Rob Bell Gets Honest and Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:12

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

00:19

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

00:27

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

00:34

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

00:43

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

00:50

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line. It's Thursday afternoon, have a few things lined up, but also going to have plenty of time for your phone calls as well, 877 -753 -3341,

01:05

Dividing .Line via Skype. I got locked out of Skype, did you know that? I didn't tell you that. I got locked out.

01:11

I had to do all this fun stuff to get back in and reset passwords and they said

01:16

I had gotten, I don't know, they said I had gotten hijacked, but nothing changed, so I don't know that I did. I think they just lost me, but anyway, 877 -753 -3341.

01:27

Just a reminder, we're heading back out to sea in January. I have contacted some friends at a church

01:34

I'm going to be at the first weekend in June down in Houston and I need to get back with them again and say, hey guys, have you come up with anything?

01:41

I'm basically asking if they know of any Muslims in the area that might be a good dialogue partner or debate partner, something like that.

01:50

There is a very large Muslim population in the Houston area. Of course, Houston is just huge.

01:55

Houston is larger than we are here in Phoenix. We are right behind them. It's New York, L .A.,

02:02

Chicago, Houston, and then Phoenix, at least according to the list I've seen anyways, so I'm going to see if we can add something to the trip down there or do it on the cruise itself.

02:19

That might be something to do, so take a look at the banner ad at aomin .org and consider joining with us.

02:28

I listened to about the first 110, I think around 110 pages, of Michael Brown's book

02:36

A Queer Thing Happened to America this morning while riding. I hope to get through the rest of it on my ride on Saturday.

02:46

I have asked the buzzmeister, the master of the

02:52

Amazon bookstore for Alpha Omega Ministries, to put it in there, and once he does, I will be blogging it.

02:59

There's so much that I would like to say. I'll limit it to this because I'm going to ask

03:04

Michael to be on, and knowing how gracious he is, I'm sure he will join us. He's already said that he'd like to talk about his new book, which is on the homosexual agenda in the

03:16

United States. He spent a number of years writing this book. I know how difficult that is. Writing books on homosexuality is not enjoyable, and things have changed a lot since I wrote the same -sex controversy.

03:29

Thankfully, the same -sex controversy really isn't dated because we were not focused upon what's going on in America.

03:36

We were providing a response to the homosexual arguments on the key biblical texts, and those haven't changed.

03:44

Very, very frequently, the homosexual advocate will actually use numerous contradictory arguments on any one text because all they want to try to do is say, there's no way that it means what you think it means.

03:57

It could mean all these other things, and so it really isn't dated along those lines. But I was amazed, even while we were writing the book, at how many books came out during the process of my writing the book that were promoting homosexuality, and it's only gotten worse.

04:11

And the educational system in the United States, from kindergarten through the university level, has been utterly hijacked, completely infiltrated by pro -homosexual individuals and programs and agendas, and it is absolutely, positively amazing.

04:33

And I could not help but think of the legal decision, and that means it was made by a judge.

04:43

I would just simply point out, and I want everyone to remember, Mr. or Mrs.

04:49

Judge, you have a judge above you, and you will be judged someday by how you have judged.

04:58

And I know there are some Christians who disagree with me on this, but I think I have very good grounds for stating this, like the entirety of the teaching of the

05:07

Old Testament, which, by the way, it's just sad when I hear modern -day

05:12

Christians, well, we're not under the law, we're under grace, and just throw out the entire ethical foundation of Scripture and show no understanding whatsoever of New Testament concepts either.

05:23

But be it as it may, Mr. or Mrs. Judge, there is a holy judge who will judge you by what you have said and done.

05:30

When I think of the judges in Massachusetts that basically told parents, we own your kids.

05:35

We don't have to tell you what we're going to teach them. We don't have to give you the opportunity of opting out, of having your young, young kids.

05:45

We're not talking seniors in high school here. We're talking kindergarten, first, second grade. You don't have the option of opting out of this stuff.

05:52

We are going to tell them that not just that homosexuality is an equally valid lifestyle, but they're finally getting beyond that.

06:03

Having two daddies is a better way of going. Having two mommies is a better way of going. It's just, I don't know how long ago it was

06:10

I started saying, these people want Uber rights. They don't want Equal Rights. They want Uber rights. They want to silence anyone.

06:15

I was listening to one thing that he mentioned that this one fellow recently had listed as homophobic attitudes, tolerance, and acceptance.

06:25

That's not enough. That's not enough. You have to consider it to be a positive lifestyle.

06:31

You cannot just tolerate it. That's a homophobic concept. What I was going to say, see,

06:39

I'm starting to get into all this stuff, and I don't want to do that. We've already got one caller, and you all can get online as well.

06:45

But I really think that one of the reasons, you've got to understand, for the homosexual, this is their life.

06:55

This is their world. This is what they wake up in the morning to, and they go to bed at night to, and that's why they never give up, and that's why they will dedicate themselves to this.

07:04

For the rest of us, we don't even want to think about it. We have lives to live.

07:10

We have children to care for and families to build. We don't even want to think about what they do, and that was one of the toughest things.

07:18

That's what I sort of skipped in my thing there, was reading the stuff I had to read, even to write the same -sex controversy.

07:26

It's just not enjoyable. It's repulsive, is what it is. I had never envisioned some of the things

07:34

I had to read about and learned a few things this morning, unfortunately, and I think that's why a lot of my generation, and certainly the generation ahead of me, my parents' generation, just do not want to deal with this.

07:51

These are not things you're supposed to be talking about in public. You're not supposed to talk about these things in public, and I remember when

08:00

I debated Dan Barker, I simply showed a picture of a book that he quotes from that had a woman's bare back on it, not even all of her, just her back, but it was bare.

08:12

Oh, you shouldn't do that! Oh, you shouldn't do that! Not even thinking about what the point I was making is, and if you've got an attitude like that, these folks are not going to be reading

08:22

Michael Brown's book, and as a result, we're losing the battle because we have our heads firmly stuck into the sand.

08:32

Oh, that's happening out there? No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to interact with it.

08:37

It disgusts me. That only happens someplace else.

08:42

No, folks, it's happening in your local community, and we are surrounded by it, and we just can't ignore it anymore.

