Is The Christian View of Hell Coherent?

In 1998, Dr William Lane Craig debated Professor Keith M. Parsons at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX. The topic of the debate was "Why I Am/Am Not a Christian." After the debate there was a lengthy exchange between the debaters lead by the moderator. The debate concluded with a question and answer period allowing both Dr Craig and Professor Parsons the opportunity to respond. 

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Is an Infinite Hell Unjust?

http://www.STRplace.org -- Isn't the infinite punishment of hell for a finite amount of sins an unjust punishment? Brett answers this week's STR Place challenge (http://strplace.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/challenge-an-infinite-hell-is-unjust/)­.

Does Hell Last Forever? (Matthew 25) John MacArthur

Then He will also say to those on His left, "Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been repared for the devil and his angels...And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:41; 46)

To the lost who will be gathered on His left the King will say, "Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels." Joining the unredeemable devil and his angels in the eternal fire of hell will be those human beings who refused to believe.

Jesus is speaking of eternal separation from God and from His goodness, righteousness, truth, joy, peace, and every other good thing. He is speaking of eternal association with the devil and his angels in the place of torment God prepared for them. He is speaking of eternal isolation, where there will be no fellowship, no consolation, and no encouragement. He is speaking of eternal duration and of eternal affliction, from which there will be no relief or respite.

Jesus uses the same word (aionios, eternal) to describe salvation and condemnation. If believers will be in heaven with God forever, the lost will be in hell with the devil forever.

Since the millennial kingdom will be worldwide, there will be no place on earth for the accursed to go. They will be slain on the spot and go immediately into the eternal punishment of hell, suffering permanent, everlasting crystallization of their state of spiritual death. At the end of the thousand years their bodies will be raised (cf. John 5:28--29), and they will again stand before God for final sentencing and final condemnation in bodies suited for hell's torments.

But the righteous will go away into eternal life, to spend all eternity glorified with their Lord and Savior. In marvelous contrast to the prospect of the accursed, at the end of the thousand-year earthly kingdom the righteous will discover that their eternal blessedness will only have begun.

You Are In Danger

This clip is taken from the sermon "Heaven and Hell," preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll at the Mars Hill Church Ballard campus in Seattle, Washington, on March 20th, 2011.

Hell is Made to Protect Us from the Devil and His Angels

This clip is taken from the sermon "Heaven and Hell," preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll at the Mars Hill Church Ballard campus in Seattle, Washington, on March 20th, 2011

Hell Is the Wrath of God in Effect

This clip is a special preview for the upcoming sermon, "Heaven and Hell," preached out of Luke 16:19--31,

Samuel Davies - Tomorrow Comes: And They are in Hell!

Samuel Davies Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list...

Samuel Davies - Tomorrow Comes: And They are in Hell!

Samuel Davies (November 3, 1723 -- February 4, 1761) was President of Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey.

Born to Baptist parents in New Castle County, Delaware, Davies received his early education under the tutelage of Rev. Samuel Blair at the academy he conducted in Faggs Manor, Londonderry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was ordained a Presbyterian by the New Castle presbytery in 1747.

At the request of religious dissenters in Hanover, Virginia, the newly ordained 23-year-old Presbyterian minister headed south to be the pastor of four congregations which had been licensed by the Colonial government in 1743. As the first non-Anglican minister licensed to preach in Virginia, Davies advanced the cause of religious and civil liberty in colonial Virginia. Davies's strong religious convictions led him to value the "freeborn mind" and the inalienable "liberty of conscience" that the established Anglican Church in Virginia often failed to respect in the days before independence. By appealing to British law and notions of British liberty, Davies agitated in an agreeable and effective manner for greater religious tolerance and laid the groundwork for the ultimate separation of church and state in Virginia that was consummated by the Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.

At the same time that Davies was starting his ministry in Virginia, six students began their studies in Elizabeth, N.J., at the College of New Jersey, which had been established in 1746 to educate "those of every Religious Denomination." In 1754 the trustees of the college persuaded Davies, whose work in Virginia had been favorably noted, to go to Great Britain to raise money for the fledgling school. The journey was at times harrowing, but Davies confided to his diary that "To be instrumental of laying a foundation of extensive benefit to mankind, not only in the present but in future generations, is a most animating prospect." In the end, Davies and a friend, Gilbert Tennent, spent eleven months in Great Britain and raised substantial support, enough to build Nassau Hall as the first permanent building on the new campus in Princeton.

