Peddling fiction about the afterlife as non-fiction

Phil Johnson calls “Peddling fiction about the afterlife as non-fiction is the current Next Big Thing in the world of evangelical publishing.”

He’s talking about the books such as Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, by Kevin Malarkey-both best-selling accounts of children who claim to have gone to heaven.

Phil writes, “No true evangelical ought to be tempted to give such tales any credence whatsoever, no matter how popular they become. One major, obvious problem is that these books don’t even agree with one another. They give contradictory descriptions of heaven and thus cannot possibly have any cumulative long-term effect other than the sowing of confusion and doubt.

But the larger issue is one no authentic believer should miss: the whole premise behind every one of these books is contrary to everything Scripture teaches about heaven.”

Phil talks about an updated, forthcoming book  The Glory of Heaven by John MacArthur on heaven in which MacArthur will deal with this new genre of literature.  Read “The Burpo-Malarkey Doctrine” to understand more what is going on.

 

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Are some hellbound? Is the Calvinist God a moral monster?

This ought to be a conversation starter over the next month or so: a new documentary debating the existence of hell is coming to theaters in September 2012.  Click  here to watch the trailer for Hellbound and one interview that didn’t make the cut from the film as well as check out some helpful resources to prepare you to discuss this intelligently with others:  professing Christians and non-Christians alike.

 

 

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Take one minute: think about death and hell

Read the following from Mike Wittmer.  Then immediately take one minute (or longer) to think about death and hell.

“Last week I spoke to the adult campers about death and then last night I spoke to a high school group about hell. You’d think such topics would be entirely depressing, and you’d be right. But I’ve discovered something else too. These topics are actually inspiring, for they provide the opportunity to speak about Jesus. Indeed, they supply the only opportunity to speak about Jesus, for if we don’t begin with sin, death, and hell, then we will have no reason to bring up Jesus.

If we try anyway, people will wonder why we’re talking about him. What does Jesus even mean to someone who is untroubled by sin, death, and hell? Why would they ever think they need him?

I didn’t start out to write books and preach on these depressing subjects, but I’m glad I have, for Jesus is more precious now than he ever was before. When your love for Christ begins to cool, stop and think about death and hell. That is the fastest way I know to recover the joy of the Lord.”

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Hell: what are you thinking?

David Platt in his recent T4G 2012 message spoke with anguish about the state of man before God apart from Christ as utterly hopeless.  He quoted two men who described hell accurately:

Thomas Watson: “Thus it is in Hell; they would die, but they cannot. The wicked shall be always dying but never dead; the smoke of the furnace ascends for ever and ever. Oh! Who can endure thus to be ever upon the rack? This word ‘ever’ breaks the heart.”

George Whitfield used to speak with tears in his eyes of “the torment of burning like a livid coal, not for an instant or for a day, but for millions and millions of ages, at the end of which souls will realize that they are no closer to the end than when they first begun, and they will never, ever be delivered from that place.“

Let us think and speak of hell correctly.

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Belief in hell lowers crime rate

Interesting article on the correlation between the prevailing views of heaven and hell in a society and that nation’s crime rate.  Of course, the best reason to believe in hell and heaven are because God reveals such truth in His Word.  An excerpt from “Belief in Hell Lowers Crime Rate”:

“The key finding is that, controlling for each other, a nation’s rate of belief in hell predicts lower crime rates, but the nation’s rate of belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates, and these are strong effects,” said Azim F. Shariff, professor of psychology and director of the Culture and Morality Lab at the UO. “I think it’s an important clue about the differential effects of supernatural punishment and supernatural benevolence. The finding is consistent with controlled research we’ve done in the lab, but here shows a powerful ‘real world’ effect on something that really affects people — crime.”

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Round trips to heaven and back

In recent years there have been a number of stories published by Christian publishing houses that relate how one person has gone to heaven and come back again.

