Conclusion – Why Coherence Matters

I began this essay by talking about energy leaning on energy – the frangibility of matter at the atomic level, and how God is the sustaining force holding all reality together.

We’ve come a long way from that starting point, through theology, exegesis, philosophy, and speculation.

But the thread connecting it all is the search for coherence.

Many Christians, I suggested early on, don’t have a coherent eschatology. They have labels, slogans, inherited frameworks that don’t quite fit together. When pressed on the details – where are the dead now? Why resurrection if souls are immortal? What’s the point of judgment if people are already experiencing their fate? – the answers become vague, contradictory, or non-existent.

This matters.

Not because getting eschatology “right” is a salvation issue. I’m not suggesting you need to believe in conditional immortality or amillennialism or instantaneous judgment to be saved. God’s grace is bigger than our theological precision.

But it matters because truth matters. Because Scripture matters. Because thinking clearly about God and his purposes matters.

An incoherent eschatology doesn’t just fail intellectually. It shapes how we understand God’s character, how we read Scripture, how we live in the present, and how we hope for the future.

If you believe in eternal conscious torment but can’t reconcile it with God’s love and justice, that creates cognitive dissonance. You end up either minimising the horror of ECT or questioning God’s goodness.

If you hold premillennialism but can’t explain the storage problem, you’re left with soul sleep (which contradicts immediate presence with Christ) or an intermediate state that makes resurrection redundant.

If you believe in an immortal soul but also bodily resurrection, you have to explain why we need bodies if souls can exist happily without them forever.

These aren’t just academic puzzles. They’re fractures in our understanding that, left unaddressed, undermine confidence in Scripture and create unnecessary obstacles to faith.

Coherence matters because God is truth, and truth coheres.

The framework I’ve presented isn’t perfect. I’ve been honest about what I don’t know, where I’m speculating, and which questions remain open.

But I believe it’s more coherent than the alternatives. It solves the storage problem. It makes sense of immediate post-death consciousness without making resurrection redundant. It honours both God’s justice (annihilating the wicked) and his love (not eternally tormenting them). It takes seriously the idea that God exists outside time and that heaven is where God dwells.

And it does all this while staying grounded in Scripture, reading texts according to their genre, and refusing to impose later philosophical categories onto the biblical witness.

Is it perfect? No. Will I continue refining it as I study and think? Absolutely. But it’s the most coherent framework I’ve been able to construct, and I’m offering it for your consideration.

The Future – Open Questions and Continued Dialogue

This essay isn’t the final word on eschatology – not even my final word on eschatology.

There are questions I’m still working through, texts I need to study more carefully, objections I haven’t fully addressed, and areas where further reflection might lead me to refine or even revise parts of this framework.

What I’m Still Exploring:

The nature of the resurrection body and the final state continues to challenge me. I’ve been appropriately humble about what we can’t know, but I want to continue pressing into what Scripture does reveal, particularly in passages like 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 3.

The mechanics of how the righteous dead relate to time, history, and angelic ministry are speculative. I’ve acknowledged that. But I’m curious whether further study might illuminate or eliminate some of those speculations.

The question of how judgment “works” for those who never heard the gospel – infants, the mentally disabled, those in unreached people groups – is something I haven’t addressed in this essay. It’s a significant pastoral and theological question that deserves careful treatment.

What I Hope This Essay Accomplishes:

I’m not trying to start a new eschatological movement or gather followers to “my position.”

I’m hoping to:

1. Demonstrate that coherence is possible – You don’t have to choose between intellectual honesty and biblical faithfulness. You can think systematically about eschatology without abandoning Scripture or retreating into mystery where clarity is available.
2. Show that the alternatives to ECT aren’t just Christadelphian heterodoxy – Conditional immortality can be held within orthodox Trinitarian Christianity. It doesn’t require anti-Trinitarianism or rejection of traditional Christology.
3. Encourage others to think carefully rather than accepting labels – Don’t just call yourself premil or amil or postmil because that’s what your denomination teaches. Actually work through the issues. Read Scripture. Think about the implications. Be willing to land somewhere that doesn’t fit neatly into existing categories.
4. Invite dialogue and critique – I’m putting this framework out there not because I think I’ve got it all figured out, but because I want thoughtful engagement. Where am I wrong? Where have I missed something? Where does Scripture contradict what I’ve argued? I want to know.

