Eternal Fire
A Riddle for the Logical Mind
Three verses. One logical answer. Can you find it?
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Jude 1:7 (KJV) Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
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2 Peter 2:6 (KJV) And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;
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Malachi 4:3 (KJV) And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD [Yahuah] of hosts.
Read all three. Lay them side by side. What must be true?
Yahushua said what the fire does.
Matthew 10:28 (KJV) And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
- Sodom suffered "eternal fire." — Jude 1:7
- That fire turned Sodom to ashes, as an example. — 2 Peter 2:6
- The wicked become ashes under the feet. — Malachi 4:3
Eternal fire is eternal in its result, not in its burning.
Why It Matters
The church teaches that the wicked burn forever in torment without end. Jude says Sodom and Gomorrha are "set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 1:7). Peter says the same cities were turned "into ashes" as "an ensample" (2 Peter 2:6). Sodom is not burning today. Malachi says the wicked "shall be ashes under the soles of your feet" (Malachi 4:3). Eternal fire, then, is fire whose work is final. What it burns never comes back.
Scripture names the end plainly. "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), not life in another place. Yahushua warned of the One who can "destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). The wicked "shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away" (Psalm 37:20). Revelation calls it "the second death" (Revelation 20:14).
Revelation 14:11 says the smoke of their torment rises "for ever and ever." Isaiah used the same words of Edom: "the smoke thereof shall go up for ever" (Isaiah 34:10). Edom is not burning either. The smoke is the lasting witness of a judgment that is finished.
Endless torment needs a soul that cannot die, and that idea came from Greek philosophy (see Riddle 8). Augustine built the doctrine out at length in The City of God in the fifth century. Medieval art and poetry fixed its pictures in the public mind. Few in the pews ever learned that the picture came from the painters, not the prophets.
This matters because it slanders the Judge. Yahuah says, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11). Judgment in Scripture is just, complete, and final, never cruelty without end. The doctrine also hands immortality to every sinner, when Scripture offers it only as a gift to those who seek it (Romans 2:7). Many have turned from Yahuah because they were told He keeps a torture chamber. He does not.
Revelation closes with a world where "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain" (Revelation 21:4). That promise could not stand beside a fire still burning living people.