Conditional Immortality, Soul Sleep and Annihilationism
(Part Two of Chapter 3 The Death State) Asleep in Christ In the New Testament, the “sleep” metaphor for death is taken up some 19 times. Examples: Matt. 9:24, I Thessalonians 5:10 (Greek katheudo); Acts 7:60, Acts 13:36, I Cor. 11:30, 15:6 and 15:18 (Greek koimasthai). Unfortunately, the NRSV often obscures the point by translating, simply, “died”.1 [...]
The Gospel At the office this week, one of my co-workers (who came from a Catholic background) was asking me about my church. He had heard the term evangelical before, but was not clear on what the word implied. I told him that when a church calls itself evangelical, it tends to emphasize the gospel, [...]
A gracEmail subscriber asks: “Are you fixated on hell?” [No.] “Do you derive pleasure from contemplating the subject?” [None.] “Do you consider this a ‘salvation’ issue?” [Absolutely not!] “Is agreement on this topic necessary for fellowship? [No.] “Why devote so much attention to the topic?” [There are at least two very important reasons.] * * [...]
continued from Part 15 General Resurrection In proclaiming Himself to John the Apostle in the vision on Patmos, one of the things the Lord said about Himself was, “{I} have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1:18). He was thus informing John, and the churches, of His power to release those who had [...]
Long before Plato ever said anything about the human soul, the Old Testament writers presented a consistent biblical anthropology. Augustine was biased toward platonic philosophy, even going so far as to claim that Plato brought him to God.1 But there is no reason for us today to be biased toward Plato’s (or anyone else’s) philosophy. [...]
Republished from the Bible Standard 1880. What is the soul? This is a question which has been asked in all ages; but the answers which they often gave or got have in many cases failed to convey the correct idea, if not an altogether erroneous one. Before proceeding to answer the question for ourselves, we [...]
continued from Part 14 General Resurrection (cont.): The Resurrection in the Epistles A very precious passage which has been a comfort and encouragement to mourning Christians over the centuries, as it was meant to be, is 1 Thess.4:13-18. In these verses Paul teaches the young Christians in Thessalonica that those who have died since they believed [...]
Dr. Oscar Cullman was a famous 20th Century New Testament scholar who held a conditionalist view of the nature of man. Born in 1902 in Strasbourg, Dr. Cullmann was a Lutheran scholar in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Strasbourg (1930-1938) and Basel (1938-1972) and at the same time in Paris. He [...]
Immortal Soul Versus Conditionalism Matthew 10:28 is a watershed text. It serves as a rope, and on either side of the rope is a group of well-meaning Christians tugging over the issue of human nature and destiny. On the one side are those who teach innate immortality. These draw support from Matthew 10:28a, where Jesus [...]
Our Resurrection is an essential part of the gospel. You have not heard the whole gospel if the message you have heard fails to include the next you. Law enforcement officers in this age of expanding technology have a number of new tools. Among the most intriguing are age advancement photography programs. Using these programs, one [...]
Here is the video from last year's conference. The transcript is here: Tracing the Road to Gehenna We should be videoing this year's conference … [Read More...]
