You may or may not be aware that new book hit bookstores this week that everyone is talking about–everyone from USA to Newsweek to very concerned pastors and bloggers. It’s Rob Bell’s new book: Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.
Here are just a few resources you might want to check out that will help you understand what is happening with this disturbing book.
- USA Today explains the firestorm over hell in “evangelical Christianity.” The article ends with this stunning endorsement: “Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls Love Wins “a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus.The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.”
- Kevin DeYoung, a faithful pastor, who was one of the first to alert us to this dangerous teaching offers offers a lengthy pastoral, scholarly, and exegetical response. His summary is this: Love Wins, by megachurch pastor Rob Bell, is, as the subtitle suggests, “a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.” Here’s the gist: Hell is what we create for ourselves when we reject God’s love. Hell is both a present reality for those who resist God and a future reality for those who die unready for God’s love. Hell is what we make of heaven when we cannot accept the good news of God’s forgiveness and mercy. But hell is not forever. God will have his way. How can his good purposes fail? Every sinner will turn to God and realize he has already been reconciled to God, in this life or in the next. There will be no eternal conscious torment. God says no to injustice in the age to come, but he does not pour out wrath (we bring the temporary suffering upon ourselves), and he certainly does not punish for eternity. In the end, love wins. . . . The theology is heterodox. The history is inaccurate. The impact on souls is devastating. And the use of Scripture is indefensible. Worst of all, Love Wins demeans the cross and misrepresents God’s character.” Check it out.
- Chris Rosenborough of “Fighting for the Faith” talks about Rob Bell’s interview with Lisa Miller of Newsweek.
- My friend Mark Worden has a timely reminder that God is still Judge! Mark has been writing a series this whole year on the character of God. He didn’t write this in response to this controversy but Mark’s post is a good antidote to this false teaching that God really won’t send people to hell.
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