Addressing Objections and Difficult Passages
I’ve presented the framework and shown biblical support for each element. But I know there are passages that seem to create problems, texts that appear to contradict what I’ve argued, and objections that need to be addressed.
This section tackles the most significant challenges to the framework. I won’t pretend these are easy questions or that my answers are airtight. But I’ll show how these difficult passages can be read consistently with the framework – and in some cases, how they actually support it better than the alternatives.
The Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15)
“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).
This passage is often cited as proof of a future, final judgment where all the dead – righteous and wicked – are raised, stand before God, and receive their sentences.
If that’s what it’s describing literally, it would seem to contradict my claim that judgment occurs instantaneously at death.
Amillennial Reading: Apocalyptic Imagery
But remember: Revelation is apocalyptic literature. It uses vivid, symbolic imagery to communicate theological truths, not to provide a literal chronological sequence.
The Great White Throne judgment is a vision depicting the reality of divine judgment – the absolute authority of God, the inescapability of accountability, the finality of the verdict.
It’s not describing a literal future event where God sits on a physical throne, opens physical books, and processes billions of people one by one through a courtroom procedure.
Not Literal Future Courtroom
Think about the logistics if this were literal.
Every human who has ever lived – perhaps 100 billion people – raised from the dead, standing before a throne, having books opened, being judged “according to what they had done.”
How long would that take? If God spent one minute per person, it would take over 190,000 years to get through everyone.
The image isn’t meant to be pressed literally. It’s symbolic.
Vivid Depiction of Reality of Divine Judgment at Death
What the vision depicts is the reality that everyone faces judgment.
Great and small. Rich and poor. Powerful and weak. No one escapes. No one gets a pass.
The books represent God’s perfect knowledge. Nothing is hidden. Everything is known. Lives are evaluated according to what was done.
The book of life represents those who are in Christ, whose names are written there not by their own merit but by grace.
And the verdict is final. If your name is not in the book of life, you’re thrown into the lake of fire – the second death, final destruction.
This can be understood as a symbolic depiction of what happens at each person’s death. You die, you face God’s judgment (not as a literal courtroom scene, but as the revelation of your status before God), and you’re either found in the book of life (in Christ) or not.
The Books: Representing God’s Standard, Not Literal Ledgers
The “books” that are opened aren’t literal ledgers where God has written down every deed.
They represent God’s perfect knowledge, his absolute standard of righteousness, and the basis on which judgment is made.
“They were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done” – this depicts the reality that lives matter, choices matter, deeds matter. Judgment isn’t arbitrary.
But the decisive factor isn’t the ledger of deeds – it’s the book of life. If your name is there (because you’re in Christ), you’re saved. If not, you’re condemned.
This fits perfectly with instantaneous judgment at death based on covenant status.
“Eternal Punishment” Language (Matthew 25:46)
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This is the most cited verse in defence of eternal conscious torment, and it deserves careful attention.
The argument goes: “Eternal” (aiōnios) modifies both “punishment” and “life.” If eternal life means everlasting existence, then eternal punishment must also mean everlasting suffering. The parallel structure demands it.
I think this argument fails for several reasons.
Aiōnios: Age-Long, Finality, Not Necessarily Duration
The Greek word aiōnios doesn’t always mean infinite temporal duration. It can mean:
- Pertaining to an age (the age to come)
- Permanent, final, irreversible
- Of enduring quality or significance
Context determines which meaning applies.
Consider Jude 7: “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”
Sodom and Gomorrah suffered “eternal fire” – but those cities aren’t still burning today. The fire was eternal in its effects (the destruction was permanent and complete), not in its duration.
Similarly, Jeremiah 17:27 threatens Jerusalem with “unquenchable fire” if they don’t keep the Sabbath. That fire came (the Babylonian destruction) and was indeed unquenchable – it couldn’t be put out until it accomplished its purpose. But it’s not still burning today.
“Eternal” and “unquenchable” in these contexts mean complete, final, irreversible – not infinite in duration.