After his return from Great Britain, Davies' prominence in Virginia grew during the French and Indian War as he implored men to do their part "to secure the inestimable blessings of liberty." Governor Dinwiddie declared Davies to be the best recruiter in the colony. Davies' rhetorical gifts were renowned. Patrick Henry, who as a child often heard Davies preach, told his biographer before his death that Samuel Davies had taught him what an orator should be.

Musicologists credit Davies with being the first American-born hymn writer, and his poetry was published in Williamsburg in 1752.

Davies also spent his time in Virginia pioneering the literacy of the colony's slave population, whom he felt were equally deserving of direct access to the word of God.

In 1759, four years after he had returned from his trip to Great Britain on behalf of the College of New Jersey, the trustees of the college called on Davies again -- this time to become the school's fourth president. Davies succeeded Jonathan Edwards, who died just six weeks after his inauguration. Unfortunately, Davies's term as president was also cut short when he died in 1761 at the age of 37. He was buried alongside his predecessor in Princeton Cemetery.

Despite his relatively short life, Davies accomplished much and lived the creed to which he exhorted the Princeton Class of 1760 in his baccalaureate address and which has been echoed by the presidents of Princeton throughout its history: "Whatever be your place, imbibe and cherish a public spirit. Serve your generation."

Why Does God Send People to Hell?

How can God be loving yet send people to hell? from A Passion for Life on Vimeo.


Don Carson answers the question: How can God be loving yet send people to hell? This video is great for a discussion in your small group or Bible study on evangelism, outreach or the sovereignty of God.

How can a God who is loving and good send anyone to hell?

Albert Mohler was asked how can a God who is loving and good send anyone to hell? Here is the video of that message.

The Echo and the Insufficiency of Hell

You can now listen to John Piper's first message at Resolved.

He spoke about hell, beginning with 5 things we need to believe about it:

1. It is eternal
2. It involves the suffering of those who are there.
3. It is conscious suffering.
4. God inflicts this suffering.
5. It is righteous.

Then he explained how hell is an echo of God's glory. And finally he made clear that no one can be saved simply by not wanting to go to hell.

There's no manuscript for this message, but you can read the sermon series that this message was based on. It includes much of the same content, including most of the quotes he used.

Visions of Hell

John Piper @ http://www.desiringgod.org reflected on the sobering theme of Heaven and Hell in relation to his talk at Resolved 08. He contrasted Clark Pinnock and Dorothy Sayers.

Clark Pinnock, a Canadian theologian who has moved far from his evangelical roots, wrote:

I was led to question the traditional belief in everlasting conscious torment because of moral revulsion and broader theological considerations, not first of all on scriptural grounds. It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life.... It’s time for evangelicals to come out and say that the biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of hell is annihilation, not everlasting torment. (Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical/Liberal Dialogue, 226-7)

Dorothy Sayers, who died in 1957, speaks a wise and faithful antidote to this kind of abandonment of truth.

There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms.” ...

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not “mediaeval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it.... It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ. (A Matter of Eternity, 86)

Talk About Hell... It's the Loving Thing to Do

Tony Miano @ http://thelawmanchronicles.blogspot.com recounts a discipleship session with a group of men in his church. As part of the discipleship, they are reading "Holiness," by J. C. Ryle. He notes: "This wonderful book, written 130 years ago, is biblical and it is applicable to today's Christian. The book, although not intended to be, is prophetic. It is prophetic in that much of what Ryle writes about the Church of his time is characteristic of today's Church, many times over."Holiness" is a must read for every Christian. In the chapter titled "A Woman to be Remembered," which is about Lot's wife, Ryle writes the following":

"God knows that I never speak of hell without pain and sorrow. I would gladly offer the salvation of the gospel to the very chief of sinners. I would willingly say to the vilest and most profligate of mankind on his deathbead, 'Repent and believe on Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.' But God forbid that I should ever keep back from mortal man that Scripture reveals a hell as well as heaven, and that the gospel teaches that men may be lost as well as saved. The watchman who keeps silence, when he sees fire, is guilty of gross neglect; the doctor who tells us we are getting well when we are dying, is a false friend, and the minister who keeps back hell from his people in his sermons is neither a faithful nor a charitable man.