08:51

And so I'm looking forward to having Michael on. I haven't talked to him about when, but his program has become syndicated now.

08:58

It's going to be on a bunch of Salem stations and things, and so I'm sure he's a busy one -armed paper hanger, and he may discover that after that program, when you do it every day, we can move this around to fit our schedules and blah, blah, blah, blah.

09:11

It doesn't work that way. Once you're on the network, man, not only do you got to do it every day, but you got to find somebody to take your place, and you can't.

09:21

You got to take breaks all at the exact same time, and we don't have to do any of that because it's just us.

09:28

Not that smart enough to... Actually, I can do it. I've done it before. I'm a radio guy. I could do it, but no thanks.

09:34

Anyway, I think that's why we're losing this battle far faster than any of us ever thought that it could be lost, is that we won't talk about it, and we won't think it through, and we'll just give knee -jerk reactions and not the best sharp reactions to what's going on around us, and it's time to wake up.

09:58

Anyway, hopefully, we'll have more next week to let you know about that book and things like that.

10:06

Did want to play one quick thing here. Well, it's not really all that quick, and then we'll get to our calls, John in Chicago and to everybody else at 877 -753 -3341, dividing .line,

10:16

via Skype if you would like to get in today. I mentioned in the last program that we had a very good program on Tuesday morning, an unbelievable that will be posted,

10:24

I would assume, somewhere in the late morning. Here in the

10:30

United States, anyways, on Saturday, and as soon as it's available, I will link to it on the blog, and I will be very interested in hearing your reactions to my discussion with Brian McLaren.

10:44

One of the texts, one of the quotations that I read from Brian McLaren's book,

10:51

A New Kind of Christianity, 10 Questions that are Transforming the Faith, page 108 according to Kindle.

11:04

That means it's somewhere between 105 and 113 or so in the printed edition.

11:10

That's what I'm discovering, anyways. He's talking about the

11:16

Flood, and let me actually back up here. For example, for me today, the

11:22

Noah story, in which God wipes out all living things except one boatload of refugees, has become profoundly disturbing.

11:30

True, I learned it as a cute children's bedtime tale, complete with cuddly pairs of furry animals, in line with the old maxim, what you focus on determines what you miss.

11:37

I was trained to read it as a story of divine saving, so I missed the small detail of divine mass destruction on a planetary scale.

11:45

In recent years, though, I began thinking about how some might use the story as a constitutional precedent. If God single -handedly practiced ethnic cleansing once, and if God cannot do evil, then there is apparently a time and a place when genocide is justified.

11:57

Let me stop just for a moment. I didn't get a chance to, at least I don't think I got a chance, or I might have very, very quickly criticized

12:05

McLaren's constant utilization of this. I did say that any divine truth can be twisted and abused.

12:13

That doesn't mean that divine truth is no longer true, it just brings guilt upon the one who twists that truth.

12:19

But that is just so much a part of the emergent criticism of Christianity, is, well,

12:27

God created, God did genocide. No, God brought justice according to His just law, and He showed mercy in the midst of it.

12:36

But the fact of the matter is, the day you eat of it, you shall die. There was mercy and grace from the start, and the world was filled with evil, and God brought judgment, and God will bring judgment again.

12:50

It's amazing to me, that's part and parcel of what we're supposed to be proclaiming to the world. I sort of wonder what emergent folks are proclaiming.

12:58

But the idea that, well, yeah, but then somebody can take that, and they can commit genocide, and it's the Bible's fault, is such fallacious thinking, as if because God did something, well,

13:09

God created, I guess that means we can too? I mean, it's just so facile.

13:15

But anyway, I continue on. And that means that maybe we, or our enemies, could be justified in playing the genocide card again at some time in the future.

13:23

Another sobering reason to take this quest for a new kind of Christianity seriously in spite of the risks and opposition. There are the crusaders out there, the explorers taking us to a new world.

13:33

Anyway, the possibility of using the Bible to justify using the genocide card is chilling, especially when one recalls this is not a hypothetical question.

13:41

This very thing happened again and again in the past, from Genesis 7 to Deuteronomy 7, to American colonization, to the

13:48

Holocaust, to the Rwandan genocide, to Darfur, which has to do with Muslims, I'm not sure.

13:53

But anyways, in comparison to a global flood that destroys all life except for a tiny remnant on one lifeboat, a few nuclear bombs are, after all,

14:04

I shudder to write this, minor disturbances. And here's the line. In this light, a

14:11

God who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship.

14:21

So there you go. Brian McLaren. This is page 109. In this light, a

14:26

God who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship.

14:32

So Brian McLaren does not want to worship a God who actually follows through on his word, which is to bring judgment upon sinners.

14:42

That's out of bounds. It can't be done, shouldn't be done, and that means that such a

14:48

God is unworthy of belief. He does not believe in a God who judges sinners, and he certainly will not worship a

14:53

God who judges sinners. I hear that, folks.

14:59

We cannot live in our enclaves any longer if we want to be salt and light in the world. And you better get used to hearing these things, and you better control your emotions when you hear them, and be ready with good, solid answers that make people think rather than knee -jerk reactions like, oh, you're a blasphemer.

15:18

They may be, but that's how lost people are. That's just sort of the way things are. And I was watching

15:26

Bill O 'Reilly, and Bill O 'Reilly had something about Easter recently, and he was responding to someone who had emailed in who had said,

15:34

Jesus, I'm so sorry. Jesus is the only way. And Bill O 'Reilly's, yes, Jesus isn't the only way.

15:40

He says, God is a just God, and that would be unjust, which shows you just how far

15:46

Bill O 'Reilly is from anything that could be remotely called a biblical Christian. But that's the way the world thinks.

15:52

God owes us something. We're not sinners. God has to provide many ways of salvation, not just one.

16:02

One's not enough, because we have a lot of different tastes. We have to have different styles and colors and languages and cultures, and so it can't be just one.

16:13

Relating all to playing this, I was directed to, I don't remember how I was directed to this now. I think it was

16:19

Twitter. Twitter is 140 characters is a bummer, but it's a real easy way of getting information out, and especially links.

16:27

Hey, take a look at this. Boom, there it is. And you let everybody know. And I think that's how I got this.