Parallel Structure: Eternal Life vs. Eternal Punishment
Yes, the same word modifies both “punishment” and “life.” But that doesn’t mean both must have the same temporal duration.
Eternal life means everlasting existence with God – ongoing, never-ending participation in divine life.
Eternal punishment means final, irreversible destruction – punishment whose effects last forever because the person is permanently dead, never to exist again.
The punishment is eternal in its finality, not its duration.
Consider an analogy: if I say “permanent death” vs. “permanent life,” both use the same modifier (permanent), but they don’t both mean infinite duration. Permanent death means you stay dead forever. Permanent life means you stay alive forever. One is ongoing; the other is a permanent state of non-existence.
Similarly, eternal life is ongoing existence. Eternal punishment is permanent non-existence.
Punishment as Event (Destruction) Not Process (Torment)
Another crucial distinction: is punishment the process of being tormented, or is punishment the event of being destroyed?
If punishment is the ongoing process of suffering, then “eternal punishment” would mean eternal suffering.
But if punishment is the judicial sentence of death carried out – the event of destruction – then “eternal punishment” means the finality of that destruction.
I think Scripture supports the latter. Punishment is death (Romans 6:23). Punishment is destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Punishment is perishing (John 3:16).
The punishment is being destroyed. And that destruction is eternal – they never come back.
Context of Matthew 25
Look at the context. Jesus is describing the separation of sheep and goats – the righteous and the wicked.
The righteous inherit the kingdom prepared for them (Matthew 25:34). The wicked are told to “depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
But what happens in fire? Things are consumed. Destroyed. Burned up.
The fire is eternal – it accomplishes its purpose completely and finally. But that doesn’t mean the wicked are preserved in the fire forever. They’re consumed by it.
The “eternal fire” is the lake of fire – the second death. And what happens when Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire? They’re destroyed (Revelation 20:14). The same fate awaits the wicked.
So “eternal punishment” in Matthew 25:46 is best understood as final, irreversible destruction – punishment whose effects last forever because the person ceases to exist permanently.
Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)
I’ve already referenced this passage earlier, but it deserves fuller treatment because it’s often cited as proof of conscious intermediate torment.
Is This a Parable or Historical Account?
The story depicts the rich man in Hades, experiencing torment, able to see Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, conscious and aware immediately after death.
It’s debated whether this is a parable or an account of actual events. Jesus doesn’t use his typical parable formula (“the kingdom of heaven is like…”), and he names a character (Lazarus), which he doesn’t typically do in parables. However, the story uses clearly symbolic imagery (Abraham’s bosom, conversation across a chasm, drops of water on a tongue) that suggests parabolic teaching rather than literal description.
What Is It Actually Teaching?
Regardless of whether it’s parable or account, the question is: what theological truth is Jesus communicating?
The point is clear: how you live matters. Death fixes your state. Judgment is final. There’s no crossing over after death. If you don’t respond to God’s word in this life (Moses and the Prophets), you won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead (a pointed reference to Jesus’ own coming resurrection).
The story teaches the finality of judgment and the importance of responding to God now.
Does It Teach Eternal Conscious Torment?
What the passage doesn’t do is provide a detailed, literal description of the mechanics or duration of post-death states.
The vivid imagery – the rich man in torment, the conversation with Abraham, the great chasm – serves Jesus’ teaching purpose in the moment. It’s not meant to be decoded as a precise map of afterlife geography or a timeline of post-death experience.
Trying to extract from this story a detailed doctrine of the intermediate state – whether eternal conscious torment, momentary awareness before annihilation, or anything else – is reading more into the text than it’s designed to teach.
What I Can Affirm from This Text
What I can confidently say this passage supports:
- Immediate post-death consciousness (not soul sleep)
- Judgment is final and irreversible (the great chasm)
- Our choices in this life have eternal consequences
- There’s no second chance after death
What the passage doesn’t determine:
- Whether the torment described is eternal or momentary
- The literal mechanics of the intermediate state
- Whether this depicts an ongoing state or the moment of judgment
The passage is consistent with my framework (instantaneous judgment at death, immediate consciousness for the righteous with God, annihilation for the wicked), but it neither proves nor disproves it. It’s a teaching story making a theological point, not a technical manual on eschatology.
