Lest We Drift Away: A Sermon for Good Friday

Almost everyone has flown on a plane before. So you’ve all sat through those opening instructions from the flight attendants about what to do in the event of an emergency. They say the same thing on every flight, every day, on every airline. And every day, on every flight, on every airline, almost no one pays attention to the message. I’ve flown several times in the past couple months and I can’t recall seeing anyone looking at the flight attendants or giving one second of thought to what they were talking about. No one pays attention to these instructions.

Why? For a few reasons I think. For starters, the flight attendants look bored out of their skulls. There is nothing in their demeanor to suggest they are very interested in what is coming over the loud speakers. The way they drop the little seat belt down and pull on the strings for the oxygen mask don’t exactly scream passion and interest.

Second, almost everyone on the plane has been on a place before. They’ve heard about the seat cushion as a floatation device and putting on your mask before assisting others. They know they should follow posted placards and that the nearest exit may behind you. Nothing new is ever said. The flight attendants never say, “Your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device, an oxygen mask will drop in front of you, and on this flight only your headrest turns into a parachute and the back of your seat becomes a rocket!” There’s nothing new, nothing exciting, so we don’t pay attention.

Mostly, we don’t pay attention because we don’t think it matters. We don’t really anticipate the plane crashing. And in the unlikely event that the plane does go down, we figure someone will tell us what to do. If not, we reckon we’ll be able to figure it out on our own.

It seems to me this whole experience of listening to flight attendants is eerily similar to church for many of us.

1. We have someone preaching to us who is pretty bored with the whole thing.

2. We’ve been to church and figure we’ve heard all the same stuff before. So why listen?

3. We don’t think we’ll really need to use anything we hear in church. And if we do, we’ll figure it out before the end comes.

So we don’t pay attention. We hear the gospel a hundred times and we don’t think anything of it. We celebrate dozens of Good Fridays and it never makes a difference. Jesus, cross, death, resurrection–it’s all just noise in the background of our lives as we try to get our seats to recline and open the tiny bag of peanuts. No one is listening.

But listen to Hebrews 2:1-4.

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

This is one of five warning passages in Hebrews. These five passages are not teaching that genuine Christians can lose their salvation. What they are teaching is that some people with an external connection to Christianity will not in the end by saved. And further, these passages suggest that those who are saved at the end, will be saved by means of these warning. These passages are danger signs that keep the elect persevering to the end.

“We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard”–that’s the warning. Sit up straight. Put your feet on the floor. Shut your yap. And listen up. “Pay attention church people! You are in danger of drifting away.” Hebrews 6:19 says the promise of God is “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” So we’ve got warnings to the drifters and promises to those who are anchored.

Floating Away

There are a lot of ways to lose your spot on the river of faith. One way is to let yourself move away to another location. The waters get choppy and rough, so you take your boat somewhere else. That happens with the gospel. We ditch Christianity because life gets hard. We drift away because of suffering. Hebrews 10 says “But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometime being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes partners with those so treated.” And then verse 35 says, “Do not throw away your confidence.” In other words, “You used to be so firm in your faith. But then you got cancer, or someone didn’t like you because you believed the Bible, or you started having troubles with your kids. Something hard came into your life and it made you question your faith. You started to wonder if there was any point in being a Christian. Was it worth the cost?” you thought to yourself. So you compromised. You gave in. You pulled up anchor and let your boat float away.”

Or sometimes we look for another spot on the river because it seems it more enjoyable. When you first got interested in Christianity it was new and exciting. It gave purpose and order to your life. You liked the fellowship and the people. But then you found out how you were supposed to change. You learned that God, because he loves you, didn’t want you to have be a sexaholic, a workaholic, an alcoholic. You realized that following Jesus meant you couldn’t live any which you pleased. You belonged to God, and the God of the Bible is not an anything goes kind of God. So, unlike Moses, you decided to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin (Heb. 11:25). You decided to drop your anchor in a sexier port. As a result, even though you call yourself a Christian and you may go to a church once in awhile, you are not in the place you once were. Not by a long shot. You’ve drifted away.

But there’s an even easier way to leave the faith. You don’t have to pick up and move somewhere else because of suffering or the allure of sin. You can just drift. If you row your little boat out in the Mississippi River and take a nap for two hours, when you wake up you will not be in the same place. Without an anchor, you will have floated away with the current. That’s what happens in life. Hebrews 6:11 says “We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish…”

Most church people drift away from God not because they meant to, but because they got busy, they got lazy, they got distracted, they had kids, they got a mortgage, a few illnesses came, then some bills, then the in-laws visited for a week, then the mini-van broke down, and before you knew what was happening the seed of the word of God had been choked out by the worries of life.

That’s the way it happens for many people. They never dropped anchor, and so they simply floated away when the currents got strong. They used to pray. They used to be interested in the Bible. They used to talk to God. They used go to church. They never woke up and decided “Today I’m going to stop being a Christian. They just drifted. That’s why Hebrews 10:24 says “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Some of the Hebrews had checked out, stopped going to church, just floated away from the whole thing.

Listen Up

So what can we do to stop from drifting? Verse one tells us. “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard.” We must keep a close eye on the gospel.

First, we must notice that it is a reliable message. Both of those words are important, reliable and message. The gospel is not the same as asking Jesus into your heart. The gospel is not a program for becoming a better you. The gospel is not a series of ethical commands. The gospel is not an experience of generic spirituality. The gospel is the good news that God so loved the world that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to fulfill the law, to suffer as a man, and to die on the cross, bearing the penalty for sin the we deserved, and being raised on the third day that we might be declared innocent and righteous before God. The gospel is a message.

And it is reliable. Eyewitnesses saw it and passed it on to others who in turn told others. The story of the gospel took place out in the open for all to see. This was no secret, mystery religion. These things did not happen in a cave somewhere. The miracles of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit testified publicly that Jesus was not just another Rabbi or another prophet or another teacher, but he was, in fact, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

We must pay attention to this reliable message, lest we mistake false gospels for the real gospel, and end up believing in the Jesus of good causes, or the Jesus of good coffee, or the Jesus of good examples, or life coach Jesus, or greeting card Jesus, or prosperity Jesus, or positive thinking Jesus, instead of Jesus Christ crucified, dead, and buried for the sin of the world.

The other think we should notice is that this reliable message is the message about a great salvation. I think many church people drift from God because he seems so ordinary. They float away from the gospel because it strikes them as dreadfully boring. They give up on the Christian faith because, like the flight attendant instructions, it seems lifeless, passionless, inconsequential. But Hebrews tells us we have a great salvation.

It’s a great salvation because it saves us from a great wrath. The argument in verse 2 is from the lesser to the greater. If the message declared by angels, if the law of Moses given by angelic intermediaries proved to be reliable and disobedience to that law meant punishment, how much more will we face God’s wrath if we reject a greater message about someone greater than Moses declared to us by one greater than angels? Parents don’t let their kids get away with disobedience, your employer doesn’t turn a blind eye when you break company policy, the government will not let you go free when you break their laws, so why should we expect God to let us escape untouched if we neglect such a great salvation.

Jesus is Greater

We must pay closer attention to this message. The Devil doesn’t want you to see the details. He wants you to believe that God is the one Being in the universe who doesn’t care about justice. But it is not so. We will not escape if we neglect this message. But praise God there is deliverance from great wrath in this gospel message. And just as importantly, there is in this message of great salvation a great Savior.

The whole book of Hebrews is an extended argument for the superiority of Jesus Christ.

The prophets revealed God to the people, but Jesus Christ was the revelation of God himself.

The angels were sent from God to be his ministering servants, but Jesus Christ was loved by God as his only begotten Son.

The old covenant taught Israel the way to God, the truth of the law, and the life of holiness, but Jesus Christ instituted a new covenant in his blood that he himself might be the way, the truth, and the life for us.

The tabernacle made with human hands symbolized God’s presence among his people, but Jesus Christ, uncreated, made without human hands, was God among his people.

The kingdom in ages past shook the mountain at Sinai, but Jesus Christ promises a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

The High Priest from Aaron’s line offered sacrifices for himself year and year, day after day, but Jesus Christ, our sinless High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, has made a sacrifice once for all, never to be repeated.

The blood of bulls and goats was shed morning and evening, century after century, for the remission of sins, but Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, shed his own blood for the sins of the world, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, but Jesus Christ has been faithful over God’s house as a son.

Joshua led the people into the promised land, but Jesus Christ alone can give you Sabbath rest.

Abraham was a great man of faith, but Jesus Christ is the guarantor of all that Abraham had faith in.

All these saints and all these things were pointing the way to Jesus Christ, our great Prophet, Priest, and King, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:2).

We must pay much closer attention to the gospel, to Jesus, and to the cross, lest by an imperceptible current we drift away. Heaven never tires of the cross, and neither should we. The saints in glory never grow weary of the singing the old, old story: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

Do not let Good Friday pass you by like a set of airline instructions. Fix your eyes on the cross. Not as the place to show us our worth, but to show us the weight of our sin. Not as the pace where Jesus simply felt our pain, but where he bore our penalty. Not as the place where God overturned divine justice, but where God in mercy fulfilled his justice. Not as the place where love died, but where love reigned supreme. Pay careful attention to the cross. Here we see a great salvation, delivering us from a great wrath, revealing to us a great Savior who was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, that by his stripes we might be healed.

“If This is What God Intended, So Be It” — The Presecuted Church in China

Published with permission from Dr. Albert Mohler

The church is known as Shouwang, or the Lighthouse. It is located in Beijing, but it does not have a building. What is does have is enemies — and chief among them the Chinese government.

As The New York Times reports, the Shouwang Church is a so-called house church, even though its membership and attendance would outstrip any residence. The key issue is that Shouwang is one of China’s thousands of unregistered churches. This is true, even though Shouwang has applied for registration.

In recent months, the church even raised $4 million to purchase a building. Instead, the church was forced into the streets, where its members were arrested for the crime of public prayer.

As Andrew Jacobs reported:

Evicted yet again from its meeting place by the authorities, Shouwang announced this month that its congregants would worship outside rather than disband or go back underground. Its demands were straightforward but bold: allow the church to take possession of the space it had legally purchased. Officials responded with a clenched fist. On Sunday, for the second week in a row, the police rounded up scores of parishioners who tried to pray outdoors at a public plaza. Most of the church’s leadership is now in custody or under house arrest. Its Web site has been blocked.

