Looking Deeper to the True Meaning of Hell

In midsummer of 1878, several hundred enthusiastic Christian ministers and lay people gathered at a hospital in Clifton Springs, The big apple, for a week of Bible conference. The founder of the hospital, a Methodist layman named Dr. Henry Foster, had erected a 50×80 foot tabernacle that seated about 650 people. Dr. Foster invited missionaries, teachers, pastors, and evangelists to stay in the hospital facilities free of charge with regards to rest and relaxation, and to use the tabernacle for Christian services.

The Christians who conducted the Bible conference in the summer of 1878 were known as the Believers\’ Meeting for Bible Study. (1) They continued to fulfill at Clifton Springs for two more years, but eventually held their annual meetings at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, and became better known as the Niagara Bible Conference. Some historians think about the Niagara Bible Conference, and the First and Second American Bible and Prophecy Conferences which it spawned, to be the primary sources from which the American fundamentalist and premillennial evangelical movements came. (2)

Unfortunately, the Bible conference at Clifton Springs in 1878 was a little bit of a disappointment to the leaders. Among other reasons, \”there were those hanging upon the outskirts who didn\’t have sympathy with the objects with the meeting, and there was danger of controversy, which always grieves the Holy Ghost.\” (3) Postmillennialists and annihilationists had apparently caused the talk. So in the following months, the Believers\’ Meeting for Bible Study adopted a fourteen-point confession of faith, later known as the Niagara Creed, as a basis for their meetings. (4) Significant because of this study of annihilationism is Article 13 of the Niagara Creed. It reads,

We believe that the souls of those that have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation do at death immediately pass into His presence, where there remain in conscious bliss until the resurrection of the body at His coming, when soul and body reunited shall be associated with Him forever within the glory; but the souls of unbelievers remain after death in conscious misery until the final judgment of the great white throne on the close of the millennium, when soul and the entire body reunited shall be cast into the lake of fire, not to be annihilated, but to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from your glory of his power: Luke 16:19-26; 23:43; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23; 2 Thess. 1:7-9; Jude 6-7; Rev. 20:11-15. (5)

In one of his reports of the 1878 meeting, Niagara\’s president, James H. Brookes, gives a summary of the 23 minutes in hell and concludes with this particular admonition to those who might want to be involved in future conferences:

Such in brief is the simple ground which we meet, and any who accept it are thanks for visiting attend. If they do not stand upon it, yet choose to attend, they are anticipated to keep silent. We do not deny the best of those who hold what are known as \”annihilation views,\” to gather when and where they please; but we do deny their right to thrust these views upon a meeting that rejects their dangerous errors. (6)

For that leaders of this historic Bible Conference, annihilationism was considered this kind of \”dangerous\” doctrinal error that it excluded its adherents from participation together.

Were these nineteenth-century evangelicals justified in their fear of annihilationism? In recent years a renewed effort has arisen among some who call themselves evangelicals to reassert the doctrine of annihilationism-that the wicked who reject Christ will not have to spend eternity in hell, but after some time of suffering will be annihilated. This is somewhat puzzling in light of the many Scriptures that teach the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell. (7) \”If exegesis may be the final factor,\” writes John Walvoord, \”eternal punishment is the only proper conclusion; taken at its face value, the Bible teaches eternal punishment.\” (8)

It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to show by a survey of the doctrinal categories that annihilationists often arrived at the Scriptures with cultural and theological preunderstandings that negate the historical-grammatical meaning of the passages. The result is, actually, a multi-faceted compromise of a biblical systematic theology that infects the majority of the major doctrines of the Christian faith. (9)

If you want more information on hell, feel free to check out Bill Weise\’s blog.