The COGC categorically rejects the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment in hellfire. This is one of the denomination's most firmly held and distinctively maintained positions. Because the COGC holds that humans do not possess immortal souls, the very possibility of eternal conscious torment is denied: there is no immortal spirit that could be endlessly punished. The unsaved dead are raised for judgment, found unworthy, and then destroyed — they cease to exist permanently. This is the 'second death' (Revelation 20:14), understood as permanent cessation of existence.

The COGC regards the traditional hell doctrine as both biblically unfounded and morally incompatible with a just and loving God. A God who subjects human beings to endless, conscious agony for finite sins is, in the COGC's view, neither the God of the Bible nor a God worthy of worship. The destruction of the wicked — swift, complete, and final — is regarded as a just and merciful alternative: the wicked simply cease, rather than being preserved in suffering throughout eternity.

Biblical language about 'eternal fire' and 'everlasting punishment' is interpreted as referring to the eternal consequences of the judgment (permanent death from which there is no return) rather than to an eternally ongoing process of conscious torment. This conditionalist or annihilationist reading has deep roots in the Abrahamic Faith tradition out of which the COGC grew.