"Where is the charity of keeping back any portion of God's truth? He is the kindest friend who tells me the whole extent of my danger. Where is the use of hiding the future from the impenitent and the ungodly? Surely it is like helping the devil, if we do not tell them plainly that, 'The soul that sinneth shall surely die.' Who knows but the wretched carelessness of many baptized persons arises from this, that might be converted, if ministers would urge them more faithfully to flee from the wrath to come? Verily, I fear we are many of us guilty in this matter; there is a morbid tenderness among us which is not the tenderness of Christ. We have spoken of mercy, but not of judgment; we have preached many sermons about heaven, but few about hell; we have been carried away by the wretched fear of being thought 'low, vulgar and fanatical'. We have forgotten that He who judgeth us is the Lord, and that the man who teaches the same doctrine that Christ taught cannot be wrong" (pp. 171-172).

Tony concludes: "Let me stated it plainly. Those who read this blog and who practice what is commonly referred to as "friendship evangelism" (which, according to how it is most commonly practiced is a contradiction of terms), and who find it unnecessary and even offensive to talk to lost people about God's wrath, judgment and the reality of hell are neither a friend nor an evangelist to sinners bound for the very place about which they are afraid to speak. If this is you, then you are merely one among the throng of professing Christians who, in the end, care more about what the lost think of you than where the lost will spend eternity. In the end, you care more about the personal benefits you derive from your friendship with the lost than you do about your lost friend. In the end, friendship evangelism is about you and not your lost friend".

The Gritty Reality of Hell

Gary Thomas @ www.boundless.org reviews the reality of Heal. He addresses:

Ancient Views of Hell

"The English word "hell" is most often used to translate the Old Testament Hebrew word Sheol, which is also often translated as grave, and the New Testament [Greek] words hades and gehenna. Sheol designates a place of darkness and decay where the dead go after they die. In the Hebrew worldview of the Old Testament, judgments were reserved primarily for this world, so Sheol doesn't really speak to either punishment or reward as much as it simply describes a place where both the ungodly and the godly go, without distinction".

Jesus: The Teacher of Hell

It's primarily from Jesus' words in the New Testament that we've developed most of our notions about hell today, moving us more toward the sense of Gehenna than Hades.

Jesus describes hell as:

• a place of severe judgment, so painful that a person would prefer to lose a bodily part here on earth than have his whole body thrown into such a painful place (Matt. 5:29-30).
  
• There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 22:13).
  
• a place where (quoting from Isaiah) "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48).
  
• In the famous "Sheep and Goats" parable, Jesus describes the fate of those who go to Gehenna as "eternal punishment" (Matt. 25:46). In the midst of this punishment, there is also separation from the presence of Christ (Matt. 7:23).
• there will be degrees of punishment, just as in heaven there will be degrees of reward (Mark 12:40, Luke 12:47-48).

The Early Church and Hell

What Does All This Mean?

The Unbearable Weight of Hell

By Tim Challies @ http://www.challies.com

Just thinking seriously about hell presses on my soul and presses upon my heart.

I find it difficult to think about hell. Though I know that hell is real and that God means for us to know at least something about it, I find it hard to read about it and to ponder it. I’m sure I’m not alone here. Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven has over 300,000 copies in print and there are another 200,000 Heaven-related products in print with it. I’m quite sure that he would have sold fewer than 3,000 had the book been titled Hell. Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven has sold millions of copies and has been on the New York Times list of bestsellers for months now where Bill Wiese’s 23 Minutes in Hell has not. We would far rather ponder heaven than hell. And for good reason, obviously.

It seems to me that a knowledge of heaven and of hell is innate in human nature. God has so wired us that we know there is life beyond the here and now. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart” Every religion acknowledges something beyond, something outside of ourselves. There is something to come. But far more people acknowledge heaven than hell. While the majority of people believe there is a heaven and believe they will be there, very few believe in hell. Even fewer believe they will ever be in hell.

