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Don’t believe something just because you want to, and don’t embrace an idea just because you’ve always believed it. Believe what is biblical. Test all your assumptions against the precious words God gave us in the Bible.
I don’t believe God wants our church life to be centered on buildings and services. Instead, God wants our churches—whatever specific forms our gatherings take—to be focused on active discipleship, mission, and the pursuit of unity.
Let’s be eager to leave what is familiar for what is true.
Nothing outside of God and His truth should be sacred to us.
it’s important that you don’t distance what the Bible says from reality. In other words, don’t forget that the doctrine you are studying may be the destiny of many people. Hell should not be studied without tearful prayer. We must weep, pray, and fast over this issue, begging God to reveal to us through His Word the truth about hell. Because we can’t be wrong on this one.
at the end of the day, our feelings and wants and heartaches and desires are not ultimate—only God is ultimate.
because there are things that we don’t want to believe about God, we therefore decide that we can’t believe them.
some Christians have not only wanted God to save everyone but have gone on to argue that the Bible says He will. This view is called Universalism.1
Bell suggests that every single person will embrace Jesus—if not in this life, then certainly in the next.5
the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most “depraved sinners” will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.6
Pluralists, these people believe that Jesus is one of many ways to salvation.
Christian Universalists, some of whom call themselves hopeful Universalists. They believe that Christ is the only way, but they hold out hope that God will end up saving everyone through Christ in the end.
dogmatic Universalists. Like the previous group, they believe that Christ is the only way, but they go a bit further and say that the Bible clearly teaches that all will be saved.
Christian Universalists (hopeful and dogmatic) believe that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ and Christ alone.
people will have another chance (or many chances) after death to believe in Jesus and be saved.
When Paul says “all will be made alive,” he’s clearly thinking about the resurrection of believers at the second coming of Christ. In fact, he says this very thing in the next verse: “All who belong to Christ will be made alive at his coming” (see vv. 22–23).
following this verse is a whole lot of destruction: destruction of everyone and everything that opposes God in this life (vv. 25–26).
In Acts 21:28, Paul is accused of preaching to “all men everywhere” (NASB). Did Paul really share the gospel with every single person on earth? Again, “all” means a whole lot of people in many different places, not every single individual.
In any case, the word want does not have to mean that God wants something and is doing all He can to get it, in the same way that I want a coffee refill and simply walk up to the counter and get it. In fact, Paul, who said that God wants all people to be saved, also said that God “wants” all Christians to be sexually pure (1 Thess. 4:3).
Samson’s love for pagan women went against God’s moral will, but became part of God’s decreed will. Samson was free to go against God’s moral will, yet God intervened to carry out His decreed will in using this situation to fight against the Philistines.
The point of 1 Timothy 2 and other passages like it (e.g., 2 Peter 3:9) is that God is not a bigot; He’s not a racist; He loves to reverse social-class distinctions because His love knows no boundaries.
First, Revelation 20 and 21 have already described the “lake of fire” as the final destiny of those who don’t follow Jesus in this life. There’s nothing in Revelation that suggests there’s hope on the other side of the lake. Second, there’s nothing in the text that says the lake of fire is intended to purify the wicked. On the contrary, the judgment scene in 20:11–15 explains that the lake of fire is for punishment.19 And third, even after the open-gates passage of 21:24–26, John goes on to depict two different destinies for believers and unbelievers:
No passage in the Bible says that there will be a second chance after death to turn to Jesus.
No passage in the Bible says that there will be a second chance after death to turn to Jesus.
I am not so much exegeting the texts as trying to draw out the logic of New Testament theology as I understand it and its implications for those texts.
Jesus answers that few will be saved, but even worse, many who think they are saved will end up on the “outside” of the kingdom, so to speak. While outside, they’ll knock on the door to see if Jesus will let them in. What will happen when Jesus comes to the door?
Like all Scripture, this parable is meant to impact our souls. Please take some time to at least read it again. Read it with care. Read it with conviction, knowing that there will be people on the outside, in a terrible place of punishment. A place called hell.
Deep down, we all have a tendency to recreate Jesus in our own image.
Deep down in the heart of every person is a hidden desire to reinterpret Jesus in light of our own culture, political bent, or favorite theological belief.
Origen, hell was a place where the souls of the wicked were purified so they could find their way back to God.
Dante depicted hell as a place under the earth’s surface with nine levels of suffering, where sinners were bitten by snakes, tormented by beasts, showered with icy rain, and trapped in rivers of blood or flaming tombs; some were even steeped in huge pools of human excrement.
Lewis, it was kind of like a dark, gloomy city, or a place where “being fades...
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AC/DC, who said that “hell ain’t a bad place to be”—it’s where a...
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Rob Bell said that hell is not “about someday, somewhere else,”3 but about the various “hells on earth” that people experience in this life—genocide, r...
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He was a blue-collar man who worked long hard days as a woodworker (or mason), and probably bore the physical features of a hardworking peasant: dark leathery skin, calloused hands, and a few scars here and there from working in the shop. Jesus probably didn’t have long hair because this wasn’t typical of Jewish men of His day, and He certainly didn’t have blue eyes, blond hair, and milky white skin.
What we find in this context is that hell was seen as a place of punishment for those who don’t follow God. In fact, so ingrained was the belief in hell among first-century Jews5 that Jesus would have had to go out of His way to distance Himself from these beliefs if He didn’t hold them.
for the Jews of Jesus’ day: 1. Hell is a place of punishment after judgment. 2. Hell is described in imagery of fire and darkness, where people lament. 3. Hell is a place of annihilation or never-ending punishment.
Daniel 12:2 is the most relevant: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”
Hades is not usually depicted as a place of punishment, though the wicked may suffer there. It is a place where the wicked wait until judgment day.
punishment doesn’t make them fit for salvation. Rather, hell is retributive—it’s God’s punishment for sin.
Worst of all, this judgment is final, “because they cannot now make a good repentance that they may live.”8
judgment has not been executed upon them in their lifetime, upon this great pain, until the great day of judgment—and to those who curse (there will be) plague and pain forever, and the retribution of their spirits. (second century BC)9
hell is not considered to be the various “hells on earth” that we face every day. It’s a horrific place of judgment where God punishes people for their sins.10
“cry and lament in a place that is an invisible wilderness and burn in the fire.” This place “was completely dark” and yet “the flame of its fire … was burning brightly” (first century AD).13 Hell is an “abyss … full of fire” where the wicked are “cast into this fiery abyss, and they were burned.”14
Some believed that the wicked would be annihilated in hell (their personal existence would cease), while others believed the wicked would be punished forever in an ongoing state of torment.
These Jewish writers described hell as a place of “all kinds of torture and torment” where “dark and merciless” beings would use “instruments of atrocities torturing without pity” (first to second century AD).16
While there’s some difference of opinion regarding the duration of hell, its existence as a place of punishment that awaits the wicked was nearly unanimously held.21 This is undeniable. This is the first-century Jewish view of hell.22
Bell emphasizes that hell is the “hells on earth,” the tragedies that this life brings, as opposed to a place of punishment for the wicked after death.24
While I applaud Bell’s attempt to understand Jesus in His first-century Jewish context, his “gehenna is a garbage dump” theory is both misleading and inaccurate.
Some commentaries and pastors still promote the idea, but there’s no evidence from the time of Jesus that the Hinnom Valley (gehenna literally means “Valley of Hinnom”) was the town dump. In fact, there is no evidence for hundreds and hundreds of years after Jesus that there ever was a garbage dump in the Hinnom Valley in the first century.
