Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #211 - Kirk Cameron Doubles Down on Conditionalism — Why He Rejects ECT

Transcript

#211 - Kirk Cameron Doubles Down on Conditionalism — Why He Rejects ECT · Brandon Fogal Evolution

• 0:00
  Kirk Cameron, he has doubled down on his viewpoint of hell, which is conditionalism.
• 0:06
  He posted another video on YouTube titled, Was I Wrong About Hell?
• 0:10
  And he came out and said, basically, he doubled down on conditionalism.
• 0:15
  But at the end, he gave a very strong reminder that he has not made any pronouncements,
• 0:20
  and he's very open-minded as well at this time.
• 0:23
  So we're going to look at a couple of different clips of him and what his basically
• 0:27
  elucidating his own viewpoint of how he sees hell for the unrepentant unbeliever,
• 0:34
  what happens to them. It's very interesting.
• 0:36
  When an unrepentant person who doesn't turn to Jesus dies, what does the Bible
• 0:41
  actually say happens to them?
• 0:43
  Are they preserved forever and kept alive by God in a place of endless conscious
• 0:47
  torment, suffering forever, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth with no end?
• 0:53
  Or is the judgment that scripture describes something different?
• 0:56
  Is it still real, still just, still severe, but culminating in what the Bible
• 1:02
  calls death, destruction, or the second death, which is the lake of fire. What would your answer?
• 1:08
  Okay. He's saying like, if his son came to him and asked him,
• 1:11
  what are your viewpoints on hell?
• 1:13
  And he gives us a straight, straightforward answer.
• 1:16
  And he, he poses it to us. What would we say? And this is something we really need to reflect on.
• 1:21
  I know most people that are unbelievers, they are not Christians.
• 1:24
  This isn't going to be interesting to them at all. And it's not even something
• 1:28
  they're going to contemplate because they're not thinking about this.
• 1:31
  But for Christians, it is a real question.
• 1:34
  How urgent should we be about getting out there and sharing the message of Jesus?
• 1:40
  Should it just be so that we can give them a better end, a better result of
• 1:43
  their life, that they're going to go to heaven, they get to spend eternity with
• 1:47
  God, eternity with God, which is amazing?
• 1:49
  Or is it also to escape something extremely severe?
• 1:53
  And I don't want to downplay what Kirk is saying. I have my viewpoints.
• 1:57
  I want to continue a little bit further.
• 1:58
  I'm going to read to you what conditionalism is, And then we're going to look
• 2:01
  at how he explains it and how he has arrived at this position.
• 2:05
  First of all, conditionalism is also called annihilationism,
• 2:09
  is a Christian belief that immortality isn't inherent, but a gift from God granted
• 2:14
  only to believers through faith in Jesus for the unsaved.
• 2:17
  Hell is not eternal conscious torment, but rather a place where they face judgment
• 2:22
  and ultimately suffer a second irreversible death, ceasing to exist forever.
• 2:26
  All right, so he ended it with saying, or do they go to the lake of fire,
• 2:31
  which is that the final death, the final death that they pretty much that they cease to exist.
• 2:37
  They're annihilated. I would immediately throw this out there.
• 2:40
  I'm letting you know I'm quoting the Bible in Revelation. It says Revelation
• 2:43
  chapter 20, verse 10, talking about the devil and the false prophet.
• 2:47
  It says, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire
• 2:51
  and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented
• 2:56
  day and night, forever and ever.
• 2:59
  I'm saying that for the mere purpose of explaining they're thrown into the lake
• 3:05
  of fire, which is the second death, but it says where they're tormented forever and ever.
• 3:11
  So I would like to get more clarity.
• 3:13
  Does he believe that the false prophet, the beast, the antichrist,
• 3:18
  and the devil, will they be annihilated as well? Will they cease to exist as
• 3:23
  well? We're going to continue on just a little bit further.
• 3:25
  This is his explanation of conditionalism and what it is. Kind of what we read,
• 3:29
  but it's going to give from his side of the story how he sees it and how he's viewing it.
• 3:33
  Because I just wanted to have a good overall picture of how,
• 3:37
  Kirk has arrived at this, and what is he actually meaning when he's saying it?
• 3:42
  Conditionalism begins with a biblical claim about what human beings are. We're mortals.
• 3:48
  That means we are subject to death. It started in the Garden of Eden.
• 3:52
  According to scripture, human beings are not naturally immortal after the fall.
