You Didn’t Really Mean That, Did You?- Answering the Hell Question, Wrap-Up

October 13, 2008

“He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” -Titus 1.9

I just wanted to thank all of you who have taken the time to read this series of posts on the question of “If God is loving/good, how can he send someone to hell?” As I mentioned in the posts, and as I have stated before in various comments (here and here), this doctrine of hell is one of the most contentious points for evangelical Christianity today. It is being attacked from all sides and as such we need to have a strong, well-formed, and biblical position on it.

To close us out I would like to post a sermon by JD Greear from The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, NC that he gave a few weeks ago dealing with this question. In it I think he does a great job of answering the objections as well as using the doctrine of hell to give way to the Gospel. Please take the time to listen to this and to begin formulating your own response for the next time this question is asked to you.

JD Greear- How Could a Loving God Send Someone to Hell?

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You Didn’t Really Mean That, Did You?- Answering the Hell Question, Part 2

October 10, 2008

(This is the second in a four part series of posts dealing with the age-old question “How can a loving God send someone to hell?” This answer was originally developed as a reply to an email I received. Today’s post deals with the objection “I don’t see how a loving God could send people to hell, therefore hell must not exist.”)

“They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” -2 Thessalonians 1.9

Now, let us first deal with the question of “Does hell exist?” The denial of hell is currently a very popular position, particularly among the emergent camp of Christianity and from people like Brian McLaren. In fact, I would argue that the doctrine of hell is one of the top issues that Christians need to be given sound instruction on these days in light of this trend. To deny the existence of hell is simply something that we cannot do and not, at the same time, deny the authority of Scripture, for Scripture speaks so plainly on it quite often (Matthew 5.29, 30, 10.28, 23.33, 25.41, Luke 12.5, 2 Thessalonians 1.5-9, 2 Peter 2.4, Revelation 20.11-15).

Of course, the objection which arises to this type of analysis is that when Christ and others spoke of “hell” as a place they were just being symbolic and therefore those passages are useless. But to that I would say, What is hell but being “away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1.9)? For us, though we may not realize it, the greatest gift is to be fully in the presence of God and the greatest torture is to be fully away from his presence. Thus, the first, wherever it may take place, is rightly termed ‘heaven,’ and the second, again, be it a literal fiery furnace with weeping and gnashing of teeth or not, would be rightly called ‘hell.’ This also takes away the argument that this current life is what hell is, since in this life on earth we know we are neither fully in God’s presence nor fully removed from it.

Therefore, our conclusion on the first question, Does hell exist?, must be “Yes,” and so, the one remaining question must be then “Does anyone get sent to hell (for eternity)?”

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Welcome Words from the 1600’s- Richard Baxter on Every Generation’s Battle

October 8, 2008

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” -2 Timothy 3.16

As I have written before, echoing the words of men like Al Mohler and John Piper, it is every generation’s battle to determine whether they will stand on the authority of Scripture or not. In light of this thought, I found it refreshing to see the call to arms for standing on God’s One Inspired Word, turning away the philosophies and ponderings of imperfect man, tucked inside of a classic work of Christian thought.

The piece I am talking about is Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor. I am about two-thirds of the way through this treatise right now and already I know that it will be a book I come back to for years as a guide on the pastoral ministry. Baxter speaks with such clarity and passion on the issues he sets out to deal with that it is hard to imagine him fitting the mold of the cliched stuffy-shirt Puritans.

In the close of his discourse on how ministers should exercise the oversight of their flocks (taken from Acts 20.28) Baxter says these words:

The Scripture sufficiency must be maintained, and nothing beyond it imposed on others; and if papists, or others, call to us for the standard and rule of our religion, it is the Bible that we must show them, rather than any confessions of churches, or writings of men.

This is such an incredible declaration. How often do we find Christians trying to define their faith by pointing to the current fad in Christian publishing (think Blue Like Jazz, Velvet Elvis, A Generous Orthodoxy, or The Shack) when all that is need and sufficient is the collected Word of God in the Bible? Or even among my own Calvinist friends, how fast are we to want to bind people by their confessions of faith, the same confessions which Baxter is decrying here (This book was published in 1656, the Westminster Confession of Faith was written in 1646)? This is a stern reminder that there must never be anything which we would refer to in place of the Bible when we are looking to defend or guide or lives as children of God.

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Everything May be Spiritual, but Only the Gospel Saves- A Commentary on Acts 10.1-11.18

September 2, 2008

“And Cornelius said, ‘Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, “Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea.” So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.’” -Acts 10.30-33

“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” -Romans 10.14-17

One of the most overlooked New Testament stories, in my opinion, is the interaction between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11. And even when we do focus on this it seems that all we say is “And here we see the Gospel opened up to the Gentiles” (which is true, don’t get me wrong, but just read on). However, I think in focusing on that we miss a really interesting commentary which speaks to a large objection to orthodoxy arising in our emerging culture these days.

It’s cool to be semi-universalist. On the heels of Rob Bell’s tour Everything is Spiritual and in light of past comments by figures such as Brian McLaren and Billy Graham, we see a swelling tide towards, if not universalism, at least a universalism where all “spiritual people” are saved. The idea from Bell is that the Gospel is Jesus telling us that we live in an “integrated holistic spirituality” and so, as in his title, everything we do is spiritual, and de facto, everything we do is worship to God (a thesis which, think about it for a minute, is completely false).

But, instead of fighting over the words of men, let’s look at what the Word of God says in Acts 10 and 11. This passage presents us with the story of a non-proselyte Roman centurion who, though not officially a Jew, nevertheless offered devotion to and feared the one-true God (Acts 10.1-2, 28 ), and as a result of his devotion God decides to use him as the entry point of the Holy Spirit and salvation to the Gentiles. This we usually state and then move on to Peter’s vision and the eventual evangelization and regeneration of the Gentile gathering. But, let’s take a closer look at the setup.

Who are we presented with? A non-Jewish Roman who through some set of circumstances and interactions has taken to worshiping the one-true God. We know that his worship is of the God of the Jews because the text states that he was “a devout man who feared God with all his household.” So, not only is Cornelius spiritual, but his spirituality is directed towards the living God, even though he is not a member of God’s covenant people Israel. And what does this spirituality get him? Under popular theology that is enough. Cornelius is a spiritual person, living a spiritual life, and doing his best to please whatever God is there. This seems to be the criteria in our society, and certainly in the theology expressed by people like Graham, for salvation. For all intents and purposes Cornelius should expect to find himself in heaven when it’s all said and done just by what he has already demonstrated.

Yet is it enough? Is his spirituality and devotion enough? Using no other text besides Acts 10 and 11 I would argue that the answer is a resounding “No.” Why do I say this? Well, look what happens. First, we see that an angel comes to him and delivers a cryptic message about sending men to Joppa to retrieve the apostle Peter (10.3-6). Then, when the men return with Peter we see that Peter’s response to why God called him was to preach the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected to this gathering of Gentiles (10.34-43). Upon hearing the Gospel the Gentiles receive the gifting of the Holy Spirit and are baptized by Peter and the believers that accompanied him as a sign that they have gained salvation and been brought into the covenant people of God (10.44-48). Finally, after all of this, we see Peter testify to the fact that he was brought to give the message of how Cornelius “[would] be saved” (11.14).

Do you see it? Peter came to preach how Cornelius “[would] be saved.” As in, he wasn’t saved already. Regardless of his spirituality and devotion, it was not until he believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that Cornelius was saved. He was even devoted to the one-true God and yet that still was not enough without his ascending in faith to the message of the Cross. If Peter or someone else had not come and presented the Gospel then Cornelius would never have been saved, no matter how spiritual and good of a life he led.

And still people miss this. It is clear as day. If Jesus saying “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” is not enough (as Rob Bell argues in Velvet Elvis) then hopefully this testimony will be sufficient to convince us. There is no salvation without faith in Christ. “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4.12). Please get this, lives are at stake. It may not be cool, but at least people won’t be going to hell because we wanted to feel good about ourselves and be liked.

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Every Generation’s Battle- John Piper on the Correct View of Scripture

August 2, 2008

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” -2 Timothy 3.16

“But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” -John 20.31

“The Battle for the Bible” often times is used in Southern Baptist circles to refer back to the period of debate in the 1970’s when the claim of Scriptural inerrancy was questioned strongly and evangelicals had to make a decision which way to go. Should we deny inerrancy and move more towards the liberal theology of many mainline denominations or should we uphold inerrancy and cement ourselves as the true conservative position in the church?

Today, more widely, the Battle for the Bible has come to mean the struggle over inerrancy along with debates over appropriate hermeneutics to use, how much authority does Scripture have over our lives, and is the Bible the only spiritual text which reveals God to us. It is in light of this type of continuing debate that leaders such as Albert Mohler comment that every generation must decide if they are going to stand on the authority of Scripture or not, every generation must fight the Battle for the Bible.

For our generation, I think the time is now. Look at the landscape: teachers like Rob Bell invoke trajectory hermeneutics to liberalize Scripture into accepting current moralities which are specifically opposed in the Bible; in their book The Lost Message of Jesus, Steve Chalke and Alan Mann refer to God’s crushing Christ for our iniquities (Isaiah 53.5) as a form of “cosmic child abuse”; Brian McLaren (the liaison to evangelicals for Barack Obama) runs around the country questioning the existence of hell and a literal second coming, at times even proposing a sort of universalism; multiple denominations are facing splits due to some ramifications of a refusal to stand on the clear Scriptural teaching that homosexuality is a sin. In all, our post-modern, post-Christian, emerging landscape is covered with major rifts which all center around the denying the inerrancy or supreme unique authority of Scripture.

To this effect, and to start our battle smartly, I want to give you guys a link to a wonderfully thorough handling of this material conducted earlier this year by John Piper. Over the course of 5 messages Dr. Piper argues what the Scriptures are, what we mean by their inerrancy and authority, why we should believe their message, and how this should inform our behavior. These messages are well researched and I believe will prove very beneficial to you as you begin to pick sides in this current Battle for the Bible.

This is important, please realize that. If we lose the Bible we lose God’s revelation of himself and any way of resting our church on the true authority of His Word over the broken philosophy of man. Put on the full armor, take up arms, and fight!

John Piper- Why We Believe the Bible

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Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Malachi Speaks to Our Emerging Bretheren

May 30, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me at how while reading the Bible you can come across certain verses that seem so appropriate for our modern/postmodern context that you almost forget they were written over 2000 years ago. It is such a reminder of how the problems we deal with today are problems that the people of God have always had to deal with. This is both comforting, because it helps you know that the things that are being said today have already been tried and argued and God has already come out on top, and frustrating, because you see that the church has really not come all that far in the 2000 years since Christ’s death.

The verse which spoke so heavily to me can be found in the book of the prophet Malachi in his prophecy to the Israelites as they continue working on rebuilding Jerusalem.

You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?” (Malachi 2:17)

This verse seems so pertinent to me in light of our last post concerning the emerging church and how they tend to struggle with losing their saltiness while out in the world. The reason why I think this is so is because in this one verse we see two claims that the emerging people are so frequent to make and we can see how God responds to them.

Working in reverse, the first statement we see is the question “Where is the God of justice?” So many are want to rail this claim against God, that he is unjust because he appears to be sitting idly by while people suffer and die in poverty and obscurity or from painful sickness and disease. He seems to sit by while families are torn apart by drugs and cheap cons. Emerging leaders such as Brian McLaren are so concerned with injustice that it becomes the focal point of who they are and what their ministry preaches, like his book The Secret Message of Jesus. Bart Ehrman wrote a book on this called God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer. Rob Bell is writing a book concerning social justice to be released in the fall called Jesus Came to Save Christians. The Emerging Church views God’s inability, or the inability of God’s people, to end suffering and promote social reform as the primary concern of the Church today. And yet, how does their evangelism prosper when they do such things? How does it help Brian McLaren’s ministry when he is arrested for protesting the federal budget?

The second statement made is that “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” This takes on various forms in the emerging church, but probably the most obvious is in their promotion of homosexuality. For whatever reason, the emerging church and gay rights have become inextricably intertwined. Whether it be the out-and-out acceptance of it by leaders such as Tony Campolo, or if it is the tacit acceptance by McLaren and his slippery line of “Frankly, many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality.” To me this type of response is beyond disingenuous. With the current climate of moral and social living in America, there should not be any person going into the ministry who is unsure where they stand on homosexuality. Go to the mountains like Jesus, or take three years out to study like Paul. But whatever you do, don’t go stand up in front of the people you are supposed to shepherd and tell them you don’t know what to do with probably the single most pressing moral issue of our time! It is the same with abortion, sex outside of marriage, alcohol and drug use, and manner of speech. The emerging church has decided that there are a set of things that they want to do, either out of their own desires or out of a desire to appease the world, and instead of calling things black and white as stated in the Bible, they hide under a cloud of cultural relativity and freedoms in Christ to maintain these behaviors. They pronounce what is evil as being good in the sight of God, even to the point that some consider God as being a universalist!

So what does the passage say is God’s response to all of this? “You have wearied the LORD with your words.” God says through Malachi that he has been wearied by these statements made by his people. To weary means to make jaded or exhausted. With their words, the people of God, and I believe the emerging church as well, have exhausted God. Not that he is tired, but that his patience and his exercise of mercy have been exhausted on them. And honestly, the last place I want to stand is on the brink of God removing his mercy. It is like when your mom says, “You’re getting on my last nerve,” only it is the most powerful being in the universe who is about to unleash his cosmic discipline upon you!

Of course, we may discuss the merits of these claims and argue over whether the things mentioned above are really sin, but as far as I see it, the emerging church needs to refocus their efforts on being the Salt and working to preserve God’s goodness and turn away from the attitudes which God has warned before lead to his weariness with them.

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Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater: Jesus is Not the Only Way (Part 2)

April 6, 2008

“Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’…. So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” -Acts 2:37-38, 41

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” -1 Peter 2:9-12

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain with their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” -Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

In our first discussion on the disturbing idea that many of the leaders in the so-called emerging church would deny Jesus as being the only way to salvation, we evaluated the distortion/denial of a traditional interpretation of John 14:6 by Velvet Elvis author Rob Bell. Today we will look at another, somewhat more slippery statement by Brian McLaren in his book A Generous Orthodoxy.

In this statement, given above, we see McLaren state that he believes it to be “advisable” to make people “followers of Christ” without making them “Christians.” What is difficult about this, and about his statement that they should remain with their “Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts” is that throughout scripture we see it declared that those who become “followers of Christ” will become exiles to the world, especially to those “contexts” which they were in before. Therefore, one must ask, how is it that McLaren believes someone can follow Christ while not changing their lifestyle, when Christ specifically says that “whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:38, 39)”?

Beyond this, we see it exemplified throughout the New Testament literature that those who accept Christ are to be set apart from those who don’t. In Acts 2:38, the whole purpose behind Peter instructing people to “be baptized” following their repentance is to publicly and dramatically remove them from their current Jewish “context.” This is necessary because Christ himself said that “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 10:33).” If these new followers were afraid to be baptized then that stood as their public denial of Christ, and as such would cast light on the genuiness of their faith. So, to say that people may remain in their present nonChristian context after they become followers of Christ flies in the face of the earliest teachings of the church.

That said, we must look further to see what is the true motivation for this statement. For, if one must repent from sin and profess faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to receive salvation (what I would assert as “following Christ”), and if thus following Christ one must become an exile from not just their “context” but actually the whole world (John 15:19, Philippians 3:20), then it would be a logical conclusion to assume that someone who has been saved cannot remain in their old, nonChristian “context.” Therefore, it must be some part of this which McLaren denies. Judging by the content of other statements he has made, as well as the statements of the people he associates with, I am convinced that the part which McLaren denies is the statement that one must actually profess a faith in Jesus Christ to be saved (though he may disagree with the other part as well).

In fact, it may eventually come to be that McLaren believes ALL ways are okay. In an article published online at Christianity Today, Brian McLaren, in explaining in part some of his views of hell and damnation says,

Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell]…
Although in many ways I find myself closer to the view of God held by some universalists than I do the view held by some exclusivists, in the end I’d rather turn our attention from the questions WE think are important to the question JESUS thinks is most important.

So, here we truly see it. If on one end is “traditional universalism” (again, we see Slick Mc redefining stuff without any new definition) and on the other is Jesus as the only way, then for McLaren to be finding an alternative view it is implicit that he does not view Jesus as the sole path to come to the Father by.

Thus, I believe the debate is settled and the results are clear. In the emerging church it is not necessary to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” in order to “be saved” (Romans 10:9). This is absolutely unacceptable!

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What We’re Facing- The Threat of liberal Emerging churches

March 5, 2008

One of the biggest waves in Christianity today is the rise of what is called the “emerging church.” These are churches which attempt to connect with the culture through conducting services and teaching theology which is relevant to the mindset of modern young Americans. A number of large and growing churches fall into this category, such as Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill in Seattle and Erwin McManus’ Mosaic in Pasadena, CA.

However there are some inside of the emerging church movement whose attempts to connect with the culture lead to gross Biblical negligence. They begin to equivocate and compromise on certain unbecoming doctrines, such as the status of homosexuality as a sin, the existence of Hell, or God’s knowledge and control of the future. This includes teachers such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, both of whom have successful books on the market to go along with the megachurches they pastor.

What I have included below is a link to a recent message from Mark Driscoll concerning the specific trends and beliefs of those who have been given the label of emerging. I found this to be a very enlightening survey of the prominent American pastors and what they are truly teaching in the pulpits and book pages that are influencing the rising generation of young Christians. I believe that this is a worthwhile listen for anyone interested in current trends of the American church. Enjoy!

Mark Driscoll- Mars Hill Church and the Emerging Church

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Posted by Todd Burus