This is a truly alarming development, but it is actually in keeping with the periodic repression of Christians that has been demanded by the Chinese Communist Party. The church has maintained a steadfastly nonpolitical stance, but the Chinese government clearly sees this church — and the thousands like it — as a threat.

As the paper reports, Chine has been cracking down on dissent in recent months. Churches in Guangzhou have had their facilities taken away. The advocacy group China Aid claims that at least 3,343 Chinese house church members were detained or beaten in 2010. Some experts estimate that two-thirds of China’s Christians worship in house churches.

This current outbreak of persecution may have been sparked by the Chinese government’s outrage over plans by some house church leaders to attend the recent Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in South Africa. Most of the leaders were detained and prevented from attending the meeting.

To understand how the Chinese government exerts its oppressive power, just consider this paragraph:

Shouwang’s latest troubles began again three years ago, shortly after its application for official recognition was denied. Officers from the Beijing Public Security Bureau burst into Sunday services, pronounced the gathering illegal and wrote down the personal details of everyone in the room, one by one. In the days that followed, calls were made to congregants’ employers or college administrators. Many congregants say they were threatened with dismissal from jobs or school if they did not switch to an official church. Some left, but Shouwang’s ranks continued to grow.

How many of our American church members would disappear if officials went about threatening jobs and college placements?

Ominously, the Chinese government has spoken its mind through official state-owned newspapers. On of these papers, the Global Times, ran n editorial last week that stated: “All Christians, as well as those of other faiths, are Chinese citizens first and foremost. It is their obligation to observe discipline and abide by the law.”

“But our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul reminds us, “and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” [Phil. 3:20]

While the New Testament commands Christians to obey the righteous laws of a nation, believers cannot bend the knee to the regime as their primary allegiance. No Christian is “first and foremost” a citizen of any earthy kingdom or nation. This is a despotic demand for the idolatrous worship of the state.

One Shouwang member spoke with Christian courage. He told The New York Times, even as his doorway was blocked by police: “I am fully prepared to go to jail for my church. I belong to the Lord, and if this is what God intended, so be it.”

We must pray for persecuted Christians around the world, including these brave believers in China. Let’s keep this verse in mind, even as we pray for them:

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” [1 Timothy 4:18]

After all, it was written by a man who had direct experience with being persecuted for the sake of the Gospel, and was about to be martyred for his devotion to Christ.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Andrew Jacobs, “Illicit Church, Evicted, Tries to Buck Beijing,” The New York Times, Wednesday, April 18, 2011.

2011 Summit Ministries Contest Winner – Olivia Van Winkle!

CONGRATULATIONS 2011 Summit Essay and Video Contest Winner – Olivia Van Winkle!

The winner will be receiving a full-tuition scholarship to a two-week Summit Student Conference this summer.  All students who submitted a valid essay or video will receive an additional $50 off registration for a 2011 Summit Student Conference.  This is over and above the $50 discount that is available for any student who asks for “The Christian Worldview Listener Discount” upon registration..  A hearty “Well done!” to all the entrants for the thought and time you put into your essays. You can register for Summit by going to Summit.org or calling 1-866-786-6483.

Here was the topic for this year’s contest:  Identify key passages related to economics in the Bible’s Book of Proverbs and explain whether those passages advocate for a capitalistic or socialistic economic system.  Each student should define capitalism and socialism.  Biblical passages outside Proverbs and other non-biblical sources can be referenced to make your case.  Potential sources: Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards, Making Modern Economics by Mark Skousen, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin Williamson.

This year, we had a panel grading the essays based on a 25-point scale, with a possible 5 points in each of the following categories:

1. Definition of terms
2. Appropriate and adequate use of sources
3. Clarity of thought and flow
4. Strength of argument
5. Originality

We would like to congratulate 18-year-old Olivia Van Winkle of Mount Vernon, OH on her winning essay entitled, “Inherently Capitalist.”  Olivia will be receiving a full tuition scholarship to a Summit Ministries Student Conference this summer.  You can read her essay here.

We’d also like to congratulate the First Runner-Up, Naomi Baskin of Dayton, TN for her essay, “Proverbial Capitalism”.  Naomi will be receiving a half tuition scholarship to a Summit conference this summer.  You can read her essay here.

Congratulations are also in order for the rest of the Top 5:

• Kimmy Miller, Peachtree City, GA
• Rebekah Busch, Lower Lake, CA
• Connor Headrick, Monroe, LA

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GRAND PRIZE: One full-tuition scholarship ($895 value) to a two-week Summit Ministries Student Conference at the location of your choice (Colorado, Tennessee, Wisconsin) in the summer of 2011.

RUNNER-UP PRIZE: One half-tuition scholarship to a two-week Summit Ministries Student Conference at the location of your choice in the summer of 2011.

ENTRY PRIZE: All students who submit a valid essay or video will receive an additional $50 off registration for a 2011 Summit Student Conference.  This is over and above the $50 discount that is available for any student who asks for “The Christian Worldview Listener Discount” upon registration.

ELIGIBILITY: Students aged 16 or older who could attend a Summit Student Conference in the summer of 2011.