The Mechanics of Resurrection
This is where things get genuinely mysterious, and I need to be honest about what I don’t fully understand.
The objection goes: “If the righteous are already with God in heaven at death, fully conscious and present with Christ, what does resurrection add? Why do they need bodies? What’s being resurrected if they’re already complete?”
It’s a fair question, and I don’t have a complete answer. But let me work through what I think I can say.
If Already “With God,” What’s Being Added?
When you die in Christ, you step outside time into God’s presence. You’re conscious, aware, worshipping, participating in heavenly reality.
But you’re not complete.
Humans are not meant to be disembodied spirits forever. We’re embodied creatures. God created us as unified beings – body and spirit together forming a living soul.
Death severs that unity. The body decays. The spirit (or soul – I’m not pressing the distinction here) goes to be with God. But this is an abnormal state. An intermediate condition. Not the final purpose.
Resurrection reunites body and spirit. It completes the human person. It restores the unity that death temporarily broke.
Spirit-Flesh Merger
I’ve been using the language of “spirit-flesh merger” to describe resurrection.
What I mean is this: at the resurrection, the spirit (which has been with God outside time) is reunited with a resurrected, glorified body.
The body isn’t the same body that decayed – it’s transformed, imperishable, powerful, glorious (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). But it’s still a body. Physical. Material. Real.
The spirit isn’t changed – you’re the same person who died. But you’re now complete. Embodied again. Whole.
Completing the Human Person
Why does this matter? Why can’t we just remain as disembodied spirits in God’s presence?
Because that’s not what God created us to be.
The biblical vision isn’t escapist. It’s not about souls fleeing bodies to exist as pure spirits in an immaterial heaven.
God created matter. He called it good. He entered into it in the incarnation. And he redeems it.
The resurrection isn’t God finally giving up on the physical world and just saving souls. It’s God redeeming the whole person – body and spirit – and redeeming creation itself.
We’re meant to be embodied. The resurrection gives us perfected, glorified bodies suited for the new creation, for “God all in all,” for whatever the final state entails.
From God’s Timeless Perspective vs. Our Sequential Experience
Here’s where it gets really complex.
From our time-bound perspective, there’s a sequence: death, intermediate state (in heaven with God), resurrection, final state.
But from God’s timeless perspective, and from the perspective of those outside time in heaven, there is no sequence in the same way.
You die, you step outside time, and from your perspective, the resurrection is immediate. There’s no waiting. Death and resurrection are experienced as simultaneous, even though from the perspective of those still in time, years or centuries may pass.
So, the “intermediate state” is only intermediate from our temporal perspective. From the perspective of the person who died, and from God’s eternal perspective, it’s all one reality.
At the Parousia, time catches up. The righteous dead (who are outside time) receive glorified bodies. The living are transformed. And everyone enters the final state together.
What Resurrection Adds: Embodiment for Eternity
So, what does resurrection add?
It adds embodiment.
Not because disembodied existence in God’s presence is bad or incomplete in some ultimate sense, but because God’s purpose includes the redemption of creation, not just souls.
The resurrection body allows us to participate fully in the new creation – whatever that turns out to be. To interact, to experience, to express ourselves as complete human persons.
We will be like Christ in his resurrection body – able to eat, to touch, to be touched, but also transcendent, not limited by current physical constraints.
I can’t explain exactly how this works. I can’t map out the mechanics. But I can say: resurrection completes what death temporarily interrupted. It fulfils God’s purpose for embodied creatures in redeemed creation.
Areas of Continued Reflection and Humility
I’ve presented a framework I believe is coherent and biblically grounded. But I’m not claiming to have all the answers or to have resolved every mystery.
There are questions I’m still working through, areas where I hold my views tentatively, and aspects of eschatology that I think remain genuinely mysterious – perhaps necessarily so, given our limitations as finite, time-bound creatures trying to understand infinite, timeless realities.
Let me be honest about what I don’t know.
The Paradox of Timelessness (4-Dimensional Limitations)
I’ve argued that heaven exists outside time, and that the righteous dead step outside our four-dimensional experience into God’s eternal now.
But I can’t fully explain what that means experientially.
We experience reality sequentially. One moment follows another. We have memories of the past, experience the present, and anticipate the future. Time is fundamental to how we perceive and understand everything.
What does it mean to exist outside time? To be “everywhen”? To observe all of history simultaneously?
I’ve speculated about the righteous dead potentially being the angels, or ministering throughout history, or even the paradox of being your own guardian angel. But I hold all of this very loosely. These are thought experiments, not doctrinal assertions.
The honest answer is I don’t know what timeless existence feels like or how it works. I can point to the logic that leads me there (God is outside time, heaven is where God is, therefore heaven is outside time), but I can’t describe the phenomenology of it.
We’re trying to grasp something beyond our dimensional experience. Of course we struggle.
Exactly How Heaven “Engulfs” Earth
I’ve used the language of heaven and earth “merging” or heaven “engulfing” earth to describe the final state.
But what does that actually mean?
Is the physical universe somehow caught up into a higher-dimensional reality? Is matter transformed into something we can’t currently comprehend? Does the distinction between physical and spiritual cease to have meaning?
I don’t know.
Scripture gives us symbolic language – a city, a river, a tree, streets of gold. But these are metaphors pointing to something beyond our current categories.
I’ve been careful not to paint pictures of Elysian fields or perfected earth scenarios because I don’t think the final state maps onto our current experience in ways we can easily imagine.
“God all in all” suggests something far more radical than “the universe as we know it, just better.” But I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like.
The Experiential Reality of “God All in All”
What does it actually mean for God to be “all in all”?
I’ve talked about participation in divine life, direct communion with God, the bride in perfect union with the Bridegroom. But these are analogies and approximations.
What will it feel like? What will we experience? What will we do for eternity?
Scripture hints: worship, reigning with Christ, exploring the depths of God’s character, perfect joy, no more tears or pain.
But beyond that? I don’t know.
John says, “What we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2). Paul says we see through a glass darkly now but then face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The final state is meant to be beyond our current comprehension. Not because God is hiding it from us, but because we lack the categories and capacity to grasp it fully.
Questions We May Not Be Able to Fully Answer
There are questions I simply can’t answer:
- What is the relationship between time and eternity in the final state? Will there be succession of moments, or will everything be simultaneous?
- How do resurrection bodies work? How can they be both physical and transcendent? What does it mean to eat and drink in glorified bodies that don’t need food?
- What happens to the universe itself? Is it transformed, transcended, or somehow both?
- How do we relate to each other in the final state? Will we recognise family and friends? Will those relationships matter, or will all be subsumed into our relationship with God?
- If the righteous dead are outside time observing history, what does that mean for free will and human agency for those still living? Are we being watched by future versions of ourselves?
These questions might have answers. Or they might be based on category errors – asking questions that don’t make sense because they assume frameworks that won’t apply in the final state.
I’m content to say: I don’t know. And that’s okay.
The Appropriate Posture: Confidence and Humility
So where does that leave me?
Reasonably confident about the core framework:
- God exists outside time
- Conditional immortality and annihilationism
- Judgment at death
- Heaven outside time for the righteous
- Amillennial consummation
- God all in all as the final state
But humble about the details, the mechanics, the experiential realities.
I’m not claiming special revelation. I’m not pretending to have mapped out the afterlife with precision. I’m offering a framework that I believe is more coherent than the alternatives and more faithful to Scripture.
But I hold it tentatively. I’m willing to be corrected. I’m open to refinement as I continue studying Scripture and thinking through these questions.
And I’m comfortable with mystery. Some things are beyond our current capacity to understand, and that’s as it should be. We’re creatures, not the Creator. We see dimly, not clearly. We know in part, not in full. For now, I trust that God knows what he’s doing, that his purposes are good, and that whatever the final state looks like, it will be far better than anything we can currently imagine.
The next chapter is here.