There is no Hell because Rob Bell
says so.
(Photo from: Now the End
Begins)
"Imagine there's no Heaven,
No Hell below us..."
There is no Hell because Rob Bell
says so.
(Photo from: Now the End
Begins)
"Imagine there's no Heaven,
No Hell below us..."
Rob Bell: A Consistent Heretic
May 2012
Part 1
Rob Bell is the pastor of a “mega-church” (Mars Hill) meeting in a former shopping mall in Grandville, MI. On a given Sunday, Rob Bell draws almost as many people to his services as will attend all the thirty-one churches of the Protestant Reformed Churches on the same Lord’s Day. He is a popular preacher and speaker who has written best-selling books. He produces powerful, well-orchestrated videos that have been viewed by millions. He is hailed as a creative and innovative thinker. His latest book (Love Wins)[1] has brought him remarkable notoriety, leading to interviews on several television shows and national news magazines like Time. Thousands revere him as a preacher and a spiritual leader.For all that, Rob Bell is a lying prophet. Rob Bell is a clever, entertaining false teacher, leading all who will follow him to the eternal hell that he denies exists.
Much controversy swirls around Bell’s teaching that God’s love will melt the hard hearts of all the people who will ever have lived, resulting eventually in everybody being in heaven, and no more hell. Does he teach that? He does. In fact, his heresies go far beyond that. But the significant thing about Bell that is so unnerving to the evangelical and Reformed church world is this: Rob Bell is a consistent heretic. That is to say, his conclusions are consistent with the body of his teaching. But the essence of his message is what most evangelical and Reformed churches are teaching.
The Heretical Method
Rob Bell uses the time-tested instrument of heretics, namely questions, especially questions laced with taunting irony. By means of such questions, Bell effectively leads down the path of error in such a way that he cannot easily be pinned down and accused of teaching contrary to the Bible. Bell also cunningly mocks Reformed (i.e., biblical) teaching, making it appear to be absurd.A second characteristic of a heretic is a wrong view and use of the Bible. For Bell, the Bible is a collection of stories that are important because they describe what is happening to us yet today. This is the view of the German higher critic Rudolf Bultmann, that what is important is the story, whether the events of the story really happened or not.
Bell badly misuses Scripture. Rather than drawing his teaching out of the whole of Scripture, he starts with a preconceived notion and finds a few lines from the Bible that ostensibly support it. He improperly places verses from two different contexts together. He selects obscure texts, which he uses to confuse the issue at hand, and ignores texts that are clear and pertinent – which contradict his teaching. He paraphrases, quotes out of context, and wrongly applies texts. For one example: in support of his view that the kingdom of God will be on the earth, Bell perverts the Lord’s prayer into a petition that “God’s kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Third, Rob Bell wants nothing of absolute truth. Churches that maintain certain truths and reject error have a form of Christianity that he mockingly labels “brickianity.” He rather describes proper theology in terms of a trampoline spring. Such “flexibility” in theology is beneficial to a heretic for he cannot be condemned for teaching contrary to “the truth.”
Fourth, Bell cleverly wraps his lies around a kernel of truth. With that small element of truth, heretics fool many who have a limited knowledge of the Bible. Besides, when heretics are challenged, they can always point to that kernel of truth and insist that they are maintaining the truth.
This is the methodology of heretics from Arius, to Pelagius, to Arminius. Peter informs us that these false teachers “privily bring in damnable heresies” (II Peter 2:1).
But what does Rob Bell teach that is heretical? Books have been written outlining his errors. We will have to limit ourselves to a few areas.
 |
|
When people use the word hell, what do they
mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things
to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter--they
are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in
such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people
talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a
Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.
