Chapter 25

The Fire of God — Biblical Fire Motifs and Baker's Case for Hell as God's Purifying Presence

Introduction

When most Christians hear the word "hell," they picture flames. That picture is not wrong. The Bible really does connect God's final judgment to fire—Jesus Himself spoke of "unquenchable fire," a "fiery furnace," and a "lake of fire." But here is the question almost no one asks: what kind of fire is this? Where does it come from? What does it actually do?

In this chapter I want to make a careful biblical and theological case that the fire of judgment is not a separate substance God uses to torture the wicked from a distance. It is, instead, the very presence of God Himself. Sharon Baker has put it as plainly as anyone in Razing Hell: fire in Scripture "comes from God, surrounds God, and is God."¹ If that thesis is right—and I believe Scripture leads us to it—then the Lake of Fire is best understood as the experience of standing fully exposed to God's holy love. For those who repent, that fire purifies and saves. For those who refuse, that same fire consumes the evil within them until, at last, nothing of the rebel remains.

This is not a small claim. It rewires our entire picture of final judgment. Let's walk through the biblical evidence, engage Baker's argument, and see how this view connects to the postmortem opportunity thesis at the heart of this book.

A Biblical Theology of Fire as God's Presence

The Bible's fire-language is not random or merely metaphorical. From Genesis to Revelation, fire functions as a consistent theological signal. When fire appears in connection with God, it does three things: it reveals Him, it purifies, and it consumes evil. Often it does all three at once.

Fire as Theophany

A theophany is simply a visible appearance of God. And in the Old Testament, when God appears, He almost always appears as fire. Moses meets God at "a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush" that "was burning, yet it was not consumed" (Exodus 3:2 ESV).² When Israel leaves Egypt, God leads them by "a pillar of fire" (Exodus 13:21). At Sinai, "the LORD descended on it in fire" so that "the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly" (Exodus 19:18). Moses later reminds Israel that "you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven" (Deuteronomy 4:11).

This pattern is not incidental. Moses summarizes it with one of the most arresting sentences in the entire Pentateuch: "For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deuteronomy 4:24). The Hebrew is not saying God merely has fire or uses fire. God is a consuming fire. The author of Hebrews picks up this exact phrase—pyr katanaliskon (πῦρ καταναλίσκον), "consuming fire"—and applies it directly to the New Covenant: "for our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29).³

The prophets continue the imagery. Isaiah cries out, "Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isaiah 33:14). His answer is striking: "He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly" (33:15). The fire is not a separate place reserved for the wicked; it is the divine presence itself, and the question is who can stand in it. Daniel sees the Ancient of Days seated on a throne whose "wheels were burning fire," with "a stream of fire" issuing "from before him" (Daniel 7:9–10). Ezekiel describes God's appearance as gleaming metal "enclosed all around" with fire (Ezekiel 1:27). And in Revelation, the risen Christ has "eyes... like a flame of fire" (Revelation 1:14).⁴

Pull all these texts together and a single picture emerges. God's presence is fire. To meet God is to meet the fire of His being.

Fire as Purification

But this fire does not simply burn. It refines. Malachi famously asks, "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire... he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver" (Malachi 3:2–3). The metaphor is precise. A refiner's fire does not destroy the silver; it destroys what is not silver. Isaiah uses the same image: "I will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy" (Isaiah 1:25). Zechariah promises that God will "put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as one tests gold" (Zechariah 13:9).⁵

Peter applies the same logic to Christian suffering: "the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire" (1 Peter 1:7). And in 1 Corinthians 3:12–15, Paul writes that on judgment day every person's work "will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done." Whatever cannot survive the fire is burned up; whatever is genuine remains. This is the very heart of Baker's argument, and we will return to 1 Corinthians 3 below. (For full exegesis of this passage in the broader argument for postmortem hope, see Chapter 16.)

Notice the implication. If God's presence is fire, and if that fire purifies rather than simply destroys, then the fundamental purpose of "the fire of judgment" is not retribution but cleansing. The fire is doing what fire always does in Scripture: separating dross from gold. (For the full case that divine punishment is reformative as well as retributive, see Chapter 22.)

Fire as Judgment FROM God's Presence

Of course, fire in Scripture is also judgment. But notice where the fire comes from. Fire and brimstone fall on Sodom "from the LORD out of heaven" (Genesis 19:24). When Nadab and Abihu offer unauthorized worship, "fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them" (Leviticus 10:2). At Taberah "the fire of the LORD burned among them" (Numbers 11:1). When Korah's company rebels, "fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men offering the incense" (Numbers 16:35). Elijah calls down fire "from heaven" that consumes his enemies (2 Kings 1:10–12). And in Revelation, when the nations besiege the saints, "fire came down from heaven and consumed them" (Revelation 20:9).⁶

This pattern is critical. The fire of judgment does not come from some neutral cosmic furnace. It comes from God. It proceeds from His own presence. This is exactly what we should expect if God Himself is fire. Revelation 14:10—often cited as a proof-text for eternal conscious torment—actually says that the wicked are "tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb." Not away from the Lamb. In His presence. (The full divine-presence reading of this verse is developed in Chapter 23.)

