Question:  Dear Greg,

            I pray that God will lead many through Christ through PTM.

            Is annihilationism the biblical doctrine we need to teach?

            Mike

Answer:  Dear Mike,

            Thanks for your prayers and encouragement about, and support for the ongoing work of PTM.  I do not believe that annihilationism is the only answer.  In fact, depending upon how it is taught, it may not even be biblically justified.  On the other hand, I do not see all the answers in a Dante’s Inferno, ever-burning eternal hell either.  There are those who seem to “need” hell as an incentive in their preaching to bring people to Christ.  I do not see this emphasis in the Bible. Neither do I see enough biblical “proof” of the kind of hell they often preach.

            I am confident that hell is eternal separation from God.  I do not know where it is, when it is, or how hot it is.  I do not know if it is a literal, physical “place” any more than I know that heaven is a physical place.  That statement may offend some, but the fact is that the Bible offers little concrete details about hell and heaven, and therefore they may not be “physical.”  To further explain, simply because the Bible may refer to something in a non-literal or non-physical way—particularly of a spiritual reality—that does not mean that such things are not real.  For God, reality is in the spiritual realm not in the physical realm where things are subject to space and time, where all things age, corrupt, where thieves break through and steal.

            Hell?  I don’t want to be “there”—wherever it is, however it is.  It is a bad “place.”  It is a “place” of punishment.  That’s true.  But we don’t know much more than that dogmatically.

            Hope this helps.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht