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Jesus Didn't Believe in Hell (feat Dr Bart Ehrman) · Paulogia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_16: At the end of the day, I think what we want to do is is we want to remove the Dante-esque view that there's like these pitchforks and all of this stuff.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_16: And you know, but I don't think it's literal flames.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_16: It's not a barbecue.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_16: You know, it's not Florida.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_12: I'm thinking of one of the best, what one of the best known skeptics of the whole world.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_12: And he says plainly to people, I'm not a Christian.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_12: I'm not Christian.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_12: But he says he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, a cold sweat, wondering what if what if hell really exists?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_11: Is it a red devil poking you in the butt with you know a pickfork?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_07: Welcome to Apologia, where a former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm excited to be joined once again by world-renowned scholar Bart Ehrman.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_07: Bart, welcome back to the show.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_07: It's so great to take a break from current events so that we can have a pleasant chat about the systematic torture of humanity.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_05: So uh yeah, just keeping up the positive vibe of the uh the daily news, right?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_07: You may not realize this, but hell is a very hot topic right now.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_05: So to say, yes.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_07: In your travels, have you come across or are you aware of Kirk Cameron?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_05: Is not ringing a major bell just now.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_07: You live a charmed life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: Many of you know me as Mike Seaver from the television growing pain.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_08: You've probably known him from the Left Behind movie.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_08: He's an actor.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_08: He's all he also does Christian content now.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_08: But I want to tell you why this position is dangerous according to the Bible.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_08: Today we are talking about Hellgate, a recent event debate that you hosted.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_09: The way that it got started was on my my uh my live stream show, uh, the Kirk Cameron show, my son and I have Wednesday episodes called Dangerous Conversations.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_09: And I told him, hey, James, you can ask me anything you want.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_09: I'll be honest with you.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_09: And one of them was what does the Bible really say about hell?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_09: Um, does God really preserve people alive in a place where they are consciously tormented forever and ever for a billion years?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_09: They're not one second closer to the end of the torment.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of affirming what is seen as the traditional view of how he affirmed a view called conditionalism or annihilationism.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_09: And that just sparked a firestorm, and people were calling me a heretic.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_09: The fact that we asked this question and a lot of people freaked out led to us gathering the best of the best from all across the world who hold opposing views on this subject.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_09: It's the answer to the controversy about the dangerous conversation my son and I had about hell.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_07: This sparked several waves of debates about what should be considered the true biblical view of the afterlife for non-believers.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_09: Some people think that you're going to an eternal conscious torment, kind of like the you know, Dante's Inferno kind of thing, devil in the pitchfork, flames, roasting forever.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_09: And then others had this idea of annihilationism where you're kind of snuffed out.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_09: And then there's other views called universalism, and then there's other afterlife views that are a purgatorial kind of view you might find in Catholicism.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_07: Now, when I covered this, I was delighted by the Christian on Christian violence and was basically very happy to just let them fight.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: Which one is it?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_07: But in your book, Heaven and Hell, The History of an Afterlife, you picked sides and took a stance.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_07: What was it?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_07: And why did you even bother to take one?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean, it's I I bothered to take one because the view is about, you know, Jesus, the the book's about Jesus' view of hell.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's not about only about that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_05: The book is about, and this is what my my course will be about, is like where the concept of hell came from, because it's not taught in the Hebrew Bible, and I think it's absolutely not taught by the historical Jesus.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: And so I have to deal with what Jesus taught in order to get to that thesis.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_05: So I am very sure that when Jesus talked about punishment for the wicked, when the Son of Man returned in judgment, he's talking about ultimate destruction, that people will be annihilated.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_05: He does not talk about people being eternally tormented.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_05: He never talks about eternal torment.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_05: He talks about eternal punishment, and people assume that that must mean that people are being tormented forever, but he doesn't ever talk about eternal torment.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: The eternal punishment is the punishment of being destroyed.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_05: And the reason it's eternal is because it's never reversed.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_05: If you're destroyed, you're destroyed.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think it's quite clearly that in the teachings of Jesus.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_05: And the other reason people don't see it is because they read torment into the text because of the way they've been even raised.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_05: And so, I mean, I can give you an example for a theme.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: Jesus likens it to all sorts of things.