Link # 2
Thoughts on Punishment of the Wicked.
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SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT FOR ANNIHILATION—
There are numerous scriptures that seem to clearly indicate that there is no eternal life for the wicked (not even in Hell). Here are quite a few that I found from the PC Study Bible after doing a search for the words “eternal life” in the concordance. These references are in Biblical order, and each is from the New American Standard Bible (Updated Edition) unless otherwise stated.
Matt 19:16—”And someone came to Him and said, ‘Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?’”
This man spoke of obtaining eternal life. It wasn’t as if he already possessed it. Preachers today would probably say to him “Son, you already have eternal life; it’s just a matter of where you will spend it.” But Jesus never said that.
Matt 19:29-30—”And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.”
They will inherit eternal life. This indicates that not everyone has it already.
Matt 25:46—”These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This verse admittedly uses the phrase “eternal punishment,” but it is juxtaposed against the phrase “eternal life.” Death by annihilation in the Lake of Fire could certainly be called “eternal punishment” because it is eternal in its consequences. Death on earth is only temporal because everyone will be raised again at the resurrection. Death in the Lake of Fire, however, is eternal: there is no reversing it and no coming back from it. If Jesus meant for the punishment to last eternally, he probably wouldn’t have contrasted it with the phrase “eternal life” which is clearly meant only for believers. If Jesus had intended what most churches believe he did with this verse, he should have said, “Both the righteous and the unrighteous will go away to eternal life, but the unrighteous will spend it being tortured while the righteous spend theirs in paradise.”
