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If “Wholly Smoke!” were less than ten pages.

He Will Burn Up the Chaff

A Berean Search on the Final Fate

Eternal fire? Ashes?

Two old-maid sisters visiting our upstart church handed me a glossy little leaflet. I eventually threw it away, but a question it posed wouldn’t go away.

After quoting Peter and Jude’s take on the fiery judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, the unidentified writer simply asked if “eternal fire” had turned the infamous cities to “ashes,” (and that is what those texts say) could it not be possible that the final judgment will be similar?

This had to be the hairbrained heresy of a kooky cult. The fire is eternal because hell is eternal, lost souls are immortal, and torment is endless. At least that’s what I always thought because that’s what I was always taught.

Hmm. Eternal fire? Ashes?

As the young shepherd of a fledgling flock with ample amounts of absorbed assumptions and peer expectations, I knew better than to entertain such nonsense. Don’t even think about it! I scolded myself.

So, I didn’t. For a while.

But like an annoying gnat, that question wouldn’t stop nagging me. Eternal fire turned the sinful cities into ashes, and Peter says it was “an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6), tying it directly to a future “day of judgment” when the unjust will be “punished… destroyed… and utterly perish” (2:9-12).

Jude agrees. Sodom and Gomorrah are “set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7).

But wait! It says “suffering.” Maybe they still are.

Then I saw what Jesus said about it: “the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:29, 30).

Destroyed them all? All? The cities? The buildings? “All the inhabitants” (Genesis 19:25). Ah, turned to ashes. The fire was eternal, not Sodom.

“Even thus”? Right, an “example.” Even thus – the future judgment will be just like that one.

I would discover later that Jeremiah adds that “the punishment of Sodom” happened “as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her” (Lamentations 4:6). So, the example of Sodom was of sudden and complete destruction, not perpetual torture.

I wasn’t convinced. But I was shaken. Enough to realize I had to make a Berean effort, you know, the “more noble” kind of search of the scriptures to see if something is so (Acts 17:11). I really wanted to know.

Though personally hopeful that the final fate of the lost would be a miserable end, not endless misery – ashes, not endless agony – I kept my search a secret, very privately reexamining the relevant texts. I didn’t want my lost friends or family to burn forever, but neither did I want my saved friends or family to think I was crazy. Or worse yet, a heretic!

So, I kept it to myself. At first.

And I argued with myself: What about the immortal soul?

Self: Ah, that’s right; torment must be unending because the soul is undying. But wait, where does the Bible say the soul is immortal and cannot die?

Self-back-to-self: You mean to tell me you grew up in Sunday School and graduated from a four-year Bible College, and you don’t know where the Bible says the soul is immortal?!

Thinking… thinking…

No, I don’t know. Where?

Well, if you don’t know, I don’t either.

I stopped arguing with myself.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know my Bible. I did. Had read it, studied it, and memorized a good bit of it; preached it and heard it preached. And because I was familiar with the Scriptures, I knew that while I couldn’t find nary a word about an immortal soul, numerous texts say a “soul” can “die” and be “destroyed.”

One of my Sunday School memory verses: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Another: “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death” (James 5:20).

I found twenty more, including: “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?” (Psalm 89:48) and “fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

If immortal means not subject to death, then the “soul” found in the Bible that expressly can “die” and be “destroyed” is certainly not immortal.

Hmm. So, souls can be destroyed in hell, and the fire that destroyed the people of Sodom was eternal, not the people the fire destroyed.

Ok, but what about “unquenchable fire”? Surely a fire that cannot be put out indicates a fuel that will not burn up.

Not so fast. When John the Baptist warned the Pharisees and Sadducees of “the wrath to come,” he said Christ “will gather his wheat into the garner” and “burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:7-12).

Burn up? Not on and on? So, a fire so powerful it cannot be put out assures that what’s in it will burn up, especially dry, brittle wheat husks? I quickly realized, indeed, these were the plain words and, thus, the clear picture. “He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Just like when firemen couldn’t put out my neighbor’s house fire. It burned up. It’s not still burning.

