Tormented Forever, Yet Extinguished to Ashes
The paper reconciles torment for all eternity with the extinction of the wicked into ashes. The Bible teaches conscious and eternal punishment: no one is tormented after ceasing to exist.
By Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, September 2, 1880 — the masthead reads "FIFTH-DAY" — the periodical Signs of the Times, published in Oakland, California, carried in vol. 6, no. 33, page 392, the article "Forever and Ever," signed by J. D. Rice. The subject was the meaning of the expression "forever and ever" in Revelation 14:11 and 20:10: the wicked would be "tormented day and night forever and ever" — and the author set out to resolve the tension between this eternal torment and the thesis that the wicked will be burned until they become ashes.
The article itself cites the text that anchors the extinction thesis: Malachi 4:3 — the ashes of the wicked mixed with the dust that the saints tread underfoot. Rice frankly acknowledges the impasse: if the terms always meant eternity of duration, it would be impossible to harmonize Revelation 14:11 and 20:10 with the "facts" he had just presented. The way out he proposes is to relativize the word: "forever" would have limited application when it refers to things that will come to an end.
To support this relativization, the article parades examples: Psalm 9:7, where "forever" would be unlimited because it is applied to God; Jonah 2:5-6, where the earth with its bars was over the prophet "forever" — three days and three nights in the belly of the fish; Exodus 21:1-6, where the servant whose ear was pierced would serve his master "forever," that is, as long as he lived. Rice also appeals to the Greek term translated as "forever," to dictionaries and scholarly authorities, and to the maxim that the word would mean "as long as the thing, all circumstances considered, could exist."
One editorial precaution is required in reading the page: the initials "J. N. A." that close the preceding column end the previous article, by another author, about a church historian — they do not belong to Rice's text. The article "Forever and Ever" is signed at its end, on the same page 392, with the initials "J. D. RICE." It is his, therefore, the impossible reconciliation that the printed page records: eternal torment and total extinction in the same sentence.
Camp burned on a nineteenth-century prairie, in a period photograph — atmospheric illustration.
The absurdity
The gymnastics lies in the sentence of reconciliation: after pages arguing that "forever" would have a limited sense, Rice announces that thus the great stumbling block disappears — and it becomes possible to harmonize torment "forever and ever" with total burning. The wicked would be tormented eternally and, at the same time, burned until they become ashes, die and cease to exist. Two mutually exclusive theses presented as harmony restored to the Word of God. Here are the exact words of the printed page:
"we can see how they can be tormented 'forever and ever,' and yet be burned up and die, cease to be, or exist."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 6, no. 33, September 2, 1880 — p. 392.
Highlighted clipping of the printed page with the cited passage, edition of September 2, 1880, p. 392.
Why this is serious
The contradiction is logical before it is theological: torment presupposes someone who feels; ashes do not feel. No one can be tormented "forever and ever" after having ceased to exist — the paper's sentence requires a subject who suffers eternally and, in the same breath, declares that this subject has turned to dust. It is neither mystery nor paradox: it is an impossibility wrapped in pious vocabulary, sold to the reader as "harmony restored to the word of God."
The trick is in the dictionary. By relativizing "forever," Rice empties precisely the clearest texts on eternal punishment — Revelation 14:11 and 20:10 — while retaining the vocabulary of judgment so as not to alarm the reader. It is annihilationism wearing the clothes of the text that denies it: the language of eternal torment is preserved and the thesis of extinction is delivered. Both pans of the scale serve the same goal — that conscious hell should disappear without the reader noticing the swap.
And the reason for the swap is doctrinal, not exegetical. Adventism needs a Revelation without a conscious hell, because its anthropology denies conscious existence after death. The solution found is to declare that the eternity of punishment would last only "as long as the thing punished can exist" — which dissolves by definition any warning of Christ about judgment. If "eternal" means "until it ends," then no threat of the final judgment need be taken seriously.
The pastoral cost of this relativization is immense. The Bible uses eternal punishment precisely as a solemn warning — Jesus speaks of the fire that is never quenched so that His hearers may fear and repent. To soften the terror of judgment, transforming eternity into extinction, is to disarm the gospel itself: those who do not fear judgment see no need of a Savior. The paper exchanges the seriousness of Christ's warnings for a painless extinction — and calls it harmony.
Period engraving with samples of ash, embers and volcanic stones — atmospheric illustration.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Revelation 20:10 is direct and admits no reconciliation with the paper: "they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." There is a conscious subject, a verb of continuous action and a duration without end. There is in the text no "ceasing to exist," no ash, no full stop — there is torment, day and night, forever and ever. The verse says exactly what Rice needed it not to say.
Revelation 14:11 reinforces this with an image impossible to reduce to cold ashes: "the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest, day or night." Smoke that rises continually indicates fire in continuous activity — and "they have no rest" describes conscious experience, not extinction. Ashes do not rise in smoke forever; ashes do not cease to rest, because ashes feel nothing.
Jesus uses the same adjective for both destinies: "these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Mt 25:46). If the eternal life of the saved is conscious and without end, the eternal punishment is conscious and without end — the same term, the same duration, the same Author. Daniel 12:2 confirms the parallelism: "some to eternal life, and others to shame and everlasting contempt." Eternal shame and contempt presuppose those who feel shame and those who are the object of contempt — people, not ashes.
And Mark 9:48 closes the door on extinction with the words of Christ Himself: "where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched." A worm that does not die and a fire that is not quenched describe continuity, not final consummation. Jude 7 adds the historical example: those of Sodom are "suffering the punishment of eternal fire" — suffering, a continuous present. The Bible knows no middle ground between eternal torment and annihilation; the paper invented one — and the invention contradicts every text it intended to harmonize.