Transcript

ANNOUNCER: According to the Bible, what is the ultimate destiny of the unbeliever? And what are some opposing, unbiblical views? Hi, this is Grace in Focus. Thank you for joining us today. This radio and podcast ministry is brought to you by our faithful donors and the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org, where you can get information about our national annual conference coming up next May 2026, May 18th through the 21st. Our theme is “Believe in Jesus for Life.” We invite you to get information and get registered and come and join us, and you’ll find it at faithalone.org. 

And now with our discussion today, here is Bob Wilkin, along with Philippe Sterling. 

BOB: Okay, Philippe, we have been talking about the unbelieving dead, where they go when they die, and where they’ll go after the Great White Throne Judgment. But we haven’t talked about some other views. Our view is what the Bible teaches, but there are people who think we’re wrong. Some people think that nobody is going to spend eternity in the lake of fire, right? 

PHILIPPE: Yes. When it comes to the eternal destiny of the unbelieving, you know, after the Great White Throne Judgment, basically three views of [unintelligible] various forms within those views. And the one is why we talked about what is our view, sometimes it’s called traditionalism or eternal conscious torment. ECT in the lake of fire. Two other views are one, universalism. That is a universal reconciliation that takes place in everyone, you know, love wins and everyone ultimately is saved and will be Christ in the new heaven and the new earth. 

BOB: And it’s called universalism. 

PHILIPPE: And then a third view is conditionalism or conditional immortality, sometimes or annihilationism. 

BOB: So annihilationism sounds like what it is, which is to annihilate is to destroy, to completely destroy.

PHILIPPE: To lead to eventually to a cessation of existence. 

BOB: I’ve talked to people who hold this view. There are some people within the greater free grace camp that hold this, some of the people that hold to what we call flexible free grace, hold this view. And there are even some people in the focus free grace camp, I think, that hold this view. And according to this view, after the Great White Throne Judgment, people are cast into the lake of fire. That’s called the second death, right, in Revelation 20. And they say that when they get to the lake of fire, they’re annihilated. 

PHILIPPE: Now, there are various forms of that. Some say that there are different people, there’s a process of time where they gradually then come to cease to exist. 

BOB: So some would see it as immediate, but some would see it as gradual. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. And then some would see that perhaps the devil, and perhaps the angels and the beast, false prophets, do go on forever there in some kind of a conscious existence, but everyone else is annihilated, cease to exist. Their immortality is conditional, it ceases at some point. 

BOB: So I think it’s a Revelation 19:20 that says the beast and the false prophet were cast alive. 

PHILIPPE: Yeah, in fact, before the beginning of the Millennium in a period as Christ, the Lamb comes in Revelation 19, and judges the nations gathered together. He does stick the beast and the false prophet and cast them alive into the lake of fire. And they are there for the thousand years. 

BOB: But now after the thousand years, they need to be judged with the Great White Throne Judgment like everybody else, right? 

PHILIPPE: That’s an inference, doesn’t say specifically. 

BOB: They could stay perpetually in the lake of fire, but they could be brought back for the Great White Throne Judgment, and then be cast again into the lake of fire. 

PHILIPPE: And presumably, also, you know, in Satan and his angels are released in the final rebellion. And we’re not told exactly when they are put into the lake of fire, though we’re told specifically by Jesus in Matthew 25, that it was the lake of fire was prepared initially for the devil and his angels. 

BOB: Not for humans. 

PHILIPPE: Not for humans. 

BOB: So annihilationism is also called conditional immortality. And in this view, at most, there’s two human beings that are going to spend forever in the lake of fire. That would be the beast and the false prophet, but maybe not even those two. 

PHILIPPE: Right. That’ll be a view that even they, you know, cease. They may cease to exist. 

BOB: So this is almost kind of like universalism, except in this view, the people who don’t believe, their light bulbs turned off. By the way, there’s another view you haven’t discussed. You mentioned eternal conscious torment. Well, there’s another view that’s eternal unconscious torment. 

PHILIPPE: It’s called a soul sleep. And some that hold to a soul sleep a view even maintain that’s both for unbelieving and believers until resurrection or glorification takes place. 

BOB: Don’t Jehovah Witnesses believe that? 

PHILIPPE: That’s perhaps, I don’t know specifically.

BOB: I think they teach when people die, they become unconscious until their judgment. Now, of course, most people in Christianity don’t believe the Judgment Seat of Christ as a judgment for church age believers and for rewards. They think there’s one judgment called the Great White Throne Judgment and the Judgment Seat of Christ is another name for it. 

