Engaging Tim Keller on the Doctrine of Hell

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host John Harris. To continue our study in engaging with Keller.

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For those who didn't see the last podcast, I would suggest go watch that, but if you don't want to watch that,

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I will just let you know that this is a very helpful resource in understanding Tim Keller's theology.

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It was printed first in 2013, so the quotes in here from Keller are from works that he did and sermons he preached before that time, which to me is very intriguing, because that means that Keller has been really off for a really long time.

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And you know, for someone like myself who was involved in college career ministry, and I remember in a very secular town in New York, I was part of a

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I don't know if church plan is the best word, but that's really what it ended up being. It was it was an attempt to plant a church, and we did one of the

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Redeemer Presbyterian Church's studies featuring Tim Keller, a video study, on the basics of Christianity, but really what it amounted to was it was a lot of like New York City secular people, like not even

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Christians, who sat down with Tim Keller as Tim Keller would explain to them what Christianity was really about, and they could ask questions, and he would dazzle them.

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He would totally knock down their misconceptions about Christianity, and I think a lot of what this book deals with reminds me of that study, because in this book,

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Keller seems to try to either posit an alternative way of looking at— that's the best construction on this—an alternative way of looking at some

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Orthodox teaching to make it more palatable or acceptable to secular people who are turned off by the church and Christianity and Jesus, or he just reinvents.

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It's not even that he's got two teachings side -by -side, one Orthodox that he gives to the Orthodox audience and one that's, frankly, compromised that he gives to the postmoderns.

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Sometimes he just comes up with, this is my thing. This is how I'm going to conceive of this Orthodox teaching, and it's all wrong.

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Usually, though, it's not—I shouldn't say all wrong. It's wrong, but it's actually somewhat right.

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That's the dangerous part. Some of what he says is right. In fact, sometimes 80 % of it can just be so biblical and good, and you miss that 20%.

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That's the poison pill. And I'm just surprised, to be honest, that for decades, those who should be guarding us—guarding against false teaching, guarding the sheep who fancy themselves as the defenders of the

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Christian faith, even—seem to have missed some of these things. It's just, as I go through this book, it becomes more and more and more revealing to me, obvious to me, that Tim Keller, he's going outside of Orthodoxy, guys.

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I don't know how else to put it. He's giving false teaching. And, of course,

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I've gone into the social justice teaching of Tim Keller in deep ways, and even published in the book that I wrote,

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Social Justice Goes to Church, a whole chapter on Tim Keller and his social teaching, and what it leads to, and how compromised it is, but it's so beyond that.

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It's so beyond that. And so this is going to be helpful for you who are in the church, who are dealing with this, maybe your pastor, which,

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God forbid, but a lot of pastors are influenced by Tim Keller. Maybe your pastor is pushing Tim Keller stuff, and maybe it's, you know, something that you haven't noticed, and now you're realizing, oh man, you know,

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I listened to Tim Keller for so long, and I didn't see these things, and it's helpful for you. Or maybe you don't care about Tim Keller one way or the other.

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You might have dismissed him already, or you're just not familiar, and you don't want to be, but you're gonna still hear these kinds of things, and so I think it's beneficial for you as well.

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So we're gonna get into Tim Keller's understanding of the doctrine of hell today. We did sin last time, now we're doing hell, and it's very similar.

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In fact, I would say that you could probably do one chapter on his view of sin and of hell, because they really run into each other, but we're separating them because the book separates them, and because they are different doctrines, and this is gonna be, it's gonna be interesting.

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GoldRiverCO .com. Promo code conversations. All right, let's talk about Tim Keller now, and this this whole issue of hell.

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I mean, this is a doctrine that, let's just say, seems a little archaic, doesn't it? I mean, people today, modern people, man, they don't want to hear about that.

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That's one of those holdovers from the medieval time period. Well, that's perhaps what a lot of people today think, and they're familiar somewhat with the imagery, maybe from cartoons, maybe from some of those demonic shows that I'm surprised are on streaming services and television, and they reference hell mostly in positive ways or ways that don't take it too seriously.

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And surprise, surprise, Tim Keller seems to understand that's where people today are coming from.

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Their vision of hell, their understanding of it has been, they're very repelled by the traditional view, and they're very open to, if they're open at all to the concept of hell, to a very watered -down version of it.

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And Tim Keller knows this, and he crafts his approach, I think, accordingly, as we saw with his doctrine of sin.

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I mean, he literally says that he needs to rebrand the doctrine of sin, and so he does so in an unbiblical fashion.

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And you see something similar going on here. So, I'm gonna read for you. This is the author of this particular section in Engaging with Keller.

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His quote, he says, this about Tim Keller, he says, Keller has two different ways of communicating the doctrine of hell.

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One for traditionalists, and the other for postmoderns. Keller's teaching for traditionalists seems consistent with the traditional doctrine.

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For postmoderns, Keller takes his cues from one of his favorite Christian thinkers, C .S. Lewis. And so, this brings up something that we have to kind of face head -on, we have to deal with, and that is the fact that C .S.

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Lewis is very respected in evangelicalism today. He is...

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some have joked about the Gospel Coalition's New Trinity.

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I don't remember all the names, but C .S. Lewis is one of them. It was like Abraham Kuyper, C .S. Lewis, and I forgot who the third one is.

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It might be Tim Keller, who knows. But C .S. Lewis, though, is so far up there on the list.

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And I'm not a Lewis scholar. I haven't done in -depth studies of Lewis. Sure, I had the

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Chronicles of Narnia books read to me as a child. And I realize there's issues with the

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Last Battle. I realize people have issues even with the idea of appeasing the White Witch instead of appeasing the wrath of God, and there's all these issues.

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But it's a fantasy. I've always taken it as it's not a perfect analogy. Lewis was trying to do analogy, but it...

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you're not... it's a challenging task, and I don't... I never really took it that way, that it was a parallel in every sense.

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And so I've never been that offended by his fantasy work, but...

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I know some of you are, I get that. But there's some problems with Lewis, and this podcast is not about exploring that.

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I just need people who are in this audience who are used to respecting Lewis. You can still respect him on some of his things, his teachings.

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I've referenced some things that are positive of his. Observations he makes that are very piercing and just accurate about the times in which he lived, and in some ways the times in which we lived.

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C .S. Lewis was a critic of modernity, though he was also in some ways a product of it, just probably like I am, and probably like all of you are to some extent.

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And so there's things we can glean. I've often quoted Lewis's quote where he talks about reading old books.

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I think that's important. But Lewis himself, as we'll see in this particular podcast, also had some issues, and these issues seem to be more or less products of modernity.

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These are things that he... man -centered approaches that he adopted that aren't in keeping with biblical orthodoxy, or just even the traditional understandings of hell that the church has valued for millennia.

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So dispel the myth of the perfect C .S.

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Lewis, if you have that in your head. Dispel the myth that C .S. Lewis is orthodox, and he's not. He's not orthodox in every sense, at all.

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And the more I think you read him on certain things, the more you come to that conclusion. But this isn't about attacking

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Lewis. This is about understanding Keller, and because Keller draws so much from Lewis on this particular doctrine,

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I have to say that up front. So let's get into it more, and talk about the actual things

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Keller says about the doctrine of hell. First, we got to do...

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we got to go through some Orthodox teaching, though, because we need a standard to compare what Keller says to the standard, which of course is

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Scripture, and of course, secondary standards being confessions and so forth. I only put one clip from a confession because I want to focus on Scripture more here.

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Here's the Orthodox teaching on hell, and this is not exhaustive. God is, first of all, we need to understand, a judge to be feared, and this is all throughout

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Scripture. In fact, there's a lot of verses that I could have put here. I did not. I think of the end of Ecclesiastes.

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God is a good judge. I often use that in evangelism. However, there are a number of passages that talk about this.

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Psalm 56, God himself is judge. Acts 10, 42, and he ordered us to preach to the people the solemnly and solemnly to testify that this is the one who has been appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.

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Living and dead, guys. Because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.

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Acts 17, 31. Hebrews 10, 30 through 31, For we know him who said,

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Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. And listen to this. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living

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God. Man, this is heavy stuff. No wonder people want to run away from this.

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Jesus said they would. This is why light and darkness don't mix. Darkness hides from the light.

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It doesn't want to be exposed. It doesn't want to be judged. And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see my judgment which

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I have executed and my hand which I laid on them. Ezekiel 39, 21. There's an audience to this judgment.

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It's not just about God doing something privately with you. People are going to know.

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And we are heading towards a final judgment in which there is a public nature to this.

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We also have the Westminster Confession of Faith. God's judicial office is included in the list of divine attributes in that particular confession.

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Now, that's number one. This is the basis for the doctrine of hell. You can't get the doctrine of hell without starting with God as a judge.

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And we could have talked about other attributes. God's holy. He's offended by sin. That's what leads you to the understanding that he has to judge sin.

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If he's a good judge, he has to. He can't turn a blind eye. He's got to judge what's before him. The law -breaking cannot be given a pass.

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Now, hell is a real place. Scripture teaches this all over. Matthew 25, 31. Then he will also say to those on his left, apart from me, accursed ones into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.

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Luke 13, 27. And by the way, I'm gonna stop right here actually and say something. I just thought of it. Hell was prepared originally for the devil and his angels, right?

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It's what Scripture teaches. I'm wondering if Tim Keller would apply, as we will see in his doctrine of hell, which is essentially that it's locked from the inside, that humans are...

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the punishment for their sin is their own sin. It's a self -judgment almost. God is not really involved in the process that much.

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If that is hell for humans, what about for demons? What about for Satan? It begs the question, and the article in this book does not go into this, but I'm gonna go into this just a little bit.

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What about for the demons and for Satan? Do they choose to go to hell? Is it locked from the inside?

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They are just living with the consequences of their actions, and God has a hands -off policy when it comes to them.

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Or, man, does he judge them because they are evil? They're evil. Keller doesn't apply this to demons, but to be consistent, you would think he would, if that's the purpose of hell.

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Anyway, we're gonna... I'm foreshadowing where we're going, but I thought of it now, and I figured I'd better say it.

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All right. Luke 13, 27 says this, and he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you are from.

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Depart from me, all you evildoers. Luke 12, 5, but I will warn you whom to fear.

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Fear the one who, after he is killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell him, fear him.

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Matthew 13, 40 through 42, so as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.

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The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all the stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and he will throw them into the furnace of fire.

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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 2 Thessalonians 1, 9, These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the

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Lord, and from the glory of his power. Revelation 14, 11, And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

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They have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast in his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name. Now, there's more than just this, but this should be enough to convince you that it is, at the very minimal, it is biblical.

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Yeah, we don't hear this on Christian radio. Yeah, you don't hear this in Christian preaching much. Yeah, this is something that's sidestepped.

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This is something that's soft -pedaled. This is something that has to be explained in nuanced ways, as people try to come up with as many ways to qualify it.

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These are just what the Bible teaches, though. These are the passages that teach this doctrine, in no uncertain terms, in plain language.

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Listen, anyone who would try to downplay this, ignore it, change it, needs to be looked on with an air of suspicion, because the truth is important.

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In fact, that's one of the reasons Jesus came, was to testify to the truth. And if you have someone who's willing to massage it, to lie, to deceive, on such a fundamental issue, and there's no good motivation

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I can think of for this. I can think of, in times of war, in contests, in various circumstances, appropriate places for deception.

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This isn't one of them. This is, like, the number one thing you would think people ought to know.

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If someone was in danger of getting cancer, because they, let's say, were in a nuclear blast field, or they live near Chernobyl, or I don't know, there's some, you know, issue in their neighborhood with installing, you know, some neighborhoods, they oppose companies that want to come in and put in cell towers and other things, because they're concerned about this.

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You know, at those moments, when you're in danger from something like that, you need to know the facts.

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You need to know what it is you should be afraid of, what precautions you should take, how can you escape it, how can you avoid it.

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Not, oh, it's not that bad. Oh, it's not, you know, I know people are saying it's this bad, but it's something that you shouldn't be all that concerned about.

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Downplaying that concern would be looked on upon as cruel. And Tim Keller doesn't ever say, quote, it's not important.

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He doesn't say that. He gives you information, though, that leads a sinner to possibly conclude that, that it's not really that important.

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God isn't really that much to be feared. Last slide on the

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Orthodox teaching of hell, and then we'll get into Keller's specific quotes on this. God exercises his own volition in judgment, okay?

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This is important, because you see this all throughout the Bible. Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Exodus, Korah's rebellion, all

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Old Testament examples of God exercising his own volition in judgment. It's not man punishing himself, it's

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God intervening to punish man. Romans 9 specifically says, in fact,

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I'll just read it. You will say to me, why does he still, God, still find fault? Who for who resists his will?

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On the contrary, who are you, O man, to answer back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this?

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Will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

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What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

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If that doesn't show you that God's volition is in judgment, I don't know what will. God does cast sinners into hell against their will.

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Matthew 7, 22 through 23, Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

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And in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

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Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. They're objecting.

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They're not saying, let's go. They're not saying, well, I'm gonna lock this door from the inside. I don't want God so I'm satisfied going here.

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That's not what's happening here. Matthew 23, 33, You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

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Matthew 10, 28, Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

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We should have fear. We should have fear. As humans, I'm talking about as sinners, fear that God will punish.

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And in fact, that's the biblical picture, is that people want to escape. How will you escape that sentence when it comes upon you?

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They're not partying down there. They're not in hell, satisfied that it's a better choice than heaven.

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No, they're there suffering at the hands of God. Keller deters people from this

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Orthodox teaching on hell. He says this, modern people inevitably think that hell works like this.

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God gives us time, but if we haven't made the right choices by the end of our lives, he casts our souls into hell for all eternity.

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As the poor souls fall through space, they cry out to mercy, but God says, too late, you had your chance, now you will suffer.

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This caricature, he calls it a caricature, he says this caricature misunderstands the very nature of evil.

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The biblical picture is that sin separates us from the presence of God, which is the source of all joy and indeed of all love, wisdom, or good things of any sort.

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Since we were originally created for God's immediate presence, only before his face will we thrive, flourish, and achieve our highest potential.

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If we were to lose his presence totally, that would be hell. The loss of our capability for giving or receiving love were you.

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You know, this is from Reason for God. A lot of these quotes are from Reason for God. This doesn't sound like the passages we just read.

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In fact, it sounds to me like Keller is saying the passages we just read are the caricature.

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In other words, there, that's the image we have, is the biblical teaching that we just went over, but you know, that's a misunderstanding.

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That's just a caricature. What hell really is, is losing God's presence.

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He reduces it down to that. He also says this, this is why it is a travesty, travesty.

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So we have caricature, now we have a travesty to picture God casting people into a pit who are crying, I'm sorry, let me out.

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The people on the bus from hell and Lewis's, C .S. Lewis's parable, he's quoting Lewis here, he relies a lot on Lewis, would rather have their freedom as they define it than salvation.

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Their delusion is that if they glorified God, they would somehow lose power and freedom, but in a supreme and tragic irony.

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Their choice has ruined their own potential for greatness. Hell is, as Lewis says, the greatest monument to human freedom.

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As Romans 124 says, God gave them up to their desires. All God does in the end with people is give them up, give them what they most want, including freedom from himself.

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What could be more fair than that? Now this is total misunderstanding of Romans. I just read you

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Romans 9, but Romans 1 is talking about God, this side of heaven and hell, this side of eternity, allowing people to go their course into truth suppression and deeper levels of depravity.

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That is what they will be punished for. That is not the punishment. Keller assumes that is the punishment.

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The sin is the punishment, and this is something that is chosen. Of course people choose to sin, but do they choose their punishment is the question, and if you conflate the sin with the punishment, then you can come up with the idea that they're choosing their punishment as well.

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This would be like a thief or a murderer going to jail because they were caught and saying, well you chose it.

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Did they choose it? Well, I guess in a sense they chose to make a decision that inevitably led to their capture and their punishment, but were they seeking capture?

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Were they trying to evade capture? Did they want capture? Was that why they did it? They really want that. They really want the punishment?

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No. Of course they don't. They wanted the sin in the moment in which it seemed desirable.

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They didn't want to sit in a prison. They didn't want to get the death penalty or any kind of fine that, you know, they may have to pay.

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That's not why they did it. That's the punishment for what they did. That's the punishment for what they did.

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Some of them might be willing to undergo that, but they don't like it. They're not—it's not something that they're choosing themselves.

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It's the infliction of punishment by themselves to themselves.

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No, the punishment comes from a judicial system in that case. A judicial system they wish probably did not exist, so they wouldn't have to be punished.

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Keller's view replaces—so that's number one. I should just reinforce. Number one, Keller deters people from the

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Orthodox teaching on hell. This is not the Orthodox teaching. But number two, Keller's view replaces the Orthodox teaching with an innovative new concept of hell.

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So what's Tim Keller's hell? The hell he talks about—the postmoderns. Well, first of all, in this hell, sinners choose it.

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Sinners choose it. Hell is just a free—this is actually his quote—hell is a freely chosen identity based on something else besides God going on forever.

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And that's the reason why the idea that you might have in your mind and that people give you in your mind that God is a

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God who sort of throws people into hell, you know that he sort of throws them into this pit, and they're climbing up the side saying, please no, let me out.

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And God is saying, no, it's too late now. It's hell for you. C .S. Lewis puts it like this.

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He says, in the long run, the answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question. What are you asking

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God to do? To wipe out past sins and at all costs give them a fresh start? He did it on Calvary to forgive them, but they don't ask for forgiveness.

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To leave them alone? That's what hell is. There are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God, thy will be done, and those to whom

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God says in the end, thy will be done. All that are in hell choose it. Without the self -choice, it wouldn't be hell.

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This is from one of Tim Keller's sermons, and this is the—the problem, obviously, with this is that God does throw people into hell, and the idea that it's purely a—the autonomous choice of man, that it's—that sin—that is the only—the sole contributor to them going to hell is nonsense.

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It's not just God leaving them alone to their own devices. Sure, God allows sinners to pursue their sin at times.

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Sure, he hardens hearts even at times, as we see with Pharaoh. Does that mean that they chose hell?

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That that was part of the recipe, part of the equation in their mind when they chose to sin? We have no biblical justification for any of this, and it takes away the role of God as the judicial force in this to come in and meet out the requirements of justice.

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In eternity, Tim Keller says, there's—there's—is increasing isolation, denial, delusion, and self -absorption.

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When you lose all humility, you are out of touch with reality. No one ever asks to leave hell.

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The very idea of heaven seems to them a sham. So, it's not just that you choose to go there, you choose to remain there.

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You want to stay there once you go there. Man, that's—so you would prefer that to heaven.

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There's no biblical justification for this. In fact, just the opposite. Keller kind of twists up—we're not going into it today—but he kind of twists up the rich man

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Lazarus to try to justify this somehow. The indications that we get from the passage

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I just read to you, though, is people are suffering down there. People are in torment. That's the reason we should fear.

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You don't see that in Tim Keller's version here. In Keller's unorthodox, innovative, new version of hell, sin is its own punishment.

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Sinful behavior and sinful desires, he says, are like a fire that is broken out in your living room.

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Fire is never satisfied. It can't be allowed to smolder. It can't be confined to a corner. It will overtake you eventually.

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Sin is the same way. It never stays in its place. It always leads to separation from God, which results in intense suffering, first in this life and then in the next.

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The Bible calls that hell. So, now we have hell not just in the afterlife, but we have hell today.

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You're suffering hell when you engage in sin in the here and now, and you will continue that suffering in the afterlife.

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So, this breaks down the idea that it's even a literal place. It's a state of being, it sounds like, that you freely chosen, and that the punishment and the sin are one and the same.

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God's involvement in judging is minimal in this, at best, in Keller's conception. He says this, the people in hell are miserable, but Lewis, C .S.

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Lewis, shows us why. We see raging, like unchecked flames, their pride, their paranoia, their self -pity, and their certainty that everyone else is wrong and everyone else is an idiot.

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All their humility is gone, and so is their sanity. They are utterly finally locked into, in a prison of their own self -centeredness, and their pride progressively expands into a bigger and bigger mushroom cloud.

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They continue to go to pieces forever, blaming everyone but themselves. Hell is that writ large. So, here you have,

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Tim Keller, basically, this is the insanity appeal. You have to square this with what he said before, too.

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So, hell is locked from the inside. They're making somewhat of a rational choice. They have their marbles about them, and they're saying,

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I'd rather be here than heaven. I'm choosing to go here. But, at the same time, they're miserable because they have to live with themselves.

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They have to live with their own sin, and that sin has made them insane. So, I don't know which one.

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Are they making a rational choice with their marbles, or are they spiraling into insanity in hell?

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I'm not exactly clear on this, and Keller isn't exactly, it seems, clear on this. What he is clear on, though, is that God doesn't seem to be in this picture very much.

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The humans are taking the volition from step one. They chose to sin. They were living in hell in this life, this state of being, that's hell, this figurative thing, this symbolic thing.

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They then go to what sounds like a literal place that continues this state of being after death, but they lock it from the inside.

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They choose to be there knowingly, and God just has a hands -off policy this entire time.

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It's as if a place existed. Now, of course, God created it. That's the thing. That kind of,

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I think, blows a hole in this. But, God created this place. So, this place exists, and it's a road that one could take.

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They have the option, and they can keep going there if they want. They can see it in the distance, all the flames, and they can see, also, the people that are rejoicing in heaven, and they just keep going down that path to the flames because, guess what, that's really what they want.

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They want the punishment. Can't wait for it. It's better than the flames, but, you know, they'll be miserable, but they'll be less miserable.

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This just goes against human nature. It goes against what the Bible teaches, and ultimately, the thing that I have a problem with more than anything is it attacks

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God's character, and I want to explain to you why. Keller's character of hell is indistinguishable from the

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Orthodox truth, so he knocks it down. He dispels the concept of the

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Orthodox teaching of hell from people's minds. They say, that's not what it is, and I'm Tim Keller. I have, I don't even know what he has, a

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PhD? I'm educated. I'm a pastor. I'm successful. I know the Bible better than you. Listen to me. I mean, that's how people are gonna take it, at least.

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He has authority, and, you know, what you heard about hell, which you might have even read in Scripture, even, because some of this stuff he's talking about, this is in Scripture.

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That's not what it is, so he, that's the first attack. It's an attack on Scripture indirectly, but the second thing is, it attacks

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God's character. It denies God's attribute of wrath as if he were not directly in control of punishing sinners.

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Keller seems to depict sin as something that inevitably leads to negative consequences without reference to God's personal role in judicial sentencing or in inflicting wrath.

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So is God a God of wrath or not? That's the question. It denies

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God's attribute of justice by arguing God does not condemn people to hell. Instead, people send themselves. Criminals, as I just pointed out, do not willingly give up their liberty to be locked up in jail.

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We could say, all who are in heaven choose it, and we would have better biblical grounds.

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In other words, if people choose to go to hell, I guess you could say that all the people in heaven are choosing it, too.

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Why not? And, but we know that Keller would probably bristle at that one, because he knows that God is the one who inevitably chooses who goes to heaven.

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That's part of his sovereign choice. Keller, at least, he, I don't want to say he feigns, but he is on the more reformed side in many of his views, especially that view of predestination, of election.

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But when you dig down into these issues, like sin and like hell now, you find out

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Keller's views are very unorthodox. They're, and they're not just unorthodox, they are not reformed at all.

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Keller tries, and one of the good things about this book, I'm not getting into it in this particular podcast, one of the good things, though, is they go into a justification

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Tim Keller tries to make. He says, look, I'm getting some of this from Jonathan Edwards. Edwards said that hell's, the fire in hell's symbolic.

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And I appreciate the fact that the author here, Schweitzer, decides to look at the sermon

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Keller is drawing from and says, hey, this point that Edwards is making is, it's worse than we can imagine.

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That's the symbol. In other words, that they're giving us these concepts, like, that we can relate to, like fire, and it's going to be that, but it's going to be a whole lot more.

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It's symbolic of something much worse. It's, the whole point Edwards is making is not that there's not going to be fire there.

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And, you know, Keller does this, it is unfortunately a habit, I think, of Keller. He does this to Calvin sometimes, or he tries to quote

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Calvin to support something, and then you go and you read the broader writings of Calvin, and even the immediate context sometimes, and you'll think that he's not taking into account historical context, he's not taking into account the greater context of Calvin's work.

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It's an answer to a different question than Calvin's answering. And so, as a historical guy,

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I appreciate that, that they didn't let Keller get away with that either. But Keller is desperate to find,

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I mean, who can he find? George MacDonald, who's not even an Orthodox believer either. C .S.

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Lewis, who I've already said is a number of issues. Jonathan Edwards, who he has to kind of rip out of context to make that work.

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He has no one to appeal to for his doctrine of hell. It's subversive stuff, guys.

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And I can tell you why I think he does it, it's because this is palatable, this is what people want to hear.

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This is, it's softening God's character on things that people don't find too appealing.

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It's putting man in the driver's seat, in a sense. So the result means there's less fear of God, there's less concern over sin, and the implication that the says is that the penal substitutionary atonement was unnecessary.

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It's unnecessary. Because, think about it, why did Jesus have to suffer? Why did he have to die?

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I thought he was taking the wrath of God on our behalf. So if God's not pouring out his wrath on sinners in hell, why did

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Jesus have to come? You see how this gets into other doctrines? See how this is a big problem?

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Well, to close the episode, I figured we would do this. Not Gold River.

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We would play a clip from a sermon. I've already actually read for you some of the quotes from this, but I figured we could we could play it.

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And then you can hear Keller say some of the stuff in his own words, and I think that'll be helpful for some of you.

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So I'll play just a clip, and then I'll give you some commentary. Here is Tim Keller from Hell Isn't the

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God of Christianity an Angry Judge? sermon by Tim Keller. Now, C .S. Lewis is constantly saying, whenever he depicts hell, that the doors of hell are locked from the inside.

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That's the whole idea behind hell. Because more and more you would say, I would never...

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you say, well, this isn't very good. People in the middle of addictions feel like that. This isn't very good, but I can't imagine being somewhere else, and everybody else, nobody understands.

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It's not as bad as you say, and I can really handle it. That's hell, and that's hell. It's hell.

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You see how this downplays hell? Those are situations in which God's...

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it's possible that God could be... he can judge in the temporal world, but these are situations apart from God's judgment where you're just suffering the consequences of your own sin.

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That's a very different thing than hell, than God pouring out wrath to punish you for your sin.

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It's the same thing when someone is a drug addict, and they suffer the consequences of missed work, of relationships that are damaged, all these things that naturally come when you engage in that kind of behavior.

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That's a lot different than a police officer busting you because you're a dealer, and then carting you away to jail.

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Those are imposed consequences, just like hell is imposed consequences from God. Very different.

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Children understand this. A child who disobeys their parents, and the parent doesn't know about it, may have to suffer some consequences, possibly.

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Maybe in the child's mind he's not, or she's not. She's engaging in behavior that they find pleasurable, and they ate all the cookies or something.

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They watched what they shouldn't have on television. Mom never knew, and... or they lied their way out of it, and guess what?

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They made out. They don't even see the consequences, and you could say, well, further on down the line, it's gonna cause...

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you know, maybe it will, but from their perspective, maybe it won't. It's a lot different than a parent coming in and saying, you're grounded.

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You're gonna get a spanking, whatever the punishment is. If that's the case, and I think it is, we have confirmation right here in this text.

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Look at the insanity, look at the out -of -touch with reality that characterizes people in hell.

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Commentators have noted for a long time that the rich man is astonishingly blind and in denial and filled with blame shifting.

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So, for example, notice that even though here's Lazarus up in heaven, look at where he is.

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He's in hell. He's still ordering Lazarus around. He still wants Lazarus to come and cool his tongue. He still expects him to be a servant.

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And notice something else. He does not ask to get out of hell. He just tries to get Lazarus in. He doesn't ask to get out, and he strongly insinuates...

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It's not a possibility. He wants to warn his...

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Keller, if you notice from the beginning of this clip I just played, he takes an assumption that he has, and then he tries to find the vindication in the text.

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That's actually... that seems to me to be a classic eisegetical move. Instead of going to the text and drawing from the text the assumptions that we ought to have.

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That God didn't give him enough information. You know, now go to my five brothers and give them the information.

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What's that? Hint, hint. I didn't get enough information. Nobody understands me, and I shouldn't really be here. And besides that, it's not so bad.

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I really don't want to be up there with all that, you know, all that humbug up there and, you know, whatever you're doing up there.

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But would you please send somebody down here to give me a little bit of break? He's suffering.

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He wants just a little something to drink, something to relieve, and he's not even in...

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I mean, this is... I don't want to get too deep into the text, but my understanding has always been of this text that he's not...

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he's in a holding place. He's in Hades. This isn't the final place of judgment. And everything

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Keller just said about this, you know, he's saying that he wasn't really guilty and all this, you're not finding this in the text.

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It's Keller just imposing an assumption, reading into this little statement about warning others what his motive might have been.

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Text doesn't tell you. The best reading, the most straightforward reading is that he's...

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he wants... he loves the people that he loves, and he doesn't... he wants them to avoid the situation he's in.

41:29

Summary, hell is just a freely chosen identity based on something else besides God going on forever.

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Hell is just your freely chosen identity based on something else besides God going on forever. So hell becomes part of this soup that Keller's cooked up about sin.

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Sin is just idolatry. It's just you trying to be your own Savior. Identity plays so much into this.

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It's an identity apart from God, whether that's your race or your nation or your, I don't know, gender, whatever.

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And Keller is now saying that hell is a chosen identity, where... you don't find this anywhere in Scripture, that hell is a chosen identity.

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Disintegrating, disintegrating, disintegrating. Refusing to admit what it is. And that's the reason why the idea that you might have in your mind, that people give you in your mind, that God is a

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God who sort of throws people into hell, you know, he sort of throws them into this pit, and they're climbing up the side saying, please no, let me out, and God's saying, no, it's too late now.

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It's hell for you. C .S. Lewis. People are laughing in the audience, guys.

42:42

People are laughing. That Keller is mocking the biblical understanding of hell.

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And people are laughing. These aren't... this is in church. This isn't in the

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Veritas Forum at Columbia University. This is at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The model that we're all supposed to be copying, because he knows how to plant churches and make them successful in New York City.

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You want your churches filled with people who laugh when you mock the biblical idea of hell? He puts it like this.

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He says, in the long run, the answer to those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question. What are you asking

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God to do? To wipe out past sins and at all costs give them a fresh start? He did on Calvary.

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To forgive them, but they don't ask for forgiveness. To leave them alone? That's what hell is.

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There are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, Thy will be done.

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And those to whom God says in the end, Thy will be done. All that are in hell, choose it.

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Without that self -choice, it wouldn't be hell. All right, we'll stop right there. I already read for you a portion of this quote.

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Can you imagine a criminal doing the crime and then just walking straight into jail?

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The doors are just open, and then he locks it himself. He says, you better not let me out. I'm a bad man.

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Yeah, I chose to come here. That's laughable. That's the thing worthy of mocking, right?

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Keller's conception of hell is actually the thing we should be laughing at, because it's so countered to human nature.

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It's so stupid. But instead, he has a church, through his lame reasoning, laughing and mocking the biblical view of hell that God sends people there.

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This is damaging stuff, guys. One of the things that concerns me more than anything, as I'm going through this, is how little

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I've heard, and probably you've heard, people talk about what

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I'm talking about right now. How many times have you heard people who are familiar with some of these things?

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I understand someone reads one Keller book that's not about these things, and maybe there's some things to glean, and they recommend it.

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That's a little different. You know, they read Keller's book on marriage, and Keller's got a good book on marriage.

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I'm talking about people who have said, hey, check out The Reason for God. A lot of these quotes came from that.

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They're fans of Keller, on a certain level. They're familiar somewhat, and they don't tell you any of this.

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I'm realizing in my own life, people who have recommended Keller to me, without any qualification,

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Keller's great. The Reason for God was one of them. You know, you've got to read this book, man.

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I listen to Tim Keller. You should listen to Tim Keller. Keller's got such a great way. He understands New Yorkers. He's the kind of guy that we need to plant churches.

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I have memories of specific people saying all these things. I'm not angry at them.

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I'm more frustrated at the situation. People who have sometimes seminary training, read their

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Bibles, and this is the kind of thing that they allow to have a cozy home in the church, inhabit the church.

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It ought not to be, ladies and gentlemen. It ought to be stopped. It ought to be stopped, and the warning bell needs to go off on Tim Keller, and how many others?

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Our discernment levels have been anemic for decades, this means. In the

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Reformed community, I'm not talking about the prosperity gospel stuff. I'll just say it, because it's on my mind.

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I watched, the other night, most of American gospel. Some of you have heard or watched American gospel. I had never seen it for years, but you know,

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I'm part of a... I help lead, or lead might not be the word. I have helped lead, but I am involved with a college career group, and I just want to be there for the students.

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I think it's such an important time of life to be involved, and they watched it the other night, and so I watched some of it, and I think there's an important reason for it.

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You got people coming from these prosperity gospel backgrounds, and I was like, yeah, you know, that's a good, it's a good thing to dissuade them from that.

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However, as I'm watching it, I'm realizing, like, two -thirds of the people in it are compromised. The majority of the people interviewed for that documentary are way compromised.

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Some of them, false teachers themselves. At least they've advocated false teaching, social justice teaching, and here they all are speaking against the social gospel, or not the social, sorry, the prosperity gospel.

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And it's obvious to me why, because I went to Southeastern, and for years I saw this kind of thing, this anti...

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it wasn't cool to be prosperity gospel. That was the boomer thing. That was the American dream thing.

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That wasn't the cool, young, hip thing. So there was an element of that, not just that the theological differences, it wasn't very popular.

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It wasn't in style. And the reason, I think, is because there's an attack on, quote -unquote, individualism.

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That individualism is our greatest problem. I've said before in dealing with things like Carl Truman's book,

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The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, that I think Truman's missing the boat on this. And I think a lot of the people that are attacking individualism are missing something very key.

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They're blaming individualism for the selfishness and the corruption and the gender insanity.

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When we, and all around us, what we're hearing is gender is a social construct, race is a social construct. If anything, we have a very strong, sort of, artificial communitarian.

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It's not even traditional communitarian. It's artificial. When you're on social media, it can be artificial.

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When you're supporting the people overseas, but you're not doing anything tangible to help them, you tweeted, that's artificial, okay?

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There's an artificial, kind of, communitarianism thing going on that's leading into socialism and communism and all the rest of these totalitarianisms.

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And that's what I see on the political horizon. I think, though, others, for some reason, still think, and this is so prevalent in Christian circles, evangelical circles, that it's individualism that's the real problem.

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It's the autonomous self. It's man trying to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.

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I'm not saying none of that's not problematic, but I'm saying that that's the great threat people still see, that's causing all the problems we have.

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When you look at a doctrine like this, the doctrine of hell, that's the attack. It's, well, these autonomous selves decided that they were going to do their own thing and go to hell.

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And this is a great problem, is you've chosen an identity apart from God. You're trying to do it on your own and look where you landed.

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It's the same thing with the prosperity gospel of America. You're choosing to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

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You individually can have the faith necessary to be rich and successful, and it's all dependent on you and your level of faith.

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And so beating up on that is very popular. I'm not trying to draw a parallel between these two things.

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I'm just saying I've noticed that people who are on the social justice side are very often against the prosperity stuff, both of them horrible, horrible teachings.

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Keller has, for lack of a better term, he's ridden that wave.

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He's presented himself as the anti -your -grandfather's

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Christianity. He's anti the fundamentalist, stuffy, archaic

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Christianity, the corrupt Christianity, the inauthentic

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Christianity. He's presented himself as he's, at least how people have taken him, that he's the opposite of all that.

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He's the opposite of Jerry Falwell, but he's also the opposite of Benny Hinn. He's also the opposite of John MacArthur.

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There's a kind of a wide range here. Whatever's stuffy and old, he's opposite of that, and fresh and new.

51:23

Because look at the way he talks about these doctrines. And he makes me, just makes people feel like a

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TED talk would. Like, you know, part of something bigger. Even if it's a deception,

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I'm part of something bigger. I don't, I have an identity that's,

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I can have an identity that's way outside myself. And I'm gonna get that fulfillment.

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That what I'm looking for, that riches aren't satisfying, and other things I'm trying to fill my life with, I'm not gonna get those things.

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But Keller's giving me a message of hope, where I can get those things in God.

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And so it becomes kind of a, it becomes a life coach. It becomes a situation where you're choosing something that is preferable, because it will make your life better.

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At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to, I think, for a lot of people who follow Keller. They're looking for answers to the depression in their life, and they think they're getting something, possibly.

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At least it makes them feel good. This is John's analysis. And what they're missing out on is some very, very basic fundamental hard truths.

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God's gonna judge you for what you've done. God's gonna judge you for your sin. You need to repent and turn to Jesus Christ, or face the consequences of a wrath that will never end.

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You need to do this. Yes, individually, you need to do this. It's not a very pleasant thought.

53:10

It's much better to think of yourself as the master of your own fate. That you're choosing to go to hell, you're choosing to go to heaven.

53:19

You're in control this entire time, and you never lose that control. And God's just kind of standing on those sidelines, hoping you'll come over to get his advice in the game of life.

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See, Keller, for all the talk about, you know, that we hear against radical individualism, autonomous self, all of that, at the end of the day, a lot of these guys end up affirming the autonomous, a version of the autonomous self, in some ways.

53:47

And you see Keller doing it right here, with the doctrine of hell. How is this different than,

53:53

I'm the captain of my fate. I'm the master of my fate, rather. I'm the captain of my destiny.

54:01

It's not, really. It's not. What's that poem? You know, I, there's a poem I'm thinking of.

54:12

I'm gonna just look it up real quick. I'm the master of my fate.

54:19

I am the captain of my soul, from Invictus, William Ernest Henley's poem. That's a poem

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I had to read in grade school. And, you know, you look at this poem, and you wonder, how is this much different than what

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Keller's telling you about hell? I mean, this is, you know, that's the thing that people can't stand about the

54:41

God of Christianity, is he is in control. You don't get to be the captain of your fate, even if that's what you want to do.

54:48

That's living a lie. God is ultimately in control. Yeah, you can,

54:54

God allows you to. You can choose to sin against him. You're not choosing the consequences. That's God's department.

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Let me read for you this poem. It says, out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

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In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeons of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

55:20

See, you won't submit to God. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.

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It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate.

55:35

I am the captain of my soul. That's what stubborn, rebellious man wants, to be in control, to be like God, and Keller allows him a little bit of space to do it.

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Well, that's my analysis of Tim Keller and his Doctrine of Hell, and a little extra here at the end.

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I hope that is important and beneficial for many of you out there.

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I view this kind of work as, this is the stuff, yeah, I talk about news, but this is the stuff

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I know that is really helpful for you, and so I'm making the slideshow available. If you're a patron, you can just download it for free.