This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 10: “The Fires of Hell”
[COLLEEN TINKER]
Problems With This Lesson:
- The Adventist argument against an eternal hell is based on straw-man arguments and assumptions.
- This argument against eternal hell does not deal with the reality of sin but with the assumption that punishment is determined by one’s deeds during a brief life.
- This lesson’s conclusions are pre-determined by the Adventist worldview that humans do not have immaterial spirits.
The first day’s lesson states the underlying assumption:
“Many conservative Protestant denominations also believe in an immortal soul that after death ascends either to Paradise or descends to hell. Indeed, if the human soul never dies, then it has to go somewhere after the body dies. In short, a false understanding of human nature has led to terrible theological errors.”
With these statements, the lesson proceeds to argue why an eternal hell is impossible. First, the author uses the typical Adventist phrase of derision: “an immortal soul”. Adventism derides the notion that a person has an immaterial spirit and argues instead that an “immortal soul” would mean “eternal life”.
This assumption creates a logical fallacy. The Bible does not equate the existence of an immaterial spirit with eternal life. On the contrary, Ephesians 2:1–3 states that we ALL are born dead in sin, by nature children of wrath. We are born physically alive but with spirits that are dead in sin. Thus it is illogical and untrue to argue that the existence of an immaterial spirit that survives the body would equal living eternally.
If living persons have spirits that are dead in sin and must be made alive in Christ, then dead persons whose immaterial spirits would survive the death of the body would not be non-existent.
A spirit that is dead in a living human being is not non-existent. Similarly, the spirit of a dead person would not be non-existent. The life or death of the body has nothing to do with the life or death of the immaterial spirit.
Adventists equate “death” with “non-existence”. Scripture never makes this equation.
Death is Separation
The Greek work underlying the word “death” in the New Testament is thanatos. This word does not mean “to cease to exist”. Rather, if means “that separation (whether natural or violent) of the soul and the body by which the life on earth is ended” (https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/thanatos.html).
In other words, the word for death means that body and soul/spirit separate from each other. Death does not mean a person is annihilated. It does mean the body dies and decays, but the spirit—the immaterial part of us which is our identity (as per 2 Cor. 5:1–9) continues to exist.
Furthermore, Adventism ASSUMES that if a spirit/soul exists, it has to be alive. This assumption is never implied in Scripture. The lesson states this on page 129:
When sin entered the world through the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), they and all their descendants (including us) came under the curse of physical death and lost the gift of eternal life.
Notice the subtle but powerful assumption that most people would only subliminally notice: Adam and Eve brought humanity “under the curse of physical death and lost the gift of eternal life.” With this sentence, the lesson reinforces the Adventist worldview: death is only physical. Eternal life, in the Adventist paradigm, is present only when the body is alive and breathing.
The reality that we were sentenced to both physical and spiritual death by Adam’s sin is utterly missing from Adventist theology. They do not teach that Adam and Eve’s spirits were separated from the eternal life of God when they sinned—a spiritual reality that was true even though their bodies continued to live and breathe.
In fact, we are born spiritually dead. We absolutely HAVE spirits, but they are dead in sin, separated from God, devoid of eternal life (Eph. 2:1–3; Col. 1:13). We are under condemnation from the moment we are conceived and are spiritually dead and sentenced to physical death as well until we are made spiritually alive trough faith and trust in Jesus (Jn. 3:18; Jn. 5:24; Ephesians 2:3–9).
When a person is on earth, he or she is either dead or alive depending upon whether or not he or she has trusted Jesus. The dead or living state of the body does not determine the dead or living state of one’s spiritual reality. Our immaterial spirits are either dead in sin or eternally alive in Christ, and our physical state does not determine our spiritual state.
The only sense in which the state of our bodies is related to the state of our spirits/souls is that it is during our physical lives on earth that we either believe in the Lord Jesus or not. We are not able to believe in Him if our bodies have died, as per Hebrews 9:27.
In short, Adventists have mis-defined the word “death”. They taught us that being dead meant not existing. In reality, being dead means not being spiritually alive—being devoid of eternal life in Christ.
For example, this passage from Matthew 8 never made sense to me as an Adventist:
And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:19–22).
To my Adventist ears, this passage just sounded like a metaphor, a somewhat confusing hyperbole that meant, “Forget your father and follow Me.”
Now I understand that Jesus was speaking REALITY. He was talking about the fact that the spiritually dead would continue living their lives as always, but those who followed Him would not be among the spiritually dead. They would have LIFE.
What Is Sin—And What Is Punished In Hell?
This lesson, by denying the existence of a human immaterial spirit and the fact that it can be dead in sin or alive in Christ, has completely twisted the significance and meaning of hell.
Sin is not primarily our deeds. Sin is our natural state; we are literally born dead and condemned. The wrath of God remains on all who do not believe (Jn. 3:36).
Our sin is not measured by our lifetimes. It is measured by God.
Adventism argues that the idea that a spirit exists after death is a deception based on the serpent’s lie to Eve: “You shall not surely die.”
But this argument is again a twisting of Scripture and definitions. The serpent’s lie kept Eve from considering the desperate reality of not believing God. In fact, Adventism—not biblical Christianity—has perpetuated the lie of Satan.
The fact that our immaterial spirits survive our bodies does equal “eternal life”!! If our spirits are dead, we are unable to be in communion with God. We are unreconciled, outside the provision made to enter His presence by the new and living way opened by His blood.
If we are spiritually dead, our fate is far worse than if we simply do not exist! In fact, this reality is why Adventism argues so hard against an eternal conscious punishment. A good God, they argue, wouldn’t punish someone indefinitely for a mere lifetime of sin. That wouldn’t be “fair”, they argue. It would be out of proportion.
But the issue isn’t primarily sins. The issue is our dead hearts, our dead spirits, that do not know and love God. Those who refuse to believe in the Son have rejected eternal life. The consequence for rejecting the Sin Bearer and His own resurrection life is eternal existence apart from Him. That cut-off existence from LIFE is eternal death.
Death does not mean ceasing to exit; it means not having access to God’s own life. It is the condition in which Adam and Eve found themselves after they ate the fruit and had to be banished from the garden.
Scripture says that the wicked will be resurrected for judgment (Jn. 5:25-29). God will put back together the bodies and the non-alive spirits of the wicked, and they will stand before God to receive their eternal sentence of punishment (Rev. 20). This sentence does not mean they will burn up, but it means that the Lord God determines the degree of their punishment, and their resurrected bodies (which are not the mortal bodies that died) will be in that punishment forever.
To reject the eternal life in Christ the Son results in an equal-but-opposite reality: eternal punishment.
In short, this lesson is full of speculation, unbiblical assumptions, and deceptive words designed to ridicule those who want to understand what the Bible actually teaches. The physicalism of Adventism destroyed the weight and seriousness of sin and makes the focus of punishment our own limited lives instead of our trust or unbelief in the eternal Sin Bearer to who took God’s wrath against our sin. †
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