Article Aionios (Everlasting) — The Word to Unlock the Future

Aionios — The Word to Unlock the Future​

by Anthony Buzzard in the July 2003 edition of "Focus on the Kingdom" newsletter.

Two things struck me recently as evidence that the Bible is not holding its own against the winds of theological confusion which are blowing so violently. Firstly, an article in the Brethren Life Magazine in which only one of ten writers grappling with the issue of homosexuality felt able actually to include in his assessment of the problem the fact that the Bible condemns homosexuality as a sin serious enough to keep you out of the Kingdom (salvation) (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Secondly, an article which presented statistics to show that the “born again” camp in America does not behave markedly better in terms of divorce and other problems than the group which claims no rebirth experience.

If believers really understood what was at stake in being a Christian, I am sure they would find the resources to be radically different from the world. The trouble is, I think, that many do not grasp the awesome nature of their destiny as co-regents with Christ in the coming Kingdom of God. They cannot thrill to Paul’s challenge that we should behave in a manner worthy of the staggering invitation we have been given to the Kingdom of God (1 Thess. 2:12).

Until the Kingdom comes into focus in people’s spiritual vision, the situation is likely to remain unchanged. In this brief study I suggest that the foggy translation of a key Greek word keeps Bible readers in the dark about their future and the future of the world.

In 1855 Charles Kingsley (clergyman and author of The Water Babies and Hereward the Wake) helped to dispel the darkness with which Platonism and its philosophy had shrouded the truth of Scripture in regard to the future. He declared, “The word ‘AION’ [age] is never used in Scripture or anywhere else in the sense of endlessness (vulgarly called eternity). It always meant, both in Scripture and out, a period of time...aionios (the adjective from aion) therefore means, and must mean, belonging to an epoch, or the epoch; aionios kolasis [appearing as “eternal punishment” in our versions, Matt. 25:46; cp. 2 Thess. 1:9] is the punishment allotted to that epoch.”

It is false, he maintained, to translate that phrase as “everlasting punishment,” introducing into the New Testament the concept found in the Quran that God is going to torture the wicked forever.

Tradition rose to oppose this idea when Dr. Pusey preached a sermon at Oxford to maintain that aionios (“ay-ohn-ios”) in classical Greek does mean endlessness. But classical Greek is a poor measure of the Hebrew oriented New Testament language. Samuel Cox (editor of The Expositor) replied by pointing out that “the word AION is saturated through and through with the thought and element of time. The adjective aionios must take the whole of its meaning from the noun AION from which it is derived. In the NT the word is used in connection with the Jewish doctrine of the two aeons. Instead of affirming that time shall be no more when men pass out of this present order and age, the NT speaks of ‘ages to come’ as well as ‘ages that are past.’” The Bible recognizes the patriarchal age, the Mosaic age and in the future, “the age to come” of the Messiah. No wonder then that Paul spoke of God’s “purpose for the ages.” Aionios refers to the great age to come and God’s great purpose for “that age” (Luke 20:35). The age to come is the age of the manifested Kingdom of God on earth (Matt. 5:5; Rev. 5:10). Jesus will introduce it at his return to this earth.

In 1877 Cannon Farrar added the weight of his scholarship to the emerging light of truth by asserting that “it has been so ably proved by so many writers that there is no authority whatever for rendering aionios as ‘everlasting.’” Nevertheless the public continued to read in their standard translations that God is going to usher the wicked into “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46), and that the same wicked would suffer “eternal punishment.” In this way the fog of Platonism continued to interfere with the inspired word. The public was getting poisoned food instead of the pure wheat of the word. The Bible could not be heard clearly while the confusion of Greek philosophical concepts jammed the pure Hebrew signals of God’s Scripture. The truth for which Paul struggled so valiantly continued to be smothered by popular “religion,” which preferred what it had always believed to the challenge of discovery and enlightenment. And as long as the doctrine of eternal punishment was promoted God was presented as some kind of cosmic fiend.



Derivation of the Word AIONIOS

Moulton and Milligan contend that the Sanskrit aye, to which aionios is related, contains the idea of life and long life. In the Septuagint (LXX), AION (age) translates no less than nine different Hebrew expressions, of which the one most familiar to Jews is the famous word OLAM = age. Interestingly, in the vocabulary of Plato the word AION applies to things belonging to the world of eternal ideas — the core of Plato’s philosophy of the world. It is that pagan meaning which has been foisted on our translations, as though Platonic metaphysics are the basis of what the prophets and Jesus said about the future! Little wonder, then, that people expect souls to enter at death an eternal, timeless heavenly realm. But nobody would have received that impression from the Bible, if aionios had been allowed to retain its Hebraic association with God’s plan of the ages. What the Bible promises believers is never “heaven” as a place for disembodied souls at death, but the “life of the age to come” consequent upon resurrection into the Kingdom to be established on earth when Jesus comes back (see 1 Cor. 15:23; Rev. 5:10).

