Transcription
Hey guys, no doubt you've caught wind of the controversy that's swirling around. Let me ask you a question. And I want you to imagine that this question is not coming from me on a podcast, but from someone you love.
What if your son or your daughter looked you in the eye and said, "Dad, mom, I know you believe in hell. I know you believe that God is just. I know you believe that sin is serious. And I know that Jesus is the only way to heaven. So when a unrepentant person who doesn't turn to Jesus dies, what does the Bible actually say happens to them? Are they preserved forever and kept alive by God in a place of endless conscious torment, suffering forever, weeping and wailing and nashing their teeth with no end? Or is the judgment that scripture describes something different? Is it still real, still just, still severe, but culminating in what the Bible calls death, destruction, or the second death, which is the lake of fire? What would your answer be?"
This isn't a trick question. This isn't me dodging it. I'm going to get into all of this right now. This isn't a reaction to a headline. And I'm not asking for what you've always believed or been taught. But what do you believe the scriptures actually teach? That's the question that my son asked me and that's the question that started this conversation.
Over the last few weeks, that conversation has sparked strong reactions. To put it mildly. Some of those reactions have been thoughtful, like my friends at Answers in Genesis and my friend Ray Comfort and even uh my friend apologist Wes Huff. Some have been supportive. Many have said, "We've asked these same questions but been afraid to really put them up on the table." And then some have been deeply critical. I've been accused of denying hell, denying judgment, even denying the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
I think it has to do with the culture that we're living in. We now have incredibly short attention spans. I get it. People watch a 10 or a 15 second clip, often edited by somebody else, pulled out of context, sometimes intentionally, in order to stir outrage and drive clicks and increase viewership for someone else's channel. In fact, there have been exponentially more views on reaction videos about my conversation with my son than there have been views of people who actually watched the full episode in context.
Now, I totally expect that kind of behavior from non-believers, from people who reject God, people who oppose the Christian faith. But what genuinely surprised me, what I was not prepared for, and honestly what was so disheartening to me personally was to see that same pattern coming from within the church itself, from my own brothers and sisters in Christ and even some very influential prominent leaders within the church who either did not watch the full episode in context or for whatever for reason decided to totally mischaracterize what my son and I actually said.
Now, before I go any further, I want you to know this. This is important. I did not walk into this conversation carelessly, flippantly. I sought counsel. I took the advice of my pastor and another spiritual Gandalf of mine, an older, wiser Presbyterian elder who told me, "Kirk, I love you. I care for you, and I'm concerned that you're going to be misunderstood." Well, he was right. And I consulted with my wife and several trusted historians and Christian apologists on this topic. I wanted to be careful. I wanted to be faithful. I want to honor the traditions of my faith and be accountable before opening a discussion with my son publicly.
So, let me be very clear. I believe in hell. I believe in judgment. I have not denied the authority of scripture. What I have done is acknowledge an honest theological question, one that faithful Christians have wrestled with for hundreds, even thousands of years as Christians. And it's about how the Bible describes the final fate of the wicked, the the unrepentant. That distinction matters.
Most people who have watched these reaction videos uh really don't understand the position we were talking about because they just watched a sound bite. There's so much confusion about the Christian view that is known as conditionalism or annihilationism. Many assume it teaches that when a sinner dies they just poof disappear. They just evaporate. They just uh slide into a state of non-existence at the moment of their death. That is not what it teaches and that's not what my son James and I said. Go back. I encourage you watch the original video.
Conditionalism begins with a biblical claim about what human beings are. We're mortals. That means we are subject to death. It started in the Garden of Eden. According to scripture, human beings are not naturally immortal after the fall. God alone naturally possesses immortality, eternal life is a gift, I believe. And it's something that God grants to those who are saved, the redeemed through Jesus Christ. He who believes in the son shall not perish but have eternal life. Immortality is not something that all people automatically possess.
And then from there, conditionalism clearly affirms this. Judgment is coming and it's real. God is just because he is holy. Sin is serious and accountability before God is unavoidable. It also affirms real punishment, including real conscious suffering. Where Christians are differing on their views of hell is not over whether or not judgment happens, but over what scripture says is the final outcome of that judgment. Conditionalism holds that those who finally reject God and die will be judged according to their deeds in full justice and then eventually cast into what the scripture calls the lake of fire, also known as the second death. After full and just punishment, the unrepentant perish. They die. And that death is final. It's not temporary. It's not reversible, not redeemable. There's no appeals of court. There's no return. The view of conditionalism does not deny hell. It does not deny judgment. It does not deny the seriousness of sin. It doesn't even deny conscious torment. The only difference is does that conscious torment last forever and ever and ever or does it eventually come to an end and the person is annihilated.