Even if people deny the innate knowledge of heaven and hell, our experience in this world it is harder to deny the experience of this world. John Blanchard says, quite brilliantly, “The judgments of God fall often enough in this world to let us know that God judges, but seldom enough to let us know that there must be a judgment to come.” We see God’s judgments in this world often enough to know that God does judge sin and that He is provoked against evil. Yet the scarcity of judgment shows us that there must be more. If God is a judge He must judge all sin, not just some sin. And so we know that more judgment is coming. It must come.

I recent received Edward Donnelly’s aptly-titled Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell. The first half of the book discusses hell in all its fiery horror; the second part turns to heaven with all its beautiful glory. The first half is difficult to read and weighs heavily on the soul; the second is like a sip of cool water on a hot day. The first terrifies; the second elevates. Donnelly is not given to hyperbole or imagination. He does not present a fictionalized vision of hell that owes more to horror movies or medieval art and imaginings than to the Bible. Rather, he simply relates what the Bible tells us, both explicitly and implicitly, about this awful place. He does so under four alliterated headings: Absolute Poverty, Agonizing Pain, Angry Presence and Appalling Prospect.

The absolute poverty of hell is in its separation from God. All that people love and appreciate and enjoy in this life will be stripped away, not for a time but forever. Even all that makes you who you are will be destroyed. “You, as a being, will become ever more degraded, more contemptible, more lonely… Everything good in you will be taken away, and everything bad in you let loose. All your evil passions will burn, increasing and consuming you until you become utterly foul… Nothing good, nothing worthwhile, a horrible monotonous dreariness, unenlivened by a single ray of light as you fester and stew in your loathsomeness. This is what will happen to you.”

The agonizing pain of hell is the utter agony that will be in that place. “The undying worm is something foul, endlessly gnawing at hell’s inhabitants, eating at them continually, giving them no rest. This probably refers to conscience.” Imagine an eternity of a violated but re-sensitized conscience continually attacking, accusing and destroying. There will be weeping—an eternity of pouring out intense grief and anguish and intolerable misery. And there will be gnashing of teeth, perhaps a rage or insanity that will beset those in hell, and for good reason. And, of course, there will be unimaginable physical pain such that people will no doubt cry out for even the worst pain they knew in this life.

The angry presence is the presence not of Satan or of his minions, but of God. Many have been deluded into thinking that Satan will own and control hell, but the reality is that God’s is present in hell as much as He is in heaven. People in hell will spend an eternity in the presence of God, but in the presence of His just wrath against sin. “Here is the ultimate horror of hell; not the absolute poverty, not even the agonizing pain but the angry presence of God.”

And the appalling prospect is that all of this will never end. We all know the words of Amazing Grace where we sing “When we’ve been there ten thousand years / bright shining as the sun / we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise / than when we’ve first begun.” Just as those in heaven will be no further from the end when ten thousand years have elapsed, the same is true of people in hell. We cannot fully imagine eternity and thus cannot fully imagine what it would be like to suffer forever and ever and ever, age after endless age. Our minds cannot conceive; and I’m grateful for that limitation. At the end of this article I’ve excerpted some words of Jonathan Edwards that are worth reading.

Little wonder, based on these four points, that I find the subject almost unbearably weighty. Just thinking seriously about it presses on my soul and presses upon my heart. I would far rather think about heaven and about the reward that awaits there for those who know and love the Lord. But it is good and healthy to think about hell. It would not be healthy to think about it too much or to have a long and deep-seating fascination with it, but because God has revealed to us that there is such a place and because He has seen fit to give us a glimpse of it, it does us good to pay attention. Resources are few. We must, of course, turn to the Bible, the source of all we know about hell. But if we look further we will be surprised at how little there is. Books about heaven outnumber those about hell by a wide margin. Donnelly’s is a good one—short, accessible and biblical. Though it shares utter horror, it also shares hope. Though it describes the ultimate fate of those who refuse Christ, it shares the hope that they might turn to Him before it is too late.

