The following are a few excerpts from the Introduction.  The full introduction is extensive, and lays a solid groundwork for why I believe this book needed to be written, and it touches on many subjects.  The following excerpts are by no means a complete representation of what you will find in the full introduction. 

Excerpt One:

     After over two years of studying little else other than Biblical judgment, it has become my strong conviction that I, in the past, along with the vast majority of Christians, have either misunderstood or mishandled the Word of God regarding what it maintains will happen to unbelievers after death and also what Scripture teaches us about the mortality and immortality of souls.  Traditional teachings have far overshadowed what God’s Word so clearly seems to tell us.  I realize these are strong statements, and ones that will upset many people and offend many others who have studied and loved God’s Word for many years, but I cannot get away from what appear in every way to be some very clear and consistent Biblical facts that are contrary to traditional teaching. I also cannot escape what I can only interpret as a prompting from the Lord to expose what is not sound in our traditional doctrine of Biblical judgment.  

         The traditional historical view that hell is a place of either physical, spiritual, or mental anguish and torment where human souls remain for all eternity is certainly difficult to reconcile with a loving Heavenly Father for many people, but far more important, it is virtually impossible to support scripturally, without breaking the most common rules of Bible interpretation such as letting context and other Scripture interpret Scripture, and understanding major doctrines in light of all of Scripture.  However, various forms of the traditional view remain the most commonly taught and accepted interpretations of what happens to non-believers after death.  The traditional view is riddled with problems scripturally and logically, and there is another more Biblically sound view that will be presented in this book. 
     But, before going further, I want to make it clear that I am in no way questioning the authority of the Bible.  I believe it is the Word of God, and I believe everything Scripture has to say about judgment, including final judgment.  I am only questioning the traditional interpretation of a handful of passages from the Bible which I believe have been fashioned (intentionally or unintentionally) into something they are not, and something that is contrary to the entire theme of Scripture which is that ultimately human souls who reject God will cease to exist.  And if I am wrong, then Scripture will prove that out as you study these topics, and the reader has my sincere apologies for any confusion I might have caused.  But if I’m correct, then we have some serious examination to do as to why we have rejected the plain teaching of Scripture for so long, and exchanged it for tradition, the very thing we are warned against in the Bible, and what’s worse, it is a tradition that warps our understanding of our mortal soul nature and God’s immortal nature and can therefore only hinder our relationship with Him, yet because of His grace, it thankfully does not stifle that relationship, for most people.  But it can be a source of confusion for some, and a stumbling block for others. 

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Excerpt Two: 

     Summed up in a couple of sentences, the fate of those who are not saved by faith in the one true God is this:  At the point of physical death, their soul, the conscious essence of their being, will enter into Hades(usually translated as Hell), where they will exist in some form, conscious, and in mental (not physical) torment until the end of Christ’ one thousand year reign on this earth.  At the end of this millennial reign, those who were in Hades will be raised to stand judgment, will be found guilty of rejecting God’s call to repent from unbelief, and will be cast into the lake of fire, which will completely destroy their very being.  This is called the second death, and there is no evidence that human souls will be able to endure and maintain any form of existence in the lake of fire.
     I fully realize that if the reader is one who has been under the influence of tradition for many years, they may have some serious doubts about some things I just claimed, such as the torment in Hell not being physical and the idea that souls will not be aware, in existence, and tormented in the lake of fire.  This introduction is not the place for it, but I can only assure the reader that I will strongly support any claim I make with Scripture, and not just a verse taken out of context here or there to prove a point.  The assertions I make will be supported by themes and multiple passages in Scripture.  I am aware of the reasons people maintain theories in opposition to the claims I just made and the verses that are used to support tradition, but it is my aim to show the weaknesses in arguments such as these, and reveal the strength in accepting the plain language of the Bible. 

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Excerpt Three: 

     If I had found even one of the many traditionalist arguments to be Biblically sound, I would probably keep quiet and never say or write a word about it, but after doing the research, I found that every one of these arguments failed.  The Biblical evidence for the common claims about eternal hell is simply not there.
     Concerning those common claims, the method in which the lost soul suffers for all eternity, according to the traditional view, is limited only by the imagination, and is probably as varied as the number of people who hold the traditional view.  Some believe that Satan will be in charge of hell, which is entirely unbiblical.  Charles Spurgeon preached, "In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of Pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the Devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of hell’s unutterable lament".  Eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards taught, "The body will be full of torment as full as it can hold, and every part of it shall be full of torment. They shall be in extreme pain, every joint of them, every nerve shall be full of inexpressible torment. They shall be tormented even to their fingers’ ends. The whole body shall be full of the wrath of God. Their hearts and bowels and their heads, their eyes and their tongues, their hands and their feet will be filled with the fierceness of God’s wrath…”. **from John Gerstner’s Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell  (Grand Rapids, 1980), p. 56. 

