Raise your hand if you like the biblical teaching on the existence of hell. My hand is not raised. No, I am not enamored with what the Bible teaches about hell. I take no joy knowing a person I care about may spend eternity in conscious torment, separated from God. I am not sadistic nor do I enjoy seeing people suffer.
In light of my dislike of this biblical teaching, I have two choices. I can accept what the Scriptures teach about hell or I can revise the doctrine until I feel comfortable with it and share my watered-down version with others to make them less comfortable as well.
Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Rob Bell, author of Love Wins. Bell, a competent writer, who has a way with words which he employs to weave a tapestry that makes his hearers feel warm and fuzzy about difficult biblical concepts, but his quilt is filled with broken threads and mismatched patterns.
In chapter 7 called, “The Good News Is Better Than That,” the pastor grapples with the questions, “Why would a compassionate God send good people to hell? Is He really a good God? Isn’t it unfair for a person to spend a brief life span of 70-80 years committing sins and then receiving an eternal punishment that lasts forever?
Bell asks good questions. I don’t like his answers.
Throughout his chapter “The Good News Is Better Than That,” Rob Bell leans strongly towards the view the hell the Bible warns us against is experienced during this life not the the afterlife. The conclusion about hell drawn by the writer of Love Wins, is that hell is our experience of life on earth. (more…)
Dec 6, 2011
Posted by Scripture Solutions on Dec 6, 2011 | Comments Off on Wondering What Happened at the Cross?
The wearing of the cross by celebrities and their imitators as seen in tattoos and jewelry has created too much of a familiarity with the instrument upon which Jesus died. In Pastor Rob Bell’s book Love Wins, his aim in chapter five is to sift through the familiarity of the cross and get to the truth about what took place when Jesus died. With this goal in mind, I am in complete agreement.
As Bell lists the various perspectives on the cross, once again the Love Wins author gravitates to a position of uncertainty. He wants to make the results of Jesus’ death an “either/or” situation. Once again Bell takes a giant leap from traditional Christianity and invents as emergent church godfather Brian McLaren calls, ” a new kind of Christianity.”
The Cross Speaks of the Sacrifice Jesus Made On Our Behalf
First, the author speaks of the death of Jesus by which the Messiah paid for our sins much like the sacrifices in the Old Testament (pg. 123). He quotes from Hebrews 9:26 which claims Jesus appeared “once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
Bell compares the sacrifice of Jesus to other cultures where worshippers offered sacrifices to appease the gods or forces in order to maintain a peaceful, favorable relationship with them. How odd! Jesus did not die to put an end to pagan sacrifices or simply to please a whimsical, vengeful. Yet Bell says, “Whole cultures centered around keeping the gods pleased. . . . And now the writer [of Hebrews] is announcing that those days are over because of Jesus dying on the cross” (pp.124-125).
The problem with Bell’s view of the substitutionary death of Christ is that he forgets Jesus was fulfilling and putting an end to the Jewish sacrificial system as described in the Torah books of Leviticus and Numbers. Jesus was not dying to appease the gods of the Greeks or Romans.
The Cross Signifies the Reconciliation Between God and Man
The next meaning of Jesus dying on the cross has to do with reconciliation . In Colossians 1:20 Paul taught, ” and through Him [Jesus] to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven”. Reconciliation, according to Bell, has to do with bringing two people together who were estranged and now they found a way to work it out and come back together in a new relationship. (pg. 125).
Here is where you have to watch the craftiness of Pastor Bell. He says on pg. 126 when Jesus died, He made peace “with all things.” You can bet your last dollar Bell will take those words to a place Paul had no intention for the phrase to go. The application of the reconciling work of Jesus to “all things” will be discussed further. (more…)
Nov 28, 2011
Posted by Scripture Solutions on Nov 28, 2011 | Comments Off on Jesus: Here, There and Everywhere
Where were you when you accepted Jesus as your Savior? I was in the Mojave desert under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs crying out for God to deliver me. Regardless of my experience, I refuse to tell others if they want to find Jesus, take several tabs of LSD, Mescaline and Psilocybin and He will appear to them. God forbid!
