Hellgate: The Christian Debate We're Afraid to Have | The Kirk Cameron Show Ep 102

Hey everybody, welcome to Hellgate. I have been so excited to show you today's episode. It's totally unique from other episodes in that it's the answer to the controversy about the dangerous conversation my son and I had about hell. There's been a debate going on for 2,000 years. And if you dare ask the question, some people think you're being a heretic. James, are you are there for hellgate? You were there for the whole discussion. Are you excited we did this?

>> Yeah, I think I think it's going to make everyone have a lot more questions. But I think that's a good thing because the fact that we asked this question and a lot of people freaked out led to us gathering the best of the best from all across the world, flying them into a room at a round table conversation where we're actually able to go deeper into this topic and learn more and grow in our faith rather than stay stagnant in our preconceived notions.

And I want to thank our sponsor of Hellgate Brave Books. I've been working with them for years. They share my deep desire to spark conversations between parents and their kids about topics of faith and character, subjects that matter. So, I hope you enjoy this. It's 2 and 1/2 hours long. It is a deep dive. Open up your Bibles and dig in.

>> Isn't it forever everlasting?

>> I think all of us here would agree.

>> If you all say yes, I'm going to just throw throw up my hands and say, "Well, then where where are we disagreeing?"

>> I know we're going to disagree and that's fine, but I'm just pointing out I don't phrase ever where you see eternal torment.

>> Lethal injection is allegedly very, you know, painless and and quick. You have crucifixion which is extremely protracted and torturous. They all inflict the same penalty which is not being alive anymore.

>> One of the emphases of scripture is that hell is just punishment. If our minds are ever going into uh directions that feel bizarly cruel, we know we've gotten off the tracks because our God is good and just. Even in Mark chapter 5, you know, have you come to torment us for our time? So, you do do see a kind of through line here that, you know, torment never means annihilation.

>> What if you find out you're wrong, though? Do you really want to be standing before God on on the final day and and have to account for the fact that you malign the character of God and call him a moral? I just refuse to do that.

>> It's only death and nothing more. There's a lot more bound up. Certainly, if the lost do not die in hell physically, why did Jesus physically die on the cross? The nature of the punishment in hell is not a primary issue. You know, the gospel is a primary issue. The resurrection is a primary issue. This may not be a secondary issue for my neighbor who is not wrestling with the resurrection of Jesus because he read the case for Christ.

>> You take the images of darkness and flame literally and they would cancel each other out.

>> Somebody was on the electric chair, they pulled the switch, the guy collapses dead, but then moments later gasps back to life. No one thinks that the state is going to be like, "Oh, well, he he paid the penalty of dying, so we've got to let him go." Because the penalty and the death penalty is the result of that process. And that's what we're saying is the punishment that lasts forever.

Welcome everybody. I'm uh excited to say the least about this group of men that have gathered around this table because uh as promised in a video that I recently made responding to all the controversy over a a conversation that I had with my son James about the afterlife. Um, it was explosive. It was fiery to say the least. And it was all about the subject of hell and what the Bible actually says about the nature of the judgment and punishment of the wicked. I was getting uh pretty spicy comments like here's one from uh I won't name her name, but she said Cameron's verbal vomiting starting a discussion in quotes is radical cult rhetoric and the abyss of apostasy's damnation. Good luck with that in the throne room. And I think what was most concerning to me was that I'm used to that coming from people who are anti- good, anti-f family, but I wasn't expecting this kind of smackdown cancel culture attitude from my own team. And uh one that was particularly painful for me was uh one of my heroes who is a hero of heroes. And uh he he had said in a public article and video that that it was sad and a fatal error stating that redefining hell undermines the core gospel message of eternal punishment versus eternal life. And I thought I I got to bring more people into the mix. And this topic that we're discussing today on hell um I I want to talk about how important it is. I want to talk about whether or not this is important enough to divide us or whether this is should be one of those secondary issues that we should be able to talk about as like an in-house intraurch family uh disagreement uh or whether this is something that really does undermine the gospel. Um today's discussion is not about picking sides. This is not a scripture cage match. This is not about guys coming to put points on the board. This is a meeting of faithful men, listening carefully, speaking the truth with humility, opening up our Bibles, and I think the church has always been strengthened when that takes place.

>> Would you each just introduce yourself briefly and let everybody know uh why you're here?

>> Yeah. Well, my name is Dan. I am a theologian and snake catcher from Australia. So, probably the strangest accent that we'll have on this panel. I teach a seminary back home, but I'm married to my wife Aaron. I have three boys and run a ministry called Questioning Christianity, which is all about helping people wrestle with how the Christian story speaks to life's deepest questions. Doing evangelism, apologetics in person, and a lot on YouTube.

>> Great. Wonderful. Yeah. Uh Gavin Ortland, run a ministry called Truth Unites. Have a few other smaller roles as well. Um, married with five kids. Very honored to be a part of this conversation. We've had we've had a lot of fun today already. I think we have kind of a friendly spirit here in this time. So, um, and my interest in this is how do we work through disagreements in a healthy way as followers of Christ. And so, we're going to come back to that again and again, I think, but honored to be here.

>> Thank you.

>> Also very honored to be here. Appreciate you inviting us. Um, I'm a member of the team at the ministry rethinking hell. uh where we are conservative evangelicals who started out for many years in our faith believing in the traditional view of as eternal torment but became convinced by our study of scripture that conditional immortality or annihilationism is true. Um, I'm also an adjunct professor of Bible and theology at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana, where we offer a very affordable, fully online education that is both academically rigorous and spiritually formative. I'm also a software engineer. That's what I do for a living. Um, one of the projects I'm working on is an application called Bibling Lingo, which helps people to learn the biblical languages, which I'm really proud of. Uh, and I live in the Pacific Northwest with my wife and sons, uh, and attend Table of Hope Community Church in Puallup, Washington, a little church plant, only about 20 of us or so. Um, and just really excited to be here and participate. So, thanks for having me.

>> Thanks, Chris.

>> And I'm Paul Copen. I'm the uh pledger family chair of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University and I teach in the MA philosophy of religion program uh with Paul Gould, author of cultural apologetics. So we have an on the ground program uh as well as a uh hybrid program uh so uh so it's really it's really a robust program emphasizing cultural engagement as well as preparing people for apologetics ministries or PhDs in philosophy. And so uh and also Chris I didn't mention this but Chris and I are going to be uh we have submitting the manuscript next week to interarity uh press uh we have a two views book on hell and it is uh basically looking at the topic of hell from the conditional immortality side as well as the traditional side and having people who are engaged deeply in various disciplines philosophy systematic theology practical theology uh you know and so forth uh engaging with each other from oppos those opposing points of view and really modeling the kind of thing that we're trying to do here.

>> Yeah. Amen.

>> Thank you again for coming and and why don't we just open up our our round table discussion with prayer.

>> That's great.

>> Sounds great.

>> Let's see. Um, I don't know who wants to pray.

>> I'll be happy to.

>> Thank you.

>> Father, Son, and Spirit, we thank you that we can gather because of what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf. We thank you our precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that you have brought us near to yourself and that you've brought us close to each other and that we can have this conversation. We pray that you will guide us that it will be an encouragement to the broader body of Christ and also a witness to those who are watching from outside who are curious about how we will interact on this very uh difficult and volatile issue. So give us your grace we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

>> Amen. Amen. Great.

>> I'd like for us first to start out by talking about what we agree on here at this table. We're talking about two opposing views about the nature of hell, about the duration of hell. But this is at the center of the table because this is ultimately what what's going to anchor us. This is our north star. Correct.

>> Amen.

>> Correct. We're not looking to a particular theological tradition or a particular theological creed. As important as these are. Ultimately, we want to be rooted here. I do.

>> Yeah.

>> But I also think that each of us here has a healthy respect for tradition and the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Absolutely. Um, I think too many Christians are quick to dismiss everything that Christians have said for 2,000 years as if all we need is this under a tree, but we're not meant to do the faith that way. We're supposed to be part of a community. So

>> yeah,

>> I I agree with that.

>> Totally agree with that. What What are some of the important things that are not in question at this table? M

>> maybe as someone who stood on both sides of this debate. So for my master's thesis, I defended the traditional view of hell or at least a CS Lewis adaptation of that uh and then in the years since have sort of changed my theological conscience and been persuaded by scripture. Maybe I can speak to this cuz having defended both views, I think we all agree that scripture is the final authority and a version of solar scriptura that this is the place that we bring all of our beliefs to be the touchstone that we are corrected by and informed by. I think we all agree on the biblical language, eternal judgment, eternal punishment, on eternal fire. There's no verse that anyone here would want to edit out of the Bible in order to be able to hold to their view, but we want to try and have views that are consistent with what all of scripture uh teaches. I think we're united in the idea that God is just in his judgments and that hell is his final way of dealing with evil that corrupts his creation in that the judgment of hell is eternal. And so these are the sort of things that are a shared commitment both amongst conditionalists and traditionalists that come to say all right where do we disagree there's a lot more that unites us than what will divide us

>> and just to add on to that I think some who may not be familiar with annihilationism which is one of the views we'll get into and define as we go may think of it as well this is denying that there is any such thing as hell

>> and I think one of the things we want to make clear there is agreement on and we're not minimizing the disagreements we're going to talk those through. We're not saying that those don't matter. Um, nonetheless, the idea that hell is a terrible reality that we should be fearful of is something we agree on. And I've even thought of I've sort of been able to relate to that emotionally a little bit more through studying this topic. Uh, just the reality that, you know, there are human beings who reject the light and choose the dark.

>> Uh, and they they go to their grave shaking their fist at God. And we all agree to warn people. We do not desire hell for anyone. We we agree Jesus through his death and resurrection has brought about salvation. That is possible for all. We desire that for people. Um, and we agree that hell is a is a reality that is fearful and dreadful. And and you know, we we want to have that sense of fear and trembling before the Lord as we talk about this very sobering topic.

>> Yeah. And I think I would add too that we often bring certain presuppositions or intuitions or traditions theologically uh with us that uh will often shape how things will go. And so do we emphasize more the uh wailing and nashing of teeth or the word torment? Uh do we emphasize perhaps more the you know the fire the consuming fire sort of emphasis? uh you know there will sometimes we'll give certain weights to some uh themes in scripture over others and of course the question we all need to be wrestling with is how do we put these things together in a coherent way that uh that fits uh you know fits well in terms of how we understand God's revelation uh in a in an in integrated sort of way

>> one thing I'd like to add that I think we can all agree on is that although the period of time between death and resurrection is not entirely unrelated to this topic we are nevertheless debating um something the nature of something that happens after resurrection from that intermediate state. So very often people confuse the debate over hell with the debate over what happens when you die. But we're really not talking about what happens when we die. We're talking about what's going to happen when we're resurrected from death. So I think that's and and to add to that too, we also there's there's crept into the church uh the notion of the quote immortality of the soul that this is, you know, actually a Greek doctrine rather than a biblical one. When the scriptures talk about immortality, it's connected to resurrection. And so the scriptures speak about a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. Uh that there is this uh you know corporeal uh dimension to uh to resurrection uh transformed physicality for the for the believer. Uh and then a physical uh resurrection uh which is you know again qualitatively different but but we're talking about resurrection here. Uh and so we need to be be clear that we're talking about the mere immortality of the soul uh that is alien to the scriptures.

>> And I just want to underscore even though we've said this already, I don't think it hurts to re-emphasize this that um I think we see each other as brothers in Christ. And I'll say from a personal standpoint, I have such love and affection for each of the four of you. And then we also agree that we want to be like the Bereans in examining the scriptures. And so I think that's a spirit recurring into this discussion. The Bible is in the center of the table. We recognize we have disagreements about the interpretation of scripture and so we just want to look at the text and really work through what has God revealed. In other words, none of us are coming here on our own authority saying, "Well, I've got this figured out. We're looking to what God has revealed."

>> And maybe one final point of disagreement then is actually the need to do what you've so helpfully coined as theological triage.

>> which is we would be affirming here all of us could stand and share the great creeds of the early church. We could declare together the Apostles Creed. We could declare together the Nyine Creed. We could declare together the Aanasian creed. I've looked through these very carefully and say with great passion, these are the things that the early Christians decided are the core story that the scriptures teach that the church should be gathered around and united on. And be able to say that is really meaningful because in your concept of theological triage, which I'll let you unpack, I think that'd be great to hear from. It just means that we are agreeing on all things which are necessary for a person to believe to be at good faith with the creed and proclamation of the faith that was once for all delivered for the saints. I want to kind of just share a little bit about the personal journey that you were on that brought you to to be the guys. Well, for you two, you're kind of like the hell guys, right? I mean, like, I know it's not what you wanted to be or ever like maybe set out for that, but something uh happened to you to where here you are at this conversation and you're writing a book together on the topic. Um, for me, this this really happened uh not because I I had any problem with the traditional view at all. All of my heroes believed this. Uh I don't have any problem with eternal conscious torment u being a a just consequence of sinning against the almighty who is deserving of eternal worship and obedience and to sin against him is there is nothing greater than that and so I I I didn't have any any problems with that but eventually I was asking asking myself questions about my loved ones? What if my children don't make it into the kingdom? What what is their fate? What if my my friends and family? And then I had my own children asking me these questions. And so as I wrestled through this, um I I was told to listen to a message by a theologian named Edward Fudge. And I listened to this message and I I heard things I'd never heard before, particularly about conditional immortality. And I thought, well, what are you talking about? and Greek philosophy as you mentioned and Plato and this and I thought I'd never even questioned some of these concepts and that led me to asking more of these questions and then it began to uh at least give me alternative answers to questions that I really I liked the way they sat with me and my understanding of the word of God. However, I'm a scripture guy. At the end of the day, I can't base any of my decisions off of my personal emotions because I'm flawed and tend to be selfish and I'm going to go, you know, the rout route of least resistance. I need to step up to the standards of scripture. And so that's what I want to frame my understanding of this topic. And uh honestly, I'm here today as a student uh and I want to listen and and ask all of the good questions so that we at home and I and my son can better understand this topic because I think It matters to God and it matters to the people we love.