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_05: He says it's like when a farmer goes out and he's trying to pick the crops and he's got all these weeds there.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_05: He gathers the weeds and he throws them into the furnace so that he can gather up the good crop.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, what happens when weeds are thrown into a furnace?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_05: Are they in there for the next you know two billion years?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_06: No, man, they're destroyed.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's all wait, they're dead, they're gone, they don't exist anymore.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so he has a number of analogies like that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's it's it's destruction, annihilation.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Bart, but you're apparently a heretic.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_07: So do without what you will.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_05: I can't be a heretic.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not a Christian.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_07: And Jesus apparently also a heretic, so that's you know, that's on him.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, right.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: Presupposes the univocality of scripture, which is just shorthand for saying the belief that scripture all speaks with one unified voice and never contradicts itself.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_18: And univocal, like speaking very clearly with a one voice.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_18: This verse looks like it can mean one thing and only one thing.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_18: That's univocal as opposed to being equivocal.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_11: The Bible is very, very clear on the eternality of the conscious torment of unbelieving sinners in the fire of hell.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_07: So the doctrine is absolutely clear and it's undeniable.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_07: Would you say that the Bible is univocal on this teaching of hell?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think part of the issue with the Bible generally is that we've got 66 books by different authors living at different times and places, and they have different perspectives on most things.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_05: There's certainly passages that talk about things like people being thrown into a lake of fire.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: There's also passages about people being thrown into the outer darkness.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_05: Well, if they're in fire, it ain't dark.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: You see what I mean?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and you you you have hints, for example, in in the gospel of Luke, the the story of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man does go into a place of torment.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: It's not said to be eternal, but it is a place of torment.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_05: And other passages assume that when you die, that's it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: You're you know, you're dead, especially throughout the Hebrew Bible.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_05: So, no, I don't think that there's like a consistent view of the afterlife throughout the throughout the Bible, or not much of a consistent, not a consistent view about a lot of things in the Bible.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Did the Old Testament saints in the earlier portions of what we call the Old Testament believe in the afterlife?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's very common to hear the claim in biblical scholarship that there's no doctrine of the afterlife in the earlier portions of the Old Testament.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_13: There are those who teach that the um in the Old Testament they didn't even have a concept of an afterlife.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_06: And it's actually more in the New Testament that we see the question and the doctrine of hell being more formally established than than in the Old Testament.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_09: There's a bunch of different types of hell in the Bible.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_09: For instance, number one, there's Sheol, often translated in many Bible translations as hell.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_05: Sheol doesn't show up there.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_05: Hell does in the Old Testament in the in the Bible translation since Tyndale in the New Tyndale translated the New Testament.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_05: This is long before the King James, and he translated Ghana, the word the as hell, and then that got picked up by King James and other before them translators, where the the word Sheol gets translated as hell.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_05: And it's a problematic translation, it doesn't mean hell.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_05: When people use hell today, they mean a place that a soul goes when they die to be punished, to be tormented forever.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: And Sheol is definitely not that.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_05: When you actually look at the Hebrew Bible and you look at how Sheol is used, it doesn't occur that much, actually.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_05: It shows up about 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, usually in poetry.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_05: And that's valuable because if you have a word you don't know what it means in Hebrew poetry, the way it works is differently from the way you know we learned in fifth grade, where you write a line and then the next line rhymes with it right at the end of the final word rhymes.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_05: In Hebrew poetry, the words don't rhyme, the ideas rhyme.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_05: And like a two-liner, lots of two-liners, like in the Psalms or Proverbs.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_05: And the first line will say something, and the second line will respond to it, either saying like the flip side of it or saying the same thing in different words.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_05: So that means that you can see what the synonyms are.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_05: And the synonyms for Sheol are are never eternal torment.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_05: The synonyms for Sheol are grave and tomb and pit.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: And it's the place your remains are placed when you die.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: Going to Sheol means dying and getting buried.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: That's it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: You think of Daniel 12.2, they make it very clear there is a real hell, and it is fearsome and terrifying.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_19: Daniel 12.2, for example, says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_19: Here there is a resurrection predicted of both the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_16: It says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_16: The contrast that's often drawn is everlasting life on one side, everlasting contempt on the other.