Platonically-minded Bible writers and thinkers, then, will use aionios in the transcendent and timeless sense in which Plato used it. But the word deserves to be heard in its Hebraic environment. In Bible times we shall naturally find the pagan, Platonic meaning current in Alexandria, that great home of Platonizing philosophy, and also in the writings of the philosophically-minded first-century Jew, Philo. The pagan meaning invaded the biblical view and overcame it when Platonically-minded church leaders, notably Augustine, brought about a grand fusion of the Bible with pagan philosophy — a form of spiritual drug which continues to make Bible reading difficult for church members who, unwillingly, have fallen under the spell of that dangerous mixture of the Bible and Plato. Paul did say, “Beware of philosophy and empty deceit” (Col. 2:8). It is not clear to us that church members are even aware of Paul’s solemn warning. They do not seem exercised about the possible baneful effects of a counterfeit Greek philosophical theology which is utterly foreign to the Hebrew mind of the Jew and Master Rabbi Jesus.



Use of the Word AIONIOS

“Belonging to the Future Age of the Kingdom”

In the LXX (Greek version of the Old Testament) aionios occurs over 160 times. One of these texts is of paramount interest to us: Daniel 12:2, where aionios describes the resurrection life of those who, after the tribulation, emerge from their sleep of death in the dust of the ground. Here aionios modifies zoe (“zoh-ee,” life) and it is this famous phrase which was so often on Jesus’ lips and appears 40 times in the New Testament, along with other phrases endorsed by Jesus and drawn from Daniel, i.e., Son of Man and Kingdom of Heaven, etc. Daniel provided Jesus with a storehouse of phrases and ideas, all of which have been distorted or ignored by Platonically oriented theology.

The phrases “eternal life” and “everlasting life” appear in our standard translations. They reflect the Platonizing influence at work on translators and indeed on Christianity in general. The real meaning of these phrases is “the life of the age to come” or “life in the age to come.” Life in the age to come is synonymous with life in the future Kingdom of God on the earth. The “life of the age to come” gives the right sense for Daniel’s “life of the age” (Dan. 12:2). This is the Christian hope and the heart of the Gospel of the Kingdom. It is the Life of the Age following the resurrection of the dead from the sleep of death (1 Cor. 15:23). It is thus properly “the Life of the future Age.” That life can be tasted even now in anticipation — thanks to the presence of the spirit of God in our lives. The Life of the Age to Come is equivalent to immortality, and it will be experienced in full only at the inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth consequent upon the Second Coming of Jesus. The concept is in direct contradiction of the popular idea that “immortal souls” are currently enjoying “bliss” in a far-off heaven. “Heaven in fact is never used in the Bible for the destination of the dying” (Prof. J.A.T. Robinson, In the End God, p. 104).

In Daniel aionios refers to the Kingdom to be set up at the return of Jesus. In 7:14 we are told of the “dominion of the age [to come].” In 7:27 we read of the “kingdom of the age to come,” and in 9:24 of the “righteousness of the ages to come,” to be introduced at the end of the “seventy sevens.” Daniel 12:2 reveals that in that Kingdom the resurrected saints will obtain “the life of the age to come.” The contrasted fate of the wicked is to be “the shame of the age to come,” that is, the punishment which excludes a person from enjoying the life of the age to come, the Kingdom of God. It is that wonderful phrase chayé olam (Dan. 12:2), “the life of the age,” which comes across into our New Testament. It should be rendered always as “the life of the future Kingdom age.” It is indeed immortality, but it is much more specific. Aionios tells us that we are going to enjoy life forever in the Kingdom of God which belongs to the coming age. The translation “eternal, everlasting” loses information and obscures the Christian destiny. It is like the difference between “Tomorrow at nine I am going to take you to the airport to catch your plane to Tokyo,” and “Sometime in the future you are going to take a trip.” Christians need to be informed about what their hope is. Hope is the basis of faith and love according to Paul in Colossians 1:4, 5.