The Fiery Furnace: An Object Lesson (Daniel 3)

Daniel 3 deserves a moment of its own. Nebuchadnezzar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a furnace heated "seven times more than it was usually heated" (Daniel 3:19). The flames are so intense they kill the soldiers who push them in. Yet inside the furnace something remarkable happens. The three Hebrews "are walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods" (Daniel 3:25). When they emerge, "the hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them" (Daniel 3:27).

What did the fire destroy? Their bonds. The text is explicit: the king sees them "loose, walking in the midst of the fire" (3:25). The fire consumed only what bound them. Their persons were untouched, and a fourth figure—almost certainly a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ—was with them in the flames. Daniel 3 is a parable in narrative form: when righteous people stand in God's fire, the fire destroys what enslaves them and leaves the people themselves whole. When unrighteous people stand in that same fire, the fire destroys what is in them that is opposed to God. The fire itself is one. The outcomes differ because the persons differ.

Baker's Thesis: The Fire That Comes From, Surrounds, and IS God

This is precisely what Sharon Baker argues in Razing Hell. After surveying the very texts we have just walked through, she concludes: "Where there's God, there's fire! Fire comes from God, surrounds God, and is God."⁷ She presses the thesis to its logical conclusion. If God is the consuming fire, then to enter God's presence is to enter the fire. There is no third place outside God where the wicked can be tormented while God watches from afar. Wherever the wicked are, if God is present at all, His presence is fire to them.

Baker also notes a striking scriptural pattern: "The fire of God will not burn up whatever is righteous and pure."⁸ The burning bush is not consumed because it is not evil. Daniel's friends are not consumed because they are righteous. Isaiah promises Israel, "When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you" (Isaiah 43:2). The fire only burns away what is unfit to remain in God's presence.

The Theion Argument: Brimstone as Divine

Baker also develops a fascinating linguistic point. The Greek word translated "brimstone" or "sulfur" in Revelation 19:20, 20:10, and 21:8 is theion (θεῖον). And theion is spelled exactly the same as the Greek adjective theion meaning "divine"—the neuter form of theios, "of or from God." Baker writes, "Brimstone not only burns as the hottest fire; it also comes from heaven or from God. The fire in the lake actually comes from God, the fire that surrounds God, the fire that is God's very presence."⁹

William Harrison develops a similar argument independently. He notes that Thayer's Greek Lexicon defines theion as "equivalent to divine incense, because burning brimstone was regarded as having power to purify, and to ward off contagion."¹⁰ Harrison cites both Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, where sulfur is repeatedly used as a ritual purifier. He also points out that the Greek word for fire itself, pyr (πῦρ), shares a Sanskrit root with words for purification.¹¹ Harrison concludes that "brimstone's connection to purification... certainly does not imply eternal conscious torment, but rather points away from it."¹²

I want to be careful here. The lexical argument by itself is not decisive—Greek words can have multiple meanings, and we should not lean on a single etymology to overturn an entire doctrine. But when the linguistic evidence runs in the same direction as the entire biblical theology of fire we just surveyed, the convergence becomes compelling. The "fire and brimstone" of Revelation is divine fire, purifying fire, fire from God Himself.

The Otto Narrative: Putting Flesh on the Bones

To show what this might look like in practice, Baker offers an extended thought experiment about a wicked man named Otto—an "international leader who has launched preemptive wars and terrorized nations with his arrogant dominance, leading to the death of thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children."¹³ Baker's point in choosing such an awful figure is to test the model on the hardest case. If God's love can confront and transform Otto, it can confront anyone.

In the story, Otto approaches God expecting wrath. He gets something far worse, and far better. As he draws closer to the fire, he discovers that the fire is God, and what he feels coming from God is not hatred but love. Baker writes, "The closer he gets to God, the more deeply he feels, not God's hatred or judgment, but God's love. It is a love of such magnitude that, with its abundance, it acts as wrath."¹⁴ God's first words to Otto are not condemnation but heartbreak: "I have loved you with an everlasting love. But look at your life; what have you done?"¹⁵

Otto then experiences a kind of life review. He goes to each victim and lays his hand on their hearts, feeling everything he has caused them—their fear, their pain, their loss. The last person in the line is Jesus. When Otto touches Jesus' heart, he feels both the pain he caused Jesus and the unconditional love Jesus has for him. Otto breaks. He weeps. He repents. The fire has burned away his self-deception, his hatred, and his pride. What remains is a man capable of receiving forgiveness. And he does. He says yes. He enters the kingdom.¹⁶

Baker quotes George MacDonald to summarize the dynamic at work: "the fire of God, which is His essential being, His love, His creative power, is a fire unlikely in its earthly symbol in this, that it is only at a distance it burns—that the further from Him, it burns the worse."¹⁷ The fire only burns those who resist it. The closer one moves toward God in repentance, the less the fire hurts—because what was being burned was the resistance itself.