I hate hell. I hate that it exists and hate that it needs to exist. I’m amazed to realize that, when we are heaven, we will praise God for it and that we will glorify Him for creating such a place and for sending the unjust there. But for now I am too filled with pride, too filled with sin to even begin to justly and rightly rejoice in the existence of such a place of torment. I cannot rejoice in such a place and do not gloat that even the wickedest of men with perish there. It is just too awful, too weighty. And I know that I deserve to be there.

---

This comes from the pen of Jonathan Edwards. To me this is probably the weightiest of all the horrors of hell—considering that it will never end, never ease, never cease. It will continue for all eternity with no hope for reprieve.

Consider what it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever: to suffer it day and night from one year to another, from one age to another, and from one thousand ages to another (and so adding age to age, and thousands to thousands), in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth - with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, [and] with your bodies and every member full of racking torture; without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him; without any possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, or help, or change for the better.

Consider how dreadful despair will be in such torment. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them. To have no hope: when you shall wish that you might be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned into a toad or a serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would rejoice if you might but have any relief; after you shall have endured these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it. After you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars, in your dolorous groans and lamentations, without rest day and night, or one minute’s ease, yet you shall have no hope of ever being delivered. After you shall have worn a thousand more such ages, you shall have no hope, but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to the end of your torments. But that still there are the same groans, the same shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you, and that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up forever and ever.

The more the damned in hell think of the eternity of their torments, the more amazing will it appear to them. And alas, they will not be able to keep it out of their minds! Their tortures will not divert them from it, but will fix their attention to it. O how dreadful will eternity appear to them after they shall have been thinking on it for ages together, and shall have so long an experience of their torments! The damned in hell will have two infinites perpetually to amaze them, and swallow them up: one is an infinite God, whose wrath they will bear, and in whom they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable enemy. The other is the infinite duration of their torment.

Oh, Sorry You’re in Hell

Posted by Dan Edelen @http://ceruleansanctum.com/

I don't know when the modern Church in the West abandoned talking about hell, but I do know that nothing's been right since.

If what we preach in the Protestant Church accurately reflects reality, people are damned from the second they draw their first breath. We talk about eternal life starting when a person comes to Christ, but eternal damnation starts a lot earlier.

Yet do any of us live with that truth in mind?

I remember a conversation I had a Seventh Day Adventist about the reality of hell. Adventists ascribe to annihilationism, meaning the unsaved cease to exist at their deaths. In other words, hell isn't real. One of my arguments against that viewpoint comes from the following:

"There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house– for I have five brothers–so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"
—Luke 16:19-31 ESV

The Adventist immediately shot back that this was a parable and could not be taken literally. However, Jesus never uses illustrations in His parables that have no basis in reality. Every element in His parables is true to life.

Hell is a real place. So is the lake of fire. (I can quote you all the Scriptures, but you can find a good sampling here, here, here, and here .)

But even as I write this (or you read it), little of the reality of the place sinks in, does it? We've made hell a kind of mystical plane of existence where only the truly abominable wind up. It's not for anyone in our family, or for our neighbor, or for the guy who empties our trash, or for the call center woman in Bangalore. It's always for someone else.

Though "Denial isn't a river in Egypt" is a mantra in the skewed world of pop-psychotherapy, too many of us Christians in America are in that same denial over the eternal futures of people around us. We go about our days as if no one will ever roast in a lake of fire for all eternity.

Too graphic. Too disturbing. Too in your face.

Leonard Ravenhill wrote in Why Revival Tarries (p.32):

Charlie Peace was a criminal. Laws of God or man curbed him not. Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death. On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk. Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses. The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading. "The Consolations of Religion," was the replay. Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell. Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase with a tremor? Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, "You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings"? All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached. Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon:

"Sir," addressing the preacher, "if I believed what you and the church of God say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!

How can it be that a condemned criminal who probably did not know Christ can be more concerned about people going into eternal torment than you or I? How many of us would scramble across the length of this country, torn to shreds by the shards of glass beneath us, to save one soul?

John Knox beseeched God: "Great God, give me Scotland, or I die!" Yet my own heart reveals little of that same concern to prefer my own death over the damnation of even one soul. And I know my heart is not the only one bereft of that evangelistic fire.