Though I intend no disrespect to Jonathan Edwards or Charles Spurgeon who is one of the most respected Christian leaders of the nineteenth century, it is obvious that they, like many others, fell prey to some very unbiblical views about the realities of final judgment.  And because of their prominence, those misguided views are given more credence by those who only do limited research in this area.  I could point out a number of problems with Spurgeon’s statement but most obvious are the two phrases “asbestos-like” and “forever unconsumed”.   Psalm 37:20 says:
“But the wicked shall perish, And the enemies of Jehovah shall be as the fat of lambs: They shall consume; In smoke shall they consume away.”  

Far from having asbestos-like bodies, the verse says the wicked are like the “fat of lambs,” and far from being “forever unconsumed,” the verse says the wicked “consume away like smoke.”  This verse is very likely referring to eternal destinies.  Notice how this verse contrasts the wicked with the righteous that were referenced in the two previous verses, Psalm 37:18-19:
"The LORD knows the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.  They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied."  

We see their temporary days referenced, and those days can be troublesome, but then we see the reference to the upright’s eternal inheritance (“inheritance shall be forever”), and it makes reference to times of trouble, possibly the time of trouble, the tribulation, which precedes the 1000 year reign of Christ and then eternity.  In the next verse of the psalm we read, apparently still referring to eternal destinies, “For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.”  Again, because of the phrase “shall inherit the earth”, this seems to be referring to the millennial reign and eternity, similar to how Christ said the meek would “inherit the earth” in Matthew 5:5.  And, the Hebrew word being translated here as “cut off” is karath which Strong’s Concordance says means “by implication to destroy or consume”.  Verses 27 and 28 continue with the same idea: “Decline from evil and do good, and dwell for ever and ever.  For the Lord loveth judgment, and will not forsake his saints: they shall be preserved for ever. The unjust shall be punished, and the seed of the wicked shall perish.” (Darby Bible)
Live forever, or be punished and then consumed—those are our choices, in the Old Testament and New.  Even if I am incorrect, and this passage is not specifically referring to eternal destinies, this same theme and concept is laid down in God’s Word from beginning to end and at the very least, it typifies or foreshadows God’s methods and ways in final punishment.  We will get into this in more depth in Chapter Six, but there are literally hundreds of verses that teach this, and never contribute anything to the theory that conscious suffering is unending.  This theme of consumption, destruction, and death of the unbelieving is a powerful theme in Scripture, and should not be trumped by a handful of verses, misunderstood and taken out of context, and used to teach the exact opposite.  Deuteronomy 4:24 and Hebrews 12:29 both tell us that God is a consuming fire.  But what is He going to consume?  Just the physical creation and not the souls of those who rejected him?  That doesn’t seem likely.  What offense has the creation committed? Yes, it is cursed, but only because of human sin.  We must pay attention to and trust the Word of God, and not what we imagine, or what is powerful through tradition only.  To believe that God only annexes unrepentant sinners to another part of His universe, but allows them to go on existing is to deny multiple passages and themes in Scripture. 

     Tertullian, the noted second century theologian, is quoted as saying, "How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages, philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish than ever before from applause."  I’m aware that Turtullian may have witnessed horrible things that were done to early Christians, but I do not think this excuses his statement.  I'm not hearing much of a heart for the lost there, nor am I hearing the heart of God who stated in Ezekiel 18:32 that He has no pleasure in the death of the lost. 
     John Gill, the noted eighteenth century theologian, in his extensive Bible study notes claims that the unsaved “vessels of destruction” are not damned by God “for this does not respect God's act of ordination to punishment; but by Satan, the god of this world”.  But the Bible never claims that Satan will have any dominion in any form of hell, even the true Biblical hell (Sheol in Hebrew/ Hades in Greek) which is the place of suffering where the unbelieving dead will await final judgment.  Others believe that the "fires of hell" are just figurative for the separation from God.  I'm not sure how they arrive at that conclusion.  Not only would that be an awkward way to solely represent a separation from God, but the Bible makes it plain that we are already spiritually dead (John 11:25, Rom 4:17, Eph 2:1) and therefore separated(Ephesians 4:18) from God at conception because of our bent toward sin, and without accepting Christ, not only will we die once physically, but God will destroy the soul uncovered by the blood of Christ as well.  Our flesh and our soul are both mortal, subject to death, although the deaths of each do not occur at the same time.  

