Theistic Evolution and the Reasonable Christian.
Collins’s main argument in The Language of God makes three related claims:

1. “Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps” (p. 93). We cannot use causal action by a transcendent intelligence to explain puzzling natural phenomena. In short, no God‐of-the‐ gaps allowed.
2. “Darwin’s framework of variation and natural selection,” but especially Darwin’s picture of a Tree of Life—the common ancestry of all organisms on Earth—“is unquestionably correct” (141). Universal common descent by natural processes is scientifically non‐negotiable. The theory of neo‐Darwinian evolution cannot rationally be doubted by any educated person.
3. The best way to reconcile the propositional content of a transcendentally grounded morality with modern evolutionary theory is what Collins calls “BioLogos,” his renaming of “theistic evolution.” BioLogos is “not intended as a scientific theory” (204), but it is “by far the most scientifically consistent and spiritually satisfying” (210) of the alternatives in the science/religion debate (the others being atheism or agnosticism, young‐earth creation, and intelligent design). BioLogos “will not go out of style or be disproven by future scientific discoveries. It is intellectually rigorous [and] provides answers to many otherwise puzzling questions” (210).
   Given this, a reasonable Christian will find herself embracing theistic evolution—BioLogos—if she wishes to be heard in our current culture.

The former Calvin College physicist Howard Van Till prominently advocated a similar position, until his recent exodus from Christianity, in such books as The Fourth Day and Science Held Hostage. Brown University cell biologist Kenneth Miller argues in his book Finding Darwin’s God and in his extensive public lectures that Christian faith and neo‐Darwinian evolution are compatible, a view also held by a majority of the members of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), an organization of Christians in the sciences. As Collins notes, his position is the mainstream view for many believing scientists and scientifically informed theologians:

Theistic evolution is the dominant position of serious biologists who are also serious believers. That includes Asa Gray, Darwin’s chief advocate in the United States, and Theodosius Dobzhansky, the twentieth‐century architect of evolutionary theory. It is the view espoused by many Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, including Pope John Paul II. (199)

For Collins, a necessary condition of being seen as a “serious biologist” is acceptance of Darwin’s theory of common descent via random variation and natural selection, and the only rational stance for a Christian is acceptance of BioLogos or theistic evolution.

Collins’s Failure to Realize the Depth of the Conflict.
Collins fails to understand fully the real conflict in the origins debate—philosophical naturalism —or the extent of its grip on modern evolutionary theory. This leads him into the central flaw that winds its way into every corner of his argument.

He locates evidence for the God of Christian theism in the fine‐tuning of the universe itself and in the “Moral Law” that governs human behavior. Cosmological fine‐tuning falls outside the purview of neo‐Darwinian theory, whereas explanation of human behavior is one of its goals, so I will only consider the latter here. On what grounds does the existence of universal standards of “right” and “wrong” behavior —of consistent moral categories across human cultures—count as evidence for the existence of God?

For Collins, humans behave altruistically because they are governed by a divinely authored moral law. The evidential significance of altruism and the moral law arises from the inability of standard evolutionary theory to explain it. Collins argues:

Agape, or selfless altruism…cannot be accounted for by the drive of individual selfish genes to perpetuate themselves. Quite the contrary: it may lead humans to make sacrifices that lead to great personal suffering, injury, or death, without any evidence of benefit. (27)

This mode of reasoning resembles exactly what Collins elsewhere derides as God‐of‐the‐gaps thinking.

Would a Darwinian biologist agree with Collins? Let me explain why I think not, by recounting two revealing personal experiences I had with David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at SUNY-Binghamton, and Elliott Sober, a philosopher of biology at the University of Wisconsin. Wilson and Sober are coauthors of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Harvard University Press, 1998), in which they attempt to explain human moral behavior generally and altruistic behavior in particular. The fact that humans are known to perform actions that appear not to benefit the actor, but someone else, is an explanatory puzzle for Darwinian evolutionary theory because such altruism appears not to be favored by natural selection.

I once spoke with Wilson about his views at a conference in Arizona. Human moral and religious behavior, he told me, is what makes us most distinctive as biological objects—and these are the characteristics of Homo sapiens most in need of evolutionary explanation. Does God Himself exist? I asked. Is there any being properly addressed as “Lord” truly out there in reality, as the object of the prayers of those people in church? No, he said to me. Once the task of evolutionary explanation is complete, under the philosophical guidance of naturalism, there is no unexplained remainder.

In the spring of 2006, in a seminar at the University of Wisconsin, I argued that naturalism cannot be reconciled with Christianity; one cannot pray to a God who does not exist. Sober, who served as a co-panelist, e‐mailed me some time later to say that I had misunderstood evolutionary theory. Explaining the causal origin of a biological characteristic such as moral or religious behavior, he wrote, does not prove that God does not exist. Evolutionary explanation, however, does destroy the evidential status of that behavior as pointing uniquely to a divine source.

In my experience, evolutionary biologists who are not already Christians—and that’s most of them—see Collins’s arguments about the divine origin of the Moral Law as wholly unpersuasive. If some humans pray or act sacrificially (say, in adopting handicapped children), then those actions, the biologists say, are facts about human biology that are in need of evolutionary explanation.

A Pervasive Contradiction.
We may summarize the central flaw of Collins’s position as follows:

1. As a Christian, Collins cannot endorse philosophical naturalism. He indeed does not. He accepts, for instance, the historical reality of the Resurrection.
2. If philosophical naturalism fails, however, then methodological naturalism—its putatively or supposedly neutral cousin for the practice of science—must, for any Christian, fail, too. For Collins, that point of failure corresponds with the moral uniqueness of human beings. Evolutionary theory does not explain altruism or human moral categories such as “right” and “wrong.”
3. If methodological naturalism is unsound as a global rule for scientific practice, however, then defying naturalism for such puzzles as the origin of life or the Cambrian Explosion—as intelligent design theorists do—is not by itself a defect in one’s scientific reasoning. If there can be a “gap” in biological history at one location, as Collins argues is the case for the origin of human moral behavior, then there can be “gaps” elsewhere, and these could be discovered by science. Suspend methodological naturalism anywhere, and one has the right to suspend it elsewhere.

Science in the twenty‐first century could use many more such brave Christians as Collins who speak plainly, in high profile settings, about their faith. Collins needs to think much more deeply, however, about what his understanding of reality entails. Pressing methodological naturalism on others, as Collins does, when he rejects it himself, is bad practice for a proponent of science. It is my hope that as the science of intelligent design matures, Collins will revisit his current certainty about its inevitable failure. I expect he is in for a major (and pleasant) surprise.

— reviewed by Paul Nelson

Pastor and author Rob Bell is a phenomenon hard to avoid. His best-selling books (e.g., Velvet Elvis) and his popular Nooma video series have made him an attractive figure for many Christians during the past six or seven years. Ten thousand souls attend his Mars Hill Bible Church in a suburb of Grand Rapids. Hailed as either an enfant terrible or on the leading edge of evangelicalism, Bell is deliberately provocative, iconic, and charismatic. He appeals to “hipster Christianity”—a younger, edgier, and less traditional form of church that challenges established patterns of worship, teaching, and Christian practice.¹ While attending a talk he gave to a packed room, I noted that Bell draws in many through his postmodernist ethos—informality, humor, storytelling, and questioning. In an interview Bell said, “I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian.”²

His recent book, Love Wins, has propelled Bell to a new level of notoriety, partially due to various prepublication leaks and speculations concerning its content. Pastor and author John Piper wrote a tweet saying, “Farewell, Rob Bell,” which sparked great interest, as did the strong endorsements given by Eugene Peterson and Greg Boyd. The burning concern was whether Bell was a universalist, someone who claims that all human beings will be redeemed in the end. Since some hipster or emergent Christian writers and speakers have seemed to embrace universalism, many wondered if Bell would join the ranks.

Having read part of Bell’s first book, Velvet Elvis, a few of his articles, and having watched several Nooma videos, I did not expect a careful, logical, deeply biblical, or theologically knowledgeable account of the perennially urgent question of the afterlife. My expectations were met. While this is not a review of all of Bell’s writings or videos, it is fitting to comment briefly on some points in Velvet Elvis, Bell’s first book, as they pertain to ideas expressed in Love Wins.

Velvet Elvis’s thesis is that Christian faith is never a finished affair; it is always exploratory, conjectural, and provisional. Bell likens it to jumping on a trampoline as opposed to standing on a foundation. For Bell, a constitutive part of this playful and bouncing faith is paradox and mystery, the unresolved and irresolvable enigmas at the heart of Christianity. By about thirty pages into Velvet Elvis, Bell assures us that all the major doctrines of Christianity (Trinity, Incarnation, salvation, etc.) are matters beyond rational knowledge. Bell even questions (but does not outright deny) the virgin birth of Christ, by drawing parallels between it and birth narratives from pagan religions.³ Notwithstanding, the virgin birth is deeply rooted in historical documents and has no real parallels in mystery religions.⁴ By his invocation of mystery, enigma, and paradox, and by questioning doctrines firmly established in history, Bell dismisses the historic discipline of apologetics: faith needs no rational support to be genuine. In fact, it cannot accept such apologetic assistance and remain real. Rather, Christians must celebrate unknowing. (I side with Christian philosopher Gordon Clark who said a paradox is “a charley horse between the ears”—something to correct, not to celebrate.⁵) Apologetics is, however, both intrinsic to the biblical sense of mission and well served by apologists through the centuries, such as Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and, more recently, William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland.⁶

An even more disconcerting feature of Velvet Elvis is Bell’s endorsement of Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything. Bell says, “For a mind-blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything (Boston: Shambhala, 2001).”⁷ Bell gives no indication that Ken Wilber affirms pantheism, a worldview that negates the Creator creation distinction intrinsic to biblical Christianity (see Gen. 1:1; John 1:1; Rom. 1:18–21). Wilber, on the contrary, believes that everything is divine.

This is a bad sign, since it reveals that Bell either cannot discern the difference between pantheism and Christianity (see Isa. 5:20), or does not think the difference is worth noting. How unlike the apostle Paul who, while before a thoroughly pagan audience of Greek philosophers, was able to contrast Christianity cogently with the Greek worldview, and to commend Christ and call for conversion (Acts 17:22–34). A teacher of the Bible should be well-studied (2 Tim. 2:15; Titus 2:7–8; James 3:1–2) and able to refute demonic doctrines that oppose biblical truth (2 Tim. 2:24–26; 2 Cor. 10:3-5). Scripture also warns us of spiritual counterfeits: teachings that seem pleasing, but betray the truth (2 Cor. 11:14; 2 Tim. 4:3; 1 John 4:1–6).

