Luther and Calvin Brigade 914: ERASING HELL BY FRANCIS CHAN & PRESTON SPRINKLE

Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up Paperback – July 5, 2011

by Francis Chan (Author), Preston Sprinkle (Author)

How could a loving God send people to hell? Will people have a chance after they die to believe in Jesus and go to heaven?

With a humble respect for God's Word, Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle address the deepest questions you have about eternal destiny. They've asked the same questions. Like you, sometimes they just don't want to believe in hell. But as they write, "We cannot afford to be wrong on this issue." This is not a book about who is saying what. It's a book about what God says. It's not a book about impersonal theological issues. It's a book about people who God loves. It's not a book about arguments, doctrine, or being right. It's a book about the character of God.

Erasing Hell will immerse you in the truth of Scripture as, together with the authors, you find not only the truth but the courage to live it out.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.amazon.com/Erasing-Hell-About-Eternity-Things/dp/0781407257

Love Wins by Rob Bell & Erasing Hell by Francis Chan

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://biggzipp.com/two-recent-reads-love-wins-by-rob-bell-erasing-hell-by-francis-chan/]

Erasing Hell?

Francis Chan

Introduction

If you are excited to read this book, you have issues.

Do you understand the weight of what we are about to consider?

We are exploring the possibility that you and I may end upbeing tormented in hell. Excited would be the wrong term to use here. Necessary would be more fitting.

For some, this discussion will open up old wounds. It certainly does for me.

The saddest day of my life was the day I watched my grandmother die. When that EKG monitor flatlined, I freaked out. I absolutely lost it! According to what I knew of the Bible, she was headed for a life of never-ending suffering. I thought I would go crazy. I have never cried harder, and I don’t ever want to feel like that again. Since that day, I have tried not to think about it. It has been over twenty years.

Even as I write that paragraph, I feel sick. I would love to erase hell from the pages of Scripture.

How about you? Have you ever struggled with hell as I have?

Do you have any parents, siblings, cousins, or friends who, based on what you have been taught, will end up in hell? What a bonechilling thought. Until recently, whenever the idea of hell—and the idea of my loved ones possibly heading there—crossed my mind, I would brush it aside and divert my thinking to something more pleasant. While I’ve always believed in hell with my mind, I tried not to let the doctrine penetrate my heart.

But I reached a point where I could no longer do this. I could no longer acknowledge hell with my lips while preventing my heart from feeling its weight. I had to figure out if the Bible actually taught the existence of a literal hell. How great would it be if it didn’t? Then I would be able to embrace my grandmother again someday.

So I decided to write a book about hell. And honestly—I’m scared to death.

I’m scared because so much is at stake. Think about it. If I say there is no hell, and it turns out that there is a hell, I may lead people into the very place I convinced them did not exist! If I say there is a hell, and I’m wrong, I may persuade people to spend their lives frantically warning loved ones about a terrifying place that isn’t real! When it comes to hell, we can’t afford to be wrong. This is not one of those doctrines where you can toss in your two cents, shrug your shoulders, and move on. Too much is at stake. Too many people are at stake. And the Bible has too much to say.

Who Should I Believe?

Part of me doesn’t want to believe in hell. And I’ll admit that I have a tendency to read into Scripture what I want to find—maybe you do too. Knowing this, I’ve spent many hours fasting and praying that God would prevent my desires from twisting Scripture to gratify my personal preferences. And I encourage you to do the same. 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.

There are many things that I believed and practiced for years, only to change my views after further study of the Bible. I’ve learned to be okay with saying, “I think I was off on that one.” While this is humbling and difficult, it’s better than continuing to believe something that is inaccurate.

For example, I was “initiated” into the American church when people urged me to pray a prayer to “receive Christ” so I wouldn’t burn in hell. After years of leading others down the same path, I changed. I now speak against this idea of simply praying a prayer as fire insurance—I just don’t see it anywhere in Scripture.

I was also taught that the Holy Spirit no longer empowers our lives with miraculous deeds, because these “ceased” long ago. For many years, I discouraged people from pursuing the supernatural. After further study of Scripture, I now believe that the Spirit can heal the incurable, accomplish the impossible, and ignite believers to do greater works than Jesus (John 14:12). And I urge people to believe the same.

