The Doctrine We Would Most Like to Lose
If any doctrine in the Bible could be quietly removed, most of us would choose this one. It weighs on anyone who takes it seriously. If you have stood at the grave of someone you feared was lost, you know this is no theory. A person who is troubled by hell has a tender heart, and we have no wish to argue that out of him.
Many who deconstruct name hell as the place where their faith began to come apart. They ask how a God of love could let anyone suffer forever. They remember being frightened as children. They think of a kind neighbor who never believed. These are honest questions, and they deserve better than a slogan.
We believe what the Lord Jesus taught. Every person who dies without Christ goes to a place of torment, and after the great white throne he will be cast into the lake of fire, conscious and forever separated from God (the Eternal State; the Final Judgment). If heaven is real, hell is real. Those studies set out the doctrine. This one takes up the challenge to it.
Are we free to be more merciful than Jesus? If you do not agree with eternal condemnation, you disagree with Him.
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For Deeper Study
- Whatever Happened to Hell?Amazon John BlanchardA thorough, readable defense of everlasting punishment that answers universalism and annihilationism.
- Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal PunishmentAmazon Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, eds.Evangelical scholars answer universalism and annihilationism from the Old Testament, Jesus, Paul, and Revelation. Some contributors are Reformed.
- Another Gospel?Amazon Alisa ChildersA lifelong Christian's account of being shaken by progressive teaching, including its claims about God's love and judgment.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Eternal State
God will make a new heaven and a new earth, where the redeemed will dwell with Him forever; all who reject Christ will be punished forever in the lake of fire.
Open Doctrine