Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth, ECT, and Conclusion

Luke 13:28 says, “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out.” Some will be weeping because they missed their opportunity to enter into eternal life; they may have been so close to entering and may have received many opportunities in their lifetime of believers inviting them to Jesus but they refused because they thought they knew the truth or they wanted to hold on to their sins or they were too busy for God. It was too late. They missed their chance. Their judgement has come. And they will soon cease to be—forever.

In contrast, there will be others who will respond to God with anger and gnash their teeth at God. There will be Jews and Pharisees, teachers of God’s law, descendants from Abraham and of the promise who will not inherit the promise because they didn’t believe in the Promised One, Jesus Christ, their Messiah. Religious people like these will replay in their minds all the good deeds they did on this earth, casting out demons, performing miracles, raising the dead, giving all their time and money to the poor, yet they will not enter the kingdom. “It’s not fair,” they will say, “after all I’ve done,” “how could God do this to me!” “Why is God letting in these other righteous people but not me!” “Why does that pedophile and thief get to enter the kingdom?” And so their anger and hatred for God will consume them as they grind their teeth.

Unbelievers often object to eternal conscious torment (ECT) saying that they just can’t believe in a God like that who would be so cruel and sadistic to torment people for billions of years into eternity. That doesn’t seem like a good or holy god that they could ever learn to love. Now, it is not on this basis that I am a Conditionalist. I believed in ECT my entire Christian life up until now and held on to the faith. However, let it be acknowledged as an objective fact that ECT is often a stumbling block for people coming to the faith. Is it the fear of ECT that is the main driving force of what causes people to repent and believe the gospel? Or is it rather the kindness of the Lord that leads you to repentance? (Ro. 2:4). Of course, kindness and mercy cannot be clearly seen without seeing ourselves rightly deserving of judgement. However, ECT is not a necessary belief to hold in order to estimate oneself as rightfully deserving the judgement of God and in need of His mercy. It is therefore a nonessential to the Christian faith. For this reason, the doctrine of conditional immortality does not subvert the gospel.

To evaluate if these doctrines presented here are true, one good test is to examine the fruit of the doctrine. Does it produce good fruit or bad fruit? If it produces good fruit, there may be a higher probability of that doctrine being true. But if it produces bad fruit, then we must examine the doctrine further with much suspicion. So let’s examine how the doctrine of conditional immortality compares to the doctrine of ECT in our practical lives. I believe it has an overall positive net benefit for both the believer and unbeliever.

If divine exhaustive determinism and Calvinism are not true, and if the facts I have presented here are true about conditional immortality, the implications could be massive. What are one of the main reasons that people reject the gospel? Do they not reject it because they think God only sends the worst of offenders to Hell but could not imagine themselves going there to be tormented for eternity? Yes, there are many people who would believe that because their basic understanding of justice is that eternal conscious torment is not just. Therefore, they do not see themselves worthy and deserving of this “just” penalty. But what if they could believe, and believe much more easily, that they are deserving of God’s just penalty because that penalty is death? Would many more people come to salvation because they see themselves as rightfully guilty and in need of a Savior? Could it be that the devil has craftily made his way into church doctrine over many centuries to prevent this very thing from happening?

The problem with the traditional perspective is that it sees the justice of God without reference to His mercy and it declares God to be infinitely just and holy as if God’s nature of lovingkindness is forgotten about and not harmonized with the wholeness of God’s character. But the truth is that God is both holy and loving. His holiness tempers His love while His love tempers His holiness. For this reason, the conditionalist perspective makes more sense because it is wholistic in harmonizing God’s character. Our God delights in showing mercy and takes no delight in anyone perishing, much less tormenting people for an eternity.

Another potential problem with traditionalism is the reservedness in our hearts towards the lost that these beliefs and other like it can foster. A.W. Tozer has said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Certainly, the doctrine of conditional immortality is no exception since it deals with the very nature of God. In this doctrine where the penalty of sin is death, God’s anger will not burn forever; nor is He a god who delights in torturing people. But if God did torture people for an eternity, then it must have been because it was the pleasure of His will to do so. And if God sees people and treats people that way, don’t you think that as children of God we would in some way reflect the heart of our Father in how we see and treat people? If God’s attitude toward the world is one of reservation or taking pleasure in people’s suffering, would we reflect that same reservation that we see in the heart of God? If God will make some people miserable for an eternity, would we find some justification in our hearts to treat people miserably? After all, they deserve it, right? There was a time when James and John were eagerly ready to command fire to come down from heaven to consume the Samaritans and yet Jesus rebuked them for it saying, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Lk. 9:55).