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_05: Well, contempt and shame are attitudes that other people have for you.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_05: People are contemptible of you.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_05: This is not saying these people are going to live forever.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's going to be saying their their names will go down as disgusting, disgraceful names forever.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so they will be remembered as horrible people.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_05: I will say, by the way, that this passage in Daniel 12 is the only passage in the Hebrew Bible that explicitly refers to a future resurrection of dead bodies.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's the resurrection of the dead.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's not about your soul going to heaven or hell.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: And so it explicitly talks about a resurrection.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_05: This becomes the standard view within Judaism.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_05: Not that your body dies and your soul lives on to be rewarded or punished, as you get in Greek circles.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_05: In Jewish circles, if there's life after death, it's because your body is brought back to life.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_05: And that's the resurrection of the dead that starts appearing in Jewish thought in the Bible with Daniel, and then becomes the standard thought by the days of Jesus.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: So that's what Jesus thought.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_05: He thought that you get raised from the dead and you'll be either destroyed or you'll be brought into the kingdom at the end of time.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Then there's another one here, Isaiah 66, the last verse of Isaiah.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: They shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: People who sin against God, their sin is not forgiven, they die.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: It says, For their worm, the Tola, there it is, same worm, shall not die.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: What if Jesus didn't die on the cross?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: We couldn't be part of his family.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: We couldn't be burned.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: What if you don't believe Jesus died for you on the cross?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's the same thing as the worm not dying.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: You can't be part of the family.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus quotes that one right there in the New Testament, in Matthew chapter 9, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_13: At the very end of Isaiah, the last chapter, in fact, the last verse, it talks about this.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_13: Let's look at it now.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_13: They will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yep, yep, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you do, because the fire and the worm go on forever.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_05: What it does not say is that you go on forever.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: And that you're thrown in there, and you're, you know, look if I if I make this huge bonfire and it lasts, you know, all night long, and uh I've thrown a like a groundworm into that fire.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: The groundworm's not alive all night long, just the fires on for all night long.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so it destroys the worm.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so that thing's always going to be there for wicked people.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_05: And wicked people, you know, forever are going to be thrown into it.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, I see.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: So it's a rotation of wicked people.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_07: I can't necessarily meet my favorite, famous wicked people when I'm there.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_07: They might be gone already.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_07: All right.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_19: What why does the concept of hell only seem to exist in the New Testament?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_19: I would say this is a matter of what theologians call progressive revelation.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_19: That is to say, God doesn't reveal the full body of his truth all at once, but progressively over history.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like it's pretty important information to know what happens when you die.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yet there's shockingly little about that question in the earlier portions of the Hebrew Bible.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: The movement of progressive revelation is not from false to true, but simply from less clear to more clear.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: All Jews and all Christians believe in progressive revelation.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_18: As the biblical rec revelation moves forward, more and more of God's purposes are revealed.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_18: And so early on, you have more bare bones characterization.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_18: Progressive revelation, a very well-established hermeneutical principle, and that the new material has to modify or inform the older material and not the other way around.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_07: I think progressive revelation is a bit of a cop-out, personally.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_07: But in acad in academia, is that a serious answer to this lack of hell in the Hebrew Bible?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_05: No, it's a common view among theologians because they recognize that there are different perspectives in different books of the Bible.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_05: And the way to explain for that is that God gradually revealed the truth.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so in some ways, that is a I think it originated probably as a form of anti-Judaism because it showed why, you know, Jews are no longer right, that they they were right at the time, but now they're completely wrong.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, and so they're all going to hell because they don't accept this new revelation.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_05: So I think the progressive revelation probably is tied into that somehow, but it's also a way of trying to explain why the New Testament is so different from the Old Testament.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_07: So it's your contention that the ideas of heaven and hell were borrowed or invented and later strapped on to Judaism and early Christianity.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, I think it's right.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: So the idea of heaven and hell in Christian teaching is that your body dies, but your soul lives on.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_05: That is a Greek idea that was not invented by Plato, but certainly popularized by Plato in several of his dialogues, such as the Phaedo, where he tries to prove the prove the immortality of the soul.