On statista.com's top ten social media platforms, five of the top ten help the user creator short videos to share with others. Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, and Snapchat reach roughly 9.4 million active users every month (https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/). The short videos usually last from 30 seconds to a minute and can be a video unto itself, or a clip from a larger video.
Platforms that are designed to have long videos such as YouTube have been pushing these shorter videos, because they trigger that part of the brain that gives good sensations, by letting a person receive satisfaction one quick video at a time. This keeps people on their platforms longer as they are chasing down videos without even realizing how much time they’ve spent.
I’ve seen my share of these and have chased a few rabbits by watching many of these videos myself. But what I’ve noticed time and time again is, alongside the video’s of the funny dogs and cats, people are sharing their theological thoughts. And as I’ve had conversations with people in the last several years, it’s dawned on me that, for the most part, the extent of most people’s knowledge on God, the Bible, history of religion and the world, are regulated to these short form videos.
And so when we as Christians share the Gospel, we’re most likely not sharing it with someone who has thought through the very issues they come up with, but rather who have a drop of a thought filtered through a minute or less video. They have what I like to call, a TikTok Theological degree. Now these video creators speak in such a way that it seems like they have insight and can speak authoritatively on the subjects they are broaching, but even just a quick Google search of the topic, usually defeats their arguments.
So, as we do every fall, we conduct an apologetics series because one of the main jobs of a pastor is the equipping of the saints to do the work of ministry. In this apologetics series we are going to walk through a series of arguments that are out there on a plethora of topics. I am going to show you how to deconstruct an argument, give you resources that you can use for your own research, so that when you come across someone with a TikTok Theological degree, you can stand for the Gospel of Christ.
In this first week we are going to be looking at a man, who goes by a character he created by the name of, JeGaysus, or the gay Jesus. He’s a Tiktoker out of California that grew up in an evangelical church, who believes he received trauma from that experience, and who has a following of almost 400 thousands people over three social media platforms. He is a part of a movement that seeks to deconstruct their faith, something we talked about a few years back, where people analyze what they believe is Christianity and leave orthodox beliefs for their own interpretations. He is a gay man who identifies as non-binary, which means they identify with a gender identity outside of male and female. He goes by JeGaysus, because he believes he looks like DaVinci’s Jesus. (https://aninjusticemag.com/an-interview-with-jegaysus-98e2536085; https://religionnews.com/2021/07/27/not-everyone-loves-me/). Now the point of this teaching isn’t to make fun of him or to denigrate him, or any of the other people we’ll be looking at, but to show what is out on the internet and to see how we may approach speaking to people who might be influenced by individuals such as this person.
Here is his video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yNssEia9C2M?feature=share
Let’s walk through this 59 second video.
The issue being addressed in this, is that of eternal punishment that is conscious torment. Now this is actually a debated topic within Christian theology. There are those that believe there is eternal conscious torment or punishment, which states that all entities will be judged one day and those that follow God will go to eternal life and bliss with him, and that all others will go to an eternal punishment away from God. Another belief is annihilation, where at the judgment, those who do not believe will be snuffed out, no longer existing in anyway. Another view, that is gaining ground in theological circles, combines the two; unbelievers will have a short experience of punishment, but in the end they’ll either be snuffed out, given another opportunity to receive the Gospel.
With us understanding that there is a debate, and having that in mind, we turn to what the video addresses. This person makes a series of statements like, “There is no where in the Bible that says ‘eternal conscious torment’ is a thing…it’s not a concept in the Bible… Closest thing you can get to anything sounding like eternal conscious torment would be, the devil getting thrown into the lake of fire, chained for a 1,000 years, tortured…that’s not humans….No mention of human souls being tortured endlessly, nor of the devil being the one to oversee it.”
Let’s deconstruct this. Is he right? He said we can’t use verse like John 3:16 where Jesus states, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The reason he states we cannot use this verse, is because the word perish is an annihilation word. And within the translation of the Greek word, apollumi (ap-ol’-loo-mee), annihilation is one way to interpret it, but it’s not the only interpretation. Another way to interpret perish is, lost, and still another one is, ruined. Which would then read, that “whoever believes in him should not be lost or ruined.” But let’s say we don’t use that verse, how about the other verse he brings up, that he says we can’t use, Matthew 10:28? When we read that verse, we see that Jesus states, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” What’s interesting is that the same root word in John 3:16, apollumi (ap-ol’-loo-mee), appears here in Matthew 10:28. Perish and destroy. You know where this word is also used? In Matthew 10:39, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And Matthew 15:24 “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” And in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This is a reiteration of what Jesus said earlier. In these verses, and more, the same word for perish or destroy is the word that gets used a lot to talk about losing someone or something (https://biblehub.com/greek/622.htm). So perish and destruction to God might mean something different than our concept of annihilation. To God it seems like to perish or to be destroyed is more akin to being lost, than it is of simple obliteration.
But there is a passage that’s very interesting if we were to continue in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 25:41-46, Jesus is completing a teaching on the end times. In the final verses of chapter 25 he talks about two groups, those that go on to eternal life and those that he says this to in verse 41, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” And verse 46 which ends the chapter, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” And there’s that eternal punishment language. So perishing and destruction doesn’t necessarily mean annihilation, but might be closer linked to being lost. And where are those that do not follow Jesus lost to? Eternal punishment. So does the Bible have at the very least a concept of eternal punishment? Yes it doesn’t.
