“Be careful with that sample; it’s hot!” warned my lab partner, pointing to a petri dish in the middle of my counter top. I froze in confusion. What was Al trying to tell me? Did the sample have such a high temperature that I would burn my fingers if I touched it without wearing asbestos [...]
Category: Conditional Immortality
John 3:16: A Keystone Verse of Conditional Immortality
It has been well said that John 3:16 could be called, “The Gospel in a Nutshell,” “The Golden Text of the Bible,” “The ‘Good News’ in Brief” and other such descriptive phrases. These kinds of statements are true and can be taken at face value, deservedly so. Titles such as these are justified by the [...]
Swept Away
In this article, Rev. Jefferson Vann discusses a fourth Old Testament word for final punishment that implies literal destruction. We conditionalists are often accused of using words like “destruction” in a simplistic, non-biblical sense. But in the three previous articles, I have examined the Old Testament Hebrew concepts of חרם (charam),[1] אבד (abad)[2] and שחת [...]
Spoiling the Vineyard
In this article, Rev. Jefferson Vann explains a Hebrew term for hell that reflects the idea of a spoiled vineyard. In this series of studies on hell, so far we have examined two Old Testament terms that help explain the biblical warnings about hell and describe its nature. We looked at the term חרם in [...]
Perish the Thought
In this article, Rev. Jefferson Vann explores the Old Testament background behind the term “perish.” When I taught Bible College, I told my students to always try to get into the bubble. By the term “bubble,” I meant the historical and literary background that original readers and listeners shared with the biblical authors. Since we [...]