Immortality is prized by Christians as God's gift to whoever places their faith in Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of their sins. Its most famous formulation is in John's gospel when Jesus' tells Nicodemus: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (KJV)
And yet much of Western evangelicalism offers the promise of everlasting life to non-believers. Well, strictly speaking, they tell the faithless that their eternal life will be lived out in the torments of hell. So every human being will live forever... it's just a question of where.
How has modern evangelicalism come to contradict so much of scripture? The natural immortality of all humans is nowhere taught in the Bible. There are so many passages describing the end-state of the unredeemed as death, destruction, and perishing,
The sole basis for this belief centers upon a few "proof-text" verses—four, to be precise—-that seem to indicate ongoing, endless, conscious punishment for the unredeemed. I contend evangelicals have uncritically accepted the Hellenistic Greek belief in natural immortality.
In 1991 Zondervan published a book entitled "Four Views Of Hell," in which the late Dr. Clark H. Pinnock (Canadian) persuasively argued the view of Conditional Immortality. A growing view of Eternal Destiny among Western Christians in the last half-century is called Universalism. The 1st edition of the book did not include Universal Salvation as one of the four views. Finally after 25 years Zondervan has published a 2nd edition that does include Universalism. But in the original/first edition, Pinnock addressed Universalism very clearly as an underground, but increasingly widespread belief—-primarily due to the lack of teaching and preaching about hell from evangelical pulpits. The lack of teaching on Eternal Destiny is a sign of Pulpitical Cowardice, IMHO. The scripture is filled with teaching on the ultimate destinies faced by all human beings.
Here's the link to download a free copy of the original version of the book:
https://ia803008.us.archive.org/12/items/fourviewsonhell00croc/fourviewsonhell00croc.pdf
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