Eternal truths predate the traditions of men, and God is far more merciful than we’ve been traditionally taught.  It’s been argued that the most important thing about us is what we believe about God, and this would be difficult to dispute.  The perception we have of our Creator affects everything else we do and think.

If we believe God is merciful, loving and good, we’re far more likely to be merciful and loving ourselves, and more likely to be hopeful in matters of eternity, regardless of the difficulties of this life.  And by the same token, if our view of a merciful Creator has become clouded for any reason, that’s going to find its way into our thinking and actions as well.  Unfortunately, the evidence this has happened is everywhere.  If we’re confused about the goodness of God, we’re on a slippery slope that can lead to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in this life, and a total loss of focus on eternity.  Our concept of a merciful God has come under attack, and it was partially an inside job.

In the Christian faith, we speak a lot about how merciful God is.  And absolutely, He is.  We see the record of His grace and mercy displayed throughout the old and new testaments of Scripture, most specifically in what He did in His Son Jesus Christ through His atoning death on the cross.  Of course, we experience His grace and mercy in our own daily lives as well, but then there’s this elephant in the room which few want to talk about; it clouds and confuses something that shouldn’t be confusing at all.  It’s destructive to our concept of a merciful God, and it’s had detrimental and far-reaching effects.  It’s the doctrine of final judgment which states that those who never find or accept God’s grace in salvation will be tormented literally and consciously for all eternity.

I’ve studied this carefully, and have bent over backwards to give the traditionalist side of the argument every benefit of the doubt, and at the end of it all, this is simply not what Scripture maintains.  Billions of souls are not going to be in conscious torment for all eternity, yet this is what most Christian ministers and teachers have told us for approximately the last 1800 years.  It’s a bad doctrine, based on a small handful of mis-used and mis-interpreted verses and a pagan concept that all souls come into existence immortal and indestructible.

Someone suffering with no relief, and for all eternity is a difficult concept to wrap your head around.  But just imagine: After billions and billions of years in torment (if there were such a thing as “years” in timeless eternity) the suffering isn’t even hours old.  The lost soul is just getting started on their torment journey, which will have no end in time or eternity.  After ten trillion years (whatever that meaningless number means), one is no closer to the end of their torment than the day it began.  It’s literally the most disturbing concept I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t think we Christians really understand what maniacal horror we’re accusing God of when we maintain and teach this doctrine — that a loving Creator is going to allow potentially billions of souls to endure such a thing.

God knows the end from the beginning.  While we have the free will to make our decision for or against the Lord during our lifetimes, God knew before He made us what those decisions would be.  According to Scripture, many more people are going to be ultimately lost than will be saved.  So what’s implied in the traditional position, but never stated, is that God brought into existence billions of souls who could not have possibly asked to be created, knowing that their ultimate “end” would be to exist in excruciating torment forever.  This brings God’s nature and character into question in ways it never should be because this concept is simply never established in Scripture.  It’s time to clear God’s good name.  Christians who haven’t delved deeply on this subject can’t possibly know just how much Scripture has to be violated, ignored, and twisted in order to maintain this tragic doctrine which has done untold damage.

Traditions have their place in our faith, and in life in general.  But Jesus and the apostle Paul both warned about the traditions of men, implying that sometimes doctrinal practices begin inching away from truth.  In Mark 7:13 Jesus said that man’s traditions can even nullify the Word of God.  And sometimes a traditional idea just needs to be challenged.  That’s what we’ll do in the following pages.

I’ll limit myself to just this one football analogy, but several years ago, the replay system became part of college football.  It slows the game down a little, and some people hate it for that reason, but personally I was glad when it was instituted.  Let’s face it.  While referees are critically important to sports, they’re also human, and they get it wrong sometimes.  And when a coach thinks there’s a bad call that’s affecting his team’s ability to move forward, now he’s able to issue a challenge, and the examination of the slow motion footage begins.  But here’s the thing about it.  The ruling on the field is king, and by rule, the replay evidence must be overwhelming in order to overturn the initial call on the field.

What I’m doing is sort of challenging for a replay in relation to this doctrine.  If the evidence I’ll offer isn’t clear, then by all means, hold onto tradition.  But let’s rewind, slow it down, take it apart and see if it holds up to scrutiny.  I believe you’ll find the evidence for a non-traditional view of final judgment to be overwhelming, and the evidence for the traditional view of Eternal Hell almost non-existent.

When carefully examined, the traditional doctrine of Hell and immortality which virtually all mainstream Christian denominations hold to appears to have a number of problematic issues.  Most notable, contrary to a consistent theme in Scripture, it maintains that every human, from conception, innately possesses immortality, and is going to exist consciously for all eternity, even those without salvation through Jesus Christ.  Scripture on the other hand, maintains that Christ alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16) and grants it as a gift to those who place their faith in Him.  Scripture tells us the ultimate punishment for rejecting salvation is death.  Tradition redefines death to mean “eternal life, only separated from God or anything good.”  Before you finish Chapter 2, you may be shocked at the number of errors that must be accepted in order to maintain the traditional view.

I hope I haven’t misled anyone to think they’re about to read a book about a soft fluffy God who doesn’t hold His creation accountable for their decisions.  That’s not where I’m going with this.  So please note two things early on. First, I’m not challenging the biblical fact that those who have rejected the pull of God in this life will one day stand judgment.  They will.  While it stops well short of the sick and twisted idea of eternal conscious torment, what Scripture truly maintains will happen to lost souls is still horrific and sad, and it’s more than enough incentive to prompt one to turn from unbelief and to the God who loves us, who is holding His hand out to us all day long.  It’s also incentive enough for those of us who do know the Lord, to continue sharing the saving knowledge of Christ so others can avoid judgment and the very loss of their soul.

We all have the almost unbelievable opportunity to gain immortality and live in peace for all eternity with our Maker who loves us.  Short of suffering consciously forever with no reprieve, I can’t imagine anything worse than standing there at final judgment and being rightfully accused of turning down God’s offer of salvation, knowing I forfeited eternal life, and that my very existence and any memory of me is about to end.  It’s a horrible end for a life that had the potential for eternal bliss.  Secondly, I’m also not challenging that the judgment God issues is eternal.  It is.  Once a soul is destroyed in final judgment, it’s gone for all eternity.  It is truly an everlasting punishment — eternal damnation, as Scripture states clearly, but it’s not an ongoing process of conscious punishment that lasts throughout eternity.  This concept is never established in the Bible.

So this is not another in a growing stack of books that are promoting the increasingly popular idea of Universalism which maintains that eventually everyone will be saved.  However, what I’ll demonstrate is that there’s barely a shred of biblical evidence that a human soul can survive the final Lake of Fire judgment or will exist consciously into eternity.  Those are the extremes, and the truth is in the middle ground.  I should also note that I didn’t take this change in my doctrine lightly as I began discovering the truth on this matter for myself years ago.  I’m a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of person generally, and it’s highly uncomfortable for me to challenge a view held by so many people I respect.  I absolutely wouldn’t do it if the evidence weren’t there.