TOPIC: Identify key passages related to economics in the Bible’s Book of Proverbs and explain whether those passages advocate for a capitalistic or socialistic economic system.  Each student should define capitalism and socialism.  Biblical passages outside Proverbs and other non-biblical sources can be referenced to make your case.  Potential sources: Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards, Making Modern Economics by Mark Skousen, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin Williamson.

ESSAY LENGTH: 500 to 750 words

VIDEO LENGTH: 4 to 5 minutes

DEADLINE:  Sunday, April 10, 2011

RESULTS: The contest winner’s essay or video will be posted no later than April 16, 2010 on TheChristianWorldview.org.  The top five entrants will also be posted.

SUBMIT ESSAY OR VIDEO BY EMAIL TO: David Wheaton, host of The Christian Worldview Radio Program

Email Address: feedback@TheChristianWorldview.org

ESSAY entries: Send essay in body of email and/or as an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .txt attachments only)

VIDEO entries: Upload your video to YouTube.com and then email the URL address to us.  Your video should begin with the following text or statement: “My name is (insert your name) and the following video is for the Summit Ministries Video Contest on The Christian Worldview Radio Program.”

Include the following information in your email:

• First and last name
• Age, school, year
• Full mailing address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Essay title
• Word count or Video length

HONOR CODE: By submitting an essay or video, you are pledging that you are the original creator/author.

QUESTIONS? feedback@TheChristianWorldview.org

When you email us a video or essay, we will email you back an acknowledgment of receipt.  If you have submitted an essay or video and haven’t received a receipt response from us, please email or call us.
email:  feedback@TheChristianWorldview.org
phone:  1-888-646-2233

Summit Ministries is the national presenting sponsor of The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton, a nationally-syndicated radio program that airs on 200 stations.  For more information on Summit Ministries, visit Summit.org or call 1-866-786-6483.  To find out more about The Christian Worldview, visit TheChristianWorldview.org.

“A Massive Shift Coming in What it Means to Be a Christian?”

published with permission from Dr. Albert Mohler

The edition of TIME magazine timed for Easter Week features a cover story on the controversy over Rob Bell and his new book, Love Wins. Interestingly, the essay is written by none other than Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former editor of Newsweek –TIME’s historic competitor. Meacham, who studied theology as an undergraduate at the University of the South, helpfully places Rob Bell in the larger context of modern theology, even as he offers a basically sympathetic analysis.

Meacham explains:

The standard Christian view of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is summed up in the Gospel of John, which promises “eternal life” to “whosoever believeth in Him.” Traditionally, the key is the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in the words of the ancient creed, “for us and for our salvation came down from heaven … and was made man.” In the Evangelical ethos, one either accepts this and goes to heaven or refuses and goes to hell.

Bell, Meacham writes, “begs to differ” with this “standard Christian view.”  He then relates that Rob Bell “suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book’s subtitle puts it, ‘every person who ever lived’ could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be. Such a simple premise, but with Easter at hand, this slim, lively book has ignited a new holy war in Christian circles and beyond.”

Well, “holy war” is an exaggeration loved by the media, but Bell has obviously ignited a raging controversy within evangelical circles.

Meacham then traced something of the reaction to Bell’s argument:

When word of Love Wins reached the Internet, one conservative Evangelical pastor, John Piper, tweeted, “Farewell Rob Bell,” unilaterally attempting to evict Bell from the Evangelical community. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says Bell’s book is “theologically disastrous. Any of us should be concerned when a matter of theological importance is played with in a subversive way.” In North Carolina, a young pastor was fired by his church for endorsing the book.

All that is a matter of public record now, but what makes Meacham’s analysis really interesting is what comes next:

The traditionalist reaction is understandable, for Bell’s arguments about heaven and hell raise doubts about the core of the Evangelical worldview, changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation. “When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world,” says Mohler, “then you don’t need the church, and you don’t need Christ, and you don’t need the cross. This is the tragedy of nonjudgmental mainline liberalism, and it’s Rob Bell’s tragedy in this book too.”

This may mark the first time any major media outlet has underlined the substantial theological issues at stake. Meacham understands what Bell’s proposal amounts to — “changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation.”

To his credit, Meacham also understands that Bell’s argument fits comfortably within the context of Protestant Liberalism. “Early in the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick came to represent theological liberalism, arguing against the literal truth of the Bible and the existence of hell. It was time, progressives argued, for the faith to surrender its supernatural claims,” he explains.

Rob Bell, he suggests, “is more at home with this expansive liberal tradition than he is with the old-time believers of Inherit the Wind.”

Meacham is right about this, of course. Readers may differ with his analysis of other aspects of this controversy, and, in the end, Jon Meacham seems to admire Rob Bell, whom he describes as “an odd combination of Billy Graham and Conan O’Brien.” But he understands that the liberal tradition in theology is where Rob Bell now finds his home.

Finally, this may be the most telling portion of the article:

Is Bell’s Christianity — less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions — on an inexorable rise? “I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian,” Bell says. “Something new is in the air.”

Like Brian McLaren, who argues for “a new kind of Christianity,” Rob Bell now openly wonders “if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian.”