- Rob Bell
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/715094]
|
Heaven on Earth
Central to all of Bell’s theology is his insistence that heaven is on this earth. His conception of heaven is that it is a state of being, not a place as such. When we live as God wants, he writes, “the life of heaven becomes more and more present in our lives. Heaven comes to earth.” He explains, “There is this place, this realm, heaven, where things are as God desires them to be. As we live his way, heaven comes here. To this place, this world, the one we’re living in” (Elvis, 147).[2]Later he writes, “The goal isn’t escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to” (Elvis, 150). And again, “We are not going somewhere else at the end of time, because this world is our home. And our home is good” (Elvis, 171).
In Love Wins, Bell concludes a description of life in “heaven” thus: “Life in the age to come. If this sounds like heaven on earth, that’s because it is. Literally” (33). He pokes fun of the notion of white-robed saints in heaven – “Can you play sports in a white robe? How could it be heaven without sports?” (Love, 24).
Although Bell distinguishes between this life and the next, he never tells us how we will get to the next. Somehow all will be there. For some, it will be heaven. For others, it will be a hell.
Eventually, all will be saved, though it may take some time in “the next” life. For God, according to Bell, will give people what they want. If they “want isolation, despair and the right to be [their] own god, God graciously grants… that option” (Love, 117). Yet, Bell assures us that part of the Christian tradition maintains that “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” (Love, 107). So, go ahead and believe that.
An End to Hell
Rob Bell rejects the biblical teaching on hell as a place, as an eternal destiny, and as a punishment from a righteous and holy God. Hell is a condition of life. There are “all kinds of hells” right now (Love, 79). “Poverty, injustice, suffering-they are all hells on earth” (Elvis, 148). In the next life, hell will be “the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us” and “the evil… when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way” (Love, 93). But that is our choice, and Bell gives assurance that if we choose to live in God’s world in God’s way, we will leave hell behind, and enjoy life in heaven. Hell is not forever. It lasts as long as we choose it.Deeper Heresies
As bad as they are, Bell’s heresies go much deeper than erroneous teachings on heaven and hell. It reinterprets the cross as some kind of universal reconciliation of all things and all people to God. That reconciliation is not, emphatically not, based on a substitutionary atonement, nor some satisfaction of God’s justice. The cross is simply a testimony that, contrary to all the frightening things happening around us, “the universe is on our side” (Love, 137). The death and resurrection of Jesus is nothing new; it is a part of all religions going way back. “But the first Christians believed that this idea had been lived out in a new and unique way in Jesus’ death and resurrection” (Elvis, 140). This doctrine destroys salvation in the cross of Christ.But Bell’s heresies go deeper to the very being of God. Bell starts with “God is love” and “God is loving” and ends with “Love is what God is” (Love, 197). That is an unclear statement, open to interpretation. It could be a reemphasis of the biblical statement, God is love. However, it could also be understood to mean: “Love is God.” Or more properly, “Love is god.”
In support of that latter interpretation, consider Bell’s story of how he was asked to make a wedding ceremony “profound and deep and spiritual” without talking about Jesus or God or the Bible. Bell relates how he led this unbelieving couple to talk of a “force” that brought them together, which force might be the same that holds the whole world together. The couple “said they would call that glue, that force, God” (Elvis, 77).
Thus, according to Bell, God is a force. The “God” of Bell is love. That would explain why, even though Bell speaks of Jesus as the divine in human flesh, he more often describes Him as a “life force” (Elvis, 92), as the energy in the world, and the sacred power present in every dimension of creation (Love, 158). To be perfectly plain, for Bell it is not necessary that Jesus be the incarnate Son of God. Already six years ago, Bell asked (Elvis, p. 26):
What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father…, and archeologists…find [his] tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in…?
Obviously, that is a denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus had an earthly father, He is not God. If He is not God, there is no salvation and no Christianity.
