The Sean McDowell Show - Kirk Cameron Doubles Down on Hell: My Response (w/Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Kirk Cameron has generated quite the controversy with his views about annihilationism. Today, I'm here with Gavin Ortlund to discuss three primary questions: Is annihilationism heretical? Is this a slippery slope? How can we best respond? Gavin and I were both on Kirk's show recently and consider him a friend. We hope this helps advance the conversation. WATCH: Is Annihilationism Heresy? (The Internet is Shaping Us): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN34MEHbxx8 *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Life Audio. There's a whole lot of thinkers over the centuries who've thought about this. The idea here is the damned in hell are not eternally in conscious existence. Annihilationists will just say death means death and they cease to exist. Maybe just kind of briefly tell us why you are not an annihilationist. When I look at the whole of scripture, I don't think the annihilationist view is the best way to take the texts. From a personal standpoint, my heart kind of goes out to Kirk Cameron in the situation he's in where there's a lot of reactivity on the internet that shapes how these conversations play out.

Actor and evangelist, Kurt Cameron, has stirred up quite the online controversy by asking if we have gotten the doctrine of hell wrong. He's adopted a controversial view known as annihilationism or conditionalism, which we will define and discuss. Cameron has responded to the criticism and let's just say things. have gotten even more heated. Here to discuss with me what a wise, measured, and biblical response might look like is Dr. Gavin Orland. Gavin, thanks for coming on.

Hey, looking forward to it. Thanks for having me, Sean. I want to have you on for a number of reasons, but one being both of us were recently guests on his podcast. We are friends of Kirk Cameron and care about theological issues, but also how these conversations take place just in the wider internet and beyond. So we're going to get into that. We're going to focus on really three questions today.

Is annihilationism a heretical view? Is this an indication of a slippery slope? And how can we best respond going forward? But with that said, a few preliminary issues just kind of to catch people up to speed. Some people might not be familiar with the term annihilationism or conditionalism. Essentially, I explain it this way, that those who do not believe in Jesus after death, at some point rather than living with eternal conscious torment, they will be snuffed out or annihilated in some sense and cease to exist. Agree, disagree, expand on that

definition in any way? No, I think that's good. I think the idea here is the damned in hell are not eternally in conscious existence, but they, you know, they'll annihilationists will just say death means death and they cease to exist. There's variation on the details of that, though. So some annihilationists will still think there's a long duration of conscious suffering prior to annihilation. And the only other thing I might throw on the table is the label, conditional immortality is sometimes one that our annihilationist friends prefer.

And one of the ways sometimes they'll explain it is to say that immortality belongs properly to God alone. And so the way they might tease this act. out is not even with the word annihilation, but just to say, only the righteous in heaven are given immortality. And so they'll make the appeal. You know, what would keep some a damned soul alive in hell? What would cause it to endure? So that's another, I'm just throwing that out as a label and as a way they might explicate their view. Very helpful clarification. I appreciate that. Now, you have a whole video on this you did before this controversy erupted. And this conversation we're having right now is not going to be a

a biblical point, counterpoint, or debate about it. But maybe just kind of briefly tell us why you are not an annihilationist. Sure. The long answer, of course, would be my video. The summary here will be that while I think, and as I try to carefully consider this idea, I think there are some theological appeals that have force in its favor and some biblical texts that can be interpreted in a annihilationist way when I look at the whole picture, especially the whole of scripture. So when I'm approaching a topic like this, I'm not looking to my own wisdom because I don't know what God is going to do. So I have to lean on divine revelation and say, what is God revealed of what will be the ultimate fate of those who are cast away into the outer darkness?

And when I look at the whole of scripture, I don't think the annihilationist view is the best way to take the texts. And in my video on this, I put a lot of emphasis on Revelation 20 and Revelation 14. These are two texts where it seems to me that the idea of torment is explicit. I think that is explicit in Revelation 2010. And then in Revelation 14, the language of no rest day or night. But I wouldn't say those are the only two texts. There are other texts that I think are suggestive that the fire of hell is not just to destroy and extinguish life. Another would be Mark 9, 47 to 49, where Jesus says, and boy, I just want to acknowledge talking about this topic is painful and sad.