“Something new is in the air,” he says. Actually, arguments for universalism and the denial of Hell are anything but new. The real question is now whether the Church has sufficient biblical conviction to resist this doctrinal seduction. Otherwise, it may well be that Rob Bell’s “massive shift” is the shape of things to come.

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Jon Meacham, “Is Hell Dead?,” TIME, Thursday, April 14, 2011. TIME’s cover reads: “What if There’s No Hell?”

Is Obama About to Push Palestinian State in September? This Would Be A Terrible Mistake.

published with permission from Joel Rosenberg

I Hate Hell

published with permission from Tim Challies

God has put eternity into man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The knowledge that there is more to this world than what we see seems to be innate in human nature. it seems God has so wired us that we know there is life beyond the here and now. Every religion acknowledges something beyond, something outside of ourselves. There is something to come. But far more people acknowledge heaven than hell. Though the majority of people believe there is a heaven, very few believe in hell. Even fewer believe they will ever be in hell.

Yet our hearts continue to tell us that there is life and death beyond the grave. Life offers us many hints of what is to come. John Blanchard says, “The judgments of God fall often enough in this world to let us know that God judges, but seldom enough to let us know that there must be a judgment to come.” We see God’s judgments in this world often enough to know that God does judge sin and that he is provoked against evil. Yet the scarcity of judgment shows us that there must be more. If God is a judge he must judge all sin, not just some sin. And so we know that more judgment is coming. It must come. And really, we want it to come—we just don’t want it to come against us. None of us want Hitler to escape some sort of greater judgment, some kind of greater consequence for what he did before taking his own life. Surely a man cannot do all that Hitler did and then escape judgment. What kind of world would that be?

In the aftermath of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins there has been a lot of discussion about hell. I believe in hell—a hell of judgment and torment. But through all of this discussion I have been convicted that I do not believe in this hell strongly enough. It seems unavoidable to me that if I truly believe in this hell, it will have a greater impact on my life and faith. A hell of conscious eternal torment is not the kind of doctrine I can believe in and then just go on my way unaffected. Either I genuinely believe it and it will deeply affect my life, or I pay lip service to it and allow it to make very little difference to me. I don’t see how I can believe it deeply and not have it radically impact my life.

I have been helped in understanding life after death by reading Edward Donnelly’s aptly-titled book Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell. The first half of the book discusses hell in all its horror; the second part turns to heaven with all its glory. The first half is difficult to read and weighs heavily on the soul; the second is like a sip of cool water on a hot day. The first terrifies; the second elevates. Donnelly is not given to hyperbole or imagination. He does not present a fictionalized vision of hell that owes more to horror movies or medieval art and imaginings than to the Bible. Rather, he simply relates what the Bible tells us, both explicitly and implicitly, about this awful place. He does so under four alliterated headings: Absolute Poverty, Agonizing Pain, Angry Presence and Appalling Prospect.

The absolute poverty of hell is in its separation from God. All that people love and appreciate and enjoy in this life will be stripped away, not for a time, but forever. All that makes you who you are will be destroyed. “You, as a being, will become ever more degraded, more contemptible, more lonely… Everything good in you will be taken away, and everything bad in you let loose. All your evil passions will burn, increasing and consuming you until you become utterly foul… Nothing good, nothing worthwhile, a horrible monotonous dreariness, unenlivened by a single ray of light as you fester and stew in your loathsomeness. This is what will happen to you.” This is complete, absolute poverty.

The agonizing pain of hell is the utter agony that will be in that place. “The undying worm is something foul, endlessly gnawing at hell’s inhabitants, eating at them continually, giving them no rest. This probably refers to conscience.” Imagine an eternity of a violated but re-sensitized conscience continually attacking, accusing and destroying. There will be weeping—an eternity of pouring out intense grief and anguish and intolerable misery. And there will be gnashing of teeth, perhaps a rage or insanity that will beset those in hell, and for good reason. And, of course, there will be unimaginable physical pain such that people will no doubt cry out for the comparable relief of the worst pain they knew in this life.

The angry presence is the presence not of Satan or of his minions, but of God. Many have been deluded into thinking that Satan will own and control hell, but the reality is that God is as present in hell as much as he is in heaven. People in hell will spend an eternity in the presence of God, but in the presence of his just wrath against sin. “Here is the ultimate horror of hell; not the absolute poverty, not even the agonizing pain but the angry presence of God.” This ought to invoke a kind of terror, a primal fear.

And the appalling prospect is that all of this will never end. We all know the words of “Amazing Grace” where we sing “When we’ve been there ten thousand years / bright shining as the sun / we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise / than when we’ve first begun.” Just as those in heaven will be no further from the end when ten thousand years have elapsed, the same is true of people in hell. We cannot fully imagine eternity and thus cannot fully imagine what it would be like to suffer forever and ever and ever, age after endless age. Our minds cannot conceive, and I’m grateful for that limitation. I do not want to conceive because I think it would destroy me.

It is little wonder that I find the subject almost unbearably weighty. Just thinking seriously about it presses on my soul and presses upon my heart. I would far rather think about heaven and about the reward that awaits there for those who know and love the Lord. But it is good and healthy to think about hell. It would not be healthy to think about it too much or to have a long and deep-seating fascination with it. But because God has revealed to us that there is such a place and because he has seen fit to give us a glimpse of it, we must pay attention. We cannot ignore it just because we do not like it.

