Hell is not unending torment without hope

Paul Marston challenges the traditional Christian view of hell as eternal conscious torment, arguing that scripture actually teaches the complete destruction of the unrepentant rather than unending suffering

It was lovely to read an article in this magazine from the faithful Christian leader RT Kendall who has just turned 90 years old. 

RT fears the Church in the UK is asleep and needs to recover sound, biblical doctrine. 

In his piece, RT claimed “many” Christians have “run to the teaching of annihilation (that one consciously ceases to exist after death)” and are abandoning the reality that people will suffer eternal conscious torment in hell. 

I share RT’s desire for Christians to be biblically faithful. But what if we’ve misunderstood and misinterpreted what the biblical writers actually claimed about life after death?