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BOB: I did a book called Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment with Zondervan and one of the people, Thomas Schreiner, he wrote in response to what I had said, “I can’t keep up with all these judgments Wilkin has. He’s got the judgment of the sheep and the goats at one place and he’s got the Judgment Seat of Christ at another place.” He said all these judgments are one final judgment. And so he didn’t see, 

PHILIPPE: I can’t keep up with it. So I’m just going to put them all together. You know why not correctly try to understand and interpret and correlate what the Scriptures say.

BOB: That’s my view. But this view of annihilationism or universalism, to me it springs from people imposing their own understanding of justice upon God. A friend of mine wrote something where he said, I consider it unjust if God were to condemn to hell, all those who never heard the name of Jesus and therefore never believe. So he’s reasoning this way. Major premise: God is just. Minor premise: it would be unjust to condemn anybody to hell who never heard the name of Jesus. Conclusion: anyone who never heard the name of Jesus gets eternal life the moment they die. That’s his position. And people like that, often what they’re doing is they’re simply saying, “I know better than God, what’s just.” 

The Bible is pretty clear that those who don’t believe are condemned forever. John 3:18, “He who does not believe is condemned already.” And that condemnation is going to go on forever. In Revelation 20:11-15, is very clear that the second death is being cast into the lake of fire. And of course, Revelation 14:11 says the smoke of their torment ascends forever. Now some of these conditional people argue, well, yeah, the smoke goes up forever, but they’re annihilated, but they’re still smoke. And I’m like, no, that’s not what it means. It’s clear that God, if we go back to the creation in Genesis 1 and 2, God created humans as eternal beings. It’s kind of like angels, didn’t he create angels as eternal beings? 

PHILIPPE: Yes. And if we were to bring up the questions were people in the lake are fire, you know, will you choose whether to cease to exist or to still continue on? 

BOB: What do you think they would pick? Because I talked about this on our show a couple of weeks ago and I’m sure some people think I’m nuts when I say that I think people in the lake of fire want to continue to exist. 

PHILIPPE: I think likewise. To be annihilated is nothing that anyone unbelieving or believing would want. 

BOB: Right, unless you view the lake of fire is like eternal torture, like God is pulling out people’s fingernails forever, God is torturing them forever. Read my book, The Ten Most Misunderstood Words, my chapter on hell, I have quotes, where a lot of preachers say, imagine the worst suffering on earth—hell’s worse than that. Well, they have no verse that says that so they just make that statement without quoting some verses in parentheses because there are no such verses, that the torment in Sheol or Hades right now is worse than anything on earth. There’s no verse that says, the future torment in the lake of fire is worse than anything on earth. I would argue the polar opposite is true, that there’s lots of suffering that people have undergone on earth that’s worse than the torment in the lake of fire. I’m not saying the lake of fire is going to be great. It’s not. 

PHILIPPE: Torment is not torture. 

BOB: The Bible never describes it as torture and we know that this word for torment occurs in the book of Revelation for people during the Tribulation. They’re going to be tormented when they’re stung, right, by these scorpion-like creatures and they’re going to experience torment during earth. So it’s not right to say the lake of fire will be intolerable. And that’s part of the reason why people go to annihilationism, don’t you think? 

PHILIPPE: Yes, and it becomes an emotional reaction to this matter of thinking of it as torture. 

BOB: Yeah, I mean, I too would hold to universalism if I thought somehow that the lake of fire was eternal conscious torture, but it’s not. It’s torment. I say I would hold that. I wouldn’t, because the Scriptures clear that God created humans to live forever. And even those in the lake of fire will live forever, but it’s a terrible misrepresentation of what the lake of fire will be like to say that it’s going to be eternal torture. So we don’t need to go to annihilationism or universalism in order for us to say, well, you know, unbelievers who’ve died are going to escape eternal torture. 

Of course they will, because God does not torture people. That’s not who God is. And a lot of people, they want to preach hellfire and damnation when they evangelize. But what they’re preaching is something that’s not actually taught in Scripture because their view of hellfire and damnation is worse than what the Bible teaches. 

PHILIPPE: Yes, and that would have been common to account how we understand the purpose of the Tribulation and even the judgments of the Tribulation. That’s another podcast. 

BOB: All right, well, very good. I hope you all will meditate and study on these issues because they’re important ones. And I hope you won’t adopt annihilationism or universalism because those views greatly diminish our desire to tell people the promise of eternal life. If we realize that those who don’t believe are going to experience torment eternally and consciously forever, then it highly motivates us to share the message of life with others. Don’t you think Philippe? 

PHILIPPE: Oh, absolutely. It is the purpose of even discussing this, all matters of the end, eschatology is really to encourage us greater faithfulness in living to God’s glory and in sharing a message of life and making disciples. 

BOB: Amen. Well, thanks so much, everybody. And remember, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: what will it be like to be in a resurrected and glorified body? Please join us again and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.