>> Yeah. I think my weigh in was on 2011 Rob Bell released a book around suggesting maybe universalism is a better way of making sense of the justice of God in final judgment and I was a student doing my master's degree at uh seminary and thinking man what am I going to do for my thesis project and I thought this is a really good opportunity. I love Jesus. I love the gospel. I love the Bible. I think there are good ways to make sense of the concerns and objections to the traditional view of hell that he was bringing up. And so I'm like, I'm going to go full kilt into researching and then defending the gospel. And that was what it felt like for me sort of going into it. And so I I did this research project. I ended up writing a paper which I think even still is a decent paper. It kind of stands on its own two feet. But it was mostly responding to universalism. And conditionalism I obviously discovered in the research phase and I'd heard from many preachers this is heresy and largely from the caricatures of the view that they described and so it didn't play much of a role in the paper itself but it was curious that I discovered a number of my heroes theologically people like John Sto whose book the cross of Christ had just had such a deep impact on me in how he unfolds the nature of the atonement uh leaned in this direction and had gotten quite a lot of public flack for it and that there were a whole lot of others pe significant figures in church history particularly in the last sort of century mostly out of the UK rather than the US although some of the Baptists here held it too and that just made me curious. So in the the years after this I started researching and thinking about it and just shifted the way in which I saw the entire logic of the Bible story from Genesis to Revelation as a challenge between life and death and life being God's gift and death being the wages for sin. And we'll pass that out more in definitions at some point. But uh it came to the point for me where I ended up over a number of years wrestling with asking questions going back and forth discovering things in the traditional view or the view of version of that that I held that were problematic that I hadn't thought through before or just that I hadn't seen how it affects other gospel doctrines uh question marks and and that that leaves. We might get into some of those today. But it led to a shift in in conscience which was relatively costly. Uh and I think a lot of people who have shifted their theological conscience on this not for emotional reasons but for biblical ones have often found that it doesn't get well received by everyone. And so I'll leave that story aside. But for me since my heartbeat particularly with the ministry we run is just to preach the gospel. Uh hell is real. I think it is the right judgment of God to deal with evil. But it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God. And so we as those who follow Jesus desperately want to weep over an unbelieving world. Uh but also want to set forth a gospel message then that makes sense to people. And in doing evangelism and apologetics, I have found the topic of hell is one that is of great concern both in sparking doubts for believers as well as being a barrier to being able to make sense of the character and nature of God, the logic of the Christian story. It feels like you're introducing something very foreign in many people's mind in the tradition view. And so it's it's an area where I want to be united with brothers. And in our ministry, we have the Lison Covenant which was pinned by John Sto and Billy Graham and others uh as sort of our guiding document. We have differences of belief on our team. And so I think this is something that Christians should work together around and be shoulder-to-shoulder in gospel ministry. But there are questions here that make it something worth discussing uh to be able to help bring some clarity. And if nothing else, one thing that motivates me for this discussion is in a culture that is constantly asking questions and you can't escape objections in the internet age to be able to help show our reasoning as we think through the Bible story, talk through the passages, look at the defenses and responses on both sides just so wherever you land, you've got a way of speaking about what you believe rather than just having to hide it away in the attic of your Christianity.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, Yeah, I think for me there's no uh big dramatic story in terms of pulling me into this particular topic. Uh it's always sort of been there in my in my theological vision, a little bit more in the periphery and then on a few occasions I've just been pulled into a study of it. Um, and I I I would just sort of describe my process as listening carefully to the annihilationist arguments with an open heart and finding that some of them are persuasive. They are not dumb. they are not bad faith. Uh but just not being persuaded ultimately in terms of putting all of the texts together that the annihilationist view is the best interpretation of scripture. And so I've just sort of landed back into uh a traditional perspective of eternal conscious torment. Um, I think one of my interests in this conversation uh has to do with something we've kind of mentioned obliquely and that's just how do we work through disagreements then?

>> Yeah. uh what what does a healthy culture look like where on the one hand and this is why I like the idea of triage but on the one hand we're not saying we're not acting like this doesn't matter this concerns the truth of scripture and so we want to be like the Bereans uh Isaiah 66 u this is the one to whom I look says the Lord he who trembles at my word I know all five of us want to have a spirit before the Lord of trembling before his word uh we're not being flippant here we're not just saying ah you know it's no big deal we're trembling before the word of And at the very same time, there's a way of having the parameters set that is more fleshly, that is more fear-based, and people get the sense that it's not safe to wrestle with questions. And I want the church to be a place where people can be discipled in their faith, grow in their faith, and feel a sense of like there's some shock absorbers to where if they they're wrestling and they're asking questions, they're not going to get zapped by a cattle prod if they take one step uh in in their in their process. There's a sense of balance and proportion there for how we think these things through. So, I'm interested in a healthy theological culture. And that's one of the things that draws me into this conversation for as as we disagree, right? We look at the text and we see them differently. Um, how do we have a healthy disagreement trembling before the word of God, but also with a spirit of overflowing love in our hearts and with a a sense of awareness? Last thing here is I would love for non-Christians to look at us disagreeing and say, "Wow, look at the way they're disagreeing. There's something that's attractive about that. I want to learn more about how they do that. And uh I think that'd be a wonderful result for Christian disagreements to see non-Christians saying uh we want to learn more about how they how they go about that. There's something about that where the love is so real that it draws me in.

>> Yeah, that's great. Uh so I was not raised in an overtly Christian home. I was an atheist as far back as I can remember and until I uh shortly after my wife and my wife and I got married. Um, and having had very little exposure to Christianity, there were only really two things that I knew going into my newfound faith that as a Christian I ought to believe. One of them was, well, Christians seem to treat the Bible as their authority, so I I better believe what it says, which is kind of ironic now that so many professing Christians don't, but that's neither here nor there. The other thing though that I knew Christians believed just because I embied it from the culture around me, was that the people that aren't Christians are going to suffer forever in hell. So when I became a Christian, I embraced both of those ideas and over the next 10 years. I never struggled emotionally or philosophically or morally anything like that with the doctrine of eternal torment. I can very much resonate with what you said. Even to this day, I have no philosophical or you know moral concern with the doctrine of eternal torment. But what happened was um I had a when I went into public ministry, I started a podcast and I would have guests on, some of whom agreed with me and were presenting views I did hold, but others who were coming on the show to prevent view present views that I didn't personally believe, but that I considered within the pale of orthodoxy. And one of those guests I had on was the now late Edward Fudge. He had just published the third edition of The Fire That Consumes. And in the process of preparing for and conducting that 2-hour long interview, I went from being firmly convinced of the doctrine of eternal torment and having no problems with it to finding myself very much on the fence now because um his positive case from scripture I found very compelling and his answers to the many many many objections that I raised in the interview were also very compelling. And so I found myself on the fence and over the next several months I poured o into every possible sermon and book and video and everything I could find. The vast majority of which was from the eternal torment perspective because I didn't want to end up becoming convinced of this view. In fact, even to this day, I really wish I could go back and believe in eternal torment again for reasons we can talk about later. Um, but I the every single source I turned to, even when they were defending the doctrine of eternal torment, made me lean even more and more and more toward this view. So, I became convinced, became invited to be a part of this ministry that was just starting up called Rethinking Hell, and the rest is history. But as far as why this is important to me, um you know, I was telling you guys over breakfast this morning, if the debate between these two views ever gets to the point um where it's similar to debates that other Christians have on other topics, you know, um premillennialists and amillennialists like me can get along very well together. Why can't we do that on this topic? And so when the hell debate becomes like these other ones where we as Christians just understand, we disagree and we dig into scripture together to figure out it out, but we love each other and we are united with one another, then I probably won't do this ministry anymore because that's what I'm most passionate about. I very much resonate with what you said. I want to see Christians experience and model the kind of disagreement that as Christians we ought to be able to exhibit. So yeah.

>> Yeah. Thank you. As as for me, I grew up in a Christian home. My my dad came from Ukraine, my mom from Latvia. Uh my dad was pastor of a Russian Ukrainian church for 18 years in Cleveland. And I I grew up I mean, not that we talked about hell a lot, but uh but obviously my parents were involved in ministry and had a a love for the uh for the lost and uh certainly uh you know, you received that uh sort of a spirit and uh and have wanted to share my faith with other people. And uh I have been involved in the kind of a the kind of a heavy emotionally uh taxing sometimes uh challenge of dealing with Old Testament ethical issues. You know, is God a moral a monster? Is God of indictive bully? Uh uh you know, did God really command genocide and so forth? And so I've taken on some of these issues that are challenges to believers because I want to help them to work through these issues and and and make some good headway in resolving uh these sorts of questions that actually say, "Oh, you know, I can I can see where you're going or I can see that to make sense." And so that's been something of a burden. I'm asked to speak on this topic, you know, like twothirds of the time. You know, you know, warfare and servitude in the Old Testament, so forth. Um, but uh you know back in uh 20 uh20 uh Chris uh you know had invited me to to speak at a re thinking hell conference and so I presented more of a traditional uh understanding and then Chris and I were sitting on a had a panel discussion and uh afterwards I leaned over to Chris and I said you know maybe we should work on a on a book together and uh so that just got the engines going for pursuing this and uh IVP academic uh picked it up and so it's been a a very good process. for me to go through almost combing through uh getting putting under a microscope uh these sorts of issues on conditional immortality and uh the traditional viewpoint. Uh I I prefer the term eternal conscious punishment rather than torment because I think torment uh yields such uh misunders misunderstanding and uh unwarranted uh you know push back where I think a lot of caricatures are generated by it. But at any rate, it's been really a pleasure to work with with Chris on this and and I must say that the uh the arguments from the uh you know conditional conditionalist side I I can see where I can understand how you'd land on that particular viewpoint. I I do see a lot of times it's a matter of emphasis and so forth, but uh but I still do maintain a uh traditionalist viewpoint, but it is certainly a chasened traditionalist viewpoint. So, so I'm very grateful for Chris for uh the opportunity to work together with him on this and look forward to seeing how God will use this book in the future.

>> Yeah. Terrific. Well, let's get into the topic. Um, I just want to uh open the scriptures together with you and um um read what the Bible actually says about hell rather than the viewpoints uh that are trying to interpret that scripture which we will will get into. And uh and and just state again for everybody watching up front that we're heaven guys, not hell guys. We're we're we're up with heaven and we're down with hell. Uh we think people should avoid hell at all costs. And God has provided the rescue and the solution in his son Jesus Christ through faith by his grace in the gospel. And that's ultimately the message that we want to get out there to people. So, um, I've got scriptures, uh, written out here sort of categorized in in in all or at least most of the descriptors that scripture uses to describe this place of eternal punishment. Uh, Matthew 3:12, his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. describing the punishment of the wicked. Uh scripture goes on to say in Mark chapter nine, "And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire." And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life maim with two feet than to be thrown into hell. Uh and if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Better for you to be entering the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. Uh in Hebrews 12, for our God is a consuming fire. Revelation 20. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Luke 16, in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side, and he called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame." Matthew 13, the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and lawbreakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and nashing of teeth. Psalm 11, let him rain coals on the wicked. Fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. Revelation 14. If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or in his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger. And he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. And they have no rest day or night. These worshippers of the beast and its image. The scriptures go on describing hell's destruction and and death in Matthew 10. And don't fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Romans 6, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 2 Thessalonians 1, in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord. This isn't comprehensive, but certainly it's enough to tell us what scripture thinks about this. This is not a trivial matter. This is not inconsequential. This is not a joking matter. And while our co our culture uh tends to make a joke out of hell, we use it to describe good things, bad things, what the hell? Hell of a good time. That was a hell of a ride. Uh uh boy, I really caught hell for that video that I And yet scripture says this is no joking matter. This is the wrath of God poured out in full strength against people who reject the light of the gospel and creation. And this should crush us and break our hearts and cause us to weep for them. So this is not a question for any of us about whether or not hell is horrifying. It is. We just want to understand how this punishment unfolds. So some of you have mentioned a view called eternal conscious punishment >> or torment. The traditional view and the conditionalist view conditional immortality or annihilationism. Um, I would like an annihilationist to describe and define the eternal torment view. And I want you the other guys to tell me if they got it right.

>> You did your master's thesis. You want to go for it? I

>> I'll jump in. I mean, um, the view is the idea that those who are resurrected face final judgment and whose names are not written in the lamb's book of life are cast into the lake of fire. And it leans into the language like undying worms or unquenchable fire and weeping of nashing and of and teeth to say that the lost cast into the flames of hell will be conscious for all eternity. In one sense they will be physically embodied experience physical life in hell. In one sense they will be immortal. But the traditionalists would say that immortality in the Bible has more to do with the gift of life in God's presence rather than life in hell. But they'll be alive forever in hell experiencing some kind of negative experience from the judgment of God. Now this conscious aspect there have been various pictures of how this has looked across history. The dominant view from sort of Augustine the beginning of the fifth century all the way through to really the 20th century early 1900s was that this involved predominantly physical torments. So you were in an immortal body that cannot die being burned by the holy presence of God. this eternal fire being regenerated so that you'll be dying, never dying, constantly experiencing pain. Um, in the last couple hundred years there have been offshoots that have become far more popular. Maybe a view called separationism where the kind of torment that you experience is more as a result of separation from God. It's the torment of probation, separated from the goodness of God's light. Instead, you experience sin and all of its effects being handed over. Just like Romans 1 would say, God handed them over to the lusts of their flesh. God hands you over to your sins and so you receive within yourself more of a psychological loss or torment of like a a flower removed from the sun.

>> Or another view which is more popular which is kind of a dehumanization view or the eternal golluming picture where you become less and less the human you were created to be as sin takes its full course and that that itself is the source of the kind of punishment you receive. But those would be probably the broad definition of eternal conscious torment.

>> What do you think? Is that is that fair?

>> Yeah,

>> I I think that's a good summary. I think I would put less so I'm I've written an academic article on CS Lewis's view of hell where I've argued that there's more compatibility between the idea of hell as you know gulling self-exile this kind of thing um and traditional categories. So I don't want to put too much of a wedge there. And I think you mentioned this idea of a physical body being regenerated. That kind of thing. That's one way you could think of it. I would kind of want to move that to the side and say if you hold to this view then you have that conversation. The view itself is pretty simple just in the the things you are emphasizing that this is a conscious experience

>> and no one likes to think about this. I find it devastating every time I think about it. I'm just trying to follow the text and it does look like a lot of these texts that that you mentioned there describe the experience of pain.

>> However you do, whether it's physical pain or not, I don't think that's what you're committed to in this camp. Um, I think you're looking at the word torment in Revelation 20:10 and you're looking at being salted with fire in Mark 9:49 and this kind of language which is experiential and relational

>> um with respect to God. And so the the the core of it I think and Paul you can weigh in on this if you want to adjust this at all but the core of it is there is an experience that is conscious of this punishment and that does endure

>> and you would agree it's also experienced by physically embodied resurrected people. Right? These are people who are physically alive and never physically die even if you would want to say that death can mean more than that and can apply to the kind of relational separation that they're experiencing etc. Nevertheless, from a physical perspective, they're alive and immortal,

>> right? The the basis of it is not the immortality of the soul,

>> everlasting. Yeah. Yeah. Rather than immortal. I think that can be sometimes uh confusing.

>> Let's get into the nuances of that here in just a moment. Go ahead.

>> Let me just you add add a little bit here. I think there are words that are associated and I of course there is the con conversation that judgment comes in degrees that not all will see see the same sort of judgment. And I think this is why the term torment can fuzz out that sort of a distinction of the degrees of of judgment. But you also see terms that are used to describe the the final state as conscious uh which has to do with Revelation uh 14 uh they're without rest. They have no rest uh day and night. Uh so there is that restlessness. Uh Romans chapter 2 uh talks about yeah whereas for the uh for the believer there is glory, honor and immortality. Uh for the unbeliever there is uh you know trouble and distress. Uh for the uh the rich man I know that the rich man in in Lazarus in in uh chapter 16 of of Luke is related is is connected to the intermediate state. So I don't want to uh you know go off track on on that. But it is interesting that you that there is that language of you know he says I am in torment. uh and well you know torment can sometimes mean like Jesus you the word is used for uh Jesus parents who were looking for him they're anxious about him uh or uh the language is used in Acts chapter 20 when Paul was saying goodbye to the Ephesians that uh that they were grieved they were distressed uh but that Paul that they were

Probably not going to see Paul again and so forth. So, so there can be this range of uh of inner states that doesn't amount to what some people describe as some sort of a uh you know an infinite torture chamber. And I think we need to get away from that sort of language of of you know people being fried or whatever. Uh and we we also I think it's helpful to keep in mind too that God will not judge someone with too great a severity or too great a leniency. That God is going to do what is uh is just and and I would say also loving, you know, even in that passage in Luke 16, uh the the Abraham tells the the rich man he calls him, you know, very tenderly says child, technon, you know, tells him, uh, you know, is is addressing him lovingly, or even the the person who is cast out in Matthew 22, uh, who doesn't have the right clothing, uh, he, you know, you know, he's addressed as friend. Uh, so I would argue that even as we talk about the uh the final judgment, that God's love still continues. That God is basically allowing people to have their own way and that God, uh, you know, and it could be argued that for God to obliterate someone could look rather unloving. Uh, whereas he says, if you, if you know, I'm not going to obliterate you because I love you and if you, if you want to stay alive, I'll let you stay alive. That's your choice, but you can just have your own way forever, find happiness your own way forever and so forth. So, I think there are different ways that we can cash this sort of a thing out. But, uh, but there are maybe a few way qualifications I would make on the whole issue of quote torment.

