Dan Kimball on Hell

The following is a blog post by Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA. I found this article hard to pass up. It is interesting to read and I do think that he has hit something here. Hell is real, but Hell is not the focus of theology or the focus of evangelism. To view Dan Kimball's website follow this link To visit Vintage Faith's website click here

"If you think I'm going to hell, you should care that I'm going to hell"

Hottheo I haven't yet asked, but I may have given the longest sermon I ever have today - three times. This was the sermon on hell that was part of the "Hot Theology" series we have been going through. The series was based out of questions from those in our church that we tallied up and compiled the most commonly asked questions and one was about "hell"- what is hell and "Would a loving God send people to hell?" It just isn't easy speaking about hell and trying to wrap it up in 35 minutes or so. *Update: I found out that the sermons were 55 minutes long. Didn't break my personal record of longest sermon, but close.

I started the sermon giving some examples from pop culture of how we generally portray or think about hell today - from Far Side cartoons with a red devil and pitchfork, to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" song and then showed a clip from an episode of Seinfeld which is the one where Puddy (Elaine's boyfriend) becomes a "Christian" and listens to Christian music on the radio but then he emotionlessly makes comments to Elaine how she is going to hell and he isn't. He then asks her to steal his neighbors newspaper and he says something like "you're the one going to hell not me, so you might as well steal it". And then she explodes and starts whacking him with the newspaper and says:

Elaine_2 "If I am going to hell, you should care that I'm going to hell."

I addressed that when we talk about "hell" it should not be done out of Christian trivia interest or curiosity - but as Elaine stated - if we believe in "hell" then we should be caring about people as why we study this. I specifically stated that only God knows people's eternal destinies and that we cannot say who is or isn't going to hell. It is not a subject to treat lightly or something to ignore. The subject of hell and judgment is written in many places in the New Testament, so I really don't see how we can be skipping it or ignoring the exploration of what these Scriptures and teachings mean. I am not sure how pastors or churches can't address the topic of hell and judgment because of its frequency of being mentioned in the New Testament. I feel odd blogging about hell. But if we do believe in hell, and we believe that people are created in God's image who would then be experiencing judgment and hell - it should make us grieve, and hurt, be in great concern, care, praying, and doing whatever possible we can to be on the mission of Jesus living out and communicating the gospel to people.

Hot_theology_hell We then shifted from making sure we aren't shaping our view of hell from current pop culture or medieval art based out of Dante's Inferno - but basing it from Scripture. So we read outloud every single New Testament passage that the English word "hell" is used in the New International Version translation of the Bible. It took several minutes, and I Intentionally didn't explain each one at first. But I wanted to have every single New Testament verse with the word "hell" in it read and heard. Then as we spoke about the previous week wanted to walk through basic hermeneutics and wanted to lay out historical context, cultural context etc. - and wanted to try and have a definition of hell that was laid out before we tried to answer the question about whether a loving God would send people to hell.

Something fascinating is looking at the concepts of the afterlife that different cultures and religions had throughout time - as to show it isn't just Christians who have a "hell". So I walked through how there was a universal sense of an after-life among world religions throughout time and even what seems to be an instinctual sense of some sort of "hell". If you go back to the Sumerian's and Mesopotamia and Egypt and other ancient people groups, they had a hell of some sort.

I then talked about words and names used for hell in the New Testament and showed how it was around 700 BC with Greek writers when the terms "Hades" and "Tartarus" (2 Peter 2:4) were first used in Homer's Odyssey. I briefly talked about Platonic views of the afterlife which then were framing the culture that Jesus lived in. We then looked at what specific Greek words are used in the New Testament for "hell" - which are 1) hades 2) tartarus 3) gehenna Looking at these words and how God chose to use two familiar pre-existing Greek mythological terms which were about a underworld of the dead (hades and tartarus) which pre-dated the New Testament by 700 years describing the underworld of Greek mythology. But God chose to use words originally from the underworld of Greek mythology ('hades' and 'tartarus' in 2 Peter 2:4) to communicate about hell as the New Testament was revealing hell to actually be. We also looked at how Jesus used the word gehenna ( which is translated as "hell" in English such as in Mark 9 etc.) which was the Valley of Gehenna - the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem where dead bodies were thrown, where worms ate flesh and where fires were constantly burning. So the imagery of fire, worms etc. which was a term Jesus used (gehenna) which is translated in English as "hell" makes sense when looked at through this lens of the Valley of Gehenna, the Greek word gehenna, that Jesus actually used which was translated as "hell" in English. We also need to be differentiating the times when the original Greek word used is hades such as in Luke 16 and what the specific context and meaning there and the difference of when the Greek word gehenna is used and the specific context and meaning for that. And at the same time, whether metaphors are used and whether it is sheol, tartarus, hades or gehenna we are talking about and their individual meanings - we cannot forget the many other passages which may not use the word hades or gehenna, but do specifically, strongly and soberly talk about judgment after death.