Several features of the Otto story deserve attention. First, this is exactly what countless near-death experiencers describe: a profound encounter with a being of light whose love is so overwhelming it acts as judgment, accompanied by a panoramic life review in which they feel the impact of their actions on others. (For the empirical evidence connecting NDEs to a postmortem encounter with God, see Chapter 5.) Whether Baker realizes it or not, she is describing a pattern reported by thousands of clinically-dead patients across cultures.

Second, the Otto narrative illustrates—better than abstract argument can—the central insight of the divine presence model: God's love itself is the judgment, because love confronts what is unloving in us. (For the full philosophical defense of the divine presence model, see Chapter 24.)

Baker's Hybrid Annihilationism—and Manis's Critique

What makes Baker's view especially interesting for our project is that she is not a universalist. She is an annihilationist who has integrated the divine presence model. After describing Otto's repentance, she immediately adds: "The possibility exists, however, that Otto does not accept God's offer of restoration, or that after the testing by fire, nothing remains of him at all. Nothing. In order to preserve human freedom, which God gave to us at creation, we must allow for the possibility that some people will still reject God."¹⁸

Two outcomes, then, on Baker's view: repentance and restoration, or annihilation. The fire purifies what can be purified. If after the fire there is anything left of the person, that purified remnant freely chooses God. If everything in the person is opposed to God, the fire consumes everything, and there is nothing left. The annihilation is not God angrily destroying the person; it is the natural consequence of standing in God's holy presence while being entirely composed of what cannot survive that presence.

R. Zachary Manis, in his philosophically rigorous treatment of the divine presence model, engages Baker carefully and critically. He calls her view "a hybrid of annihilationism and the divine presence model" but argues that it is "lacking in precision."¹⁹ Manis identifies an ambiguity in Baker's account: it is unclear whether she means (a) natural consequence annihilation, where the fire simply burns up everything in Otto until nothing remains, or (b) free will annihilation, where Otto retains his free will after purification and uses it to reject God one final time. Some passages point one way; others point another.²⁰

Manis's critique is fair, and it actually helps clarify the model. I would suggest Baker's two outcomes are not really in tension if we read them as describing different cases. Some persons may freely choose to accept God's offer once their self-deception has been burned away. Others may freely cling to their rebellion even after the fire has stripped them of every illusion—and in such persons, since their entire identity is bound up in that rebellion, there will be nothing left when the rebellion is consumed. Both outcomes preserve free will, and both flow from the single dynamic of God's purifying presence meeting either repentance or refusal.

1 Corinthians 3:12–15: A Universal Fire?

Baker's exegetical centerpiece is 1 Corinthians 3:12–15. Paul writes that on the day of judgment "the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:13–15). Baker's reading: "in the final judgment, everyone will go through the fire—through the fire that surrounds God, comes from God, and is God."²¹

Most commentators take this passage to refer narrowly to the judgment of Christian workers. Baker grants this but suggests its underlying principle—every person passes through the fire of God's presence—is repeated elsewhere (e.g., 1 Corinthians 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:10–11). She links it to Isaiah 43:2: "When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."²² The promise is not that the righteous will avoid the fire; it is that they will pass through it unharmed. (For the full exegesis of 1 Corinthians 3:11–15, see Chapter 16.)

The Lake of Fire as the Final Postmortem Opportunity

Now we can pull the threads together. If the entire biblical theology of fire points to fire as God's holy presence; if Baker and Harrison are right that theion (brimstone) signals divine, purifying fire; if the fiery furnace of Daniel 3 is a paradigm in which God's fire destroys bonds rather than persons; and if 1 Corinthians 3 generalizes the principle that every person passes through the fire of God's presence on the day of judgment—then the Lake of Fire is best understood not as a torture chamber but as the final, full, unshielded confrontation with God Himself.

This means the Lake of Fire is, on the framework of this book, the final postmortem opportunity. It is the last chance, after every illusion has been stripped away, for a person to surrender to the love that has pursued them their whole life and beyond. Some will repent. Their evil will be consumed and they will be saved. Others will refuse. Their refusal will be consumed along with everything else in them, and they will cease to exist. This is conditional immortality, but it is conditional immortality with a heart—annihilation as the final, sorrowful consequence of God's love meeting unrepentant resistance, not as God's eager punishment of His enemies.

Conclusion

The fire of God is not what we have been taught to fear. It is something both more terrifying and more wonderful. It is God Himself—His holy, blazing, never-changing love. To enter that fire is to enter Him. For the saints, that fire is glory. For the unrepentant, it is agony, because love agonizes those who hate it. But the fire is one fire. It does not change when it touches us. We change—or we are consumed.

This is, I think, the truest meaning of the Lake of Fire. Not a separate chamber where God deposits His enemies. Not a furnace stoked by demons. But the Throne Room itself—the unshielded presence of the One who said, "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3). The Lake of Fire is the last invitation. Some will accept. Some, tragically, will not. But God will not stop pursuing. He is the fire, and He has been chasing every soul since the day they were made.