Let's get into that. But first, let's have one of the two of you describe the conditional immortality view to their satisfaction. In my video on this, I tried my best to steal man, the uh conditionalist view. And so together we can work at this, but I would just say the the experience of the damned is an eternal punishment. Uh, but that is not an ongoing conscious existence. Uh, rather it is that, and I think different annihilationists could maybe uh understand this differently. I think you'd have freedom within that view. But it could be some long duration of time, uh, first, or it could be a lesser one. But there will ultimately be an extinction or annihilation or destruction of the damned in hell. And, uh, sometimes that will even just be understood in terms of, well, how could it be otherwise, uh, if they are not given the gift of immortality? And one of the reasons I want to um keep mentioning the triage idea, just help our viewers who maybe have never thought about this understand why that's not a crazy idea to to wonder with these passages is you will find the language of eternal punishment and eternal fire applied to historical judgments like uh Sodom and Gomorrah in Jude 7. They suffered the fire of eternal punishment, but that was a historical judgment. Yeah. And so one of the things we want to say to try to steal man annihilationist perspectives is the word eternal doesn't always require that it is eternal in the experience of it, as opposed to in some other respect, like its consequence, just as we speak of an eternal sin, but that doesn't mean you're sinning for eternity. >> And the word eternal can be used like that in other ways in scripture as well. So I'm starting us off here.

Yeah. And we could also add too, and you guys could jump in. Uh, you know, there is the question some people see, uh, say the devil and his angels perhaps having an ongoing, uh, you know, torment, whereas, uh, that isn't the case for say humanity. And I don't know if you'd want to go qualify those things, but are you know, there are maybe some differences there that some people might, uh, in the conditionalist camp, uh, you know, parse things out a little bit more, uh, you know, precisely, but that's also something to add perhaps.

So what I'm hearing from the both of you, and are you all happy with the definitions that you've heard here? Uh, really close. I think the one a bit of additional, uh, clarification I'd want to add is that really what we're talking about when we're talking about annihilationism is a final execution, a capital punishment. It's not, um, we're not talking about, at least most conditionalists are not talking about a punishment of pain that lasts for a long time and then once the punishment is exhausted, then they're annihilated. That's for the most part a mis, a caricature of our view. Rather, we see the punishment as everlasting death. The kind of death that results from being killed, um, like an electric chair or whatever. And one of the reasons why I like this, um, way of understanding it is because we all know from just ordinary human experience that the various means by which the capital punishment is carried out inflict varying degrees of pain. Right? There's there's very, uh, relatively speaking, painless and quick deaths. Um, lethal injection is allegedly very, you know, painless and and quick. Being the firing squad, you get a whole lot of people, trained marksmen, firing into your heart at the exact same time, and it's practically lights out. But at the other end of the spectrum, you have crucifixion, which is extremely protracted and torturous. And you've got being stoned to death, which is extremely painful and torturous. So the point I'm getting at is just that what's interesting is that all these various forms of capital punishment, despite all their different degrees and durations of pain, they all inflict the same penalty, which is the penalty of death, not being alive anymore. And if that penalty lasts forever, it is by definition an everlasting punishment. And that's really what most of us conditionalists understand the eternal punishment to be, death forever. Death is ordinarily understood, not death in some kind of, you know, esoteric or or code language.

I don't mean that as a, I don't mean to say code language to demean, you know, the the traditional view, just.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think that I think that's helpful.

I've got some kind of basic, you know, men on the street questions that have come up as my sons asked me these questions. So, when we read these passages about the flames and the fire, is the fire literal, like when I make a campfire in the backyard cuz it's really hot? Uh, and that would cause a lot of pain, and that's I think what most of us think about, or is this symbolic? Is this is this metaphorical?

I think to quote a conditionalist, I would say that John Sto said, "If you take the images of darkness and flame literally, then they would cancel each other out." Uh, that we are dealing with something that is, uh, you know, metaphorical, although I think the conditionalist would probably be able to emphasize, you know, the, you know, the fire that consumes, you know, I guess that would be more, uh, perhaps in your camp than than what, uh, you know, Gavin and I would be advocating, but, but I think that the, uh, the notion of flame and darkness are are simply metaphors or images, not to reduce the severity of this, uh, this picture, but rather just to to say, you know, we have to be careful about, uh, overliteralizing the text. And some people say, "Oh, you're not taking the Bible literally." And I think that's important that we qualify what we mean. We don't always take the Bible literally wherever you're coming from. We don't believe that, uh, Jesus, you know, believed that Herod was a fox, uh, or that the trees of the field clap their hands. Uh, we we ought to take the Bible literally where it ought to be taken literally and figuratively or metaphorically or ought to be taken metaphorically. You know, a lot of symbolism in Revelation and and the poetic books and so forth. Uh, and so I would say we ought to treat the Bible literarily.

Uh, treating each genre according to what it is and how the author expects you to interpret it. Like when I say once upon a time, you immediately think fairy tale. So that is the sort of thing. There's agreement between the author and the reader that you will understand it in the way that it was intended to be taken. I think my experience thinking about the imagery of fire throughout the Bible is when I was a traditionalist in writing my thesis defending the view is to see fire as having more a metaphor for some experience of of torment or a negative psychological experience and certainly defending more of the kind of CS Lewis picture of the gates of hell being locked from the inside. Uh, that was the kind of world that you were imagining. One thing that I found challenging for me as I was wrestling with this topic is you start looking from the beginning of the Bible at what fire does whenever it interacts with sinful people.

And so you've got this sort of paradigmatic judgment in Genesis 19 with Sodom and Gomorrah where God calls down fire. Yahweh calls down fire from Yahweh in heaven. It's a fascinating trinitarian passage as well. Um, but that literally consumes this fire and brimstone consumes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and all of their inhabitants and smoke rises from them as a testimony to that destruction. And you follow that image right through the kind of biblical story. You see it too with what happens with the historical judgment on Edom and again kind of smoke rising forever as a historical judgment. And you gave mention to that with the Jude passage and that this becomes sort of the pattern then where New Testament authors like there in Jude 7 or in 2 Peter 2:6 reduce them to ashes making them a example of what he's going to do with the ungodly. Most of the fire image for me for me as I read it, it seems to be that this is God consuming evil. Fire is a force of either purification for the righteous or consumption for evil and death and and that which is not righteous. And kind of the the other major paradigm was in Isaiah 66, which you mentioned. It's sort of this passage foretelling a future vision of the new creation. And the whole book closes with the righteous having gathered into new Jerusalem, then leaving after worshiping Yahweh. And it says they look upon the slain corpses of those who disobeyed God's commands. And it says their worm shall not die. Their fire shall not be quenched. This is like this is Isaiah 66:23 and 24. Their fire shall not be quenched and they shall be in abhorrence to the righteous. So they'll be remembered with contempt. And that's sort of the origin then of Jesus's language in quoting Mark 9, unquenchable fire, undying worms.

Even Daniel 12:2 of this being eternally, um, uh, contemptible or, um, the lost rising to shame and then everlasting contempt. That's not a conscious experience of the unrighteous or the lost. That's actually how they're remembered eternally by the righteous, according to the Isaiah passage. And so I've always found that was challenging to my position. The fire imagery always does seem to be God's destructive force. And it's, yeah. Even even the salted with fire, not not to debate the passage right now, but even the Mark 9:49 with assaulted with fire, I think there's a really good argument to be made that what the author is doing there, or what Jesus is doing, is actually appealing to the the process by which in the Old Testament, um, when one nation would destroy another, or you know, one city, one army would destroy a city, they would literally salt the ground in order to prevent it from being able to flourish again, from being able to regrow things. And so I actually think salted with fire doesn't, um, historically some traditionalists have said that salt is purif, or it's a preservative. So salted with fire, they take to mean fire that preserves rather than destroys. But I think there's a really good debate to be had that actually even that, even the salted with fire, is a language of destruction rather than.

So when you say language of destruction, um, does that mean that hell has, uh, literal flames, a place with literal flames, or we're talking about destruction language? This is metaphorical and symbolic. So from maybe the conditionalist perspective, and I'd love to hear maybe from the traditionalist what what they would say on this. Um, but from the conditionalist perspective, hell is being exposed to the wrath of God.

And both in Deuteronomy 4:24 and then again in, I think you quoted in Hebrews 12:29, speaks of God as a consuming fire. And so my, whenever you see, and this is Sodom and Gomorrah, but it's also in in Leviticus 10, it's with the sons of Kora in the rebellion, fire coming from the Lord's presence consumes his enemies. Um, my, I affirm eternal fire, and I think the fire is eternal. But I think that's because eternal fire is the presence of God.

Yeah.

And is it real flames? I mean, are we talking about real?

It could be.

Like what I have coming out of my torch, or or is this just language of destruction?

Yeah. Well, I think that I, I think it's a language of judgment. I think that that's what a lot of traditionalist interpreters see, you know, that that is a, you know, an indication of judgment. You do have fire, like even with the the rich man Lazarus, he's he's talking about being in the flame. So obviously this flame is not consuming. You have the elements that are going to be burned with fire in second Peter chapter 2. Uh, but this, you know, a number of interpreters see this as not a, an annihilation, but actually a transformation or purification or renovation of the the old heavens and earth that are transformed into the new heavens and earth. And, you know, everything that is, you know, unworthy of God's presence, you know, is kind of, you know, burned off as it were. But, but again, this language of fire, of consuming heat and so forth, it actually isn't a literal consuming. It, it is only something that has to do with transformation. Uh, so, so I, so just because there's fire, I would say doesn't mean that there isn't also the language of ongoing, uh, conscious awareness, as we do see in, you know, Revelation 14 and so forth, but we can get into that later.

Yeah. So, so is a fair summary, I think it sounds like we're saying is the fire literal fire? Sounds like we're saying maybe I would be with Paul on saying no, uh, more. It's not literal, but, uh, that doesn't mean it's mild and and and pleasant. Um, because it's described again in this in this experience of of, uh, weeping, nashing of teeth, uh, regret, pain, anguish.

Uh, and then the the Revelation 20 text, of course, is the one where we've got a lake of fire.

And that's one of those that I'm sure we'll get to because we've got explicit references to eternal torment. And even if it is symbolic, I have heard from various commentaries that often the reality is worse than the symbol, or or that the symbol is referring to some reality that is even greater. Do I have that right?

I think you do. But it's also important to understand that different people are going to understand what is greater or what is more severe differently. So, so for example, probably it's the case that most humans find the prospect of eternal torment in in fiery hell more terrifying, more severe than being annihilated. I grant that that's probably true of most humans. But, um, I I recently asked chat GBT, um, which of course is the ultimate authority on everything. I said, my understanding is there's a long stream of of of um tradition, uh, where a minority of humankind actually very much fears annihilation far more.

Than being eternally tormented. And I'm among them. Um, so for example, the first century historian Plutarch said of his Greek countrymen that, um, his fellow Greeks would much rather go on suffering forever in torment than being annihilated because the human, um, being loves life more than anything else. Augustine himself in City of God said that if you were to present the impenitent sinner with the option of either being tormented forever or being annihilated, they would joyfully choose to go on being tormented forever. Now, I'm not saying that that therefore I'm right and annihilation is the more severe fate. I'm just saying that which is more severe, which is greater, might very well be a subjective assessment and therefore can't really arbitrate what the symbology and revelation is getting to.

And and I just again, just to jump on that, you know, and I'm writing the conclusion to our to our book, you know, co-authoring it, but, but I have a section and I, I say that there are going to be competing intuitions. Yeah. Again, like I said before, competing weight that we give to certain texts. You say fire, but I say what about the weight, you know, the weeping and nashing of teeth. You know, there, what you know, how do we bring these together? And so there will be those sorts of perhaps impasses that we will, uh, experience as we work through these texts.

Which is why we've got to rely on that. Just if I could make one observation, I think what Chris brought up is a really important point about why it's so important not to rely on our intuitions to make a final call about this because we might just assume, oh, this view is so unjust and is so wrong, and then we realize that most human beings outside of the modern West don't share my own intuitions about that. And so I need to hold them with circumspection and and examination. And I think one point that I want to emphasize that may be especially helpful for non-Christian viewers of this who are trying to sort out their own thinking about this, and this is a point of agreement for us all, is that, um, while we don't, we can't rely on our own intuitions about what feels right. One of the emphases of scripture is that hell is just punishment.

So we find in Revelation 20, according to their deeds, >> rendered twice. You you emphasized this point helpfully earlier. There's a proportionate nature to the justice of God.

And if our minds are ever going into, uh, directions that feel arbitrary or bizarrely cruel, we know we've gotten off the tracks because our God is good and just. And whatever hell is, we can be certain it will be a just response to evil. That's why I very much appreciated what Mike Winger recently said, which is that, um, regardless of which side of the two views you fall on, but especially if you're an annihilationist, because we're the ones, our community is the one that tends to, um, malign the character of God in the event that traditionalism is true. He, he says, "Would you, what if you find out you're wrong, though? Do you really want to be standing before God on on the final day and and have to account for the fact that you said that if the traditional view is true, you malign the character of God and called him a moral?" I just refuse to do that. I certainly think that intuitions and things should be a part of the conversation. I mean, look at Abram when when he's talking with God before he destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. He says, "Will you really destroy the whole city if there are 50 people in the city that are righteous?" Far be it from the just, you know, the the ruler for God to do that kind of thing. Um, so there is a place for intuition and for philosophy and moral reasoning. I just think that, um, I would, I would hope that our community does a better job of not speaking about the traditional view as the stain on the character of God that we so often do.

Yeah.

All right. I'd love to to get to the phrase that people have said to me is just so obvious. Kirk, read your Bible. Like, come on. It says that the righteous will go into eternal life and the unrighteous, I'm paraphrasing, will go to eternal punishment. And the word eternal there is the same for both. It. And so whatever it means, >> it's you got to go, you know, it's go both ways. So if heaven is forever, that means hell is forever. And that punishment is going to last forever. So what does the Bible mean by eternal? Isn't it forever everlasting?

I think all of us here would agree.

If you all say yes, I'm going to just throw up my hands and say, "Well, then where where are we disagreeing?"

The punishment is where we >> disagree. We all agree that the punishment is eternal. It's everlasting. We think the punishment is eternal, not punishing necessarily. And there's actually a big distinction between punishing as an active thing that God is doing, and punishment, which is the result of the ongoing nature of whatever is being done. And this is kind of the rub of the disagreement between the two views. The traditional view would say that the wages for sin is eternal conscious punishment in, uh, an immortal body that cannot die.

Physically immortal.

Physically immortal, right?

Or everlasting.