Love Wins will be pleasing to many who embrace postmodern culture and its ways of thinking and feeling. The postmodern spirit avoids most certainties, plays with ideas more than carefully argues for conclusions, favors impressions over convictions, and tends toward glibness as a virtue. In this spirit, the text of Love Wins is not laid out like an ordinary book. There are few words per page, most of which do not consist of complete sentences. (This style is similar to that of Velvet Elvis.) An inordinate number of questions appear throughout the book (often one after the other), usually without resolution. The style often aspires to poetry, but falls short. It is rather a fragmented and affected prose. There are no clearly stated premises leading to a conclusion through some identifiable form of argument. One finds instead impressionistic and staccato discussions—and without any supporting documentation. There may be a place for this kind of writing, but it is ill-fitting for matters as consequential as heaven and hell.

ADJUSTING THE GOSPEL

Love Wins begins by telling a short story that leads Bell to wonder whether Gandhi is in hell. He asserts that traditional ideas of heaven and hell have repulsed many from being Christians. As he writes later in the book, “Telling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do or say or believe the right things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a very good story” (p. 110). The biblical view of the afterlife, therefore, should be readdressed in the hopes of reaching those who have rejected Christian faith.

This is a noble intention, but intentions are insufficient for virtue. We should be like Paul, who said, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings” (1 Cor. 9:22–23⁸). Zeal for evangelism should meet two conditions. First, one must realize that many people reject the gospel of Jesus Christ not because they have been presented with a defective version of it, but because they do not want to bow their knee to God. As Jesus said, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). The gospel is always offensive to human pride (see 1 Cor. 1:18–2:16). We must understand the bad news that we are sinners before a holy God before we can receive the good news that we can be restored through God’s grace in Christ. We should not shy away from the implications of biblical teaching. Second, we should never redefine and so diminish the gospel for the sake of winning a larger audience (see Gal. 1:6–11). Adjusting the gospel to placate human rebellion against God transforms the good news into a compromise with worldliness, something we should earnestly avoid (Rom. 12:1–2; James 1:27; 4:4; 1 John 2:15–17).

TWO COMMENDATIONS

Before examining Bell’s assertions, we should commend him for two things. First, he rightly emphasizes that salvation, biblically understood, involves the present as well as the future. There is a this-worldly dimension to the Kingdom of God that some Christians miss. God created a good world and will recreate it with the new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21–22). Christians should bring shalom (God’s justice, peace, and well-being) to all of life. In this, Bell is influenced profitably by the writings of N. T. Wright.

Second, Bell addresses some biblical texts that seem prima facie to teach universalism, which some evangelicals have not taken seriously enough. If we believe that the entire Bible is authoritative, we need to interpret these passages rightly as well as the rest of Scripture. Bell’s competency in this regard will be addressed below.

THREE CONTRADICTORY IDEAS

Bell’s claims about heaven and hell, however, are fairly difficult to discern, given the impressionistic, interrogative, and scattered nature of much of the book. But he does clearly challenge the view that death seals our destiny (by advocating postmortem possibilities for salvation) and suggests that all people may be saved. Unfortunately, the book affirms three contradictory ideas: (1) Since God is love and God gets what God wants, all are saved. No one is in a permanent hell. (2) Since humans are free, they may resist God’s love. Some will end up in a permanent hell. (3) We cannot know whether or not everyone will be saved.

Of course, these three statements cannot all be true. Statement (1) contradicts statement (2). Statement (3) affirms that we cannot know whether (1) or (2) is true. Therefore, these statements do not cohere with one another logically. Nevertheless, I will address each of these three points, spending the lion’s share on (1).

1. No Hell.Bell first claims that he cannot reconcile a God of love with the punishment of hell immediately after death. How could God offer His love to us during this earthly life and then end up punishing people forever after they die? Bell says that we cannot love a God like this (174). In many cases, God’s judgment would be grossly unfair, since one may not have had ample opportunity even to hear the gospel message. What if the missionary’s car got a flat tire, thus causing someone not to hear the gospel before he or she dies (9)? Would God send that person to hell? In three different places, Bell also questions how an eternity of punishment could be suitable for one limited lifetime of sinning (2, 102, 174).

If God is love and all-powerful, then God is able to win every creature to Himself. Bell cites some biblical texts that speak of the universal effects of Christ’s work, and claims that many prominent Christians throughout church history have believed that everyone would be saved. He asserts that one can be a Christian and believe this, since Christianity is wide enough for all manner of divergent beliefs (108).

Bell also avers that biblical passages speaking of eternal punishment do not literally mean unending, conscious punishment. The Greek word for “eternal” may mean a time of pruning or trimming (91; see also 31–32), and the Hebrew word for “eternal” may mean “long lasting” (92). Bell says, “So when we read of ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there. Jesus may be talking about something else” (92).

In worrying about humans not getting a fair shake from God, it appears that Bell has little sense of God’s sovereign purposes in salvation. Yet God works out “everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11). He places people where He wants them (Acts 17:26), reveals His existence to all (Rom. 1:18–21), and holds us accountable for our moral character (Rom. 2:14–15). “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save” (Isa. 59:1). When I heard Bell speak, he asked why God would send people to hell because they had not heard the gospel. I was surprised that a forty-year-old pastor and author would utter words so often on the lips of ignorant unbelievers. God holds people accountable for what they know, not what they do not know. The argument in Romans, chapters one through three, is direct and emphatic on this point.⁹

Bell is wrong that “an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years have assumed…that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever” (108). While some with a high view of Scripture have embraced universalism, it has been a minority position and has never been affirmed by the historic creeds and confessions of any of the three branches of Christianity: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant.¹⁰ Moreover, simply because some people identify as both Christians and universalists, this does not lend credibility to universalism. Truth is not a matter of counting noses. The issue is not whether one can be a Christian and also a universalist, but rather: What does the Bible teach on the subject? (On the importance of making Scripture the ultimate source of truth, see Ps. 119; Matt. 5:17–20; John 10:33; Acts 17:11; 2 Tim. 3:15–16; 2 Pet. 3:16.) Despite Bell’s complaints, it is not intrinsically unjust for God to sentence unrepentant sinners to a conscious and eternal hell for their sin. As the great American theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards emphasized, human sin is an offense against an infinitely holy God (see Ps. 51:1). As such, the punishment must be perpetual. Edwards took this question up in his essay, “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.”¹¹ Edwards argued that  because God is “a Being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory,” He is therefore “infinitely honorable” and worthy of absolute obedience. “Sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and deserving of infinite punishment.” D. A. Carson puts things into perspective: “I doubt if any of us is equipped to assess what is an ‘appropriate’ punishment for defiance of the holy and sovereign God, save God himself.”¹²

Even apart from this impeccable theological reasoning, the Scriptures repeatedly speak of God’s judgment, either unto eternal life or eternal punishment. While Bell skates over the text (91), the clearest New Testament passage on hell as a conscious state of eternal punishment is Jesus’ teaching on the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46). “The righteous,” who respond rightly to Jesus (by serving Him in serving the “least of these”) will go into “eternal life” (v. 46). But “the cursed” (v. 41) go into “eternal punishment” (v. 46). As Walter Martin often said, this passage is the clearest and most cogent teaching on the eternity of hell in the Bible. The logic is straightforward. If “eternal life” means the everlasting experience of the redeemed, then eternal punishment means the everlasting torment of the damned, since the Greek constructions are symmetrical.¹³ No major translation of this passage speaks of hell as being of limited duration or as a time of purging, as Bell suggests several times in Love Wins (more on this below).

Further, Jesus spoke of eternal punishment more than any other character in the Bible (see Matt. 5:30; 8:10–12; 13:40–42, 49–50; 22:13; 24:51; Luke 16:19–31). He also warned of the sin against the Holy Spirit, which would never be forgiven (Matt. 12:31–32; Mark 3:28–30; Luke 12:10).¹⁴ Bell ignores this teaching of Jesus. He further omits a strong reference to eternal judgment found in Daniel: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2).

What of Bell’s claim that postmortem salvation is possible? Bell avoids the usual verses used (wrongly) to support this view, but appeals to a statement by Jesus. Since Jesus said that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than in a Jewish town that rejected the gospel (Matt. 10:13–15), Bell infers that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah still have hope of redemption (84–85). But the text never suggests this. Rather, Jesus speaks of the heightened culpability of God’s own people in rejecting the Messiah. (He also indicates in Luke 12:47–49 that there are degrees of punishment.) Jesus says nothing about hope for the destroyed cities. Further, Jude contradicts Bell’s interpretation by saying that Sodom and Gomorrah “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7–8; emphasis added).

Bell simply posits postmortem salvation as a solution to the problem he finds with God’s eternal judgment of humans on the basis of their response to Him in one lifetime. But the burden of proof is on Bell, since orthodox Protestant thinkers have traditionally affirmed that judgment immediately follows death and there are no biblical texts that even suggest otherwise.¹⁵ Consider Jesus’ warning to the Pharisees: “If you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins” (John 8:24, emphasis added; cf. Heb. 9:27).

2. Hell Is Real.Despite his (poor) case for universalism, Bell also develops the idea that some humans may freely and finally resist God’s desire to save all people. “Love demands freedom” (114), and freedom means we can say no to God in this life and the next. This, Bell claims, even demonstrates God’s grace, since God lets us have what we want (117). This is an odd understanding of grace, since the Bible always presents grace as God granting salvation to those who do not deserve it: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8–9; cf. Titus 3:5–6). According to Scripture, those who are redeemed experience God’s saving grace; those who are condemned experience God’s justice.

Bell defines hell as “our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story” (170). He also writes of hell as part of the evil of the present world. After seeing many teenagers who had their arms and legs hacked off in the Rwandan civil war, Bell says, “Do I believe in a literal hell? Of course. Those aren’t metaphorical missing arms and legs” (71). Bell believes that hell is real in the present world, but only speculates that it might continue forever for some in the world to come.

Bell’s discussion of hell trades on the human refusal (whether temporary or eternal) to trust and be healed by God. Bell nowhere articulates the biblical concept of hell as God’s active punishment of incorrigible sinners. Consider Jesus’ warning to pseudo-Christians, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt. 7:22–23; cf. 8:11–12). Jesus also said, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them” (John 3:36). He also prophesies a day when the dead will be raised and evil-doers will be condemned (John 5:28–29). Many other passages on this theme of divine condemnation could be cited, but Bell either avoids these passages or misses their meaning.

While Bell suggests that some kind of hell may exist, it is not obvious what he means by “hell,” especially since he refuses to speak of divine wrath, rejection, or punishment. Given Bell’s emphasis on postmortem salvation and God’s desire for restoration, pruning, and refining, he may think of hell as a kind of purgatory—a temporary state prefatory to final redemption. If so, he has no biblical leg to stand on. Carson makes the point forcefully. “There is no shred of evidence in the NT that hell ever brings about genuine repentance. Sin continues as part of the punishment and the ground for it.”¹⁶ This is why the New Testament emphasizes the urgency of repentance in this life: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:4; cf. 4:7; Matt. 4:17).