There’s another danger that comes along with the traditional view of conscious eternal suffering in Hell.  Most Christians won’t admit it, but because a punishment of everlasting torment seems so uncharacteristic of a God who we know in our hearts is a good God, deep down we actually doubt the truth of this doctrine.  We teach it and share it because we think we’re supposed to.  But it’s just so unfathomable that there’s part of us that just can’t believe it.  Therefore, the danger is that if we think it’s actually stated in Scripture, but we doubt it, then we’re doubting Scripture itself.  And that’s another slippery slope.  What parts of the Bible are true then, and what parts aren’t?  It’s all true, the whole thing!  But what’s missing from Scripture is the concept that God is going to cause or allow the eternal suffering of those who reject Him.  He’s going to return them where they came from…nothingness.  And while it’s an incredibly harsh sentence, it also makes sense.  This is God’s world, and He makes the rules.  It’s only by faith that we can be saved.  He’s building a family of faithful believers who love Him because we recognize and appreciate the incredible sacrifice He made in order to give us eternal life.

There was a time we didn’t exist.  God gives us the first amazing gift by giving us life and being at all.  He didn’t have to make a single one of us.  And then we’re offered the immensely greater gift of eternal life if we’ll put our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus as Savior.  If we reject that, we’re returned to the nothingness we were before God initially gave us our life.  It’s a stiff penalty, but it doesn’t bring the nature and character of God into question the way the traditional doctrine of Eternal Hell does because even though the lost soul suffers the great loss of their own soul and the potential of eternal life, the one who rejects salvation is ultimately no worse off than where they began.  They were nothingness to begin with.

I’ve heard it said many times by traditionalist pastors or teachers that “We all deserve Eternal Hell.”  Often they’ll even personalize it and say things such as “I know I deserve to go to Hell for all eternity.”  I’ve never believed that or felt that way.  I’m just being honest before the Lord and the reader.  I do understand why they say this, however.  We who are Christians understand that the Lord is holy and perfect and that we fall well short of that standard every moment, and it’s only by His grace that there’s even a shred of anything good about a single one of us, and it’s only by His mercy that we can approach Him in any way.  Therefore, those among us who believe in eternal Hell are going to say things like that.

But the truth is, we don’t deserve to suffer for all eternity.  I can look back on times in my life where I was avoiding God, rejecting the truths of the Christian faith, and living for temporary pleasures, and even if I had died in that state, I couldn’t say that I deserved to suffer torment for all eternity.  I deserved death.  I deserved it then, and I still deserve death now – true and actual cessation of life and existence in any form.  We all do.  We didn’t ask for life.  We can’t grant ourselves life.  We can’t earn life.  And we therefore don’t deserve life, in any form.

That we experience conscious existence at all is a pure act of God’s grace.  As noted, we were nothing before God dreamed us up and made us, and therefore we, by our own merit, can’t deserve anything worse or better that our original state.  We were non-existent in eternity past and what we deserve is to be returned to that state of nothingness.  Any form of existence above that “is gravy,” as they say.  This life is a gift.  Eternal life is an unimaginably more gracious gift, but those who willingly forfeit it deserve their first estate, nothingness, or “the blackest of darkness forever” as Jude phrased it in Jude 13.

Don’t leave your church!

While I feel strongly about this important theological issue, I would never advise anyone to break fellowship with other believers over this, even if you begin to recognize the errors in the traditional position as you read through this study, or other peoples’ works on the topic.  In one sense this is a really big deal.  It concerns the very nature and character of God, and as already noted, our perception of who God is affects us deeply.  On the other hand, this is still a peripheral issue, not a salvation issue.  As convinced as I am that the mainstream Christian church has misinterpreted a handful of verses and promoted a bad doctrine for centuries, I remain a part of the mainstream Christian church.  In fact, during most of the years I studied and wrote on this, I was a Sunday School teacher and regular musician at a local church that constitutionally held to the traditional view of Hell and immortality, the very tradition I challenge.  And before choosing to step down, I had served as an elder and a deacon there as well.

When my family and I left that church after over a decade, we didn’t go find some cult or even fringe Christian denomination to fellowship with just so we might hear a “lighter” view of Hell and judgment taught from the pulpit.  Instead my family began attending and eventually joined another church where the pastor, and I’m assuming, most members hold that same traditional view.  And that’s alright.  In Christian unity, at least in terms of what should or shouldn’t cause division, we can overlook all non-foundational doctrinal differences.  It’s okay to disagree sometimes.  However, if there’s a traditional doctrine which is disturbing to many, and can also be shown to have little Scriptural support, and if the opposition of it can be strongly supported, then at the very least it deserves a hearing.  That’s all I’m really asking for.  This is not an attempt at a revolution or an attempt to divide believers, but I do hope it causes a little personal reformation and revival in the hearts of those like me, who will find truth and a sense of relief in a non-traditional view of final judgment which paints God in a far more merciful light.

Often during this study and writing project, I was so bothered by the thought of potentially just promoting one more thing for Christians to disagree over that I tried to put this book endeavor down several times.  But it would never go away.  And of course, that created a new mental struggle I had to deal with: Is this God not letting this go away because it’s something He wants me to bring to the attention of others, or is Satan trying to confuse me and then confuse others, through me?  You haven’t read the evidence yet, so if you’re a traditionalist on this matter, I already know which one you believe was happening.  But ultimately, I decided that outside of Scripture, I couldn’t answer that question with absolute assurance.

Every evidence I see in Scripture points to a non-traditional version of final judgment, while virtually every preacher and Bible teacher I listen to and respect holds the traditional view.  This has created a mental battle in my head for years now.

As far as what I personally believe about judgment, I’m going with Scripture and what it appears to say, and not with men, and what they tell me Scripture says.  However, whether or not to share my study publicly has been a more complicated internal debate.

I’ve heard more than one pastor say that in determining what God wants us to be missional about and step out in faith on, we’ll never be more than about 80% sure of anything.  And that makes sense — I suppose it wouldn’t require faith if we were 100% sure on these things.  I’m close to 80% sure I should be sharing, so I’m going with my heart, and with what appears to be the bulk of Scriptural evidence, and asking those who will read the material to determine for themselves if it’s Bible truth or not.  To me, it’s clear.

We’ll all have to answer to God one day for the things we do.  If I’ve just completely missed the boat on this and looked at it all wrong, I’d rather answer for misinterpretation than for ignoring what has often over the years felt like a prompting from the Lord to challenge what appears to be a bad tradition.  And on a personal level, I’ll never forget how troubling the doctrine of eternal torment has been to me, and I continue to have people contact me from my website who are similarly troubled, and are thankful for the biblical challenge to tradition I’ve presented.  One sweet woman from Scotland I corresponded with for a while told me that the traditional view of Hell had literally ruined her life.  But she has come to peace with God through a new understanding of final judgment.  I appreciated her honesty and her sensitivity to the matter.

It’s easy to get busy with life and not think about the ramifications of what we teach and believe on this.  If tradition is correct, essentially all of human activity and pursuit is to end with the vast majority of people suffering senselessly without relief for all eternity.  That’s heavy stuff to deal with.  People who really sit and think about it instead of pushing it out of mind somewhere are going to be deeply and most likely negatively affected.  Thank God the defense of such an idea is so weak, and the evidence for an alternative view is so Scripturally evident.  If this is something that has troubled you, I hope you’ll find the same relief I and my friend from Scotland did as you do the research.