Why I’m Publishing This:

For years I’ve been working through these questions privately, in conversations with friends, in detailed study. But at some point, you have to put your ideas out there and see if they hold up under scrutiny.

My blog has a readership – not huge, but significant. People I think engage thoughtfully with what I write.

This essay is an invitation to that kind of engagement.

I’m not pretending to be a professional theologian or biblical scholar. I’m a practitioner – someone working in corporate compliance by day, studying theology part-time, and trying to think carefully about what Scripture teaches.

But I believe lay Christians can and should engage in serious theological reflection. We don’t have to leave all the thinking to professionals. We can read Scripture carefully, think systematically, and contribute to ongoing conversations about what the Bible teaches.

So, I’m putting this framework out there.

The Danger of Unexamined Eschatology

Most Christians inherit their eschatology rather than examining it.

You grow up in a premillennial church; you assume premillennialism is true. You attend a Reformed church, you adopt amillennialism without really thinking through why. You read a Left Behind book, and suddenly you’ve got a detailed end-times timeline that you’ve never actually tested against Scripture.

This is dangerous – not because getting eschatology wrong damns you, but because unexamined theology shapes how you read Scripture, understand God, and live your life.

The Interpretive Danger

If you’ve unconsciously adopted a premillennial framework, you’ll read passages like Revelation 20 as literal chronology rather than apocalyptic symbolism. You’ll impose a millennium onto texts that don’t mention it. You’ll split prophecies into multiple fulfilments to make them fit your timeline.

If you’ve accepted eternal conscious torment without examination, you’ll read “destruction” as metaphor, “perish” as something other than perishing, and “death” as ongoing existence. You’ll force texts to say things they don’t naturally say because you’ve already decided what they must mean.

Unexamined eschatology becomes a filter through which you read Scripture, rather than letting Scripture shape your eschatology.  Trust me, I know this too well.

The Theological Danger

Worse, unexamined eschatology can distort your understanding of God’s character.

If you hold ECT but haven’t really thought through the implications – billions of people consciously tormented forever by a God who is love – you create cognitive dissonance. Either you minimise the horror (“it’s not that bad”), or you suppress questions about God’s goodness, or you develop a truncated view of God’s love that only extends to the elect.

If you hold universalism without examining the biblical testimony to judgment’s finality, you end up with a sentimentalised God who never really says “no” to human rebellion, undermining the seriousness of sin and the urgency of the gospel.

Eschatology isn’t an abstract puzzle. It’s about who God is, what he’s doing in history, and where it’s all heading. Get it wrong – or rather, hold it unexamined – and you risk distorting your entire theology.

The Pastoral Danger

Unexamined eschatology also creates pastoral problems.

If you can’t explain to a grieving family member where their loved one is now, or why they need to wait for resurrection if they’re already “with the Lord,” or what judgment actually accomplishes – your eschatology isn’t serving the church.

If you tell people their unbaptised infant is in hell, or their Buddhist grandmother is being tortured right now by a loving God, and you haven’t actually worked through whether that’s what Scripture teaches – you’re causing unnecessary pain.

If you create anxiety about “the Rapture” or “missing the signs” or “the Antichrist” based on an unexamined dispensational framework, you’re distracting people from the actual hope of the gospel.

People need pastors and teachers who have thought carefully about eschatology, who can give coherent answers, who can comfort with truth rather than platitudes.

The Danger of Defaulting to Labels

The most insidious danger is thinking that adopting a label solves the problem.