And so here I am talking about fire and so forth. And we want to acknowledge this is a difficult doctrine. Let's let the, I think it's designed to kind of shatter our hearts in a way. And so let's allow it to have that effect upon us and cause us to grieve be sobered at the reality of evil and God's justice. But Jesus says, Mark 949, everyone will be salted with fire. This doesn't sound. So a lot of these earlier texts before you get to revelation seem suggestive that there's an experience going on in hell. And I just find that a tough passage to interpret in an annihilationist framework. So the full case for this is in my video,

but what I'm just trying to lay out here is the best interpretation of the Bible as a whole seems to me to point toward, yeah, there is an ongoing experience for the damned in hell. And as far as you understand, this is what can be called the traditional or the classic view of hell across even like Orthodox and Protestant and Catholic views. And so there may be some annihilationist type positions held in the past and in the somewhat present, people like F.F. Bruce and John Stott, but these are very much minority voices. This is what I've heard. I haven't done a deep dive on it. Is that your understanding? I would probably say minority voices, but not very much minority voices. So in other words, I do think actually the early church,

the patristic era for 500 years or so of church history roughly, is a little more diverse. Once you get after Augustine, I think you get ECT or Eternal Conscious Torment as pretty much the backbone or the mainstream view. But in the early church, it does look more scattershot to me. You've got explicit affirmations of annihilationism from Christians like Arnobius. And then you have a lot of Christians who are a little bit underdetermined in their language. It's debated a little bit how to read them. but they seem more pushing it toward an annihilationist view in the way they speak of immortality and the way they speak of death with respect to the final state.

So I would think of Ironaeus in that category, for example. So I'm not trying to remove all the ambiguities from the interpretation of some of these figures. But I would say annihilationism is a minority report in the tradition, but it is present, especially in the early church so far as I can see. This is an important distinction because when you take issues like the current in the past 50 years, redefinition of marriage, there was not any debate whatsoever in the history of the church about this until modern times. There are no voices arguing that we should change the definition of marriage to be non-gendered. When it comes to annihilationism, this is not a new debate.

This debate has existed in the church. in various ways throughout its history. Now, it feels new. And between you and I, I didn't have on my bingo card this year that Kurt Cameron was going to do video in favor annihilationism. I think I was about as surprised as anybody. But it feels new to us in this moment, but there's precedent in the church wrestling with this question going way back. Now, with that said, part of what stirred this in his response video, I think Kirk framed for everybody, why he ended up really what started this conversation for him. And it was a conversation with his son about the fate of non-Christians,

the fate of those who are damned. And he said, basically, you know, if his, he asks right opening in only the way that like somebody who's good on camera can draw you in with drama. Like he's so good painting the picture. He's like, what would you do to the audience if your son or daughter can, to you and asked you what you believe the Bible says and will non-Christians experience eternal conscience torment. He framed it that way. So I'm really curious. I'm going to give my two cents in a second, but how would you respond if one of your own kids came to you and

asked you that question? It depends upon which child and which age. Because I have five kids ages three to 12, and the truth of scripture would not change from one child to another, but the language I would use and the way I would interface with them would be different for the three-year-old, the five-year-old, the 12-year-old, et cetera. I think we can be, I just think we want to be sensitive to the age dynamics there in terms of how we unfold a biblical view. Now, I would teach them about the debate. Okay, I would talk. I don't want them to go through their whole life and never learn about this discussion and then suddenly hear about it later on. So I'd want to talk them through where Christians are disagreeing on these topics. And then I would just invite

them to study the scripture with me. I actually do have a lot of theological conversations like this with my kids, especially around the bedtime routine as I'm putting them to bed and we talk theology. Sometimes they're trying to prolong bedtime. Exactly. but I'll still go there and we'll talk. And so one thing I've found helpful is to invite them into the study of scripture and try to model for them, hey, dad doesn't have all the answers, but let's study the scripture. And here's what I'm doing. I'm looking to what God has revealed about this.

