The words of John 3:16 are known by even people who hardly memorize almost any specific phrases or passages of the Bible, even, in some cases, by people who are in no way adherents of Christianity. Many people have heard of how this verse states that a restored relationship with God enables a person to not "perish" because they receive eternal life, but the implications of this wording are often ignored even though the word perish and the phrase eternal life are rather clear as far as language goes (all language is arbitrary and a construct to be used as a speaker or writer intends, but it is more probable that the intended meaning has come through in some cases than in others). Read without assumptions, John 3:16 very clearly says that every person without eternal life will perish, and when perishing is contrasted with eternal life, the word would refer to nonexistence.
It is always possible that even the obvious can be overlooked by those who have yet to liberate themselves from assumptions. Moreover, things that are obvious, at least in hindsight, are not trivial just because they are obvious. It is obvious upon reading the Bible without letting traditions or social pressures interfere with one's analysis that most ideas credited to the Bible have little to nothing to do with what it actually says, and they usually misrepresent it very thoroughly. Annihilationism is like theonomy and egalitarianism, among many other philosophical stances, in that it is very plainly taught in the Bible even if most people pretend otherwise. It is not surprising in one sense to a rationalistic thinker that something as clear as John 3:16 is so widely assumed to be compatible with something it does not say (that all the wicked will suffer eternally), but it is a very fitting example of commonplace stupidity.
The various other verses that say the wicked will perish or come to an end are also usually misunderstood as much as John 3:16. While some passages explicitly use words like death to describe what will happen to the unsaved (like Ezekiel 18:4 or Romans 6:23), others speak of perishing, which no one would think suggests eternal conscious torment unless they had already assumed otherwise. This is how verses directly or indirectly pointing to annihilationism "hide." They are read without serious reflection and interpreted with assumptions as the starting point. This is the total inverse of how a rational person interprets a text: he or she will refuse to make assumptions, read the portion of the text in question, and see what the wording probabilistically suggests.
Merely following these steps would end a person's allegiance to the idea that a conscious eternity in hell is being described by terms like death, perish, and so on. That a verse as familiar to the masses as John 3:16 could "hide" support for annihilationism shows how little thought actually goes into textual analysis by proponents of eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings. After all, even verses that are not thought of as having a clarifying connection to the Biblical theology of hell either teach or support annihilationism. It is assumptions, and usually assumptions held to in the name of popular or subjectively respected traditions, that evangelicals tend to favor over reason and exegesis.
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