Christian actor Kirk Cameron indicated in a podcast recently that he now thinks that annihilationism, also known as conditional immortality, may be what the Bible teaches. You can see his video here.

Ray Comfort, who has done many videos with Kirk, released a response video on Dec 11. See here.  

Many others have responded, including our own Ken Yates. You can view his first of two response videos here.  

Philippe Sterling and I did a podcast on this recently. You can hear it here.  

I believe in what is known as ECT, Eternal Conscious Torment. That is the official position of Grace Evangelical Society. That is also the teaching of Scripture. Annihilationism is contrary to Scripture.  

For proof of ECT, see this article by me.  

My question in this blog is not whether it is Biblical. It is whether a person who believes in annihilationism necessarily does not believe in Jesus for everlasting life.  

The answer is no. Annihilationism is not incompatible with faith in Christ. A person can believe John 3:16 and simultaneously believe that the perishing in that verse refers to annihilation. That would be a wrong understanding of perishing. But if someone believes that he has everlasting life that cannot be lost by faith in Jesus, he is born again. Compare John 4:1-26 and John 11:25-27, where the Lord says nothing about perishing or condemnation.  

I know many people like that. Some of them are pastors and parachurch leaders. This seems to be a growing trend. They are sure they have everlasting life that cannot be lost simply because they believe in the promise of life. But they also believe that those who never believe will be annihilated.  

Having said that, most people who believe in annihilationism do not believe in the promise of life. But that isn’t because the two are mutually exclusive.  

The people I know who believe in the promise of life and annihilationism first believed in the promise of life and only later came to believe in annihilationism. It seems to me that belief in annihilationism makes it harder, but not impossible, to believe in the promise of life. The reason it is harder is because if we reject the clear teaching of Scripture regarding ECT, we are more likely to reject the clear teaching on the promise of life as well.  

Keep grace in focus and you won’t drift in your understanding of Scripture.