While I am aware Jesus comes to us in the strangest of places and circumstances, I am hesitant to say things like, “You can find Jesus in Hinduism, Buddhism or any religion that mentions the name of God or gods.” Quite the contrary, each encounter we experience when we find Christ needs consistency and fundamental aspects.
Different Ways People Come to Know Jesus
In Rob Bell’s book Love Wins, a work of exploratory theology, the pastor reports different experiences people had when they found Christ. One person was knocked off his chair and fell prostrate to the ground totally overwhelmed by God’s unconditional love for him (pg. 139). I encountered the same exact sense of God’s love for me in the Mojave desert. Yet as soon as I realized the depth of God’s unconditional grace, I repented of my sin before His holy presence. (more…)
Nov 21, 2011
Posted by Scripture Solutions on Nov 21, 2011 | Comments Off on Jesus is the Only Path to God; You Just Don’t Know It
There’s not a Christian alive who does not know the contents of John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
What is there not to understand about this verse? How much clearer can Jesus be about the fact men and women come to the Father through Him alone? Yes, it is an exclusive statement that excludes the validity of other religious figures (and their followers) like Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna and every other so-called deity or religion. John 14:6 is everything but inclusive.
Is Jesus actually a backdoor Redeemer?
Leave it to Rob Bell to find a loophole in what I call a “Christianity 101 Bible verse”. Bell says on page 154 of his widely read book Love Wins, “What He [Jesus] doesn’t say is how or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through Him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through Him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore is happening through him.”
When I think of all the off-the-wall theological comments Bell makes in Love Wins, this is the worst. Would Acts 4:12 make it clearer for Bell? “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
For Bell to claim Jesus doesn’t “even state that those coming to the Father through Him will even know they are coming exclusively through Him,” is heresy or just plain mental confusion. Is Bell saying a person who places his faith in Buddha is actually saved through Jesus; he just doesn’t know it. What about Satan worshippers? Where is this taught in the Bible? Are people who worshipped Molech or Baal in the ancient Canaanite culture actually worshippers of the God of Israel; they just didn’t know it. Why didn’t the God of Israel instruct Israel to enlighten the Canaanites instead of tearing down their altars and wiping them out? (more…)
Nov 8, 2011
Posted by Scripture Solutions on Nov 8, 2011 | Comments Off on Can’t God Do Anything Right?
In a recent post on the God’s Politics blog by Lynne Hybels, wife of mega church Willow Creek pastor, Bill Hybels, she asked, “What is an evangelical?” It’s a question that has graced the cover and inside pages of Christianity Today for several decades. I am not sure why we as Christians keep asking this same old question. Yet I predict if we keep making the same inquiry, eventually someone will come up with a new definition that will radically change the meaning of what it means to be an evangelical.
It was bound to happen.
Joining other theologians like Brian McLaren, author of “A New Kind of Christianity” (HarperOne, 2010), Pastor Rob Bell climbed aboard the bandwagon of redefining Christianity in his recent bestseller Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.
One area where Christianity is refined with these “progressive theologians” is the inclusivity of salvation, also known as universalism. Is God going to permit everyone to enter heaven regardless of their acceptance of Christ or do individuals need to ask Jesus into their lives to receive eternal life?
In chapter four Bell wonders, “Does God Get What God Wants?” In other words, if God desires everyone to experience salvation according to 1 Timothy 2:3-4, then everyone will be saved. Read the passage, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the [knowledge of the truth.
He starts off by explaining the sad plight of people who do not accept Christ as their Redeemer. No disagreement there.
Bell goes on to describe the doctrinal statement of several churches as found in their weekly bulletin or websites, in which the reader is told “he or she will suffer conscious, eternal torment in hell unless they accept Jesus” (pp. 95-86). Pastor Bell pokes fun at these congregations, “Welcome to Our Church!” Bell’s a real barrel of laughs about a matter that should not be ridiculed.
Yet on these same church websites, according to Bell, are “extensive affirmations of the goodness and greatness of God” (pg. 96). Bell sets up the reader when he conjectures, “That God is mighty, powerful, and ‘in control'” and that billions of people will spend forever apart from this God, who is their creator, even though it is written in the Bible that ‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2). (more…)