A Better Story
Bell claims that his gospel is a better story than that which the church has proclaimed from the time of Jesus to the present. Bell’s “better story” goes something like this: God is love. In his love, he sent Jesus to die on the cross to show us that he is for us, not against us. The gospel is a story of love and renewal. Jesus’ death and renewal is important because we also experience death and resurrection. The earth is eternal. God (who is love) is seeking a people to care for the earth and to love each other. That is what God wants. If you take care of the creation, and live in love, you bring heaven to earth. If you violate the creation and live in hatred, you bring hell to earth. You choose – heaven or hell. Love lets you choose. But eventually love wins.Consistent Heresy
As heretical as all that is, it is consistent with itself. Thus Bell creates great difficulty for many. For, though the great majority of churches today affirm much of Bell’s gospel, they are not able to stomach the conclusion. They are inconsistent in their heresies. |
|
But the fearful, and
unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and
sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. – Revelation
21:8 (KJV)
|
Part 2
Rob Bell: A Consistent Heretic, with Theologically Inconsistent Critics
Rob Bell’s latest book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is full of heretical teachings. He proposes a “better story” than the biblical gospel preached by the Christian church for nearly two thousand years. The book has stirred up a firestorm of protest from Evangelicals and Reformed theologians. A number of the reviews contain extensive criticisms of his theology. They condemn Bell for his improper use and interpretation of the Bible, his universalism, his wrong view of sin (all horizontal), his vitiation of the atonement, and his erroneous views of Christ and of God. His teaching is rejected as old liberal theology reformulated, and as a new gospel, which is no gospel.While all of that criticism is deserved, it is a bit surprising that these critics are thus aroused. For these things are not new from Bell. In 2005, Rob Bell wrote Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Virtually everything that Bell writes in Love Wins is found in Velvet Elvis, at least in seed form. So why the hue and cry over the new book? To be fair, part of the answer is that they are dismayed and/or angered that a well-known preacher is promoting heresies that cut out the very heart of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. Yet, that is not the whole story.
The rest of the answer is that the newer book, by focusing on God’s love and the final destiny of all, is exposing the theological errors of the vast majority of Evangelical and Reformed preachers. (I use the label “Reformed” loosely.) Bell is teaching the same basic theology (i.e., basic errors) as his Evangelical and Reformed critics. In Love Wins Bell draws out the logical conclusions of these teachings, and his critics are not willing to accept these logical conclusions of their own theology. Although they recognize that Bell’s conclusions undermine the whole of the Christian faith, they will not see that Bell’s conclusions are the logical consequence of a universal love of God. Thus they try to reject the fruit (his heretical conclusions), while yet maintaining the heretical plant (Arminianism) that produced the evil fruit. The critics fail to acknowledge (whether deliberately or through lack of understanding) that the fruit is the natural product of the plant. They are theologically inconsistent. Rob Bell is consistent, thus the sound and the fury of the critics. Rob Bell’s book teaches that the theology of a universal love of God eliminates hell and places all who ever lived in heaven. If a Hoeksema or an Engelsma points out the logical conclusion of Arminian theology, they are dismissed as hyper Calvinists. But when a Rob Bell does it….
Consider the remarkable agreement between the theology of Rob Bell and that of the overwhelming majority of Evangelical and Reformed ministers:
- God is love, and God loves everyone.
- God wants to save all, and offers salvation to all in the preaching, expressing His desire that all be saved.
- Christ died for all people, and also for the creation. This death is a demonstration of God’s love for all, not a penal substitution for the elect. The benefits are available for all.
- God is sovereign, that is, all powerful. (In reality, this is a meaningless, non-functioning sovereignty, for God does not, according to this view, exercise His sovereign power in salvation.)
- All children who die in infancy go to heaven.
- God is building His kingdom on earth. He calls all Christians to be kingdom builders (or, to use different terminology, to redeem creation).
The problem is that these teachings result in logical conclusions that blatantly contradict Scripture. For example: If it is so that 1) God loves all men and wants to save them, and 2) God is sovereign, then 3) all men must be saved. However, the Bible states plainly that not all will be saved.
Or consider this: If Christ died for all men, thus paying for their sins, then all men must be saved. But that conclusion too contradicts the Bible.
Or this: If God commands us to work to redeem the creation and to build His kingdom in the earth, to make the whole of this world subject to Jesus, then this earth must be or become heaven. For why should the church subdue the whole earth and restore it to its original purity, if the coming of Jesus means that this world will be literally burned with fire and we will be lifted off from it to a different place called heaven? But that conclusion, namely, that this earth is heaven, is too obviously contrary to the Bible. So the promoters of this earthly kingdom, not daring boldly to teach that heaven is here, teach a contradiction: build the kingdom of heaven here; yet there is a heaven somewhere else.
God loves all men, Christ died for all, God offers salvation to all, yet God saves only some.
How do these same preachers/theologians reconcile these contradictions? They do not. They rather call them paradoxes – apparently contradictory. Such teaching may seem like contradictions to us, but God can resolve them. We must hold on to both, they insist.
Rob Bell solves other “paradoxes” of Evangelical/Reformed preachers. How can God who is love, put people into hell, a place of eternal torment? How is it possible for God to love a man all the time he lives on earth, but after the man dies, God pours out dreadful, killing wrath on the same man? A paradox, say the critics. No, says Bell. A loving God does not put a man into hell; the man puts himself into his own “hell”… temporarily. Eventually the love of God will melt the man’s obstinacy, and he will agree to love people and care for the creation, and he will effectively be in heaven, by his own choice.
What about this difficult question: Why does a sovereign God allow men (whom, according to their teaching, God loves) to perish, when He could save them? Evangelicals and Reformed preachers will babble on and on at this point about man’s responsibility, and how hard it is to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. But they have no answer.
Rob Bell does. Salvation is entirely up to each person. Live in love, and you bring heaven to earth. Live in hatred, and you create your own hell on earth. Man controls his own destiny. Bell wants us to believe too that all who ever lived will end up in heaven eventually. That this blatantly contradicts the Bible is of no concern to Bell. It is consistent with the basic tenet that God loves all men, which teaching is proclaimed by virtually every Evangelical and nominally Reformed preacher.
The issue comes down to this: Who saves, God or man? The Reformed (biblical) position is that God alone saves. God eternally determined to save certain ones whom He loved, predestinating them unto adoption as His sons (Ephesians 1:4-6). Others God rejected, forming them as vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction (Romans 9:22). In time God sent His Son to lay down His life for His sheep (i.e., the elect, John 10:14,15). God by His Spirit powerfully regenerates His elect people, giving them a new, spiritual life (John 3:3-8). God gives faith, and by His sovereign, particular grace, God saves from death and hell and gives eternal life (Ephesians 2:1-10). Through the preaching God commands all men everywhere to repent and believe in Jesus (Mark 1:15; John 3:36). Through the power of sovereign grace, the elect believe, they repent, they turn to the living God (Romans 10:13-15; Acts 14:15). The reprobate hear and are hardened in their unbelief (II Corinthians 2:14-16). God preserves His own unto the end, and brings them through death unto Himself (Philippians 1:6). The reprobate, on the other hand, are justly condemned to hell on the ground of their sins (Revelation 20:13-15).
This is the theology of sovereign grace. It is a sovereign salvation. It is a gracious salvation and it is a particular grace (and love) that saves – the only kind of grace (and love) that the Bible teaches.
That theology, however, is loathsome to most preachers and theologians. They want a place for man. “Man’s responsibility” – that is the touchstone and the battle cry, as if a command from God to repent and believe is not enough to establish man’s responsibility. Accountability is not the real issue. What they loathe is the teaching that God sovereignly determines whom He will save, and then effectually saves them and them alone.
But if God does not determine who will be saved and who will not be saved, then who does? The logical answer is, Man does. But preachers are a bit hesitant to say that, for the Bible is rather plain on that – For by grace you are saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8, 9). So most preachers would say, No, man does not save himself.
But that answer is inconsistent with the theology that God loves all and offers salvation to all. Rob Bell gives the answer that is consistent with the “God-loves-all-men and God-offers-salvation-to-all-men” theology. Bell’s answer is: Man determines his own destiny, and Bell is explicit about this. As he ridicules the biblical teaching that God saves through preaching, that God sovereignly sends where He wills, Bell draws the reader up short – “This raises another, far more disturbing question: Is your future in someone else’s hand?” (Love, p. 9). The Arminian abhors the thought that someone else might be in control of his future. The Reformed believer answers without hesitation, Indeed, my future is in Someone else’s hand. Thank God that it is!
 |
|
Rob Bell doubts the scriptures
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/501377370998957182/]
|
A Warning
In so many ways, Bell’s teaching is a warning to the church world of the end product of their theology. Virtually the whole of the church world has adopted some form of higher criticism of the Bible, thus destroying the church’s stand that the Bible is word for word God’s inspired word, infallible and inerrant. Bell takes that to its logical end-insisting for example that the story of Adam and Eve’s fall is not important because it happened, but because it happens. Bell is not even convinced that the canon of Scripture is closed. Such a low view of the Bible allows Bell to pick and choose the verses that he likes, and to ignore the rest. The reviewers rightly criticize Bell for this, but they are guilty of the same. Most of them present God’s plan of salvation as if John 3:16 is the last word on the matter, and close their eyes to explicit passages on salvation such as John 10, Romans 9, and Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2.Bell follows N.T. Wright, as does virtually the whole church world today. N.T. Wright also teaches that heaven is right here on the earth.
Bell plays with Roman Catholicism, as so many Evangelical and Reformed folk do. When he speaks of the Lord’s Supper, he claims it includes an altar. More significantly, in his defense of purification in the next world, he uses the same texts that Rome uses to defend the heresy of purgatory.
The chickens come home to roost, and it makes the preachers uncomfortable.
This is God’s warning to the church that teaches that God loves all and wants to save all.
Through Rob Bell, God sets before the seminaries, the preachers, the elders, and the people the proper, i.e., logical, conclusion of their false theology: Universal salvation, heaven on earth, man determining his own destiny. Will the preachers listen? Let them turn and seek the old paths of sovereign, particular grace. Let them call the people to worship the true God who is holy, just, and truly sovereign, and let them honor the God who revealed not only that He is love, but that He is also the one who “hath… mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9:18).
Is this a hard doctrine? Of course. Is it offensive? It certainly is! It offends me daily! Nonetheless, it is the gospel of God revealed in the Bible. A preacher, as an ambassador of Christ, must speak what the King commands him to speak, even if it brings the wrath of the whole world upon him.
 |
|
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.pinterest.com/vivianacarrera7/contend-for-the-faith/]
|
Part 3
Rob Bell: A Consistent Heretic with Thousands of Followers
Rob Bell is a false teacher openly promoting damnable heresies. His teaching includes the heresies of Jacob Arminius: God loves all and wants all to be saved. Jesus died for all and thus salvation is available for all. In the preaching, God offers heaven to all. All that remains is for people to make their choice: heaven or hell.Rob Bell goes beyond Arminius himself, drawing from the spiritual descendants of Arminius – the promoters of the social gospel. Standing with postmillennial proponents of “kingdom theology,” Bell maintains that heaven is not a place different from this earth. Believers are rather called to bring heaven to this earth.
Bell’s conclusions are consistent with his heretical theology – a heaven on earth, and each and every person determining his own destiny in the “next life.” If one lives in love and cares for the creation, the “next life” (here on earth) will be a heaven for him. If one refuses to live in love, he will live in the hell of his own making for as long as it takes for love to melt his obstinate heart. “Jesus,” found everywhere and in many religions under different names, is the life force. God is love, and love is what God is.
These damnable heresies are brought in under the cover of scattered passages of Scripture, twisted to support doctrines contrary to the whole of Scripture.
