Love Wins, Rob Bell Loses
Posted: March 9, 2011 Filed under: Book & Media Reviews, Miscellaneous, News & Commentary 1 Comment »
Rob Bell.
That name once resonated positively with many young Christians in America. The Chicago Sun-Times once called him “The Next Billy Graham.” I have read his book first book, Velvet Elvis, twice and have seen his DVD Everything is Spiritual and the NOOMA series numerous times. Early on, Bell would come off as a little whacky and off-center, but his questioning of orthodoxy seemed innocent and for thought-provoking purposes only. As time progressed, and he aligned himself with men like Brian McLaren, it became obvious that he was not a fan of orthodoxy at all. Actually, he seems to enjoy trying to re-create our faith.
In the promotional video for his latest book, Love Wins, most evangelicals got the impression that Bell was promoting universalism – the belief that everyone will spend eternity with God with or without believing in Jesus in this life. The questions swirled and the debate waged on but now that advanced copies have been delivered, it is painfully obvious that Bell has fallen completely off the wagon.
In a must read review by Tim Challies, this quote from the book was highlighted:
A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better…. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.
Yep. That’s a real quote. And it should be enough to scare you away from it.
In short, I pray that you will completely avoid this book unless you are reading/teaching it for the purpose of exposing it. They say that any publicity is good publicity, but I hope that the outrage of Bible-believing Christians will be enough to drive this book to the trash/recycling bins of America very soon.
The combination of Rob Bell’s heresy with his popularity make his book very dangerous. He is using the tools of our post-modern world to shame Christ. Initially, all I could think of was how upset his book made me, but who he is truly offending is Christ.
We’ve been planning our Easter services as my church, and the thing about the Easter story that continues to strike me even having heard it thousands of times, is the fact that Christ was mocked, scoffed, tortured, and abused by a world that He was trying to save. At times, every Christian falls into the category of shaming the Cross with their sin, but thankfully God gives us grace and forgiveness and has made a way for us through the blood of His son. In times like this, when men like Rob Bell so painfully mock the Cross through false doctrine, I understand only in a small sense what Christ must have felt being abused the day He died for our sins.
I pray that the grace extended to me comes to Mr. Bell and he sees the way he is offending God.