumed together.” V. 17. The righteous, on the other hand, “remain.” V. 22. “All flesh” come to worship God—the wicked are no more. V. 23.

This is the setting of the crucial verse 24: “And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” Note that the righteous view the destruction, not the misery, of the “corpses” of the wicked.

This symbolic picture of the future mirrors an actual incident Isaiah witnessed when God defeated the Assyrian army. Isa. 36, 37. The same scene will be reproduced on a vaster scale at the end of time. Similar scenes are pictured throughout the OT.⁷

Gnashing of teeth: The Gospels record seven stories in which Jesus describes people expelled from a place of favor as “gnashing their teeth.”⁸ Traditionalists believe it expresses the unending torment of the damned. Yet this phrase appears numerous times in the OT,⁹ and it always pictures someone so angry at another that he grinds his teeth in rage, like a mad animal straining at the leash. We see the same usage in the NT, where Stephen’s enemies “gnashed at him with their teeth.” Acts 7:54. We can apply this description to Jesus’ stories as well—in this case, rage at being excluded from the reward of the righteous and, by extension, heaven.

Smoke that ascends: The “smoke of their torment” that “ascends forever and ever” (Rev. 14:11) also deserves defining by prior biblical usage. This picture comes from the destruction of Sodom. Gen. 19:28. There were no more cries in Sodom when Abraham viewed the ascending smoke. The sinners were all destroyed. The rising smoke testified to that.

The lake of fire: This lake of burning sulfur is the Bible’s last description of final punishment. It is mentioned only four times in Scripture.¹⁰ Most seem to agree, however, that it is the same ultimate destiny we commonly call “hell.” In Revelation 20:10, Satan will be “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Again, traditionalists quote this to prove unending torment. But the rest of the vision clarifies the intent: “And Death and Hades [hell] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” V. 14.

This is the consummation of God’s victory over His final foe—death. Death and hell are certainly abstractions, not persons, and the lake of fire here means their annihilation.

After the destruction of sin and sinners, even hell and death are destroyed. Only the righteous endure for eternity

Only now do we find sinners included in this dreadful fate. “Anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.” V. 15. The next chapter repeats the fact with elaboration. Overcomers will inherit the new heavens and new earth, but all classes of sinners “shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone,” which again, John adds, “is the second death.” Rev. 21:8.

Paul’s most common phrases harmonize with this picture. The wicked (meaning whole persons, not just bodies minus immortal souls), he warns, will die, perish, and be destroyed.¹¹ Nor will they ever come back, for this destruction is to be “everlasting.” 2 Thess. 1:9.

Eternal punishment: This destruction is punishment, in this instance capital punishment. And it is truly the second death, from which there is no resurrection or return forever. Never again, in all eternity, will the wicked exist. No one else will ever die, for death itself dies.

Righteousness fills the new heavens and earth. From east to west the righteous declare: “Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints.… All nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been manifested.” Rev. 15:3, 4.

God’s victory is complete. His redemption is accomplished. His creation has reached its goal.