Rob Bell has thousands of followers. Many are ardent followers. They flock to the services he leads on Sunday. They purchase his books and videos. They rush to his defense in public forums.
How can it be that thousands of people follow such a man, a false prophet? No, that is not the puzzling question, for that is easily answered. People are sheep, and sheep follow. History demonstrates repeatedly that people will follow many unlikely religious leaders. Raging radicals or soothing liberals – people will follow, sometimes even to their own death.
Rob Bell has a theology that appeals to people. What Bell has done is aptly described by MSNBC interviewer Martin Bashir, who confronted Bell with the charge that Bell amended “the gospel, the Christian message so that it is palatable to contemporary people who find… the idea of hell and heaven difficult to swallow.” Said Bashir to Bell, you have “created a Christian message that is warm, kind, and popular for contemporary culture.”
So it is no puzzle that thousands follow Rob Bell.
Rather, the question is: Why do people of Reformed background follow Rob Bell? How can it be that people born and raised in nominally Reformed churches are comfortable under Bell’s preaching? Is it that they cannot discern the lie? Is it that the preachers in the churches of their youth failed to give them the necessary instruction so that they would know the difference between truth and error? Or is it that they discern the lie, but they do not care, or even that they love the lie?
Probably all of these together comprise the answer.
Over the years, as Mars Hill Bible Church grew in Grandville, Michigan, drawing hundreds and then thousands weekly, it became obvious that many of these worshipers were leaving churches that still had the name Reformed written over their doors. The inescapable conclusion is that these people had a serious lack of knowledge of the Reformed (biblical) faith. The youth no longer had catechism classes; Heidelberg Catechism preaching was no more; and solid, biblical sermons were a thing of the past. Rather than biblical truths, preachers taught the heresies of a common grace, a universal love, and a God who pleaded with people to accept the offer of salvation that Jesus had made available for all.
Increasingly, both the church pulpits and the school lecterns emphasized that the Christian’s main calling is to build the kingdom of God here on this earth. The infallibility and authority of the Bible was questioned and effectively rejected with specific decisions on evolution, women in office, and more. Preaching was whittled down to a ten or fifteen-minute sermon filled with stories and jokes, supplemented with the latest novel the minister read, or the latest movie he or she had seen. In a desperate attempt to “keep the youth,” the rest of the worship service was given over to entertainment – singing groups, videos, the dance, and bands – in “Reformed” churches.
Then Rob Bell comes on the scene. He puts the Bible back into the center of the worship. He opens the Bible and teaches the people from the Bible! The preaching is the center, with messages that often last forty-five minutes or more. He does not deny the historicity of the Bible narrative (publicly at least). Members of these “Reformed” churches discover – we can get preaching here!
And they came in droves; they sat happily under the heresies of Rob Bell, because they had not the knowledge, and because they had been conditioned to Bell’s lies by their former pastors and teachers.
The shepherds were unfaithful. They did not feed the sheep. They did not heed Christ’s command to produce sermons for the edification, exhortation, and comfort of His people (I Corinthians 14:3). They turned a deaf ear to Paul’s charge to Timothy: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (II Timothy 4:1-2). Rather than preach Christ crucified and that only, they came with cunning words of man’s wisdom (I Corinthians 2:1-5). They starved their sheep, and the sheep scattered and perished. Terrible is God’s judgment against unfaithful shepherds!
Yet, the unfaithfulness of the shepherds does not fully explain the huge following Rob Bell gained from former members of Reformed churches. No doubt, among his followers are some who were taught the truth, and heard the lie condemned. In reality, although unfaithful shepherds bear their dreadful guilt, the people are likewise to be blamed. God explained it thus to Jeremiah in the days of Israel’s apostasy: “A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so…” (Jeremiah 5:30-31) (my emphasis, RJD).
John Calvin’s commentary on this is penetrating.