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Excerpt Four: 

     Satan’s desire is to cause as many as possible to fail to accept Christ as Savior, and to hinder the functionality of those who do, and what better way than to work from the inside and use the church itself to paint an erroneous picture of God?  This damages Christians and potential Christians.  The traditional view takes our gracious, merciful Savior and Creator and makes Him out to be a merciless tormentor who would sustain the vast majority of His human creation in a useless state of suffering without end and with no opportunity for reform; and for what purpose?  Maybe I shouldn’t even pose the question of purpose.  God’s ways are high above our ways and there are simply things we are not going to understand in this life, and, because of this, I wouldn’t even pose the “purpose” question if there were not passages in His Word that offer an answer.  So what could be the purpose of eternal suffering of humans?  Certainly not God’s pleasure.  We just looked at the verse that told us that God says He has no pleasure in the death of the lost.  So does He have a need for this suffering of the unsaved?  He was whole and complete before creation so we cannot claim that He has any needs(Acts 17:25).  According to His Word and the knowledge of Himself as revealed in Scripture, we can safely come to the conclusion that He has no pleasure in or need for the eternal suffering of the unsaved.  So what does He have?  He has Holy, righteous desires and requirements that line up with His Holy nature.  So the question is:  Does He desire or require the destruction of unregenerate humanity, or does he desire or require the eternal existence of the lost so they can forever regret their failure to put their faith in God?  What brings Him glory?  From beginning to end, His Word teaches that He is a consuming fire who will destroy His enemies.  It would seem to bring Him more glory to complete what He has promised and mercifully destroy the unfaithful rather than keep them around for eternal torment.  Traditionalists see the complete opposite.  Many believe it somehow will bring glory to God for the lost to suffer throughout all eternity.  And aside from the general flaw here, namely that this idea that eternal torment would bring glory to God is based on a doctrine that is not even taught in Scripture in the first place, there is another flaw in this thinking.  I mentioned earlier in this introduction that one of the common traditional arguments for why there must be eternal infinite conscious suffering is that our sin is against an eternal infinite Creator.  But Christopher Morgan, one of the traditionalist co-authors of Hell Under Fire, unknowingly points out the problem with that theory.  He writes, “Sin is inherently against God, who is infinite in all his perfections.  Thus, sin is an infinite evil and merits endless punishment.”  I’ve already pointed out that this reasoning is nowhere taught in Scripture and that this is simply a commonly-used human construction, but Morgan himself shows the real flaw in it when only two pages later in his portion of the book Hell Under Fire he writes, “Therefore, an endless punishment would be the only means by which finite sinners could approach paying the infinite penalty due sin.  Even an endless hell, however, will never fully satisfy the justice of God because there will never be a time when it could be said that now justice is satisfied.” (italics mine)  I wholeheartedly agree with his last sentence.  The eternal conscious suffering of the lost would never satisfy, glorify, or please God, nor would it fulfill any need or desire of God, according to Scripture.  And fortunately the Bible never claims this as the fate of the lost.  It is confusing as to why Morgan and so many others will say things such as “an endless punishment would be the only means by which finite sinners” could pay for their sin.  First, according to these same people, no one is “finite”, but rather all are eternal(a widely accepted but non-Biblical idea as we’ll see in Chapters Two and Three).  But secondly, if God’s Word, in countless places, exhibits the full destruction of those opposed to God as His primary means of punishment, why should we doubt this?  If a continual punishment were required, then it technically is never going to be paid for and completed because it has no end.   Beyond this, Morgan is essentially claiming that God, throughout eternity, is going to remain unsatisfied in His justice – that somehow finite man has thwarted infinite God’s eternal justice system such that He will never be totally satisfied and will only settle for the closest thing to real justice that He can get.  This is preposterous.  His requirements for justice, contrary to Morgan’s thinking, will be completely satisfied.  Not only does the traditionalist theory not work logically or scripturally, it is completely out of character for the God of purpose and meaning and mercy that the Bible describes.  The picture we see throughout the Bible is a righteous God who will not tolerate sin and unbelief forever, and who puts an end to the unfaithful.  There is possibly no clearer theme in God’s Word.        The non-traditional view I will put forward paints a very Biblically sound portrait of a Lord and Maker who so loves that He gave Himself for us that we might live eternally with Him, yet who requires justice for sin that was not covered by the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.  But even in judgment, He is merciful.  The wages of sin is death, and while it is a horrible fate, death is the merciful end of a sinner uncovered by God’s merciful sacrifice.