Rob Bell

For those who don’t know, Rob Bell is the leader of the euphemistically-named Mars Hill Bible Church and author of a number of books suitable only for hanging on the outhouse wall. His latest effluvium is Love Wins.

Happy April Fool’s Day. Our topic for the day, appropriately, is Rob Bell, innocent victim of slander*, who offers the following answer to the question, “Do you think you’re going to go to heaven?”

Yeah, and I say that because I trust Jesus and I believe in Jesus, but I say it because of my experiences now, that which I can’t explain: the peace and joy now, the sense of presence, especially for me in the midst of difficult things. I am loved, I am being guided, I am being supported . . . [more here]

That is a terrifying testimony, especially coming from a man who has created his own Jesus, rejecting the Jesus of Scripture and the substitutionary atonement of the cross. The source of his assurance is his present experience and how he feels right now. It’s a fool’s testimony because it rests not on what the Christ of real history has done, but on what his feelings about what a fictitious Jesus is presumed to be doing for him now.

I write this not because anything more needs to be said about Bell’s heresy, but to warn you that if Bell’s testimony is your testimony, you have no cause for hope of salvation. Unless your faith is in the finished work of Christ as recorded in Scripture, in his life, death, and resurrection, your hope is empty.

The Bible is quite clear on what the foundation of genuine saving faith is. It is never based even in part on our experiences or feelings. It is firmly founded upon absolute propositional truths. At the center of every one of those truths is Jesus, not you, and not your feelings about Jesus. When someone asks you if you think you’re going to heaven, you should be able to answer with those truths.

I offer my own testimony as an example.

* Slander: To accurately repeat and analyze the public statements of those not man enough to face examination.

or, Bell’s Hell

I really love John MacArthur. It would be safe to say that no one, other than the biblical writers, has influenced my theology and church philosophy more than he. I love him because he does almost nothing but teach the Bible. He is, to my knowledge, the most single-minded, textually obsessed Bible expositor alive. At the same time he isn’t afraid to address current issues and tell it like it is when the name of God and the health of the church are at stake. Such was the case in the last couple of weeks, as he peeled the fleece off a very thinly disguised wolf.

One might ask why it is necessary to keep talking about Rob Bell. Hasn’t enough been said already? Well, yes; enough has been said, but until everyone hears it, it must be said again and again. Bell’s influence is not limited to the apostate circles in which he lives. It reaches far and wide, and into the most unexpected places. I was dumbfounded to learn that one of the elders of my own church — an EFCA church in North Dakota — had used the Nooma videos in a Sunday School class. In my own church, a man who does not know the Lord, has no understanding of the gospel, and in fact, hates the God of the Bible, was teaching via DVD. I felt like Mayor Vaughn in Jaws: “My kids were on that beach too!”

So yes, I find it necessary to dedicate some space here to attacking this wolf. But like I said, enough has been said. I don’t need to, and really can’t, add anything new. Below are links to MacArthur’s series on Bell. Read them, and share them. You never know where a false teacher might have crept in unnoticed (Jude 1:4).

1. Rob Bell: a Brother to Embrace, or a Wolf to Avoid?

   

   Historic evangelicalism has always affirmed the authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency of Scripture, while declaring (as Jesus and the apostles did) that the only way of salvation for fallen humanity is through the atoning work of Christ, and the only instrument of justification is faith in Jesus Christ as He is revealed in the gospel.

   Rob Bell believes none of those things. His skepticism about so many key biblical truths, his penchant for sowing doubt in his hearers, and his obvious contempt for the principles of divine justice as taught in Scripture all give evidence that he is precisely the kind of unbelieving false teacher Scripture warns us about.

2. Rob Bell: “Evangelical and orthodox to the bone?” Hardly.

   So on the one hand, in a single sentence, he professes to affirm the virgin birth. On the other hand (and on the very same page), he spends multiple paragraphs calling the truthfulness and importance of that doctrine into question.

   That is Bell’s modus operandi. He labels himself an evangelical while simultaneously undermining the foundational tenets of evangelical conviction.

   In light of this, Love Wins should not have been a surprise to anyone. The book is consistent with several things Bell has been teaching for some time.

3. Rob Bell’s Unbelief in His own Words

   Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, 130: “I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identify ourselves first and foremost as sinners.”

4. Bell’s Inferno

   The sad reality is that if Rob Bell does not confess the truth in this life, one day he will realize how wrong his understanding of hell really is. His view of hell will be painfully altered forever when he receives the more severe punishment reserved for those who with a Bible in their hands mock God and trample the blood of Christ underfoot (Hebrews 10:29; cf. 2 Peter 2:21).

   My earnest prayer is for Rob Bell’s repentance. But I am even more deeply and urgently concerned for the many untaught and undiscerning people who are being led astray by his toxic teaching (Jude 22-23). It is time for faithful shepherds to speak up and warn the flock of the deadly peril posed by false teaching such as this.

Note: I thought I was being clever with the Bell’s Hell title, but I had forgotten that Michael Horton had beaten me to it.