The concordance, not a commentary, became my best study bud. I wanted to know what the inspired writers said, not what someone else said about what they said. I found that Malachi and Peter said similar concerning a day of wrath to come:

Malachi 4:1: “For behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up…”

2 Peter 3:7, 10: “Reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men… the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

By this point my dogma door was ajar. How could I not dig deeper? Unable to find any Scriptural support for an immortal soul and having discovered that the eternal fire that turned people to ashes is an example of the future judgment, and that unquenchable fire burns up chaff, I was at least sure I wasn’t so sure.

I finally told somebody – Todd, a sympathetic confidant, and Tim, a fiery antagonist. At least Todd didn’t think I was crazy; Tim went crazy, boiling over in defense of ceaseless suffering. It was during one such moment that something suddenly happened that sealed my fate and settled the debate.

Well, settled it for me. And it was such a simple revelation – one word in the one verse every Christian knows by heart, a text so familiar few can remember when they first learned it, and so beloved that it’s displayed everywhere – on jewelry, restaurant cups, the back of tractor trailers, roadsides, stadium signs, and in eye black on football player’s faces. Familiar. Beloved. Simple. Clear.

As Tim’s jaw jutted, brows arched, and nostrils flared, this plain word in this precious verse came to me, at first like a sunrise, and then a lightning bolt.

The verse? John 3:16.

John 3:16?

Yes, John 3:16! John 3:16!

As I began to internally quote it, I got to this part and said it out loud: “should not perish.” Should… not… perish but have everlasting life. Perish! Don’t you see it? I saw it – really saw it! Saw it for the first time.

I immediately grabbed my giant red hardback 5.7-pound Strong’s Concordance, sat on the couch, and turned to “perish.” Reading the entries one by one (154 total in its various forms) it was obvious “perish” never expressed a process without an end.

And the contrast of everlasting life to perish became as clear as a rain-swept sun-soaked blue sky – endless life or life that ends.

Eureka! It was a gold-strike, light-bulb epiphany.

Ultimately other verses began to flood my mind:

Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

1 John 5:11, 12: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

John 10:27, 28: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish.”

So, it all started to piece together that eternal fire turning people to ashes was an example of judgment to come; unquenchable fire will burn up chaff; the soul can die and be destroyed; believers receive eternal, everlasting life; unbelievers will burn up and perish.

Thus, via a Berean search I became convinced that the Bible persistently and consistently describes the final fate of the lost as a miserable end, not endless misery.

And throughout Scripture this was the modus operandi of God in judgment:

“in a moment consume” Exodus 33:5

“consume in a moment” Numbers 16:21

“consume as in a moment” Numbers 16:45

“destroy thee suddenly” Deuteronomy 7:4

“destroy them quickly” Deuteronomy 9:3

“perish quickly” Deuteronomy 11:17

“perish quickly” Deuteronomy 28:20

“perish quickly” Joshua 23:16

“executed speedily” Ezra 7:26

“his anger endureth but a moment” Psalm 30:5

“as in a moment utterly consumed” Psalm 73:19

“suddenly be destroyed” Proverbs 29:1

“as in a moment” Lamentations 4:6

“for a little moment” Isaiah 26:20

“at an instant suddenly” Isaiah 29:5

“suddenly at an instant” Isaiah 30:13

“desolation shall come suddenly” Isaiah 47:11

“a little wrath for a moment” Isaiah 54:8

“suddenly destroyed” Jeremiah 51:8

“swiftly and speedily” Joel 3:4

“a speedy riddance” Zephaniah 1:8

“avenge them speedily” Luke 18:8

“swift destruction” 2 Peter 2:1

“sudden destruction” 1 Thessalonian 5:3

“Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), and every time the fire of God fell in judgment, it consumed. And every single judgment fire metaphor in Scripture pictures complete consumption (of chaff, stubble, tares, briers, etc.), not endless torment.

But that provoked a new question. How could I, and every Christian I knew at the time, have been so wrong for so long? How had we been so sure God authored, administers, or allows the unending agony of the vast majority of everyone who’s ever lived? If untrue, it’s got to be the greatest mistake in the history of Christianity and gravest slander of the God of the Bible.