Aionios is the word which describes those precious facts of the Christian future. Those wonderful events associated with the future coming of Jesus can be tasted now through the spirit which grants a downpayment guaranteeing the fullness of the spirit at the return of Jesus. The holy spirit gives us a taste of the “powers of the age to come [the future aion]” (Heb. 6:5). That future age will see the new-born world of the Kingdom of God, a reorganized political theocracy (Matt. 19:28), and the restoration of all that the prophets foresaw (Acts 3:21; cp. Acts 1:6). The tribes of Israel will be regathered in the land and the resurrected Apostles will administer them in association with Jesus as the Davidic Messiah (Luke 22:28-30).

Things described as aionios are things which “pertain to the coming age of the Kingdom of God on earth.” Try now substituting that translation of aionios wherever it appears (as “everlasting” or “eternal”). You will see how prominent the future Kingdom age is in the New Testament. The Bible is indeed a forward-looking book, brimming over with hope for a better world to come on this planet. What Christians are to seek as the supreme reward of faithfulness is the Life of the Age to Come in the Kingdom. Christians are called not only to be in the Kingdom but to be the Kingdom, the royal family of priests and kings to assist Jesus in the reordering of our disordered earth (Rev. 1:6; 2:26; 3:21; 5:10; 20:1-6; 1 Cor. 6:2; 2 Tim. 2:12; Isa. 32:1; Dan. 7:14, 18, 22, 27). The Gospel of the Kingdom is rightly called “the Gospel about the Age to Come” (Rev. 14:6), inadequately translated as “everlasting Gospel.” Nigel Turner, celebrated author of Christian Words and of Moulton, Milligan and Turner’s Grammar of New Testament Greek, says: “Christians do not suppose that the Gospel lasts forever. Rather it is the Gospel of or concerning the Kingdom age (Rev. 14:6)” (Christian Words, p 456).

Now try applying this meaning of aionios to the book of Hebrews. In 5:9 we have the salvation which pertains to the coming age, in 6:2 the judgment or administration of that coming age. 9:12 speaks of the redemption of the coming age and 9:14 designates the (holy) spirit as the spirit of the age to come. Most appropriately, 9:15 speaks of the inheritance (of the Kingdom) of the future age, and 13:20 tells us that the New Covenant has to do with the age to come. Jesus himself spoke of the covenant of the Kingdom and kingship which conferred the right to rule on himself and the Apostles. We find this in Luke 22:28-30: “Just as my Father has covenanted to me a Kingdom so I covenant with you a Kingdom.” This Jesuanic covenant — “God has covenanted a Kingdom to me” — is the climax of the earlier Abrahamic covenant — the promise of land and descendants (Gen. 12:1-4), and the Davidic covenant (2 Sam. 7; 1 Chron. 17) — the promise of a perpetual royal family. The Bible is principally about the Land and the King of that Land, the Messiah Jesus.

Finally aionios, properly translated, will dispel the monstrous idea that God is intending to torture human beings forever and ever. The punishment to be inflicted on the incorrigibly wicked is “aionian fire” (Matt. 25:41). It would be quite wrong to think of this as everlasting fire. The very same expression is found in Jude 7, where we learn that Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the penalty of “eternal fire” (so the KJV, etc.). But was that fire literally everlasting? Of course not. It has long since ceased to burn. It was in fact “the fire of the age to come,” “aionian fire,” “supernatural fire,” which will likewise burn up the wicked, consume them as smoke (Ps. 37:20) and reduce them to ashes (Mal. 4:3). The ruin of Sodom is the model for the future ruin of the present wicked world. This judgment will happen when Jesus comes back (2 Thess. 2:7-9). “Everlasting (aionios) destruction” really means “the destruction to be brought about when the age to come arrives.” There is no support for popular ideas about “eternal punishment” here. In Revelation the word “torture” carries a meaning slightly different from our meaning. The city of Babylon is to undergo “torment” (Rev. 18:7) which is equivalent to being “burned up with fire” (v. 8). It connotes sudden and permanent destruction (vv. 9, 10).

Christians should take time to show their friends and neighbors these keys to understanding God’s wonderful plans for the future. A proper understanding of aionios sheds a brilliant light on God’s revelation. This information is readily available to truth seekers. As early as 1889 the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges stated: “The adjective aionios (‘everlasting’) does not in itself mean ‘unending’” (Matthew, p. 196). This applies to the same adjective aionios in Daniel 12:2 where the future life of Christians is the life of the age to come. Aionios also describes the fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah thousands of years ago. The fire was not “everlasting” (Jude 7).