The Counterfeit Bill Analogy

Often pastors or Bible teachers will use the following illustration when speaking about recognizing false teachings.  They talk about people who are being trained to recognize counterfeit money, and they point out that for long periods of time the students, rather than being exposed to counterfeit bills, are only exposed to original legitimate bills.  Then after being entrenched in what is real, counterfeits are easy to recognize.  We understand the illustration: Entrench yourself in truth so you can recognize what’s false.  But it seems that one unmentioned aspect of this analogy is that whatever you’re exposed to first and longest (and more importantly, what you’re told is right and real by those you trust) is what you will assume is legitimate and correct.  In other words, the students are assuming that the “true” bills they were handed to study are in fact legitimate.

So consider this — If the traditional view of Hell and immortality is wrong, but this is all we’ve been exposed to, and this is what we, as the Church, have handed down for centuries, then we’re going to assume that anything contrary to that tradition is false and that those who oppose tradition are working against Christ.  I’ve been accused of this, and if the reader is one who currently holds the traditional view of judgment, he or she may be tempted to reject what I’m putting forward, simply because it’s contrary to what you’ve always been told.  But what if someone sneaked in some counterfeit bills for those students to study?  I believe this is what happened, centuries ago.  This is where we’ve got to come back to the only source of truth, Scripture itself, and see if perhaps it’s been twisted a little to support such a doctrine.

What about Universalism?

The traditional view of Hell is at one doctrinal extreme, an extreme that, according to many teachers and pastors, has God causing or allowing billions of people to be literally on fire for all eternity.  Many others have a slightly softer view and teach that there won’t be literal fire involved, but the lost will instead be in the throws of mental misery, conscious, but separated from their Maker for all eternity.  Because of the extreme horror of either of these, many who can’t accept such a concept escape to the other extreme: Universalism, which maintains that all human souls will ultimately be at peace in heaven for all eternity.

The Christianized versions go by terms such as Universal Reconciliation or Christian Universalism.  These have in common with general Universalism that all souls will ultimately be saved regardless of what they believe about God, but these Christian versions do maintain that it’s only because of what Jesus Christ did in giving His life on the cross that any are saved.  However, they remove the individual faith factor – the one thing that Scripture maintains is required for salvation – us placing our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus and His atoning work on the cross of Calvary.

I wish I could tell you my study of Scripture revealed that everyone will be saved in eternity, but that’s not what happened.  Jesus said that few are taking the narrow path that leads to eternal life and many are taking the broad road that leads to destruction (oh, and notice, He said “destruction”…not eternal conscious suffering).  Much like the traditional view of Hell, Universalism is depending on too few verses for support, and being overly creative with them.  There’s John 12:32 where Christ says that when He is lifted up, He will draw “all men” to Himself, and Colossians 1:20 which says God will reconcile “all things” to Himself.  And there are a few other verses like these which on the surface could be taken to mean that all will be saved, but of course they could be understood to mean something very different…and should be.

Universalism has some new allies: Rob Bell is one of them.  He, until a few years ago, was the popular pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Michigan, and in 2011 he released a book entitled Love Wins, a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.  I’m not going to an extreme and calling Bell an enemy of the Gospel.  I’m assuming he loves God, as he understands Him, and that he believes that it’s only through Christ’s atoning death that any can be saved, something all true Christians agree on.  And he probably legitimately believes what he teaches about Universalism.  But I have to wonder what drove him to this belief.  After reading his position on the matter, I can’t help but believe it was the horror of the traditional view.

Bell has an issue with tradition…as I do.  But he errs on the other extreme, but by the same method, using too few verses, and even those, out of context, to maintain a doctrine.  And at the core of both Traditionalism and Universalism is the idea that every soul created already has the innate ability and right to exist consciously for all eternity.  This assumption is the foundation for both errors, and we’ll see strong evidence in chapters 2 and 6 that there’s no sound biblical basis for this thinking, and we’ll also see how this relates back to Satan’s first lie to humanity – that we would not surely die.

Julie Ferwerda took the case for Universalism to another level in her book Raising Hell.  I found it well written – so well written in fact that if I had not already been studying this exact issue from a non-traditionalist viewpoint for years, I would have been tempted to buy in, being a person seeking to find answers to the unmerciful God of tradition.  I appreciate any Christian who makes an effort to combat the problematic teachings of eternal conscious torment in Hell.  But I find many errors in the universalist stance, and my plea to those who believe and teach it, is to consider the ramifications of teaching it, if they happen to be wrong.  If you, the universalist are not 100% convinced – if in your mind there’s the slightest chance you’re wrong, then stop.  You’re damaging the concept that faith is the key to salvation, and while you probably mean well, it’s potentially leading more people to destruction.

And I don’t think any of us in this final judgment conversation, if we’re honest, can say we’re 100% sure about every aspect.  The Bible was written a long time ago, in various cultures all different from ours today, by multiple inspired (yet human) authors, in multiple languages, with there being some disagreement about and room for discussion over the definitions of many of the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic words that make up the canon of Scripture.  So even as much as I’ve studied the doctrine of final judgment biblically, I’m not bold enough to believe there’s no way I’m incorrect.  I wouldn’t be writing if I thought this was likely, but I never rule out that I could’ve missed something somewhere.

In fact, I hope the universalists are correct.  But based on the research I’ve done, they’re simply not.  Many people will ask a question such as the following: “But what about those who never hear the gospel?”  The universalist answer is the most comforting, although the least verifiable in Scripture.  Their answer is that all will ultimately be saved, whether they’ve heard the gospel in this life or not.  Unfortunately, that’s not the biblical statement on the matter.  But if that’s your question, I offer what I believe are satisfying answers to that and similar thoughts in Chapter 8 where we’ll address Universalism.

The strongest evidence is on the conditionalist third of this 3-way debate among Christians about how final judgment will play out.  And concerning labels, I’d prefer to not identify with any label and instead simply say I’m a Bible believing Christian who has a scriptural understanding of final judgment.  Having any label beyond “Christian” almost seems “culty.”  But it would make writing about this issue difficult if we didn’t have terms for the different factions.  So if cornered, I’d have to call myself a conditionalist.  Both traditionalists and universalists believe all souls are immortal and are going to exist somewhere for all eternity (a view shared by virtually every other religion, which right there maybe should cause one to raise an eyebrow at tradition).

Conditionalists instead believe that being granted the attribute of immortality — the ability to go on living forever — is conditional upon putting one’s faith in Christ, and this is what the Bible tells us.  However this does not mean we believe the lost will simply vanish out of existence at the time of physical death.  Some who hold a conditionalist view may believe this, but that would be more of an atheistic belief than any form of Christian position.  Traditionalists, most conditionalists, and even many Christian universalists believe there will be judgment and consciousness in the afterlife.  However, we vary widely on interpreting how the process will play out, in function and in duration, and certainly concerning what the end result will be.

If the preacher says it, then I believe it!
…almost always

Allow me to share a story from Scripture.  One day Paul met with the other apostles and told them that going forward, their primary message to the unbelieving world should be that we all have an immortal soul and are going to live somewhere for all eternity, and that we need to decide where we want to spend our eternity.  Okay, NO THAT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL!  In fact, Paul never said anything like this.  Jesus also never said anything of the sort.  And no other writer of Scripture stated this either.  No, we need to decide if we love the God of the Bible or this quickly degrading world.  Do you want to live eternally, or be destroyed?  Those are the things we need to decide.  But the way I posed my fake bible story is how our eternal prospects are presented all the time in Christianity today.

