The wicked do not exist forever in conscious punishment. After judgment they are destroyed and pass out of existence, because immortality is God's gift to the saved alone.
A heresy denies the Gospel or the God it reveals (Galatians 1:8).
Where It Began
A few early writers hinted at the destruction of the wicked, but the view did not take lasting shape until the Reformation era, when the Socinians denied the natural immortality of the soul and taught that the wicked would be annihilated.
In the nineteenth century, a movement often called conditional immortality argued that eternal life, and therefore eternal existence, is given only to those in Christ. Several new religious movements of that century made it official teaching, and in the late twentieth century a number of evangelical writers adopted it.
The People Involved
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Why This Is Dangerous
It shortens the punishment Christ called everlasting (Matthew 25:46) and so lowers the weight of sin and the judgment from which the Gospel saves. It tells the lost that their punishment will end in nonexistence, when Christ warned that it will not.