My Top Ten Problems with Hellfire Christians
1. Many seem to take devious delight in consigning people to hell.
2. Many of those who don’t delight in it still seem to like the idea of eternal torment instead of being horrified by it.
3. Man...y claim to know who will be in heaven and hell--and can name several individuals whose destiny they seem to know (Gandhi and Hitler, of course, being two).
4. Many who hold fast to believing in the eternal torment and torture of unbelievers seem to forget that the Bible does not make any of our traditional church-contrived “mercy affirmations”: our belief that children under the “age-of-accountability” and the severely brain-damaged will not go to hell, since we are sure God would not hold any one accountable who does not know how to understand the options. In these instances they are universalists who believe love wins.
5. To be a good hellfire Christian, you have to hold that everyone, regardless of age or capacity to understand the gospel, goes to eternal torment. (Strict hellfire Calvinists have it easy: God elects a few for heaven and the rest He elects for everlasting darkness, fire, torment, and separation from God).
6. Many make no distinctions between the devilish evil of people like Charles Manson (the wicked that we believe deserve hell) and the innocent ignorance of a poor, young Hindu mother who dies never having heard the name of Jesus. Both get the same eternal torment. Hellfire Calvinists call them both “totally depraved,” so they both get what they deserve (Calvinists being glad, of course, that they received God’s amazing grace—and their children and grandchildren too—that the others were not so lucky to receive).
7. Many (helped by John MacArthur and John Piper) believe Rob Bell is a heretic, liar, and an unbeliever (hence deserving hell), in spite of the fact that he makes the same conclusions C. S. Lewis does and his mentor from the grave, George MacDonald, who could not believe that God’s love could ever leave any of the souls He created suffering for eternity. They demonize Bell and idolize Lewis.
8. Many made decisions for Christ because they didn’t want to go to hell but show very little evidence that their “faith” is anything more than “fire insurance.”
9. Many don’t realize that the evangelist Paul’s two clear definitions of the gospel do not make mention of hell: “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God–which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures–concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles, for His name’s sake” (Romans 1.1-5). “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.1-4)
10. Most hellfire Christians are not content to consider the issue of final judgment as something we have only scant understanding of and that the risen and coming Christ is the one who makes the final call: “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Rev. 1:18).
I thought you would like this. I have met Dean who is upsetting creationists as he is one of those who is pro-geology and a little bit anti-evolution. He made me a walking pole 10 years ago and is blackballed by BJU.
Just to show good can come out of fundies and not all American fundies are rapture -ready and hold lighted matches