Tim Challies offers some suggestions on how to respond to such books as well as to people who have read them and found comfort and peace through them.  Read “Heaven’s Tourism.” An excerpt:

“In the first place, we have no reason to believe or expect that God will work in this way—that he will call one of us to the afterlife and then send us back to our old bodies. The Bible says that it is for man to die once and then to experience the resurrection. There are many experiences we can have in a near-death state I am sure—dream-like experiences that may even seem real—but the Bible gives us no reason to believe that a person will truly die, truly experience the afterlife, and then return. Those who have a biblical understanding of life and death and heaven and hell will know that for a person to die and visit heaven, to experience sinlessness and the presence of Jesus Christ—for that person it would be the very height of cruelty to then demand that they return to earth. None of these books are at all consistent with a robust theology of heaven and hell, of the work of Jesus Christ, of the existence of indwelling sin. On the surface they may seem compelling, but in reality they raise far more questions than the few they may appear to answer.  . . .

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The most frightening aspect of hell

R. C. Sproul on “Hell”:

“Perhaps the most frightening aspect of hell is its eternality. People can endure the greatest agony if they know it will ultimately stop. In hell there is no such hope. The Bible clearly teaches that the punishment is eternal. The same word is used for both eternal life and eternal death. Punishment implies pain. Mere annihilation, which some have lobbied for, involves no pain. Jonathan Edwards, in preaching on Revelation 6:15-16 said, “Wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing and forever cease to be that they may escape the wrath of God.”

Hell, then, is an eternity before the righteous, ever-burning wrath of God, a suffering torment from which there is no escape and no relief. Understanding this is crucial to our drive to appreciate the work of Christ and to preach His gospel.”

R. C.’s post is worth reading in it’s entirety here.

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Pain is a pointer to hell

Some of you suffer with chronic pain.

David Murray has been suffering recently with some very severe pain. Although he has suffered pain before he wonders this time:

If this pain is limited in extent to one part of my body, limited in intensity by medication, and limited in time by the eventual healing processes (soon please), what must the pains of Hell be like?

Unlimited extent, unlimited intensity, and unlimited time.

All over and all through, unmedicated and unmitigated, forever and forever.

Especially forever.

Forever.

That’s more than a week, more than a year, more than a decade, more than a million years.

Read David’s post “Sometimes It’s Hard to Believe in Hell” to understand more about the reality of hell even when we can’t fully conceive of it!

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No heaven, no hell, or no hurry?

A story is told about Satan calling his emissaries of hell together because he wanted to send them to earth and aid men and women in the ruination of their souls. He asked , “Who would go first, and what would be the strategy?”  One said, “I will go.” “And what would you tell them?”  Satan asked. “I will tell them there is no heaven.” And Satan said, “They will not believe you, for there is a bit of heaven in every human heart. In the end everyone knows that good will triumph over evil. You may not go.”

Then another came forward, darker and fouler than the first. “If I send you,” Satan said, “what will you tell them?” “I will tell them there is not hell.” Satan looked at him and said, “No they will not believe you, for in every human heart there is a thing called conscience, an inner voice which testifies to the truth that no only will good triumph but evil will be defeated. You are not to go.”

The last creature that came forward was more diabolical than them all. Satan said to him, If I send you what will you say to men and women that will lead to the destruction of their souls?” And he said, “I will tell them there is no hurry.” Satan said, “GO. You are the one.”

–Already Compromised by Ken Ham and Greg Hall, pp. 74-75

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Living in light of hell

Paul Tripp in his recent book Forever devotes one chapter to reminding us of the reality of hell–which he calls the “dark side of forever.” At the end of this chapter he writes, “Hell is the ultimate reminder that we live in a moral universe under the care of a perfectly holy God” and he then gives some “practical directions on how to live in light of it in the here and now” (p. 63).

1. Use every means available to fight the delusion that what you choose to do or say doesn’t make any difference
2. Require yourself to see sin as sinful as it really is
3. Be thankful for the final justice of God
4. Celebrate forgiving grace every day
5. Let the dark side of forever remind you of what is important

You can buy Paul’s book here. 

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