I hate hell. I hate that it exists and hate that it needs to exist. I’m amazed to realize that, when we are heaven, we will praise God for it and that we will glorify him for creating such a place and for condemning the unsaved to it. But for now I am too filled with pride, too filled with sin to even begin to justly and rightly rejoice in the existence of such a place of torment. I cannot rejoice in such a place; not yet. It is just too awful, too weighty. And I know that I deserve to be there.

Rinse Not the Prose: Christopher Hitchens on the King James Version

Why would an ardent atheist care about translations of the Bible, and why would Christians be concerned with what an atheist would think? These are rather obvious questions, especially when the atheist is Christopher Hitchens, one of the most influential of the New Atheists.

Nevertheless, Hitchens devoted his column in the May 2011 edition of Vanity Fair to the King James Version of the Bible, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.

As always, Hitchens is interesting and provocative. He places the history of the Authorized Version (by which the British normally refer to the King James Version) in its political context in the early years of the Stuart dynasty and rightly explains that the interest of King James ! in the project was to “bind the majesty of the King to his devout people.” He then offers anecdotal observations of the KJV text, correctly attributing its tone and tenor to the earlier work of William Tyndale, as well as to the unusually gifted committee of translation.

Hitchens is a man of letters, and as such he takes matters of language with urgent seriousness. He points to the King James Version as a crucial repository of our common civilizational knowledge. As he sees it, “A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one.” It is very hard to argue with that warning.

Hitchens is also an avowed enemy of banality, which means that he has little literary respect for modern translations that lack literary and linguistic taste and thus pander to mere popular taste. The King James Version translates 1 Corinthians 13:7 to read: “[Love] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.? But the Good News Bible translates it as: “Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.”

As Hitchens states:

This doesn’t read at all like the outcome of a struggle to discern the essential meaning of what is perhaps our most numinous word. It more resembles a smiley-face Dale Carnegie reassurance. And, as with everything else that’s designed to be instant, modern, and “accessible,” it goes out of date (and out of time) faster than Wisconsin cheddar.

He also has little use for attempts to render the text as gender-neutral. He asserts that “to suggest that Saint Paul, of all people, was gender-neutral is to re-write the history as well as to rinse out the prose.”

Along the way, Hitchens takes legitimate shots at modern marketing efforts to commercialize the Bible and see some translation or edition to virtually every niche market. Of course, as an atheist, he expresses less sympathy with the Reformation conviction that the Bible should be available to everyone in the vernacular of the language. He does offer some interesting insights into the King James Version and the larger issue of Bible translation.

His admonition that translations should not “rinse out the prose” is well stated and profoundly appropriate. Even an atheist can offer good advice on literary matters, and Hitchens is a writer of great ability.

Since the article’s publication, several observers have noted Hitchens’ comments on faulty modern translations and gender-neutral approaches. His points are well worth noting.

But the more interesting aspect of this article to note is this: Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s most ardent and outspoken atheists, and a man in the fight for his life against cancer, is reading the Bible. This is at least the second article on the Bible that he has written of late. I note this with a sense of hope.

I know you will join me in praying that, in reading the Bible, Mr. Hitchens will find more than he might be looking for. Rinse not the prose of its message.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Christopher Hitchens, “When the King Saved God,” Vanity Fair, May 2011

Why is the New Iranian Video About the Soon Coming of the Messiah Significant?

published with permission from Joel Rosenberg

NEW: The Joshua Fund posts video blog analyzing new Iranian video that says the Twelfth Imam is coming soon

Last night, I returned from a week in Europe where I had the opportunity to brief several dozen Iranian, Arab, Israeli, European and American pastors and Christian ministry leaders about the new feature-length documentary film produced by the Iranian government and its religious allies called, The Coming Is Near. As I will explain in more detail below, I believe now is the time for pastors and ministry leaders around the world to use the occasion of the release of this film to accelerate and intensify their own teaching about the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and to answer the questions being asked by millions of people throughout the Middle East and elsewhere about who the Messiah is and when/how/why He will return.

The film, The Coming Is Near, was brought to the attention of the West by Reza Khalili, a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member who became a double agent for the CIA working against Iran in the 1980s. It explains how the current wars and revolutions in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and North Africa are signs consistent with Shia Islamic End Times teaching that the Twelfth Imam (or Mahdi) and Jesus will soon appear on earth to usher in the destruction of Israel, the establishment of an Islamic caliphate (kingdom), and the end of days. As I write about in The Twelfth Imam and Inside The Revolution, Shia Muslims are convinced that Jesus will come as a deputy to the Mahdi and force all Jews and Christians to either convert to Islam or die.