The world famous scholar of New Testament Greek, the late Nigel Turner, Ph.D, says: “It would be imprecise to translate aionios as ‘eternal.’ It means ‘belonging to the future age or dispensation’” (Christian Words, T & T Clark, 1980, pp. 452, 455, 456). He was right. Often these gems of understanding go no further than learned books. They belong in preaching and teaching. The public needs to be informed of basic facts of faith.

Translations of the Bible may sometimes reflect not the truth of the inspired original but merely a prejudice in favor of established traditional doctrine. One of the tasks of the Bible scholar is to expose such misinformation. The Bible must be rescued from the corrupting influence of paganism which hit the church from the second century onwards. That paganism has affected Christianity in all of its central doctrines, including the doctrine of God — but that is another story.


Of crucial importance is a clear understanding of the Message of the New Testament. It might just be that potential believers are hindered from an encounter with Christ, precisely because current presentations of the faith offer a meaningless disembodied existence in a vague “heaven,” or an unending conscious existence in a tormenting fire for the wicked. Jesus spoke clearly and Hebraicly when, quoting the fascinating Psalm 37:9, 11, 22, 29, 34, he offered the faithful an invitation to “have the earth as their inheritance” (Matt. 5:5; cp. Rev. 5:10). The same Psalm tells us that the wicked will “vanish away like smoke” (v. 20).³

Source: Focus on the Kingdom July 2003

Footnotes:
[1] Acts 13:33 refers to the beginning of the Son and v. 34 by contrast describes the resurrection of the Messiah. The KJV is misleading here since it adds to the Greek the word “again” in verse 33. But it is verse 34, in contrast to verse 33, which speaks of the resurrection from the dead.
[2] Known to commentators as the divine passive, i.e., it was God who begat Jesus.
[3] Not as in the KJV, “for this reason also…” as if there might be TWO reasons for his being Son!

 

[Lori Jane]

Here is an earlier newsletter article on the subject as well.

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That Word “Everlasting” or “Eternal”​

Platonism has unfortunately wormed its way into most standard translations of the Bible. It appears there in the unfortunate rendering of the Greek word aionios (=“belonging to the age”). Aionios does not mean strictly in itself “lasting for ever.” Most Bible readers recognize at once the expressions “everlasting” or “eternal life” (zoe aionios). What then is the meaning of that adjective “eternal”

As long ago as 1889 the Rev. A. Carr of Oxford and Wellington College, UK was instructing the young students of the Bible in England in the celebrated set of commentaries, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press). He provides a most enlightening and instructive gem of information in his comment on Matthew 25:46:

“The same Greek word (aionios) is translated everlasting (punishment) and (life) eternal. In each case the adjective in the Greek text follows the noun
— the place of emphasis. The adjective aionios (eternal) = of or belonging to (1) an aion or period, past, present or future or (2) to a succession of aions or periods. It does not therefore in itself = ‘unending’” (p. 196). Professor Carr goes on to point out that in the case of the Life of the Age to Come (“eternal life”), that life will be in perpetuity. It will be bestowed when the age to come of the Kingdom of God on earth arrives with the return of the Messiah. But note that the unending life which is the Christians’ destiny is elsewhere clarified as “immortality.” In the case of the punishment of the wicked, on the other hand, we repeat, “aionios, eternal, does not in itself mean unending.” The reader of the Bible will find an enormous relief in learning that the God of infinite compassion will not express his wrath by inflicting on the wicked “unending punishment.”

That exaggerated notion, which attributes a supreme cruelty to God, has been read into the text under the pressure of adherence to ancient tradition, related to the Platonic belief in the innate immortality of the soul. Firstly, then, in the Bible there is no “immortal soul” existing in the wicked (or for that matter in the righteous) which God will torture for endless ages without cessation forever. What Jesus did say was that the wicked who refuse his authority as God’s supreme agent, the Messiah, will suffer the penalty of “the punishment which belongs to the age to come,” “that age,” as Jesus said, when the faithful will by resurrection attain to the Kingdom of God (Luke 20:35). Secondly, the punishment which will fall upon those who reject the words of Jesus must be defined more fully from other passages of the Bible.

Matthew 25:46 tells us no more than that it is a punishment to be meted out when the age to come arrives. It is, we might say, “supernatural punishment,” and it will exclude the wicked from the glory of the millennial Kingdom age to come.