3. We Cannot Know.Having argued for two logically incompatible statements concerning hell, Bell then waxes agnostic: “Will everybody be saved or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” Bell answers, “These are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t” (115). One should ponder the significance of this statement. Bell implies that God’s revelation through Christ and the Bible cannot answer the most important question possible: Who will be saved? Thus, the force of Love Wins is to confuse and withhold certainty from needy sinners, since Bell has given up on knowledge in this area (cf. Mal. 2:7).

In the end, Bell mutes and muzzles biblical revelation through his 198-page confession of ignorance. Should we join him? We should not. The biblical God reveals saving and sanctifying truth in the Bible (John 17:7). This revelation is “living and active” (Heb. 4:12; cf. Isa. 55:8–9), “profitable for teaching” (2 Tim. 3:15), and should not be twisted or adjusted (2 Pet. 3:16). One central means by which Christians grow in the knowledge of God (1 Pet. 3:18) is through understanding the truth of the Bible (Ps. 119).

FURTHER PROBLEMS NOTED

Space forbids me to criticize further Bell’s view that salvation is available in other religions (see Eph. 2:12), his endorsement of the pantheistic book, The Soul of Christianity by Huston Smith (201),¹⁷ his deficient views of Christ’s atonement (chap. 5), or to do more than note that he fails to explain adequately justification by faith, which is the heart of the gospel itself. Suffice it to say that despite his popularity and desire to reach unbelievers with God’s love, Bell has withheld knowledge from the very people he desires to reach. As Jesus said, “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge” (Luke 11:52).

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary and the author of many books on apologetics, including Christian Apologetics (IVP Academic, 2011).

 NOTES

1         See Brett McCracken, “The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity,” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111704575355311122648100.html.

2         Michael Paulson, “Rob Bell on Faith, Suffering and Christians,” The Boston Globe, September 26, 2009, http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/09/rob_bell.html.

3         Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 25–26.

4         On the case against Christianity being influenced by mystery religions, see James R. Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 132–39.

5         Gordon Clark, quoted in John Robbins, Trinity Review, March-April 1986, 8.

6         See Douglas Groothuis, “The Biblical Basis for Apologetics,” in Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011). For the case against New Age pantheism in general, see Douglas Groothuis, Confronting the New Age (1988; reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010).

7         Velvet Elvis, 192. I reviewed A Brief History of Everything in the Christian Research Journal, http://www.equip.org/articles/a-brief-history-of-everything.

8         All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

9         For an excellent exposition of Romans 1–8, see Francis A. Schaeffer, The Finished Work of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998).

10      See Richard Bauckham, “Universalism: An Historical Survey,” Themelious 4, 2 (September 1978): 47–54.

11      Jonathan Edwards, “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” in Puritan Sage: Collected Writings of Jonathan Edwards, ed.Vergilius Ferm (New York: Liberty Publishers, 1953), 293–326.

12      D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), 10.

13      See D. A. Carson, Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, eds. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 586.

14      I am not here explaining what the unpardonable sin may be, but Jesus says that at least some people in His day had committed it. If so, they go to hell.

15      See Robert A. Peterson, Hell on Trial (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R, 1995), 150–52.

16      Carson, 587.

17      See my review in Christian Research Journal 29, 4 (2006): 48–49 (http://journal.equip.org/articles/selling-the-soul-of-christianity). Smith also endorses the use of LSD for spiritual enlightenment.

“God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” This old saying often is used to resolve the tension between God being both just and loving toward fallen people. There are, however, instances in the Bible that appear to defy this principle. When David cries out, “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates” (Ps. 11:5),¹ or when Malachi prophesies, “I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau” (Mal. 1:2b–3a), they appear to communicate that God hates certainpeople. A closer examination of these passages in their immediate context and in relation to the overarching message of Scripture reveals these to be ways of expressing God’s opposition toward corrupt souls bent on committing sinful actions.

The Lord Hates the One Who Does Violence. Psalm 11 is attributed to David. It reflects a time when the psalmist took refuge in the Lord on being warned that he had been targeted for death and needed to fly to the mountains like a bird (vv. 1–2). The psalmist’s world was in such upheaval that he cried, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (v. 3).

In the psalm’s second stanza, David envisaged the Lord in the heavenly temple reigning over and knowing all things (v. 4), and says, “The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup” (vv. 5–6).

The Hebrew word translated “hate” in Psalm 11 is Sänë´ (שֶׂנֵא). It “expresses an emotional attitude toward persons and things which are opposed, detested, despised and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship.”² This is not hate out of ignorance or animosity; rather it is a righteous God’s opposition to wickedness. The same idea is communicated by Isaiah against unrepentant Israel, declaring, “I hate [Sänë´] your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, they have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them” (Isa. 1:14). Solomon, likewise, says, “There are six things which the LORD hates [Sänë´], yes seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers” (Prov. 6:16–19).

A number of commentators believe the historical backdrop to Psalm 11 is the time when David had to flee from Saul, who sought to take him down like a man hunting partridges in the mountains (1 Sam. 18:8ff).³ Sin had so corrupted Saul that he not only tried to assassinate David on more than one occasion (1 Sam. 18:10ff), but also succeeded in murdering the priest, women, and children of Nob, who provided David sanctuary (1 Sam. 21–22). Saul was indeed in the place of receiving divine judgment, and the lyricist rightly captures the situation in poetic hyperbole with the words “the one who loves violence His soul hates” (Ps. 11:6).

Jacob I Loved, but Esau I Hated. Malachi prophesied to the Jewish people after the Babylonian exile around the middle of the fifth century BC. His oracle begins, “‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have You loved us?’ ‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord, ‘Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau’” (Mal. 1:2–3a).

Historically, Esau and Jacob were the sons of Isaac and Rebekah. Prior to their birth, God revealed to Rebekah her sons would become two nations but “the older shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). God’s word came to pass when Esau despised his birthright by selling it to his younger brother for some lentil stew, and Jacob with the aid of his mother tricked his father into giving him the elder brother’s blessing (Gen. 25:19–34; 27:1–40). Jacob ultimately fathered the nation of Israel and Esau the nation of Edom.

Malachi’s prophecy concerns the nations of Israel and Edom during the post-exilic period of Old Testament history. He puts God’s love for Jacob in antithesis to the divine hate toward Esau. The same Hebrew word for “hate” [Sänë´] is employed, signifying God’s righteous opposition to sinful Esau. The reason divine hate came was that “not only did the Edomites gloat over the ruin of their Israelite brothers, but also actively helped the Babylonian invaders by acting as informants and cutting off escape routes, (Ps. 137:7; Ezek. 25:12–14; 35:15; Obad. 8–16).”⁴

God’s opposition to Edom was further demonstrated in the nation’s expulsion from their homeland. What happed was that around the sixth century, prior to the days of Malachi, the Nabateans invaded Edomite territory. They left the Edomites’ cities in ruin and forced them to resettle in southern Palestine in an area later called Idumea. The prophet alludes to this invasion saying, “I have made [Edom’s] mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness. Though Edom says, ‘We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins,’ thus says the Lord of host, ‘They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the LORD is indignant forever’” (Mal. 1:2b–3). Edom’s sins were hostile to the ways of a righteous God, so the prophet’s hyperbolic expression “Esau I hated” is befitting.

Romans 9 similarly references Jacob and Esau as part of a sophisticated argument demonstrating that the Jewish people rightly could be judged by God for rejecting Jesus Christ. Those who rejected the Lord identified themselves as descendants of Abraham, but Paul contends, “They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel” (v. 6). Before Esau and Jacob were born, God told Rebecca that “the older will serve the younger“ (v. 12). The nations of Israel and Edom both sinned and went into exile, yet God brought back Israel but not Edom; hence, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (v. 13). Paul’s point is that “God has the right to choose among the chosen line,” and “not all Abraham’s descendants received the promise.”⁵ Their salvation would not be found in a genealogical connection to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.⁶ The Jews who rejected Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah sinned greatly and put themselves in opposition to God.⁷

Using the Clear to Understand the Unclear. God’s opposition to wickedness depicted in Psalm 11 and Malachi 1 should be considered in light of other truths Scripture reveals about God’s dealings with sinners. Readers can use clear passages of the Bible to understand unclear ones.

First, the Bible teaches that God offers common grace to all. For example, He sustains the creation, sending sun and rain on the farms of both saints and sinners alike (Matt. 5:44–45).

Second, the Bible teaches that God loves sinners and works to resolve the problem of sin. Paul writes, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). John likewise writes, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). In the same epistle, he writes that Christ “is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

Finally, the most remarkable thing the Bible teaches is that sinful and corrupt people do not have to remain that way. They can repent and enter into a right relationship with God. Zacchaeus came down from the tree, received the transforming grace of God, and committed himself to making restitution to those he defrauded (Luke 19:1–10). Paul also witnessed the resurrected Lord on the road to Damascus, which converted him from a persecutor of the church to an apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 8–28).

The God of righteousness opposes unrighteousness. It is, therefore, befitting for the psalmist to say, “The one who loves violence His soul hates” (Ps. 11:1), and for Malachi to prophesy, “I have hated Esau” (Mal. 1:3), to demonstrate God’s vehement disapproval of those bent on doing unrighteousness things. However, the Good News is that sinners can be saved by God’s grace through faith on account of Jesus Christ. —Warren Nozaki

Warren Nozaki is a graduate of Talbot School of Theology and a researcher for the Christian Research Institute.

NOTES

1. Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard version.
2. Gerard Van Groningen, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 2, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 880.
3. Cf. Willem A. VanGemeren, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 5, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 130, and J. A. Motyer, New Bible Commentary: Twenty-First Century Edition, ed. G. J. Wenham, J. A. Motyer, D. A. Carson, R. T. France (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 494.
4. Gordon P. Hugenberger, New Bible Commentary: Twenty-First Century Edition, ed. G. J. Wenham, J. A. Motyer, D. A. Carson, R. T. France (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 885.
5. Ibid., 885.
6. Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1993), 432–33.
7. Whether or not Romans 9:13 can be used to support a particular view of divine election, Calvinism, Arminianism, or another mediating position is an issue that Christians can debate but should not divide over. For further study, see James White and George Bryson, “Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, Part One,” Christian Research Journal 23, 4 (2001): 32–41 (http://www.equip.org/articles/the-divine-sovereignty-human-responsibility-debate-partone-) and James White and George Bryson, “Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, Part Two,” Christian Research Journal 24, 1 (2001): 23–25, 41–47  (http://www.equip.org/articles/the-divine-sovereignty-human-responsibility-debate).