16:32

This was an interview of Rob Bell. I don't know how many interviews Rob Bell has done. Rob Bell has done more interviews in the past month than I've ever done in my entire life,

16:40

I would imagine. And here,

16:45

Rob Bell is a little more honest than he was on Unbelievable. Just a little more honest. I think on Unbelievable, he was dissimulating.

16:54

He was being coy. Coy is the term I would use. He knew that there was opposition, and so this unwillingness to actually answer direct questions, very, very troubling and bothersome.

17:10

Really bugs me to death. But here, he was on a more liberal talk show.

17:16

And you know what? If you want to hear what a liberal really believes, get him on a liberal talk show. Don't get him on a conservative talk show.

17:22

Get him on a liberal talk show. This is what Rob Bell had to say. And I don't know if I can find one of the calls.

17:29

I may skip the calls if we get many more calls in, because I can tell John right now that though I know that Van Til and Clark were on opposite sides of things,

17:41

I'm not an expert on all the issues involved with it. And I can tell you right now,

17:47

Clark is not on my top 10 list of anybody to be reading, though Turretin Van likes him.

17:52

But there's been some really weird people that are big

17:58

Clark guys. There's that, what's that, Red Beetle dude on YouTube? What is his name?

18:03

I don't know what it is. He thinks everybody's a heretic. And the Trinity Foundation guys that just thought

18:09

I was just, since I didn't call Robert St. Genesis a papist or something in one paper, then that was a terrible, horrible compromise.

18:16

They tend to be a little on the radical side, just a little weird. Except for Turretin Van. He's about the only

18:23

Clark fan I've found that isn't completely loopy. But anyways, we'll see what

18:30

John has to say. But if you want to get in as well, 877 -753 -3341, let's listen to Rob Bell being a little more honest than the normal Rob Bell on this program.

18:40

Thanks for joining us, Pastor Bell. It's great to be with you. You ask in this book whether a loving

18:48

God would send sinners to hell. And I guess I'm going to ask you, would he? Well, one of the reasons

18:54

I wrote the book is I want to get at the simple idea that God is love and that God's love demands freedom.

19:04

So we are free to choose love. We are free to choose the decent human right thing to do.

19:09

And so in the book, I simply explore people's conceptions of the divine and how this shaped us. And so essentially, we create our own hell when we choose destruction, greed, abuse.

19:20

We see hells around us all the time. So the book explores sort of this power of human choice to make these kinds of decisions.

19:26

So we see that hell is human choice. It's not really the biblical terminology, but hey, it's not

19:33

God's wrath. It's not God's justice. It's the result of man's freedom.

19:39

Love demands freedom. As someone said, they said, someone mentioned,

19:45

I forget who it was on Twitter, said, isn't it interesting that Rob Bell and Brian McLaren sound like the logical conclusions of What Love Is This by Dave Hunt, which is pretty much true.

19:57

And you're suggesting that hell is right here and now if we make certain choices.

20:04

Yeah, yes. As a pastor, one of the things you see again and again is the power of the human will to make both extraordinarily beautiful choices that benefit others and ourselves, and then the power to make other kinds of choices that bring a sort of hell on earth.

20:23

And I think my experience is the same with a lot of people of watching how

20:29

Christians have made a big deal about heaven and hell when you die, when we have those sort of choices right now.

20:35

So let's do something about hells on earth right now. Well, ultimately, Christians say that if you don't accept

20:42

Jesus Christ as your personal savior, then you are condemned to hell. Yeah, and that's actually, that was one of the main reasons

20:49

I wrote the book is what about the people who have never heard it? Let me stop right there. Why do

20:54

I don't know who this interviewer is. He was taking somebody else's place anyway, so I don't know what really matters.

21:01

But you have to catch the badly phrased questions.

21:07

If you don't believe in Jesus, you're condemned to hell. No, you're condemned to hell. And the only way out of it is believing in Jesus. Those are not equative sentences.

21:17

One makes the reason of your condemnation to hell, your non -belief in something.

21:23

And that then raises all the questions about, but what about people who didn't hear? But to state everyone is condemned to the judgment of God, which takes place in hell, unless you are in Christ Jesus.

21:38

That's a completely different foundation. Similar concepts, but you have to be able to make that distinction or you're not going to get anywhere.

21:47

And when you hear people asking questions like that, you can tell they've either never heard a meaningful discussion of it or are specifically attempting to guide the conversation by means of the questions.

21:58

God, that kind of God that would truly send billions of people to hell for not believing in a

22:05

Jesus that they've never heard of. And I think a lot of people find the... And notice,

22:11

Bell bought it, because that's how he presents it. That's how he presents it in Love Wins.

22:16

He does not present an orthodox perspective that all men, because of sin, are condemned by God's holiness to separation from he who is holy.

22:25

Everything that is unholy is separated from him who is holy. So he buys it and says, oh yeah, I didn't know. Questions of Christian and faith they've encountered, they're unable to stomach it because of its inability to ask very basic questions like that.

22:37

So I come from a tradition, a C .S. Lewis, Billy Graham tradition that always left room for the mysterious grace of God.

22:45

And I'm not the judge, so somebody else can make those decisions. And you say, for folks who have never heard of Jesus Christ, what about for those who have heard of Jesus Christ and said, well,

22:58

I'm not necessarily going to accept him as my personal Savior? Yeah, that's a great question. One of the things in the book

23:04

I talk about is this woman who used to... was abused by her father, and he would recite the

23:11

Lord's Prayer while he raped her. And so I explore, for some people, the name Jesus is deeply tied up with lots and lots of destructive things.

23:21

And so I assume in all those sorts of situations, God has all sorts of grace and patience.

23:28

And that's something that's very important, I think, for Christians to acknowledge God. So God has grace and patience.

23:35

So for Rob Bell, grace and patience means saving outside of the self -giving of the

23:43

Son of God in Jesus Christ. So evidently that wasn't enough. That's not gracious enough.

23:49

That's too restricted. Now, do you see the foundational element that leads to this?

23:57

Do you catch where this is? Since he's coming from an Arminian anti -reform background, that makes sense because God can't really save anybody anyways.