A few years ago, during a church service, the pastor asked us to turn in our bibles to Hezekiah 3:4.  Only a couple people began looking for the passage initially, and then more joined in when he added, “Well, is anyone going to look that up with me?”  I’ll save you the trouble if you don’t already know; no, there’s no book of Hezekiah.  And his point was this: What sounds biblical and right isn’t always.  He and I disagreed about final judgment, but I appreciated the illustration.  It helps my argument, because also notable from his demonstration, even if unintended, was that we assume we can trust what we hear from the pulpit.  And the majority of the time, we can.

There are a number of terms and phrases in “Christianese” that sound biblical because many of us heard them all of our lives, but we’re going to seriously challenge some of them in this volume.  Here’s just a few you’ve probably heard thrown around: “Your immortal soul,” “a Christ-less eternity,” and “You’ve got to decide where you’re going to spend your eternity.”  These force the assumption that we even get an eternity to spend somewhere, when, without salvation, we don’t.  This issue is at the center of this matter, and as often as these types of statements have been made, especially in our modern day, there’s nowhere in Scripture where such a proposition is so clearly laid out.  Jesus, nor Paul, nor any other writer of Scripture ever said “You’re going to live somewhere for all eternity.  You need to decide where.”  Why not?  If it’s true, and if that’s now our primary argument for why people need to make a decision for Christ, why wasn’t it phrased so simply when Scripture was being penned?  And why didn’t it begin with God’s warning to Adam?  Why did God tell him he would ultimately return to dust instead of warning him that if he disobeyed he was at risk of suffering in fire for all eternity?  It’s a fair question.

Somehow, against all biblical evidence, it’s become a foregone conclusion that from our conception, we have, or we are an immortal soul and regardless of our faith, will exist consciously somewhere for all eternity, never mind what the Bible says in countless places on this matter.  And while many teachers avoid the matter altogether, some bring it right down into the most commonly used terms: “Heaven or Hell.  What’s it gonna be?”

Please don’t misunderstand.  In one sense, Heaven and Hell are our only two choices.  Many words are translated into the English word “hell,” and these words sometimes describe the fate of the lost, but the different terms have different meanings, and it’s unfortunate that the English language doesn’t differentiate among them, but instead lumps them all into one term: “hell.”  And it’s further unfortunate that we’ve allowed anything other than Scripture itself to define the terms and concepts.  Two of the terms translated as “Hell,” Sheol and Hades, refer to either the grave itself, the state of being physically dead, or the place, real or theoretical, where departed souls await their resurrection to life or to judgment.  And Scripture is clear that both faithful and faithless souls would await there, at least prior to Christ’ death and resurrection; whether that’s waiting in a conscious or unconscious state is another debate, and we’ll look at that in Chapter 7.

Another term that Jesus used often, Gehenna, is also translated as “Hell” in virtually all modern Bible versions, but this was a geographical location adjacent to the city of Jerusalem where refuse was burned.  It was a waste dump.  And Jesus used it figuratively for the destruction that awaits the faithless.  But rather than leave the word which means “Valley of Hinnom” alone, translators and interpreters literally change the words of Jesus and make it “Hell.”  It’s difficult to believe this is just okay.  It was a physical location, and even though He was most likely using it as a figurative type for final judgment, it’s inexcusable to plug “Hell” in for a map location, yet almost every modern Bible version does this very thing.

And then concerning the faithful saved, our eternal lives will ultimately be with God in Heaven.  So, while the terms can be confusing, Heaven and Hell are our only choices in some sense.  But when the “Heaven or Hell” proposition is made, the assumption is that most people hold the traditional impression of “Hell” as a fiery eternal dungeon or fiery lake, and then sensible people are being asked, “Would you rather have this for all eternity, or eternal bliss?”  That’s a no-brainer, if we believe Scripture is true and if we believe it when we’re told that this is what the Bible portrays about Hell.  But scaring people into their “salvation” with unbiblical ideas can ultimately backfire.  While our Dante’s Inferno-like descriptions of a place that will burn forever with fire are the predominate picture people have of judgment, the effect is short-lived — probably because it borders on the unfathomable, and likely, many people simply don’t believe it.  In fact, many of the great revivals in America’s past, at least the one’s “fueled” by fiery teaching on eternal hell, ultimately fizzled back out into unbelief.

And what about the state of the church in North America right now?  Did those “great awakenings” last?  I believe “sick” and “in trouble” were just two of the words that one of my favorite teaching pastors used to describe today’s church, and he may well be correct.  And what about all the efforts of traditionalists John Gill, Charles Spurgeon and others in 18th and 19th Century England?  Did no one pick up the torch?  Genuine Christianity in England has declined steadily since that time, and it’s almost non-existent at this point.  Without discounting personal sinfulness as a leading cause, is it possible that being taught an unmerciful God of fiery eternal torment has been a major contributing factor in our failure as Christians?

I’m not trying to take anything away from the many positive things these and other well-known past Christians have done, but it seems that everyone who maintains a doctrine that causes people to question God’s mercy and goodness is damaging their own efforts to spread the good news of salvation.  Wouldn’t the truest revival and longest lasting awakening happen when the most merciful and loving God is revealed, assuming what we reveal could be supported with Scripture?  We should be teaching a God we can both fear and love at the same time, without having to question His character and nature.  And that’s Who the Bible actually offers us.

We’ve seen that the traditional position on judgment has adopted a number of unbiblical phrases that get thrown around constantly in Christian teaching.  Let’s see what we’ve done with some common terms that we thought we knew the meaning of, and this will really demonstrate what shaky ground tradition is on.  Die actually means “live forever in misery,” destruction and be destroyed actually mean “indestructible and unable to be destroyed,” and “will perish” means “will never fully perish.”  Further, the traditionalist position asks us to believe that when God indicated no sinner could endure His wrath, He actually meant they not only could, but would endure it for all eternity.  And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the contradictions in terms involved in the traditional position.

I appreciate the pastors most who will tell you things like, “Check me on this. I could be wrong,” or “Be a good Berean and do your own research” when they’re making certain claims from Scripture that aren’t blatantly obvious.  And truly I appreciate all pastors and preachers who God has called to be His spokespeople for the difficult days we’re in…even those I disagree with about this judgment issue.  But being called and used of God doesn’t mean any are beyond error.  Paul called out Peter for error.  Barnabas and Paul parted ways because of disagreements.

In our own day, one pastor will tell you that God has a specific plan for your life that you and only you can fulfill, and that if you don’t do it, no one will and it will be left undone.  Another will tell you that it doesn’t work that way at all, and if you don’t answer to those nudges from God and fulfill your calling, God has someone else waiting in the wings to take your place.  Two of my favorite nationally known pastors are on the two opposite ends of this scenario, and they can’t both be right.  But I believe they’re both wonderful Bible teachers, called by God.

In some ways, the judgment issue is just another peripheral doctrine that we’re going to have to agree to disagree over, although in my opinion it’s a really important one to get an alternative view of out there, so people can see there’s another valid side to the issue – a fact which many people are completely unaware of.