 “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:22).²

Like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Christianity died with the last of the apostles. They believe Christianity was not resurrected until their founder, Charles Taze Russell, began organizing the Watchtower Society in the 1870s. In their view the cross is a pagan symbol adopted by an apostate church and salvation is impossible apart from the Watchtower. While the Witnesses on your doorstep consider themselves to be the only authentic expression of Christianity, the Society they serve compromises, confuses, or contradicts essential Christian doctrine.

First, the Watchtower Society compromises the nature of God. They teach their devotees that the Trinity is a “freakish-looking, three headed God” invented by Satan and that Jesus is merely a god. In Watchtower theology Jesus was created by God as the archangel Michael, during his earthly sojourn became merely human, and after his crucifixion was re-created an immaterial spirit creature. JWs also deny the physical resurrection of Jesus. According to Russell, the body that hung on a torture stake either “dissolved into gasses” or is “preserved somewhere as the grand memorial of God’s love.”

Furthermore, although Christians believe all believers will spend eternity with Christ in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1; 22:17), the Watchtower teaches that only 144,000 people will make it to heaven while the rest of the faithful will live apart from Christ on earth. Thus in Watchtower lore there is a “little flock” of 144,000 who get to go to heaven and a “great crowd” of others who are relegated to earth. The heavenly class are born again, receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and partake of communion; the earthly class do not. To substantiate the notion that heaven’s door was closed irrevocably in 1935, JWs point to “flashes of prophetic light” received by Joseph F. Rutherford at a JW convention in Washington D.C. Other false “flashes of prophetic light” include Watchtower predictions of end-time cataclysms that were to occur in 1914…1918…1925…1975.

Finally, under the threat of being “disfellowshipped,” Jehovah’s Witnesses are barred from celebrating Christmas, birthdays, or holidays such as Thanksgiving and Good Friday. Even more troubling are Watchtower regulations regarding vaccinations, organ transplants, and blood transfusions. In 1931, JWs were instructed to refuse vaccinations—by 1952, this regulation was rescinded. In 1967, organ transplants were ruled a forbidden form of cannibalism—by 1980, this edict was erased. In 1909, the Watchtower produced a prohibition against blood transfusions. No doubt, this too will one day become a relic of the past. In the meantime, tens of thousands have not only been ravished spiritually by the Watchtower Society but have paid the ultimate physical price as well.

While Watchtower adherents are often willing to do more for a lie than Christians are willing to do for the truth, these and a host of other doctrinal perversions keep JWs from rightly being considered Christian.

Is the New World Translation of the Bible Credible?

Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the New World Translation (NWT) is the “work of competent scholars.” Conversely, they contend that other Bible translations are corrupted by religious traditions that are rooted in paganism. In reality, the NWT is the work of a Bible Translation Committee with no working knowledge of biblical languages. Their bias is so blatant that Dr. Bruce Metzger, professor of New Testament at Princeton, not only characterized the NWT as a “frightful mistranslation” but as “erroneous,” “pernicious,” and “reprehensible.”

First, the NWT mistranslates the Greek Scriptures in order to expunge the deity of Jesus Christ. Against all credible scholarship, Jesus is downgraded from God to “a” god in John 1 and demoted from the Creator of all things to a mere creature who created all other things in Colossians 1. According to the translation committee of the Watchtower Society, as noted above, Jesus was created by God as the archangel Michael, during his earthly sojourn was merely human, and after his crucifixion was recreated an immaterial spirit creature.

Furthermore, the Translation Committee has sought to conform the NWT to their religious traditions by replacing the cross of Christ with a torture stake. Matthew 10:38, for example, has been altered to read, “And whoever does not accept his torture stake and follow after me is not worthy of me.” In Watchtower lore, the cross is a pagan symbol adopted by an apostate Christianity when Satan took control of the early church. Jehovah’s Witnesses view wearing a cross as a blatant act of idolatry. Conversely, Christians wear crosses as a reminder of what was at once the most brutal and beautiful act in redemptive history.

Finally, the Watchtower Society claims that the Christian Scriptures have “been tampered with” in order to eliminate the name Jehovah from the text. In reality, it is the Translation Committee of the NWT that can rightly be accused of tampering. In well over two hundred cases the name Jehovah has been gratuitously inserted into the New Testament text. In passages such as Romans 10:13 this is done to obscure the unique deity of Christ. In other passages, it is done under the pretext that referring to God as Lord rather than Jehovah is patently pagan. Ironically, in The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, Watchtower translators themselves fall into this “pagan” practice by translating the Greek word kurios as “Lord” even in cases where it specifically refers to the Father.

For these and a host of other reasons, Greek scholars across the board denounce the NWT. Dr. Julius Mantey, author of A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, called the NWT a “shocking mistranslation,” and Dr. William Barclay characterized the translators themselves as “intellectually dishonest.”

—Hank Hanegraaff

Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast heard daily throughout the United States and Canada via radio, satellite radio XM-170, and the Internet. For a list of stations airing theBible Answer Man, or to listen online, log on to equip.org.

NOTES

1. Excerpted from Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answer Book (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2004).
2. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

SYNOPSIS

Many Christians in the United States believe that it is their biblical responsibility to support the contemporary Jewish State of Israel for specific theological reasons (as opposed to general political ones), a view known as Christian Zionism. The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 percent for white evangelicals. This view holds that the regathering of Jewish people to Israel since 1948 is the miraculous fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham to establish Israel as a nation forever in Palestine. Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novels, together with books written by Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, and many others, which propound this view, have sold well over 100 million copies. Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy and Christians United for Israel wield immense influence on Capitol Hill, making Christian Zionism the largest single‐issue political lobby to come from Western Christianity. A growing number of Christians, however, are left increasingly uneasy about the idea that God would bring the Jewish people back to Palestine while they are in unbelief, since that was why they were exiled from it in the first place. The methods Israel has used, moreover, to colonize the land and subjugate the Palestinians— many of whom are Christians—do not match the picture of a God‐fearing Israel that Christian Zionists find in their literal interpretation of the ancient prophecies. An alternate interpretation is that the promises of land, like the laws of Moses, were part of the Old Covenant, which was fulfilled in the New Covenant. These Old Covenant shadows were realized in and through the substance of Jesus Christ and the church. Christian Zionists’ unconditional support of the current State of Israel would therefore be a misguided effort to separate Jews and Gentiles again, whom God joined together in the church, the body of Christ.

“For the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews and gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”¹ Billy Graham’s father‐in‐law, L. Nelson Bell, then editor of Christianity Today, expressed the sentiments of millions of American evangelicals when he described the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967 as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

The roots of Christian interest in Israel can be traced to the Bible prophecy movement in Britain and the speculations of Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby in the early nineteenth century. The 1967 ”Six Day War,” however, marked a significant turning point for fundamentalists and evangelicals with such interest; it fueled among them a resurgence of enthusiasm for Eretz Israel (“Land of Israel”), that is, a resurgence of support for the State of Israel.² Christians who support the contemporary Jewish nation for theological rather than political reasons are part of a movement, born out of the Bible prophecy movement, that is referred to as Christian Zionism.³

In 1976, a series of events brought contemporary Christian Zionists to the forefront of U.S. mainstream politics. Jimmy Carter was elected president as a ”born¬again” Christian, drawing the support of the evangelical right. The following year Menachem Begin and the right¬wing Likud Party came to power in Israel. A tripartite coalition slowly emerged in the United States among the political right, evangelicalChristians, and the Jewish lobby that increasingly used biblical language to describe the condition of modern Israel. Jimmy Carter later acknowledged how his own pro-Zionist beliefs had influenced his Middle East policy.⁴ He also described how his generation was witnessing “a return at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews were driven so many hundreds of years ago,” the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, stating that the establishment of the nation of Israel was the “very essence.”⁵ When Carter vacillated over the aggressive Likud settlement program and proposed the creation of a Palestinian homeland, however, he alienated the pro-Israeli coalition, who switched their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections.

Reagan’s legal secretary, Herb Ellingwood, one of the most fervent believers in Eretz Israel and the imminent war of Armageddon, described how he and Reagan often discussed the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, according to author Grace Halsell.⁶

“White House seminars” became a regular feature of Reagan’s administration, bringing leading Christian Zionists into direct personal contact with national and congressional leaders. In 1982, for example, Reagan invited Jerry Falwell to brief the National Security Council on the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.⁷ Two years later, Reagan shared his personal convictions in a conversation with Tom Dine, one of Israel’s chief lobbyists working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: “I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if…we’re the generation that is going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.”⁸

Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton do not appear to have shared the same theological convictions concerning Israel as their predecessors, but George W. Bush proves to be more of an enigma. He has not explicitly affirmed Christian Zionist beliefs and he does advocate a two‐state solution, but his strong support of Israel and statements such as the following, made in 2001 before a Jewish audience, are consistent with Christian Zionist convictions: “Through centuries of struggle, Jews across the world have been witnesses not only against the crimes of men, but for faith in God, and God alone. Theirs is a story of defiance in oppression and patience in tribulation—reaching back to the exodus and their exile into the diaspora. That story continued in the founding of the State of Israel. The story continues in the defense of the State of Israel.”⁹

The Bible prophecy movement is typified as much by Tim LaHaye’s fictional Left Behind series of novels as by John Hagee’s political organization, Christians United for Israel. Hal Lindsey, however, is undoubtedly the most influential Bible prophecy proponent of the twentieth century. Time magazine described him as “the Jeremiah for this generation,”¹⁰ and his present publisher calls him “the father of the modern-day Bible prophecy movement”¹¹ and the “best known prophecy teacher in the world.”¹² The New York Times Book Review called Lindsey’s most famous book, The Late Great Planet Earth, the nonfiction bestseller of the 1970s.¹³ The book has spawned more than 20 sequels, and approximately 40 million copies of it have been published in 54 languages.

The back cover of Lindsey’s Planet Earth 2000, for example, promises, ‘‘Hal will be your guide on a chilling tour of the world’s future battlefields as the Great Tribulation, foretold more than two thousand years ago by Old and New Testament prophets, begins to unfold. You’ll meet the world leaders who will bring man to the very edge of extinction and examine the causes of the current global situation—what it all means, what will shortly come to pass, and how it will all turn out.”¹⁴

Many evangelical Protestants see a connection between Israel and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and/or believe that God gave Israel to the Jews in 1948. At least 60% of those with such beliefs support the state of Israel,¹⁵ and 32% cite their religious beliefs as the primary reason for such support.¹⁶ It is my conclusion, after 10 years of postgraduate research on the subject, that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial, and most influential single‐issue political lobby within Western Christianity today.¹⁷ As such, the foundations on which this widespread position rest are open to examination. I propose to examine those foundations by addressing two questions: first, does the regathering of the Jewish people to the contemporary State of Israel have any theological significance in terms of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?; and second, does the evidence in the Bible suggest that it endorses or that it rejects the Zionist ideology?¹⁸

In answer to these questions, I first will explain the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Then I will examine the meaning of the Abrahamic covenant, the ethical requirements of the covenant relationship, the concept of inheritance in the New Testament, and, finally, the meaning of terms such as the elect and chosen people when discussed from a Christian perspective.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

Christian Zionists assume an ultraliteral hermeneutic when interpreting Old Testament promises concerning the people of God, the land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple, and believe that those promises are being fulfilled literally today. The International Christian Embassy affirms, for example, “The modern ingathering of the Jewish People to Eretz Israel and the rebirth of the nation of Israel are in fulfillment of biblical prophecies.”¹⁹ Christian Zionists assume that the Old and New Testaments run parallel into the future, the former speaking of Israel and the latter speaking of the church; however, this is not the way the New Testament interprets, fulfills, and completes the Old. For example, Jesus annulled the Levitical food laws when He said, “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body. (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)” (Mark 7:18–19).²⁰

In Acts 10, God uses a vision of unclean food specifically to help the apostle Peter realize that in Christ there no longer is any distinction between Jew and Gentile—God accepts both equally into His kingdom. Only when Peter encounters Cornelius does he begin to realize the implications of the vision for the way he should now view Jews and Gentiles: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34–35). If God does not show favoritism, neither should we. The Jews no longer enjoy a favored or exclusive status.