Or everlasting. Yes. So in an everlasting body that cannot die physically. Uh, whereas the conditionalist perspective would say the punishment that is eternal is death. So the idea of the provation of ongoing embodied life, that life itself is the gift granted to God to all people. But that is what from Genesis onwards the Bible has said is the wages for sin. On the day that you eat of the fruit, you will die. And and that once, well, Jesus distinguished between two different kinds of death. In Matthew 10:28, which you described, he said, fear not him who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. So the idea or logic of the conditionalist perspective is the first death is just the death of the body. But God preserves the soul, what we would call the intermediate state or other options. But God preserves the soul for resurrection and final judgment so that he can set everything right in the presence of all. So God that can be shown to be just and that after the resurrection, the lost are thrown into hell. And there's there's elements where the conditional perspective will say there's at this judgment shame where everything is open. The books are open. Revelation says, "And all of your deeds and thoughts and words are exposed. All of the negative effect of everything you've ever done is now made possible and you experience shame." That is a conscious experience of the lost on the day of judgment. You will also have the recognition that you've missed out on eternal life. And on the conditionalist perspective, it is the loss of eternal life that was on offer with Jesus that can also be a key element of what's experienced. There's also then the knowledge that you'll be remembered with contempt by the righteous. So if you think the difference with how Hitler is remembered today versus just random people whose names we don't know who were not in infamy, he is remembered with stain, that's his ongoing legacy will be how he's remembered. There is being cast into hell consciously, and so there is weeping and nashing of teeth in the same way that Jesus in the practice of his death being carried out on the cross experienced suffering and torment and anguish in his death sense. There is the weeping and nashing of teeth, but that that results in the idea of this second death in hell, a destruction of body and soul. And this time, God does not preserve the soul for resurrection. Of this second death, there is no return to embodied or physical life. And so, the person just perishes, disappears.

And one just very brief thing to add really quick is it's important that people understand that death, the death penalty is not the penalty of dying, right? If if the if the penalty in capital punishment was dying, then imagine what would happen if somebody was on the electric chair, they pull the switch, the guy jolts around, and then collapses dead, but then moments later gasps back to life. This is a real phenomenon. They have a label for it. It's called Lazarus syndrome. And if somebody did that, no one thinks that the state is going to be like, "Oh, well, he he paid the penalty of dying, so we've got to let him go." No, they're going to pull the switch again and kill him because the penalty and the death penalty is the result of that process, the the not having life anymore. And that's what we're saying is the punishment that lasts forever.

Yeah. Yeah. I just jump in here and thanks for you know, bringing clarity to this from your side. I would also add that there is, you know, there's a question of well, those who I, I do think that there is this notion of of of consciousness that that continues. And you have this connection to, uh, weeping and nashing of teeth, that this is something that is, you know, even in Revel, in Matthew 13:4-42, you have mention of one the consuming fire of the furnace that is there, and then it goes on to talk about weeping and nashing of teeth. In fact, it's kind of interesting, too, that the that this place of final separation is the place of weeping and nashing of teeth. It's not, it's the place of destruction. It's the place of weeping and nashing of teeth, as though consciousness is connected to this in a very deep way. Uh, but, but back to Matthew 13, you have mention of the furnace that purportedly consumes, but then it goes on to add the consciousness element, uh, where there is weeping and nashing of teeth. And that it connects to Daniel 12, uh, and Jesus is quoting from Daniel 12 about the the righteous shining like the sun and so forth. Uh, that you have this consciousness on the one hand, and of course the un unrighteous, but also the conscious, uh, consciousness of the the righteous as well. Uh, but you also do have mention of burning, uh, without the consumption, as I mentioned, you know, second Peter, uh, you know, even the mention of, uh, the rich man in in in Hades, uh, that this, you know, there's mention of flame, but there's still ongoing consciousness. And you can maybe quibble with it, but the point is that just because there's the mention of flame doesn't guarantee that there's eradication of consciousness.

So, just a few things.

I, I'm even thinking of the burning bush right now. I know this is a different context, but here's here's a flame in a bush that's not being consumed.

Well, but what's interesting is some of the examples you might think of actually I think count in our favor. So, for example, um, I can think of a a quintessential example, an extremely memorable example where people survive being burned in fire. And it's when Daniel's friends, the righteous, are thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, which by the way is exactly what Jesus is alluding to in Mark or Matthew 13 when he refers to the furnace of fire. And what's interesting is while God's while go while those who enjoyed divine protection survived that fire from from the very midst of it, right? One like a son of man was seen inside of the furnace with them. What's interesting is that those lacking divine protection, people that just got close to that furnace because Nebuchadnezzar said go, you know, get close to the fire and go fan the flames or whatever, they died from just getting close to it.

So, it's interesting that in a paradigmatic example of, uh, fire that doesn't burn up, it's actually the righteous who survived that fire and the unrighteous who died just getting even close to it.

But, you know, and again, I think a lot of times as a matter of emphasis, as I talked about, you see the parallels there. You see the the fire that burns, and then you see the nashing weeping and nashing of teeth. But I think maybe even more clearly in in Luke 13:28 and 29, you have mention of Jesus saying depart from me, you workers of of of of lawlessness, and you know, and he, you know, you know, cast them out into where there's weeping and nashing of teeth, and it goes on to say, while you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then of course, uh, you know, the people from east and west reclining at tables. So it seems like there's this awareness, uh, that they are separated from all of those good things. And you could, I think, you know, interpret this in a in a conditionalist sort of way where you say, no, we can work around that. Uh, but I do think that there's kind of this interesting kind of point of observation that they're observing what's going on, like a a table set before me in the presence of my enemies. There is this observation of what is going on. So I, I, I, I'd say that we can probably, you know, push back and say, yeah, but I, I still see consciousness. I mean, not to mention the say the torment that, you know, the restlessness without rest, as opposed to the saints in Revelation 14 that finally are resting from all their labor. So, how is how is torment understood in the sense of restlessness in Revelation 14? That just strikes me as conscious existence that goes on day and night. Uh, that this is, you know, has that eternality or everlastingness to it. So, so maybe it's fair to say, this would be true to me, and I probably several of us at least, that fire in the scripture does not just have one simple purpose. It serves multiple purposes. It is not always purely destructive. Uh, fire can be punitive. Uh, Lazarus in Luke 16, however you interpret that passage. Um, but the other one I would put onto the table as one example of this, and you just alluded to this, is, uh, Revelation 20, where you have three entities who are thrown into a lake of fire. And it explicitly says to be tormented forever. And I've studied this passage at great length, looking at the word tormented, and it means tormented, and looking at the word, the words unto the ages of the ages, forever. And that's the same word used to describe the state of duration for the righteous. So, it just looks like eternal torment in fire. And I'm not, I understand there's other ways of looking at that passage. Annihilationists will read that differently. But even if you took it as an image or a symbol, certainly it's a case where fire is not destroying.

Yeah.

Uh, and that would be the case for Revelation 14 as well.

Yeah. And also, I think even as we look at that text of Matthew 25 that you're pointing to, you know, eternal, you know, one way or the other, is it everlasting conscious awareness and so forth. Uh, and I think Chris, you you helpfully point out, you know, how do we understand that, you know, those two aspects, you know, you know, of et of eternal apply to the righteous and the unrighteous. Uh, you know, we'll look look at the say the synoptic gospels in, you know, or Matthew in particular, and see how does he look at the final state. I do say that I, I do see that there is consciousness regularly, uh, mentioned in terms of the weeping and nashing of teeth. But when we connect Matthew 25 to, uh, you know, to, you know, to be cast out into, you know, you know, the place for the prepared for the devil and his angels. Well, the devil and his angels, you know, that is a specific reference, you know, to, to, uh, as it were, uh, Revelation 20, the devil and his angels. Some people say, well, this is symbolic, this is corporate, etc. But the devil, uh, is there, you know, you know, who is being, again, a personal being who is the opponent of God and so forth.

Pictured as a big dragon. Sure. But I'm just saying, but but is the devil prepared for the devil and his angels. So yes, it's a, but, but we're talking, and we're also talking about the angels as well, of of of Satan. Uh, so we do have this, and and that is the same, you know, sort of language that is used in in in Revelation 14 of those who worship the beast and his in his image. Uh, that each one of those, it says in Revelation 14, will drink from, you know, you know, God's, you know, the cup of God's wrath. And there's also a corporate dimension of it too in Revelation 16, where the city of Babylon, uh, drinks of that, that that cup of judgment. But Babylon is made up of those people who worship the beast as well. So, so I, you know, I think that there is that, uh, that emphasis on torment, however we don't understand that, uh, in the book of Revelation, that applies to individuals as well as, you know, kind of metaphorical entities. But again, that metaphorical entity that is made up of those particular, you know, worshippers of the beast.

I got to tell you, Kirk, at some point, we'll probably need to spend some focused time on Revelation because I think Dan and I probably have a lot that we want to say.

Absolutely. We want to get into the book of Revelation. That's where so many of our our questions are. But first, I want to take a minute and I want to thank the sponsor that made this whole round table possible. Having discussions like this is very important because it sharpens us and it challenges us to think. That's why I love Brave Books. Many of you know that I have been writing children's books with Brave. And Brave Books is all about families coming together to spark great conversations about the values that build kids character and their faith. Now, there will always be plenty of debates and discussions, disagreements within the family of faith, and then we'll prayerfully decide what we believe and how we want to raise our families. But at the end of the day, we can all agree on this. We want to raise children with a biblical foundation and strong character and unassalable faith. That's what Brave does. They give families the perfect tools to do exactly that, to set aside distractions, focus on real family time and deep conversations. Brave creates stories that bring foundational values to your kids like life, like humility, loving others, courage, honesty, and faith. And then in the back of every Brave book, there's something called the Brave Challenge. It's one of my favorite parts. It's a set of conversation starters, family games, and scripture verses that are designed to bring your family together and then spark conversations that actually matter. So, let's make this year the year where we start new habits that have long lasting impact on our kids. If you'd like to get a new Brave Book delivered to your home every month, just sign up for the Brave Book Club. They want you to know that you'll get my book for free, plus free access to Brave's streaming platform, which happens to include all seasons of Iggy and Mr. Kirk, my new kids TV show. I play Mr. Kirk. You'll also get a bonus bundle worth over $45, all for free. And just for watching, Brave is going to give you 25% off your first order right now when you use the promo code Kirk at checkout. So just go to bravebooks.com promo code Kirk. Thank you, Brave Books.

All right, I would like to move to this subject of the human soul. It's not easy to even understand what the soul is when we talk about we have a mind, we have a heart, a soul, a spirit. Are these things words that mean the same thing in some cases? Are they all separate things? But if we are souls, I've always been taught that our souls are immortal, that our physical bodies can perish, but that souls last forever. And so when we get to a passage like Matthew 25:46, I think, uh, where it says that the righteous will go on to eternal life and that the unrighteous will go to eternal punishment. That that fits perfectly with this idea that the soul is eternal. And then I heard someone say, Bible doesn't teach that. That's an early Greek philosophical idea. Plato taught that and that made its way into the church. And then with that sort of baseline bias toward the soul, well, you got to spend eternity somewhere forever, heaven or hell. But you guys are saying something totally different. So explain what conditional immortality is all about.

Yeah, you go. Well, so historically, as as we talked about earlier, the doctrine of eternal torment or eternal conscious punishment, um, has entailed, has has, uh, posited that the lost when they are physically resurrected, um, will be phys will be made physically immortal. They, uh, historically, they were comfortable using the word as far back as the second century in the likes of Athanagoras of Athens and Tatian of Aiaen, all the way through Augustine and Aquinas and Anselm and Jonathan Edwards and Spurgeon, all the way to the modern day people like even Wayne Grudum, they explicitly say that the risen lost are physically immortal, or to use the word you preferred, everlasting, and that they will live physically forever in hell. In fact, it's not uncommon for less careful theologians than those of us here to say things like, "Everybody gets eternal life. It's just a matter of where you live it, right? In a good place or a bad place."

So, you might, you might, I would count the doctrine of eternal torment as a form of unconditional immortality. There are no conditions that we as God's creatures must meet in order for God to resurrect us immortal. Okay? So, it's unconditional immortality. We believe, uh, that the scriptures make clear that immortality is not something that humans enjoy naturally. Um, plausibly, we're immortal in the sense that our souls don't naturally die with our bodies, right? We sometimes characterize vampires as immortal, right? Because they don't naturally die, but of course we can kill them, right? In in in the mythology. So it might be, we might our souls might be immortal in that sense. It doesn't naturally die with the body. But in terms of immortality is endless resurrected life, physically embodied life. Scripture seems to say that you must meet a condition in order for God to grant that immortality to you. And that condition is being saved through faith in Christ.

So if I'm understanding this just at the street level, I'm hearing you say that, uh, you believe that eternal, uh, immortality, I mean, I know that the Bible says that God is immortal. He alone is immortal, and he grants immortality to those who believe the gospel. There, you then are granted eternal life. It's not something you automatically get, >> just because you're a human being. That's why we're called mortals. Is am I understanding that right?

Yeah, I think so. And we're going to probably disagree to a certain extent as to what expressions like eternal life mean. Um, but, but just as one example of some of the some of the biblical data that shapes my convictions in a passage no one ever talks about on the nature of hell in Luke 20:35 and 36. Jesus is talking to the Sadducees who are Sadducees because they deny a resurrection. And, um, and he says to them, in the resurrection, those who are counted worthy to attain to the resurrection, um, they're like they're sons of God, and so they'll be, uh, unable to die anymore. But what is the implication of that? I mean, it seems as if what's being implied there is that those not counted as sons of God, those not counted worthy of resurrection will be able to die, which is exactly what the doctrine of eternal torment historically has said can't happen to the resurrected lost. I mean, for example, Paul, you were you were saying earlier, God lovingly allows people who want to go on living forever to live forever on their own terms in hell. But what if they wanted to die?

Well, again, these are some things that we, we do be, we can be perhaps speculative about. Uh, and, and, and maybe suggest certain alternatives. But there's also the question of that, uh, desire to live without God is an ongoing rebellion. It's not as though it just stops at reviews, but there's ongoing rebellion. So there's ongoing judgment against that ongoing rebellion too. So it's not as though it's just this disproportionality question just pertains to this life, as though there is no, uh, you know, sinning that takes place after, uh, there is a final judgment too. So that's something that we'd, uh, you know, want to take into consideration too.

But yeah, that. Oh, go ahead.

Just going to say on that. I mean, just one sentence on that is that what a sobering thought on our view, at least. Um, the worst thing about hell may not be the pain. It may be the fact that you're still a sinner.

To think that you're still, you still hate God and rebel against God and this sort of thing. Again, it's just this whole topic is very sobering to think through. But I think much.

I would just say, you know, I think your question is right on the money here to situate. And I think all of us agree the basis for our view is not the immortality of the soul. It is the biblical account of resurrection, which is for all human beings. All bodies are raised.

And that is what immortality is resurrected to resurrection. So, yeah, the resurrection of the of the righteous.

And neither of our views is obvious apart from divine revelation. Someone in freethinking speculation might say, you know, why would God raise a body only for it to suffer eternally? Or they could also ask, why would God resurrect you only for you to be annihilated? Both are sort of understandable instinctive reactions because you could just say, well, why not just, you know, what's the point of raising the body if you're just going to kill the person? And that's why I think all of us are just looking at the text of scripture to say, what does the scripture teach about the nature of the final resurrection and final judgment?