Why is this new film significant? I see several reasons:

1. The film has attracted international attention through reports by the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Drudge Report, and other media outlets — this is good because it is further helping people around the world to understand what the current Iranian regime believes and why it is so dangerous.
2. The film has been screened and approved at the highest levels of Iranian government, providing further confirmation that the Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad believe their eschatology is being vindicated and thus emboldening them to continue pursuing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
3. The film is being screened throughout Iran for military officers and soldiers as well as for paramilitary units, suggesting that Iran’s leaders are trying to prepare their forces for a rapidly approaching genocidal war against Israel, the U.S. and the West and to encourage them not to fear because Shia Muslims are on the winning side of history.
4. The film is being translated from Farsi (the language of Iran) to Arabic, suggesting that it will soon be shown and distributed throughout the broader Middle East and North Africa to prepare other Muslims — Sunni and Shia – for a genocidal war with Israel and the West.
5. The film is full of false teaching (the Twelfth Imam is not the true Messiah, cannot save mankind and will not set up a global Islamic kingdom), delivered by false teachers (Iranian clerics), who follow a false religion (Islam), but it is useful in that it is further evidence that our Lord Jesus Christ was absolutely correct when He warned His disciples in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 that “false messiahs” and “false prophets” will come in the last days before Christ’s own return. Indeed, while we can’t know for certain that a false Islamic messiah known as the Twelfth Imam is actually coming soon, we must recognize that this is possible, would be a fulfillment of Bible prophecy, would create much deception in the world, and would need to be countered with great courage and wisdom by faithful followers of Jesus Christ.
6. The film is full of evil, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-Christian teaching, but it is serving one particularly good function: it is beginning to accelerate and intensify an on-going conversation among Muslims and Jews throughout the world who are asking, “Who is the Messiah? When will He come? What signs will precede His coming? How shall we recognize Him when He comes? And how shall we live differently in light of His soon arrival?”
7. The film, in my view, should immediately lead to Christian ministries producing films and TV programs explaining what the Bible says about the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and how to both prepare for His return and live lives of holiness, prayer, evangelism, discipleship and church planting in view of Christ Jesus’ coming. Followers of Jesus Christ should be ready and willing to answer people’s questions from the Scriptures, and teach other believers how to answer these questions from the Bible, as well. One of the ministry leaders I spoke to who is responsible for broadcasting and webcasting programs that are seen by hundreds of thousands of Iranian and Arab Muslims and Christians throughout North Africa and the Middle East has already committed to having his staff make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ a new and important theme of their programming in the weeks and months ahead.

Please pray that many Christian leaders around the world will see this as an important moment to teach Bible truths in love and with great courage, that Jesus of Nazareth is the only true Messiah and the Savior of the world, and that He is coming back soon. As Jesus Himself said in John 14:1-3 and 6, ”Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also….I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Also worth noting: Reza Khalili notes that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, President Ahmadinejad’s top adviser and chief of staff was directly involved with this project. Khalili quotes Mashaei as saying:

Therefore let us shout out loud that The Coming is soon and that evil should be fearful. We live with these thoughts every day and our lives are filled with The Coming of the last imam. That human will reappear and fill the world with justice and establish his promised governance on earth. The very world has witnessed too much bloodshed of the innocent for others to build their palaces. The very world is filled with shouts for justice. The innocent and the oppressed are losing their lives to world powers. It is in this very world where the oppressors rule and this world that Allah will command the last imam to appear and forever put an end to injustice. At that time the world will belong to the righteous.

• CBN report about the Iranian film, “The Coming Is Soon”
• 28-minute excerpts of Iranian film, with English subtitles
• Reza Khalili’s translation of the Iranian film, “The Coming Is Soon
• Iran Film: Iran Plans to Conquer Israel, World

“Respectable Sins” – Identify, Confront, Overcome!

Limited-Time Offer to Get Jerry Bridges Acclaimed Book, Respectable Sins, for a DONATION OF ANY AMOUNT (March-May 2011)

The Christian Worldview Book Club is pleased to offer this beautiful hardcover book, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate, by best-selling author Jerry Bridges.  Because we think this book can be so helpful in your walk with Christ and because we don’t want anyone to not be able to get the book because of financial limitations, we are offering Respectable Sins to listeners for a DONATION OF ANY AMOUNT to The Christian Worldview!

Plus, we’re taking the reading of Respectable Sins to a whole new level for this Book Club term:

• You will receive a FREE weekly two-chapter summary email with some ideas on how we can apply what we have read to our daily lives.
• You can post your comments and insights on our Facebook Group, Respectable Sins*, as you read through this book.

So, order your copy of Respectable Sins today and get ready to identify, confront, and overcome the respectable sins in your life!

*To participate in the Facebook Group, do a search for “Respectable Sins Book Club” or request Facebook friend status with “David Wheaton”.

Doing Away with Hell? – Part Two

The doctrine of hell has recently come under vicious attack, both from secularists and even from some evangelicals. In many ways, the assault has been a covert one. Like a slowly encroaching tide, a whole complex of inter-related cultural, theological, and philosophical changes have conspired to undermine the traditional understanding of hell. Yesterday, we considered the first and perhaps most important of those changes–a radically altered view of God. But other issues have played a part as well.

A second issue that has contributed to the modern denial of hell is a changed view of justice. Retributive justice has been the hallmark of human law since premodern times. This concept assumes that punishment is a natural and necessary component of justice. Nevertheless, retributive justice has been under assault for many years in western cultures, and this has led to modifications in the doctrine of hell.

The utilitarian philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham argued that retribution is an unacceptable form of justice. Rejecting clear and absolute moral norms, they argued that justice demands restoration rather than retribution. Criminals were no longer seen as evil and deserving of punishment, but were seen as persons in need of correction. The goal–for all but the most egregious sinners–was restoration and rehabilitation. The shift from the prison to the penitentiary was supposed to be a shift from a place of punishment to a place of penance, but apparently no one told the prisoners.

