In Revelation 20:10, the devil, the beast and the false prophet are described as being tormented (basanis thesontai) "day and night forever and ever". Thus, if language means anything at all, in these contexts, the Adventist theory of annihilation destroys itself.

4. Jn. 3:36: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him."

Our fourth and final point in the grammatical study of the "doctrine of annihilation" will be to combine the passages of Romans 2:8 and Revelation 14:10 with the Gospel of John 3:36. Jesus tells us that he who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ already has eternal life (grammat. present tense), and he who is "not a believer in the Son," He says, "will not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him." The Greek word menei, translated here as abide, occurs several times in the New Testament. It defines an action that continues in time (cf. John 1:33; 2:12; 8:31; 15:9). Thus, in John 3:36, the Holy Spirit says that the wrath of God will be the eternal lot of "those who do not believe in the Son." Compared with Romans 2:8-9, we can see that those who do not heed the Truth and do evil are the objects of God's wrath, which is defined in Revelation 14:10-11 as eternal. "He shall drink the wine of the wrath of God... and the smoke of their torment shall ascend for ever and ever, and shall have no rest day or night."

The word orges, translated "wrath (wrath)," appears in each of these verses, and this leaves no doubt that the subject is being discussed. It is obvious that such a state of perception of God's wrath cannot be compared with the relatively "blessed" prospect of the total destruction of those who "have neither the Son of God nor have life".30 and "the wrath of God is upon him".31 The wrath of God hangs like a sword of Damocles over those who deny Jesus Christ. This sword will come into action when the soul departs into eternity and stands before the reality of the Eternal Judgment of God.

Seventh-day Adventists should not be ostracized from society just because they hold their view on the matter, because they believe that in an indefinite period of punishment will expire before the final destruction of sinners along with Satan and his spirits.

Dr. Francis Pieper, the famous Lutheran theologian and author of the monumental Christian Dogmatics, made my point when he wrote: "The Scriptures teach the truth of eternal damnation so clearly and powerfully that no one can deny this dogma without denying the authority of Scripture itself. The Bible draws a parallel between the eternal salvation of believers and the eternal damnation of unbelievers. Whoever denies one is obliged, in order to be consistent, to deny the other (Matt. 25:46). We have found the same comparison and antithesis in other places of Scripture as well. This parallelism proves that the term "eternity" in the sense of limited duration is not acceptable in this context. We must accept the concept of eternity in its direct and true meaning, a meaning traceable throughout the Holy Scriptures, which is used to describe the duration of the punishment of sinners in the future life (see 2 Thess. 1:9; Matt. 18:8; Mk. 3:29)... The objections to this dogma, which have taken place at all times, are quite understandable. The thought of the endless agony of intelligent beings conscious of their plight is so horrific as to exceed the capacity of human imagination. However, all these objections are based on an erroneous principle of representing God and His providence as analogous to our human sentiments and judgments.

In this case, this misconception refers to those who hold that the eternal punishment of a part of mankind is inconsistent with the unity of the divine plan of the universe, or that it is incompatible with either divine love or divine justice; who, accordingly, replaces eternal damnation with the possibility of salvation by gradual improvement in the next life or by the instant destruction of sinners. In response to these hypotheses, we must adhere to the fundamental principle of the divine essence, his attributes, and providence, which transcends human conception, and which we therefore cannot know except by divine revelations given to us in his Word, and showing what is in accord and what is contrary to the divine essence and attributes. The nature of eternal damnation consists in eternal exile from the Face of God and, in other words, in a state of constant rejection from union with God... In order to illustrate the terrible agony that is accompanied by eternal exile from the face of God, theologians point to the torment of fish pulled out of their habitual habitat. But there is one essential difference here: a fish without water will soon die, while a person expelled from union with God must, according to Divine judgment, continue to exist consciously ("but he is subject to eternal damnation" Mark 3:29)."32

Seventh-day Adventists would have taken a great step forward in their dogma if they had carefully studied Dr. Francis Pieper's reviews as well as the teachings of the Christian church over the past two thousand years. Most importantly, Adventists must carefully read the teaching of God the Word that the soul of a person, regenerated or unregenerated, continues to exist after physical death. The divine judgment that establishes eternal punishment for the unborn again and eternal life for the saved are two sides of the same coin—divine justice and divine love. We believe that the Bible clearly teaches that there is no reason to believe that the doctrine of conditional immortality and annihilation is consistent. The Lord has given in the fullness of His Wisdom the knowledge that none of His children will persist in setting their own criteria and standards for determining His perfect righteousness. I believe that Seventh-day Adventists have done this because, first, by predicting that the God of Love will not endlessly torment conscious beings, and second, by trying to fit Scripture into the narrow confines of their teaching, ignoring the principle of contextual interpretation. Their Christian brethren can only pray that sooner or later the Adventists will come to realize their great error and the contradiction of the Church's historical position in preaching the doctrine of the sleep of the soul and the destruction of sinners.

Old Testament Saturday, Sunday and the Number of the Beast

Without a doubt, the most definite doctrine promulgated by Seventh-day Adventists, and one of those that have entered the name of the organization itself, is the doctrine of the Seventh-day Sabbath. Adventists have come to the conclusion that the Sabbath is the true day of worship of God, and so the resolution of the question of why they continue to defend this concept and zealously insist on their rightness against Sunday-believers may be the key to understanding their psychological and theological premises.

I. Saturday or Sunday?