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_05: And in Greek circles already in Plato, there are these stories about people who their soul lives on.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_05: And if there's any justice in the world, the people righteous are going to get rewarded, and the people who are wicked are going to be punished.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: That becomes the Christian view.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's not the view of Jesus, it's not the view of Judaism, it's the traditional Judaism, not the view of apocalyptic Judaism, and it's not the view of the vast majority of the New Testament writers, but it is a later view that gets into Christianity because most people who convert to Christianity by the end of the first century, the early second century, are Gentiles who are raised in Greek thinking circles.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_05: They're not Jews who are raised to think that you know the body and the soul have to be together to be alive.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_05: They they grew up in Greek circles.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_05: So the soul lives on, the body dies, and now they're adopting a Greek version of what the afterlife would be.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_05: So it's it's really kind of interesting.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: This is what I'm going to be trying to show this in this course that the current Christian view, the typical view of heaven and hell is actually a combination of the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Plato, conflated in a way that that neither Jesus nor Plato would have agreed with.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_05: But it became the standard view.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_07: And I assume Paul is an agitator in getting that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_05: Paul helped with it because Paul started out thinking, like Jesus, that at the end of time there'll be a resurrection of dead bodies.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_05: And he's quite emphatic about that in 1 Corinthians 15, for example, that what's going to happen at the end, which is coming soon, is that Jesus will return and there'll be a judgment, and those who have opposed God will be destroyed, and those who have sighed with God will be rewarded and be given salvation from this destruction that's going to happen.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_05: Toward the end of his life, it looks like Paul started worrying about well, you know, does this mean that I'm going to die before it happens?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_05: Because, like, it's, you know, I thought it was going to happen soon, it hasn't happened soon.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: And so in Philippians and in 2 Corinthians, he starts talking about dying and being with Christ, being in the presence of Christ.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's the beginning of the idea that, well, maybe there is some kind of existence apart from before the resurrection.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_05: And then that becomes the dominant view.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_07: Gotcha.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_07: Your book calls God a transcendent sadist intent on torturing people.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_07: Is that still is that still your position?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_06: I say that?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_06: What?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_06: I don't say that God really is.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_07: No, you see you say if you say if a certain view of hell is correct.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Look, let's say that there is a God, and let's say that you've got a friend who is you know 20 years old and has been aware of basically what he's doing ethically for the last 10 years and has done things wrong and has not accepted Jesus into his life.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so, according to many current Christian views, this 20-year-old who dies at 20 will spend all of eternity in hell being tortured, not just you 200 trillion years, that's just the beginning.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_05: Tortured non-stop forever because God's upset with them for for sinning for 10 years.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_05: And and so, really?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like God is worse than the worst Nazi you can even imagine?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's like, no, man.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_05: Really?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_05: But that is that's what it would be.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_05: And and people say, well, you know, God has to be just.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_05: Well, okay, if God's just, is it just to torture somebody for 200 trillion years for something they did for 10?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_05: How about like the punishment should meet match the crime, for example?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_07: All right.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_07: So we got I'm glad we cleared that up.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_15: Now, personally speaking, I don't think God sends anybody to hell.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_15: I think God has given us free choice, and he's allowed us to decide if we want to follow him or if we don't want to follow him.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_19: So I don't think God sends anybody to hell.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_19: I think people send themselves by irrevocably separating themselves from God, and it is against God's will.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_19: They defy the will of God for them by choosing to reject him.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now C.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis describes this in The Great Divorce uh by saying, and and others have described it this way too, by saying that, well, the people who are in hell being tormented forever, uh, they they choose it actually.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, C.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis says that hell is a a door that's locked from the inside.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_17: I I I take C.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_17: S.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_17: Lewis's view of hell, which is the the the the gates of hell are locked from the inside.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_17: So I don't think anyone in is in hell that that didn't choose to be there.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_05: You know, C.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_05: S.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_05: Lewis did think that it was possible for people who hadn't heard of Christ to enter into the kingdom.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: The you know the final book of the Narnia series is really about that, and that people who live up to God's standards, even if they don't know who God is, will be will be provided salvation.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's a that's a hopeful side of that view.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_05: But the idea that people choose to go to hell, I mean, you know, you have to think it's a little bit crazy, really.