Some of us may be mean, bitter, and cruel people because that might be our secret view of God and so we may take it out on other people, even in evangelism. However, another group of folks may not do that and may be very kind to people. However, instead of directing this unresolved tension towards people, they direct it towards God. Their hearts become reserved in their love for God because He doesn’t love people as much as they do; and so they secretly hold suspicions against God for this or worse, their hearts turn embittered against Him.

There are other implications that this doctrine could have as well. In moments of tragedy and/or suffering, many Christians might doubt God’s love, be embittered against God, think God is cruel, and finally apostatize from the faith because of their belief in eternal conscious torment, “How could a good God send my loved ones to Hell to eternally suffer? How can I love a god like that?” they may reason. So as a result of ECT, more Christians may apostatize. Whereas, they might not if they believed in conditional immortality. However, it’s also true that once finding out about and believing that the penalty of sin is not so severe as ECT, there could potentially be many people in the church that will leave it. Some might reason, “if the penalty is only death, maybe I’ll just take my punishment instead of living for God. It’s the easier path after all.” And so, I imagine the possibility of many people walking away from the faith because of this. From an earthly perspective, this could certainly affect church growth and income. However, from a spiritual perspective, it may be better for the purity of the church for those people to leave since they may not have been genuine followers of Jesus to begin with. True spiritual growth is best achieved with like-minded people whereas bad company corrupts good morals. Those who still want Jesus will stay while those who don’t, will find it easier to walk away. However, we must be careful here in explaining annihilationism. The penalty isn’t only death. Death is simply the consummation of that penalty. Whatever other penalty God has reserved for people will also be given to them according to how they lived their lives on this earth. How this will look like, we don’t exactly know but it should nonetheless cause people to fear God and walk in His commandments even if they choose to not trust in Him for their salvation.

The final practical implication I see for the doctrine of conditional immortality is that it can resolve an unhealthy tension in the hearts of Christians, especially non-Calvinists. This tension being the sense of responsibility and guilt that can come with evangelism and the lack of evangelism. Have you ever imaged the lost burning in Hell? Have you imagined them burning for thousands of years into eternity? What does that do to your conscience and emotional state? It could weigh you down with an unbearable burden of guilt, shame, or sorrow. Now, there’s a healthy burden for the lost that we all need to have but there is also an unhealthy burden for the lost that we don’t need to have—an emotional state that isn’t profitable and doesn’t produce good fruit. Some of us who believe in ECT have learned through the years to shut it off—to ignore those imaginations and thought processes after we have spent a little time there because spending more time there isn’t healthy. However, not all of us can just turn it off or we may not be able to turn it off all the time. It is certainly in a situation like this that believing in conditional immortality would help relieve the weight of that burden so that it’s no longer unbearable. Perhaps it may even transform that burden to evangelize out of joy rather than shame and guilt. After all, people already have the knowledge that they are going to die one day. They already expect that. What they don’t expect though is the good news that they could live forever. Therefore, the focus of evangelism is more on the good news rather than the bad news. This is also the same focus we see throughout the New Testament. They continually urged people to believe the gospel rather than fearing people out of going to Hell. To this I do not mean we should stop speaking about Hell and judgement because Jesus spoke of it and Paul mentioned the importance of the law being a tutor to lead people to Christ. I’m simply suggesting that the weight of our words to be placed upon the goodness of God rather than the severity of God.

It is possible that for some Christians who have believed in ECT for years, they have been overwhelmed by the thought of it for the lost and have coped by shutting away or diminishing their compassion for the lost. It is taught in the realm of Psychology that you cannot selectively numb or turn of some of your emotions without affecting the rest of your emotions. So, if you have shut off your heart to the lost to avoid the emotional pain, this could close your heart off towards people in other ways so that you do not feel. This could even close your heart off to God. If we shut our hearts off to the painful emotions, this can shut our hearts off to the delightful emotions as well. In light of these things, Conditionalism will be easier to emotionally process and emotionally manage than ECT for both new believers and seasoned believers.