And so I remember writing in my master's thesis defending the traditionalist account. A traditionalist doesn't have to say that the soul is immortal. The traditionalist can say God alone is immortal. But for his purposes in judgment to play out with eternal conscious punishment, he grants immortality to the lost in order for them to receive the just penalty that they deserve. I think what kind of began to shift my mind towards conditional immortality is I went back to the Genesis narrative and in Genesis 3:22, you've got the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis in chapter 3. And then the justification for why they're exiled from the Garden of Eden was so that in their fallen state as sinners, they could not reach out and take of the tree of life and so live forever. It's the first, it's the first phrase where these two words are put together. Olam meaning forever, largely what we would normally put for that, and then this, uh, this word for life, the hav. And so you've got this first phrase or picture there that the thing that God wanted to prevent was people living forever in a fallen state.

And I said, "Gee, that just doesn't fit with my traditional view, which seems to make eternal fallen people in a physical body the very thing that Genesis wants to prevent by cutting them off from the tree of life." And so that's one of the reasons why when I moved forward and I'm looking at, okay, the promise of eternal life, or in one Corinthians 15, which speaks about resurrection for the believer, that it's always a promise of what was sown mortal will be raised immortal, what was sown in dishonor will be raised honorable. This isn't a description of the general resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. This is the promise for what the believer will receive when they are resurrected. And so part of conditional immortality thinks that everyone is resurrected, the lost and the saved. But the saved are raised with these immortal bodies that God has made for the new creation. But that the lost are raised with mortal bodies again to be cast into hell where they'll be destroyed. Not like just the first death in body only, but rather this time being slain both in body and in soul. And so I was reading through the scriptures and this phrase of eternal life is so often logically contrasted with, let's say, John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Or Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Or even that passage we were speaking about before in Matthew 25:46, that these the wicked, the goats will go away into.

eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. The logical contrast of eternal life is not eternal life; it's death. And so the concept of an eternal death seemed to me, I'm like, "Wow, there's a powerful contrast between life is always described as being embodied in, uh, for human beings, and then the wages of sin being death from Genesis all the way through there." And this is where, you know, as a traditionalist, I'm like, "Well, death must mean something other than just physical life." And so you've got this concept then of spiritual death as a traditionalist that I was trying to work out. Okay, so Adam and Eve didn't die physically on the day they were kicked out. They were separated from God's presence. But the challenge for me in thinking that was, "Well, wait a second. Now that means lost people are spiritually dead. What then is a second death? Because they're never raised from that spiritual death in order to die again spiritually. It's just a continuation of the first death." And so some of those things for me around life and death were really important issues for me to unpack. And I think it's probably a center point for the debate.

"And I would say that, you know, in that second death, I think there is a finality to it that this is something that is irreversible and so forth. So, it, I think there is a connection to that and the second death. But you also do see the language of destruction that is used of things that continue on to exist, like in, in, in 2 Peter chapter 3, you have the, uh, the world that was destroyed, but yet it wasn't, you know, wasn't obliterated. It was, uh, you know, again, became reinhabited after the flood. Uh, you also have language of, you know, the prodigal son or the wine skins, uh, that have been ruined and so forth, as language that's, you know, again, connected to destruction. Uh, but, but it's, but there's also a continuation, uh, of that. So you could talk about ruination, uh, that those, those wine skins are ruined, but they're not obliterated. Uh, so, so there are those, those things that we could also, you know, discuss as well, but, uh, maybe onto the next question. I don't know."

"For what little it's worth, my understanding is that when a wine skin bursts, it is no longer a wine skin. It's a bunch of fragments of leather or whatever they made those out of."

"Or if that were to happen to a, >> person or the prodigal son, you know, he's, you know, the language of ruination that's there. Uh, you can also talk, you, there, there is that sort of, uh, language, uh, that, that, you know, a car can be ruined, um, no longer functional, but it's, you know, it still exists. It hasn't been."

"Yeah, that's fair. But I mean, speaking to the issue of life and death, what's interesting is that when Jesus says in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both body and soul in hell, you're right that that word *apollymi* there, when it's used in certain ways, um, can mean something like ruin or waste or lose or whatever. But everywhere in the synoptic gospels that it's used in the way Jesus uses it there, so it's, it's in what grammarians call the active voice, and it's got human, uh, human beings as the direct object of that verb. Everywhere in the synoptic gospels, and in most places elsewhere in scripture, it means kill or slay. So, for example, Herod, um, didn't want to ruin, waste, or lose the baby Jesus. He wanted to kill him, right? And the adult and the Pharisees didn't want to ruin, waste, or lose the adult Jesus. They wanted to kill."

"We even get have that in our own culture where we're watching the Bills and the Chiefs and you're going like, 'They just destroyed them.'"

"Well, we don't mean that they actually annihilated them. Although we'll say they annihilated them, they killed them, but we actually mean something different. So, um, how do we, how, how do we know which version is the right definition to apply to the particular text?"

"Yeah, that's an excellent question. Um, and I, I'll tell you, I'll give you a couple of examples of how I analyze that, and I'd be interested in what you guys say. So, Matthew 10:28 is an example where one of the ways that we can determine which of the word *apollymi*, that's the Greek word for destroy there, which of its many meanings does Jesus have in mind here, and one of the ways we can do that is look at morphology, uh, grammar, things like that. And like I said, everywhere in the synoptic gospels where *apollymi* is used in the active voice with a human being as its direct object, it means slay or kill. So that's an example where we literally slay."

"Literally slay or kill. Um, and one more example. We haven't touched on this much. 2 Thessalonians 1:9, you read it in the, in the opening, 'everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.' A lot of translations really butcher that verse. There's nothing in there about being separated from God or being, you know, taken away somewhere else. The preposition in Greek just means from, blown from the water, right? It means destroyed from the water. It's no longer there anymore. It doesn't mean the boat is like lifted out of the water and placed somewhere else, right? Well, anyway, but destruction, *olothros* there, does have a semantic range and doesn't always mean this strong sense of destroy. So, how, how might we arbitrate that? How we, how might we narrow down the semantic range? Well, one way we could do that is by looking at intertextuality, which is the relationship between different passages in scripture. Leading into the verse, Paul uses this language of flaming fire and inflicting vengeance. And the combination of terms he uses there only appears together in one place anywhere else in scripture. And it's in Isaiah 66:15-16, where God's angels come and by God's sword kill, um, the wicked, such that the result at the end of that scene is a pile of rotting, stinking, burning corpses. Right? So what Paul seems to have in mind by using that language leading into this language of everlasting destruction might inform which of the word *olothros*'s many meanings he has in mind."

"Yes. Go ahead."

"I, I think we're right to probe right here where we are right now. What does death mean and what does destroy mean?"

"And I want to acknowledge the complexity of this. And my answer to your question is, we have to go painstakingly carefully with each verse. And, uh, because, you know, um, you mentioned for human beings being destroyed with the demons. It's interesting in Mark 1, a demon says, 'What do you want with us, Jesus? Have you come to destroy?' Same Greek verb, *apollymi*. Uh, and then Mark 5, exact same question, but it's switched. 'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to torment us?' Which invites the question, is the demon in Mark 1 afraid of one thing, annihilation from Jesus, and the demon in Mark 5 afraid of something else, torment from Jesus?"

"Or are they synonyms?"

"Or are they synonyms? Two parts of the same package. Right. And I think Doug Moo makes a good case for 2 Thessalonians 1 referencing ruin. And I do think that's a legitimate meaning of the verb. Um, and so I, I think for our viewers, certainly at the surface level, death does not always mean annihilation. You were dead in your trespasses doesn't mean we were annihilated. Um, it invites the question then, and I think that's where we just have to go with care and attention to the little nuances in each particular case. What are we dealing?"

"That's why exegesis, many of us at least, so value what's called the grammatical-historical method, because it's all about understanding that humans don't write or speak in a vacuum. Yeah. Right. They, they, they're they're formed and shaped by their cultures and by their environment, and you have to understand a lot of that background to really do justice. Obviously, there's a lot of this we can understand with that back without that background, but not all of it. We need some of that."

"Does your view of the punishment in hell fit the crimes of a sinful person? More specifically, if a 15-year-old boy or girl commits rebellion against their parents and rebellion against God, lying, cheating, stealing, load her up with all of the sins in the world. Is, does that comport with your view of God's punishment for that person? An eternity, uh, of conscious punishment, or an execution that separates her from God and life and everything forever and ever?"

"Yeah. Why, why, why does your view conform with justice and fit the crime?"

"Yeah, I would jump in by saying that as we, I think the, the major focal point would be what is a person's fundamental orientation toward God. In this world, we kind of set our, our moral and spiritual compass, uh, in one direction or another. And, uh, there may come a point where we, like the unpardonable sin, perhaps peculiar to Jesus' own day and the religious leaders, uh, of his time. But, uh, there may come a point of no return in which you've gone so far away from God that it just becomes psychologically or spiritually, uh, impossible to repent. You have gone too far, but, but you have chosen your own, uh, moral and spiritual compass. Uh, compounding that with, as I said, uh, an ongoing rebellion against God in the afterlife, that it's not as though it just stops there and the person says, 'Shocks, I wish I had done differently.' Even the, the rich man, he's, you know, probably lamenting the loss of his, of his wealth, his comfort, and so forth. When he, when he looks at Lazarus, uh, he's not saying, 'Lazarus, please forgive me. I was so, I was so wrong. I, I wronged you. You know, Lazarus, you know, Abraham, send Lazarus to to quench my my my.'"

"Yeah. So, so there, so you do see kind of the, an ongoing trajectory that is here. And I think that that's perhaps the, the better way of looking at it, that there is something that continues on based on the kind of orientation or the setting of our moral and spiritual compass in this life that carries over into, uh, the other. And there may be other questions too. We talked about the, you know, the Plutarch image of, uh, of, you know, people rather, rather than being annihilated, wanting to just live on whatever the consequences are. And and and there may be something to that, uh, in in the equation as well, but, uh, there's maybe just kind of a preliminary to to jump into some other questions."

"There's sort of been these two justifications that the traditional view has given as to why conscious suffering in hell is warranted based on sin. >> Everlasting conscious, >> everlasting. And so one of them has been from Anselm, nearly a thousand years ago. And his argument was, even though sins are committed in a finite time and they may be finite sins themselves, they're committed against an infinite authority. And so he invoked something that now philosophers call the status principle, that what you deserve isn't just by basis of what you do, but who you do it against. And because you're sinning against an infinite God, therefore warrants an infinite punishment that can never fully be repaid. That was one justification. A second one you've been alluding to was given mostly by C.S. Lewis. And it's this argument that we continue to sin in hell. That if you were to send a prisoner to jail and yet they continue to commit crimes in jail, well, the penalty for those new crimes is simply added to their sentence. And so if you're perpetually sinning, you need to perpetually be kept there. And there's even a concept more of hell then rather than even punishment, more confinement or quarantine of eternal beings now in hell so that they cannot corrupt the new creation. So there's like a couple of things that that are usually given by the traditionalists. Now, as conditionalists, >> we could by nature agree with that same necessity for infinite punishment. So if you think, hey, you're diminishing the glory of God by saying they get a finite punishment, I can simply say, well, actually the death is eternal. Every day that a person who has been killed in hell is deprived a day of life is also contributing to the same nature of an infinite punishment that a person suffering consciously eternally would also be. So I, I think they're kind of equal in explanatory power if that's an argument. One thing that began to trouble me when I was wrestling with this subject theologically is I'd never considered that the traditional view says that God is sustaining evil forever. Yeah. So there is never a point where evil comes to an end or where there is a final victory where Christ is all in all in terms of being reconciled, right? And our reconciliation concept isn't just I'm over you in judgment. It seems to be more that all that is left in creation is reconciled to Christ. And I'm, that's curious. And so those sort of *apocatastasis* passages, things like in 1 Corinthians or in Ephesians where he'll become all and all in Colossians. But the other element of it is, and this is maybe more troubling for me, was this idea that it means that God's justice is never satisfied eternally. And so if an >> punishment left to meet out, >> there is always punishment left to meet out. And so God's justice will never ultimately be satisfied in the suffering of the lost. And so those concepts of the eternal upholding of evil because even if you want to say it's the removal of his presence, God's still omnipresent, but he still has to sustain the evil in creation and enable them to sin forever. So he's effectively upholding an opportunity for sin to continue forever. And I've just always found that seemingly very difficult to reconcile with these other other passages once I became kind of consciously aware of that. And I think maybe the value of the conditional immortality perspective. It says that in one, uh, Romans 1:32, it talks about how even people who are wicked and who are turned against God and have turned inwards in sin, uh, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, yet they are aware that the just penalty for their deeds is death. And so what seems intuitively right even to a person who is an enemy of God is that once my deeds are exposed, what is the right penalty? Death. And this is the removal of evil then from creation. Hell is God's means of bringing evil to an end finally so that he can become all in all and be reconciled to everything else left in creation."

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"Two, two, two quick points that help me understand the justice of hell that I think are to some extent common agreements are on the table are: number one, both heaven and hell are proportionate and personal based upon a person's deeds in life. Mhm. Um, that's that according to their deeds in Revelation 20. The experience of hell is not some general experience. It is a response of justice to the person. So it's not the same for everyone. And the second point is that, um, hell is not an arbitrary place God concocts. It's not like he, he could build it, uh, five different ways and he chose option four and we'll make that hell. Uh, that's a caricature. Rather, there is a sense in which, and I've argued in my work on this, that you can draw from a lot of the insights of C.S. Lewis to, uh, help illumine, uh, some of the traditional ways of thinking about hell, but there is a sense in which hell is a kind of basically the absence of God. And in a traditional view, there is a sense in which we speak of a kind of resolution and finality. Revelation 22, outside of the New Jerusalem are, and then it lists those who are in hell. Uh, though it, it is different for sure, but nonetheless, um, hell is so terrible not because God just chooses to do this. Well, C.S. Lewis's great insight is, what could it be but hell to lose God? God is the source of all that is good. How, you know, what would there be in the depths of reality to preserve it from becoming absolutely horrible once you have been finally severed from God? And that is why this topic on all our perspectives is so sobering."

"I think you're right. Um, and I don't, I'm not trying to debate too much here, although everybody knows I'm a big debater, so I love debating. But you make a good point about what would it, what else could it be to be separated from God other than this kind of abject misery? Well, I mean, one thing it could be is to no longer be alive, right? I mean, uh, Paul at the Areopagus, Mars Hill, right? He says that God gives to all mankind life, breath, and everything. By the way, he doesn't use a Greek word like *bios*, which is allegedly just biological life. He uses *zoe*, right? Which is often people pretend it means some kind of other life, some kind of quality of life. But no, God gives life to all mankind. Well, then if he's the lifegiver, what would it mean to be separated from that other than to die? I mean, you separate a branch from a tree, and it no longer gets the life-giving sap from the trunk. What happens to the branch? It dies. So, I, I think you're right. That's a legitimate question to ask, but I don't think the answer is as obvious as C.S. Lewis thought it was. Just as eternal life is far more than mere existence, >> it is possible that eternal death is is more complicated than mere non-existence. Because when we speak of eternal life, we are not just saying, oh, you continue to exist. It, it, that act, the word life actually refers to the fullness and quality of one's existence before God. But go ahead, Paul."