So, how did we make this mistake? Absorption. The dogma of perpetual pain was not what we arrived at after a Berean search; it was all we ever knew. Endless torment was considered unquestionable and therefore unquestioned.

And we certainly had memorable phrases from Scripture that we sincerely thought confirmed our creed: undying worms, unquenchable fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Confident that the Creator of Language and Author of Scripture used His creation and wrote His book to clearly communicate, not confuse, and that the Bible wouldn’t contradict itself, I knew my Berean search would not be complete until I had thoughtfully and thoroughly considered every proof text for endless torment.

After understanding that chaff burns up in a fire that can’t be put out (Matthew 3:12), I concluded that the unquenchable fire of Mark 9:44 must describe similar. What I had not known was that Jesus was quoting directly from the last verse of Isaiah. Seeing what it said made all the difference.

Isaiah 66:24: And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

Carcasses! A verse that I had always thought spoke of undying souls is talking about dead bodies. Their worm? Whose worm? The carcasses. Their fire? Whose fire? The carcasses. The antecedent of the pronoun “their” is carcasses. And it’s in the context of “the LORD will come with fire, and… the slain of the LORD will be many” when the sinners are “consumed together” (66:15-17). Their worm and their fire are agents of their final consumption, not ongoing torment.

Ah, now Christ’s contrast of life versus unquenchable fire makes sense. It is life versus death, better that one member of the body perish and the person “enter life” than the whole person perish in the fire that can’t be put out. Better to lose a limb than to lose life. And to make that contrast clear, our Lord quotes the phrase in question from a familiar text about dead bodies.

How did we miss this? How did I miss that? Well, we were so sure we knew what Scripture meant before we read to see what it said, and presuppositions overwhelmed perception.

This is what happened with the undying worms and unquenchable fire – sure of what it meant (undying souls and unending torment) we didn’t really pay attention to what it said (“burn up” and “carcasses”). It is the same with other texts in which our assumed interpretation was built upon our absorbed dogma.

Here are some quick examples: The story of the buried rich man (Luke 16) is silent on duration of the final punishment. The “weeping and gnashing” (Luke 13:28) is at the casting, not everlasting. “Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” The next verse supplies the answer: “He that walketh righteously” (Isaiah 33:14, 15). We assumed each of these, the rich man, “weeping and gnashing,” and “everlasting burnings,” taught endless torment, but none of them did.

Revelation 14:11 is not even about hell or the dead, but of a specific judgment on earth of mark-receiving beast worshippers that takes place in the presence of the angels and the Lamb. In the context of the events surrounding the mark of the beast, “earth” is found thirteen times, “hell” zero. Most who tout this text are unaware of that context.

And it is the smoke, always evidence of consumption, that goes on and on, not the torment, just as it did in Sodom (Genesis 19:24-28), Idumea (34:5-10), and Babylon (18:21; 19: 3) where the smoke rose on and on after the people were long gone.

Once I saw the Comprehensive Coherency of Scripture (what all the relevant texts consistently teach) describing the final fate of the lost as a miserable end, not endless misery, then I was able to see that our proof-texts did not prove ceaseless suffering.

“A threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12), and the following individual strands consistently blend, convincingly reinforce, and comprehensively unify into one cohesive unbreakable truth concerning the final fate.

THE WORDS IN THE WORD. These are the plain words: perish, consume, destroy, destruction, burn up, devour, ashes, end, no more, are not, not be, die, and death.

THE PICTURES IN THE SCRIPTURES. These are the clear pictures: chaff, tares, stubble, briers, thorns, and dried branches are consumed, devoured, and burn up in an unquenchable, everlasting, eternal fire.

THE EXAMPLE OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH. This is the perfect example: Eternal fire fell on Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed them all, turned them into ashes, happened as in a moment, no hands stayed on her, and left a perpetual desolation.

All the words in italics are the very words in the Word.