The book of Hebrews explains the progressive movement of biblical revelation more fully. The Old Testament revelation from God often came in shadow, image, and prophecy. That revelation finds its consummation and fulfillment in the New Covenant (i.e., Testament) in Jesus Christ. The writer to the Hebrews, then, declares, “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb. 8:13). He insists later, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship” (Heb. 10:1).

It is essential that Christians interpret the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, not the other way around. Paul insists, for example, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (Col. 2:16–17). The question, therefore, is not whether the promises of the Old Testament should be understood allegorically or literally. It is instead a question of whether they should be understood in terms of shadow or substance.

THE MEANING OF THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

The roots of the Abrahamic Covenant are found in Genesis 2, not in Genesis 12, as Christians Zionists argue. The covenant began with God’s creation of a paradise in the garden of Eden, not with His promise of any real estate in the Middle East. In Eden, people received all of God’s blessings and enjoyed fellowship with Him. Mankind lost the paradise of Eden through the fall, but God promised to restore to him the paradise of heaven through redemption.

In Genesis 12 and 15, God promises to give Abraham’s family a place to live and indicates the extent of that place: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18). In Genesis 17, God repeats and amplifies the promise: “I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:6–8). Contrary to dispensationalists, who understand the promises God made to Abraham concerning the land as eternal, covenantalists see them not as an end in themselves, but as a foretaste of heaven.

The land is described later as “flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:8), which points to a restored paradise in the future. From the very beginning this Old Covenant shadow would have to wait for the New Covenant substance (or reality) for actual fulfillment, and then not by military conquest but by Messianic crucifixion. Conquest and residency in the land was a temporary assignment, a test of faith, not an end in itself. This is because the covenant always was primarily relational (with God), not material. We see how Abraham and his descendants understood this land promise in Hebrews 11:

For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.…And so from this one man…came  descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.…Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Heb. 11:10–16)

This is how the New Testament interprets the Abrahamic Covenant. In Hebrews, the term heavenly is used not in an allegorical or nonliteral sense, but in just the opposite sense: the promises find their consummation in heaven. The “Jerusalem above,” the heavenly city for which the Old Testament patriarchs reportedly were longing, therefore, is not the territory from Egypt to Iraq, but a relationship with the living God. In this context, residency in Canaan was only ever intended to be a prelude.

The land itself, further, never unconditionally belongs to Israel, but to God. God insists that the land cannot be bought or sold permanently or even given away permanently, let alone annexed and colonized as has occurred since 1967. The land is never at Israel’s disposal for its national purposes; rather, it is Israel who is at God’s disposal. God’s people at best ultimately remain tenants in God’s land (see Lev. 25:23).

A large portion of evangelicals, nevertheless, seem preoccupied with realizing an Old Covenant shadow and building a Jewish kingdom for Jesus. This explains their support for the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, their opposition to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and their lack of sympathy concerning the Palestinian quest for autonomy.

According to Bible teacher Arnold Fruchtenbaum, for example, the geographical extent of Eretz Israel is nonnegotiable and covers everything from Egypt to Iraq: “At no point in Jewish history have the Jews ever possessed all of the land from the Euphrates in the north to the River of Egypt in the south. Since God cannot lie, these things must yet come to pass.”²¹ Such reasoning ignores the way the Old Testament writers themselves understood the promises made to Abraham. The writer of the book of Joshua, for example, makes clear that the covenant promise already had been fulfilled by his generation (Josh. 21:43–45).

Nehemiah, writing after the second exile, likewise looked back and testified to the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham: “You gave them kingdoms and nations, allotting to them even the remotest frontiers.…You made their sons as numerous as the stars in the sky, and you brought them into the land that you told their fathers to enter and possess” (Neh. 9:22–23).

The right of Israel to exist as a nation is not in dispute and must be protected; however, it is clear that the promises made to Abraham were given in the context of a covenant relationship that was intended to bless all peoples of the world. To insist, therefore, on an interpretation of those promises that now gives people of Jewish origin born in other parts of the world an exclusive title deed to much of the Middle East in perpetuity, at the expense of the Palestinians born in the land, many of whom are Christians, appears to run as contrary to their Old Testament context as to their New Testament fulfillment.

THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE COVENANT RELATIONSHIP

The Promised Land was never an unconditional right, but always a conditional gift. During the wilderness wanderings, God warned His people, “If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you” (Lev. 18:28).

Thirty‐six times in the Old Testament, God specifically warned the Jews to be compassionate to strangers and aliens because of their own experience in Egypt (see, e.g., Lev. 19:33–34). The prophet Ezekiel amplified the same warning: “‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you…shed blood, should you then possess the land? You rely on your sword, you do detestable things…Should you then possess the land?…I will make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an end” (Ezek. 33:25–29; see also Jer. 17:4).

On the basis of such warnings, many in Europe and the Middle East argue that the Israeli government’s failure to comply with UN Resolutions regarding the rights of Palestinians would suggest another imminent exile rather than a final restoration. God stipulated through the blessings and curses that repentance is always a condition of return (Deut. 30:1–3).

The assertion, therefore, that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967 indicate that God is once again blessing the Jewish people is without foundation in Scripture. Those who believe biblical prophecy is being fulfilled literally in contemporary Israel today must answer this question: if the promises in Genesis are the basis of Israel’s claim to the land, what about the commandments and prophecies throughout the Law of Moses that make it quite clear that the Israelites’ right to the land was conditional?

If you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country… The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven… You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. (Deut. 28:15-16, 25, 63-64)

In Leviticus, while the Israelites were still wandering in the desert, the Lord uses some of the most graphic language in the Bible to spell out the basis for their future residency in the Promised Land: “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws… And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you” (Lev. 18:24-28).

If the Israelites’ claim to the land was conditioned on obedience, and if they were deported from the land in the first century because of the ultimate disobedience of rejecting their Messiah, how can it be affirmed that they now have a right to the land when they persist in the same disbelief and rejection of their Messiah? Furthermore, if the predictive element of prophecy must be understood literally, so must the prophetic demand for justice. Palestinian theologians are not alone in seeing the present Israeli colonization of Palestine as a twentieth‐century equivalent of Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard.²²

THE CONCEPT OF INHERITANCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Christian Zionists’ preoccupation with a literal fulfillment of biblical prophecy in Israel today is most apparent regarding the status of Jerusalem. In Galatians 4, Paul criticized the “Jerusalem-dependency”²³ of the legalists who were infecting the church in Galatia. In verse 27 he cites Isaiah 54:1, which refers to the earthly Jerusalem, and applies it to the home of all who believe in Jesus Christ. Access to heaven no longer has anything to do with an earthly Jerusalem. Jesus made this clear to the woman of Samaria: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:21–23).

Jesus explained at His trial why this is so: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). He thus repudiated the idea that His kingdom involves the establishment of an earthly Jewish kingdom, a mere shadow. Before the resurrection encounters and Pentecost, the disciples seemed to share the same understanding of the land promises as the other first-century Jews: they looked forward to God’s decisive intervention in history that would restore political sovereignty to the Jews within the Promised Land. This is reflected in the words of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who confessed, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). It also must have been the idea in the minds of the disciples when, before the ascension, they asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). John Calvin comments, “There are as many mistakes in this question as there are words.”²⁴ Jesus redefined and expanded their understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God and thereby the meaning of chosenness. The expansion of the kingdom of God throughout the world requires the permanent exile of the apostles from the land. They are sent out into the world with one‐way tickets, and are not told to return.

After Pentecost, the apostles begin to use Old Covenant language concerning the land in new ways. Peter, for example, speaks of an inheritance that, unlike the land, “can never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Pet. 1:4). Paul, likewise, asserts, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). The New Testament authors insist that through faith in Christ we already inhabit the heavenly Jerusalem and look forward to its appearing (Heb. 12:22–23). Paul, similarly, insists, “But the Jerusalem that is above is free” (Gal. 4:26). The limitations of the literal land, which was but a shadow of the coming substance, and which provided a temporary home for God’s emerging people and a geographical context for the incarnation, have been transcended. The direction now is outward from Jerusalem, stretching through the Great Commission to the uttermost ends of the earth.²⁵

Paul used the Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar to inoculate the Galatian believers against the infiltration of the legalistic Judaizers (Gal 4:21–31). He compares Jerusalem, which had rejected Jesus, to Hagar and her slave children (v. 25). He then likens the Galatian believers to Isaac and describes them as “children of promise” (v. 28). Paul’s critical analogy could perhaps apply to some forms of Messianic Judaism today that require Torah obedience, as well as to the political system in Israel which, because of proportional representation, is metaphorically “held captive” to minority religious political parties that are tied to orthodox Judaism (which itself is historically rooted in, and continuous with, New Testament Pharisaism).

After Pentecost, the apostles in no sense believed that the Jewish people still had a divine right to a kingdom centered in Jerusalem, or that this would be an important, let alone central, aspect of God’s future purposes for the world. In Paul’s christological thinking, God has superseded the land, like the law, in His redemptive purposes.

ELECTION AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD

Based on their literal reading of the Old Testament, Christian Zionists believe that the Jews remain God’s “chosen people” who enjoy a unique relationship, status, and eternal purpose within their own land, separate from any promises made to the church. Christian Friends of Israel, for example, insists, “The Bible teaches that Israel (people, land, nation) has a Divinely ordained and glorious future, and that God has neither rejected nor replaced His Jewish people.”²⁶ Jews for Jesus likewise perpetuates the distinction between God’s purposes for Israel and His purposes for the church—the latter being merely a “parenthesis”²⁷ in God’s plan for the Jews: “We believe that Israel exists as a covenant people through whom God continues to accomplish His purposes and that the Church is an elect people in accordance with the New Covenant, comprising both Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and Redeemer.”²⁸

This contradicts John the Baptist’s statement: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:8–9). Jesus similarly insisted, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus then used the analogy of the vine and branches to explain the relationship between God and His people (John 15:1–6); clearly, Jesus, not Israel, is the vine; His followers, not national Israel, are the branches of the vine. Remaining part of the vine and bearing fruit depends on a personal relationship with Jesus, not on heredity.