And then what I'm trying to do is model this sense of discipleship in our theology. That to be a theologian doesn't mean I'm sort of dictating the shots based on my intuitions and my feelings, but I'm looking to the scripture and I'm seeking to follow and submit to what God has revealed best I can. I want to model that to my kids. And then we talk through the arguments and I'll try to, of course, shepherd them along that process as we work through text by text. I love that. I think that's a great model what you're doing for your family. We can do in the larger body of Christ and the church family.

But we'll come back to that. For me, one thing I would do is, and again, it does depend upon the age. my kids are a little older, 13, 18, 21. But the first thing I would not do is show any fear. I wouldn't show any disgust. I wouldn't show any anger. I would not show that I'm threatened by this. In fact, if anything, I try to show that I love that my kids are asking theological,

biblical questions, I would invite it from my kids. One of the things we see from kids leaving the faith is not questions and doubts, but when they have unexpressed questions and doubt. So creating a culture in our immediate families, and I would argue the larger church, where we're not threatened by questions and we invite questions, I think can help limit the deconstruction slash deconversion story we've heard so frequently from people who have questions that were really shut down. Then I would ask back.

One thing my kids will learn is I often ask, when I'm asked a question, I ask a question back. So I would say, why, that's a really interesting question. I will tell you what I think. But why do you ask that question? I want to know the story behind why, you know, again, a six-year-old is going to be different than a 12-year-old versus a 21-year-old. Why is that question bothering you right now?

Is it a debate you saw online? Are you troubled by loved ones? Is it emotional? Is intellectual? Like, what's driving this? I want the story beneath the story. And then I'd probably third say, tell me what your view is. Again, I'll give you my two cents.

But if you had to articulate what you think about this, what you say. And then finally, I'd say, let's go to the Bible. Let's have this conversation. And then we would jump into the text. That's how I would navigate this. And like you, I've had many of these conversations with my kids. And one thing that's been lost here is that I haven't heard many people say, good for Kirk Cameron, for having the kind of relationship with his son.

that as his son is older, he wants to come with him and ask him questions. He wants to discuss theology with him. Kirk has clearly done something right in his family to have that kind of dialogue. And to me, that's vital and lost amidst some of the craziness of how people have responded. Now, that said, we're not going to do so much a deep dive on this, but I love your take on three questions. And I'm going to give my two cents. Is this question, this issue of, of conditionalism, annihilationism. Is it a heretical view? What's your take, Gavin?

Before I answered that, I just want to say one, adding on your answer to this last question, helped me think this through even a little more fully, because I love what you're saying of this non-fear-based response. I found this to be so helpful. Sometimes Christians, we feel on our heels when a question comes up. And I think this idea of calm curiosity to draw out the question. And then I just, the one thing I wanted to say is, I believe Christianity is intellectually robust, and it has answers to these difficult questions. And the doctrine of hell is very difficult, but there are strong defenses for why this is a rational thing to believe.

One of the emphases in Scripture is the justice of God. Hell is not an arbitrary torture chamber. hell is God's just response to unrepentant evil. And the reason it is so terrible is because God is so good. If God is the light, hell is the darkness. And so the reason there's a hell is because of the glory of God and the possibility of being banished from it. I just want to, so that's the other thing with my kids is I want to shepherd them toward the truth of the gospel with a non-fear-based response, commending the truth of Christ but without a sense of panic or fear. It's just something that was in my heart there is you. Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible Study KJV app by Salem Media makes it easy to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organized. Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Grow in your faith every

day. Search for King James Bible Study KJV and download the app today. Love it. Well, so well said. Now to your question about heresy, I'll lay out my thoughts here and welcome any pushback from you. I would give three appeals for why I don't see it as heretical. By heresy, what I, the way I use this term is as a first rank issue that separates Christian orthodoxy from that which is outside of Christianity. And we have to have some category for that because Christianity is a definite, specific, religion, it's not just this amorphous entity that can be a shapeshifter. So there's boundaries about what Christianity is and isn't. But of course, the key here is not putting every doctrinal disagreement on that fault line, because there's lots of in-house debates and even second and third rank. I find Christians are often very black and white, all or nothing, in thinking about things. So it's either heresy or it's unimportant. And I wrote a book, Finding the Right Hills to Die on,

trying to lay out a schema or a spectrum of different rankings because some doctrines can be very important but not heretical. You can be a genuine believer, even if we say this really matters about who's right and who's wrong. But the three appeals I would give would be scripture, church history, and then a pragmatic appeal. Say them each in one sentence here. Biblically, I think this is a legitimate issue of the interpretation of scripture, not one side rejected the authority of scripture. Second, church history-wise, I think there's precedent for both sides

in the history of the church. We've mentioned that before. And third, pragmatically, this is not something that requires division in terms of its practical consequence in church life. It's not like church government where you kind of just have to decide something

one way or another, just for unity in the way the church is going. it's not going to be something that is as obviously showing up in the actual day by day, Sunday by Sunday worship of a church. You know, it's a little bit more. Yeah. I don't want to say it's theoretical, but it's just not as consequential at the street level. And if I could say one more sentence on the biblical issue there, while some Christians will,

especially if they're not familiar with the discussion, say, well, obviously it's not a legitimate issue of interpreting the Bible. The Bible is so clear about eternal punishment, I would love to encourage them to wrestle with the best arguments from the other side, to understand this is more complicated, and to wrestle with verses like Jude 7, which uses the language of eternal punishment for a historical judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah and says, Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the fire of eternal punishment. So the language of eternal punishment can be used for the consequence of a judgment not necessarily the punishment itself ongoing. And that's just one example of the kind of issue we need to be careful about.

That's great. I went back and listened to a number of voices on this just to see where other people were landing, people like Wes Huff, Greg Kokel, Calvinist scholar, James White, and none of them placed it in a first-tier issue that if somebody embraces annihilationism, they are outside the fold of the faith. James White distinctly said, I don't think Stott went to hell or F.F. Bruce. And I agree with him.

And so that, it should not be a first-tier issue, such as the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, salvation by faith alone, that Jesus was human and divine, of course. It's not a first-tier issue on that level. James White also said something really interesting. This is my words, but I think it's a point he was making. He says, there's no other issue for which people hold the traditional view so firmly without justification.

In other words, people hold this view so passionately and yet haven't really thought through and wrestled with why they hold it. And some of this might be we don't preach on hell a ton. we don't walk through these passages and make the case because it's so widely held the standard view within the church so it's not explained. But I think about my own life, Gavin, and I have not done as much of a deep dive on this as I have some other issues as well. And so I try to hold my level of confidence for this based on the study that I've done. And so I love your pushback to say we got to go to the text. It's not a first, tier issue. This is something one of my colleagues, Eric Tonnis, wrote about in theology. He put a piece

that's in ESV study Bible, and there's like certain first tier core essentials that if you compromise those, you were talking about a different faith. Not another denomination, literally a different faith. And that's not what's at stake here when it comes to annihilation. I view it not perfectly, but a little bit more like debates over origin, for example. So, Biola, we hold to ECT, Eternal Conscious Torment at Talbot specifically, but we don't think people who are annihilists are necessarily heretics. We just disagree with that and don't hold that as a part of our doctrinal commitments. Well, the same is true with creation.

We do not teach or accept evolutionary creation within, Talbot School of Theology, we're not convinced biblically or scientifically. But we don't think that people who embrace that are necessarily heretics outside of the fold. The key issue at stake is, will God judge, are the unborn damned? That's kind of at stake with the issue of annihilationism, although the details of how he does so are important. When it comes to creation, the core issue is, Is God the creator? The secondary question, which is important, is how did God create? Now, by saying that, does that make annihilationism, therefore not that significant?