Something interesting is that the English word "hell" that has been translated in our Bibles from the Greek words gehenna, hades and tartarus is derived from Hel, the name of the mythological Nordic goddess of the underworld. So as we even say the word "hell" in English (the word translators chose to pick as our English word translating for the Greek words hades, tartarus, gehenna) we now adopted and use the name of a mythological goddess Hel . Kind of similar to the word Easter which is derived from the fertility goddess Eastre - but Easter is not a word used in the Bible, where the English word "hell" is.

Hellsign_2 I found this background information important to walk through, as this is not just limited to scholars and this is becoming more commonly known and taught in universities - so I felt it important to at least briefly raise these things in pro-active awareness of the origin of these words and how this does frame the words, definitions, metaphors from the world Jesus was speaking from.

But then - after going through the actual words Jesus used and then some of the descriptions which likely are metaphors of fire, the worm that never dies etc. - even if metaphors are used, the reality and truth is still there. When Jesus used the metaphor of "vine" or "bread" to describe Himself - even though He wasn't meaning those words literally, there was still truth to the metaphors used. So we then walked through that the Scriptures do state that it is appointed for people people to die and then everyone face judgment - Hebrews 9:27 (we walked through the difference of judgment between a Christian and another who is not a Christian). I shared how much of what hell specifically will be like is a mystery, we can know that is eternal, it is a place of regret etc.

I read what to me is one of the more horrifying passages of the Bible in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 about being "shut out of God's presence". Talked about Jesus and the cross and what happened there, His payment for sin and what it means to have your name in the book of life (Revelation 20:15).

Jesus didn't seem to focus on hell as a means of evangelism. I am fully aware of how Jesus focused on the Kingdom of Heaven on earth for His teachings, not only the after-life. I think we have often taken hell and subtly infused hell as the primary focus and motivation for salvation and the gospel - which I think has altered what the 1 Cor. 15 gospel holistically is. But then I fear that some can remove hell and judgment from the gospel and we are left with the same path some of the more extreme "liberal" (so to speak, I don't like using terms but can't think of others right now) churches currently and in the past have taken to where hell, judgment, eternal shutting out from the presence of God (2 Thess. 1:7-9) is not mentioned or seen only as a metaphor for this life and not the afterlife. It has to be holistic and I believe in eternal judgment and there is separation.

Burn_in_hell_2 Far too much to write about here - but I stressed how we don't want to focus on hell and punishment as something we dwell on, but at the same time we must not ever forget it. It seems easy for churches and Christians to forget or because it is uncomfortable not talk about it or teach on it. We can so easily just get busy in our Christian-world, we don't really take serioulsy praying for those who are outside the church and Christian world. But it is easy to forget, beacuse we don't hear hell talked about too much. It is actually odd it isn't talked about as it is in the teachings of Jesus and in the New Testament just as much, or if not more, than other things we seem to regularly teach about. But then on the other extreme, those who do talk about it, seem to be consumed with it in an unhealthy way - preaching on it all the time, using it as a weapon, the signs about hell you see on street corners sort of a thing - and I don't want to go the other extreme where in some circles hell is something talked about so much - the beauty of the holistic gospel is lost in the extreme focus on hell and punishment.

But, as I shared in my long sermon and now in this long blog post, the thought of eternal "shutting out" from the presence of God is so strong and horrible that it causes me to I used a Spurgeon quote in closing:

"If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for."

- Charles Spurgeon

That was the day of preaching 3 times on hell. Not an easy thing to tackle or understand or figure out how to balance a belief in eternal hell but balancing it with the beauty of the gospel for this life and the life to come. But if we believe in hell - then as Elaine said - "if you think I am going to hell, you should care that I'm going to hell".

participating in the suffering of God in the world

Students of the Cross
by Tom White, Director of Voice of the Martyrs


On February 19th, 280 Christian students were assaulted on their way to graduation. The graduates of the Emmanuel Theological Seminary and Bible College in Kota, Rajasthan, India, were beaten at the Koto train station by a militant Hindu mob (RSS) that was waiting for them. They were beaten again at the police station with iron rods and bicycle chains. The students were then robbed and forced to return home. The next day another group of 22 graduates were beaten and also forced to return home. Still, 4,300 came from across India, to receive their diplomas.

Former Emmanuel graduates have gone out to "swim" in the turbulent waters of a Hindu society that is hostile to Christianity, and they have planted 11,113 churches. They were not content to stand on the shore and have jumped into hot water because they dared to get involved for the sake of the Cross.

