Does hell exist? Who goes there? Does Matthew 13’s furnace reference talk about it? Today, I spout off about my views of hell, judgment, and justice. I share my thoughts around the passage from Matthew 13, commonly called the parable of the wheat and tares, where the wheat and tares are allowed to grow together until the end of the age when the wheat is harvested and put into a barn and the tares are gathered and burned in a furnace.


Does this passage talk about hell? If yes, what does it mean? If not, how do we interpret it? I also go into the four classic views of hell, Eternal Conscious Torment, Annihilationism, Purgatorial, and Universal Reconciliation, and talk about where I land these days, why, and what it means for the lived experience of faith.


Time Stamps for the episode:


0:40: Introduction

2:02: Matthew 13, weeds and wheat

3:08: Eternal Conscious Torment is the central dogma of fundamentalism

7:40: Judaistic Roots of Mattew 13

12:26: Agricultural Sabotage!

15:44: The Big Baddie in the Bible is not Satan, it’s Empire

20:49: The Kingdom of God is like… 7 different stories

26:14: Justice and Judgment

31:35: Hell and the end of the world

36:51: Gritty Justice in Matthew

42:01: The Daniel Reference in Matthew 13

45:07: 4 Views of Hell, 2 Views of Justice

51:48: Universal Reconciliation

55:52: Conclusions


All Music for this episode is provided by Axeltree:

@axletree


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All Music for this episode composed by Axeltree