Introduction to Hell/Afterlife Series

For most of my Christian life, I believed in the doctrine of Hell as an existence of eternal conscious torment (ECT). This was my view by default since it’s the mainstream view within Christianity. However, as I began to do more research and question my previously held beliefs about God’s justice and wrath, I came to a different conclusion last year (2024) in October. I discovered that ECT was not a belief held by the early church fathers like Irenaeus, Ignatius, Athanasius, Theophilus of Antioch, or Arnobius. It was not held by William Tyndale, the first English Bible translator. Nor was it held in the earlier years in the lives of the reformers, Martin Luther, and Ulrich Zwingli. In more recent years, John Stott, Edward Fudge, and Clark Pinnock were also against that view. Edward Fudge is more well known for his beliefs in conditional immortality as he has written a book on it, “The Fire that Consumes.” Another popular resource for this doctrine is the ReThinking Hell website, YouTube channel, and book they have put out on this topic.

Conditional Immortality is a view consistent with Jesus’ plain teachings, the teachings of the early church fathers, the Genesis account, the Jewish audience’s view of the afterlife, wholistic Bible reading, substitutionary atonement, the laws of nature of energy decay, the measure of God’s justice and nature of punishment for sin in both Old and New Testaments and throughout Jesus’ parables, and the use of language if those words are cross-referenced to all the other uses of those words and phrases in both Old and New Testament. It is a view consistent with God’s nature, the nature of the soul, and the nature of prophetic, symbolic, and parabolic literature and how this literature is properly interpreted in those contexts. However, eternal conscious torment is not a view consistent with these things, especially the nature of God. This will be discussed in the latter portion of this book as well as practical implications for the Christian life.

The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Ro. 6:23). It doesn’t say that the wages of sin is eternal conscious torment. If that were true, it would be a very important detail to leave out. And John 3:16 “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” The option here is between perishing and eternal life, not eternal life in Hell vs. eternal life in Heaven. That is, the punishment for sin is death, capital punishment, eternally.

I would recommend hearing this side out before completely dismissing it. There are many misconceptions of what this view actually entails. People do not just cease to exist immediately after they die. There is other punishment involved as well other than annihilation. Overall, the Biblical evidence to support this view is overwhelming if you take the time to thoroughly hear it out. Hundreds of hours went into the preparation for this book in reading other books, articles, listening to podcasts, and personal study. I have done my best to present the breadth of that information in the most concise and thorough way possible so that by the end of this, hopefully, you can be convinced of this view as well.