• 3:58
  God alone naturally possesses immortality.
• 4:02
  Eternal life is a gift, I believe, and it's something that God grants to those
• 4:09
  who are saved, the redeemed through Jesus Christ.
• 4:11
  He who believes in the Son shall not perish but have eternal life.
• 4:15
  Immortality is not something that all people automatically possess.
• 4:19
  And then from there, conditionalism clearly affirms this.
• 4:23
  Judgment is coming and it's real. God is just because he is holy.
• 4:29
  Sin is serious and accountability before God is unavoidable.
• 4:33
  It also affirms real punishment, including real conscious suffering.
• 4:39
  Where Christians are differing on their views of hell is not over whether or
• 4:44
  not judgment happens, but over what scripture says is the final outcome of that judgment.
• 4:48
  Conditionalism holds that those who finally reject God and die will be judged
• 4:53
  according to their deeds,
• 4:55
  in full justice, and then eventually cast into what the scripture calls the
• 5:01
  lake of fire, also known as the second death.
• 5:04
  All right, so right there. But we know that going into the lake of fire,
• 5:07
  This is, I mean, this is not something to be like light about,
• 5:10
  and I don't want to come into this light, but I want to, from a,
• 5:13
  I want, I want to basically talk about it from an every man perspective because
• 5:17
  I'm, I'm not sitting or standing in a pulpit. I'm not preaching to anyone.
• 5:22
  I want it just to be that I am really trying to understand what this is because,
• 5:27
  but if he says the lake of fire, that they're thrown into that,
• 5:29
  which we see from revelation, the lake of fire, they are tormented day and night forever and ever.
• 5:37
  So it's not like it's just, it's the smoke just rises forever and ever,
• 5:43
  but they're being tormented day and night forever and ever.
• 5:45
  I don't know if he's going to make a distinction between the false prophet,
• 5:49
  the Antichrist, and the devil, and then just the regular everybody out there,
• 5:53
  everybody born into this world.
• 5:56
  And we're going to land on, and then I'm also going to take a look at what Wes
• 6:00
  Huff had to say about this, because this was very interesting.
• 6:02
  I take Kirk Cameron, what he says, really serious. I think he's,
• 6:05
  he's been nothing but amazing for Christianity. He's one of the few.
• 6:09
  Paul said, not many, not many are called of this status.
• 6:14
  Kirk Cameron is not, is one of the not many, like,
• 6:18
  Because he is one of those that had influence. He had awesome,
• 6:21
  amazing influence in this world. And he stepped away from Hollywood,
• 6:25
  that infrastructure. And he came into Christianity.
• 6:28
  He became a Christian and said, I'm not going to do those things that are out
• 6:31
  there that bring shame to the name of Christ.
• 6:35
  I'm not going to do scenes with women that tarnish my witness for Christ.
• 6:40
  And he put his neck out of line and he walked away from an illustrious career
• 6:44
  that he could have had. And he's also had, he's had an incredible career since then.
• 6:48
  So it's turned out for the good, but it wasn't guaranteed that that was going to happen.
• 6:52
  It wasn't guaranteed that that was going to happen. So he's one of the,
• 6:55
  not the many that came out of that, having a high status in this society and
• 7:00
  just turned it for Christ. And he's done nothing but good for Christ.
• 7:04
  Wes Huff is a person that has weighed in on what Kirk has said,
• 7:07
  and it's very enlightening.
• 7:09
  We're going to look at this after this next clip where Kirk is going to describe.
• 7:12
  He's not drawn lines. He's not making pronouncements. He's not developing a
• 7:17
  new creed for Christianity.
• 7:19
  He's just, I think, which is awesome about this, even though I disagree with him.
• 7:24
  I believe in ECT, eternal conscious torment.
• 7:28
  I believe in that. I believe that that's what the Bible explains.
• 7:31
  I do like that he is bringing this because it's definitely getting a lot of
• 7:35
  attention from people that wouldn't be attentive to any of this kind of stuff.
• 7:40
  And it's maybe making them think, even though I think he's coming to a wrong
• 7:43
  conclusion, he's still not, he said, he's not making dogmatic statements about
• 7:47
  this. And we can see this in this next clip.
• 7:49
  It deepens. I also want to be clear about this. I have not made final pronouncements.
• 7:54
  I have not issued declarations or drawn hard lines. what I've done is acknowledge
• 7:59
  uncertainty and invite careful, prayerful study.