There is further excellent evidence for the fact that aionios, used in connection with punishment, does not require us to believe in “eternal torment.” Jude 7 speaks of the “eternal” (aionios) fire which destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the​

neighboring towns. The fire in question struck those cities in the form of sulfur rained from heaven. It was no man-made conflagration. It was fire “belonging to the age to come” (Jude 7), fire as a warning to the wicked of the future, but it was not fire which burned endlessly. Having achieved its destructive effects by burning up the cities and their inhabitants, it ceased to burn. The fire was not quenched. It came to an end when the objects for which it was prepared were consumed in smoke. In the same language the Psalmist spoke of the destruction of those who oppose God: “The wicked will perish; the enemies of the Lord will be as the fat of lambs: they are consumed. In smoke they are consumed away” (Ps. 37:20). The Cambridge Bible for Schools comments: “Smoke is the natural figure of speedy and complete disappearance, as in Hosea 13:3: ‘[The wicked] will be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew which passes away, as the chaff which is driven by a whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney.’” The same picture of the fate of the wicked appears in Obadiah: “Shall I not in that day, says the Lord, destroy the wise men of Edom… everyone in Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter…you will be cut of for ever…the heathen will be as though they had never existed” (Obad. 8-10, 16). In another passage an opponent of God “will be ruined forever” (Ps. 52:5). The idea is of a destruction in perpetuity with no prospect of reconstruction. So also in Psalm 92:7, 9: “When the wicked thrive they are like grass, and when all the evildoers blossom, it is to be forever destroyed…Your enemies, Yahweh, will perish.”

“Eternal punishment” and “eternal fire” in the New Testament require translation into the idiom of the New Testament’s Jewish background. Thus Dr. Nigel Turner in Christian Words (T & T Clark, 1980, pp. 452, 455, 456) says: “It would be imprecise to translate aionios as ‘eternal’… [It means] ‘belonging to the future age or dispensation.’” This important information which bears on a major biblical doctrine
— the fate of the wicked — was offered to the public nearly a century earlier in the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels: “The adjective aionios occurs 70 times in the NT…Three passages should be examined: ‘through times eternal’ (Rom 16:25), ‘before times eternal’ (II Tim. 1:9; Tit. 1:2); in these uses it is clear that ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting’ are not interchangeable. This agrees with the LXX [Greek version of the Old Testament], in which aionios is used to describe the rites and ceremonies of Judaism which are abolished in Christianity (Ex. 12:24; 29:9; 40:15; Num. 8:19 and others)” (Vol. 1, p. 540). The author of this important entry on “eternal punishment” goes on to oppose the translation of aionios as “aionian” or “age-long.” He rightly also rejects “eternal” as the correct rendering. This is because the New Testament speaks of time “before times eternal” (aionios). Time before eternal time is a logical impossibility. You cannot have time existing before eternity! Correctly rendered, however, the Bible speaks of times before specific “ages of time.” There was in other words time before “the time of the ages,” “time marked out by ages.” Rev. W.H. Dyson goes on to clarify the meaning of aionios like this: “Eternal [aionios] Life is the Life of the Kingdom… ‘Eternal punishment’ is the antithesis of ‘eternal life,’ the penalties upon all unrighteousness inseparably bound up with the Kingdom…As a working principle, then, ‘eternal’ [aionios] may be accepted as descriptive of things belonging to, essentially bound up with the Kingdom, and it almost equivalent to ‘Messianic’… These deeper meanings of aionios should serve to remove the question of the time element in future punishment from the unsatisfactory basis of merely verbal interpretations.”

This information is vitally important for a sound appreciation of the fate of the wicked. The punishment with which they are threatened is not a punishment which lasts for ever. That false impression is conveyed to readers of the English Bible by a mistranslation of the word aionios. Aionios appears often in the Old Testament as a word descriptive of limited periods of time. It comes into the New Testament as descriptive of the great Age to Come of the Kingdom of God — “that well-known age,” as Jesus described it (Luke 20:35). The proper translation of aionios as “belonging to or pertaining to the Age to Come of the future Kingdom” will bring into focus a number of expressions now mistakenly translated by the adjective “eternal.” “Eternal” brings to the mind of the average reader the concept of timelessness, a largely meaningless idea. However, God deals with us in terms we can grasp. Jesus wanted us to understand that the goal of salvation, the inheritance of the Kingdom of God in the future, is not a timeless concept. The Second Coming will happen at a specific moment of future history. Jesus will not introduce the “end of the world,” another mistranslation in some versions, but “the end of the age” (Matt. 24:3; 13:39; 28:20). The end of “the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4) will mark the beginning of the New Age of the coming Kingdom. Calendar time will continue in that coming age. Christian hope is based on a grasp of that promised future. It is a future to be enjoyed during the coming age. For the believer it implies also, of course, immortality. For the wicked the penalty is “destruction which excludes from the coming age of the Kingdom.” It is a destruction beyond reconstruction. Rev. Dyson made the point well in the article we have been citing:

“The characteristic teaching of Jesus as to the penalties of sin is bound up with his Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus spoke of the incomparable value of the Kingdom of God as the ‘richest treasure’ and ‘pearl of great price’ (Matt. 13:44, 45). The supreme quest of the Kingdom is to be the first duty and sovereign wisdom of life (Matt. 6:33). [The converse of all this] is the incomparable loss which the rejection of the Gospel will entail. This is the supreme penalty — exclusion from the Kingdom, to be cast into the ‘outer darkness’ (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), denied by the Lord (Matt. 7:23; 10:33; 25:12; Luke 13:25-27), shut out from the glad presence of the King (Matt. 25:41). The use of the figures ‘weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth’ in the sentence of exclusion clearly indicates that remorse is one element in future retribution (cp. Luke 16:25: ‘Son, remember’)…In the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24ff.) and the drag-net, the ultimate overthrow, and as the terms would seem to imply, the final destruction of evil are decisively declared.”

“Eternal fire” does not mean a fire which burns throughout endless ages. It is the “fire of the age to come,” the lake of fire to which the Beast and False Prophet are dispatched at the coming of Christ to inaugurate the first stage of the Kingdom of God, the thousand-year reign (see Rev. 19:20 and compare the destruction of the leader of Assyria as prophesied in Isa. 30:31-33). “Eternal punishment” does not mean a punishment which continues to inflict pain endlessly. Again, the article on “eternal fire” in the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels is helpful:

“In many OT passages, even where it is said that the fire is unquenchable, and will burn forever, material fire is undoubtedly meant, for fire is one of the physical agents which God commonly employs in His temporal judgments and its burning forever must refer to the lasting destruction which it effects. Sodom and Gomorrah and Edom are given as examples of places on which the doom of eternal fire fell, and they still bear its proof marks…In Sodom and Gomorrah, Edom (Isa. 34) we have examples of what is meant by ‘suffering the doom of eternal fire’ (Jude 7). But this does not mean that ever since the fire destroyed the cities, their inhabitants have been enduring the pains” (Vol. 1, p. 536).

The New Testament happily defines “eternal” fire when it describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude used the expression “eternal fire” to define the nature of that punishment. It should be obvious to any reader that “eternal,” as we have pointed out above, conveys the wrong sense in English. That fire is not still burning. It is not “eternal.” It was in fact an example of the devastating and destructive “fire of the coming age.” It will be inflicted at the return of Jesus (II Thess. 1:7-9, and following the second resurrection, Rev. 20:10).

“Undying worms” (immortal maggots?!) are no evidence of a perpetual conscious punishment for the wicked. The maggots will help to consume the carcasses of the wicked. But no one imagines that the maggots will live forever. Nor will the carcasses exist after they have been “consumed in smoke” (Ps. 37:20). At that point the wicked will be “as though they had never existed” (Obad. 16), a pile of ashes under the feet of the righteous. “The coming day will burn [the wicked] up…and they will be ashes under your feet” (Mal. 4:1-3). “Burning forever,” “everlasting burnings” (Isa. 33:14) describe the consuming fire of destruction which will put an end to the wicked forever. The effects of that punishment will be beyond reversal. They will last forever. Thus in Revelation 18 the city of Babylon will undergo the same final punishment. It will be a sudden tormenting and torturous destruction by burning. It will be all over in one day. “Her plagues will come in one day and she will be burned up, utterly burned with fire” (Rev. 18:8). Onlookers will watch “the smoke of her burning” (v. 9) and “will stand at a distance for fear of her torture,” a process lasting “one hour” (v. 10). “In one hour the city is laid waste” (v. 19). The city of Babylon, by this process of torture (vv. 10, 15) resulting in “smoke which rises into the ages of the ages” (19:3), will cease to exist, “be found no more” (18:21). We should note carefully the exact sense of the word “torment” (18:10, 15). It produces a condition of non-existence. It means “violent overthrow by fire” (see 18:21). To be “tormented” is to be “utterly burned up with fire” (18:8). The smoke of the fire, as the indicator of the fire’s destructive work, goes up “into the ages of the ages” (19:3). This does not lead us to understand that the city will continue to experience an endless process of punishment. The Old Testament has taught us to understand that in the Day of God’s wrath “the land of Edom will become burning pitch. It will not be quenched night nor day. The smoke will go up for ever. The land will lie desolate from generation to generation; no one will pass through it forever and ever… No one will be there” (see Isa. 34:8ff.). This picture of “endless fire” (cp. Jude 7) does not require us to understand that the people or the city will remain in conscious punishment. They and the city will be destroyed. It will be an irreversible destruction which lasts into the ages of the ages. Such final destruction is called “torture by fire.” The city of Babylon will suffer such “torture.” The Devil and his cohorts will likewise experience “torture into the ages of the ages” (Rev. 20:10). Taken in isolation from the rest of Scripture this one verse may well be read (or at least in English it will be so heard) to mean an endless conscious punishment. But since “eternal fire” (Jude 7) is really the destructive “fire of the coming age” (aionios fire), and since the wicked will be “destroyed for ever” (Ps. 52:5; 92:7), Revelation 20:10 should not be made to control the rest of the biblical evidence. “Torture,” as we see, means “sudden destruction by a consuming fire,” with endless results. It was “torture” which caused the sudden ruin of Babylon (Rev. 18:8- 10). It will be “torture” which destroys Satan and his supporters forever. Based on the biblical usage of the word for “torture” in connection with sudden, violent irreversible ruin of the city, it is fair to take Revelation 20:10 in the same sense: The Devil will suffer a torturous destruction by fire, with endless, irreversible results. Words in the Bible must be allowed the nuance given them in the context of the original languages. The sense of “torment” or “torture” in the Greek of Revelation is not necessarily quite that of the English. This is shown by the use of “torment” to describe the demise of a city (Rev. 18:10, 15), a usage that is really quite inappropriate in our language. Full allowance must be made for this important linguistic fact.​