There are many different ways to interpret the non-fundamentals of Scripture, and that’s what I hope readers will keep in mind as they’re reading this book.  I’m not a heretic.  Even if I’m wrong, it only comes down to this: I see final judgment taught one way in Scripture, and someone else sees it taught another way.  And if I couldn’t strongly support the position I’m putting forward, and if I didn’t know the same doctrine that troubled me greatly also troubles many Christians and would-be Christians, I wouldn’t bother to argue for it publicly.  I would simply believe it in my own heart and mind.  But I know it’s a problem for a lot of people, and it’s easy to demonstrate the flaws and holes in the traditional view, so it’s impossible for me to hide the answers I’ve found any longer.

At the end of the day, Mainstream Christianity has portrayed God in a less than merciful light, and then has pointed us to Jesus’s command to love this One with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  This is difficult enough as we battle our own flesh.  But it’s almost impossible for many of us, when God is made out to be this one who requires the intense and eternal suffering of those who never find His grace.

Adding to the difficulty of conjuring up a love for this god are the Calvinist leanings of many of today’s pastors and Bible teachers.  If you don’t know what I’m referring to, teachers that follow in the Calvinist line of thinking promote the idea that God only gives the ability to respond to Him with saving faith to the relative few, making faith in God a literal impossibility for most of human creation.  So, because He requires faith for salvation, but only gave it to the few, the logical conclusion for Calvinists is that God preordains most to destruction.  And making the matter worse is that this “destruction” isn’t even a merciful putting away from existence, but is redefined as eternal conscious suffering in a tormenting Hell, by virtually all mainstream Christian preachers and teachers.  It is these teachings that disturbed me for years, and made my taking Christ seriously difficult, and my re-approach to Christianity slower than it should have been, after I went away from the faith for several years.

I began writing a book challenging Calvinism several years ago.  I probably won’t pursue it.  Unlike the conditionalist view of final judgment which gets little attention (and which I’m hoping to bring more attention and validity to with this book), Calvinism/Predestination is often challenged, and there are a number of books already out there.  But in case you’re one who has fallen victim to the ideas it encompasses, just a brief defense of the Free Will position here before we center back on the primary topic:

People who hold to the Calvinist line of reasoning (even if they don’t technically call themselves “Calvinists”) seem to be hung up on a couple of concepts which they can’t see past.  The first is “predestination.”  This is a biblical concept, but it has nothing to do with us having free will or not.  Romans 8:29 says in part “For those whom he (God) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” (ESV)  The Calvinist reads this and thinks something like, “see, He planned ahead of time to predestine some of us to salvation and others, not so much.”  But that’s not what the verse says.  Unless we want to believe this “foreknowing” means that we somehow pre-existed with God before our conception (an idea which almost all of us would disagree with), then the words themselves explain everything perfectly.

There’s something that God knows – something He “fore” knows.  What is it?  Leaning back on God’s omniscience and foreknowledge answers so many doctrinal questions.  God is growing a family of faithful believers to spend eternity with, and our having free will to put our faith in God, or put it in something else, is part of that process.  But while we have free will in real time, God already knows what we’re going to do with our faith.  He knows all future.  In that sense, He “foreknows” who are His.  And as the verse clearly states, those whom He foreknew (those He knew would be his), He predestined (determined ahead of time) to conform them to the likeness of His Son.  A common sense biblical understanding of predestination takes nothing away from our free will.  God simply already knows what we’re going to do with our free will.  Passages like this are a testament to God’s omniscience, and shouldn’t be mis-used to damage the biblical and common sense concept that of course we have free will.

The other big hangup for Calvinists is God’s sovereignty.  I don’t understand why this seems to be such an issue with them, but it is.  They believe that because God is sovereign, He simply cannot allow humanity to truly have free will, because it would infringe on His sovereignty.  Even if unintentional, that’s a jab at God’s omnipotence.  My short answer to this is that if God sovereignly chooses to give mankind free will, then that was His sovereign decision, so it therefore cannot be said that our free will violates His sovereignty.  Allowing it was part of His sovereign determination.  But even that’s a bit of a small picture way of looking at it.  What’s truly amazing is that God’s plans ultimately go His way even with our free will intact because He is light years worth of chess moves ahead of us.  He sees the future and works His plans in and around all of the good and bad things humanity will ever do.  Someone will ask, “Why then are we told that most are going down the broad path to destruction and few going down the narrow path to life, since we’re also told that God isn’t willing that any should perish?”  The Calvinist answer is that the “any” of that verse only means the relative few that God chose to save.  The better understanding is that there are layers to God’s will.  He isn’t willing that any perish, therefore He made a way so that none would have to.  But His ultimate will and intention is to only grant salvation and eternal life to those who put their faith in Him.  There’s a distinction between not being willing that any perish and creating a system where none will perish.  The former is biblical.  The latter is not.

There are some passages of Scripture which Calvinists believe prove that God overrides our free will and pre-determines who can be saved.  First, it needs to be said that pre-knowing who will come to Him for salvation, and pre-determining who is able to are very different things.  But let’s look specifically at a couple of passages.  A common one a Calvinist will take you to is Malachi 3 where we find God pleading with the nation of Israel (Jacob) and stating that He loved Jacob, but hated Esau.  First, this “hate” is more the idea of “rejection” than how we may humanly think of “hate.”  But again, God’s foreknowledge solves the dilemma.  God knew before these twins were born, and even before creation itself, that one day, the older, who should have been in the line of the Messiah, and the one to receive the birthright, would trade that birthright for a bowl of soup because his stomach was growling.  Jacob, the younger (by only seconds most likely) desired the birthright, and valued the promises of God to their family.  And this too God knew.  God doesn’t pick favorites, but His foreknowledge is undeniable, and that’s where He operates from.  He knows who will value the things of the Lord and knows who will put their hope in this fading world, and He works from that place of knowledge.  But everyone, in real time, can choose for or against God.

Except for Pharaoh, right?  This is another place a Calvinist will go.  When Moses was sent by God to tell Pharaoh to let His people go out from Egypt, we find something interesting.  Throughout the various plagues that God sends, sometimes we read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and wouldn’t let the people go, and other times the text says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  And it’s undeniable that back in Exodus 7:3 God says, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” and in 7:4, “Pharaoh will not listen to you.”  So does He want Pharaoh to let them go, or doesn’t He?  If we read on in Chapter 7, we’ll see that God’s ultimate purpose was not only to free His people from the bondage of slavery, but to demonstrate who the real God of the universe was to the masses of people in Egypt who were lost and headed toward destruction.  And this was stated again in Chapter 9.  And many Egyptians did in fact leave Egypt with the Israelites; that’s who the “mixed multitude” was.  And Exodus 9:20-21 tells us that because of the plagues, already some in Egypt, even Pharaoh’s servants, were beginning to fear the name of the Lord, while others were still unconvinced.

Ultimately, God was trying to save Gentile souls, and lots of them — not only free His own people from slavery.  But what about poor Pharaoh?  Isn’t he just the victim here?  Even though God’s ultimate purpose was to demonstrate His power to Egypt so that as many as would, could be saved, Pharaoh was used as the pawn because he wasn’t even given a choice — God hardened his heart so he couldn’t exercise his “free will” and let the people go, right?  Actually, he had already exercised his free will and denied God.  There’s no way that Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the world at the time wasn’t well informed and fully aware of who the Israelites living in Goshen, just outside of Egypt, were.  He knew they claimed to know the one true God, and their God wasn’t Pharaoh, and he made them slaves and kept them in bondage.  So Pharaoh rejected God in this way first.  Also, while God did forewarn Moses that He was going to harden Pharaoh’s heart, we don’t see God actually doing that until Exodus 9:12, well into the series of plagues, and after Pharaoh himself had hardened his own heart multiple times, according to the text.