• 8:03
  Because scripture deserves that kind of attention. But when honest questions,
• 8:08
  your questions, my questions, our children's questions, are met with public
• 8:12
  shaming, the church should pause.
• 8:15
  When certain questions may not be asked, scripture quietly becomes secondary
• 8:20
  to tradition. And that should concern every believer. All right.
• 8:25
  And he's going to explain what he's going to do from there, which is it's very admirable.
• 8:29
  He's going to start doing a more of an in-depth discussion about this.
• 8:33
  And he's going to bring a lot of people in not to debate, not to just get a
• 8:37
  big taglines, awesome clips.
• 8:40
  You know, I got you on that and point to chapter and verse. I got you on this
• 8:43
  one. Got you on this one. No, he's going to just a thoughtful conversation.
• 8:47
  A thoughtful exercise in Christian scholars coming together and discussing these matters.
• 8:53
  Actually, before I bounce out of that, I want to look at one more thing,
• 8:57
  because I wanted to look at the Wes Huff tweet, what he put out there.
• 9:00
  This is what Wes Huff said regarding this. When all this kind of stuff hit the
• 9:04
  fan that he put out last week, Wes says, with Kirk Cameron announcing his position
• 9:09
  on conditionalism, I'm seeing a lot of people attempting to critique it.
• 9:13
  I hold to ECT, which is eternal conscious torment,
• 9:17
  but I do understand the topic of conditional immortality and have yet to see
• 9:22
  anyone actually give a rebuttal that shows me they've interacted with the arguments
• 9:26
  and biblical reasoning from the other side.
• 9:28
  To condemn conditionalism slash annihilationism as heresy is to say that John
• 9:34
  Stott, Edward Fudge, F.F.
• 9:36
  Bruce, potentially even Athanasius of Alexandria
• 9:39
  are all heretics this is with
• 9:42
  all due respect ridiculous while the position might be unorthodox it is not
• 9:47
  heresy if you actually want to interact with someone who knows the topic reach
• 9:51
  out to my friends at date chris and or at dan patterson both are solid fair-minded
• 9:58
  well-educated and articulate holders of conditionalism.
• 10:02
  This is nice that it's being brought up.
• 10:04
  And we're actually, these are another one. And I don't know if I'm saying that
• 10:08
  right, but not one of the many.
• 10:10
  He's like, Wes Huff is another person, a Christian that's out there that has, he has gravita.
• 10:17
  He has authority on the matter. He has respect from everyone.
• 10:21
  He went on Joe Rogan's podcast to millions of subscribers and followers and
• 10:27
  listeners and proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, defended the faith,
• 10:31
  which was once for all delivered to the saints.
• 10:33
  And he's done it. And he has so much respect from just regular people, big names out there.
• 10:40
  Westhoff is pretty much the guy that people go to if they want maybe a solid
• 10:44
  answer and apologetic on something that...
• 10:48
  Christianity stands for or disagrees with, something that's in the main arena
• 10:53
  that people are talking about.
• 10:54
  Wes Huff, he's authoritative and he's got the credentials.
• 10:58
  So him saying this and weighing in on this and saying, it is not heresy.
• 11:03
  It's not heresy what Kirk Cameron is saying.
• 11:05
  There's been a long line of biblical scholars throughout church history and
• 11:09
  the main consensus is that it is eternal conscious torment,
• 11:13
  which if we start nitpicking across this
• 11:16
  like what's to say that eternal life lasts forever
• 11:19
  well i mean because i mean it's the same word
• 11:22
  being used that's where i i'm there but i i
• 11:25
  am not a person that just i'm i'm digging my my feet
• 11:28
  in to the ground and i'm not moving one way or the other i'm definitely open
• 11:31
  just like kirk is and he's raising he's saying where he's at right now he's
• 11:36
  saying where he's at right now whether you agree with it or not and it's gotten
• 11:40
  a huge backlash and people like starting to question him I'm not questioning Kirk Cameron.
• 11:46
  He's saying what like what a lot of people would honestly believe.
• 11:50
  And I said this in my last video that I talked about this, that I would almost
• 11:54
  it's where I would honestly want to believe.
• 11:58
  But I don't I don't want that to come across because obviously God knows better.
• 12:03
  And when we try to bring things down to our level, it makes it seem like that
• 12:08
  we don't see the seriousness of our predicament.
• 12:12
  We don't see the gravity of what we live in and how we are living and the punishment,
• 12:18
  the weight of what our sin deserves.
