StudyGrowKnow

Heaven and Hell Q & A

July 11, 2011 at 5:46 PM Leave a comment

Recently, we received a number of questions regarding a book written by a well-known Emergent Church leader.  The book discusses heaven and hell and the possibility that all people will eventually be saved.

The person asking the question was wondering about this and wanted to know if the author had any valid points.

We decided after responding to the questions posed in the e-mail, to make a broadcast about them as well.  It is likely that there are other people who have the same questions.

The subject of hell or eternal punishment is something that nags at many people.  It is difficult for them to reconcile the idea of a God who is purported to love with one who will subject people to an eternity of punishment.

Rather than go by our emotions, however, it is important to always turn back to the pages of God’s Word when attempting to define these types of doctrines.

I have not read the book that the e-mail writer alludes to, but I have read reviews of the book and I have read other things by the same Emergent Church leader who authored the book referenced in the questions.

It is not my goal to denigrate a leader within Christendom; however, it is also important that where error is taught, the truth of the Bible should be brought to bear on it.  For that reason, we mention the author’s name because the person writing the email mentions it.  Again, it is not our intent to castigate the author, but we do believe that he is wrong in his understanding of the doctrine of eternal punishment.

The person who emailed me has several questions and what I will be doing is reading his question, each followed by my answer.

The first question reads as follows:

Q:  I wanted to ask you something.  I know I asked you what the emergent church was before but I think i need a good definition.  I was listening to an excerpt from the book Heaven, Hell and who goes where, by Rob Bell.  I know he is an emergent church leader but he makes a point I can’t seem to reconcile in my mind.

A:  Right up front, it is important to know that what Bell teaches in that book is nothing more than a newly varnished approach to Universalism, the belief that all people will eventually go to heaven.

Q:  [Bell] said if believing in Jesus is the way to heaven because we are to hide behind Jesus to protect us from God’s wrath, why does God have such a wrath?  What kind of God would want to see his creations burn in hell forever and ever? Why if they are loving good people on earth do they still get condemned unless they are protected by Jesus?

A:  I would fully disagree with Bell when he states that we are “hiding behind Jesus.”  As authentic Christians, we do not hide behind anyone, including Jesus.  I have not read Bell’s book, so I cannot comment on his exact wording.  The reality is that when someone becomes an authentic Christian, they receive complete forgiveness for their sin.  Beyond this, the righteousness of Jesus is fully credited to that person’s account.  When God sees me, He does not see my unrighteousness or my sin (which no longer exists), but the righteousness of Jesus which has been imputed to my account.

The Bible specifically states that God does not want anyone to perish.  We learn this in 2 Peter 3:9 that states, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”  It is important to understand that Peter is saying that God wants everyone to repent; to understand that they are sinners deserving of death (eternal punishment).  God has provided a way out, but it is up to us to take that opportunity.

So God does not want to see His creation burn in hell forever.  However, for those who refuse to repent, this is where they go.  Also note that hell was not created originally for human beings.  It was created for the devil and his angels only.  Matthew 25:41 says, “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.”

The eternal fire that God did create was not created with human beings in mind.  At the same time, those who continue to rebel as Satan rebelled will receive the same punishment.

One thing you need to be aware of is this:  do you honestly believe that people who continue to sin in this life will magically stop sinning after they leave this life?  No, they will continue to sin and in fact, they will become nothing but sin.

Here in this life, God’s image is indelibly imprinted on us.  We learn in Genesis 2 that God made man in His image; male and female.  The idea here is that we are different from the angels, from Satan, and even from the animals.  God’s imprint is on us.  However, since we are born in sin, if we are left to ourselves, sin is what we become fully.

Those people, who live their lives in this life without God, then die, go into eternity without His salvation.  Because of this, these individuals are the objects of His wrath.  Once they die and are placed in hell – remember they did this by ignoring God’s salvation – God will pour out His wrath on them because He will spend eternity pouring His wrath out on sin.  If a person aligns themselves with sin, they will receive the punishment that is reserved for sin.  In essence, because they have identified themselves with sin, God treats them as sin.

Regarding the idea that people are loving, and good, we also must remember that the Bible says there is no one who is good, except God alone.  “And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone,” (Mark 10:18).  The Bible also tells us that no one is righteous.  Romans 3:10 tells us this very fact.  “as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.”  Paul is likely thinking of Ecclesiastes 7:20 which says, “Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins,” so when you speak of “good, loving people,” you are incorrect.