We could keep looking at these types of places in Scripture that Calvinists believe demonstrate our lack of free will, and keep finding that one has to read information into these passages that isn’t there to come away with the conclusion that we don’t have free will to accept or reject God.  But let’s look at it from a different angle.  There are so many places where we could get these types of verifications of free will, but let’s first go straight to the words of Jesus.  In Revelation 2:20-21 where He’s dictating to John the letters to the churches, He reprimands the church in Thyatira for tolerating a prophetess named Jezebel who is seducing His people into sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols.  But what I find interesting is that in verse 21 Jesus says, “I gave her time to repent, but she refuses…”  And then He goes on to tell of the trouble she’s about to fall into because of refusing to repent.  But wait.  Why did He do that, if there was no way for her to repent?

And think about Cain and Abel for a minute.  Cain saw that God approved of the offering Abel brought, but did not approve of his own, and was angry about this.  We won’t get into exactly what all that was about.  There are a number of theories on why one was approved and the other not.  But what I find interesting is that God came to Cain, even after He had disapproved of his offering, and asked, “If you do right, will you not be accepted?”  Either God is practically mocking people, and acting in total futility when He attempts to get them to turn from their faithless acts, or these people truly have the free will to turn or not turn.

Denying we have free will makes a mockery of Scripture and really all of life.  What exactly is the point of anything, if God has essentially done nothing more than create a movie in which we’re playing a role, but in reality our lines are scripted and we only “feel like” we have free will?  The entire Bible is screaming that we have free will, and God is pleading with us to exercise it toward Him, putting all our hope and trust in Him for eternal life.  Picking only two of the countless evidences of this seems like a dis-service to the topic, and there are so many other facets to the dismantling of Calvinism that we’re not even getting into, but we need to move on.  This isn’t a book about the issues with Calvinism.  But before we move on, I must say, regarding God’s question to Cain, that “if” is the one word God doesn’t need to speak to humanity if we don’t have true free will.

Why would God imply that Cain would be just as accepted as Abel “if” he would do right, if in reality, there was no way for him to do right?  Now, again, because God knows the whole future, He already knew that ultimately Cain was not going to do right, but was actually going to go totally off the deep end and commit the first murder.  But that just proves even more that Cain had free will.  Even though God knew what he would do, He still went out of his way to give him the opportunity to do right and be accepted.  If Cain had no true ability to make a decision one way or the other, then truly God was doing nothing more than mocking him.  I’m going to choose to believe that God doesn’t lock people into being unable to act rightly, and then mock them for it.  Is that fair enough?

Speaking of “if” being the one word that God shouldn’t say if we don’t have true free will, that was actually going to be the title of the book I’m probably not going to finish — If: the one word God shouldn’t use if we don’t have free will.  Someone should steal that from me.  Oh wait, they already did.  Not really, but it’s sort of a funny story.  Years ago, when I was dug in on both my final judgment and anti-Calvinism studies, I was listening to a podcast of one of my favorite teaching pastors, Mark Batterson, and the sermon was about the importance of knowing where we stand on some of the peripheral doctrines of the faith, and he specifically mentioned the Calvinism/Predestination vs. Free Will controversy.  But instead of share where he lands on the matter, he chose not to, and instead just emphasized the importance of knowing why you believe as you do, no matter which side you’re on.  I get that…to some degree.  But I really wanted to know where he stood, and I also wished he would take a stand publicly for what he believes, although I think I understand now why he doesn’t.  These issues can be divisive, and for him to do the things that God has specifically called him to do, it’s probably more productive to not publicly get into some of the peripheral issues.

But at the time, I just wanted to know where he was on it.  He had indicated in that broadcast that he had been on both sides of that argument at various times in his Christian life.  So I emailed him, and shared a lot of what I’d been finding in the way of challenging Calvinism, hoping that if he had swung to the Calvinism side, maybe I could help swing him back.  I can’t say this with absolute assurance, but I’m 99% sure I mentioned that I was working on a book about it, and about 90% sure that I told him my tentative title was “If.”  Well I never heard back, and I wasn’t surprised.  I can only imagine how busy he is, with multiple church locations and all the responsibilities he must have, and all of that on top of having family responsibilities as well.  So I wasn’t offended or shocked that he didn’t respond.  But then I’m in a bookstore in the Christian section a couple years ago and I see this black book with a huge white lowercase “if” right there on the cover, and who is it written by?  Mark Batterson.  Mark Batterson wrote a book called If and just a few years prior, I had emailed him and told him I was writing a book called If.  What are the odds?  Now don’t get me wrong.  First of all, his “if” book isn’t even about Calvinism.  Secondly, books can have the same title; it’s not a violation.  Thirdly, it’s very likely he never even saw my e-mail, and it’s a total coincidence.  On the other hand, it’s possible he read the e-mail, didn’t respond for whatever reason, and the “if as a book title” concept just went into his subconscious.  It doesn’t matter.  I really just find it funny and probably coincidental, and he’ll always be one of my favorite pastors and authors.  But for some reason, I never read that one.  I’ve read five or six of his books, loved every one of them, but just haven’t gotten around to If yet.  Let’s move forward…

While both of these teachings (Calvinism and eternal conscious suffering) are questionable and potentially destructive on their own, together they paint a picture of a god[1] who brings individuals into existence who could not have possibly asked to be born, requires the impossible from them, and then when they of course fail in faith, their punishment is to be tormented for all eternity.  Further confusing is that many of those who promote these dual ideas say the reason God does it this way is that it glorifies Him.  What??  How?  Yes, this is the elephant in the Sunday School room – the ugly side of our faith, which for the most part is just swept under the rug, but we need to hash these things out.

Us-centric instead of God-centric

God desires people to respond to Him in faith, and in fact it is only by faith that we can please Him according to the Bible, yet for centuries, the primary means enlisted by most preachers for drawing people to this loving God is the threat of suffering consciously for all eternity.  It doesn’t take a lot of faith to make that choice if you believe what you’re being told – only a desire to not be on fire forever.  And this is one of the detriments of the traditional view.  It hinders the act of coming to God in loving faith and appreciation for His expression of love, and replaces it with “You better come to God because you need to decide where you want to spend ‘your eternity’…in bliss, or on fire.”  It becomes more about saving our own neck than falling in love with God.

Jesus, God with us on earth, prayed to God the Father in heaven for those who rejected and mocked Him as He was dying on the cross, yet tradition would have us believe that He requires not the life of the one who rejects him, but rather his or her eternal torment?  It just doesn’t add up.  This is not who God is, but this is the traditional view of Hell and immortality in a nutshell.  And this paradoxical view, I believe, while drawing many in to get more answers, repulses many others and keeps them from the God who loves them.  The scriptural truth of the divine judgment of those who reject the knowledge of God is scary enough without the threat of having to remain “alive,” conscious and tormented throughout timeless eternity to regret the decisions one made against the one true God.

This is not a new teaching!

