No Wonder He Fears to Die

From J. I Packer’s 18 Words, one last quote, which I’ll be adding to the theological term page on annihilationism. Regarding the claim that scripture speaking of “eternal fire,” “eternal destruction,” etc. refers to annihilation, Packer writes: 

Some hold that these texts imply the annihilation of the rejected — one searing moment in the fire, and then oblivion. But it seems clear that in reality the ‘second death’ is no more a cessation of being than is the first. For (i) the word rendered ‘destruction’ in 2 Thess. 1:9 (olethros) means, not annihilation, but ruin (cf. its use in 1 Thess 5:3). (ii) The insistence in these texts that the fire, punishment and destruction are eternal (aionios, literally ‘age-long’) and that the worm in Gehenna is undying, would be pointless and inappropriate if all that is envisaged is momentary extinction; just as it would be pointless and inappropriate to dwell on ‘unending’ pain resulting from an immediately fatal bullet wound. Either these words indicate the endlessness of torment, or they are superfluous and misleading. (iii) To the argument that aionios means only ‘relating to the age to come’, without any implications of endless duration, it seems sufficient to say that if in Matthew 25:46 ‘eternal’ life means endless bliss (and surely it does), then the ‘eternal’ punishment mentioned there must be endless too. (iv) We are told that in the ‘lake of fire’ (the ‘eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’, Matt. 25:41) the devil will be ‘tormented day and night for ever and ever’ (Rev. 20:10). That any man sent to join him will endure a similar eternity of retribution is clear from the parallel language of Revelation 14:10f.: ‘he (the beast-worshipper) shall be tormented with fire and brimstone … the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night.’

It seems plain that what these texts teach is not extinction, but the far worse prospect of an endless awareness of God’s just and holy displeasure. Grievous as we may find it to contemplate, and sickening as we may find the Jewish apocalyptic imagery in which Christ and the apostles speak of it (this is, after all, the post-holocaust era), and endless hell can no more be removed from the New Testament than an endless heaven can. This is why physical death (the first death) is so fearful a prospect for Christless men; not because it means extinction, but precisely because it does not mean extinction, only the unending pain of the second death. The godless man dimly senses this, through God’s general revelation (Rom. 1:32); no wonder, then, that he fears to die.