This is the reason Peter warned his hearers soon after the day of Pentecost that if they refused to recognize Jesus as their Messiah, they would cease to be the “people of God” (Gk. laos): “Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people” (Acts 3:23). Paul elaborates on the analogy of the vine in Romans 11:17–21 to explain the relationship between the natural branches (Israel) and the wild branches (Gentiles). It is significant that in the New Testament the term chosen is never used exclusively of the Jewish people. It is used only to refer to Jesus or the church, the body of Christ (e.g., Col. 3:12).

Peter also draws terms from the Old Testament that describe Israel and applies them to the church: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9–10). It is, therefore, no longer appropriate to describe the Jews as God’s “chosen people.” This term has been redefined theologically to describe all those who trust in Jesus Christ, irrespective of race.

This view sometimes is caricatured as supersessionism or replacement theology, that is, the belief that the church has superseded or replaced Israel. The New Testament does not teach that the Gentiles have uperseded the Jews; but neither does it teach a racial exclusivity that gives Jewish people preferential or levated status. According to Paul, God’s intention has always been to break down the “wall of partition” and create for Himself one new people, drawn from every race (Eph. 2:11–16).

ZIONISM THROUGH DISPENSATIONALISM

The Bible prophecy movement, born within British evangelicalism in the nineteenth century, reached mainstream American evangelicalism in the twentieth century. It became institutionalized through a view known as dispensationalism, which sees in history a succession of biblical eras, or dispensations, that are distinguished by God’s different methods of dealing with His people. In this view, the era of the church is different from the coming era of a literal kingdom in which the returning Christ reigns over Israel in the Promised Land for a thousand years. Kenneth Cragg satirically summarizes the implications of this ethnic exclusivity and simplistic dualism:

It is so; God chose the Jews; the land is theirs by divine gift. These dicta cannot be questioned or resisted. They are final. Such verdicts come infallibly from Christian biblicists for whom Israel can do no wrong—thus fortified. But can such positivism, this unquestioning finality, be compatible with the integrity of the Prophets themselves? It certainly cannot square with the open peoplehood under God which is the crux of New Testament faith. Nor can it well be reconciled with the ethical demands central to law and election alike.²⁹

Christian Zionism thrives on a literal and futurist hermeneutic in which Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish people are transferred to the contemporary State of Israel in anticipation of a final future fulfillment. It ignores, marginalizes, or bypasses New Testament passages that reinterpret, annul, or describe the fulfillment of these promises in and through Jesus Christ.

The process of redemptive history has yielded a dramatic movement, from shadow to substance. The land that God once constrained to the specific place of His redemptive purpose He then expanded to the entire breadth of the created cosmos, through the New Covenant. The exalted Christ rules sovereign over the entire world, from the heavenly Jerusalem.³⁰

The substance cannot give way again to shadow, for in the will and purposes of God the shadows no longer exist. The light has come in Jesus Christ: “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (Heb. 8:13). The choice, therefore, is between two theologies: one based on the shadows of the Old Covenant and one based on the substance of the New Covenant. Christian Zionism offers an exclusive theology that focuses on the Jews in the land rather than an inclusive theology that centers on the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. It is time to stop fighting over the birthright, like Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, and start sharing the blessings.

NOTES:

1. L. Nelson Bell, Christianity Today, July 1967, quoted in Donald Wagner, “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political
   Alliance,” The Christian Century, November 4, 1998, 1020.
2. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether, The Wrath of Jonah, The Crisis of Nationalism in the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict
   (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 173.
3. Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism: Road‐map to Armageddon? (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 2004).
4. Jimmy Carter, The Blood of Abraham (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985).
5. Jimmy Carter, Department of State Bulletin, vol. 78, no. 2015 (1978), 4, quoted in Regina Sharif, Non‐Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History (London: Zed, 1983), 136. See also http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US‐Israel/Carter_Begin4.html.
6. Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1986), 43.
7. Ibid., 47.
8. Ronnie Dugger, ”Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?“ Washington Post, April 18, 1984.
9. George W. Bush, Address to the National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance, April 19, 2001, quoted in “U.S.
   Presidents on Israel,” Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US‐Israel/presquote.html.
10. Hal Lindsey, Planet Earth 2000 (Palos Verdes, CA: Western Front, 1994), back cover.
11. Hal Lindsey, The Final Battle (Palos Verdes, CA: Western Front, 1995), back cover.
12. Hal Lindsey, The Apocalypse Code (Palos Verdes, CA: Western Front, 1997), back cover.
13. Ray Walters, “Paperback Talk,” New York Times Book Review, April 6, 1980, cited in Hal Lindsey, The 1980’s: Countdown to
    Armageddon (New York: Bantam, 1981), 179.
14. Lindsey, Planet Earth 2000, back cover.
15. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Many Americans
    Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics,” August 24, 2006, http://people‐press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1084.
16. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Americansʹ Support for Israel Unchanged by Recent Hostilities,” July 26, 2006, http://pewresearch.org/reports/?ReportID=37. For statistics regarding American Christians who believe they have a biblical responsibility to support Israel, see also Michael Prior, Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry (London: Routledge, 1999), 143.
17. See Sizer.
18. I am indebted to Don Wagner, Colin Chapman, and O. P. Robertson for some of the inspiration for this article, arising from A Theology of the Land consultation, The Levant Study Centre, Droushia, Cyprus, June 1996.
19. International Christian Embassy, International Christian Zionist Congress Proclamation, Jerusalem, February 25–29, 1996, http://www.internationalwallofprayer.org/A‐013‐1‐Proclamation‐of‐Third‐Intl‐Congress.html.
20. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.
21. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, ”This Land Is Mine,” Issues 2, 4 (July 1, 1982), Jews for Jesus,
    http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/2_4/land.
22. Naim Stifan Ateek, Justice, Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 86–89.
23. Peter Walker, Jesus and the Holy City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 129.
24. John Calvin, The Acts of the Apostles 1–13 (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1965), 29.
25. Walker, 127.
26. Christian Friends of Israel, “Standing with Israel,” information leaflet, n.d.
27. David Brickner, Future Hope (San Francisco: Purple Pomegranate, 1999), 18.
28. Jews for Jesus, “Statement of Faith,” Jews for Jesus, http://www.jewsforjesus.org/ about/statementoffaith.
29. Kenneth Cragg, The Arab Christian (London: Mowbray, 1992), 238.
30. See O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed
    Publishing, 2000).

SYNOPSIS

Eternal conscious punishment (also called traditionalism) holds that the wicked will suffer in hell forever. Annihilationism (or conditionalism) holds that the final punishment of the wicked is their extinction of being. This extinction is irreversible, and the annihilationist definition of eternal punishment is extermination without remedy.

I reject annihilationism and believe in endless punishment for three main reasons. First, traditionalism is the historic view of the Christian church. Second, endless punishment fits better than annihilationism with other scriptural teachings. Third, and most importantly, five biblical passages constrain my belief in eternal conscious punishment: Matthew 25:41, 46; Mark 9:42–48; 2 Thessalonians 1:5–10; Revelation 14:9– 11; and Revelation 20:10, 14–15.

Jesus declares in Matthew 25:41 that the destiny of the unsaved is “the eternal fire prepared for the devil.” Matthew 25:46 uses the same adjective, eternal, to describe the fates of the lost and saved: “eternal punishment” and “eternal life.” Jesus depicts “hell” as a place “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:47–48). Paul’s reference to “eternal destruction” in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, indicates a figurative devastation that the damned will experience forever in hell, separated from the Lord’s royal presence. Revelation 14:10, where we read that the impenitent “will be tormented with burning sulfur,” depicts the hellfire imagery as agony, not annihilation. John speaks of everlasting torment when he adds, “and the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever” (v. 11). John’s description of Satan’s fate in Revelation 20:10 as being placed in “the lake of fire and sulfur” and being “tormented day and night for ever and ever” signifies everlasting pain, a fate that lost human beings share (Rev. 20:15).

Hell is at the end of the day the darkness outside; dense like a black hole, it is the place of cosmic waste. Who, indeed, is sufficient for these things? The question is surely rhetorical. None of us is sufficient. But our sufficiency is to be found in Christ, the Savior, the perfect Man, the Redeemer, the Judge. We must constantly remind ourselves that it is the Savior who spoke clearly of the dark side of eternity. To be faithful to him, so must we.¹

Sinclair Ferguson is right on several counts. Hell is too awful for words. Only Christ enables us to endure the thought of unsaved persons suffering forever. We, too, must act as witnesses to its reality because He clearly taught the truth of hell. Here I will define terms, explore the reasons why I believe certain things, and present the reasons why I believe in endless punishment rather than annihilationism.

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Eternal conscious punishment is the view that the wicked will suffer the pains of hell forever. It is also called traditionalism because it is the church’s traditional view. Annihilationism, by contrast, is the view that God will exterminate the wicked in hell. Conditional immortality—conditionalism for short—is the view that God does not give immortality to all human beings, but only to believers, and that He will resurrect unbelievers, who lack the gift of immortality, to face ultimate annihilation. Because annihilationism and conditionalism reach the same conclusion—the lost finally will be eliminated—I will use the two terms interchangeably.

Evangelical annihilationists teach the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment with conscious punishment according to sins committed. The last stroke for the wicked is the extinction of their being. This extinction is irreversible; thus annihilationists define eternal punishment as extermination without remedy.

GROUNDS FOR BELIEF

There are several reasons why I believe in various Christian doctrines including hell. These involve respect for the consensus of the church through history, for the systematic consistency of doctrinal teachings throughout Scripture, and most of all, for the very witness of Scripture itself.

The Testimony of Church History

I previously wrote of 11 figures who share the consensus that the wicked will suffer endless punishment—Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Wesley, Francis Pieper, Louis Berkhof, Lewis Sperry Chafer, and Millard Erickson:

The figures…hail from various countries, inhabit diverse periods in church history, and represent major branches of the Church. It is significant, then, that in spite of their great diversity, these theologians agree on the subject of hell’s duration. This consensus leads us to ask an important question: Is it possible that these eleven figures are wrong on the topic of hell? It is possible, but highly unlikely! In fact, I cannot think of even one doctrinal issue in which they all are in error. It is not that they agree on every detail of theology; they differ in their understanding of baptism and of the millennium, to choose two examples. But on basic aspects of the Christian faith they are united—and one of those aspects is eternal punishment.²

This then places the burden of proof on those who break with Church tradition and espouse conditionalism. The testimony of historical theology, however, is not the fundamental reason why I believe in endless punishment.

