Hells' Bells....

I read "Love Wins" by Rob Bell yesterday at Borders. I had an evening event to talk about college planning at HACC-York, so I stopped in and read the book in the afternoon. I buy my share of books from Borders so I felt no guilt. Maybe I should have?

I just did not feel right purchasing a book that is heterodox. It is one thing to be non-Christian...at least the cards are on the table. It is another to claim a work is Christian, but then do sleight-of-hands theological tricks. I use that term deliberately and carefully.

Rob Bell essentially makes the argument that God cannot abide having human beings consigned to Hell/Lake of Fire for an eternity of suffering for sins committed while on earth AND be loving.

There are two key verses in the New Testament that expose Bell as a false teacher:

Rev. 21:8

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

Matt 25:41&46

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels....Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

If Jesus intended for there to be an understanding that redemption is plausible and probable on the other side of death, this would have been the time to mention it. That he does not...is death to Rob Bell's argument. It is heresy to add more (Rev. 22:18).

Although Rob Bell is not Satan, it is awfully demonic to ask the question did "God really say?" and then posit an addition to the words of God that negate the first sentence. There is a fearsome finality in Jesus's words. And we have to let them stand...whether we like them or not. The Kingdom of God is not a democracy. Jesus said that the road to destruction is broad and many go by it...that narrow is the way that leads to life. Hells Bells...

Daniel 12:2

Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.













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