24:07

He's got to leave it up to them. So if there's only one way of salvation and God can't bring his elect by that means, and it's up to us to cooperate, well, then you've got your objection.

24:21

And that's the whole grounds of it. Theology matters. Sorts this out. And so we announce this good news, this love, and we trust

24:29

God to sort this out. What are you trying to do in your book? I'm trying to recapture the historic good news that God loves everybody and Jesus came to announce this, to give us this love, to show us this love, to invite us into this love so that we could experience it and we could share it with others.

24:48

And I think lots of people, we need to hear. That's what happens when you overemphasize one divine truth at the expense of all other divine truths.

24:58

God loves everybody and Jesus came to announce that. Really? What were the first words of Jesus' preaching?

25:07

I think it's Mark. I looked it up just recently. Jesus comes preaching, and what does he preach?

25:14

Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand. Of, well,

25:21

Mark must be telescoping, and he forgot the God loves everybody part.

25:29

Where is that? As long as you don't read the

25:34

Bible, these guys can make a good case. I mean, a postmodernist just loves it.

25:41

But if you read the Bible, you go, wait a minute. Jesus guy talks about hell and repentance and sin and all this other stuff, and yeah, the love of God's in there, but it's connected with all this other stuff that puts it in balance, and I don't want that.

25:58

Good news. And you say the word Christian, and our culture and lots of people have lots and lots of other associations that have nothing to do with the love of God for everybody.

26:08

So in some senses, I'm trying to recapture a very pure, beautiful message that I think got hijacked along the way.

26:14

Well, it's interesting. Your book has drawn a lot of criticism from folks on what's traditionally called the

26:19

Christian right, calling you a heretic, even a universalist. Yes, I am told that that's happened.

26:29

Well, in Jesus' day, there was a strong religious establishment that had a very strict, rigid hierarchy for who's in, who's out, who's clean.

26:40

We're the Pharisees. Who has God's favor? Who doesn't? And Jesus, essentially, he turned over those tables.

26:48

He dined with tax collectors and prostitutes, and he touched lepers. And what did he say to the tax collectors and prostitutes?

26:58

Repent and sin no more! Not, oh,

27:03

God just loves you right where you are! Not, that might be the living

27:09

Bible translation, but not. He upset the power structure in his day. I think religious people have had a problem with God's mysterious grace for a long time now.

27:20

Yeah, religious people have had a problem with God's mysterious grace for a long time now. That's why we just listened to Rob Bell telling us that God's grace in the one way of salvation,

27:31

Jesus Christ, is too narrow. We need something beyond that. A problem with mystery?

27:38

Yes, I think it's a problem with mystery. I think we naturally want to create categories. We naturally like black and white categories of who's good, who's bad, who's us, who's them, who's in, who's out.

27:51

And Jesus doesn't like those categories. He continually tells stories about who people, who everybody assumed were in, being out, and the people, all the people who are in, assumed were out.

28:03

If you haven't read Love Wins, a lot of it, a lengthy portion of it, is trying to string together a number of passages for which

28:13

Bell has been strongly criticized as far as trying to come up with this paradigm of who's in, who's out.

28:23

Now, it's very clear, I don't know how many years, since the 80s, I know, I've been talking about how the

28:30

Pharisees believe the Ahmaudites, the people of the land, were beyond the grace of God.

28:37

And so there is an element of truth to this, but it's what Bell uses to turn on its head the concept of divine truth, the singularity and uniqueness of the atoning work of Christ, the uniqueness of coming only via Christ to the

28:54

Father, etc., etc. Finding out that they were actually in, he sort of turns all that upside down, and I think it's something that we all instinctively know, and just needs to be said again and again and again.

29:06

We're talking to Pastor Rob Bell, who might be described as one of the hottest Christian ministers in the country.

29:12

We will continue that conversation after we check in to the KPCC. First, did Jesus talk about a hell?

29:20

And then two is, what about the concept of a purgatory? Great question.

29:27

Every hell occurs a little less than 20 times in the Gospels. There are three words.

29:33

One is the word Tartarus. It's in one of Peter's letters. Jesus used two different words.

29:38

He used the word Hades, which is essentially a Greek word that is equivalent of the Hebrew word Sheol. So it's sort of a fuzzy, murky place after death.

29:48

And then the main word is the word Gehenna, and Jesus used that roughly 12 times. And Gehenna is the

29:53

Greek word. It means Valley of Hinnom, and it was the south and west valley of the city of Jerusalem, and it was the town dump in the first century.

30:03

And there were actually wild animals that would fight over the scraps of food, and then they would have it on fire all the time to sort of burn the trash.

30:10

So Gehenna was the place where the teeth of the animals would clash against each other. It was the place of the gnashing of teeth where the fire never goes out.

30:17

So what's fascinating, and why your question is so interesting, is Jesus, when he used the actual word hell, was referring to an actual first century town dump, a place of sort of waste and destruction.

30:30

And the context he used the word in was generally violence against another person, exploiting against another person, saying essentially, be careful, because the way that you treat your fellow man, fellow woman, there are profound destructive consequences for the way that we treat each other.

30:50

So does he actually say, if you treat people this way, you're going to end up in a place like this, the town dump?

30:57

Well, yeah, that's actually the great question, is to what degree is the town dump a metaphor, or is it of destruction?

31:06

And to what degree does it have implications for when you die? The central idea seems to be you can reject

31:12

God's call to be a person of light and hope and good in the world, and there will be consequences to that.

31:19

Now, how exactly that plays out, now we have lots of room to discuss, and Christians have sort of analyzed and discussed.

31:26

It just bugs me when he goes, well, now we've got lots of room. He's taking a position, but he's just too wimpy to come out and say it.

31:34

Or his postmodernism makes him do this. And now we can talk about a lot of things.

31:41

I've just said your position's wrong, but we can now talk about a lot of things. It gives the impression that, well,

31:46

I'm open to correction. No, he's not. What are you talking about? For hundreds and hundreds of years. Kevin, that answer your question?

31:53

Yeah, and just the concept of purgatory. And I've had that debate with people over the actual interpretation of Guyana being hell.

32:05

And Jesus talked about a second death, but he never talked about sending us to a sadist, or in this case,

32:13

Satan, to be tortured for all eternity for what we can do on earth. And that does not sound to me like a loving, caring

32:20

God that could do something like that. OK, so here's your standard person in the

32:26

United States. Loving, caring God will never do that for just, I mean, come on, we're not that bad.

32:33

We're really not. I mean, you know, a loving, caring

32:39

God's not going to do that. Well, let's see what Rob Bell does. And then I guess the flip side of this, what would warrant that kind of punishment?

32:47

What could we do on this planet that would warrant eternal suffering? OK, Pastor Bell?

32:53

Yeah, and in the book, that's the fundamental challenge of the book is, I agree with you.

32:59

How is that a loving God? Now, I assume you and I both— I agree with you.

33:04

How is that a loving God? So, what happens when you fall off the cliff

33:13

Dave Hunt has fallen off of? Now, Dave Hunt would disagree with this guy. But read

33:18

Debating Calvinism. When it comes to the nature of the will, the nature of freedom, and the absolute preeminence of omnibenevolence as the essence of all divine qualities, how can

33:36

Hunt avoid this? It's—they're standing on the same ground. Rob Bell's just taking it to his logical conclusion, that—a conclusion that Hunt's not willing to follow, thankfully.

33:47

We both agree. In the Gospels, what Jesus does insist again and again is that God is for us.

33:53

And God's desire is that we would flourish in a good world. God is for us.

34:01

So, one of the problems in reading Love Wins was that he would take texts specifically about the elect of God and universalize them.

34:09

Because he doesn't have an elect of God. And so he universalizes them, and thereby ignores all the texts of judgment that demonstrate that if you don't recognize that there is a distinction, then you're turning the

34:23

Bible into a mishmash that is just what you want to say, not what it actually says. And so, God's desire is that all of that which we— would get in the way of us flourishing in God's world, we need to get rid of.

34:36

So, greed, indifference, abuse, hardness of heart— these are all the things—this is why

34:42

Jesus calls disciples, that we would learn to be the kinds of people who were more and more and more the kinds of people that God created us to be.

34:49

And so, I struggle with the idea of a purgatory or the idea of flames, although one of the things in the book

34:55

I trace is that we tend to— the way that religious people have talked about fire is destruction, but I think you can argue biblically for fire as refining.

35:05

There is this— – There you go! Tim Staples online, too!

35:11

Tim Staples for Rob Bell online, too! Rome is waiting for you! – Purifying process that we go through in life, and it is because God loves us and desires that we would become more and more mature and compassionate and lacking nothing.

35:26

So, yes, I agree with you. What kind of God would do that? Not a God I'm interested in trusting.

35:32

– Give us a call if you'd like to get in on this conversation with Pastor Rob Bell, author of Love Wins, 866 -893 -KPCC, 866 -893 -5722, or you can give us a call.

35:48

Does the Bible say if you don't accept Jesus as your personal Savior, you're going to hell? –

35:53

Well, again, do you have a verse that says that? Literally, no. Again and again and again is the invitation to trust

35:59

Jesus, that God is really that good, that sins are forgiven, that on the cross everything was taken care of, that there's going to be a new creation, a new heaven, a new earth.

36:07

There's endless sort of insistence you can trust this Jesus. At the same time, Jesus says things like,

36:15

I have other sheep. He says things like there will be a renewal of all things. He says— –

36:20

Okay, now listen to this string. These are some of the passages, and you could go to every single one of them and demonstrate that Rob Bell's use of them is completely bogus.

36:29

He has other sheep. Who's that? The Gentiles. Does that mean everybody? Every single person? There's going to be a renewal of all things.

36:37

Does that mean every single person? I mean, you look at the context of any one of them, and his biblical argumentation is just— throughout the course, this thing is amazing.

36:47

– As I'll be lifted up and draw all people to myself. So there is both this insistence that Jesus can be trusted, that salvation is through him.

36:55

And at the same time, there is this space the Scripture keeps creating for God's love and grace and all of the mystery of how

37:05

God draws people to God's self. And so that's why in the tradition, as I talked about earlier— –

37:11

Again, the only reason— and one of the reasons I'm doing this is we read emails from Johnny Farese's list on Wednesday nights at church and for part of our prayer time.

37:27

And one of the Reformed Baptist pastors was over in, I think it was

37:33

Africa. And many of the questions he was asked were about the emergent church movement,

37:42

Rob Bell and Love Winds, in Africa. In Africa. So it would be nice to just go, eh, eh, eh, but evidently, there's a lot of people that don't understand.

37:57

Folks, all you're listening to is Protestant liberalism. This is just a massive testimony to how badly

38:08

Protestant liberalism has communicated itself. It communicates itself only to its own people.

38:15

If you had been in a United Methodist Church almost anywhere in the United States for the past 50 years and just sat down and listened for a while, this is what you'd hear.

38:26

There is nothing new here. And every once in a while, someone comes along and they say it, you know, well, he's hot.

38:35

Oh, please. You know, they're wearing skinny jeans and they've got the Britney Spears microphone.

38:40

They're good with Twitter. And so all of a sudden it sounds new. It's not new. There's nothing new here.

38:46

Nothing new at all. Even Bell says, oh, there's lots of people who believe stuff like this. Yeah, well, yeah, he's right.

38:54

Protestant liberalism has been around for a long time. But a lot of us sort of live in our own enclaves. We don't listen to this stuff.

38:59

And therefore, it bothers us when we hear it. Of a Billy Graham who simply says, who goes where?

39:06

I am not the judge of that. So possibly through other religions. Pardon? Through other religions.

39:12

Well, I always leave room for that. Yeah. Did you catch that? Did you catch that?

39:18

The guy goes, so you could get to heaven through other religions. Oh, I always leave room for that.

39:24

Yes. Okay, so if you don't want to get into an argument as to whether Rob Bell is a universalist, there is absolutely no question that Rob Bell is an inclusivist.

39:39

But then again, most Roman Catholics I know these days are, too.

39:45

Give us a call, 866 -893 -5722. Bonnie is calling from Culver City.

39:52

Bonnie, thank you for joining us on KPCC. Hi, thank you. I am so excited.

39:58

Okay, I think this is the one call I wanted to get to. And then I'm going to be done after this. I only got one call here, though, folks.

40:04

So 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. We're going to be done with this in just a moment.

40:09

So if you've had any comments you wanted to make on the Bart Ehrman stuff, on the

40:16

Rob Bell stuff, etc., etc., now is the time to do it after we get done with Bonnie's call.

40:22

You hear about this book. And I have been writing a lot on the same level.

40:27

But it's not just Reverend Bell that is out there saying the same thing. There are a lot of pastors out there.

40:36

Reverend Dr. Michael Beckwith is one of them. But there's many, many out there that are saying the same thing and saying it's about time that we really did look at how we're feeling about others and come to answer that question, don't you think?

40:50

Yes, well said. Well, one of the interesting things about you, Pastor Bell, is your arrival as a minister at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

41:02

I mean, you wanted to be a rock star. Is that right? I was in a band in college, and I was convinced—I can't speak for the other members—that we were just going to do great things.

41:13

We were going to put out albums and tour, and we were going to really tear it up. And that sort of— Tight, skinny jeans and a loud guitar, the whole thing?

41:23

Pretty much. But— See, somebody else said it. It wasn't just me.

41:29

Tight, skinny jeans, and he laughed and said, pretty much. So, see, my description wasn't all that far gone.

41:35

The band broke up, as bands are wont to do, and I was left with this sort of—I had no plan

41:40

B. And I had a series of sort of surreal experiences of, I guess

41:45

I'm supposed to be a pastor. I mean, it was literally—and friends would say, you know what? I think you're supposed to be a pastor, which, if you knew me at the time, that was very funny.

41:52

Were you already a Christian? I was. My parents are Christians. I grew up in sort of a—in a

41:58

Christian home. So I had always found Jesus terribly compelling and mysterious and exotic and fascinating.

42:08

And I had always sensed— Mysterious, exotic. He's where the life is. But I always found the sort of—I don't know what term to use—the

42:15

Christian package. I always had this sense like, really? Words of worldly wisdom. You have this extraordinary Jesus.

42:20

How did you make it this boring? I always had this sense like it should be so much better. It should be so much more interesting and compelling.

42:28

Faith should be. It should have lots of room for question and doubts and struggle. And it should soar.

42:34

It should inspire. You're a young man. You're 28, 29 years old?

42:40

I am 40 now. We started our church when I was 28, yeah. Right. You started out, right. When you were young, you were started out.

42:46

And you kind of threw out conventional sermons and worship services. Well, what's funny is actually the first year and a half of our church,

42:56

I preached through the book of Leviticus verse by verse. And did like hour -long sermons.

43:02

And I'd set things on fire and cover the stage in dirt and hand out props to the audience.

43:08

It was somewhere between Bible teaching and performance art is what a lot of people have said. But yeah, we stopped taking an offering and just put some metal boxes in the back and said, if you want to give an offering, you can just vote.

43:21

But yeah, we had lots of ideas. And we were young enough and free enough to just try them.

43:27

So it has been a grand experiment. And it has been extraordinary. Let's take another call.

43:34

Christina from Glendale is calling. Christina, thank you for joining us on KPCC. Hi, thanks for having me.

43:40

First of all, I want to say that Pastor Rob or Rob, whatever you go by, I really appreciate the message that you're giving.

43:47

Okay. Listen to the unbiblical mind. Listen to the emotion.

43:53

Listen to the modern American in this case. The mysteries of God and it all not making sense and that we don't have all the answers.

44:03

Because I really do agree that if there is an infinite God that created us, it would be rather foolish and a bit presumptuous on our part to think that we're going to ascertain all the answers while we're here in our finite minds and bodies.

44:18

God couldn't communicate anything to us so that we can really know him and know what's pleasing.

44:26

I'd just be arrogant to think that God could have that capacity. Just first of all, I want to say that.

44:33

And I guess my question to you is, given the verse in the

44:38

Bible that says that Jesus is the only way, yeah, what would you say to that?

44:45

Well, I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. Oh, well, just given that I totally understand the argument with people who've never heard or babies who are aborted or people who don't have mental capacity, all that kind of stuff aside.

45:05

I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on that because that seems like a pretty clear verse about like, you know, aside from us not knowing everything, but there being some right guideline.

45:16

Right. Well, first off, and actually this is in the book. I sort of pulled this apart because there is this

45:22

I am the way, the truth and the life. And that is generally I'm sure you've used that. That's sort of the club.

45:28

That's sort of the discussion stopper, right? Like, like, where can you go from there? Listen, he says, but he doesn't say anything about mechanism.

45:36

He doesn't say anything about how exactly that plays out. And it shouldn't surprise us that he comes along and he speaks that sort of exclusively because he said, if you have a problem with compassion for the poor, well, that's central to who

45:52

God is. If you have a if you have a problem with healing and restoring, if you have a problem with those on the leper being hugged and embraced and welcomed back into the community has been kicked out of those are that is central to God's heart, because we would all believe,

46:08

I assume affirm that God is love. Now, at the same time, Jesus says extraordinarily inclusive things.

46:15

So he says he'll draw all people. He says he has other sheep. He leaves all of this space.

46:21

And so I think it's important to hold those in tension and how exactly

46:28

God draws everybody to God's self. We don't know.

46:34

And like you said, there are all sorts of mysteries here. And to me, those can hold those can be held in tension just fine.

46:41

I don't need to make grand sweeping judgments about, you know, every other religion. I don't need to make grand sweeping judgments about every other religion, though I will tell you that at least you conservative

46:52

Christians have got it wrong. But that's not a really sweeping grand judgment. Or something. I can't announce that the

46:57

God that Jesus talks about loves everybody and pursues everybody. And I think Jesus says doesn't give up on anybody.

47:05

How that plays out, I have no idea. But I've heard way too many stories of people sort of demonstrating this love.

47:13

And can see what happens when you when you ignore the biblical teaching of God's electing grace and you you are imbalanced here.

47:22

This is theology matters. You can if you look at the foundations of what he's saying, you can identify the specific errors giving rise to all this.

47:33

And a lot of people just listen to go, oh, what's this guy talking about? I have no idea what he's talking about. Well, that's if you take it apart, that's where it comes from real quick, because I can go to John's and wait a long time.

47:43

I have to say that has to be the most unique call to the pastor I've ever heard in my life.

47:48

Oh, yes. My interpretation of that would be, well, you know, I was like in a rock band and the band broke up.

47:56

And so I decided, well, I figured I should be a pastor then because that's what

48:02

God clearly wants. Otherwise, the band would be together. Right. So then. OK, OK, OK, OK.

48:08

Thank you. Thank you. Before before we get in trouble with some other group, sometimes you start going after, you know,

48:14

Russian things and things like that. So just don't even go there. Yeah, it does.

48:22

It does remind me of what was the quote from Twitter today? Someone, Craig Ireland down in Australia, quoted

48:31

John Knox about something about, I've never once feared death, but I always tremble when

48:38

I enter the pulpit. Doesn't sound exactly like Rob Bell's view of ministry at all, as he described things.

48:45

Anyways. All right. We only have one caller today on the program. I'm starting to feel very unloved. 877 -753 -3341.

48:53

And we've made him sit around for 47 minutes and 30 seconds anyways. So let's go ahead and talk to John in Chicago.

49:00

Hi, John. Hello, Dr. White. Thank you for taking my call today. Yes, sir. I actually first, before I ask my question, want to respond.

49:09

You were discussing the homosexual agenda. Yes. And I find it interesting. I live in Chicago, Illinois.

49:15

I'm sorry. And yeah, I mean, it's tough. I mean, you get over it.

49:22

But recently, the public schools, at least most of them, now do not allow for parents to pack their own kids' lunches because parents were packing stuff unhealthy for their kids.

49:34

I heard about this. I heard about this. Yeah. Isn't it great to live in a nanny state?

49:40

Isn't it wonderful? Yes. Well, yeah, I don't pay taxes. So right now, it doesn't bother me.

49:47

But one day, I'll be, you know. Okay. My question is, concerning the

49:54

Clark -VanTilde debate, both sides seem to have radicals in one sense or another.

50:03

You know, you have guys like Red Beetle, Monty Collier, and he's notorious for condemning

50:10

Everybody. Everybody. Yeah. In fact, the circle's so narrow for that fellow that he has to stand on one foot to stay inside himself.

50:18

Yeah, because I've seen some encounters with him and other

50:23

YouTubers on YouTube, and he'll grossly misrepresent, you know, everyone he comes in contact with.

50:32

Yeah, I'm not going to blame Clark for his followers. I mean,

50:38

I would imagine there's some good articles out there on the actual exchanges between Clark and VanTilde when they were both alive, and there just would be people significantly more read up on the subject than I am.

50:49

It's just not a subject I've gotten into. Whenever anybody calls on the subject and says, hey, look,

50:55

I've read a whole lot more of VanTilde than I have of Clark. And when I read Clark, there are two major red flags that go up that have always caused me to be biased toward VanTilde, especially because I find so much in VanTilde that is very good.

51:12

The two big issues with Clark had to do with his exaltation of logic.

51:18

In the beginning was the Logos, and his equation of Logos with logic is just beyond any type of exegetical defense

51:26

I could possibly think of. And then the other thing is his view of faith involves the very same error that we see in the non -lordship

51:38

Arminians. And that really, really concerns me. But does that mean he was wrong in a certain criticism of VanTilde?

51:48

That obviously would not be the case. So that's why I say, well, that's where my reading's taken me.

51:55

But I would admit that there's a lot more that I could learn about that particular subject. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because,

52:05

I don't know, men like, because you have men like Doug Wilson, who

52:10

I've, you know, I think he has a lot of great things to say. I've heard his debate with Christopher Hitchens.

52:15

Right. Or debates, actually. But some of the stuff that he's into, like the whole...

52:23

Federal Vision. Yeah, Federal Vision and the Auburn Avenue Heresy and... We all have our problems, evidently.

52:29

Yeah. You know, and it's just, I feel like, like,

52:36

Clark often objected to VanTilde's definition of the Trinity, and I don't know... Well, John, actually, my crying and whining got some more people to call in, but let me just mention to you on that, that Colin Smith, my former student at Columbia Evangelical Seminary, wrote a lengthy paper on that subject.

53:00

He has distilled some of that for the blog. And so I think if you did a search on VanTilde or Gordon Clark, that would pull up on the blog fairly easily.

53:10

And he has a pretty lengthy paper on VanTilde's view of the Trinity and what he was attempting to communicate and stuff like that, that you might find to be very, very useful.

53:19

But I do know that, while VanTilde is difficult to read, his works, for example, on Christian epistemology and Christian apologetics are very, very good, and I would highly recommend them, which will mean there will be a new video on Red Beetle's channel about how heretical

53:34

I am for doing that. But that's okay, because that gives him something to do, and we want to help people to have things to do.

53:42

Yeah, I mean, I was originally very opposed to VanTilde, just because, you know, it's easy to accept a side before you hear both.

53:55

Right. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know what else to say. Yeah, take a look at that article, and I think it'll help you with VanTilde's view of the

54:03

Trinity, okay? Okay, thanks very much. Thanks a lot. God bless. Bye -bye. All right, let's talk with Brian in Reno, Nevada.

54:10

Hi, Brian. How are you doing, Dr. Wayne? Hey, doing good. Yeah, it was your crying and whining that got me to call in.

54:16

Here I am. Well, you better make it good, though, because, you know...

54:22

Love wins, Rob Bell. I mean, isn't God called love in the Bible? I mean, that's a lot of what we hear nowadays, and it's just interesting.

54:31

I've been listening to... I've read The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul a few times, and I picked up some messages that he did on a series of it, and just talking about the kind of thrice -holy nature of God and that superlative attribute, and though you don't want to elevate one attribute of God above another, it is interesting that God is not called...

54:53

Love, love, love. ...love, love, love, but he is called holy, holy, holy. That's true. And just the kind of theological fog that our current culture is in when it comes to balancing the attributes of God and seeing how his holiness needs to permeate all those justice and love and mercy and grace, and just everything that encompasses the whole revelation, it's just picked apart nowadays.

55:22

Well, just a real brief comment here. You're exactly right, and it's interesting.

55:27

Many of these emergent guys are former fundamentalists, and they still read the Bible as a bad fundamentalist.

55:33

In other words, if God is love, then God can't be holy. And so instead of a balance in these things...

55:40

At the same time, the revelation of God's nature has been a progressive one.

55:47

And what did God start with? You know, one of the reasons people don't like the Old Testament revelation of God is because it's, oh, he's mean, he's terrible, he's wrathful, and he wipes people out, and blah, blah, blah.

55:59

Well, what you have at first is the revelation of God's holiness and justice, and it is against that backdrop that we actually see the depth of his grace and his mercy and his love, but people don't want that part.

56:10

They won't allow the narrative to be any richer than a one -dimensional reading, and that's the real problem.

56:17

You're exactly right, Brian, and I appreciate you rescuing me from having to stretch here at the end.

56:23

But we've got another person on the line. We're going to try to sneak in real quick, so thanks for your call. All right, thank you. Thanks, Brian. All right, bye -bye.

56:28

Real quick, we'll extend just a little bit to talk with Richard. Hi, Richard. Hi, Dr. White.

56:33

How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for taking my call. My call is about Arminianism and what constitutes a false gospel.

56:45

Now, you've said, and I've listened to what you've said about Rob Bell in recent weeks, and you mentioned at one point when you were going through Love Wins, you mentioned the

56:58

Dutch writer who had the temerity to say that Rob Bell either worships or has in mind a different god.

57:09

Oh, yeah. Now, with that being the case, if they have a different god and then a different gospel arising out of that, then as Arminians, how can we judge them to be our brothers and sisters in Christ?

57:31

Well, I think we sort of answered that a little bit earlier in pointing out that the foundations upon which

57:37

Rob Bell and Dave Hunt are standing on many issues are very much the same. But Rob Bell goes ahead and goes for consistency based upon those assumptions resulting in a rejection of the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and all the things that are associated with it.

57:56

You're a standard Arminian, and again, it depends on who you're talking about. I've often said an

58:01

Arminian who is consistent with his presuppositions will be forced into a false gospel.

58:08

But thanks be to God, the vast majority of people who are not Reformed are never forced to be consistent in any way, shape, or form, and therefore they will at the same time confess, even using terms like the sovereignty of God and the grace of God, but their entire theology is so full of self -contradiction, but they're never forced to even examine it.

58:29

They're never forced to even make decisions on these issues. That's why they can affirm the truthfulness of completely contradictory statements.

58:37

And I just think that we're under necessity to accept a person's statement that I believe in sola gratia and sola fide, and you say, yeah, but, you know,

58:50

I heard you preach a message over here. It sort of sounded like you were contradicting that. And there are going to be people who have inconsistencies.

58:57

I'm one of them. I'm sure that there are places, even though I try as hard as I can to avoid inconsistency, that I still have inconsistencies.

59:05

And so the balance is to avoid passing beyond that mark.

59:14

The hyper -Calvinist gets to the point of saying, yeah, if you don't agree with me in absolute perfection in my theology, then you're lost, and you're a false gospel.

59:25

But I'm very thankful that there are a lot of folks who just are never brought to the position of, you know, because the church they're in, or because the culture they're in, whatever it might be, they're never brought to the position of being forced to see where the inconsistencies are.

59:44

And as a result, they continue to hold, they continue to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified and Him alone as a way of salvation and God's grace.

59:51

They don't see how their traditions end up actually vitiating much of what they're saying in practice.

59:57

Now, that's not a good thing. We should speak against that. We should expose that. But the problem is, a lot of people get to the point of saying, ah, and so if you don't look just like me and talk just like me, evidently you're not a

01:00:08

Christian. Well, you know what? I struggle with these things. And there was times when, even when on the dividing line, back in the early 80s,

01:00:19

I didn't understand particular redemption. And I would have said things were inconsistent. I mean, I wasn't saved then?

01:00:25

No, of course not. But I was forced to think those issues through. So I think that's where we need to be careful.

01:00:32

Yeah, well, see, real quickly, I think I may have come across some hyper -Calvinist literature.

01:00:39

You know, you mentioned today the Trinity Foundation. Yes. Well, I have a Facebook friend who sent me a link to that website.

01:00:48

And anyway, this guy, he's basically saying that the

01:00:54

Arminian Gospel is a false gospel because it equates the faith that they have as being unregenerate as a work.

01:01:04

And so that falls under Paul's condemnation in Galatians. Yeah, yeah. Again, you have to be very, very careful at this point.

01:01:15

Is that how they understand it? Is that what they're asserting? I'd have to see the quotation, know who said it, so on and so forth.

01:01:23

There is no question that there are people who find in Arminianism an excuse for a man -centered gospel.

01:01:30

And the Arminian Gospel, if it is taken consistently, is a false gospel because it cannot allow for the freedom of God in salvation.

01:01:40

But what I'm saying is, a large number of people wouldn't even have the foggiest clue what you were just talking about.

01:01:47

They have no earthly idea. They believe in faith alone. And are they consistent?

01:01:56

No. Should we call them to consistency? Yes. What's the best way to call them to consistency? By telling them they're going to hell?

01:02:02

Or by opening the Word of God and saying, here's what the Word of God says? Now, if they don't have any interest in what the

01:02:08

Word of God says, that might be a good indication of something, you know? But if they do, then you've won your brother and you've brought another person to a better understanding of the faith.

01:02:19

That's the important part. Hey, Richard, we went over time for you. Thanks for your phone call today. Really appreciate it.

01:02:24

Thanks for listening to The Voting Line today, folks, especially to those who called in right there at the end and kept me from having to talk about the weather here in Phoenix or something like that, which is rather warm today, but very dry, just beautiful.

01:02:38

So, you know, you got a weather report anyways. Hey, thanks for listening. We will be back, Lord willing, at our, oh, yes, yes, regular time on, yes, should be regular.

01:02:50

I'm just going to miss. I'm going to take off right afterwards and then get back right before Thursday.

01:02:55

So should be all right. If for some reason it's not, I'll let you know. Thanks for listening. I had time to make some noise.

01:03:52

The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

01:04:01

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

01:04:06

World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.