The Consistency of Theological Doctrine

As a systematic theologian, I am more convinced now than when I began teaching seminary 27 years ago that although I believe that the Bible does not contain a complete system of truth, its doctrines cohere. The teachings do not contradict one another, which makes systematic consistency one test of biblical truth. In view of that, I argue that endless punishment better and more consistently comports with a biblical understanding of other doctrines than does annihilationism. In Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue, which I wrote with fellow evangelical Christian Edward William Fudge, I argued that traditionalism “fits” better than annihilationism does with scriptural teaching on the intermediate state,³ Christology and the inseparability of Christ’s two natures, and the personal eschatology or nature of final punishment.

The Intermediate State. Fudge argues for ultimate annihilationism (in Rev. 20:14 and Jude 7) on the basis of his view that death means extinction of being rather than separation of soul from body. Because physical death means extinction of being, the second death means final extinction of the resurrected unsaved.

But this is an error. I say this because seven passages teach the survival of the soul after the death of the body (2 Cor. 5:8; Luke 23:46, 43; Phil. 1:23; Rev. 6:9; Heb. 12:23; Luke 16:19–31). Study of these texts should give annihilationists pause. And further theological reflection should do the same. The intermediate state/resurrection view demonstrates the continuity of personal identity. The same person who dies, lives on without the body, and will one day be reunited in body and soul in the resurrection of the dead. The extinction/re‐creation view, however, encounters serious difficulties in maintaining personal identity at the resurrection. In what sense is a human being who dies and ceases to exist the same person as the one who is re‐created by God at the resurrection?⁴

Christology. “Fudge, therefore, seeks to strengthen his case for annihilationism by arguing that Jesus endured final punishment by being annihilated on the cross. The systematic implications of such a view are enormous. Nothing less than orthodox Christology is at stake.”⁵

The Word of God declares that as a result of the incarnation Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man. He is one person with two natures, one divine and one human. These natures are not mixed together and are not separable.…if Fudge is right, and Jesus was annihilated, then Chalcedon is wrong and Christ’s natures were separated.⁶

Personal Eschatology. Fudge accepts the traditional eschatological scenario, right up to the point of eternal destinies. He affirms suffering for the unsaved in hell and thus upholds the biblical principle that there will be degrees of punishment in hell. But when he makes annihilation the caboose, he derails the whole train. For in spite of his claim [that cessation of being is the worst possible punishment, it, to the contrary,] would bring an end to punishment. The wicked would be delivered from their terrible suffering and would experience the pains of hell no more.⁷

I am persuaded, then, that endless punishment meets the test of systematic consistency better than conditionalism. That still is not the primary reason why I believe in endless punishment, however.

The Witness of Holy Scripture

I respect historical theology and systematics, but Scripture is what ultimately constrains my belief. I have a spectrum of beliefs ranging from truths that are essential to salvation to loosely held beliefs about unimportant things, and I believe many things in between, including endless punishment. I would include endless punishment under the category of things not necessary for salvation, but things important.

In two books, I adduce ten passages of Scripture that I maintain teach endless punishment.⁸ I still believe that my exegesis of those ten passages is sound and I here point to five of those passages that most clearly teach endless punishment.

Matthew 25:41, 46. The returning Son of Man says to the wicked, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).⁹Jesus here consigns unsaved or cursed human beings to “eternal fire,” stating that they will suffer the same fate as Satan. John says in Revelation 20:10 (see below) that the Devil “will be tormented…for ever and ever.” The conclusion of “Depart from me… into the eternal fire” in Matthew 25:41, then, is incontestable: unsaved human beings, along with the Devil and his angels, will endure endless punishment.

Our Lord also affirms endless punishment in Matthew 25:46. Concerning goats and sheep, respectively, He says, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Jesus contrasts the fates of punishment and life and modifies them both by the same adjective: “eternal.”

The word “eternal” (aionios) does not of itself mean everlasting in duration, but rather indicates a long period of time with limits set by the context. The limits of aionios when referring to last things, however, are set by the life of God Himself. The age to come lasts as long as He does—forever. The New Testament speaks of the eternal God (Rom. 16:26), the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14), eternal life (Rom. 5:21), eternal salvation (Heb. 5:9), eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10), and the eternal kingdom (2 Pet. 1:11).

Matthew, as D. A. Carson notes, uses “the adjective aionios… only for what is eternal.”¹⁰ The punishment that the lost suffer in hell is parallel to the bliss that the righteous enjoy on the new earth. Augustine draws the logical implication:

If both are “eternal,” it follows necessarily that either both are to be taken as long‐lasting but finite, or both as endless and perpetual. The phrases “eternal punishment” and “eternal life” are parallel and it would be absurd to use them in one and the same sentence to mean: “Eternal life will be infinite, while eternal punishment will have an end.” Hence, because the eternal life of the saints will be endless, the eternal punishment also, for those condemned to it, will assuredly have no end.¹¹

The goats will experience everlasting punishment even as the sheep will experience everlasting life.¹²

Mark 9:42–48. Jesus also teaches endless punishment in a passage in which He urges His hearers to take drastic measures rather than sin, especially rather than mislead children. He warns against going “into hell, where the fire never goes out” (v. 43) and of being “thrown into hell, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (vv. 47–48). Conditionalists interpret Jesus’ language (via their interpretation of Isaiah 66:24, which Jesus cites) as teaching the annihilation of the wicked. The fire of hell that never goes out, they say, is a never‐ending memorial to the extinction of the wicked. The undying worm lives until it consumes its prey, and the unquenchable fire relentlessly consumes what is put into it until it exists no more.

This is not what the passage says, however. Hell is “where the fire never goes out” (v. 43) because the suffering of the wicked in hell never ends. Scripture in a number of passages uses fire imagery to depict the sufferings of the wicked, rather than their extermination, as conditionalists teach (e.g., Matt. 13:42, 49–50; 25:41; Luke 16:23–25, 28; Rev. 14:10; 20:10).

Jesus teaches that the pains of hell last forever when He says, “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (vv. 47–48). He points to the activity of worms and fire in this life to teach figuratively about the life to come. All maggots die when they consume their prey and exhaust their fuel. All fires go out when they run their course and exhaust their fuel. Jesus says that the worms and fires of hell, by contrast, will never run out of fuel; the worm of the wicked is undying and the fire of hell is not quenched. That is, hell knows no end.

Author Robert Yarbrough, agrees, stating in an essay on Jesus’ view of hell, “In this Marcan setting Jesus is at conspicuous pains to underscore the unending nature of hell’s affliction. He does this, first, by speaking of the ‘fire that never goes out.’ Then he does it by quoting Isaiah 66:24. This is one of at least two Old Testament passages that clearly teach ‘the notion of eternal punishment’ (cf. Dan. 12:2). In Mark 9, then, Jesus teaches that hell’s agonies are ongoing and never‐ending.”¹³

2 Thessalonians 1:5–10. This is Paul’s most extensive treatment of the fate of unbelievers. He extols the justice of God who will deliver His persecuted people and punish their persecutors. “When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels, He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power” (2 Thess. 1:7– 9). The words “everlasting destruction” from this passage have become a slogan for conditionalism. Conditionalists teach that hell will consist in the extinction of the wicked and that this extinction is everlasting in that it is final. The exterminated wicked will not live again. According to conditionalism, “everlasting destruction” means irreversible annihilation.

Is this what Paul really means? A careful study of the expression “everlasting destruction” in this passage yields a negative answer. Paul writes, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power” (v. 9). If “everlasting destruction” means irreversible annihilation, then being “shut out from the presence of the Lord” means the same thing. This will not do, however, because for exclusion from the Lord’s presence to mean annihilation the Lord’s presence must be interpreted as His omnipresence. Fudge teaches this in a footnote in his book The Fire That Consumes: “1. God’s presence will fill all that is, in every place; 2. the wicked will not be in his presence; 3. therefore, the wicked will no longer exist.”¹⁴

A paraphrase of the text will help us to evaluate the conditionalist view that “the presence of the Lord” in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 means God’s omnipresence. Conditionalists hold that Paul taught that the wicked will be punished with irreversible annihilation and shut out from the omnipresence of the Lord. To the contrary, when Paul referred to the fate of the lost as “eternal destruction,” he did not mean a literal destruction, but used the words figuratively of the devastation that the damned will experience forever in hell. There they will be separated, not from the Lord’s omnipresence, but from His powerful royal presence, as Paul’s words indicate. “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.”

Douglas Moo, in the finest study of Paul’s teaching on hell of which I am aware, expresses his agreement: “We would suggest, therefore, that the ‘destruction’ of which Paul here speaks may just as likely refer to ‘ruin.’ In this sense olethros would mean not that the wicked simply cease to exist but that they suffer ruin: ‘an eternal plunge into Hades and a hopeless destiny of death.’ ‘Ruin’ must be placed alongside other Pauline depictions of the state of the wicked: suffering wrath, spiritual death, tribulation, and condemnation.”¹⁵

Conditionalists claim that the whole Bible teaches their view because Scripture frequently uses the vocabulary of destruction, referring to God’s enemies as being destroyed, perishing, and the like. This, however, is not a strong argument. First, most of the Old Testament references that they cite refer to God’s visiting the wicked with premature physical death; the references do not even speak of eternal destinies. Second, there is biblical evidence that the “destruction” of God’s enemies is their endless punishment. In Revelation 17:8, 11 “destruction” (apoleia) is prophesied for “the beast.” Two chapters later the beast and false prophet are “thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (Rev. 19:20). John teaches that after Satan is cast into this lake, he, the beast, and the false prophet, “will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10). The beast’s “destruction,” therefore, is not annihilation, but eternal punishment.

Conditionalists, consequently, err when they claim that the words destruction, perish, and their synonyms signify the final extinction of the wicked. This claim cannot be established from a study of all of the judgment passages that use these words. The passages that can be made to conform to conditionalism, in fact, are ones in which the words are used as shorthand without further explanation.

Revelation 14:9–11. This passage pertains to final destinies, as verse 11 indicates when it speaks of the smoke of the torment of the lost rising “for ever and ever.” John describes the plight of the lost in hell: they will “drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath” (v. 10). They will personally experience the holy anger of almighty God.

John uses fire imagery to describe the suffering of the impenitent in hell. Each one “will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (v. 10). There is no doubt as to the function of the hellfire imagery here. It depicts the agony of the damned. John extends the fire imagery in the next verse: “And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever” (v. 11).