What especially impressed and blessed was the consistent contrast between the fates of the believer and unbeliever – everlasting life or perish, eternal life or death, endless life or an end to life. It is not eternal life in heaven or hell, but life or not life, life that lasts or life that doesn’t: 

Psalm 37:18-20 inheritance shall be forever vs. perish, into smoke consume away

Psalm 49:9, 10 live for ever vs. corruption, die, perish

Daniel 12:2 everlasting life vs. everlasting contempt

Malachi 3:17; 4:1-3 jewels spared vs. stubble burned up, ashes

Matthew 3:12 wheat garnered vs. chaff burns up

Matthew 7:13, 14 life vs. destruction

Matthew 10:39 find life vs. lose it

Matthew 13:40-43 righteous shine vs. tares burned

Matthew 16:25, 26 find life vs. lose it, lose his own soul

Matthew 18:8 enter life vs. cast into everlasting fire

Matthew18:9 enter life vs. cast into hell fire

Matthew 25:46 life eternal vs. everlasting punishment

Mark 9:45 enter life vs. cast into hell

Luke 9:24, 25 save life vs. lose it, lose himself

Luke 17:29, 30 went out vs. destroyed (even thus shall it be)

John 3:15 eternal life vs. perish

John 3:16 everlasting life vs. perish

John 3:36 everlasting life vs. shall not see life

John 5:24 everlasting life vs. condemnation

John 6:27 everlasting life vs. perisheth

John 6:53, 54 eternal life vs. no life

John 10:28 eternal life vs. perish

John 12:25 life eternal vs. lose it (life)

Romans 2:7-12 eternal life vs. indignation, wrath, tribulation, anguish, perish

Romans 5:21 eternal life vs. death

Romans 6:21, 22 everlasting life vs. death

Romans 6:23 eternal life vs, death

1 Corinthians 1:18 saved vs. perish

2 Corinthians 2:15, 16 saved; life vs. perish; death

1 Thessalonians 4:17; 5:3 caught up vs. sudden destruction

2 Thessalonians 1:9, 10 glorified vs. everlasting destruction

2 Thessalonians 2:10 saved vs. perish

Galatians 6:8 life everlasting vs. corruption

2 Peter 3:7-10 not perish vs. perdition, burned up

1 John 5:11, 12 eternal life; hath life vs. hath not life

Revelation 20:14, 15; 21:8 book of life vs. lake of fire… which is the second death

If it were just a matter of location and not life, why would the inspired writers and speakers go to such lengths to contrast the fate of the lost with life?

There are two texts in that tall tower that we presumed meant endless misery, but upon closer inspection, we see they express a miserable end.

Daniel 12:2: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

It is some to everlasting life, and, therefore, some not to everlasting life. Some to life that lasts, and some to life that ends. Hitler is held in everlasting contempt.

Matthew 25:46: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

Everlasting punishment is in contrast to life everlasting. The one is not the other. It is either everlasting life or everlasting loss of life, which is indeed an everlasting punishment.

The everlasting punishment is the “everlasting destruction” that takes place “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them who know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; When he shall come… in that day” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).

It’s one sentence; it’s one event. The Lord is present; it is expressly “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance… when he shall come… in that day.”

The book of Hebrews gives three instances where “eternal” refers to the result and not the process, the end and not the means:

“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all that obey him” (5:9).

“Of the doctrine… of resurrection from the dead, and of eternal judgment” (6:2).

“He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (9:12).

It is eternal salvation, not eternal saving; eternal judgment, not eternal judging; eternal redemption, not eternal redeeming. And it is everlasting punishment, not everlasting punishing; everlasting destruction, not everlasting destroying.

Each of these has a limited duration as to the process (how long it takes), but an unlimited extent as to the result (how long it lasts). Each is truly ever-LAST-ing.

The process of redemption was in what Christ once obtained, but the result of redemption is eternal, therefore it is truly eternal redemption. Here scripture gives us such a clear example of a finished process with an everlasting result: “Once… obtained” – past tense, completed, done – but an eternal result. It didn’t take long, but it lasts forever.

Similarly, the process of the judgment (the judging) is not everlasting, but the result is (the judgment). The destruction is everlasting, not the process of destroying.

To sum it up, eternal life is the gift of God through a second birth in Christ, not the intrinsic possession of a soul through the first birth in Adam. And just as eternal fire turned the inhabitants of Sodom to ashes, Christ “will burn up the chaff’ in “the wrath to come.” It is the simple clarity of John 3:16: “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”