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_05: People are choosing to go to hell.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_05: Now, you say, well, they've chosen to reject God.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: Usually in Christian circles, that means the Christian God.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_05: Throughout the history of the human race, if you trace human the human race back, you know, where however far you want, 300,000 years or something, you know, 99% of the human race has never even heard of the Christian God.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so, like, they've chosen to disobey him.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: How's that work?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, I just, you know, I know it's a way of getting around the problem.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, so if people want to think that, if it makes them feel better about the fact that the vast majority of humans who have ever lived are going to roast in hell, they want to say, well, it's your fault.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_05: But it does seem to me that it's also a little bit arrogant and self-centered because it says, Well, I've seen the truth, you know, and God's going to be merciful to me.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, people won't say, Well, therefore, you know, I'm a better person.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_05: But it is, you know, yeah, well, I have salvation.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_05: Too bad, you know, for the 99% who are going to be have demons poking red hot irons in their eyes for eternity.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: Too bad for them, but you know, they chose it and I didn't.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_05: I just think it's arrogant.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_07: I feel like that when I'm in that situation that and the doors are not locked, I feel like I will leave.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_07: But, you know, just pragmatically, it seems like something I would do.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_14: Yeah.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_14: But some further wonder, yet, how can hell be just if one receives eternal punishment for a temporal life of sin?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_14: Again, I'd leverage Craig's reflection on this, where he said, the reason the punishment goes on forever is because the sinning goes on forever.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_14: It's not like we sin less in hell.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_14: No, we would sin more with God's general grace removed and our sin nature operating in full throttle.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_10: Then whoever is in hell is getting the appropriate perfect level of punishment for their sin.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_10: And their sin didn't just uh didn't just have to do with what they did here.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_10: They continue to sin in hell.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_10: There's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_10: People are still set against God in hell.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_10: So that's why the punishment continues, according to this view.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_05: Well, absolutely.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: You know, everybody who's ever like been on the rack and is has his joints taken out of and is screaming to the top of his lungs to please make it stop.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_05: People like that are going to want to keep sinning could be they they want that to happen forever.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I think.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_07: Well, it's the gnashing of teeth, Bart.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_07: That is that's that's they're gnashing their teeth.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_05: You know the anecdote about that, because the disciples then asked Jesus, what about those who have no teeth?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_05: And Jesus said, Jesus said, Teeth will be provided.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_07: I have not heard that one.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_07: That's great.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_07: So hell has a better, better dental plan uh than than YouTube, at least.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_10: That's and if he's infinitely loving, he doesn't want to punish us, so he takes our punishment upon himself for those that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_10: Want to be pardoned of their sin.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_10: But God is not going to force anybody into heaven against their will.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_10: If you don't want Jesus now, you're not going to want him in eternity.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_10: And heaven, of course, is being in the very presence of God.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_10: God loves you too much to force you into his presence against your will.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_10: God separates himself from you because you have chosen.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_10: You don't want him.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_10: So God respects your free choice.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_10: That's what God does.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_10: He doesn't force himself on you.
• 22:28
  unknown: What?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_05: Well, first of all, nobody thinks God forces people into heaven.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: So if people go to heaven, it's God's gracious gift.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_05: It's not forcing.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_05: And nobody is going to turn down the eternal bliss.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just telling you, nobody will turn it down.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_05: So to think that the alternative to eternal bliss is being tortured by demons for eternity is stupid.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, that's not the alternative.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_07: The alternative that Jesus Well, they equate it to dating, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_10: Ladies.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_10: Have you ever had a young man pursue you whom you did not want to date?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_10: Some of you are going, yeah, and he's sitting next to me right now.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_10: He will not leave me alone.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_10: Whenever I ask that question, the ladies always giggle and the men look at their shoes.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_10: Is he looking at me right now?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_10: Well, ladies, suppose this doesn't deter this guy.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_10: You know, he keeps asking you out.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_10: You don't see appear to be interested, but he keeps asking you out.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_10: You finally say to him, Look, I like you, but only as a ladies, why don't you just stick the knife in and turn it?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_10: Every man has heard the dreaded friend rejection.