Two years ago 1,508 graduating students of Emmanuel College came from their satellite schools to graduate together in Kota. Standing side by side they made the following pledge:

• I stand with the apostle Paul in stating that "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain."

• I take a stand to honor the Lord Jesus Christ with my hands to serve all mankind.

• I take a stand to honor the Lord Jesus Christ with my feet to spread the gospel to all the ends of the earth no matter what the cost.

• I take a stand to honor the Lord Jesus Christ with my lips by proclaiming the Good News to all who hear and by edifying the Body of Christ.

• I take a stand to honor the Lord Jesus Christ with my mind as I meditate upon His Word and His promises to me.

• I give my earthly treasures and all that I possess to follow the way of the cross.

• I commit to love my family, orphans, widows, lepers, the wealthy and the poor the way that Christ loved the church.

• I surrender my will and life to His will and life.

• I commit to the service of the Lord by being a good steward of my time.

• I surrender this body on earth to the perfect will of Jesus, and should my blood be spilled may it bring forth a mighty harvest of souls.

• I pledge allegiance to the Lamb. I will seek to honor His command. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.

• Lord Jesus, Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

• I love my India and my fellow citizens, and I claim India for Christ.

One spark at this 2003 service was a newly converted Christian young man who had carried his four-month faith back to his village. While sharing the joy of his salvation, he was persecuted by the whole village. Hopegivers International reports that the villagers tied pairs of old shoes around his neck, forced him to parade down the main road while they beat him, and then forced him to drink the urine of a cow. As a result of his lifting up Christ, 100 villagers became Christians.

Glenn Penner from our Canadian office comments: "These students understand that the real sacrifice for ministry comes not so much in the preparation of ministry but in the performance of it. They understand that a cross-centered gospel requires cross-carrying messengersÉChristians are not called to a lesser degree of involvement. Sacrifice for Christ is not theoretical. It is tangible. It is real. Go out, and make something happen."

In my old 1966 Random House Dictionary, I found these challenging terms describing the word "involve": "the art of entangling, something complicated, to bring into difficulties, to absorb fully, concerned in an affair in a way likely to cause danger or unpleasantness, committed or engaged." Reading the list, it is easy to see why we hear the sentence, "Don't get involved."

Jesus was totally involved—in the temple, on the street, and in the dining rooms of the world. He calls us to carry our cross and swim out into society, fully engaged, or sink into a worldly sea of sameness.

It is human nature to flee unpleasantness, entanglement, complications. It is supernatural to walk to them and through them for the gospel. Demas, who helped Paul while he was in prison, later changed his mind and abandoned Paul (2 Timothy 4:10). He chose not to be involved. When I was imprisoned in Cuba, I met Pastor Noble Alexander, who while a prisoner for more than 20 years had secretly baptized more than 300 prisoners. The founder of our mission, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, taught his Romanian youth group to give Gospels to the invading Russian soldiers.

Do we swim out into society's waters, activating our entire body, involved in the process? Or do we stand on the shore and shout about the danger, afraid of sinking among the sinners?

Surviving or Sharing in Christ's Sufferings

As described in the book, The Prison Poems of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this German Lutheran pastor was speaking and writing in America in 1939, while back in his homeland, courageous Germans resisting Adolf Hitler were being executed. Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter that he must cancel his lectures, which were arranged to keep him safe in America, and return home. His uncle, General VonHase, had already been hanged.

Bonhoeffer was disappointed with his church, which was content to survive until the evil times were over, calling this a "self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself." A few Protestant and Catholic leaders protested Nazi brutalities before they gained complete power. The church in Germany, he said, had lost its power to proclaim the gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation to the world. He returned to Germany, was captured and executed, but his writings and the spirit in which they were written remain with us. He disdained non-moral sympathy, or simply feeling bad about something but doing nothing about it. He called this a product of "religiosity" and hoped that it would not be a trait of his people.

In a letter from prison, he wrote the challenging statement, "It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but the participation in the suffering of God in the world." Like Jesus, he chose to carry his cross into a brutal godless tyranny, not by becoming entangled in their sin, but by engaging German minds with the gospel.

The Voice of the Martyrs, July 2005

Lausanne Covenant

I was reading the Lausanne Conference Covenant and was struck with a few of their points. I wanted to post them here just for reading and thinking. Hope that you enjoy them.

5. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he or she should be respected and served, not exploited. Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. Although reconciliation with other people is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ. The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist. When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.