But what about the conscious part? An eternal punishment could be that we are eternally snuffed out. To answer this there is only one clear glimpse we get into the eternal punishment, and it comes from a story Jesus tells about Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. This story follows the parables of the Lost sheep, coin, and sons, interesting that we have been talking about lostness in the verses before and the clearest picture of eternal punishment follows parables that speak about being lost?
Well in the story that Jesus tells, and I make that distinction between the parables Jesus tells and the stories he tells, because Jesus’ parables contain general character archetypes, whereas this story contains named individuals; in fact scholars lean to this story being a real tale, rather than a made up fable, because of the naming that occurs. In the story, a rich man dies and is tormented with an understanding of both his current situation and the physical world that is going on at the same time. In the story Jesus states that Abraham tells the rich man in the 25th verse, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” This story, whether real or a parable, relays the idea that there is consciousness in the anguish, in the punishment, in the life to come. Two of his points addressed and countered.
No all this was mostly done with a simple search of the verses and words we were given through the video by looking them up on both biblegateway.com and biblehub.com. Two sites that you can utilize as you share the Gospel.
But what about his claim that eternal conscious punishment comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy? Dante wrote in the 1300s A.D., so let’s look at early Christian writings from before that to see if Christians were writing about eternal conscious punishment before the Divine Comedy was published.
Clement of Rome, around 100 AD, wrote, “But when they see how those who have sinned and who have denied Jesus by their words or by their deeds are punished with terrible torture in unquenchable fire, the righteous, who have done good, and who have endured tortures and have hated the luxuries of life, will give glory to their God saying, ‘There shall be hope for him that has served God with all his heart!’ (Second Clement 17:7)”
Ignatius of Antioch, around 110 AD, wrote, “A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him (Letter to the Ephesians 16:2).”
One more, this one from Polycarp a mentee of John the Apostle, around 155 A.D., “Fixing their minds on the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly tortures and purchased eternal life with but a single hour. To them, the fire of their cruel torturers was cold. They kept before their eyes their escape from the eternal and unquenchable fire (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:3).”
These men are writing in the second century A.D. while Dante is writing about eleven hundred years later. So is JeGaysus right? Again, he isn’t. The Bible speaks of eternal conscious punishment and the early Church interpreted that way as well, hundreds of years before Dante put pen to paper (https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/what-did-early-christians-believe-about-hell/).
Finally what about hell? I know that the very verse of Matthew 10:28 brought up hell, but is this person correct on what they say? That, “Hell is not a concept in the Bible.” And that hell is “Incorrectly translated from 1 of 4 words, Hades, Gehenna, Sheol, Tartarus”?
First, yes, the words that are used to translate hell in places like Matthew 10:28 are words like Gehenna. Words like Hades and Sheol were used to talk about the unseen place were souls went. Sheol was the Hebrew word, while Hades was the Greek word. There was no distinction in the words themselves between good and bad people, but as we saw in Jesus’ teaching on Lazarus, there is a distinction in eternity. Now the word Gehenna is interesting because it carried with it, not just the idea of an unseen place for souls, but a distinct place of punishment for evil. To the Jews, the valley of Gehenna was seen as a place of punishment for the ungodly and so became a reference to the unseen world of the souls who were being punished by God. We again see this in Jesus’ story about Lazarus and the rich man.
So though the word isn’t hell, and instead is Gehenna, the idea of eternal conscious punishment is there. So where does the world hell come from? The study of words is called etymology and hell’s etymology begins with the helle (Old Frisian), hellia (Old Saxon),hel (old Norse), Hölle (German), and haljia (Gothic). In Old English hel with one “L”was used to talk about the abode of the dead and the torment of the wicked; while in Proto-Germanic it was halijo which was a term for the underworld. The word itself means to cover or conceal, and was used to speak about the nether world or a place to torment the wicked or dead. So when the Hebrew words Sheol and Gehenna, and the Greek word Hades was translated into English, the word for the same idea was used, that’s hell (https://www.etymonline.com/word/hell). This is what typically happens in translations, a word is used that means the same or similar to the word that is being used when going from one language to another.
So no, hell is not incorrectly translated and it’s concept is squarely found in the Bible.
Now it took me roughly twenty minutes to go through a 59 second video. But most people won’t watch this, because a lie said in 59 seconds is easier to consume than a truth told in 20 minutes. Yet, as believers this is what we must do. We must take the time to research, to analyze, and to confront false teachings, and the TikTok theologians that we encounter. As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” And we do so as Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…”
The purpose of standing against false teachings is to point others to Jesus. Jesus told us that false teachers would arise (Matthew 24:5). Paul told Timothy that there would be teachers that would tickle the ears in the last days (2 Timothy 4:3). We need to take the time, studying God’s word, and prepare ourselves for those times, when God brings into our lives people that need to hear the Gospel, but all they’ve heard are these short videos that are easily debunked, we will be ready.
We do so not to win arguments, but to point others to Jesus, that they may not endure hell, being separated from God for eternity. And all it took of me was two good biblical sources and two Google searches. Any of us can do that, you don’t need a college or seminary degree, because you have the work of the Holy Spirit and God’s word.
My challenge to you this week is, first, if you have access to the internet, take one of the two websites I used today, biblegateway.com or biblehub.com, and familiarize yourself with at least one of them. Use it as a tool to help you stand against the TikTok theologians that are out there.
Secondly, something we all can do, is pray for those who base their thoughts on God on the short videos of social media. Pray that they would dive deeper and seek the Living God, because he desires to be sought. Pray that the Holy Spirit would move and there would be such a wave of souls coming to the Lord that it would change the trends and algorithms of social media.
Let us be those who stand firm on God’s word ready and willing to be used to speak out against the TikTok theologians of our day. Amen.
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