The fate of the wicked in Revelation 14:11 is depicted in the same language. The smoke of the their torturous death goes up ever. There will be no possibility of reprieve day and night forever. The wicked can look forward to no future beyond destruction in the second death — death meaning in the Bible the absence of conscious existence (Ecc. 9:5, 10, etc.). Death in the Lake of Fire is death with no prospect of recovery.

There is not a single text in Scripture which allows us to imagine that the second death is a kind of purgatory from which a man can reemerge and be saved. Such is the illusion of “universalism” that cannot bring itself to believe that God actually puts the wicked out of existence forever. The annihilation of the wicked, via a torturous destruction, provides the starkest possible warning to humanity. With that warning the New Testament consistently calls us all to repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom as Jesus preached it (Mark 1:14, 15). Forgiveness of sins is provided in the atoning death of the Messiah for the sins of the world, but forgiveness is contingent on repentance. And repentance means responding with intelligent belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom (see Mark 4:11, 12; Luke 8:12). Repentance and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin. One without the other has no meaning. And sin is expressly defined by Jesus as failure to believe him and his words (John 16:9; 5:47, Matt. 13:19, etc.). Hence the critical importance of defining the saving Gospel as Jesus did, so that repentance can follow in response to the command that we “believe the Gospel about the Kingdom” (Mark 1:14, 15). Water baptism in the New Testament followed upon the convert’s intelligent grasp of the Gospel about the Kingdom and the Name of Jesus (all that Jesus stands for) — Acts 8:12. All this was in compliance with Jesus’ marching orders to the Church until the end of the age when he returns to set up his Kingdom in a renewed earth (Matt. 28:19, 20).

 

[Lori Jane]

ETERNAL


1. aion (αἰών, 165), “an age,” is translated “eternal” in Eph. 3:11, lit., “(purpose) of the ages” (marg.), and 1 Tim. 1:17, lit. “(king) of the ages” (marg.). See age.


2. aionios (αἰώνιος, 166) “describes duration, either undefined but not endless, as in Rom. 16:25; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2; or undefined because endless as in Rom. 16:26, and the other sixty-six places in the NT.


“The predominant meaning of aionios, that in which it is used everywhere in the NT, save the places noted above, may be seen in 2 Cor. 4:18, where it is set in contrast with proskairos, lit., ‘for a season,’ and in Philem. 15, where only in the NT it is used without a noun. Moreover it is used of persons and things which are in their nature endless, as, e.g., of God, Rom. 16:26; of His power, 1 Tim. 6:16, and of His glory, 1 Pet. 5:10; of the Holy Spirit, Heb. 9:14; of the redemption effected by Christ, Heb. 9:12, and of the consequent salvation of men, 5:9, as well as of His future rule, 2 Pet. 1:11, which is elsewhere declared to be without end, Luke 1:33; of the life received by those who believe in Christ, John 3:16, concerning whom He said, ‘they shall never perish,’ 10:28, and of the resurrection body, 2 Cor. 5:1, elsewhere said to be ‘immortal,’ 1 Cor. 15:53, in which that life will be finally realized, Matt. 25:46; Titus 1:2.


“Aionios is also used of the sin that ‘hath never forgiveness,’ Mark 3:29, and of the judgment of God, from which there is no appeal, Heb. 6:2, and of the fire, which is one of its instruments, Matt. 18:8; 25:41; Jude 7, and which is elsewhere said to be ‘unquenchable,’ Mark 9:43.


“The use of aionios here shows that the punishment referred to in 2 Thess. 1:9, is not temporary, but final, and, accordingly, the phraseology shows that its purpose is not remedial but retributive.”*





3. aidios (ἀΐδιος, 126); see everlasting.





Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Vol. 2, pp. 207–208). Nashville, TN: T. Nelson.

 

[Lori Jane]

“describes duration, either undefined but not endless, as in Rom. 16:25; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2; or undefined because endless as in Rom. 16:26, and the other sixty-six places in the NT.

Wow!

 

[Lori Jane]

ETERNAL, ē̇-tûr′nal (עוֹלָם, ‛ōlām; αἰώνιος, aiō̇nios, from αἰών, aiō̇n): The word “eternal” is of very varying import, both in the Scriptures and out of them.


1. ‛Ōlām


In the OT, the Heb word ʽōlām is used for “eternity,” sometimes in the sense of unlimited duration, sometimes in the sense of a cycle or an age, and sometimes, in later Heb, in the signification of world. The Heb ‛ōlām has, for its proper NT equivalent, aiōn, as signifying either time of particular duration, or the unending duration of time in general. Only, the Heb term primarily signified unlimited time, and only in a secondary sense represented a definite or specific period. Both the Heb and the Gr terms signify the world itself, as it moves in time.


2. Aiōn, Aiōnios


In the NT, aiōn and aiōnios are often used with the meaning “eternal,” in the predominant sense of futurity. The word aiōn primarily signifies time, in the sense of age or generation; it also comes to denote all that exists under time-conditions; and, finally, superimposed upon the temporal is an ethical use, relative to the world’s course. Thus aiōn may be said to mean the subtle informing spirit of the world or cosmos—the totality of things. By Plato, in his Timaeus, aiōn was used of the eternal Being, whose counterpart, in the sense-world, is Time. To Aristotle, in speaking of the world, aiōn is the ultimate principle which, in itself, sums up all existence. In the NT, aiōn is found combined with prepositions in nearly three score and ten instances, where the idea of unlimited duration appears to be meant. This is the usual method of expressing eternity in the LXX also. The aiōnios of 2 Cor 4:18 must be eternal, in a temporal use or reference, else the antithesis would be gone.


3. Aḯdios


In Rom 1:20 the word aḯdios is used of Divine action and rendered in AV “eternal” (RV “everlasting”), the only other place in the NT where the word occurs being Jude ver 6, where the rendering is “everlasting,” which accords with classical usage. But the presence of the idea of eternal in these passages does not impair the fact that aiōn and aiōnios are, in their natural and obvious connotation, the usual NT words for expressing the idea of eternal, and this holds strikingly true of the LXX usage also. For, from the idea of aeonian life, there is no reason to suppose the notion of duration excluded. The word aiōnios is sometimes used in the futurist signification, but often also, in the NT, it is concerned rather with the quality, than with the quantity or duration, of life. By the continual attachment of aiōnios to life, in this conception of the spiritual or Divine life in man, the aeonian conception was saved from becoming sterile.


4. Enlargement of Idea


In the use of aiōn and aiōnios there is evidenced a certain enlarging or advancing import till they come so to express the high and complex fact of the Divine life in man. In Gr, aiōnes signifies ages, or periods or dispensations. The aiōnes of He 1:2, and 11:3, is, however, to be taken as used in the concrete sense of “the worlds,” and not “the ages,” the world so taken meaning the totality of things in their course or flow.


5. Eternal Life


Our Lord decisively set the element of time in abeyance, and took His stand upon the fact and quality of life—life endless by its own nature. Of that eternal life He is Himself the guarantee—-“Because I live, ye shall live also” (Jn 14:19). Therefore said Augustine, “Join thyself to the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal.” See Eternity.





Lindsay, J. (1915). Eternal. In J. Orr, J. L. Nuelsen, E. Y. Mullins, & M. O. Evans (Eds.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Vol. 1–5, pp. 1010–1011). Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company.