Conditionalists claim that this means the ever‐ascending smoke is a perpetual witness to the extermination by fire of the wicked. Such an interpretation is not based on a straightforward interpretation of the text. John speaks of “the smoke of their torment” forever rising. As Gregory K. Beale shows in his commentary on Revelation, “The word basanismos (‘torment’) in Rev. 14:10–11 is used nowhere in Revelation or biblical literature in the sense of annihilation of personal existence. Revelation, without exception, uses it of conscious suffering on the part of people (9:5; 11:10; 12:2; 18:7, 10, 15; 20:10).”¹⁶ The link between the description of never‐ending torment and the possessive pronoun “their” is noteworthy, too. The text implies everlasting conscious torment rather than annihilation¹⁷ when it describes the suffering of the unsaved as “the smoke of their torment” and the smoke as one that forever rises.

The words that follow strengthen this interpretation. “And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night” for them (v. 11). If John had intended to teach conditionalism, he could have written, “The smoke of their destruction rises for ever and ever, for they were no more.” John instead adds, after speaking of the smoke of the suffering of the damned perpetually rising, that the wicked have “no rest day or night.” That is, in contrast to those “who die in the Lord,” who “rest from their labor” (v. 13), the lost will never know the sweet repose of the Lord.

Beale notes his agreement in his excellent study of the doctrine of hell in the book of Revelation:

The phrase “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever” (Rev. 14:11) is not a mere reminder of past judgment, but ongoing judgment as well. It is not the smoke of a completed destruction that goes up, but “the smoke of their torment.” The nature of the torment is explained in the second part of v. 11: not to be annihilated but lack of rest. Indeed, annihilation would be a kind of rest or relief from the excruciating torment of the brief, final judgment (those who support euthanasia do so usually because they believe it is merciful to relieve people of pain by annihilating their physical life). Therefore, the smoke is metaphorical of a continued reminder of the ongoing torment of restlessness, which endures for eternity.¹⁸

Revelation 20:10, 14–15. It is profitable to trace the fate of the unholy triumvirate in Revelation and discover that this passage, too, affirms endless punishment. The beast, in fulfillment of the “destruction” prophesied for him in Revelation 17:8, 11, is “thrown into the lake of burning sulfur” (Rev. 19:20) with the false prophet. In the first edition of The Fire that Consumes, Edward Fudge states that “in the case of the beast and false prophet…the lake of fire stands for utter, absolute, irreversible annihilation.”¹⁹ Consider Revelation 20:10, however: “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” John here teaches, contrary to Fudge, that after the Devil is cast into the fiery lake as well, the beast, the false prophet, and the Devil “will be tormented…for ever and ever;” the beast’s “destruction,” therefore, is not annihilation, but eternal punishment.

The words “they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” plainly admit of only one meaning—everlasting conscious torment. Annihilationists attempt to deny this by claiming that the beast and false prophet represent institutions and not persons and thus could not be tormented forever, but this is not convincing. (The best interpretation of the beast and false prophet, I believe, is that they represent various enemies of God throughout history, culminating in two individuals.²⁰ Regardless of the precise identification of these two, the Devil’s identity is transparent and there is no doubt that he is a personal being capable of suffering, and that is precisely what John teaches when he says that the Devil “will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).

Annihilationists try to attain their goal by arguing as well that even if Revelation 20:10 teaches that the Devil will suffer endless punishment, that text says nothing about the fate of human beings. This argument fails also because five verses later John says that human beings too are “thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15; cf. 21:8). I am aware of conditionalist attempts to deny that the lake of fire means the same thing for human beings that it does for the Devil. Those attempts miss a basic point: John has just said what “the lake of burning sulfur” signifies in verse 10—everlasting torment. He indicates no change in meaning between verse 10 and verse 15. Conditionalists teach that although the lake of fire means endless punishment for the Devil, it means annihilation for human beings. This seems forced. The lake of fire means the same thing for the Devil that it means for unsaved human beings—endless punishment.²¹

IMPLICATIONS OF OUR STUDY

Although I respect the powerful witness of Christian history to traditionalism, and am impressed by arguments from systematic theology, at the end of the day, I appeal to a higher authority than history or theology. I am convinced that a straightforward exposition of these five scriptural passages (and more) confirms the thesis that the sufferings of hell consist in everlasting conscious punishment. Jesus, Paul, and John teach that the suffering of the lost in hell will know no end.

Sinclair Ferguson is right: it is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who spoke most clearly of the dark side of eternity. To be faithful to Him, we must do the same.

NOTES

1. Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Pastoral Theology: The Preacher and Hell,” in Hell under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 237.
2. Robert A. Peterson, “The Road to Traditionalism: History,” in Edward William Fudge and Robert A. Peterson, Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 127–28.
3. The intermediate state is often described as the interval between the death of the body and the last judgment, and as the condition of the soul during that interval, the nature of which some people debate.
4. Robert A. Peterson, “Seeing the Big Picture: Theology” in Two Views of Hell, 174.
5. Ibid., 176.
6. Ibid., 177–78.
7. Ibid., 180‐81.
8. See Robert A. Peterson, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R Publishing, 1995), 29–94; Robert A. Peterson, “The Foundation of the House: Scripture,” in Two Views of Hell, 129–69.
9. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version.
10. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 528.
11. Augustine, The City of God, ed. David Knowles (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 1001–2 (21.23).
12. Robert W. Yarbrough agrees; see “Jesus on Hell,” in Hell under Fire, 75–76.
13. Ibid., 74.
14. Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 2nd ed. (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1994), 155, n. 31.
15. Douglas J. Moo, “Paul on Hell,” in Hell under Fire, 106.
16. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 762.
17. Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals (ACUTE), The Nature of Hell (London: ACUTE/Paternoster, 2000), 83.
18. Gregory K. Beale, “The Revelation on Hell,” in Hell under Fire, 118–19.
19. Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 1st ed. (Houston: Providential Press, 1982), 304.
20. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God, 527.
21. D. A. Carson agrees; see The Gagging of God, 528.

First, in Hebrews, as in the rest of the New Testament, the Old Testament history of Israel is interpreted as a succession of types that find ultimate fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord. As such, far from being peripheral, typology is central to a proper interpretation of the infallible Word of God. Indeed, throughout the New Testament Jesus is revealed as the antitype of the Hebrew prophets through his preaching of repentance, his ministry of healing, his concern for the poor and the social outcasts, and his death near Jerusalem (Luke 13:33). This, of course, is not to confuse the biblical principle of typology with an allegorical method of biblical interpretation that ignores or rejects the historical nature of the Old Testament narratives. On the contrary, typology is firmly rooted in historical fact and always involves historical correspondence.

Furthermore, biblical typology, as evidenced in the writings of the New Testament, always involves a heightening of the type in the antitype. It is not simply that Jesus replaces the temple as a new but otherwise equal substitute. No, Jesus is far greater than the temple! It is not as though Jesus is simply another in the line of prophets with Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. No, Jesus is much greater than the prophets! The new covenant is not a mere “plan B” that God instituted as a parenthesis between two phases of his redemptive work with Israel. The new covenant is far greater than the old covenant–”a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22)–rendering the old “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13)! Just as Joshua is a type of Jesus who leads the true children of Israel into the  eternal land of promise, so King David is a type of the “King of kings and Lord of lords” who forever rules and reigns from the New Jerusalem in faithfulness and in truth (Revelation 19:16). In each case, the lesser is fulfilled and rendered obsolete by the greater.

Finally, it is important to point out that antitypes themselves may also function as types of future realities. Communion, for example, is the antitype of the Passover meal. Each year the Jews celebrated Passover in remembrance of God’s sparing the firstborn sons in the homes of the Israelite families that were marked by the blood of the Passover lamb (see Luke 22; cf. Exodus 11-12). Jesus’ celebration of the Passover meal with his disciples on the night of his arrest symbolically points to the fact that he is the ultimate Passover Lamb “who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Though the Last Supper and the corresponding sacrament of communion serve as the antitype of the Passover meal, they also point forward to their ultimate fulfillment in “the wedding supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9; cf. Luke 22:15-18). On that glorious day the purified bride–true Israel–will be united with her Bridegroom in the new heaven and the new earth (Revelation 21:1-2). Thus the fulfillment of the promise is itself a guarantee of the final consummation of the kingdom of God. In sum, as eschatology is the thread that weaves the tapestry of Scripture into a glorious mosaic; typology is the material out of which that thread is spun.

For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code: Find Out What the Bible Really Says about the End Times…and Why It Matters Today (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

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Finally, it is crucial that you get into the Word of God and get the Word of God into you. If you fail to eat well-balanced meals on a regular basis, you eventually will suffer the physical consequences. Likewise, if you do not regularly feed on the Word of God, you will suffer spiritual consequences. Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Great physical meals are one thing; great spiritual M-E-A-L-S are quite another:

Memorize: As a result of teaching memory seminars for over twenty years I am convinced that anyone, regardless of age or acumen, can memorize Scripture. God has called you to write his Word on the tablet of your heart (Proverbs 7:1-3; Deuteronomy 6:6), and with the call he has provided the ability. Your mind is like a muscle. If you exercise it, you will increase its capacity to remember and recall information. If you do not, like a muscle, it will atrophy. A good place to start memorizing is Joshua 1:8: “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”

Examine: As mentioned above, the Berean believers daily examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul taught was true. For that they were commended as being noble in character. Ultimate authority was not placed in the revelation of men but in the revelation of God. The apostle Paul urged Christians to test all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21) and to be transformed by the renewing of their minds in order to discern the will of God (Romans 12:2). Examining the Scriptures requires discipline, but the dividends are dramatic.

Apply: As wonderful and worthwhile as it is to memorize and examine Scripture, it is not enough! You must take the knowledge you have gleaned from the Word of God and apply it in your daily life-wisdom is the application of knowledge. As the Master put it: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matthew 7:24-27). James the brother of Jesus used irony to drive home the same point. In essence, he said that anyone who hears the Word and does not apply it is like a man who looks in a mirror and sees that his face is dirty, but doesn’t wash it (James 1:23-24).

Listen: In order to apply God’s directions to life experiences, you must first listen carefully as God speaks to you through the mystery of his Word. Like Samuel, you should say, “Speak, [Lord,] for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10, emphasis added). One of the most amazing aspects of Scripture is that it is alive and active, not dead and dull. Indeed, God still speaks today through the mystery of his Word. The Holy Spirit illumines our minds so that we may understand what he has freely given us (1 Corinthians 2:12). As Jesus so beautifully put it, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27, emphasis added).

Study: In examining Scripture, it is typically best to stick with one good Bible translation. This not only provides consistency but facilitates the process of Scripture memorization. In studying, however, it is helpful to use a number of good translations. To further your study of Scripture, it is necessary to have access to study tools. The toolbox of serious Scripture students should include a concordance, a commentary, and a Bible dictionary. You also might consider obtaining some of the resources suggested in The Bible Answer Book. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). May the acronym M-E-A-L-S daily remind you to nourish yourself by partaking of the Bread of life.

Adapted from Christianity in Crisis

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