Chapter 1 – Growing Up

As a teenager, I was a bit of a Christian extremist. Not the violent type, just a young person who was super-serious about the Christian faith. From the time I was fourteen, I read the Bible and prayed for at least an hour each day—sometimes much more, started small group Bible studies, and attended a Pentecostal church a minimum of three times per week.

I also fasted frequently, handed out gospel tracts to strangers, and carried a pocket Bible with me through the halls of my public high school. I was not the typical American teenager. I even quit my high school baseball team because I felt like I was thinking too much about a sport: What’s my batting average? How many errors have I committed? Without baseball, I would have more time to focus on things that really mattered, like prayer and Bible reading.

Why was I like that? One easily identifiable cause was my belief in the traditional idea of hell, which asserts that unbelievers will suffer in eternal conscious torment. I used to imagine people in hell—people I knew—then I would pray intensely for their salvation. Why? Because if they died, they would go to hell instantly. And they could die at any moment. They were one breath away from unimaginable and unending suffering. How could I not think about it?

Why was I so fixated on the place with eternal flames? Maybe some personalities gravitate to the topic of hell. Or maybe I had read too much from authors of previous generations like Charles Finney (1792–1875)[i] and Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Edwards delivered an intense and frightening description of God’s wrath in his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He addressed sinners in this way:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. . . You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.^[ii]

For whatever reason, hell was frequently on my mind. But I never really thought I would be the one suffering forever in the otherworldly fire. I was sure I was going to make it.

Who wasn’t going to escape the eternal flames? Those who didn’t believe in Christ, those who didn’t abstain from evil, those who didn’t care about the Bible, those who didn’t go to my church. Basically, most of the people I knew. At the time, I wasn’t aware of my own self-righteous attitude in determining who would be saved.

But I was genuinely concerned for others. Sometimes I meditated on hell to keep me focused while listening to a pastor’s sermon. There are people here who are going to suffer in agony forever, I thought. That gave me the jolt I needed to stay alert and prayerful during a boring sermon.

After graduating from high school, I studied the Bible in a small Christian college in New England. My school assigned us to serve in local churches so I had the opportunity to preach a couple of times. In one message I said something like, “The worst part about hell is that there is no way out. It is unending torment. The people who go there can never get out.” After that statement, you could have heard a pin drop on the carpet.

Following my undergraduate studies, I went on to earn a master’s degree from an evangelical seminary. Since then I have worked as a youth pastor, high school Bible teacher, and curriculum writer. I’m grateful for the people and experiences that have shaped my thinking on various issues, including my perspective on hell: conversations with professors, debates with roommates, discussions with students, and insightful books.

My journey down the long path of Christian history has resulted in surprising discoveries. I’m writing to share what I’ve found along the way. These findings may be threatening at first, but they are ideas that have been around for centuries—rooted in the works of early Christian leaders. Reading this book, then, requires a willingness to consider more than one perspective on this topic.

In particular, we will examine three major depictions of hell in Christian thought and compare them with the biblical evidence: (1) an everlasting prison of eternal conscious torment, (2) an incinerator that results in annihilation, and (3) a refinery leading to universal reconciliation.

Finally, this book has not been written to cause division. My exploration has included searching for the unity of the historic and worldwide Christian church on this subject. Ultimately, this is only one person’s journey to understanding a single topic in Christianity. You may not agree with the conclusions, but I hope it inspires you to embark on your own journey through the Bible and church history.

[i] Unless otherwise indicated, all dates are from the Common Era (CE or AD).

[ii] Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, preached on July 8^th, 1741.