Book review: All You Want To Know About Hell

★★★★★

I really enjoyed this one. I asked for a review copy because I had previously devoured Steve Gregg’s Revelation: Four Views. This guy is an engrossing writer who gets right to the heart of the matter. While Gregg doesn’t entirely mask his own opinion, he does manage to fairly represent several alternative views with these books, and this time around he gives voice to the following opinions about hell:

1. Traditionalists, who stick with the common view of everlasting conscious torment.
2. Conditionalists, who argue for annihilation of the sinful. “The wages of sin is death.”
3. Restorationalists, who insist that hell is a place of rehabilitation. Everyone will eventually find their way to heaven.

Universalists, at least those who reason that for God to be victorious no one could find themselves in hell, are not strongly represented in the book. Hell is too real in scripture to dismiss.

It’s important to emphasize that all three views are solidly founded in scripture. Lots and lots of scriptural references are provided for each view, and all views have thoughtful, scholarly supporters.

We’d all like to know the ultimate truth about hell, but I just don’t think the scriptures are in total harmony in this matter. That’s where this study led me, though I doubt that’s where Gregg meant to lead. The more I study topics like this, the harder it is to believe in Biblical Inerrancy. I remain baffled as to why otherwise thoughtful Bible scholars rage against the obvious … that doctrinal differences in the Bible are a natural result of differing opinions among the Bible’s writers.

Nevertheless, this is a book to make you think, and to make you appreciate the richness of the Bible even as it examines the most frightening topic known to man.