Advent Christian Blogspot a blog by John Roller has Sidney Hatch’s Why I Believe in Conditional Immortality as well as other wonderful articles/resources.
Atheolous writes about Under the Altar (Rev. 6:9)
UNDER THE ALTAR:
The souls that were under the altar were in the grave, under the literal altar of the literal temple.
I can hear a chorus of voices exclaiming, “That can’t be. Dead souls cannot speak!”. Of course, that is true. Souls that sleep the sleep of death while awaiting the resurrection cannot speak. But the souls in John’s vision did speak.
I believe that pride keeps most Christians from accepting the truth concerning soul sleep (conditional immortality). It is a flat-out stubborn refusal to accept the wages of sin.
Martin Luther defense of soul sleep from Reformed Thinker
Scripture everywhere affords such consolation, which speaks of the death of the saints, as if they fell asleep and were gathered to their fathers, that is, had overcome death through this faith and comfort in Christ, and awaited the resurrection, together with the saints who preceded them in death.—A Compend of Luther’s Theology, edited by Hugh Thomson Ker, Jr., p. 242.
and also from Reformed Thinking Calvin’s Refutation of Soul Sleep ( Calvin had differing opinion to Luther!) A Brief History of Conditional Immortality, an article published on this website might be of interest.
Early Christian Beliefs ( see link for extensive footnotes)
The earliest post-apostolic Christian confessions of faith do not refer to heaven or hell, but do mention the resurrection. Most writers from the first to the seventh century believed in an immortal soul and eternal torment in hell.
Soul sleep or soul death was occasionally understood to be followed by eternity in heaven or hell subsequent to the resurrection.Conditionalism was preserved by early Christians such as Arnobius, and among Syrian Christians such as Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai,and Jacob of Sarug.
Syrian Christianity inherited both soul death and soul sleep from earlier Jewish teaching.
If you have found any links of interest to readers please leave a comment.
I’m glad you found my article here useful. You may be interested in the rest of the series. You may also be interested in my book on the subject, aimed at establishing the historical continuum of mortalist belief throughout the Christian era (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/sleeping-in-the-dust/13045163?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1).
I would be happy to send you an electronic copy of this book as a gesture of fellowship in our common cause. I tried sending one to the email address in your blog comment, but I received the message ‘Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA’s poor reputation’.
Thank you. Did you try respublishing@slinsghot.co.nz ?
I will try that now.
The email was returned with ‘Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA’s poor reputation’.
I am trying again with a different email address.
I’m sorry I have misspelled my email address. The correct one is:
respublishing@slingshot.co.nz
Please try again
Tarnya
Ok, I managed to get through. Thanks for your email.