Last November, The Dissenter reported that popular speaker, author, and pastor, David Platt of McLean Bible Church, would be joining Revoice “gay Christianity” leader, Preston Sprinkle for Sprinkle’s Theology in the Raw Conference. Thankfully, Platt bailed on that conference though, sources close to The Dissenter explained that Platt’s reason for not attending the conference was due to personal family issues surrounding an adopted child. At any rate, we’re glad he chose not to associate with these men who claim to be brothers but practice and preach immorality (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Nevertheless, the conference went forward and the remaining heretics who were scheduled to speak did.

Speaking at this conference was the notorious heretic, Chris Date, who denies the existence of Hell and holds to a heresy known as annihilationism. Before you write in to me and attempt to convince me that annihilationism isn’t actually heresy, let me warn you that denying the open and plain teaching of Scripture is an affront to God and rebellion against His word. A denial of the eternal conscious punishment described in the Scriptures is a denial of the plain teaching of God’s word—the Scriptures are not vague or ambiguous on this teaching.

That being said, Revoice leader, Preston Sprinkle—who already ascribes to and teaches that one can be an unrepentant homosexual and still be right with God—is now promoting the idea that one can hold to the view of annihilationism and still be within the bounds of orthodoxy.

There’s three Christian views of hell. By Christian, I mean views that have been held by Christians who hold to Christian orthodoxy and have different views of hell.

There is the most familiar one, eternal conscious torment, and that’s the view that probably almost all of you… when you think of the idea of hell this is what comes into your mind. That hell is a place in the afterlife where people who don’t follow Jesus will suffer never ending punishment. That’s eternal conscious torment.

Then there’s the annihilation view, or sometimes called conditional immortality. This view also says that there is a hell. It’s a place of punishment, but when people go there, they die. They will cease to exist. There is no never-ending ongoing conscious torment.

The third view is sometimes called Christian Universalism. It’s better titled ultimate reconciliation. That says that, and you have to distinguish between Christian universalism and non-Christian forms of universalism or pluralism, which would say ‘oh all roads lead to you know heaven or whatever you know. Jesus is one way and Hinduism is one way and even atheists is another way.’ You know that’s radically different from Christian Universalism or ultimate reconciliation Christian Universalism says that the blood of Jesus is so powerful that it can even overcome the unbelief of all humanity, and that God will ultimately reconcile all things, including all people to himself.

All three of those views have been held by orthodox bible-believing Christians throughout the centuries and this morning we have two of those three views.