I have distanced myself from traditional forms of “church” in pursuit of what I believe is more biblical. 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.

At one point, I even sold my house, quit my job, and left the country because I didn’t want any of my comforts to hold me back from pursuing God wholeheartedly. I wanted to follow God wherever He led me.

Why do I tell you all this?

I’m not going to hang on to the idea of hell simply because it’s what my tradition tells me to believe. And neither should you.

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. And so it is with hell. If hell is some primitive myth left over from conservative tradition, then let’s set it on that dusty shelf next to other traditional beliefs that have no basis in Scripture. But if it is true, if the Bible does teach that there is a literal hell awaiting those who don’t believe in Jesus, then this reality must change us. It should certainly purge our souls of all complacency.

As we roll up our sleeves and dig into the topic of hell, 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.

Let God Be God

But this book is actually much more than a book on hell. It’s a book about embracing a God who isn’t always easy to understand, and whose ways are far beyond us; a God whose thoughts are much higher than our thoughts; a God who, as the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all things, has every right to do, as the psalmist says, “whatever He pleases” (Ps. 115:3 NASB).

God has the right to do WHATEVER He pleases.

If I’ve learned one thing from studying hell, it’s that last line.

And whether or not you end up agreeing with everything I say about hell, you must agree with Psalm 115:3. Because at the end of the day, our feelings and wants and heartaches and desires are not ultimate—only God is ultimate. God tells us plainly that His ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than ours (Isa. 55:9). Expect then, that Scripture will say things that don’t agree with your natural way of thinking.

This is why we need to pray. We need to ask God to help us think rightly about hell. Before you read this book, I ask that you pray. Seriously. Pray. I’m the type of person who never does what a book tells me to do, and maybe you are too. But I ask you to make this one exception. Pray before you read this book. The following is the gist of the prayers I prayed as I journeyed along in the writing of this book. It’s also my prayer for you as you wrestle with this important issue:

God, I want to know what is true. I know I have cravings that sway and distort my ability to reason. You promise that Your Holy Spirit will guide me into all truth. I pray that He will now. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to be deceived by others or myself. You alone possess all truth, and I want to be on Your side. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Give me courage to live and speak what is right no matter the cost. I don’t want to believe anything about You that is not true. Amen.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www1.cbn.com/biblestudy/erasing-hell%3F

Hell is the backdrop that reveals the profound and unbelievable grace of the cross. It brings to light the enormity of our sin and therefore portrays the undeserved favor of God in full color. – Francis Chan

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/874616]

Francis Chan’s Erasing Hell: A Response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins

By Randy Alcorn | June 22, 2011

I spoke about Mark Galli’s God Wins in the previous blog. (The ebook is now available on Amazon.) Today I’ll deal with Francis Chan’s Erasing Hell, another response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. Then I’ll compare Chan’s book to Galli’s.

In Erasing Hell, Francis Chan speaks with compassion. You can almost feel him trembling over the issues at stake. He recognizes this debate is about God, His nature and His authority. I sensed both humility and prophetic power in this book.

I’ve talked with Francis personally and been at a few conferences where he’s spoken. It’s like watching a fire burn—you don’t know exactly what’s coming next. That same passion is on the pages of his book. Chan lays his heart on the table. It’s rare that a book mixes straight-from-the-heart talk with careful citation of Scripture. Erasing Hell does exactly that. I was not only informed, but moved.

What I read wasn’t the final edit, so some of the contents may have changed by the time the book’s released in early July. But these were some of the chapters:

Does Everyone Go to Heaven?
Has Hell Changed? Or Have We?
What Jesus Actually Said About Hell

Do not erase bible verse from scripture

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://web.facebook.com/GoodFightMinistries/photos/a.118358416333.102120.80567856333/10154697097706334/?type=3&theater]

Chan’s book goes deep and detailed exactly when it needs to. It occasionally appeals to the original languages, e.g. the meaning of the Greek words Gehenna and aionos. It does so in order to deal with misleading statements about those terms in Love Wins.

The author explains that he asked his friend Preston Sprinkle to assist him in the research. That research and Francis Chan’s presentation are a dynamic combination.

Chan is honest, admitting that when it comes to Matthew 25:46 “everything in me wants to interpret it differently, to make it say something that fits my own view of justice and morality.” Then he adds, “But from what I can tell, this is what the text is saying.”

