Liam Goligher is soon to assume the same pulpit that Barnhouse, Boice and Ryken have preached from.
Here he introduces a piece of commentary on the controversy which has arisen from the promotional material for Rob Bell’s upcoming book with these words:
Just yesterday someone told me of a sincere and well-meaning Christian family who forbid their children from reading Harry Potter books and who buy them Rob Bell’s Nooma Videos to watch instead. What is particularly galling about that is that Harry Potter is relatively harmless to the discerning child while the Nooma videos’ influence is frankly toxic.
Goligher then goes on to outline why anyone would be confused about what Bell’s position could be, since Bell:
“is the one who said that it doesn’t really matter if the virgin birth happened or not, or whether Adam ever existed or actually did what the bible says he did; whose assessment of Scripture is that it is not the result of ‘divine fiat’ but a ‘human product’ reflecting people’s experience of God; who thinks Christianity is more about putting things right here and now than it is about eternal life in the future; who flat out said that Peter’s problem, when he started sinking in the water where he’d been walking, was not that he didn’t believe in Jesus but that he didn’t really believe enough in Peter!”
He follows that by pointing out that this is not a new problem since:
“We’ve had Roman Catholic universalism since Vatican II with anonymous Christians and all that. Then there’s been the annhilationism so beloved by mostly English Evangelicals who privately speculate that eternal punishment won’t be eternal after all. Recently there has been the euphemistic reference to hell as mere (?) ‘separation’ from God and all that’s good – a hell that’s noted for what’s not there rather than what is, (eternal exposure to the wrath of an angry God). But above all there has been the sound of silence from evangelical pulpits (or platforms) on the theme.”
And then concludes that evangelicalism’s current problem in mentioning hell is because:
“After all, how does one make hell sound cool? What ubiquitous joke could possibly introduce a sermon on the subject? How does one write lyrics about eternal flames that fits the genre of soft rock (Eternal Flame by the Bangles doesn’t count)? So what have we done? We have simply muted it. Hell has become noted for its absence. We don’t tell people there is a hell to shun. Hence our people struggle to understand the ‘penal’ in penal substitution; they fail to grasp why God would need to be propitiated; the idea that we might be able to pass the final judgment on the basis of the whole life lived suddenly becomes a possibility, and consequently sin becomes less serious, less horrific, less something to be abhorred and avoided.”
mgpcpastor's blog 