There is a view espoused by many individuals within Christian circles who don't believe in the ongoing reality of hell neither it's eternal punishment. That view is called Annihilationism. Here is a working definition of this view:
Annihilationism ~"A Christian doctrine that sinners are destroyed rather than tormented forever in "hell" or the lake of fire. It is directly related to the doctrine of conditional immortality, the idea that a human soul is not immortal unless it is given eternal life. Annihilationism asserts that God will eventually destroy or annihilate the wicked, leaving only the righteous to live on in immortality. Some annihilationists believe the wicked will be punished for their sins in the lake of fire before being annihilated, others that hell is a false doctrine of pagan origin."
Now, in my previous post, Does The Bible Teach A Literal Hell, we addressed the fact that hell is taught throughout the bible and that hell is a literal and not merely figurative place. In fact hell as is taught throughout scripture is a place of ongoing conscious reality and one of torment.
However under the annihilationist construct, there is an emotional appeal to a western sense of morality and guilt based righteousness. Hell either does not exist as a literal place or abode, or is a temporary place of punishment described with figurative terminology specifying extinction rather than an ongoing conscious reality of suffering. Scriptures such as Ecclesiastes 9:5, Ecclesiastes 9:10, which are used to claim that there is no consciousness or pain beyond death and Malachai 4:1, and Mt. 10:28, claiming that the destruction of the individual in hell is actually the extinction of the individual rather than eternal ongoing punishment.
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