Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

26 April, 2006   comments: (0) Sound Doctrine   "My Sunday School Teacher Says Hell is Made Up" I received an email this morning which said: "A Sunday school teacher at our church is now telling us that hell is made up! He gave us the link below to read. Can you please take a look at it and help me to defend truth?". Although Universalism isn't new, it's growing in popularity now days, as more and more people want to find ways to "air condition" Hell. There are many different areas of theological study that I'm not familiar with and would not feel qualified to address in depth. But it just so happens, I've had a great deal of exposure to Universalism, through a friend who spent 14 months trying to talk me into it. My Universalist friend had always been a strong bible believer, but after a couple of decades he seemed to come unglued about the doctrine of Hell. He said that he kept having "hell dreams" at night, and that he just couldn't stand the idea of there being people in torment for all of eternity. I believe that this caused him to search-out alternate ways of viewing the bible, and he eventually ended up as a Universalist. The person who sent me the email this morning referenced a link to Jesus' teaching about Hell, from one of the most popular Universalist websites out there. Unfortunately, the web is making it easy for obscure views and doctrines to reach a bigger audience, and I remember my friend constantly emailing me links to pages on that very same website. Often these sites portray Hell-believing Christians in a negative light, calling them things like "Hellers", and inferring that we somehow enjoy the thought of people in torment. These sites often pick apart the Greek words for Hell and try to hold them as literal places on earth that have no eternal representation. As the picture here shows, they want you to think Jesus was talking about this earthly place on the left (today's Gehenna in Israel), rather than the eternal place on the right. Another significant twist of Christian Universalists is that the word eternal or eternity is not forever. I could get into a big explanation of this but, in a nut shell - they take the Greek root word (Aeon) behind those words and claim that it can never mean everlasting. It's true that the word does mean "age lasting" but, we (traditional) Christians believe that an age can be everlasting in length. Universalists on the other hand, say it always means a temporary amount of time. So most Universalists then, believe that Hell is temporary, and that everyone (including the devil) eventually repent and put their faith in Christ and then are allowed out of Hell. This process might take thousands of years for Hitler and the devil, but aunt Millie might get out after only a couple of weeks. That's their thinking, anyway. One of the things then, that you'll want to try to help the Universalist to see, is that Aeon (an age) can be everlasting. Here's one convincing scripture that I think does that: 2 Corinthians 4:18 "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal [Aeonian]". There you have seen things as temporary, and what's the opposite of seen? It's unseen. And what's the opposite of temporary? NOT TEMPORARY, and look at the word that's used - it's based on "Aeon". The Universalist will fight that verse, but there's at least one pretty solid evidence of a non-temporary age. Another problem for Universalists is the scriptures that seem to be missing in the bible. Eric Landstrom of ovrlnd.com demonstrates the significant obstacles facing Universalism: ... a systematic look through the Bible in its entirety reveals that there is not one verse that shows: 1) The sins of the wicked being forgiven in the after life. 2) The wicked repenting in the after life. 3) The wicked accepting Jesus Christ in the after life. 4) The wicked avoiding judgment in the after life. 5) The wicked having sin "conditioned" out of them in the after life. 6) The wicked getting out of the lake of fire. 7) The wicked getting their names written back into the book of life. 8) Nor can we find anywhere that God repents of His judgment on the wicked in the afterlife or that His judgment is anything short of final and fixed for all eternity. 9) Nor do I see any evidence that God will acquit any fallen angel ever. Robert A. Peterson - in his excellent book entitled "Hell on Trial" comments on the danger and seriousness of Universalism: We must label universalism as a false teaching. In fact, because universalism flies in the face of Scripture and deliberately avoids much of the biblical evidence, it is a sin to hold it. If some readers of [this] are entertaining the universalist hope, I plead with them to repent and submit to the truth, albeit painful, of God's Word that not everyone will be saved in the end. ... Because universalism seeks to undermine that foundation, it must be rejected as evil. Although universalism claims to extol the love of God, in reality, as T.F. Torrance reminds us, "No doctrine that cuts the nerve of that urgency in the Gospel can be a doctrine of love, but only an abiding menace to the Gospel and mankind". To the person who emailed me this morning, I recommend that you talk to the elders at your church, and inform them of the error that your Sunday School teacher is trying to propagate. It is their job to protect the flock. I have a lot more that I could post on this, and perhaps I will future weeks. UPDATE 10/10/07 - See my updated post on this topic: "Does Anyone Really Stay in Hell Forever?" Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.245          Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism