Hades And Gehenna

Acts 2:27 uses the word Hades in reference to the Sheol of Psalm 16:10 and the general Old Testament, with Luke 16:19-31 perhaps seeming in isolation to present Hades as a dimension people go to right when they die.  It tells the story of a poor man named Lazarus who goes to a quasi-heaven while a selfish, rich man goes to Hades and is tormented in flames.  Even if was not a parable, though, it would still not suggest, and certainly not affirm, anything similar to eternal torture in a hellacious place.  In fact, Hades is not the hell Jesus speaks of one way or another.  For the latter, Jesus uses the word Gehenna, such as when he says in Matthew 10:28 that humans can only kill the body but that God can annihilate both body and soul in hell.  The ultimate irrelevance of Luke 16 to the direct doctrine of hell is very overt.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is actually parodying a very unbiblical concept of the intermediate state, as the Bible plainly and repeatedly (though it needs to only say this one time) says that the dead have no ability to think or act before their resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Psalm 88:10-12, Daniel 12:2, 13, Job 3:11-19); they are not reunited with God or Christ until their resurrection if they are righteous or redeemed (John 14:2-3, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) and are not resurrected for punishment in hell, which culminates in permanent death (2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28), until after the return of Christ if they are wicked (Revelation 20:11-15).  Still, Luke 16 would say nothing about the duration of hell even if it was about Gehenna, the lake of fire, instead of Hades, or if Hades was taught as an intermediate afterlife.

The precise details about the true Biblical nature of Sheol aside, the text of Luke 16:19-31 never has God or any of the characters say that the experience in Hades will last forever.  No aspect of the story touches on this issue at all.  The Bible already says in Revelation 20 that Hades is thrown into the lake of fire, where unrepentant sinners are killed (Romans 6:23, John 3:16).  The Hades of the Bible is neither an everlasting state of being nor a realm of consciousness at all.  Within Luke 16 itself, these things are not specified.  The relevant verses are scattered about the Old and New Testament outside of this lone chapter of Luke.  Someone who fallaciously thinks that the chapter is talking about what the wicked immediately face upon death or who conflates Hades with hell/Gehenna/the lake of fire would still be in error for thinking this teaches anything about eternal conscious torment.

There is a gulf described in Luke 16 that stops Lazarus and the other righteous people from coming to help the wicked in their afterlife, who are tormented by flames and unable to have their tongues cooled: there is comfort for the righteous and pain for the wicked.  Jesus and the characters in the parable do not say anything about the length of time the rich man of the story would suffer.  It does not teach or even imply anything about the duration of pain.  If Sheol/Hades did involve punitive suffering, it would end regardless when the wicked are summoned to the great white throne to be judged, sentenced to hell, and killed there once and for all.  The Bible teaches the latter things elsewhere.  Hades, though, is really a condition/realm of the dead where there is unconsciousness, the total absence of experience.  Either way, Hades does not involve eternal torture.