When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
(2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

The Bible asserts that when Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, returns he will come to judge the nations. Jesus himself describes the scene speaking of himself as the Son of Man:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:31-32)

Jesus then affirms those he judges to be unrighteous ‘will go away into eternal punishment’ while ‘the righteous (go) into eternal life.’

This offends humanity, and many have, do and will reject a God who judges; and even to his followers, it is a bitter teaching. But to all who believe the Bible to speak to spiritual reality, this should be no surprise. Scripture teaches that eternal life is to be lived in the presence of God; so it was with Adam before the Fall and will be in the Holy City of the New Earth, as the apostle John sees in a vision:

I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.’
(Revelation 21:2-3a)

It is important to contemplate the alternative, ‘eternal destruction’. Now this does not speak to the soul being ‘obliterated’. In one sense, if the soul was expunged then there would be nothing, not an eternal state. The word in Greek translated ‘destruction’ is olethros (ὄλεθρος) and properly this means ruination not annihilation or extinction. This describes the loss of everything, an ‘undoing’ of all that is good and wholesome. The closest earthly equivalent is person bankrupted, whose marriage has fallen apart and children disowning him, shunned by all and utterly rejected by every society.

This is an apt analogy but pales in comparison to the eternal state of which Jesus and his apostle Paul outlines. To ‘live’ outside the presence of God is no life at all, it is an utterly bleak existence. In mortal life, God ensures that his presence can be seen and felt, even for those who completely reject him. If nothing else, the triune God is present in the universe he created through the spoken Word, which is his Son, Jesus:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
(Psalm 19:1-4)

As John explains:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)

By rejecting the Son of God, there is no life only a drear survival, devoid of light. In the mortal life, people are free to rebuff God, deny him, even abuse him, and yet live and thrive. The Bible confirms that there is no correlation between circumstance and righteousness. While the Israelites were offered blessings for obedience, this was not to confer God’s approval, the state righteousness – for that can only be gained by faith in Jesus as Messiah. This is hard message of Paul’s letter to the Romans, which was so challenging, not only to his people of his race, the Jews, but all nations represented in Rome.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. (Romans 8:1-3)

All humans naturally derive comfort from good circumstance, and many project that comfort into an eternal life; but to be righteous, that is to have positive verdict of God at the final judgment, is only available from faith in Jesus and, more importantly, what he has done.

God forebears to bring forward the verdict during mortal life but he judges all continually, as Jesus told a prominent man of the Jews authorities, Nicodemus:

‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.’ (John 3:16-18)

Perish here is apollumi, a Greek word that derives from adding apo to olethros; the prefix conveys the utter ruination ‘away from’ (God).

If the Bible is to be believed then it is better to place trusted in its message now, for when mortal death overtakes a person it is too late. At this point there can be no doubt: therefore, it is not a matter of faith (for faith and doubt coexist before certitude is gained). Standing before God is then reality, and so will be his decision to invite you to live with him or exist without him. But God has made promises through his Son and this true comfort to be derived in this version of life:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms.
(John 14:1-2)

Thus the invitation to eternal and blessed life in the presence of its giver is issued but must be heeded in life; Scripture upholds that it is extended up to death, but not after.