And I think both you and I would say, no, time out. A lot matters. It's important, like you said, for the character of God, how we understand the scriptures. And honestly, I would argue, I was talking with an atheist recently who was like, I don't fear death at all. because I didn't exist before I came along and had no suffering, and so I won't exist afterwards. I thought, well, that's interesting. Could you make the same kind of argument against annihilationism? I don't fear God or his judgment as much because I didn't exist before. Of course, there's responses to that, but my only point is to agree with you. It's not an essential

doctrine that divides whether you're following Jesus or not, but that doesn't make it unimportant and not worthy of thinking about. Anything you agree, disagree, challenge about that? I'd love to hear. Feel free to disagree. No, I think we're both saying this isn't a first-rank issue. And from a personal standpoint, my heart kind of goes out to Kirk Cameron in the situation he's in where there's a lot of reactivity on the internet that shapes how these conversations

play out where, frankly, I don't think. Now, I will say, I think a lot of the responses are saying. saying, you know, Kirk is still our brother, but here's why we disagree. So you do see that a lot. But there's also a lot of charging of heresy. And even beyond that, I would say just a kind of reactivity that doesn't seem to practice in my response video, I called it intellectual hospitality, which is one way of trying to get at this idea of really courting an idea, listening, welcoming the idea and listening to the best arguments and then responding thoughtfully. I think, and this is true of all sides in all directions and so many issues, the internet increases an impulsive reaction.

And it sometimes even rewards impulsive reactions. And one of my biggest concerns in this conversation is that we practice charity and thoughtfulness in how we conduct disagreements as followers of Christ. That is not soft. That is not compromise. That is a matter of following the character of Christ to be good listeners. James says to be slow to speak and quick to listen. The internet really has incentives against that. And so I just think in this conversation, the fact that it's not a first-rank issue means we're talking as fellow Christians that we're going to be in heaven together. And therefore, there needs to be charity in our hearts for the people on the other side. And charity means really listening to their argument. And I'm concerned sometimes

on this issue, there's not enough careful listening to the exegetical appeals that are being made in the theological arguments as well. I totally agree. Now, there's a reason why I didn't do an initial response video to this. And one reason is I'm not the response guy. I'm not always doing response videos. But second, I want to think about it. I want to see the conversation. It's okay viewers and listeners to sometimes say, you know what, I need to think on this. You need to get some advice on this. I need to brew on this. There's a whole lot of wisdom in pausing and not just reacting quickly. We'll come back to some of that. But I'm really curious if you think this is an indication. of a slippery slope. I mean, this is less about Kirk Cameron in particular, but if somebody adopts annihilationism, should there be concern of a slippery slope? This would be an area where I think it'd be wise to have exactly that careful listening, what you described of relating to your children of drawing out, you know, tell me where this question comes from. Let me hear more. I think those kinds of questions would be necessary before we could have any idea in any particular case,

there's something as a slippery slope. So in other words, I would say not necessarily. I think it can be if someone is saying, if we understand their reasoning and they're basically saying, well, I kind of admit the Bible teaches this, but I just am uncomfortable with that and it doesn't seem right to me. That is more concerning. But in other cases, I think there are our legitimate brothers and sisters in Christ who are wrestling with the text of Scripture. And because I'm not God, I'm not going to judge their motives, but from everything I can tell, they are sincere in their efforts to follow the scripture. That's my honest opinion. And it's taken me a while of studying this issue to come to really appreciate how they're looking at some of these texts. I have some great annihilationist

friends, and I'm listening to them, and I'm asking them, tell me more of how do you read Revelation 20? Tell me about this. And I'm trying to, and as I listen to them, I think they're being good faith. I don't think there's an effort to throw off the authority of the Bible. I think, this is a legitimate exegedical disagreement. And therefore, I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope in the way that it is when we start to reject the authority of Scripture. So the way you worded is exactly where I would put. It's not necessarily an indication of a slippery slope. It could be. There's often stories of people that I know who have deconstructed and deconverted their faith and started by questioning a traditional view of hell. That was one of the

