Raising Hell: Christianity's Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire

by Julie Ferwerda

Most people who reject the notion that God will save all, and who believe in hell, are still unyielding at this point because they can’t reconcile a God who would actually create evil and then let it win out over most of His creation forever.

Learning that God is not stumped, trumped, or surprised by evil, that He is actively using it and fully aware of it, and that it does not exist outside His space or confines has continued to give me great comfort and reassurance ever since my realization of it. I’ve finally connected with the hope and reassurance that the universe is not spinning out of control in the way I had once thought, and that God truly is more powerful and supreme than those in my Christian roots have given Him credit for, out of their misguided, exaggerated reverence for and fear of evil.

In this happily ever after scene, I believe the Tree of Life is Jesus, the leaves of the tree are those working with Him to bring His healing to the nations.[†††††††††††††††††††††††] Each month they are bearing fruit, bringing in the harvest of the rest of mankind into “the city” (Kingdom of God) to wash their robes.

“That’s just it. I didn’t even ask to be here and I have to make a choice. And if I choose wrong or don’t choose at all, I’ll forever be punished. And while it’s great for me, since I happened to be born into a family that taught me about Jesus, what about all those billions of people who have never heard about Him? Or what about those who did hear but, out of no fault of their own, couldn’t connect the dots to ‘make a decision’ for Him? They didn’t ask to be here either, especially not in the condition they were born into, and now they’re going to be penalized forever for not believing? Where’s the love and mercy in that?”

In the subconscious recesses of my mind, evil was winning the war. The hardness of the human heart and the power of free will were more prevailing and determinate than God’s loving heart and will.

As mentioned earlier, the prevalent views of God in today’s mainstream Church logically leads to the conclusion that He is either too mean or too weak to get what He wants, what He plans, and what He wills.

I think it’s silly to suggest, as the skeptic would have you believe, that this praise is coerced or that people would actually praise God on their way to hell. Praise is joyful worship and adoration. False worship would be nothing more than hypocrisy, something God rejects:

Sovereign will is one of the most comforting realizations I’ve ever had. If good hasn’t resulted yet, it’s only because the Story hasn’t played out long enough.

Paul points out that God is truly fair because He will ultimately have mercy on those who are intentionally put in roles as adversaries, acting out evil by design for a temporary purpose.

Is this his point?

The name Lazarus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name, Eliezer, and…what a coincidence! There just so happened to be an Eliezer who was the faithful financial manager and servant of Abraham’s household in the OT (Gen. 15:2). Wow, what are the chances that Jesus would bring up both Abraham and an Eliezer in the same parable—unless He was speaking about thee Abraham and thee Eliezer, prominent figures of the OT, in order to speak to the Jews from out of the well-known traditions of their own history.

The word found in the Greek text for “bosom” is kolpos, meaning “lap.” This relates to the Second Temple period practice of reclining and eating meals in proximity to other guests, the closest of whom physically was said to lie on the bosom (chest) of the host.

That inheritance included wealth, prestige, power, kingship, priesthood, and the land of Canaan as an “everlasting” (age-enduring) possession.

Because of finding a wife for Isaac, Eliezer and his offspring inherited nothing. Thus, the parable refers to Eliezer (Lazarus) as a “beggar” who possessed nothing of earthly value, waiting to be fed from Judah’s table (the Jews).

According to the Scriptures, a person does not have a soul. Each person is a living soul. Your soul is the sum total of you—your body, mind, will, emotions, and spirit. No one part of it can be separated from the rest or it is no longer you. You were brought to life as a living soul.

Matt. 20:28: “…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”[†††††††††††††††††††††††††††] Did you know that Jesus gave His soul for you? This would not be possible based on modern theological teachings that want you to think the soul is immortal and only dies when it is eternally damned.

In Jewish thought death is total. There is no immortal soul, no division of body and soul. Paul’s thinking is Jewish in this regard. …The soul is as mortal as the body. But there is a resurrection.

NASB uses the word “proof,” but the word in Greek, “pistis,” is consistently translated as “belief” or “faith,” 241 out of 243 times in the NT. In this case, translators concealed the important concept of God “furnishing belief to all humans.”