One of the main stumbling blocks for Christians sharing the gospel is the doctrine of Hell, specifically, the belief in eternal conscious torment. Christians often fear sharing the gospel because they have to speak about Hell and usually when they speak about Hell, it isn’t received well. However, if they believe in conditional immortality, much of this fear is removed.

It is for these reasons that I find the doctrine of conditional immortality to be quite relevant for us, being so much more than a mere intellectual pursuit. It affects our view of God and God’s view of humanity. Both the saved and unsaved are part of this humanity and most of us naturally have compassion in our hearts toward our neighbors. But if God’s compassion towards people is so far removed from how we naturally have compassion for people, this can create a disconnect in our heart towards God. Some of us may find ourselves loving God less, or others might even abandon the faith altogether because they cannot conceive of a God who would torment their loves ones in Hell for eternity. Let me ask the religious reader here, what would be better? For someone to deconstruct their beliefs and arrive at the doctrine of conditionalism? Or for a Christian to apostatize because they couldn’t accept your particular version of hell? I will simply advise you to be careful of your dogmatism—it has real consequences.

Whether you believe in ECT or not, I would encourage you to not make ECT a primary thing. It’s a secondary issue. We can lump other doctrines into this as well: Calvinism vs. Arminianism, six-day literal creation vs. evolutionary creation, etc. If then these are secondary issues and believing in one or the other are not essential to our salvation in Jesus, why do we defend them to unbelievers as if they are primary issues? Can’t we just be honest with them and say that they are secondary issues and that there are true believers on both sides? It’s not necessary to believe in ECT to be a true Christian. When we appear before the judgement seat of Christ, I hope that we can honestly say that we didn’t act religious like the scribes and Pharisees, shutting off the kingdom of God to people and not allowing those who are entering to go in (Mt. 23:13) simply because of our dogmatic religiosity trying to defend our particular form of Christianity at the expense of someone’s eternal destruction. I pray that our doctrinal positions, which are secondary issues, will not be used as stumbling blocks to prevent people from entering the kingdom of heaven.

Moreover, let us remember that it is the Holy Spirit that enlightens the mind to see and understand. It is unreasonable to convince someone of all the correct beliefs in the Bible if they do not yet have their eyes yet opened and enlightened to see. It is in believing the central truth of the gospel that our eyes are opened and willing to see whatever else it is that the Bible teaches, not the other way around. The gospel is needed first and then more illumination can come.

Finally, unbelievers might object to even God’s capital punishment as being too severe for their sins. To that I would say, they haven’t seen their sins for what they are. They do not see the weight of all the bad they have done throughout their life because they have little knowledge of God’s law. If they were to be more aware of their sin, they would see their sin as piling up to heaven, and they would see it as God’s mercy to give them capital punishment vs. more years of conscious painful punishment. We must realize that God punishes sin more severely than humans do because He is the perfect Judge without any sin. Therefore, a lying tongue is an abomination to the Lord (Prov. 6:17) and anyone who lies or who has an angry heart to cuss people out and malign them will be guilty to be judged by the eternal fire (Mt. 5:22; Rev. 21:8). God also does not allow sin in heaven and if sin is all you want and all you have, then heaven is not a place for you.

In addition to these things, unbelievers must realize that they were given sufficient knowledge and understanding through creation and Christian testimony to rightly conclude that there is a God and that being God, He’s the one in charge; and by logical deduction, if He’s in charge, then we are accountable to Him. Yet they decided to neglect Him and be ignorant anyway. They must realize that apart from God, there is no life. Therefore, capital punishment is not only about justice but also about choosing the only source of life vs. no life; and if you don’t want Jesus and heaven where Jesus is, then Jesus will not want you there either once you die. You had your chance but once you die, that door will be closed off to you as it was closed in the great flood and you will forfeit all that God is in His light, life, and love. You will simply cease to be apart from Him. But this does not have to be the case. If you place your trust in Jesus to save you from the penalty of your sins, you can be saved and live forever because He died on the cross to pay that penalty.