open doors that led to it. So it can be, but is it necessarily the answers, no, it wasn't for Stott. It's not for other annihilationist friends of mine as well. So I think we can err on the side of going, ah, slippery slope, rejecting the Bible. This is going to completely follow this trajectory of deconstruction. Well, not necessarily. But I think also we ought to have our ears perked and just say, what's the story behind this? What's motivating this, either biblically or emotionally or practically? Let's get to the story behind the story. And in some sense, to me, more than anything else, it's just a reminder to always be biblically vigilant. Always assess everything that said. We see this in the scriptures over and over again. Make sure our teaching is sound. Make sure the Bible is our authority.

And so I'm certainly not going to accuse Kirk Cameron to being on a slippery slope. I would not say that for a number of reasons. But I do think we should always be theologically vigilant, go back to the text. And this is a reminder of the importance to do that for all of us. My last question for you is moving forward, what do you think we can best do? What do we learn from this? How do we best move forward on this topic and others? in the church. And inevitably, this isn't the last time hell is going to come up, and it's

certainly not the last time another controversial doctrine will come up. This is one of the main concerns on my heart in relation to this episode and something I addressed in my video response. And that is, I think we would do well to give a lot of thought to how our discourse is taking place in the body of Christ, especially through the influence of the internet and even more specifically through social media. And I won't try to label this or use exact words that could narrow it down too much. But I'll just say something seems unhealthy about much Christian discourse on the Internet. And it's not just because if I were to say, well, it's the reactivity or it's the lack of charity, that would limit it too much.

There's a lot of things involved. And I don't even understand them all. I just know that the culture we are creating in the way we disagree with one another seems to me to fall short of what the New Testament calls us toward in so many cases. There's some great counter examples. I'm so thankful for your channel. There's other great Christian YouTubers. There's other great Christians on social media who are doing such great work. So I'm not saying it's always this way.

But there's a lot of unhealthy discourse. And if we were to go through the New Testament and look at all the verses about how we are to talk to each other in the body of Christ. I mean, there's one thing that is absolutely crystal clear in the New Testament, and that Christians are to show love to other Christians and to all people as well. But there's this particular kind of love we have for those for whom Jesus shed his blood. And I would just love to encourage us to think about what does that look like when we have a disagreement? How do we show love amidst disagreement? That's not compromise. That's not softness.

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right from the app. Feel God's presence. and every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. Funny to the truth of the gospel. What if there's somebody out there watching this? And they're really not sure what they believe

and they're really wrestling with this. But they see us talking to each other in a way that they say, wow, that feels like a healthy way of disagreeing. That feels like genuine love without any slackening of conviction. But nonetheless, the presence of love and respect in our discourse.

That itself is a part of how I think we bear testimony to the truth of the gospel. So I see that as a first order issue that we show love for others. And so, of course, we're fall short and not do that perfectly. But I would just, to your question of how, where do we go forward, I would love to see more careful engagement with the arguments, continued wrestling with the issue, continued, I'm not trying to shut down disagreement, continued arguments for the truth,

but more attention to love in discourse and more attention to the overall culture we're shaping in the way we talk to each other because the internet is a very complicated thing and it's affecting us in ways we need to pay very careful attention to. I love it. Really, really well said. I agree with everything. And I love that you said the way you respond is a first order issue because they will know us by our love.

