Most of us grow up being taught that all those who die without accepting Christ will burn for all eternity in hell. While in this hell, they’ll be consciously tortured, day and night– forever.
But is this even biblical?
If you read your Bible without having any prior knowledge of this “hell” would you walk away believing in it as a result?
Probably not- because it’s not biblical. It wasn’t biblical in the time of Jesus (hell wasn’t in his Bible) and it’s not in ours, either.
In this week’s episode of That God Show, Benjamin sits down with Kurt Willems to talk all things related to the doctrine of “conditionalism” which is the biblical alternative to what your Sunday School teachers taught you about hell. Find out exactly what the Bible teaches, and explore what our relationships with others would look like if we did not have the underlying issue of hell on our mind.
Catch the entire episode of That God Show, right here!
Related reading: find Ben’s full archive on hell related theology, here. Additionally, you can visit Kurt Willem’s hell series, here. And don’t forget to consider Kurt’s challenge to give up hell this year.
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Don’t forget to subscribe to That God Show in iTunes, or catch up on episodes via the website.
*header image via freedigitalphotos.net
5 Responses
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Your article gave me a lot of inspiration, I hope you can explain your point of view in more detail, because I have some doubts, thank you.
Benjamin, I really enjoyed the podcast! Definitely some aspects I’m now looking into. I’m struggling HARD! I’ve been a Christian for years, and ECT has always been my most difficult struggle with God, and it has put me in as ever depression recently.
I’m trying to see if another option is scripturally possible. I know Rev 20:14 is usually listed as a supporting verse (lake of fire as the “second death”), but earlier in verse 10, when the Devil joins the beast and the false prophet in the lake of fire, it says they will be “tormented day and night for ever and ever.” How do you reconcile this verse with the annihilation belief? Do people not get the same reality in that place?
I listened to the show looking forward to hearing “exactly what the Bible teaches” about Hell but I was severely disappointed. Instead of a careful and methodical presentation of all the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures which mention Hell or imply it and what they mean I heard mostly generalizations like:
– Hell is not in the Old Testament
– The New Testament words Gehenna and Hades do not mean a place of eternal torment
– “It is hard to get it from the New Testament”
If you are going to make the claim to say “exactly what the Bible teaches” about Hell then do so. But don’t sweep away the entire discussion with generalities, anecdotes, and “I don’t think I can believe in that kind of God” statements.
Also, you make the claim that if one were to read the Bible and take the teachings of Hell at face value you would not believe in a place where men without Christ “will burn for all eternity”. But I have read the Bible and I take the teachings at face value and I come away with the belief that Hell is a place of eternal torment for men who die in their sins. So this argument is weak.
I heard nothing in the show that persuades. I admit that time is limited for the show but you are the one who made the grand statement that I would learn “exactly what the Bible teaches” about Hell.
The claim was not that one can come away from reading the bible while still believing in eternal torment, but that said belief would not come from an unbiased reading of the text. I suspect that you already believed in such doctrine before you looked to scripture, and so saw what you wanted to see.
It is also possible though for one who was previously unbiased to come away believing in eternal torment if he was reading a biased translation of the text, or the biased commentaries often included in the same volumes as the translation. Unfortunately, almost all English translations are biased in favor of this false doctrine to some degree. (The only exception I know about is Young’s Literal Translation.) The more popular modern translations are especially biased, as older versions were more often more constrained by a more Formal Equivalence rather than Dynamic Equivalence translation philosophy.