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The fate of the wicked

My son wrote this essay and I’m glad to share it.

The Fate of the Wicked: What happens to people that do not follow God?
by Tommy Cacy

Intro: The purpose of this little paper is to layout and explain what the biblical view of the fate of the wicked. What happens to people that are not Yahweh (God) followers? Sinners that do not repent, where do they go? The traditional view is to Hell, but what does that mean exactly and why do we believe it? A sneak peak ahead is that a faithful biblical reader will NOT affirm burning forever in Hell (eternal conscious torment) — pain and suffering without ceasing day and night. A faithful reader of the Bible would conclude that the wicked will be killed. Destroyed. Cease to exist. The rest of the paper will be dedicated to supporting and defending this idea.

NOTE: Firstly, I want to start by knowing nothing. No preconceived notions that come from church traditions, but just reading what the bible says. No view on Hell, and we will wait for the Bible to explain. After that, I will deal with the so-called problem verses.

Prophesying in part

We charismatics like to use this verse to justify when a modern-day prophet makes a prophecy and it doesn’t come to pass:

1 Corinthians 13.9: For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

It seems we use “in part” to mean “could be incorrect.” Have you heard this? It’s exactly what I was taught how I should think about New Testament prophecy.

The idea I was taught is that Old Testament prophets were somehow overcome or controlled (or something) by God’s Spirit and so were able to prophesy without error. And it’s because of this perfect prophesy that the OT was able to have laws about how to know if a person is actually a prophet: what they say comes true. Here’s the go-to verse for that:

Deuteronomy 18.22: when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

And I was taught that New Testament prophets are different in that they prophesy “in part” — they can make mistakes. They can tell us what they think is a word from God, and be wrong— and yet still be a prophet.

So how wrong can a prophet be and still be a prophet? I don’t think anyone ever gave a percentage. I do remember my pastor talking about a prophet in our church and saying he is about 30% correct and that’s a good percentage.

That really is a low bar.

Bliss, torment, and the temptation of metaphor

I’ve been thinking about how Christians tend to portray the eternal destinies of believers and unbelievers as either “bliss in the presence of God” or “torment away from God’s presence.”

So it’s bliss verses torment.

However, the Bible over and over portrays the distinction as between “life” and “death.” It is so amazingly common to see this; once I started noticing it I can’t unsee it.