No problem. If Christ's death on the cross is anything to indicate what those who do not accept it shall suffer, then conditional immortality's view of hell makes all the more sense. Christ suffered a finite time and then died. He did not suffer infinitely, otherwise it only makes sense He Himself would be in hell right now still suffering the punishment in our place. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is "death", not "eternal conscious torment" or "spiritual death". We will die here on Earth, no doubt, but the second death we shall not be hurt of if we believe. Only in Christ can we have immortality, and it is indicated to be a gift to us via verses such as Romans 2:7 - there is nothing in the Bible that says we already have it in our souls such that death is only a conscious separation from God in which we still live forever in hell, just apart from God. Also, there is 1 Timothy 6:16, that says God alone hath immortality (or hath alone immortality? I think it has been translated as both), and so in any context, if man has
anything about him that is inherently immortal, then this verse makes no sense to me. Also, Christ's descriptions of Gehenna still say nothing of the people who will go there, whether they will last forever in that "eternal fire" or not. He just ascribes the word "eternal" to the fire, not the person, so unless these verses in the gospels about Gehenna were the only verses that ever spoke of the fate of those who will not believe, there is no good reason for me to believe this means man will also be eternal in that fire. If he did last forever in it, instead of being destroyed by it, then we wouldn't have a number of verses everywhere throughout the Bible that say these very things will happen to the unbeliever himself - destroyed, perish, be no more, wither away, and so on. And, I have heard it said by many that "eternal punishment" as mentioned by Christ in the gospels
has to be eternal conscious torment because it is no punishment at all if you just die and wither away as ash or something. But, contrary to what said people's personal view of God's justice should be, a death in which you can never return, where there is no hope of resurrection unto life again like we believers now have through Christ, is in fact a punishment and it
is eternally lasting (if the term "eternal" in Matthew 25:46 is in fact referring to the length that it will last, rather than eternal as in the quality of the One who initiates that punishment). Death was the very punishment God said would occur as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge in the very beginning of the Bible, in fact. He said "in the day you eat of it, you will die", not "in the day you eat of it, you will surely one day go to live forever in a place of perpetual torment, apart from me".
You ask what the point is of Christ's sacrifice if hell is not eternal conscious torment rather than a possible conscious punishment for a time and then annihilation/death, my dear Lioness, but to me the latter view matches what happened to Him on the cross a lot more closely, and I still honor Him for it. Let's say that universal reconciliation is the true view of hell, where God will eventually reconcile all to Him no matter what, and thus you chose to abandon your faith entirely and deny Christ (if that's even possible for a believer; I personally believe in the OSAS view, myself), because as a universalist you knew that your punishment in hell would last only for, say, as little as the number of years you lived on Earth (or substitute
any amount of time that is not infinite, really), before you were reconciled to God by His ultimate will for you and all other humans who ever lived. Would you choose to become an unbeliever and live a life here for evil instead, knowing that, Lioness? Would the temporary, correctional punishment in hell be worth going through for you? ... I think your answer would be no; that you would still believe here and now on Earth, and be grateful for Christ's sacrifice saving you from even that temporary unpleasant fate. To me, fear of what will happen to us otherwise as a natural consequence should not be our motivation for believing and following Jesus Christ
now.
Forgive me, Lioness. To me it seems my arguments for conditional immortality and rejecting eternal torment are often not very well written and I don't even get close to covering all I wanted to say, for some reason. But I should leave it at this for now despite this being the thread for random topics, out of respect for the others who may not want to hear about all this kind of stuff. I only meant to help Codyfaith possibly feel better about his questions before.
(But if you wish, Lioness, I would welcome speaking with you more through pm.)