Mt 24:21 — “For then there will be great suffering unlike anything that has happened from the beginning of the world until now, or ever will happen.”
Rev 7:13 ‘Then one of the elders asked me, “These dressed in long white robes—who are they and where have they come from?” 7:14 So I said to him, “My lord, you know the answer.” Then he said to me, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation.…
In recent decades, annihilationalism (the doctrine that the finally impenitent cease to exist, rather than that they suffer eternal conscious torment) has continued to gain ground in evangelical circles.
Over the past century, those committed to (or, at least, sympathetic towards) this doctrine include: Harold E. Guillebaud, Basil Atkinson, J. Stafford Wright, Norman Anderson, John Stott, John Wenham, Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, E. Earle Ellis, John Stott, F.F. Bruce, Michael Green, I. Howard Marshall, Stephen Travis, Edward Fudge, R.…
The redoubtable Cambridge scholar Basil Atkinson (1895-1971) may be said to have kick-started the revival of interest in annihilationalism/conditional immortality here in the UK.
John Wenham (in his autobiographical ‘Facing Hell’, p69) recalls an informal talk given by Atkinson in the mid-1930s. The main ideas included the following:
In I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus (2nd ed., 1988), Stephen Travis outlines the following case for conditional immortality (‘annihilationism’):-
First, immortality of the soul is a non-biblical doctrine derived from Greek philosophy. In biblical teaching man is ‘conditionally immortal-that is, he has the possibility of becoming immortal if he receives resurrection or immortality as a gift from God. This would imply that God grants resurrection to those who love him. but those who resist him go out of existence.…
Richard Baxter: The Saint’s Everlasting Rest (1650). Abridged by Benjamin Fawcett (1759).
Baxter was suffering from a serious illness when he set down his thoughts on the blessedness of the life to come.
At the end of ch. 4, Baxter sets out his conviction ‘that the souls of believers do enjoy inconceivable blessedness and glory, even while they remain separated from their bodies.’
What can be more plain than those words of Paul? We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home, or rather sojourning in the body, we are absent from the Lord.…
[Note: this article is a work in progress!]
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
(William Walsham How, ‘For All The Saints’)
Alone (so far as I am aware) among our better-known hymns, this one distinquishes between the restfulness of the Christian’s state immediately following death, and the ‘yet more glorious day’ of our Lord’s return and the ensuing resurrection of our bodies, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth, and the completed triumph and eternal reign of God.…
Piecing together the (admitedly limited) biblical data on the intermediate state, Michael Bird proposes the following:
…1. Prior to Christ’s ascension, all who died went to Sheol/Hades, which was divided into two parts, one compartment for the wicked and another compartment for the righteous.
2. After Christ’s descent to Sheol/Hades and with his ascension, Christ took with him into heaven all of the saints in the paradisal part of Sheol/Hades, while the wicked remain in Sheol/Hades waiting for judgment.
The doctrine of ‘soul-sleep’ interprets the period between a believer’s death and final resurrection as one of uninterrupted unconsciousness.
Habermas and Moreland identify a number of problems with this view:
…First, numerous biblical texts (e.g., Luke 23:43; Phil 1:23; 2 Cor 5:1-10) clearly teach that death is a transition into conscious enjoyment of the presence of Christ. How could Christ’s presence be enjoyed if one were asleep?
Second, some of these same Bible passages describe death as a gain because the deceased is with Christ.
In Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright notes that there is no biblical warrant for supposing that the faithful departed are actively engaged in praying for us. In particular,
…We should be very suspicious of the medieval idea that the ‘saints’ can function as ‘friends at court’, so that, while we might be shy of approaching the King ourselves, we know someone who is, as it were, ‘one of us’, to whom we can talk freely and who will maybe put in a good word for us.
Lk 16:19 “There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 16:20 But at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus whose body was covered with sores, 16:21 who longed to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. In addition, the dogs came and licked his sores.
16:22 “Now the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.…
