There’s a growing fad in Evangelical circles—one as old as rebellion itself—where otherwise church-going folks suddenly decide that Hell isn’t real anymore. Not literal. Not eternal. Not conscious torment. Just a metaphor, a symbol, a poetic flourish Jesus used when He… didn’t mean what He said.

And you can always spot the trend by the opening move: they don’t start with Scripture—they start with sentiment. Then they go hunting through the Bible for anything that sounds soft enough to justify their discomfort. Preston Sprinkle, who is better known for his build-a-bridge campaign between homosexuals and Evangelicalism, and the rest of the annihilationist crowd do this with whole lists of verses, stacking them like cardboard boxes and pretending that sheer volume is the same thing as truth.

They won’t say it that plainly, of course. They wrap it in soft language, the kind meant to soothe the conscience rather than confront it. And I get it—few things torment the mind like imagining a loved one under God’s wrath. Even born-again Christians flinch at the thought. We are weak. We doubt. We grasp for emotional escape hatches when Scripture presses too hard. The human heart will always try to reinterpret what it cannot bear.

But let’s not pretend. Doubting God’s Word is sin, and sin demands repentance.

And Scripture does not stutter on the reality of an eternal, conscious Hell.

Jesus—the same Jesus who healed lepers, welcomed children, and wept over Jerusalem—describes Hell with a precision that leaves no wiggle room. He speaks of eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46), of fire that never goes out (Mark 9:43), of a place where the sorrow is so deep the gnashing of teeth becomes the soundtrack (Matthew 8:12), of a worm that never dies (Mark 9:48). He doesn’t whisper these things. He declares them.

And this is where annihilationists always pivot to the “big blue list”—a hodgepodge of judgment texts from the Old Testament, ripped from poetry and prophecy, slapped together as if metaphors about destruction cancel out Jesus’ actual words about duration.

They love to parade Isaiah 66:24, for example, as if “the wicked will be corpses” clinches the case. But the text says, “their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched.” Jesus quotes this Himself—to support eternal conscious misery. Not one person reading Isaiah would conclude, “Oh yes, everlasting worms and unquenchable fire… clearly they disappear.”

Malachi 4:1 gets thrown in too—the wicked becoming stubble.

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

But Malachi isn’t describing annihilation. He’s describing judgment imagery Israel already knew by heart. Fire consumes. Fire destroys. Fire ruins. But the prophets use the same language about nations that continued to exist long after their “destruction.” The imagery describes severity—not cessation.

Psalm 37:20 says the wicked “vanish like smoke.” True enough—smoke rises because something is still burning. The metaphor is about defeat, not obliteration. David said his bones were wasting away too—but they didn’t evaporate into cosmic dust.

The other biblical writers don’t soften it either. John speaks of fire and brimstone endured in the presence of the Lamb (Revelation 14:9–11). Paul says those who refuse the gospel “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:8–9). None of this is metaphor. None of it is temporary. None of it is optional.

And when Paul says “eternal destruction,” annihilationists start foaming at the mouth.

“See? Destruction!”

But the text says “eternal,” not momentary. Not temporary. And in Scripture, destruction never means non-existence. A sheep is destroyed when it is ruined. A house is destroyed when it no longer functions. Israel is destroyed repeatedly yet always remains.

Destruction is about condition, not extinction. Paul clarifies it anyway: “away from the presence of the Lord.” You cannot be away from a presence you no longer exist to experience.

The problem is that we evaluate our loved ones by a standard miles beneath the holiness of God. A depressed brother, a suicidal friend, a relative who died in rebellion—we convince ourselves their struggles somehow dilute their guilt. But every one of them has broken the law of their Creator. Every one deserves Hell. And so do we. Our emotions don’t override God’s righteousness.

Eternal conscious torment isn’t theological cruelty—it’s the logical consequence of sinning against an infinite God. A finite being can never exhaust infinite offense. Divine justice demands satisfaction, and fallen humanity simply cannot provide it. That’s why Hell exists and why its punishment never ends. Not just because God is harsh, he is, but because His holiness demands it.

And this is precisely why annihilationism feels appealing—it lets us pretend sin has a manageable weight. It lets us imagine that justice can be wrapped up quickly, boxed, and shelved, as if the infinite offense of rejecting the infinite God can be paid off like a parking ticket. But sin isn’t a finite infraction, and Hell isn’t a divine temper tantrum. It is the unending collision between infinite holiness and rebellion. There is no “time served” in eternity.

Hell is the blazing proof that God will uphold righteousness even when every earthly instinct begs Him not to.

And yet—this is the part modern soft-theology cannot stomach—Hell also magnifies the mercy shown to the redeemed. When the saints behold the misery of the damned, they will not gloat. They won’t become cold or cruel. They will see, with perfect clarity, the abyss from which they were rescued.

They will know deep in their resurrected bones that the only difference between themselves and the condemned is sovereign grace. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Ironically, though, Annihilationism, for all its claims of tenderness, robs grace of its backdrop. If the wicked simply wink out of existence, then the cross becomes a modest solution to a modest problem. But if the punishment Christ absorbed is truly eternal in weight—if Hell is as dreadful as Scripture says—then grace becomes mind-blowingly incomprehensible.

That’s the part the deniers can’t accept. If Hell isn’t eternal, grace isn’t amazing.

Hell testifies to the costliness of sin, the perfection of God’s justice, and the scandal of His mercy. Remove it, and Christianity collapses into sentiment.

Keep it, and the cross becomes what it truly is—the only refuge from the wrath we all deserve.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer;
But this I know with all my heart:
His wounds have paid my ransom.