(Acts 17:26,31; Gen. 18:25; Isa. 1:17; Psa. 45:7; Gen. 1:26,27; Jas. 3:9; Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27,35; Jas. 2:14-26; Joh. 3:3,5; Matt. 5:20; 6:33; II Cor. 3:18; Jas. 2:20)

6. THE CHURCH AND EVANGELISM
We affirm that Christ sends his redeemed people into the world as the Father sent him, and that this calls for a similar deep and costly penetration of the world. We need to break out of our ecclesiastical ghettos and permeate non-Christian society. In the Church's mission of sacrificial service evangelism is primary. World evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. The Church is at the very centre of God's cosmic purpose and is his appointed means of spreading the gospel. But a church which preaches the cross must itself be marked by the cross. It becomes a stumbling block to evangelism when it betrays the gospel or lacks a living faith in God, a genuine love for people, or scrupulous honesty in all things including promotion and finance. The church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology.

(John 17:18; 20:21; Matt. 28:19,20; Acts 1:8; 20:27; Eph. 1:9,10; 3:9-11; Gal. 6:14,17; II Cor. 6:3,4; II Tim. 2:19-21; Phil. 1:27)

7. COOPERATION IN EVANGELISM
We affirm that the Church's visible unity in truth is God's purpose. Evangelism also summons us to unity, because our oneness strengthens our witness, just as our disunity undermines our gospel of reconciliation. We recognize, however, that organisational unity may take many forms and does not necessarily forward evangelism. Yet we who share the same biblical faith should be closely united in fellowship, work and witness. We confess that our testimony has sometimes been marred by a sinful individualism and needless duplication. We pledge ourselves to seek a deeper unity in truth, worship, holiness and mission. We urge the development of regional and functional cooperation for the furtherance of the Church's mission, for strategic planning, for mutual encouragement, and for the sharing of resources and experience.

(John 17:21,23; Eph. 4:3,4; John 13:35; Phil. 1:27; John 17:11-23)

10. EVANGELISM AND CULTURE
The development of strategies for world evangelization calls for imaginative pioneering methods. Under God, the result will be the rise of churches deeply rooted in Christ and closely related to their culture. Culture must always be tested and judged by Scripture. Because men and women are God's creatures, some of their culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Because they are fallen, all of it is tainted with sin and some of it is demonic. The gospel does not presuppose the superiority of any culture to another, but evaluates all cultures according to its own criteria of truth and righteousness, and insists on moral absolutes in every culture. Missions have all too frequently exported with the gospel an alien culture and churches have sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to Scripture. Christ's evangelists must humbly seek to empty themselves of all but their personal authenticity in order to become the servants of others, and churches must seek to transform and enrich culture, all for the glory of God.

(Mark 7:8,9,13; Gen. 4:21,22; I Cor. 9:19-23; Phil. 2:5-7; II Cor. 4:5)

14. THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Father sent his Spirit to bear witness to his Son; without his witness ours is futile. Conviction of sin, faith in Christ, new birth and Christian growth are all his work. Further, the Holy Spirit is a missionary spirit; thus evangelism should arise spontaneously from a Spirit-filled church. A church that is not a missionary church is contradicting itself and quenching the Spirit. Worldwide evangelization will become a realistic possibility only when the Spirit renews the Church in truth and wisdom, faith, holiness, love and power. We therefore call upon all Christians to pray for such a visitation of the sovereign Spirit of God that all his fruit may appear in all his people and that all his gifts may enrich the body of Christ. Only then will the whole church become a fit instrument in his hands, that the whole earth may hear his voice.

(I Cor. 2:4; John 15:26;27; 16:8-11; I Cor. 12:3; John 3:6-8; II Cor. 3:18; John 7:37-39; I Thess. 5:19; Acts 1:8; Psa. 85:4-7; 67:1-3; Gal. 5:22,23; I Cor. 12:4-31; Rom. 12:3-8)

A Simple Consideration for the Advocation of Social Gospel #2: Not Social but Socio-biblio Gospel

Those who don't advocate social gospel should at least consider a portion of it. Even if you are a dispensationalist (which I do consider myself at least part dispensational in theology) you can still use Christ as your ultimate source for Reaching out. Rarely did Christ only reach the spiritual needs of those around. Sure you can make the point that the Biblio gospel was always supreme in Christ's witness, and to be honest you have a valid point. But nonetheless, Christ, our supreme example, did not only present the Biblio gospel. Consider this, use a portion of the socio gospel to reach the physical and in the process lead into the Biblio gospel. Socio and Biblio needs not to fight, they can complement. All I am asking is that you consider the socio-biblio gospel as not only a, but the chosen method of Christ.

Often the only obstacle between Heaven and Hell is the mountain of social injustice, will we build a bridge over that mountain, or will we make the unsaved take the long and rough pass around the mountain?

(Don't read into that analogy too much, I am not advocating that the most simple path is the best, simply that sometimes Christians prefer to make the path to salvation painful and hard, salvation is not about indoctrination...its about Jesus Christ. Once one is saved then you can attempt to indoctrinate them if thats what you wish to do.)