It might surprise some readers to know that Conditionalism is nothing new.  Not only, after years of study, does it appear to be the consistent theme of Scripture, but throughout history many church leaders and even some church “fathers” have held a conditionalist stance.  Even in our own day, the often quoted and well-respected Christian author and church planter, the late John Stot announced in 1988 that he was tentatively letting go of his belief in the traditional view of Hell, and stated that he believed the subject needed to be revisited by the mainstream.  I hope that’s what I’m offering with this book.  And Stot is certainly not alone.  I could offer a decent list of people who rejected the traditional view of eternal suffering, but even by only mentioning Stot, it’s too close to doing something for which I’m critical of traditionalists commentators, which is relying more on the opinions and findings of other humans to strengthen their arguments than on Scripture itself.

One multi-author book I read which set out to defend the traditional view of Hell, Hell Under Fire, was difficult to even push through because of the constant footnoting and references back to other men’s writings and sayings, especially the other co-authors of that very book.  I’d never read a book where on many pages, the footnote section on the lower half of the page was physically larger than the body of “new” content at the top…and the footnotes were even in a smaller font.  So I’ll spare the reader from much of that at all from this point on, and we’ll simply look at what Scripture says on the matter, not what other people believe.  But if one finds the philosophical or religious company they’re in to be important, then you’re not in bad company if you’re a conditionalist.  But you are in the extreme minority.  The traditional view is widely held, and from what I’m seeing, is unfortunately only being combated semi-effectively by Universalism – which seems to be solving one problematic false doctrine with another problematic false doctrine.  Today, we who reject the traditional view in favor of the conditionalist position — which should at least be considered an equally acceptable way to understand divine judgment — are spoken of as if we are fools or heretics with no Scripture to back our view.  The opposite is true, and if you’ll bear with this study, I believe you’ll agree there’s a better way to interpret final judgment — without violating Scripture.

Debating in Love

I’d like to briefly address the tone this book is written in.  I’ve been putting down and picking up this writing project for over a decade, for reasons already partially explained.  I’ve sat down to study and write in various different moods and modes over the years.  Obviously the book has been edited, and the extremes of tone and mood have been eliminated.  However, at times the reader may detect that I’m upset with a particular pastor, speaker or author who’s made an attempt to defend the traditional view in a less than stellar way.  Sometimes the reader may even pick up on some sarcasm, although most of that has been removed.  The truth is, the traditional position on hell and immortality not only appears to be doctrinally incorrect, but because it is so disturbing to myself, and so many others, and because the defense of it is generally so poor, if I’m honest, I am upset — and I’ve let a little of that come through in the writing at times.  Sometimes a person’s argument is so weak or offensive, to highlight it in a dry, emotionless way seems less than genuine.  I certainly could’ve altered my approach and let this book read like many scholarly works about doctrine – no first-person writing, etc.  But this book and this topic are very personal to me.  So while I believe you’ll find the doctrinal study to be deep and meaningful, I wrote it from the perspective of being a real person, not a stuffed suit that doesn’t have personal opinions or get upset when someone is making a weak case that brings the nature and character of God into question.  And to be clear, I’m not upset with the general Christian population that holds the traditional view.  Most haven’t studied the doctrine.  If I’m upset with any individuals, it would be those who have been exposed to excellent arguments from the conditionalist position, and instead of admitting it’s perhaps at least a viable alternative way to view final judgment, instead it’s stubbornly ignored and explained away.

The people I challenge have put their positions out into the public arena, and it’s fair game, just as I’ve now put my own position out there as well, to be assessed, attacked…whatever may come.  But what I want the reader to know is that if someone is out there defending the traditional view of hell, that tells me at least one thing: They’re a believer in Christ.  And I love and respect them as a brother or sister in Christ, and I appreciate that they share the gospel.  But that doesn’t get them off the hook if they’re making other public statements that don’t seem to line up with Scripture.  If my method for calling someone out seems less than merciful in a book about how much more merciful God is than we’ve been told, then hold that against me personally, and not against the doctrinal stance on judgment which I’m putting forward.  If my personal methods for going about this study and writing project are also less than stellar, then please look beyond my methods to the information itself and know that God is far more merciful than we’ve been told.

While I’m critical of the traditional view, and at times the people who put forward ideas that don’t line up with Scripture (and more their methods than anything personal), in no way do I intend to bring into question any traditionalist individual’s ministry as a whole.  I’ve reaped a harvest of biblical knowledge and life-giving words from the numerous Bible teachers I listen to in person, on the radio, Internet, and television.  But the vast majority of them hold a traditional view of judgment which I of course disagree with, and I believe they’re doing damage to the gospel in this one area.  This book is a plea for traditionalists to reconsider the matter, but it is not a slam on a single one of them as a minister of the gospel truth that salvation is in Jesus Christ alone.

I’m also not questioning the intelligence of any person who holds a traditional view.  I’m familiar with the proof texts for the doctrine (all of which we’ll address in Chapter 4 if not before), and I understand why many people hold this view.  But I also understand just how strong tradition can be, and how much we desire to trust everything we hear from our pastors and teachers.  And while I don’t think this is a matter of intelligence at all, I do believe that many who hold a traditional view have never studied the topic deeply.  And even those who do may be overlooking the obvious and simpler message of Scripture in favor of tradition.

Often traditionalists come at the study of judgment with the assumption that all souls are already eternal, and then try to make everything fit into that box, so they begin with a question like “So what will eternal Hell be like?” instead of a fairer question like “What does Scripture say will ultimately happen to those who reject God’s offer of salvation?”  James MacDonald has consistently been one of my favorite radio/internet/TV Bible teachers over the years, and I continue to listen to, be challenged by, and learn from him all the time.  But on a broadcast of Walk in the Word a few years ago, he prefaced a short series on Hell by credentialing himself as having spent “an entire week” studying the topic.  MacDonald has more Bible knowledge in his little finger than I ever will in my head, but after having been at my study of final judgment for years at that point, I couldn’t help but be a little offended at the implication that a week of focused study prepared him to teach solidly on the matter.  And it became quickly obvious during the three-message series that he, like most other traditionalists, approached the topic looking for “descriptions of Hell” rather than truly delving into bigger questions such as, “What is the fate of those who reject the pull of the Holy Spirit to come to Christ for salvation?”

And another note:  Although MacDonald initially expressed doubt that those who claim to have had glimpses of the afterlife are legitimate, he later seemed to use some of these very accounts as evidence for his own conclusions about Hell.  I don’t put a lot of stock in peoples’ accounts of going to Heaven or Hell and coming back to tell (and write books) about it.  I’m not claiming there’s no way this could happen.  It’s at least possible that God has given people in modern times glimpses of what the afterlife will look like, for both the saved and the lost.  But there’s no way to know who’s being honest and who isn’t, and they all have varying versions of Heaven and Hell.

I believe I’ve made this clear, but in case I didn’t, I’m not denying that the lost will exist beyond this life.  They will.  The souls of those who reject salvation will not vaporize at physical death.  But they will not exist after final judgment and into timeless eternity.  Eternity is for the saved.  But the lost will certainly experience something after death, and it’s possible that some have been given a sneak peek into it.  However, while personal accounts of near death experiences make interesting stories, they’re impossible to verify.  The only thing I’m going to base my doctrinal beliefs on are going to come straight from Scripture or undeniable personal experience.

I realize that asking people to “open their minds” to a new way of looking at a topic which they believe they’re familiar enough with can be taken completely wrong.  “Opening your mind” has a very “new age” connotation.  But the fact is that coming at the topic with a lot of preconceived ideas is the first problem.  If you already believe that all souls are eternal, and if you already believe there’s a place where the lost will spend eternity, and just can’t fathom that anything else could be the case, then you’re going to have trouble reconciling actual biblical statements with statements of tradition you’ve heard from the pulpit.