Yes, people may think of other people as loving and good, but that’s not the issue.  The issue is what God thinks of them.  How does He come up with that?  Simply by comparing them to Jesus and by the way, all people who will be judged in the afterlife are compared with Jesus and His perfect life.  We can always find someone in this life that we feel we are better than, or more loving, or less sinful.  That is not the issue.  The issue is how does our life compare with that of Jesus and the perfect life He lived?  There is no comparison.  We are sinners.  He was not.

Remember, we are not simply protected by Jesus.  While that may be a byproduct of our salvation, it is not the main thrust of our salvation.  This is a completely misunderstanding of Scripture.  People like Bell are insidious about this type of verbiage.  As an authentic Christian, I have literally been adopted into God’s family through my faith in Jesus.  I am no longer my own, nor am I part of the kingdom of darkness – Satan’s kingdom.  I have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.  We learn this in Colossians 1:13.  “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”

When God the Father looks at me now, He literally sees the righteousness of Jesus.  While that offers me protection, it is the fact that I am part of God’s family that is my true protection.

We are literally born in sin.  I realize well that there are people who do not believe in original sin or that the sin committed by Adam and Eve was somehow passed onto the rest of the human race, but I would vehemently disagree with them.  Paul seems to be clear on this concept in the book of Romans.

Romans 3:23 states, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and this along with numerous other passages, indicates that there is not one person who has lived and not sinned, with the exception of Jesus.  This fact alone means that because all people have fallen short of God’s glory, God has every reason and right to eradicate all of us.  Yet, He chose not to do that, but instead, made it possible for people to come to Him for salvation.  Those who come to Him for it, find it, while those who ignore the offer do not find it.

Q: What is God like? Jesus taught God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus and so what is taught and thought is that Jesus rescues you from God, but what kind of God is this, that we need to be rescued from? How could that God ever be good or trusted and how can that be good news? I know Jesus died for OUR sins, and He took the wrath of God upon Himself. Yet we are back to the wrath again, I have been pondering this thought a little stepping outside the box and wondering.

What the person is asking about is classic Universalism.  Besides the obvious problem, the difficulty is that these questions arise from man’s sinful nature.  The entire emphasis is on MAN, not God.  If we read Romans carefully, we will see that Paul clearly and coherently shows us just how guilty we are and that there is only one way out.

It is not that Jesus protects us from the wrath of God.  It is that through salvation, we become partakers of eternal life!  This is so much different from what the writer of the email is saying.

Q:  A few other things I have been thinking about…

1) If Adam sinned why is all mankind paying for his mistake? We should not be held accountable for our father’s doings or our fathers, father’s doings. We don’t impose such a law on earth to our civilians.

Romans 5:23 states, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…”

It stands to reason that if Adam and Eve corrupted themselves through sin; they began to physically die immediately and they spiritually died immediately, then how would it at all be possible for any other human being who comes from Adam and Eve be better than their parents?

Because of sin, Adam and Eve fell.  They essentially became fully corrupted because of their sin.  How would it be possible for any other person born from Adam and Eve (directly or through subsequent parents) be found to be in the state that Adam and Eve were in before they sinned?  That is a physical impossibility.

Since Adam and Eve did not have any children until after they fell through sin, their children then would have no chance at all of being born without corruption of sin.  Once Adam and Eve sinned, they developed the sin nature.  Their DNA literally changed.  It was that DNA that got passed onto all human beings after that.

I also believe that God fully knows that every single human being, if He was to put us individually in Adam and Eve’s shoes, would have done exactly the same thing they did.

We are accountable because we inherited the sin nature.  That sin nature puts us at enmity with God.  It’s really a matter of simplicity here.

You say that we “don’t impose such a law on earth to our civilians,” but consider this.  Maybe society does not do this, but I guarantee you that a child who is raised in a home where the only thing he knows is violence and a lack of love, will learn that same thing.

The sin nature however, is not learned.  It is simply adopted by each and every person once a person is conceived.

Q:  2) If God is love and truth and we are to try to be a reflection of that, why is that not good enough? It makes it seem that God, that wants to condemn the world to hell, aside from those who hide behind Jesus, isn’t a God of love it is more a God of vengeance and punishment.

A:  It is impossible for fallen creatures to truly reflect God’s love and truth unless the Holy Spirit lives within that person, through the new birth (John 3).  Only those people who have been born again have the possibility of being able to imitate God here, because it is the Holy Spirit within the person who makes that possible.

Remember, people who appear to “love” or whom we may consider “good” are only so based on our definitions of it.  When compared to God, those definitions are absolutely nothing.  God judges the inside of a person, their motives.  We judge from the outside.

How do you know what a person’s motivation may be for why they do what they do?  It may appear to you that they are “good” people, or they are “loving,” but what if they are doing what they do totally based on SELF?  You wouldn’t necessarily know that this is their motivation at all.  To you, they seem like “good people.”  You cannot see what they cannot show you – their will and their mind; the very reason they do what they do.  Even in authentic Christians, it’s very difficult for us to know our own hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”  Our sin nature tries to desperately keep our true motives hidden from us.

Q:  I also take into consideration all the people that our born say in China or Vietnam where the predominate religion is Buddhism.  Some of these people are very kind, wonderful people that love God as they know him and want to be with him and follow all the commandments of their religion, yet on death day they are infuriaters of God because they failed to find Jesus so He curses them to hell???? Just seems too harsh for a God that is supposed to be so loving. And to make everyone’s punishment that doesn’t believe in Jesus per say, go to hell FOREVER.

A:  Kindness, being wonderful, loving, etc., these are all relative.  We normally base these on our own interpretations of them, or how we compare them with other people.  God’s standard is HIMSELF.

If someone is a Buddhist (or something else), they do not know God at all, according to the Scripture.  Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me,” (John 14:6).  So how is it possible for someone who is not a Christian to actually know God?

They do not become “infuriators” on the day they die.  People are “infuriators” of God until they come to know Him through salvation.

Yes, God is love.  He is also holy, just, perfect, and many other attributes.  We tend to think of God only as love and little more.  Because God is holy, He cannot have sin in His presence.  God can also simply not “set aside” people’s sin.  What kind of Judge would He be if He did that?

We would demand a human judge who did that be removed from his bench if he simply decided that though a person was guilty, he was simply going to set them free.

This is the problem though.  Again, we tend to put God in our box.  When Adam and Eve sinned, God could have destroyed the entire human race and started over fresh.  He chose not to do so.  He also chose to create a way that would provide salvation to those who wanted it.  No one who wants salvation will die without it.

Just take the time to read Romans 1.  Notice the progression here.  Paul clearly explains how people go from bad to worse until they finally get to a point where they do not even wish to think of God anymore.

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them,” (Romans 1:21-32).

Q:  3) There are different degrees in hell and also the most confusing is that the demons are torturing people and there is gnashing of teeth and lakes of fire. I can understand that if someone didn’t choose God or Jesus than they would be apart from Him and all His attributes.  Yet why add the added fire and torture and if you ever saw the “21 minutes in hell” video, whether that be true or not assuming some of it is because he had some Bible verses to back certain experiences, why all the added punishment? Why not just leave it as the absence of God as for that is what it is truly about if someone does not want to be with God.

A:  Fire purifies.  If you search Scripture, we will see that time and time again, fire is used as a purifying force.  The problem with the fire of hell (actually, it’s the Lake of Fire, as spoken of in Revelation 20), is that because people never stop sinning.

What people do not understand is the level of hatred God has for sin.  Because of His nature, imperfection is anathema to Him.  This should cause us to marvel at His patience with us and if that does not prove His love for us, nothing will.

Q:  And lastly 4) God does not make himself shown visually. His book is not to be read intellectually per say, it is more of a supernatural nature. So seeing is not believing believing is supposed to be proven by faith.  Faith is hard when there really isn’t any evidence.  I know the Bible predicts the future and has some statistically off the charts amazing components to it, yet scientists still can find a way to shine doubt upon it. So why not God make himself known, like He did to Adam to everyone and let them make their own choice? And once you die it is too late is a bit absurd too.  What if someone was a devout Hindu and he died saw his God was wrong but wanted to be with God. Why can’t he make that choice than? Why is it too late? Why can’t God allow us to see Him and then we realize we want to be with Him and not apart from Him and let us dwell with Him?

The Bible essentially teaches that no man can see God and live (Exodus 33:20).  Because we are sinfully corrupt, if we saw God, we would instantly be killed, simply because our nature cannot handle the presence of absolute perfection.  God has kept Himself invisible because of His compassion on us, knowing of course what the result would be if we could see Him.

The instances in the Bible where God revealed Himself to someone was normally a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus and when He appeared to Abraham or someone else, He did so with the body that He was going to have after being born.  God the Father is never seen.

You want proof that God exists, that the Bible is accurate?  One word:  Israel.  There is no way that nation could have survived what they have survived unless God existed and His Word and promises are true.

And by the way, Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God has made Himself known to us through His Creation.  The Psalms and Proverbs as well as many other portions of Scripture bear this truth out.

By the way “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (Hebrews 1:1).  When we trust God, He strengthens our faith so that we have confidence in what we cannot now see.

If we had evidence – hard, cold evidence – faith would be absolutely obsolete.  This is why God says that without faith, it is impossible to please Him.  Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

The Bible also says “now is the day of salvation,” (2 Corinthians 6:2).  God provides every possible chance for people to become saved now.

God is under no obligation to save anyone at all.  That is extremely important to understand.  Humanity made its choice when we surrendered our freedom to Satan in the Garden of Eden.  We then became enslaved to Satan.  God offers the way out of the kingdom of darkness and every person must make that decision individually.

People who are born in various parts of the world who never hear the gospel are still not excused because they inherited the same sin nature from Adam and Eve that you and I inherited.  Because God could have destroyed the human race with Adam and Eve, but didn’t, does not make Him culpable.  Humanity alone is culpable.

Q:  You know some people believe that since it was written in the Bible that God knew everyone of us before we were born that, that implies that we were all in existence before we were put down on earth. It’s just that we don’t remember it.

A:  No, it does not imply that we existed before we were born.  It teaches that God – being perfect in knowledge and infinite, knew us before we were born simply because He sees the beginning from the end.

When Jesus died on the cross, He saw me, though I had not been born yet.

Q:  But God says he did know us in the Bible, so maybe as Adam who was in the pre-flood world (a world we don’t know what it was like, in fact physics as we know it could have been different then. We know the speed of light was far faster back then), was different then. Man in which we come from. Remember God made Adam in His image yet we are made in man’s image.

A:  No, humanity individually and as a whole was made in God’s image.  We were not made in man’s image.  We were all made in God’s image because we all come from Adam and Eve.

While there may have been different scientific laws in effect (or not) prior to the fall, this does not negate the fact that humanity is all connected because we are all made in God’s image.  Chances are good for instance, that the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics did not go into effect until after the fall.

I’m not sure where the person is getting the idea that we are made in man’s image.  Adam and Eve had bodies, souls, and spirits.  So do we.  When God breathed into Adam, he became a living soul (just like us), unlike the animals and unlike the angels.

Q:  So could Adam have been a miniature less powerful god that encompassed all of us, all our identities and souls together all at once. This could possibly explain why when Adam ate from the apple we are all paying for it. We all made the conscientious choice. Humans are the only creature on the earth that needs companionship to survive for the most part. So maybe be since we are not all joined together as before when we were all part of Adam, this is why we long for one another. We miss our original state of togetherness.

A:  All creatures need companionship to survive.  The reason Adam and Eve ate of the tree is because Satan tempted them into thinking that by doing so, we would become gods, like God.  Like Satan, we chose to do our best to usurp God’s authority and in doing so, we failed miserably (Adam and Eve) and that failure was passed onto us.

The person’s last paragraph here sounds extremely New Age-ish.  This is what the New Age teaches, that we are all one and we are all gods.  We need to activate our deity in order to become like Jesus.  The New Age teaches that Jesus was like we are but simply found a way to unlock His inner deity and then became the master of His life and fate, creating His own reality.

The New Age tells us the same lie that the Tempter told Adam and Eve in the garden.  In fact, the lie has been told so many times and in so many different ways, but it is the same lie: we are gods.

No, we are human beings, created in God’s image, which rebelled and because of that rebellion, fell from grace and inherited the sin nature, which does its best to keep us away from God.

Unfortunately, it is my considered opinion that people like Rob Bell do nothing good for anyone, in my opinion.  He – like so many Emergent Church leaders – believes in some form of Universalism all based on an erroneous view of God’s love.  They emphasize love, to the exclusion of everything else.

Well folks, I hope these questions and answers have been helpful to you.  It is always important to understand what God’s Word says and the most vital thing we can do is to allow God’s Word to interpret itself.  For this reason it is imperative that we do not simply take a verse out of context here or there.  We must allow God’s Word to interpret itself by speaking to the entirety of His Word.

Listen to Dr. Fred’s broadcasts every week at Oneplace.com/ministries/study-grow-know

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