I don't think we have a lot of time left. I'm no prophet or eschatology guru, but I can't escape the Holy Spirit saying that we've got to start living like we really believe the Lord. That belief means we'll do whatever it takes to ensure that no one ends up in hell. Maybe we better stop wasting time comparing iPod prices online.

Where is our zeal for evangelizing the lost? Why are we so dead to the reality that people we know are cruising toward an eternity filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth?

Hell is a real place. Time for us to start living like we believe it.

To Hell with Hell

By Mark Driscoll

On a recent Dateline show, one of those guys with a strong jaw and good hair did a very interesting story on hell.

Curiously, most Americans believe in hell according to the report, which said, “A Harris poll of our attitudes conducted a few years ago found that 94 percent of American adults believe in God, 89 percent in heaven and 73 percent in hell.”

But here’s the hook, nobody thinks they are going to hell because hell is for the other evil people like terrorists and relief pitchers who give up a lot of walks. The report said, “Fully three-quarters of survey participants felt pretty sure they will be going to heaven when they die, while just 2 percent expected they would wind up in hell.”

The story then transitions to talk about Pentecostal pastor, Carlton Pearson. You may have seen him on the Trinity Broadcast Network wearing purple like Grimace of Happy Meal fame.

He began preaching at fifteen, was ordained at eighteen, and attended Oral Roberts University. He grew a church to 6,000 and even got to hang out with President Bush, whom he helped support in the 2000 election.

Everything seemed to be going well, until I guess you could say all hell broke loose. The following is a portion of the interview where he explains what he saw on television and how who he thinks was God (and possibly a demon) spoke to him:

Pearson: And you saw these African people—mostly women and children walking slowly back trying to come home. There was no light or life in their eyes. It was a horrible thing for me to see. Swollen bellies and skeletal bodies, emaciated... and then the babies looking at the mom and the mama looking out in space. It was sad. And I’m sitting there with my little fat-cheeked baby and my plateful of food, watching my big screen TV. A man of God, a preacher of the Gospel, an Evangelist, and I’m looking at those people assuming that they’re probably Muslim and going to Hell. “’Cause God wouldn’t do that to Christians,” I’m thinking...

Morrison: They deserve hell.

Pearson: They deserved hell.

And then, right at that moment, Carlton had his revelation.

Pearson: And I said, “God I don’t know how you’re gonna call yourself a loving God and allow those people to suffer so much and then just suck them into hell.” And I believe it was the Spirit of God in me saying, “Is that what you think we’re doing?”

Morrison: You heard this voice.

Pearson: Yes, sir. And I said, “That’s what I’ve been taught.”

He talked back, he says, at that voice in his head.

Pearson: “God, I can’t I can’t save the whole world.” And that’s when I heard that voice say, “Precisely. That’s what we did. And if you’d tell them that they are redeemed, you wouldn’t create those kinds of problems. Can’t you see they’re already in Hell?”

Clear as a bell, says Carlton, he heard god telling him to preach this new message that hell is a place in life, and that after death, everybody is redeemed. Everybody.

Pearson: I immediately started thinking about my grandparents. “Well, maybe they’re not in Hell. Maybe if they’re already saved, if the cross and Christ and all that stuff really happened and is really spiritual—which I believe it is—then—if He came to save the world, then the world is saved unless he’s a failure.”

This was powerful stuff. Though dangerous too.

Morrison: You mean Hitler’s in heaven?

Pearson: You think Hitler’s more powerful than the blood of Jesus? I mean, I got a hell to put a lot of people in. I’d sent Hitler and every slave trader straight to hell and a few deacons in my church if you wanna know the truth—I’d send people to hell, but I’m not God. He’s the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not ours only, but the sins of the whole world.

Then Carlton started preaching what he’d come to call “The Gospel of Inclusion.” He told his big congregation that Hell doesn’t exist in the way the church has taught and that all people will eventually be reunited with god.

So how did his universalistic theology go over? Not well. Pearson was essentially denounced as a heretic and his church shrunk from 6,000 to maybe a few hundred. The money dried up and their building had to be sold. He ended up preaching to a small remnant on Sunday afternoons in a room borrowed from an Episcopalian church.