“I’m amillennial” doesn’t mean you understand amillennialism or can defend it biblically. It just means you’ve picked a team.

“I believe in conditional immortality” doesn’t mean you’ve worked through the exegetical questions. It might just mean you’ve reacted against ECT without actually building a positive alternative.

Labels are useful shorthand. But they’re not substitutes for careful thinking.

I’ve tried in this essay to avoid simply defending a position because it’s “my team.” I’ve tried to show why I hold what I hold, what problems it solves, where Scripture leads me, and where I’m uncertain.

That’s what examined eschatology looks like. Not perfect certainty, but thoughtful engagement. Not tribal loyalty, but honest wrestling with Scripture.

The danger of unexamined eschatology is that it keeps you from that wrestling. It lets you coast on inherited frameworks, popular books, or what your tradition has always taught.

And in doing so, it keeps you from the richness, clarity, and hope that comes from actually understanding what God has revealed about the future.

Pastoral Implications

Eschatology isn’t just for academics. It has profound pastoral implications for how we comfort the grieving, counsel the dying, preach the gospel, and shape Christian hope.

The framework I’ve presented – if it’s true – changes how we approach some of the most significant pastoral moments in ministry.

Comforting the Grieving

When a believer dies, we can say with confidence: they are with the Lord right now. Not sleeping. Not waiting. Not in some holding pattern. Present with Christ, conscious, experiencing the joy of his presence.

From their perspective, death and resurrection are immediate. They stepped outside time into God’s eternal now. The funeral we’re attending, the grief we’re experiencing – they’ve already moved beyond it into glory.

This is genuine comfort. Not “they’re in a better place” as vague sentiment, but “they are with Christ, which is far better” as theological truth.

And we can say: they will be resurrected. This isn’t their final state. When Christ returns, they’ll receive glorified bodies. They’ll be complete – body and spirit reunited. The physical person we loved isn’t lost. They’ll be raised, transformed, made imperishable.

Counselling the Dying

For someone facing death, this framework offers clear hope without false promises.

You don’t have to fear a long period of soul sleep where you’re unconscious and unaware. You don’t have to worry about an intermediate state of purgatorial suffering. You don’t have to imagine yourself floating around as a disembodied spirit for thousands of years waiting for resurrection.

You can face death knowing: the moment you close your eyes here, you open them in Christ’s presence. Instantaneous. Immediate. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

And for the dying person who hasn’t trusted Christ? We can be honest about the stakes without resorting to horror stories about eternal torture.

The consequence of rejecting Christ is death – real, final death. Not endless suffering, but cessation. You won’t exist to experience regret or torment forever. You simply won’t exist.

That’s sobering. That’s serious. But it’s not the moral obscenity of a loving God inflicting infinite suffering for finite sins.

Preaching the Gospel

This framework changes how we preach the gospel.

The good news isn’t “believe in Jesus so you can avoid being tortured forever.” That’s evangelism by terror, and it distorts both the gospel and God’s character.

The good news is: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Perish vs. eternal life. Death vs. life. That’s the choice.

We can preach judgment without making God into a cosmic torturer. We can preach urgency without manipulation. We can preach hope without sentimentality.

And we can do it all grounded in Scripture, not in medieval images of hell or Dante’s imagination.

Shaping Christian Hope

Finally, this framework shapes what we’re hoping for.

We’re not hoping for escape from the physical world into some ethereal spiritual realm. That’s Gnostic escapism.

We’re not hoping for an eternal retirement community on a perfected earth. That’s too small, too earthbound.

We’re hoping for “God all in all” – for participation in divine life, for resurrection bodies suited for the new creation, for the consummation of all things when heaven and earth merge and we see God face to face.

That’s a hope worth living for. Worth dying for. Worth enduring suffering for.

And it’s grounded not in speculation or tradition, but in Scripture’s own testimony about where history is heading.