• 12:20
  I know this is not popular and it's not something that anybody wants to hear about, but the.
• 12:26
  Jesus made it clear, like, if you have anger towards someone,
• 12:30
  you deserve to go into hell.
• 12:33
  Anger, which is, he says, is murder in your heart towards someone. That deserves Gehenna.
• 12:39
  That deserves for someone to be thrown into there.
• 12:42
  One sin is deserving of that. And it's like, I think we just lose track of,
• 12:47
  because we can't see God. We're just living in this world and we can't see it.
• 12:52
  We can't see anything that is further than two feet in front of us.
• 12:56
  You know, because there's a veil that is over all of our eyes.
• 13:00
  We don't see the amazing grandeur of God.
• 13:03
  We look at this universe and it's huge. We look up at the sky.
• 13:06
  It goes on for infinitum. It goes on forever and ever.
• 13:10
  And it's like, wow, you think that that, this is a creation of a creator who made this.
• 13:17
  And to think that we are just in front of his face because we are always before his face.
• 13:23
  We're always standing before his face and we're slapping God in the face with
• 13:26
  every sin that we commit, because we commit sin.
• 13:29
  I'm going to go today and I'm going to do something that is not perfect in God's
• 13:34
  eyes, that is not doing everything with love towards God, you know,
• 13:37
  that is basically fundamentally just sin.
• 13:40
  And I don't see the being, this eternal being that is right there giving me
• 13:46
  every breath I have, that I'm just slapping him in the face,
• 13:50
  spitting in his face, and what Jesus had to go to the cross and die for.
• 13:53
  So I think talking about this, as you can see where I stand is.
• 13:57
  There was something cosmically significant when Jesus went to the cross, him dying on the cross.
• 14:03
  It wasn't just a man dying there, but it was the eternal God dying there.
• 14:10
  And that's why it was pain and eternal punishment. That's where I stand.
• 14:14
  I mean, I'm definitely not like, there's no way it can be anything different.
• 14:17
  I think we're all going to be clear once we get to heaven.
• 14:20
  Once we get, we stand before God, it's going to make sense. It's going to click.
• 14:23
  The things that are just foggy now and don't make sense now,
• 14:26
  they're going to click and make sense when we stand before him.
• 14:29
  But I think, I think Kurt Cameron is wrong about this.
• 14:32
  He's open about just discussing these things. He's not, he said he's not dug
• 14:36
  in, but he's, he's doubling down where he is at.
• 14:40
  And I'm doubling down where I'm at. I, I think ECT,
• 14:44
  eternal conscious torment is the biblical view, but God only knows,
• 14:48
  you know, but I think I don't want to call into question, which is called the
• 14:53
  perspicuity of scripture, that the Bible is clear.
• 14:56
  Everything in the word of God is clear. The things that make things darkened
• 15:01
  in our eyes is it's our own sinfulness.
• 15:04
  God is clear, but we don't see it perfectly. We don't understand it perfectly
• 15:08
  because we have sin in our own eyes.
• 15:10
  We don't see things as they really are.
• 15:12
  But I think this is good. And I hope Kirk Cameron keeps talking about this because
• 15:17
  it's bringing attention from people that wouldn't hear about this at all.
• 15:21
  And like I said, But unbelievers, people that don't believe in Christ or any
• 15:25
  of this stuff, it's fallen on deaf ears anyways.
• 15:28
  They don't care about it. They don't matter. It doesn't make sense.
• 15:31
  Like, I'm not concerned about the God of Muslims and Allah, the God of Muslims,
• 15:37
  or all these other gods that are out there.
• 15:39
  I'm not concerned about that. Well, they could—.
• 15:42
  Muslims could say that Allah will send you to eternal punishment or whatever.
• 15:46
  I'm not concerned about that God. It's not the same God. It's not the true and living God.
• 15:50
  So I get why unbelievers would feel this way because this is just noise to them.
• 15:56
  It doesn't matter. But I think it's the realest thing in the world.
• 16:00
  And once you trust in Christ and your eyes are opened, you start seeing things
• 16:04
  for the way they really are.
• 16:05
  All right. I'll get off my soapbox and describing this because you have your
• 16:10
  own opinions where you stand.
• 16:12
  But I think tune into this, lean into this, and maybe let's try to grow together.
• 16:18
  Let's try to iron sharpening iron as we go along.
• 16:22
  All right, we'll leave it at that. Follow me on X and Instagram at Brandon Fogle. Have a great day.