"Yeah. And and I, I, I, I do think that there is, you know, I hadn't thought of it before, um, I came across G.K. Beale's commentary, his shorter commentary, where I kind of dismissed, uh, Revelation 22:15, which talks about, you know, outside or the dogs and so forth. Uh, which, you know, I thought, well, you, of course, does connect to Revelation 21 where that, you know, partial, partial list shows up in, you know, in two, two places in Revelation 21 giving this this vice list. Uh, but it does seem that there is this kind of ongoing presence that G.K. Beale says, you know, that that there is this simultaneous, uh, existence of those who are outside the gate, uh, or outside the city, as as as as those who are inside the city. Um, and so I, I think there is something, uh, to that. But I'd also say when it comes to the, uh, the nature of this embodied existence, whether for the believer or the unbeliever, you know, I, I think it's important to to emphasize that kind of that we're talking about the quality of life in communion with God. That that the unbelievers are deprived of that, or they want to deprive themselves of that communion with God so they can, uh, you know, live on everlastingly. But, but they don't have that communion with God. And and and I, I mentioned too that in, uh, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, there is this, uh, you know, you know, and again, connected to Revelation 14, that the judgment is before the presence of God, that there is this place of of punishment, torment, uh, is in the, you know, before the throne of the Lamb. So, so it can have a positive effect, uh, of communion with God being life-giving and so forth. But also there is that counterpart of those who, you know, the very same love of God that is there continues on, you know, God's love continues. He doesn't obliterate them, but shows love by, as it were, you know, allowing them to continue in life, allowing to continue in rebellion. That God is, but, but, you know, Jordan Wesling, uh, talked about this, uh, as well, uh, where he talked about, you know, three aspects of of the love of God, where, where we have, you know, God is concerned, you know, well, love is shown in a concern for a person's existence, a person's flourishing, and also relationship with God. Conditionalism, of course, you know, doesn't come, doesn't affirm any of those, uh, in terms of the end state. You know, God obliterates and it, you know, doesn't have that concern. Whereas in the presence of God, there is still this ongoing love of God before the believer as well as the unbeliever. But for the, for the unbeliever, it is received with, uh, you know, with distress. It is received with, you know, the gnashing of teeth. There is a hostility. The gnashing of teeth has to do with hostility or contempt against God. Uh, so when Stephen is about to be stoned, those who are about to stone him, you know, they're gnashing their teeth. They're they're angry. They're hostile. And so there is this wanting to keep God at a distance. And so God allows them to continue, even though he, uh, reluctantly does so. And you have that that image of the, you know, of, you know, Abraham saying, you know, you know, child to, uh, to, uh, to the, uh, the rich man in in Hades. And and, uh, there is that, I think, an expression of that ongoing love that I, I think the traditionalist is better able to capture than than the conditionalist."

"Can I, can I maybe just say there's something, there's a point of agreement here, which is whatever God will do, he is just. >> And our our submission of our own theological consciences then to the revelation of God's justice in Jesus. And that's what gives us confidence. And maybe this is a part to to bring this in, because God's justice then is represented in the atonement that Jesus bears for us on the cross. >> And one of the central features there of, if Jesus is paying the wages for our sin, if he's acting as our substitute for the penalty that we deserve, serve, then the emphasis of atonement within the New Testament is on the death of Jesus. Now, if we want to, as the traditionalist will tend to want to define that death as a spiritual, then separation from God in that sense, well, then I think you'll bump into a a challenge here, which is going to be a Jesus becoming separated from the Father. All of a sudden, you're bumping into a Trinitarian concern where you've got a genuine, like this, this is genuinely heretical. Uh, and so you've got to say, you know, the emphasis is on Jesus's physical death. And yes, he suffered in the process of that playing out. But if traditionalism is true, and the penalty of hell is eternal suffering in a body that cannot die, then Jesus, being the infinite God-man, could have paid that penalty while he's alive on the cross and then said, 'That's done,' and then gotten down. There is no reason for his physical death. What conditionalism does, it says the New Testament puts the emphasis on the death of Christ on the cross. The suffering is an element of that, but it's on his actual physical death in our place, the privation of embodied life. And so I would say when we're thinking justice and proportionality, the atonement needs to be a key part of that conversation. And that's where again, I think the conditionalist picture fares well."

"Although I would, I would say that, you know, and I, I would agree that there is no separation between the Father and the Son, that that's problematic. You know, Jesus says in at the end of, uh, John 16, that even though you will abandon me, yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. And, uh, and, you know, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. So there is clearly the presence of God there at the cross, rather than the absence of God the Father. Um, and so I would, I would certainly concur with that. Um, in terms of death, I don't, you know, I think that because we are dealing with the, uh, the infinite Son of God, uh, we don't have to, in a sense, quantify what this amounts to. What is, you know, that is, you know, there is death that is connected to it, but there's also, uh, the innocent, perfect Son of God, uh, who has also, uh, been, uh, been mistreated. Jesus basically allows himself to, uh, to, he surrenders himself to the, the forces of evil, as it were, but yet possessing full control of his own, uh, direct direction toward the. But I don't know that it's a matter of, you know, saying it's, it's, it's only death and nothing more. There's a lot more bound up."

"But if the lost, certainly if the lost do not die in hell physically, why did Jesus physically die on the cross?"

"Well, I, I think this is the picture of the, the, the sacrifice, the, the sacrificial picture of the, you know, of the Old Testament that is now being picked up on, that there is a substitute, uh, on behalf of all. And I don't know that we have to quantify that, you know, as this is a perfect correspondence to that, uh, that the, there is a penalty that is paid that it allows for there to be a, a justice to be declared, that we, we can be justified because that penalty was paid, even though Jesus was the innocent Son of God. And I think that because of the innocent Son of God, that, uh, that we, we're dealing with the, the infinite, perfect, uh, you know, morally blameless Son of God. And yes, there's death involved, but I, I think there's a lot more involved in the very fact that Jesus is, yeah, the, the supremely great being who is enduring this on our behalf. And I'm, I'm not, it includes death, but I don't know that we, uh, that we can reduce it to that either."

"I don't think we're wanting to reduce it, but I."

"Yeah, I didn't want to misstate either, but I think there's a lot more, uh, involved here, but, uh, anyway, I don't want to."

"That's fine. Did you."

"Just going to say, I, it looks to me like there is disanalogy, >> on all our views, between what Jesus endures on the cross and then what we understand to be the final death. So, I think we need to be sensitive to that, that that's going to be across the board."

"That's really resonating with me because I'm going, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, swimming in waters way too deep right now because I'm thinking questions like, if Jesus was our substitute on the cross, paying the penalty for the sin of the world, um, he suffered neither eternal conscious suffering in hell, nor did he get annihilated. So then."

"But this is where I think the definition >> paid for."

"I think the definition matters here because the argument is not the penalty for sin is annihilation. It's the penalty for sin is death."

"Is death."

"And for embodied creatures, death is the first cessation of life, but then the idea of the ongoing probation. It's not granted back to them by God. And so that's all the conditionalist says the penalty for sin is is death. And Jesus did suffer a death on the cross, which was the ending of his physical life."

"Yeah. Whether you're disembodied and your soul is in Hades, or you've been annihilated, either way you're dead. So, so it is actually a substitute for the death penalty, even if his soul continued to exist consciously. Um, because the punishment isn't the cessation of existence. It's the cessation and ongoing probation of life, which Jesus did suffer."

"Deep waters. They are deep waters. All right. Um, let's go to Revelation. Who wants to pick a verse? Where do we start?"

"It might be better to start even before getting to any specific verses and talking and and start by talking about how visions of the future like the one recorded in Revelation actually function because a lot of Christians and I probably especially in the West, they think that these visions like the one in Revelation are literal visions of the future as if a camera recorded it and then the recording had been sent back in time. But Dan, do you want to talk about whether that's actually the way these kinds of."

"I, I just want to maybe lay some cards on the table and say I found Revelation was my biggest barrier to adopting conditionalism. So you've got this long treatment where you do have these two key texts in Revelation 14:9-11 and Revelation 20:10, which really do on the surface seem to in the imagery be depicting eternal torment. And so I completely understand why traditionalists would look and say, 'How are you looking at these verses and arriving at a different position?' I think part of the journey for me was was reeling with, okay, what are we looking at when it looks like, uh, the book of Revelation, it's described as a prophecy in, uh, Revelation, uh, 1:9. It's an apocalypse. This idea of the unveiling, but it's the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants. But this whole, uh, nature of apocalyptic imagery, this is not the first time we see it in the Bible. And that when you go back into the book of Genesis and you've got Joseph who's sent into Egypt, he's in jail, uh, after the incident with Potiphar's wife, and there he comes across the cupbearer and the baker, and they have dreams, and Joseph interprets those dreams for them, and then Pharaoh has dreams, and Joseph interprets those dreams for them. There's visions of seven skinny cows and seven fat cows, and the skinny cows consume the fat cows, and Pharaoh's going, 'What does any of this mean?' And Daniel says, 'Well, let me interpret these images for you. There's something that's depicted, but then that has a reality that that's describing in the seven good years of plenty and then seven years of famine.' Fast forward the book of Daniel, and Daniel gets these series of dreams and and visions, uh, from the angel Gabriel. And so many of them are beasts and of a statue that has these four different compositions, and they represent kingdoms. And so again, there's a depiction, there's an image, but then there's an interpretation that's given by the angel or by the agent of God, in each one of these situations. And we come then to the book of Revelation, which is everyone agrees the most imagery-laden book. There's over 800 Old Testament references in the book of Revelation. So there's constant allusions back to the Old Testament, but there are these really perplexing images, and it's why you get books like 'Four Views on the Book of Revelation' and why there were all these different interpretations of how it unfolded, because we're trying to say, okay, we're given these symbolic images, but then they depict something in reality. What is that depiction? And so, uh, yeah, that's sort of maybe a prolegomena as we come to the book of Revelation, just to say, okay, we're, we're probably actually going to agree on the imagery."

"Yeah."

"What we will disagree about is what is that imagery designed to symbolize? And that's probably where we should."

"That's an important point. >> Just for, we've been talking for a while. Viewers can get lost in the details. Let me just underscore what you said because I think that's important. So it sounds like, correct me if this is wrong, in Revelation 14, the no rest, day or night language. And in Revelation 20:10, the word torment and then the word that's often translated as forever, >> *eis tous aionas ton aionon*, sounds like we agree that at that level of, we're talking about eternal torment."

"Yep."

"Okay. But, but so I'm just, for our viewers to understand, the idea is from your perspective that is an image that is then subsequently interpreted to be a reference to death in the sense you understand."

"I think this may be worth for Revelation 20:10, that's certainly the case because this is depicting the lake of fire, the final judgment. Conditionalists actually have disagreements about Revelation 14. Some people do not think that's descriptive of the final judgment at all, nor is it describing necessarily eternal suffering. They will say that this is the idea of a judgment that comes upon the people of the earth at that time when Jesus returns, and they're slain. Uh, but that it's the smoke of their torment that rises forever. And the restlessness is not a eternal restlessness. It just means that the, the activity of God's judgment is ceaseless. It's not like you're experiencing his judgment, then it pauses for six hours for you to get a breather, and then he continues. It's the process of that judgment is carried out without any rest until it's completed. So that's one conditionalist view. Others will also see it along with Revelation 20:10 as depicting eternal torment, but that's the image. What's the interpretation? I just think that's worth table-ing."

"So, right here, we're bumping into just a really important fault line. And so, this is good to just work through. And I'm always trying to pull back an abstract for viewers, kind of where we're at and so forth. And I think, let me articulate a principle that I think we could all agree on, that where the imagistic nature of Revelation could lead us, we, we'd all probably want to tap the brakes if someone said, uh, Revelation 21, uh, 3, I think that's the right verse, says there will be no more suffering on the new."

"21:4."

"Yeah. >> 21:4. There's the no wipe away tear from their eye. Um, so if someone said, 'Well, but but Revelation is a very imagistic book. So it doesn't really mean there will be no more suffering in heaven on the new earth.' We would all say, 'Yeah, there's images.' is, and I think we all probably agree the lake of fire is an image. >> Nonetheless, the the specific language there still means there's going to be no suffering in heaven. And, um, I think what, so then going back one chapter to chapter 20, where we've got in chapter 20:10, the explicit language 'eternal torment' for at least Satan and these two other entities. I think what we then need to probe is kind of the nature of how that symbol is interpreted because if I understand you both are looking at it saying, uh, verse 14 following just a bit, the interpretation of the image inclines toward a conditionalist view. In my mind, that interpretation is harmonious with a traditionalist view. >> Uh, the lake of fire, you know, death and Hades being thrown into the lake of fire. I, I can, that doesn't cause me trouble as a traditionalist in my reading of the text. And this, I, to put my heart on the table, I, I, you know, I try to look at this issue from both sides. You, you guys have good arguments for your case. I can see how you're looking at different passages. For my conscience, when I stand before the Lord one day and give an account of my teaching, this is one of those passages that really gives me pause because eternal torment seems like a very odd image to use for annihilation. And I think it's a fair game, especially when I am now going with the majority of the Christian tradition throughout space and time. I think it's a fair game for me to ask, um, you know, why should I accept that John is using an image of eternal torment to describe what is not eternal torment? I, I think that's fair. To be more precise, I don't think it's John doing that. I think it's God who's giving him the vision. But same point. Um, and and I think that's fair. Like I'm, I'm the first to acknowledge that the mere fact that everlasting torment is depicted in the symbology of, uh, Revelation 20, um, is a point in traditionalism, traditionalism's favor. It would be foolish of me to suggest otherwise. And so I, I start constructing a scale in my im, in my mind. And on one side of that scale, you've got what is depicted in the imagery. And we have to take that seriously. But before I look at what, why that v symbol, I first want to see, is there anything else that might come on this other side? Well, you mentioned the interpretation of the lake of fire as symbolizing the second death, which, um, the way the very way interpretation works throughout scripture is that you take the hidden meaning and the perplexing symbolism and you unpack it in ordinary language. Right? It wouldn't make, it wouldn't be interpreting anything if you used as esoteric and under and and difficult to understand language in the interpretation as appears in the vision. Um, but also often interpreters are are interpreting things by, uh, re, uh, by by mentioning other things that the hearers are already familiar with. And in the case of the second death, there's good evidence that that was an expression that the Jewish people in John's day were familiar with because it appears in several places in what are known as the Targums. The Targums are Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Old Testament, similar to the Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And in the Aramaic Targums, the phrase second death appears in several passages. In some of them, it even appears next to the term Gehenna, which is what the the word Jesus uses for hell. And in every single one of those Targums, the second death means exactly what it sounds like, literally dying a second time, exactly as conditionalists believe. So now I'm starting to see, oh, well, now the balance, the scale is starting to shift, but I'm not even done. So you mentioned death and Hades. Death and Hades in John's vision are not concepts. They're they're they're conscious beings. In Revelation 6, they're the fourth horsemen of the apocalypse. Death is on the the pale white horse and Hades follows him, kind of like a squire. So if all of these conscious entities in Revelation 20 are thrown into the lake of fire and suffer forever there, we kind of should think that so too do these personifications of death and Hades. But what is said just a few verses later? >> 'Death shall be no more.' And and and this is appealing to the same passage in Isaiah 25 that Paul is when he says that the last enemy to be destroyed is death, when death is swallowed up forever, when the saints are raised immortal. So the picture seems to be that the everlasting torment of these personifications of death and Hades in the lake of fire actually symbolizes the annihilation of death itself, such that once all of God's enemies are destroyed and all of God's people have been made immortal, they will never face the existential threat of death ever again. Death will have been annihilated. So now I'm seeing the scale tip even more. And then you look at how this imagery plays out in Daniel. Um, a lot of the imagery throughout Revelation is drawing directly on Daniel's vision of the beasts. And there the beast's fiery fate is different from the beast's fiery fate in Revelation. Right? In Revelation, the beast is thrown alive into the fire and tormented forever and ever. Whereas in Daniel, the beast is th is killed and its lifeless body is thrown into the fire. But when the angel interprets that for Daniel, he says that the the reign, the dominion of this kingdom will be annihilated. That's what the fate in the fire means. So now I'm seeing the scale tip even more. And I'm haven't even finished. There's the fact that the tree of life appears again. The one that we talked about in Genesis, which would have preserved Adam and Eve alive forever had they continued to have access to it. It appears again in Revelation 22, I think it is, where only the saved have access to its fruit. So I see the scales tip even more. So where I'm finally left, and I will wrap this up, I've been going for a while. What I'm left with is I don't know why God chose a picture of everlasting torment in the book of Revelation to symbolize, uh, annihilation. But every single bit of evidence that I might appeal to on either side of the debate other than what's depicted in the imagery lands squarely annihilation's favor. So what I'm left thinking is, well, there must be an answer to this question. Why this image? I don't know what it is, but I'm confident enough because of all of this other data that I can say, well, gosh, I also don't know what in the world, why is a woman standing on the sun a picture? I mean, what kind of SPF, uh, you know, sun screen would she need to wear to survive standing on the sun? What does that mean? >> So, I don't know what a lot of the imagery why it is the way it is. I'm not a first-century Jew steeped in Old Testament, right? Um, but all of this other data makes me think there's got to be an answer."