C. S. Lewis rejected this idea as an assault upon the very concept of justice. “We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.”

Penal reforms followed, public executions ceased, and the public accepted the changes in the name of humanitarianism. Dutch criminologist Pieter Spierenburg pointed to “increasing inter-human identification” as the undercurrent of this shift. Individuals began to sympathize with the criminal, often thinking of themselves in the criminal’s place. The impact of this shift in the culture is apparent in a letter from one nineteenth century Anglican to another:

“The disbelief in the existence of retributive justice . . . is now so widely spread through nearly all classes of people, especially in regard to social and political questions . . . [that it] causes even men, whose theology teaches them to look upon God as a vindictive, lawless autocrat, to stigmatize as cruel and heathenish the belief that criminal law is bound to contemplate in punishment other ends beside the improvement of the offender himself and the deterring of others.”

The utilitarian concept of justice and deterrence has also given way to justice by popular opinion and cultural custom. The U. S. Constitution disallows “cruel and unusual punishment,” and the courts have offered evolving and conflicting rulings on what kind of punishment is thus excluded. At various times the death penalty has been constitutionally permitted and forbidden, and in one recent U. S. Supreme Court decision, the justice writing the majority opinion actually cited data from opinion polls.

The transformations of legal practice and culture have redefined justice for many modern persons. Retribution is out, and rehabilitation is put in its place. Some theologians have simply incorporated this new theory of justice into their doctrines of hell. For the Roman Catholics, the doctrine of purgatory functions as the penitentiary. For some evangelicals, a period of time in hell–but not an eternity in hell–is the remedy.

Some theologians have questioned the moral integrity of eternal punishment by arguing that an infinite punishment is an unjust penalty for finite sins. Or, to put the argument in a slightly different form, eternal torment is no fitting punishment for temporal sins. The traditional doctrine of hell argues that an infinite penalty is just punishment for sin against the infinite holiness of God. This explains why all sinners are equally deserving of hell, but for salvation through faith in Christ.

A third shift in the larger culture concerns the advent of the psychological worldview. Human behavior has been redefined by the impact of humanistic psychologies that deny or reduce personal responsibility for wrongdoing. Various theories place the blame on external influences, biological factors, behavioral determinism, genetic predispositions, and the influence of the subconscious–and these variant theories barely scratch the surface.

The autonomous self becomes the great personal project for individuals, and their various crimes and misdemeanors are excused as growth experiences or ‘personal issues.’ Shame and guilt are banned from public discussion and dismissed as repressive. In such a culture, the finality of God’s sentencing of impenitent sinners to hell is just unthinkable.

A fourth shift concerns the concept of salvation. The vast majority of men and women throughout the centuries of western civilization have awakened in the morning and gone to sleep at night with the fear of hell never far from consciousness–until now. Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been reconceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell.

The theodicy issue arises immediately when evangelicals limit salvation to those who come to conscious faith in Christ during their earthly lives and define salvation as anything akin to justification by faith. To the modern mind this seems absolutely unfair and scandalously discriminatory. Some evangelicals have thus modified the doctrine of salvation accordingly. This means that hell is either evacuated or minimized. Or, as one Catholic wit quipped, hell has been air-conditioned.

These shifts in the culture are but part of the picture. The most basic cause of controversy over the doctrine of hell is the challenge of theodicy. The traditional doctrine is just too out of step with the contemporary mind–too harsh and eternally fixed. In virtually every aspect, the modern mind is offended by the biblical concept of hell preserved in the traditional doctrine. For some who call themselves evangelicals, this is simply too much to bear.

We should note that compromise on the doctrine of hell is not limited to those who reject the traditional formulation. The reality is that few references to hell are likely to be heard even in conservative churches that would never deny the doctrine. Once again, the cultural environment is a major influence.

In his study of “seeker sensitive” churches, researcher Kimon Howland Sargeant notes that “today’s cultural pluralism fosters an under-emphasis on the ‘hard sell’ of Hell while contributing to an overemphasis on the ’soft sell’ of personal satisfaction through Jesus Christ.” The problem is thus more complex and pervasive than the theological rejection of hell–it also includes the avoidance of the issue in the face of cultural pressure.

The revision or rejection of the traditional doctrine of hell comes at a great cost. The entire system of theology is modified by effect, even if some revisionists refuse to take their revisions to their logical conclusions. Essentially, our very concepts of God and the gospel are at stake. What could be more important?

The temptation to revise the doctrine of hell–to remove the sting and scandal of everlasting conscious punishment–is understandable. But it is also a major test of evangelical conviction. This is no theological trifle. As one observer has asked, “Could it be that the only result of attempts, however well-meaning, to air-condition Hell, is to ensure that more and more people wind up there?”

Hell demands our attention in the present, confronting evangelicals with a critical test of theological and biblical integrity. Hell may be denied, but it will not disappear.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

A much longer version of this essay appears in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Zondervan, 2004). I recommend this book to readers interested in knowing the background to current debates over the biblical doctrine of hell. A previous version of this essay was published here on November 30, 2004.

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