This week I’m taking a break from my series (12 Lessons…) and thought I would share with you a very important and highly relevant blog post from Randy Alcorn (www.epm.org). I have always considered Randy to be one of the best writers in evangelical Christianity today. He has a very sharp theological mind and a strong, robust grasp of Scripture.
Many of you are aware of the recent book authored by Rob Bell, entitled Love Wins. In Bell’s book, he promotes a form of Universalism (Bell’s description is that virtually everyone will get into heaven – no matter what they believed here on earth and that people will have a second chance after they die to turn to Christ if they didn’t do so during their lifetime). There were numerous aspects of Bell’s book that were very troubling.
In response to Love Wins, there are two new books being released in the next few weeks. One is by Mark Galli (senior managing editor for Christianity Today magazine) entitled: God Wins: Heaven, Hell and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins.
The other book is by Francis Chan and is entitled Erasing Hell: What God said about Eternity, and the things we made up.
I highly recommend both Galli’s and Chan’s books.
This subject (eternity, heaven, and hell) is of utmost importance! Satan loves nothing more than to get people distracted away from the seriousness of the question of eternity. As A.W. Tozer wrote…
“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unheeded.” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy)
A few days ago, Randy Alcorn posted his thoughts about Mark Galli’s new book, God Wins, on his blog. It was so good that I thought it would be well worth passing along to as many people as possible.
To give you a brief taste of some of what Alcorn writes in this post, here is an excerpt…
“As I read Rob Bell’s book, I kept saying to myself what I’ve said while reading other recent “evangelical” books—that the God revealed in Scripture is not a love-only, single-attribute God. Vital as his love is, the seraphim in his presence do not cry out day and night, “Love, love, love is the Lord God Almighty.”
Love—as moderns narrowly define it, in the sense that everything should turn out well for everyone—certainly does not win in the biblical narrative. Rather, as Galli’s title aptly puts it, God Wins. And not just any God, but the true God. The Father who is both loving and righteous, the Son who is full of both grace and truth, the merciful Spirit who has the word Holy in his very name. God’s attributes aren’t a menu from which we may choose only what we wish. He is all that he is, all the time. The universe exists not for Love’s glory, but for God’s glory.”
Here is Randy’s blog post in its entirety – I believe it’s well worth 2-3 minutes of your time to read.
(If you would like to read more from Randy Alcorn, you can go to his website at www.epm.org, or directly to his blog post at www.epm.org/blog. Randy’s website is filled with hundreds of the best articles and resources available anywhere on the web. You can download virtually all of them for free.)