"Chris, um, I, I want to know who is actually tormented forever and ever >> explicitly in the image >> explicitly because we're talking about Revelation 14, Revelation 20 or 21:20. And, um, is that the de, is that the devil and the prophet? Is that human beings? Who is actually."

"The beast. That's not talking about the lost, the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. >> That's re Revelation 14. And of course, you know, the, you know, those who worship the the beast and his image, uh, you know, they drink the cup of wrath, they're, you know, there's they have no rest and so forth. So there is there is that element."

"So maybe could it be that that the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are tormented day and night forever and ever, but that the human beings are not because it doesn't explicitly say that, although they're they're shown in the same location?"

"So there's one variation. This would be a disagreement even against some conditionalists. Some conditionalists would comfortably accept that conclusion and say, well, maybe it is because the devil is himself non-corporeal. So, he is a spiritual being, not embodied like human beings. Uh, the fires of hell do not have the same effect upon him. And so, the devil and then the false prophet and, uh, and the beast are more representative of here. Perhaps one is directly a human entity, perhaps not. The other one seems to be a kingdom and rulers and, uh, and so it's again complex imagery. But some will say maybe the devil and his angels are tormented forever in the fire because of the nature of their constitution. But human beings who are created with the potential of being killed will be as Jesus said in the second death he describes, killed both body and soul in hell. Uh, and so you can leave that open. My my concern is the same theological things that I brought up before, that that will not reconcile all creation, that that will leave evil in creation, that there will continue to be sin happening forever. So it doesn't reconcile those concerns, but it would still say, well, you can take the real literal suffering of these beings in that way. My my other concern here though is it feels like traditionalism here will often play two different two different parts because you'll say, well, it's not really literally suffering in fire, but then you'll want to literally interpret these passages or images that do speak about suffering fire in the presence of the Lamb and of his holy angels. And I just think like consistency is, if if you want to take these images literally, then you need to dispense with the C.S. Lewis versions and adopt the more traditional historical picture, which was immortal lost people with physical bodies will suffer fire forever. That's the nearly dominant description from the fifth century through to the 18th, 19th century."

"But I guess if you put it together, I mean, you like you said, I mean, demonic beings, uh, don't have bodies, don't have nerve endings. So we're we're talking about something metaphorical here. So."

"Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So and again, as I said, there can be different ways of understanding, you know, what does it mean for him to be in torment, as as it were, uh, you know, loss of his his his wealth. He's, uh, concerned about himself. He is distressed, uh, for a number of different reasons. You do, you have, you have in Romans chapter 2, you have mention of the final state of the righteous, which talks about glory, honor, and immortality. But you have trouble and distress, uh, that is the looks like the final outcome for those who are, uh, for those, you know, it doesn't, you know, there, it doesn't say death, it, you know, or annihilation, I should say, but it, but it does seem to refer to this ongoing conscious awareness, uh, at the, you know, as a result of the judgment of God and so forth. But, uh, you know, so, so, and even when we look at the imagery of, uh, of death, you know, of, of, you know, that being, you know, being."

thrown into the lake of fire and so forth. Uh, we can talk about human beings who've been raised from, you know, again, with this, with these, these bodies. And, uh, that there is, you know, and I, I recognize some of the tensions that there are here. Uh, but, but, you know, so it seems incomplete or seems out of sync to have people who are ongoingly existent, uh, God is sustaining them, uh, in their, in their, you know, sin and rebellion and so forth. I mean, I understand that.

But on the other hand, you've got the tension of God fundamentally obliterating the creatures he's made. Uh, that, you know, doesn't look like love. Uh, you know, that doesn't look like you're, you're affirming their, uh, you know, their the value of their existence and so forth. You know, so you can, you can, you can play the these things in different ways. But, uh, and I think it's, you're illustrating what I think what Gavin has mentioned, where you will have these, I think tensions, where everything is not in a sense locked up in one, in one position or another, that we will have these sorts of tensions and disagreements on what to take as the more basic consideration here as opposed to others.

I guess I would say in terms of your point of inconsistency, which is a fair point, to me, it's one thing to take the physical objects of these visions as symbolic, such as, uh, the lake of fire or bowls of judgment and things like this. Another thing to take a word like forever or a word like torment. Um, and that's where I bring up the Revelation 21:3 or 21:4. Is if I'm saying eternal torment itself is part of the imagery, I find myself hard-pressed to ex to understand this kind of imagery. And I think we just have to recognize as we talk this through, um, our exit. Jesus is going to have some points of disagreements and that's okay.

And so the points that you're stacking up on the scales are not stacking the same for me. Sure. So I'm looking at, you know, the interpretation, the the conclusion of Revelation 20 and it doesn't cause me as much struggle from a traditionalist perspective. What I'm trying to do is take the images of Revelation in a symbolic manner, not like, uh, the idea of eternal torment. I, to me, again, I, I would just come back and say eternal torment is a weird image for what isn't eternal torment. And there's, there's also, Amy, you think you, that same word is used in chapter 11:10 where the two witnesses, you know, the church, uh, you know, was speaking prophetically and engaged in in performing miracles and so forth before the the people who dwell on the earth, uh, they are, they are tormenting the people who are living on the earth, uh, through their message and so forth. So there is that, you know, connection, you know, and again, like you said, uh, even in Mark chapter 5, you know, have you come to torment us before our time? So you do, do see a kind of through line here that, you know, torment, uh, never means annihilation for one thing. And, uh, and so again, we will have maybe different priorities in terms of how we.

But that is, that is what happens in the book of Revelation itself with the same imagery in Revelation 14 and then move ahead to mystery Babylon. I think this is a really helpful contrast for this one because you do have historical representation in the Old Testament of the same language in Revelation 14. And so with the destruction of Edom in Isaiah 34, destroyed with pitch and fire and sulfur, and then the smoke from that destruction rises forever. Now, if you go to Edom today, there's not literally smoke going up forever, but this smoke rising forever is an image of complete destruction. And so similarly, you could apply that forward.

What's even more interesting is if you move just a few chapters later in the book of Revelation, you've got Mystery Babylon. So, the great that that rides the beast and, uh, and it describes then her end, and she's inflicted with torment. But then you travel to the, and the smoke rises from her forever. But you travel to the next chapter and there is an explanation that the angel gives the explicit description of what that is designed to symbolize. And it's like a millstone being thrown into the ocean. So too will she be found no more. And so it is not that she exists still somewhere somewhere else. It's that she is now no more. And yet uses that torment and smoke rising forever.

But think about say Nazism, where you have, um, Nazism that is destroyed, even though the people in Germany remain largely intact. Uh, so they, you know, again, you know, burned burned the monuments and the and the symbols of Nazism. They they tried and executed the hierarchy and so forth, but the German people still remained, even though the system of Nazism was dismantled. I, I think there's something like that going on with the destruction of Babylon, that you do have that ongoing existence, even though the system, as it were, has been destroyed, because the system has been made of persons, and those individuals will drink, uh, from the cup of wrath, just as Babylon does. But, uh, but it seems that in Revelation 14, uh, there's more than just the smoke rising. There's this ongoing restlessness as well.

Yeah. And torment is never an image for annihilation to my awareness in the scripture. So Isaiah 34, you've got the eternal smoke as this simil, but you don't have eternal torment of Edom.

Well, but but think about this. The whole reason why Revelation 14 sounds like it teaches eternal torment is because smoke can't rise forever from torment unless torment is going on forever. Right? It's not. This forever and ever language isn't spatial. It's temporal. So if the smoke is rising forever from torment, that is what leads to the conclusion that the torment is depicted going on forever. But now take us back to Isaiah 34:10. Smoke is rising forever from that too. But smoke doesn't rise forever from nothing. It it rises from burning.

The difference I was noting is the no rest day or night.

But the day and night language is there too in Isaiah 34:10.

But the restlessness and the torment.

I agree. But but but at some point you've got to say if four out of the five symbols that converge in Revelation 14 appear in this other passage where the symbols do in fact communicate death and destruction, as they do again in Revelation 18 and 19 with with mystery Babylon. Then just because there's the additional symbol of torment, um, and the additional symbol of restlessness doesn't sound like doesn't seem like enough to counterbalance all that other stuff.

The question is, is torment an image? Uh, is it just a fifth image on top of the four? I know we're going to disagree and that's fine, but I'm just pointing out.

Is there a phrase ever where you see eternal torment?

Yeah. Where Revelation 20:10.

The Greek for humans?

Well, yeah. I mean, I think they're with, you know, they have they have no rest day and night. And in contrast to those who do have rest, they've rested from their labors, the the saints. Uh, so you have this remarkable contrast. What is what is the nature of this, you know, the the the torment? Well, it's, it's this restlessness, just as the the nature of the conscious existence in in Romans chapter 2 is trouble and distress. Uh, that seems to be the final outcome of those who have separated themselves from God or resisted God and so forth. So I mean, we can perhaps.

Well, so let me ask you then, in in the imagery in Revelation 20, when these horsemen, death and Hades, are thrown into the lake of fire, it doesn't say they're tormented forever and ever. So what do you think happens?

I think I think it's it's depicting finality, just like Nazism has done. You have of course with the resurrection of the righteous and also the resurrection of the unrighteous. It's, you know, there is no longer any death that is going to take place. Uh, you know, that in in terms of, you know, you they have been resurrected to their their final states. Uh, and and even the the being thrown into the the lake of fire has to do with a finality of judgment, that this is irreversible and.

Okay, but now let's let's pick up on that. So you're saying that because death and Hades aren't explicitly said to be tormented forever in the lake of fire, therefore we don't have to assume they are. Fair. I mean, because otherwise, if every, if if Okay, here's what I'm trying to say. If the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are the first ones thrown into the lake of fire and they're tormented forever and ever explicitly, and then humans, resurrected humans are thrown in, but they're not said to be tormented forever and ever. Okay? And then death and Hades are as well. If you want to say, "Well, death and Hades, these personifications, can be thrown into the fire and not be tormented forever like the devil, the beast, and false prophet are." Why do you assume that the resurrected humans are, when it doesn't say they're are tormented forever and never?

It does say that they're, you know, they they're without rest day and night. It does seem that there is this sort of a connection. So I, I think a lot of times we may just have to say, I, this seems to be inescapable to to my thinking, but, uh, you know, I appreciate, you know, the direction which you're going too.

Well, and I'll just say that to my mind, what's in it, what seems inescapable is the conclusion that the personifications of death and Hades are tormented forever and ever as well. What you're what you're offering sounds to me like special pleading. Um, yes, some entities are explicitly said to be tormented forever and ever. Then the humans, we can we can infer that they are. Oh, but not death and Hades. They're not.

I mean, they're thrown in the lake of fire. They're, you know, I mean, but but the devil is certainly being tormented. And those who have been, you know, the, you know, the, you know, devil, the devil and his angels always been part of the system of Babylon behind people who are worshiping the beastite, they are tormented. Um, so, but, but, but again, you know, death and Hades aren't tormented. They're just simply cast in the lake of fire.

But human beings aren't said to be tormented in the lake of fire either.

No, my point, but but again, the imagery of being of of having being without rest day and night. Uh, sounds kind of like that, you know, distress and tribulation that Revel, that Romans chapter 2 is talking about. Uh, that, uh, that again, I, I think that is something that, uh, I think is a a relevant factor here. And I think to probe this fully, we need to talk through what are death and Hades, and are they taken in the way that you're taking them or not, and that kind of thing. I will note that the lake of fire itself does not end. It's just there. And, uh, then you've got the Revelation 22 passage about outside are the dogs and that kind of thing, which I think also flavors the way we're looking at these passages. But I'm sensitive to the fact that we've been on Revelation for a while. We may need to move on.

We have. Why don't we take one more break and then we can conclude with some pastoral questions.

Great. Sound good?

Thank you. Well, this has been incredible. I mean, re really opening our eyes and causing us to dive deeper into scripture to think about things that I, I hadn't thought of prior to this conversation. So, uh, this is a real treat. One of the things that I also am very aware of is that I'm a dad of six kids. I want all of my kids to be saved. I want them in heaven. I don't want them to to spend one second in hell, whatever it is. And I know that this conversation has got to slide off the table out of this room and into the into our families and into our neighborhoods and our churches for it to really have its full impact. So here's some questions that I wrestle with. Even though the nature of the punishment in hell is not a primary issue, you know, the gospel is a primary issue, the resurrection is a primary issue, but this may not be a secondary issue for my neighbor who is not wrestling with the resurrection of Jesus because he read the case for Christ. He understands all the evidence and he's in, except he can't reconcile with the character of God when he believes that God is cruel or capricious or arbitrary. It's not logical, or he was born into sin, he can't not sin. And if he doesn't believe something, he's going to be tormented forever. I've been told by some within the church, well, if your friend can't handle that, don't expect God to change his mind on how hell works. I mean, you're just going to have to basically like put on your big boy pants and like show up. That's what the scriptures say. And I think, you know, if we give answers like that, I think that's going to do more harm than good. So, how do we wrestle with tough questions like that?

I think it's great to invite our non-Christian friend into a fresh study of the text of scripture itself. I've just found the word of God has ways of speaking to the human heart that we cannot, uh, replicate through anything that we do. And a lot of times I'm appreciating the spirit of your question because I've seen this happen too in my own practice of evangelism. Many times there are misunderstandings, and these could come against either of our views, uh, from the non-Christian where they are envisioning hell as arbitrary.

Based on a movie that they saw.

Right, exactly.

Because that's that's their world.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. And and and actually tremendous lack of familiarity with the texts of scripture in many cases, and they're going by caricatures.

So I, I want on the one hand, I don't want to say anything that is going to reduce the the fear of God, right? Um, and I, so that very posture is, let's tremble before this text. But at the same time, there are all kinds of caricatures of the nature of God's judgment. I don't think it's too much for us to emphasize that the second coming of Jesus, this is not a liability for the Christian faith.

Uh, the justice of God is good.

That's right.