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_10: But suppose this doesn't deter this guy.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_10: He keeps asking you out, and he finally says, Look, I love you so much, I'm going to force you to love me.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_10: Ladies run screaming from the building.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_10: Can he force you to love him?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_10: No, love by definition must be freely given.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_10: So if he truly did love you, what would he do?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_10: He would leave you alone.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_10: That's what God does for us.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_05: I just the idea that Jesus had is that if you if you disobey God and you're you're opposed to God, that you'll you'll be destroyed.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_05: You won't have eternal life.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're on God's side, whether you are Jewish and you keep the Jewish law, or if you are somebody in another part of the world who's just doing your best to help people, that you'll be rewarded with eternal life.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_05: So it's not a matter of eternal torment versus bliss.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's a matter of doing well for other people so that you'll be living like God wants you to.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't believe in that either, but it's much more humane than thinking that God is going to torture you for trillions of years.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_07: I do a lot of call-in show hosting, and a lot of people call in both Christians and non-Christians.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_07: For them, a big sticking point is their fear of hell.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_07: What is your advice that you give to people who don't believe any longer but are still like wake up afraid that they're going to?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_05: I had the same problem when I when I was thinking about leaving the faith, I was afraid that it would mean, you know, maybe I was I was in danger of being eternally punished.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's very hard to get out of that mindset if if once you have it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_05: In my case, I just had to continually convince myself that God is not a horrible monster who wants to make people, you know, in torment forever.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_05: That that isn't what God's like.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_05: He's not he is not a horrible being.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_05: And if he is a horrible being, then none of us have any hope anyway, if he's really horrible.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, and he's not the kind of horrible being who picks a few and then torments everybody else.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_05: Just I I convince myself there could not be a God like that.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_05: And for some reason, it just helped me to keep telling myself that that's true.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_05: That I didn't exist before I was born, and I won't exist after I die, and there's not going to be torment for it.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_05: And so now I'm not gonna be bothered by it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'm not gonna have a body that can be hurt.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: If I don't have nerve endings, I mean, I don't have a body, I won't have anything.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: And so for me, for me, that's not a that's not a problem.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's actually, I thought that would drive me to kind of a nihilistic depression, but it didn't.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_05: I I'm never despaired at all about life because I do think it's all it is, but I I certainly don't think that it's a trial run to see who gets to be tormented forever and who gets to live in heaven.
• 26:15
  unknown: All right.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_07: Well, our time is coming to a close.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_07: So, Barton, you like Jesus, are here offering everyone a free gift to anyone who will accept it.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_07: So, what is this free gift that like Jesus you are offering people?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we're doing a two-lecture course on July 18th.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_05: I'm doing a two-lecture course on where the idea of hell came from because it's very helpful to see historically how this view developed since it's not in the Hebrew Bible, it's not what Jesus taught, it's not the original Christian teaching, it's a later imposition on Christian teaching, and that's helpful to see because it shows that you know it's actually not divinely inspired, it's not even in the book.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's a two-lecture course, 50-minute lectures, two 50-minute lectures, followed by a QA, and it's completely free.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_05: Anybody can come to it.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_05: If you're there, you'll be able to ask questions.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so I won't be able to answer all the questions, but you know, assuming there are a trillion people there.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_05: July 18th, and people should think about signing up for it.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_07: All right, and the most important question of the whole session what are the consequences, Bart, of not accepting this free gift?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_05: You will be tormented forever because I will hate you and I will make sure that you will suffer for eternity.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, okay.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_05: Or actually, I'll just say, Yeah, okay, too bad.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_05: You missed that one, but it will be recorded, and so people can uh also get it.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, so you're a bit of a universalist.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_07: I see.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_07: I see.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_07: You're just a heretic all around.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just I'm just gifting out as much as I can.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_07: If you'd like to join Bart for these lectures for the low, low price of free, head over to tinyurl.com slash Bart Hell or tap the link in the description.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_07: And by using these links, you'll be helping the mission of this channel, which I greatly appreciate.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_07: Bart, as always, thank you so much for your time.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, great.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_07: And if you want more of Barton Pologia, two former Christians taking a look at the claims of Christians, tap on the thumbnail on screen now for the Barton Pologia playlist, and I'll see you over there.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_07: Until next time.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_07: Later.