[A]fter 25 years or so of pastoring in Advent Christian circles (I only have pastored two Advent Christian Churches in my 39 years of ministry) I began to question if what I had come to believe regarding conditional immortality was indeed Biblical. I left the shire and went on this “kind of scary” adventure and after some time found myself rejecting conditional immortality and embracing the traditional view of eternal conscious torment of the wicked….
Read MoreIn A Devil of A Dilemma: Part 1, we examined Revelation 20:10 honestly and cogently, but many were not impressed or satisfied with what we termed a sort of “modified conditional immortality view.” In truth, that is not a particularly good name since there is nothing actually modified about it per se, it merely states the main assertion of conditional immortality in plain language and follows it to its logical conclusion.
Read MoreEdward Fudge’s life story has been summarized, written up in detail and even made into a movie already, so the only thing that I want to say about him is what he has meant to us as Advent Christians.
Read MoreI know, you have been told that human souls are immortal: they can never die. You have been told “you have an immortal soul and are capable of living in immortal glory.”[1] But what if the Bible spoke of souls as dying, and referred to the dead as dead souls. Would that make a difference.? Would you have to re-examine your theology of the soul? I hope you would.
Read MoreIn a recent Advent Christian Voices article, Corey McLaughlin examines conditionalists’ treatment of Revelation 20:7-10 and concludes that our exegesis of that text has been “poor”, and based on “logic stretched thin.” He suggests that our problem is that we are trying to make Revelation 20 say that the lake of fire will come to an end, but that the text insists that it will not. To accurately reflect what is taught in Revelation 20:10, conditionalism will need to be modified to allow for the eternal conscious torment of the devil and his demonic agents.
Read MoreEvery theological system I have studied has at least a few unruly texts that scratch and claw like a cat being pushed into a bathtub whenever someone tries to clean them up and fit them into their particular theological framework...
Read MoreWe have stated that the materialist thinks of man as purely a physical being with mental and emotional development as a higher organization of his nerve system. The mystic thinks of man as essentially a spiritual being with a material body that is a temporary but not necessary residence. The Bible, however, presents man as a rational balance of both of these limited and distorted views. L
Read MorePerhaps there are other major branches of theology besides Theology Proper, Anthropology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology and Eschatology; but, these five will certainly do for a vivid illustration of my thesis: that Conditional Immortality is not only the true teaching of the Bible, but that it is also “extremely important” – so important, in fact, that we have found that denying it would lead us into irremediable error
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