Doubtless, we shall find that to be ever true which is said in Deuteronomy 13:3 (Thou shalt not harken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.) that when false prophets come, it is for the purpose of trying God’s people, whether they from the heart love God. It is then his object to try our religion, whenever he gives loose reins to impostors and false prophets: for everyone who truly loves God will be preserved by his Spirit from being led away by such deceivers. When; therefore, ignorant men are deluded, it is certain that they are justly punished for their neglect and contempt of God, because they have not been sufficiently attentive to his service; yea, because they have wished for impostors.
Likewise, Calvin’s comments on Ezekiel 13:1-3 (a condemnation of false prophets) are insightful. After pointing out that the false prophets spoke words that were calculated to gain the favor of the people (namely, that the captives would be released in but three years, not the seventy that Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied), Calvin states that the people were not free from guilt. Writes Calvin,
Nor could the people object that they were deceived by those falsehoods, since they willingly and knowingly threw themselves into the snare. They were not destitute of true prophets; and God had distinguished his servants from false prophets by well-known marks, so that no one could mistake except willfully. But in the midst of light they blinded themselves, and so God suffered them to be deceived. But that was the just reward of their pride, since they could not be subject to God and his servants. Then when they sought enticements, as is evident from many passages, God also gave the reins to Satan, that there should be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets.
The same emphatically applies to the thousands who follow Rob Bell in Grandville, Michigan, particularly those from a Reformed background. They had true and faithful preachers living in their land. Some of these preachers wrote books that set forth the truth clearly. They published the Standard Bearer twenty-one times a year in order to set forth the truth over against the lie. Worship services have been held in this area for over 85 years, in which the solid, biblical (i.e., Reformed) truth has been faithfully expounded. Everyone who drives to Mars Hill Sunday morning will bypass such a church to get to Mars Hill. Besides, the radio broadcasts the truth Sunday after Sunday.
Yes, I refer to the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). And I do not mean by this that the PRC is the only church that has the truth. But I do know that, by God’s grace alone, these churches still proclaim that truth faithfully, boldly, and antithetically. People in Reformed churches knew that. But they did not want that truth. Some of their fathers cast out Herman Hoeksema, George M. Ophoff, and Henry Danhof and their consistories because they did not want to hear the truth. They did everything they could to snuff out the clear proclamation of God’s truth.
Because they did not want the glorious, antithetical truth, God took it away from them and caused them to believe the lie. They now follow a man who is denying cardinal truths of the Christian faith, the very existence of heaven and hell, as the Bible clearly teaches it. A man who preaches a different Jesus and whose god is love. A man leading his followers to their own destruction. What a grief!
God is proving them, whether they love Him from the heart. He will not allow the followers of Rob Bell to pretend that they want the Bible. Bell’s teaching so obviously contradicts the Bible, that his followers are confronted with but two options: Follow Bell, or follow Jehovah, the true God. If you know some who attend Mars Hill, and have any love, any concern for their souls, you must put it as starkly as that. Yet, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. All believers are still prone to hate God. If you believe the truth of Lord’s Day 2 (Heidelberg Catechism), you will also recognize that we all are prone to follow a false prophet who gives us a god after our liking. It is not enough to have the truth preached in your church. To those who do not love the truth, God will send a strong delusion that they believe the lie (II Thessalonians 2:10, 11). And then that dreadful additional word: “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (v. 12).
Thanks be to God that the Spirit did not stop there, but inspired Paul to add (vs. 13, 14): “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ”, and finally, this exhortation to every believer (v. 15): “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”
The Reformed Witness
Hope Protestant Reformed Church
1307 E. Brockton Ave.
Redlands, CA 92374-3802
or email us
Hope Protestant Reformed Church
1307 E. Brockton Ave.
Redlands, CA 92374-3802
or email us
INTERNET SOURCE: http://hopeprc.org/reformed-witness/rob-bell-a-consistent-heretic/