The Practical Difference

Does this framework change everything pastorally? No. Much of Christian pastoral care remains the same regardless of eschatological position.

We still comfort the grieving with God’s presence. We still counsel the dying to trust Christ. We still preach the gospel urgently. We still cultivate hope in God’s promises.

But details matter. Clarity matters. Truth matters.

A pastor who can explain coherently what happens at death, why resurrection matters, what judgment involves, and where it’s all heading is better equipped to minister than one who can only offer vague platitudes or inherited contradictions.

And a church that understands these things – that has a coherent eschatological hope – is better positioned to face suffering, death, and uncertainty with confidence in God’s good purposes.

Confidence and Humility

I’ve presented this framework with what I hope is appropriate confidence.

I believe the core elements are biblically sound, internally coherent, and superior to the alternatives. I’ve argued for them with conviction because I think they’re true.

But I also recognise the need for humility.

Where I’m Confident

I’m reasonably confident that:

• God exists outside time and space, and heaven is where God dwells
• Humans don’t possess inherent immortality; eternal life is God’s gift
• Eternal conscious torment is neither biblically warranted nor morally defensible
• Judgment occurs at death, not at some distant future event
• The righteous experience immediate presence with Christ
• The wicked are annihilated, not preserved in eternal suffering
• Amillennialism makes better sense of Scripture than premillennialism
• “God all in all” is the final telos toward which history moves

These aren’t tentative suggestions. These are convictions I’ve reached through sustained study, careful exegesis, and theological reflection.

Where I’m Tentative

But I’m tentative about:

• The exact nature of the intermediate state and how the righteous dead relate to time and history
• Whether the righteous dead function as angels or participate in angelic ministry
• The precise mechanics of resurrection and how body and spirit are reunited
• What the final state actually looks like beyond “God all in all”
• How to describe realities that transcend our four-dimensional experience

These are areas where Scripture gives us hints and glimpses, but not comprehensive explanation. I’ve offered thoughts, speculations, and possibilities – but I hold them loosely.

Why Both Are Necessary

Confidence without humility becomes arrogance. You stop listening. You stop learning. You assume you’ve got it all figured out and everyone else is wrong.

That’s dangerous.

But humility without confidence becomes wishy-washy uncertainty. You can’t say anything definite. Everything is “well, maybe, possibly, we can’t really know.” You become paralysed by the fear of being wrong.

That’s equally dangerous.

What Comes Next:

I’ll continue refining this. I’ll engage with responses and critiques. I’ll keep studying Scripture and reading theologians who disagree with me.

And I’ll hold it all loosely enough that if I’m convinced I’m wrong about something, I can change my mind.

The goal isn’t to defend a position at all costs. The goal is to understand what Scripture actually teaches about the hope we have in Christ.

So read this with a critical eye. Check the references. Test it against Scripture. Push back where you think I’m wrong.

Let’s reason together.

I began this essay talking about energy leaning on energy – about the frangibility of matter and the God who holds all things together. I’ve taken you on a long journey through theology, exegesis, and speculation about realities beyond our current comprehension. But it all comes back to this: God is faithful. His purposes are good. And whatever the final state looks like – however inadequate our current language and categories prove to be – it will be the fulfilment of everything he’s been working toward since before the foundation of the world. Death will be destroyed. Evil will be eliminated. The righteous will be raised and glorified. And God will be all in all. That’s the hope. That’s the goal. That’s where history is heading. Everything else – the frameworks, the systems, the careful distinctions – is our attempt to understand what God has graciously revealed about that future. I’ve offered mine. Engage with it. Test it. Refine it. Or reject it and build something better. But whatever you do, don’t settle for incoherent eschatology when coherence is possible, or for inherited assumptions when Scripture calls you to think more carefully. We serve a God of truth, and truth coheres. So let’s pursue it together, with confidence in what we can know and humility about what remains mystery, until the day when we see face to face and know even as we are known.