And of course, love means speaking truth. boldly and sometimes it means having a prophetic voice calling out heresy boldly, but this is clearly not the time given what we've talked about and others have as well. I'd say a few things. I just tell people, I say, don't be afraid of questions. I'm a professor and I'm, and I try to teach my students and my kids how to think. I think sometimes we're afraid of questions because of our own insecurities. I think that's sometimes controversies like this. reveal what lack of theological depth that we have, because we tend to be more fear-based and threatened when we don't know what we believe and why we believe it. So don't be afraid of

questions. Invite questions in, make scripture our guide when it's all said and done, not emotions. And this is a whole separate conversation we could have, but part of what I think the appeal of annihilationism is, is the horror of eternal conscious torment and just thinking about our loved ones there is it gives me chills. Greg Cocolat Stan Reason this week he's like on his commentary was like, I don't like the doctrine of hell. And I agree with that 100 percent. I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't prefer it. But am I going to fit the scriptures into what I prefer or am I going to shift my emotions to what the scriptures teach. And I'm preaching to myself more than anybody else here, but that would be my

encouragement moving forward. Make scripture our guide. And the question is, what did Jesus teach? He's the only one who was sinless, who had clarity about the world and God and the scriptures. What did he teach? So don't be afraid of questions. Make scripture our guide. Fourth, slow down and act. Don't react. Give it some time. Process it. thing I would say, and yeah, but I want you to comment on this, I would say, I think annihilationists carry a certain level of burden of proof here. If I don't, if I haven't studied a certain doctrine, I'm going to say, you know what, probably if the church has had large unanimity on this, there's a whole lot of thinkers over the centuries who've thought about this. I better have good

reasons to reject. And I know this is your criteria of church history. I would say there's a certain level of burden of proof on annihilationists. I don't want to raise it so high that it's impossible, but if we're going to go with a small minority of scholars, they better make the case pretty solid to me. Agree or disagree with that. I agree and one or two sentences on that to say, as I think about this, I am looking at the scripture. I'm aware I'm going to give an account to the Lord for my teaching one day. Amen. And so I don't think I could stay. I'm before the Lord and say, there's Revelation 20, there's Revelation 14, but I taught this, this. For me, that's where it boils down. I couldn't do that. And so that's where this sense of

submitting to the scriptures, but also the scriptures as interpreted by the majority of the tradition, seems like the wisest and most godly response that I can take to the issue. And like you say, I don't like hell either. It really troubles me, but I'm trying to submit to the truth. And I think that's a rational thing to do because we believe the scriptures are trustworthy. Our Lord is trustworthy. He knows more than us. So, yeah, I think that sense of submission is something we need to think through.

I'm not saying a particular annihilationist is not also doing that. But I'm just saying that is how the tradition impresses itself upon my conscience. I love it. I'd ask one more question, people watching this. How many of you before you reacted took the time to watch his whole first video and his response video versus just reacting from a TikTok video or an Instagram reel or a comment somebody else made? If not, I think it might be reason to repent and reflect and go back.

Now, you might have been right in your reaction. I don't know. But let's not, let's just move away from reacting so quickly. without the context and giving a brother like Kirk the benefit of the doubt initially, whereas, of course, always taking those questions back to scripture. So, Kirk, if you happen to watch this, love you, grateful for you and your voice. I know you're bringing on scholars to talk about this. I will be watching very interested to see the kind of conversations that you host

and hope you'll bring on the best from all sides of this conversation. and walk people through how to follow it. I've never done a deep dive on hell on this channel. I had emails going back just a few weeks ago about doing an in-depth conversation in 2026 between annihilationist and someone who supports eternal conscious torment. So that's coming on my channel. But for now, Kirk, we will be eagerly waiting to see who you bring on

and hopefully, and I trust that you will. You can help us think this through biblically and land well. Check out Gavin Orton's book, Hills to Dian is excellent. His video, if you want to critique of annihilacism just to start his video on his YouTube channel is also excellent in that regard. Let me know here if these kind of response type videos, either myself or with somebody else, are helpful in light of an issue like this that drops culturally, takes a good amount of time to think through and respond. I want to do it if it's helpful to you. So please let me know. Make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of other

topics coming up you won't want to miss. That's for sure, including things like reincarnation, a deep dive critique on this. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we'd love to have you at Talba School Theology. There's information below. Gavin, appreciate you and this conversation. We'll do it again soon. Thanks, Sean. Great to be with you. Hey, friends. If you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet. And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review.

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