Daniel 12:2 Teaches Annihilationism

Annihilationism is not only taught in the New Testament.  Subtle hints and explicit teachings alike are found in the Old Testament, among them Daniel 12:2.  In an eschatological segment, the chapter says that the multitudes will sleep in the dust of the world and be awoken.  This summary of soul sleep and the resurrection of dead humans is followed by what is supposed to happen to two categories of people.  Some, it says, are resurrected or "awoken" to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting contempt.

There could not be a contrast between everlasting life for the righteous and the fate of the wicked if both groups are to live forever.  It would be absolutely deceptive at worst and pathetically misleading at best for anyone to linguistically distinguish between eternal life and endless torture since eternal life is logically required for endless torture, as having everlasting life does not have to mean a person exists in bliss without end.  It just entails that a being does not cease to exist as a consciousness.

Alone, this is enough to disprove the idea that this is clear communication of a contrast between eternal bliss and eternal agony.  There would be no contrast but the kind of everlasting life if this was the case.  Just by saying that some awaken from the sleep of death to everlasting life, Daniel 12:2 already qualifies that only certain people among the resurrected dead receive this unending existence.  For it to say that the rest of humanity also receives eternal life would be an obvious contradiction and thus both ideas could not be true at once.

Now, does the rest of the verse say something about what happens to the wicked after resurrection that actually contradicts the fact that if all receive everlasting life, it cannot be true that only some people do?  It is a necessary truth that lacking everlasting life being the same as eventually ceasing to exist, to live.  The remainder of the verse does not say anything contradictory.  It says that those who do not rise to eternal life receive shame and everlasting contempt.  Nowhere does it say they will also live forever in torment.

First of all, it does not say that their shame is everlasting, only the contempt directed towards them.  Someone does not need to still be alive to be hated.  They do, however, need to be alive, even if only as a consciousnesses without a body, to experience shame (though the Bible teaches that everyone has both a mind and a body in their afterlife, and the afterlife of the wicked simply does not endure forever).  Daniel 12:2 very clearly teaches that not everyone lives forever in any capacity, that only the righteous or redeemed continue to exist without end, and that the rest of humanity will at some point truly perish following their resurrection.