In reading the various interviews with Pearson, he seems to be a decent enough guy who means well. The obvious problem is that he is disagreeing with Jesus, who spoke of hell more than anyone in the entire Bible.

Sadly, he ended up with false doctrine because he was apparently led astray by a demon who spoke to him. He failed to obey the command in 1 John 4:1 that says, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (emphasis added). By failing to test the voices speaking to him, a man who had given his life to doing ministry and building a church was ruined in a day because of a lack of discernment. It’s a sobering lesson for every Christian leader, who James says will be judged more strictly than the average Christian, that we must let God be God and beware of the Serpent who loves to whisper, “Did God really say?”

Infinity, eternal punishment and the cross

Chris Tilling has initiated a debate on hell. Amongst other things, he questions whether hell need be understood as the infinite, eternal punishment of the wicked. See Here & Here for the posts and to follow the discussion.

Jonathan Edwards taught the eternal, conscious punishment of the wicked on this basis:
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God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory; and therefore he is infinitely honourable. He is infinitely exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in heaven; and therefore he is infinitely more honourable than they. His authority over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience is infinitely strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed himself, and we have an absolute, universal, and infinite dependence upon him.

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So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.- Nothing is more agreeable to the common sense of mankind, than that sins committed against any one, must be proportionably heinous to the dignity of the being offended and abused; as it is also agreeable to the word of God, I Samuel 2:25. "If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him;" (i.e. shall judge him, and inflict a finite punishment, such as finite judges can inflict;) "but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?" This was the aggravation of sin that made Joseph afraid of it. Genesis 39:9. "How shall I commit this great wickedness, and sin against God?" This was the aggravation of David's sin, in comparison of which he esteemed all others as nothing, because they were infinitely exceeded by it. Psalm 51:4. "Against thee, thee only have I sinned."-The eternity of the punishment of ungodly men renders it infinite: and it renders it no more than infinite; and therefore renders no more than proportionable to the heinousness of what they are guilty of.

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See Here for full text of Edwards on The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.

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If sin does not deserve infinte and eternal punishment, why did the Son of God have to become flesh in order to atone for sin? Only he as an infinite Person could propitiate God's holy wrath aganist our sin. John Owen reflects on the infinite value and sufficiency of the death of Christ in the following quote:

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The first thing that we shall lay down is concerning the dignity, worth, preciousness, and infinite value of the blood and death of Jesus Christ. The maintaining and declaring of this is doubtless especially to be considered; and every opinion that doth but seemingly clash against it is exceedingly prejudiced, at least deservedly suspected, yea, presently to be rejected by Christians, if upon search it be found to do so really and indeed, as that which is injurious and derogatory to the merit and honour of Jesus Christ. The Scripture, also, to this purpose is exceeding full and frequent in setting forth the excellency and dignity of his death and sacrifice, calling his blood, by reason of the unity of his person, “God’s own blood,” Acts xx. 28; exalting it infinitely above all other sacrifices, as having for its principle “the eternal Spirit,” and being itself “without spot,” Heb. ix. 14; transcendently more precious than silver, or gold, or corruptible things,1 Pet i:8; able to give justification from all things, from which by the law men could not be justified, Acts xiii. 28.

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Now, such as was the sacrifice and offering of Christ in itself, such was it intended by his Father it should be. It was, then, the purpose and intention of God that his Son should offer a sacrifice of infinite worth, value, and dignity, sufficient in itself for the redeeming of all and every man, if it had pleased the Lord to employ it to that purpose; yea, and of other worlds also, if the Lord should freely make them, and would redeem them. Sufficient we say, then, was the sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of the whole world, and for the expiation of all the sins of all and every man in the world. This sufficiency of his sacrifice hath a twofold rise:— First, The dignity of the person that did offer and was offered. Secondly, The greatness of the pain he endured, by which he was able to bear, and did undergo, the whole curse of the law and wrath of God due to sin. And this sets out the innate, real, true worth and value of the blood-shedding of Jesus Christ.

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See Here for full text of Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.