It is a restoration of how things ought to be. And I think we can actually lean into that and, um, you know, invite our friends to consider the what the text of scripture might call them away from in terms of caricatures that they may have. But others weigh in on this too.

Yeah.

I often find that the greatest resources to listen into is the character of Jesus. If there's a concern about the justice of God, there's one place in scripture where the nature of who God is is made clear. The invisible God is made visible in Jesus. He said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one." Or Colossians 1:15 says that he is the image of the invisible God. Or Hebrews 1, talking about how he's the exact representation of the divine nature. And so in Jesus, we get to see who God is. And where you've got Jesus weeping over an unbelieving Jerusalem, you want to know how God feels about hell. Similar in Ezekiel, he doesn't delight in the death of the wicked.

He doesn't want to bring judgment upon anyone. He would much rather have the sword of divine justice fall upon himself in substituting himself than meeting that out on anyone else. And I find for people who are wrestling with the justice and the goodness of God to draw them to the character of Jesus and his desire, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself." And that great line in in John 3 where he's describing, just like the Israelites were bitten by venomous snakes in the wilderness, and a bronze serpent had to be lifted up in order for them to look upon it and live. So too, Jesus then describes that's the nature of his sacrifice, that anyone who looks upon him, anyone who trusts in him, anyone who believes in me will not perish but have eternal life. Uh, it's when you see where Jesus was willing to go, that's the character of God.

And so because what we're asking people to do is to trust God. There is an element of mystery here as to what final justice will look like. We know it's just. We know it's final. We know it's irrevocable. But we're wrestling with what is the nature and how does that play out and is that cruel or unjust? Like, well, look at Jesus. Can you imagine Jesus doing anything cruel and unjust? No. And if that's who God is, you can have this deep assurance that whatever uncertainties you still have, you can try.

And that's why, and perhaps I guess I'm asking, that's why God went to such great lengths to rescue us. Look what happened to Christ on the cross. God's taking sin extremely serious because its consequences are dire.

And I'll just. Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say too, I mean, along these lines, uh, Jesus is described as being one who won't snuff out a smoldering wick or break a bruised reed. That he calls, uh, those who are weary and burdened to to come to him for rest and so forth. That this is the kind of savior we serve and, uh, that that is really reflecting the kind of self-giving heart, uh, and even the enemy love, uh, of of God who says, you know, on the cross, Jesus saying, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing." So, so this is the kind of God who is shown himself to be trustworthy and where we, like you said, can't figure out those, you know, and there will be mystery where we feel like we can only go so far. We have a God who has shown himself to be trustworthy. Just look at the cross, look at the resurrection, look at the coming victory, uh, and justice of God. And and one one last very minor thing I'll add to everything you guys said is just that if we can tell the kind of skeptic that you're talking about that this is an area of debate within the church, that we, um, that that the traditional view that they've, uh, encountered isn't the only option. Mind you, I'm not saying they should feel free to just embrace whatever they want. The Christian doctrine isn't a smorgasbord, right? We could just choose whatever we want. But I think on both sides, we should be able to say if the view I happen to hold concerning hell is a stumbling block for you, please don't let that be the stumbling block because there are other views. To Paul Cop, Paul.

Yeah, Paul Paul Copan. That's right. And Paul and Gavin. Yeah. So, um.

And and something else that has has helped me is in my, um, time, uh, becoming friends with Ray Comfort, uh, on the streets evangelism, talking to people. I find that many times Christians will soft-pedal the seriousness of sin. They'll downgrade sin so that it's like, well, everybody lies, everybody steals, everybody looks with lust, everybody does these things, and so that's really not deserving of an eternal punishment. But if we really have a proper understanding of the holiness of God, and then we have a proper understanding of the depravity of sin and the human heart, then all of a sudden, I think it begins to make more sense to that person that says, "I don't understand why God would do this to somebody who doesn't believe the gospel." It's so much more than just not believing something. It is high-handed rebellion against the one who's given you life and who is holy. And your sin is is uh is is is dire.

So, well, I've got a couple other questions for you, guys, because you're you're the experts on hell.

Uh, oh.

Hopefully that's a studied, uh, expertise and not an experiential one.

Is it legitimate for us to use hell in our evangelism? When we're sharing the gospel with the lost, many people hear the words, "Turn or burn. You're gonna go to heaven or you're gonna go to hell. Where do you want to go?" And nobody wants to go to hell. At least I can't imagine why somebody would. But is that just weaponizing hell for church membership? Or did Jesus use the threat of divine wrath to bring people into the kingdom? And is that why people should get saved, to avoid hell, or should they be getting saved because they see the value of God and all of his glory and majesty and embrace him?

I don't think it has to be either or.

It can be both.

I think it could be both. I mean, just from a distinctly conditionalist perspective, one of the things that, uh, that I find, um, powerful about our view, besides just how biblically we think it is, is that it seems that it, it offers both a carrot and a stick that already resonate with with humanity universally. Namely, humanity universally, um, fears death, even when they pretend they don't. Um, they fear death, often death understood as annihilation. And at the on the opposite side, they want to go on living, right? Um, maybe not in a suffering state in their 80s, but if they were given a pill to die or to be able to go back to their 20-year-old self in a great state of longevity.

Well, people just they want to live. They want to be they want to be strong for a long, long, long time.

That's right. Woody Allen famously said something like, "I don't want to live forever in the memory of me, you know, people's memory of my legacy. I want to live forever in my apartment." Right. So, so the point I'm getting at is that humans want to go on living. They fear dying. And that's precisely what we think as conditionalists, the gospel is. It's an opportunity to escape the fate you're already afraid of, and receive the thing that you already want. But here's the thing that we have to offer, and this is true on both sides of this debate. The eternal life we have to offer is so much infinitely more glorious and beautiful than the kind of eternal life that say transhumanists are trying to achieve through technology. Right? People who freeze their body to be brought back at some point in the future or have their tra their their consciousness digitized or whatever. These ways that humans go about trying to achieve immortality, even if they were able to accomplish it, which I think we all agree they wouldn't, you're not going to have you're not going to get rid of the problem of sin. There's still going to be racism and classism and all that kind of thing.

Can you imagine Hitler living on? You know, you got the problem of sin and people who can afflict, you know, others endlessly. Uh, you know, that's a a terrible thing.

Yeah. I read I read through the Gospels, I see Jesus referring to Gehenna and warnings of final judgment. He's not doing that in the context of pagans who don't know God. He's doing that in the context of Jews who were meant to know the character and the justice of God and be obedient to his commands and yet were neglecting the weightier things of the law. And so almost all of Jesus' warnings were directed to religious leaders who were misrepresenting God to those whom he loves. That's a scary thought to begin with. Where we do see evangelistic messages in the book of Acts, for instance, they do speak of judgment again and again and again, but they define it neither as death nor as eternal conscious punishment. They simply refer to judgment. And I do think there is a deep theme here which resonates with human nature of a desire for evil to be dealt with. And I think framing the goodness of God, he will bring evil to an account or an end, but at least he will stop the ongoing destruction of the creation and those whom he loves within it by sin. And he will hold things to account. And therefore, we need to be on the right side of that judgment.

If it is the evil within us that is corrupting creation and harming those whom God loves, that needs to be dealt with through forgiveness and spiritual rebirth in Christ, being born again in order that we can enter into the kingdom to come. And so with Jesus, people often say he spoke more about hell than he did about heaven. That is not true. He spoke about the kingdom of heaven far more than he ever spoke about Gehenna. But he does warn about Gehenna primarily as a motivator to get right with God. And I think we should be using judgment in the same way, but maybe not overpressing. And I think we do need to be wise here missionally. Paul's saying, "I became a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greek. To those under the law as one under the law, to those outside the law, weak to the weak. I've become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some." And just knowing if there are people that have a deeper aversion to a particular caricature of how hell has been painted, just speak of the goodness of God's judgment, his character, he'll set things right. Avoid the caricatures that are going to be unhelpful. But never delete out of the gospel something that in the apostolic preaching we see there.

Yeah, kind of reminds me of what N.T. Wright said when students would come to his office and say, "You're probably not going to see much of me because I can't believe in the God that you believe in." And so he would, you know, he'd say, "Well, what is the nature of the God that you believe in?" And they would tell him, he said, "Oh, I don't believe in that God either." So it's it's good to just ask some questions and find out what are your perceptions and perspectives on on God. What have you grown up with that actually may need to be sorted through and corrected?

So helpful. And I was just going to say in agreement with all of this, I think we should be candid about the scriptural teaching about hell as you were just saying, uh, in evangelistic context to speak of God's judgment, but to ward away the caricatures and misunderstandings of that. But as a place to put the emphasis, we know that, uh, a heart of faith issues into love for God. And this is the greatest commandment. And I'm just going to say these simple words, which, you know, the basic gospel message, and I'll just say them slowly and carefully as a point for us to emphasize and set our hearts upon, and for viewers to hear this. Aresh to for us to say to our non-Christian friends, God loves you so much that he sent Jesus to die on a cross for you.

I never, that never gets old to me. And that's what I want to make the the real focal point, the spear point of evangelism. Then candid, candid discussion of all that goes with that as context. And that's the spear point though. And to try to to try to drive that into someone's heart.

Um, and I'm so thankful that message is true. And and when you know, it's so wonderful. We don't have to have all of our questions answered about, uh, what God hasn't revealed. But I, I would say this, and this is an appeal I might make to a non-Christian, is we know enough to trust God.

Yeah.

Because of what he's done for us in Christ. A God who sends Jesus and hangs for his enemies, is a God that you can trust. Even if you don't know what all the answers are, you can trust there's going to be answers in the last things.

And I think this relates too to things like the question of the unevangelized or those who have been poorly evangelized. You know, that these are these are secondary issues, but these are, you know, you know, God's got it taken care of. It's not as though we have to know all of the answers to, uh, you know, in order for people to accept the gospel. That again, anchoring it on the in the goodness of God, his trustworthiness is, uh, is sufficient, and, uh, we can, we can work out the details.

Thank you for bringing up this point because there are babies who have died in the womb. There are all sorts of circumstances where people have not come to a place of receiving the Lord, and there are questions where are these these souls now? What's happening to them? And at the end of the day, it's coming down to trusting God in the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God, his judgments and his his statutes are right altogether, and we can trust him. I think it was may have been John Stott who said something like, "Even when I cannot, um, trace God's hand, I can always trust his heart," because of what we do know, particularly from Jesus. Finally, let me ask you about why is it that so many within the church like to get into debates and discussions about the finer points of theology and will even discuss the nature of the atonement and the embodiment of souls and hell and the nature of, uh, the fate of the wicked, when all of this should be pointing us to getting out and sharing the gospel with the lost. Yet many people who are the the most ferocious warriors of their doctrinal positions, even about eternal suffering, are failing to even share the gospel with the lost. What does that say about the disconnect between their head and their heart? Or my disconnect between my head and my heart if I'm not sharing the gospel?

Yeah, I, I think this is a big reflection of whether or not we allow the truth of the Christian story to actually sink into our being. And I remember when I first became a Christian and I'm wrestling with, okay, what are the implications? If this story is true and I've now encountered Jesus personally, I've been reading the New Testament. I've got to the end of John's gospel. I realize I believe in him. I'm spiritually alive. I've been made new, but none of the guys that I went to high school with know him. And I've got tons of people in my life that don't know Jesus. And I look across the world and you go to a shopping center or a mall or any public event and you see thousands of people and you just wonder, man, where are these guys going? And I remember it moved me so much. I was reading the revivalists and Jonathan Edwards and you hear about these great moves of God. And it just stirred me to pray, if Jesus weeps over an unbelieving Jerusalem, I should weep in my reaction to the lost. I think just allowing ourselves to sit in that. And it was the Apostle Paul who said, "Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men." Mhm. And it was this reality of judgment is coming. And if we haven't had our evil dealt with through the gospel, then that is a fearful thing. And I desperately want to get out and preach the gospel. And this can lead to all kinds of emotional challenges and anxieties. And you've got to trust in the bigness of God that he will work through his people and by his means. And he's got means way beyond us to do it. But he wants to include us and we should be moved to share. And I just think like our, if we've got this life-saving gift, if we have this terminal condition, sin, which leads to death. Well, then the only cure is resurrection unto eternal life through Jesus. And I just think there is this need then for, uh, I remember a story from Penn, the comedian and magician, and him, they do shows in Las Vegas all the time. He said after one show, and he's a famous atheist, he talks about that on his social media all the time. There was a gentleman who waited behind to the very end of all the line of people that wanted to talk with him, and he came up and he started talking to this gentleman. He said, "I'm I'm a Christian, and you make a lot of fun of Christianity, but I want you to know that I love you and I've come to give you this Bible." And he, you might expect then an atheist who makes fun of Christianity to make fun of this man, but he was deeply moved by it. And so the next day he gets up and you can see this clip on YouTube. He just records, he's like, "You know what? That's the right thing to do. If he believes that what the gospel says is true and that I'm lost without Jesus, even if it's going to cost him a great deal, even if he makes fun of me, I should absolutely want to be able to reach across the aisle and offer the hope of eternal life, uh, to, to an atheist." And he just said, "Man, that that's an action of love from that guy." And that that moved me, cuz here is an atheist who mocks Christianity saying what a moving thing for a Christian to face the opportunity to be laughed at by being willing to come and give me a Bible. That's what Christianity should should result in. And he also said that, uh, if you're a true Christian who believes in say, you know, traditional view of hell or whatever, regardless, he said, how much do you have to hate a person not to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to that person? You know, just to keep it to yourself and not to proclaim the good news. So it's a, a good sobering warning for us.

That is. And, uh, I suspect for most people, it's not that we hate our unsaved neighbors. It's that we're just scared that we won't know what to say, how to answer the questions, that they're going to reject us. But, uh, as my friend Ray Comfort likes to say, so I just think of the way I overcome my fears. I think, what's my worst-case scenario? I go, I share the gospel and I get rejected, fully rejected. He said, what's their worst-case scenario? The lake of fire. So he says, I have to let love swallow my fears, and give me the courage to do what I ought.

But that is easier said than done.

Yes.

It's scary. Go ahead. It is so scary. Yeah. Uh, the emphasis upon love that you just mentioned there, love for our non-Christian friends, I think is a wonderful point to call our viewers to. Uh, Romans 9:1-5 is a challenging passage for me where Paul, uh, even says, "I could wish that I myself were accursed on behalf of my Jewish brethren." And I think I, I don't know how to interpret all of this or apply all this, but a good prayer to start with is, Lord, what would it look like for me to start approaching something like this with my non-Christian friends? Do I love them like that? And, um, yeah, we, we will be debating about hell differently to your to your original question if it is constrained with tears, prayers, the costliness of evangelism. And may we never talk about it if we're not doing those things.

Amen.

Amen.

Guys, this, this is historic in my life. I've never had a conversation quite like this. And I thank all of you for coming and participating and and, uh, helping me, helping my family. I, I feel like, well, I feel like I understand what the Bible says about hell a little bit more, but I'm also, I've got more questions now after talking with you. Uh, this is wonderful. And my hope is that people who are watching right now are going to say, "Wait a minute." Um, that's exactly what we need to be doing. We need to to be faithful asking good questions, listening, speaking the truth with humility, with courage, and with charity toward one another. I mean, guys, we are the family of faith. We need to have these in-house discussions with the kind of charity and intellectual hospitality that you guys have demonstrated today. So, thank you for modeling that for us.

Thank you. Thanks for setting this up.

Oh, my pleasure.