In an 1892 Sherlock Holmes story called Silver Blaze, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his famous detective solve a mystery based on a clue’s absence rather than its presence.
The crime – a murder and the theft of a racehorse – occurs late at night. There are no witnesses, of course.
In all of the testimonies given by the household staff, Holmes notices something that is not there.
There is no report of the dog barking.
And thus, Holmes correctly reasons, the perpetrator was not a stranger.
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Those who want to prove that the Bible teaches that unbelievers suffer eternal punishment in Hell have a handful of verses to point to. But it is “the dog not barking” that has me leaning the other direction – towards annihilationism.
I have hinted at this in some of my other posts on this topic, but let me state it plainly: It seems to me that justice exacted by a holy God through torment of billions of human souls over millions upon trillions of years in a lake of fire is such a horrifying and weighty idea that it deserves to be introduced early in the Bible and then repeated often.
If it is indeed reality, Hell – and how to avoid it – should be woven into every step of the Bible narrative.
But take a look at the Old Testament.
Scripture begins with God warning Adam and Eve that if they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they will surely … die.
Funny not to mention the eternal torment thing at this point. Seems like a logical place to introduce the fact that the vast majority of humanity is now doomed to everlasting torture and suffering.
By Genesis 6, we have God regretting making man.
God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”
It’s a safe bet that the Lord judged these people as deserving of Hell, so it seems like another good place to introduce the concept. But I suppose we can’t fault God for not including a little diatribe on Hell here.
It might have come across a little hypocritical for him to judge humans for their violence to each other by subjecting them all to eternal pain and torment.
And so it goes. Story after story in the Old Testament, but no time to develop any doctrines regarding the afterlife?
It’s not for lack of various characters dying. We’re told repeatedly where their bodies get buried. But that is typically the end of the story.
Then a new story begins.
So … why is the Hell dog not barking?
Perhaps when humans sinned in the garden they lost their shot at immortality?
Maybe the only way for humans to have immortality is if God goes out of his way to provide a new path to eternal life?
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