Okay, I want to be clear with you about where I stand. Many of the Christian thinkers and the pastors I most admire and am indebted to, my historical heroes, hold what is often called the traditional view of hell. More precisely, as we've mentioned, it's called eternal conscious suffering. It's exactly what it sounds like it is. And I honor them deeply for the way they handle the word of God with with extreme care and reverence and holiness with a desire to understand it. Voices like St. Augustine and the Westminster confession. I hold to that. Charles Spurgeon, George Whitfield, John Wesley, Dr. RC Sproul, and one of my own personal mentors, Dr. John MacArthur have all articulated and defended this traditional view with care, seriousness, and deep respect for the scripture. My respect for them has not diminished at all. In fact, it is deepened.
And at the same time, the questions that my son and I are asking are not new. Many of us have never been taught church history. Check this out. In the early church, I mean like way early, like the year 100, 200, 300, 400, men like Justin Martyr, Eranius and Athanasius, they emphasized conditional life and final destruction apart from Christ. That's the conditionalist view. And then during the reformation, Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, rejected the idea that human beings are naturally immortal. and he openly questioned longheld assumptions about the soul and final judgment. And then in more recent history, respected evangelical scholars like John Sto, FF Bruce, and Edward Fudge examined the scriptures carefully and came to similar conclusions. It's interesting that Francis Chan's co-writer in the book he wrote about hell after the book was published shifted his views away from eternal conscious torment and says he is leaning toward conditionalism because he thinks it's more biblically sound although he's still grappling with some passages.
So when I ask questions about how the Bible describes final judgment I am not rejecting orthodoxy. I'm standing in a long Christian tradition that believes scripture deserves careful, humble, and honest study. And to pastors, you are not my adversaries. You are my allies in the gospel. And we know that the gospel is not merely avoiding hell and punishment. The gospel is about knowing the father, the only true God, and his son Jesus Christ, and receiving the gift of eternal life.
Many of you know me and have known me for over 35 years. I I'm not just giving lip service to these things. I'm not just sitting in a cubicle in a study reacting to reaction videos. I'm actually sharing the gospel with the lost in real time. I've done this in Hollywood and on the streets with Ray Comfort for years and literally put on a bulletproof vest so that I can go into dark places and share Christian truths with children in public libraries. I believe eternity is at stake. That is why I evangelize and the urgency to do that doesn't fade with me, it deepens.
I also want to be clear about this. I have not made final pronouncements. I have not issued declarations or drawn hard lines. What I've done is acknowledge uncertainty and invite careful prayerful study because scripture deserves that kind of attention. But when honest questions, your questions, my questions, our children's questions are met with public shaming, the church should pause. When certain questions may not be asked, scripture quietly becomes secondary to tradition, and that should concern every believer.
So, here's what I'd like to do next. In the weeks ahead, I want to host a thoughtful scripture centered roundt conversation with some of my heroes, with some of the best and the brightest. It won't be a debate. It's not going to be a sound bite. It won't be clickbait. I'm talking about men who love God, who will honor his word and disagree with one another in good faith to model for us as students how Christians can have dangerous conversations about topics that matter with humility, with courage, and with love. No character attacks, no outrage, no shortcuts, just brothers in Christ opening the scriptures together and showing us as the family of faith how to reason, how to listen and how to learn without fear because the truth does not fear honest questions and neither should you.
Now at the same time we have to remember something essential. There are core Christian truths that we must agree on. Unity matters when it comes to those things. The truths handed down to us from the earliest days of the church. Those essential beliefs were preserved. They were protected. They were passed on to us in the form of the apostles creed, the nyine creed. This was like 300 AD, 400 AD. A confession of faith shared by Christians for more than 1,700 years. And it's interesting that neither one mentions the topic we have been discussing because it is a secondary issue.
So let's say it together. The Apostles's Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontious Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, meaning the Holy Universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
And for those of you who stayed with me to the very end, never stop asking questions. Always be willing to learn and be willing when necessary to be wrong. Study the scriptures for yourself. Learn from those who have gone before you. But let God's word, not the words of fallible men, be your final authority. And when you do that, your faith becomes your own. Your convictions will be battle tested, tried and true, ready to weather the storm. That kind of faith doesn't fear honest questions. It grows stronger because of them.
So, thank you guys for listening. Thank you for your patience. And thank you for caring enough to stay in the conversation. God bless you.