One of the tests of whether we truly believe in the authority of God’s Word is whether or not we bow to it and accept it by faith even when it is painful or disturbing to do so. (What should it tell us if the Bible seems to always agree with us?) Chan models this approach to biblical interpretation. Will we pridefully believe what we want to, or humbly believe whatever God has told us?

C. S. Lewis said of Hell, “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.” Dorothy Sayers, another broad-minded Christian, claimed, “We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.”

Too many Christians choose to believe whatever makes them feel good, while they ignore, deny, or reinterpret Scripture when it doesn’t fit culture’s current definition of love and tolerance. Hence, culture and the reader of Scripture become the authority, rather than Scripture itself. Faith becomes merely a collection of fleeting opinions, always subject to revision. That is something very different from historic, biblically grounded Christian faith.

Rather than apologize for God, Chan suggests we should apologize to God for presuming to be wiser and more loving than our Savior. Yet he does this while fully acknowledging the heart-rending difficulty of facing the existence of eternal Hell.

How does Erasing Hell compare to God Wins? I would describe Erasing Hell as passionate, biblically reasoned and pastoral. God Wins is historically rooted, theologically reasoned and journalistically precise. Someone who prefers thoughtfully presented theology and history might favor Galli’s book, while someone who enjoys careful exposition of key biblical passages and likes to connect with an author on an emotional level might prefer Chan’s.

I deeply appreciated both books; their content is sufficiently unique to justify reading both. I think it’s a God-thing that these small books are so different, yet complement each other with minimal redundancy. With their different backgrounds, personalities, life experiences, and writing styles, Mark Galli and Francis Chan each bring to the table things the other doesn’t. Reading them back to back, I found they produced a stereo effect that made the sound fuller than either on its own.

These are both small books. Combined, they are less than 80,000 words, which would total one medium-sized book, still smaller than most theological books. If you are thinking a book can’t be that great if it’s just a critique, realize that both of these authors don’t just respond to Bell, they set forth a positive case for a central biblical doctrine. (Remember too that Luther’s classic On the Bondage of the Will, which he considered his best book, was actually a critical response to a book on free will written by Erasmus.)

I love that these authors don’t throw anyone under the bus for raising questions. But neither do they throw orthodox Christians throughout church history under the bus for believing the most difficult teachings of Jesus.

I was encouraged that both my sons-in-law clearly saw the danger of Bell’s book and rose to the occasion in their churches. One, a pastor, produced a podcast on Rob Bell’s book for his church and the other led a study of the book with men in his church. God Wins and Erasing Hell will be invaluable tools for pastors and lay leaders to guide believers in evaluating these doctrines.

Is it possible that God can be loving and that there is such a thing as eternal punishment? The Lord Jesus and Scripture, as understood by the great majority in the early church, the medieval church, the Reformation and the evangelical church, has always answered affirmatively.

Yes, Hell is dreadful, but it is not evil—it’s a place where evil gets punished. Something can be profoundly disturbing yet still be moral. Hell is moral because a good God must punish evil.

Much more is at stake here than the doctrine of Hell and the question of universalism. We don’t own the Christian faith. It isn’t ours to revise. God’s Word wasn’t meant to be given away piecemeal, leaving the next generation with leftovers. If we go on decade after decade parceling out fragments of the faith, what will be left? When we abandon truths Christians once died for, will we no longer have truths worth living for?

Both Chan and Galli recognize that the doctrine of hell isn’t a ballot measure, and God doesn’t give us a vote. There will be no end to dismantling doctrines if we consider it our calling to try to make God look good in our eyes and our culture’s. If his definition of good is different than ours, we dare not expect him to be the one who changes. The Almighty doesn’t need us to give him a facelift and airbrush his image. Our task is not to help people see God favorably but to see him accurately. God has the power, through the true gospel, to touch hearts and draw people to his love and grace while they fully affirm his holiness and justice. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.

We are tempted to shrink God so he fits inside the borders of our minds. But those are small borders, and he is a big God. There’s great comfort in knowing a God who loves me but doesn’t need my counsel. The best part about Chan’s Erasing Hell and Galli’s God Wins is that as I read both these books, God became greater and I became less.

The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unheeded.

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961), 95.