The pulpit tells us the lost will suffer for all eternity.  Scripture tells us they will ultimately perish and become non-existent.  Scripture tells us the total obliteration of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah was an example of what will ultimately happen to the ungodly, but tradition tells us that unbelievers will get an asbestos-like body so they are able to survive and suffer in the Lake of Fire for all eternity.  While many traditionalists tell us the lost will be on fire for all eternity, the Bible tells us that fire fully destroys all but the faithful.  And then in Luke 16, the favorite proof text for traditionalists who believe the lost can and will exist on fire, we read of a lost man in Hades who says he is tormented, but curiously, by a single flame, not the fire that tradition tells us he’s in.  And when we dig a little, it becomes a fascinating study.  Every time that singular flame appears in Scripture it’s a reference to the reality and truth of God Himself, not literal fire.  This is expanded on in Chapter 4 where we address every well-known proof text for the traditional position.

I’m in total agreement with traditionalists that those who have rejected God will experience regret and suffering in the afterlife.  It’s the duration which I’m in disagreement over.  Chapter 7 is a study of the intermediate state between physical death and final judgment.  And the conscious suffering of the lost may be very brief, or it may be quite lengthy.  There’s room for debate.  But whether it’s short or long, that suffering will in fact end.

We could go on and on looking at these diametrically opposed concepts which are not sensibly reconcilable, and the strain to make them all work has created more problems and disagreement among traditionalists than it has solved.  Even more unbelievable is that some modern day traditionalists somehow view all the biblical language about the lost being burnt up as chaff, thrown in a furnace of fire, consuming away like smoke, and being thrown into a lake of fire as only figurative language for a spatial separation from God, a separation which most traditionalists maintain was prefigured by Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden.  We’ll find many problems with that theory and discover some real treasures as we carefully study through the Garden of Eden scene again in the following chapter.  An open-minded and honest look at biblical judgment is sorely needed in Christianity, so yes, I’m asking the reader to open his or her mind.  You will not be disappointed by the answers you find.

Christian Unity

Is this worth debating over?  Christian unity is a major theme in the New Testament.  We need to be very cautious about what we spend time outwardly disagreeing over.  I have four children.  Nothing makes me happier than when they are getting along and being sweet to one another, and little else bothers me more than when they are arguing or fighting with one another over insignificant matters.  I imagine it’s not too different with our Heavenly Father.  I’m sure the divisions and arguments we have over petty (in the grand scheme) issues hurt the Lord.  Mark Batterson (a traditionalist on this judgment matter as far as I can tell, but a wonderful teacher, author, and motivator) calls our wasted efforts and arguments over peripheral doctrines “sideways energy in the kingdom,” and I agree with him.  Christians often waste a lot of time and energy on issues we shouldn’t.  And Batterson might even consider this particular topic one to not hash out publicly; everyone has to determine for themselves where they draw the line on whether an issue is worthy of argument or not.

Here’s where I personally draw the line:  Does it bring into question the nature and character of God in a way that can affect a person’s relationship with their Heavenly Father, or for those who have not yet made a decision for Christ, can it affect their comprehension of who God really is?  If it doesn’t, it should fall into the “let’s not waste our time fighting over that” category.

I’m willing to talk about any subject in Scripture, but I’m personally not going to debate someone over certain issues — such as the young earth/old earth issue — not because it isn’t important on some level.  It is.  But because it isn’t an issue that concerns the character of God.

I’m also not going to argue with someone over when or if the rapture will occur.  Again, not because it isn’t an important topic, and not because I don’t have my own strong opinion on the matter.  I do, and I share it at times, and I’m planning a writing project now where I’ll challenge some of our thinking in that area as well.  But I’m not going to argue with anyone over it or break fellowship with other believers, because the timing of the rapture, like so many other doctrinal matters, doesn’t directly concern our comprehension of our Maker.  But the doctrine of judgment does.  And Calvinist-like doctrines do as well.

So there are topics to hash out, and times to do such.  And there’s a precedent of believers bringing others believers back to truth when doctrinal problems arise, especially when it involves falling into the traditions of men.  And if I’m wrong on these matters, I pray someone will show me the light and bring me back in line.  But if I’ve found truth, I hope it finds many others.  A devotion to unity shouldn’t keep us from delving into difficult doctrinal questions, and we can certainly remain unified as believers in Christ even if we disagree over large issues.

Regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong on these non-essential doctrines, there is one God who loves us and saves us.  As already noted, I’ve continued to attend a local church that maintains the traditional view of Hell, even though I disagree with the doctrine.  What would be the alternative?  Join an odd sect of Christianity that has a similar view of final judgment, but that adds strange things to Scripture?  Stop going to church?  We don’t need any more separation.  We need unity, and while it may appear that there’s a form of unity on this issue already, because most mainstream Christians have a traditional view of Hell and immortality, the truth is, there’s still no full unity on this topic, even among traditionalists.  There are as many different versions of Eternal Hell as there are people who believe in Eternal Hell.

Truth is older than tradition.

What I’m asking readers to do, especially those who teach, is take this one look into the matter and make sure you are holding the view, not with the most traditional support, but with the most Scriptural evidence, and which most accurately portrays the God of love and mercy we believe in.  Tradition can be very strong, but sometimes it can also be a stronghold.  We have an Enemy.  There is one who does not want individuals to know God as He is, and he’s extremely clever.  Are we Christians so beyond error that there’s no possibility we’ve been deceived and are perpetuating Satan’s very first lie to humanity?  I certainly believe that I was deceived, before delving into this study and re-thinking it.  Is it not possible that we have problems in a couple of our major doctrines?  Christianity has come a long way doctrinally since the dark and middle ages, but are we there yet?  Have we sorted out every major doctrinal issue?  Probably not.  And certainly every issue doesn’t need sorting out to have unity and be effective in the world as Christians, but shouldn’t we work toward it?

There’s a phrase that’s become popular within Christianity over the last several years and it’s this:  “You need to know why you believe what you believe.”  I totally agree, and that concept is foundational to why I’m writing this book.  But an equally important, if not more important question would be: Does why you believe what you believe make the most sense, logically and scripturally?  I can believe that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.  And I can believe this because teacher says so (or because it’s a line in my favorite Christmas movie).  But it’s based on nothing factual.  A number of books have been written defending the traditional view of eternal conscious torment, and these books are filled with the best why’s humans have come up with to maintain the traditional what’s.  But careful study reveals gaping holes in the logical process behind most of those arguments, and we’ll critique some of those as we work through this study.

Tradition appears to be wrong on this matter, and a clearer view of judgment needs to be made available for those who have struggled with tradition.  And while I may challenge what certain people believe and teach on this, I don’t hold any personal hard feelings toward them — just the opposite.  I respect all of the teachers who have spoken life to me through Biblical teaching.  And I hope this challenge will be taken in the right spirit.  Having disagreement or debate shouldn’t ruin us.  We’re all sinners saved by grace, in need of God’s mercy every moment.  God bless you as you read on.

Copyright © 2018 by Scott McAliley

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[1] lower case was on purpose, because this is not the One True Living God of Scripture