Being the view shared by Jehovah's Witness's, Seventh Day Adventists and followers of the teachings of Victor Paul Wierwille (being myself) that the fate of the unsaved is to die and cease to exist while the fate of the saved is eternal life itself.
I will give the condensed arguement for my view bellow, chopped out of an anti-hell article I wrote once:
"
Hell does not exist as we underestand it. It is not a place of eternal torment.
How can I make this claim? First, know that in the Old Testament, the word “hell” is translated solely from the Hebrew word, “sheol,” which is also translated as “grave” and “pit” in the King James Version of the Bible. In the book of Genesis, Jacob expects that he will one day die and go to sheol (Genesis 37:35). In fact, in the book of Job, the title character desires to die and go to sheol, specifically to avoid his suffering (Job 14:13). Also know that when the New Testament quotes Hebrew scripture that contains “sheol,” it translates that as the Greek word, “hades,” from which many uses of “hell” in the New Testament are translated (Acts 2:25-28). “Hell” just refers to the state of death.
So, what is the fate of the unsaved? What is the “eternal fire” (Jude 1:7)? It is “consuming fire” (Hebrew 12:29). It is eternal death, utter destruction of the body and soul (Matthew 10:28). Consider Psalm 37:18-20: “The LORD knoweth 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. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.”
Consider similarly John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” When God said “perish” as opposed to “have everlasting life,” he actually did say “perish.” He did not say “should not have bad everlasting life, but have good everlasting life.”
Any torment would be in the initial process leading to their smoky second death and utter consumption by eternally burning fire (Revelation 14:11).
"
What's your view on this matter? Am I a heretic? Or onto a biblical truth that has been lost in wide-decimination of false doctrine and mistranslation?
I will just say that my arguement against Luke 16 right now is that it is a parable working within the framework of Pharosetic afterlife beliefs and that nowhere else in the bible is the afterlife every mentioned as a place of consciousness. It also mentioned that the dead are asleep John 11:11 and in 1 Corinthians 15 a bunch of times as well as Epesians 5:14 and 1 Thessalonians 4:14. Anyway, the "hell" in Luke 16 would refer to the afterlife for both the good and bad.
But yes, I do ascribe to the soul-sleep followed by immortality for the saved and literal second death for the unsecond death beliefs.Doesn't that make more sense? It was realizing that those beliefs were true and biblical that made me accept the word of God in the first place because I could never fathom the idea of hell, and it didn't make sense.