Hope, Hell, and Rob Bell, Part 2
In this continuation of the discussion after a brief child-induced interruption, Ray and Steve jump right back into the discussion. If you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, you need to go listen to it first. It sets the framework for the heresy thoughts you’ll hear in this part!
We certainly enjoyed batting around different angles on this topic, and look forward to any responses you have to them.
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March 11th, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Steve and Raborn… I appreciated these two podcasts on Hell so much. And I love how you two are not afraid to ask these serious and honest questions. We need thinking and discerning minds in the Body of Christ and those who are not afraid of poking some holes in the sacred cows. Keep on poking guys! Thank you. Celebrating eternal life in Jesus with you… now.
March 11th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Dave,
Thanks so much for your encouragement! We really are “thinking out loud” and welcome your input.
March 13th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
I can hear SOME people saying: “So if we LOVE our enemies, they cease to be our enemies. This simply will not do! Who then is Hell for?”
I’ll go back to counting clock bongs now.
March 15th, 2011 at 3:12 am
I love these topics!
I can only say that the more I entertain ultimate reconciliation and preterist thoughts, the more I fall in love with my Daddy.
(“The Parousia” by J.S.Russell is a real helpful book when it comes to looking at the NT from a preterist perspective.)
As a German I can’t help but comment on the question whether even an Adolf Hitler could be saved.
The problem is, we only see him as this wild beast that he became when he was the “Fuehrer”. But we rarely ask: Why did he become like this? The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Hitler’s childhood:
“It was in Lambach that the eight-year-old Hitler sang in the church choir, took singing lessons, and even entertained the fantasy of one day becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding.
His younger brother Edmund died of measles on 2 February 1900, causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident, outgoing boy who excelled in school, to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers. Hitler was attached to his mother, though he had a troubled relationship with his father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois’ retirement and disappointing farming efforts. Alois wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. Despite his son’s pleas to go to classical high school and become an artist, his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school of about 300 students, in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and in Mein Kampf confessed to failing his first year in hopes that once his father saw “what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of.” Alois never relented, however, and Hitler became even more bitter and rebellious.
German Nationalism quickly became an obsession for Hitler, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government.”
Man! That could have been me! How could I ever judge this guy? How could Father look at this man and not see a beautiful, yet hurting and confused, angry child of his, that he longs for to finally sweep up into his loving arms?
March 18th, 2011 at 2:07 am
I really enjoyed the podcast! And when you talked about if you change the concept of hell…it effects alot of other theological views…especially around atonement. Rather, than cut and paste in the box here, here is what I mused yesterday…
http://thewearypilgrim.typepad.com/the_weary_pilgrim/2011/03/its-safer-to-leave-hell-in-the-storypulling-it-out-it-unravels.html
Peace…Ron Cole ( oof the west coast of british columbia, canada )