Bob Vincent On Hell and God’s Compassion : part three

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(Continued from part two)

We now get to part three of Bob Vincent’s paper on our compassionate God and the suffering of men.

Lost humanity and the truth

Several passages come to one’s mind in thinking about the destiny of those who have never heard the gospel.

The first is Romans 1:18-20: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Here we learn that every human being has a basic, latent knowledge of the true God. This knowledge exists not only in the glaring, compelling and conclusive evidence of the existence of a Supreme Being, Prime Mover, or First Cause in the very structure of reality outwardly, but is confirmed inwardly according to verse 19: “because that which is known about God is evident within them.” In other words, this knowledge is not only a posteriori, but a priori as well. And it is very comprehensive knowledge according to verse 20, including the true nature of God’s character, which according to Romans 2:14, 15, includes a basic sense of right and wrong: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”

This knowledge is part of the very nature of a human being; it is contained within the broken and twisted remains of the image of God. But factual, compelling proof never stops people from doing evil: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32.)

The problem is not a lack of conclusive evidence, but a deep-seated mental illness that has gripped every human being. Just as a grown woman may push back the memory of her mother’s boyfriend having molested her when she was a little girl, so all humans repress this painful truth out of the conscious mind. But that repressed memory of the true God, guilt and coming judgment is still there, just as all painful childhood memories are, and it haunts people in the dark night: “For God does speak—now one way, now another—though man may not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn man from wrongdoing and keep him from pride, to preserve his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword.” (Job 33:14-18.)

The above truths have profound significance in how we deal with those whom we encounter outside the pale of the Church and means that so much of the proclamation is simply confirmation of truth that outsiders already know. It takes the work of the Holy Spirit to bring up this deeply buried knowledge, but he is pleased to honor the proclamation by doing so. What is not buried within and cannot be deduced from an analysis of the external evidence is God’s loving act of grace in Jesus Christ, even though the proclamation of the good news resonates as truth deeply within fallen man, plagued as he is by guilt and angst.

Such knowledge of God leaves people without excuse (Romans 1:20.) but cannot save them from hell, however, and most importantly, people are not in hell simply because they did not respond to the gospel. They are in hell justly suffering for their countless acts of rebellion against God and ungratefulness toward his kindness. That someone has heard the gospel and spurned it only adds to his condemnation. There is eternal equity in all God’s dealing with people: “That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows.” (Luke 12:47, 48.)

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Kate’s Letters on Life, Love, and Faith

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I don’t know whether I’m supposed to laugh or cry about this.

In the wake of reality TV couple Jon and Kate Gosselin’s highly publicized divorce in December, Zondervan will release a new book by Kate Gosselin on April 13.

I never watched the show so I was surprised that this woman was a professing Christian. It never occurred to me that such an exhibitionist would be a Christian. Again, I’ve never even seen a clip from the show, so when I say “exhibitionist” I simply mean the kind of woman who would allow camera crews into her home to film her family life.

From this article we read:

“In I Just Want You to Know, Kate reveals a less familiar spiritual side.”

So I guess her spiritual depth wasn’t evident to all viewers. But from this Christianity Today article by Julie Vermeer Elliott, I learn that the show, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, was a magnet to Evangelicals. This article makes this point that is worth considering:

It was not until the recent allegations of sexual impropriety arose that a significant number of Christians began to question whether Jon and Kate were indeed the examples of faithful living that we had imagined. Somehow most of us missed the long trajectory that was, day by day, moving them farther from a life of Christian virtue. Sexual immorality—whether actual or merely suspected—caught our attention, but the materialism, narcissism, and exploitation of children that preceded it was largely overlooked.

So who wants to read what Kate Gosselin has to say? I don’t know her and I don’t think it’s impossible that she is a Christian, but with all the wonderful missionary women in the world, and with all the wonderful mothers who are faithfully taking care of their families without a camera crew following them around, who has time to read this:

The new hardcover book, which will retail for $22.99, will feature excerpts, prayers and memories from Gosselin’s journal, “offering an intimate look at the heart of a mother during the three years her family transitioned from obscurity into the national spotlight,” Zondervan said.

The book will also include eight individual letters–one addressed to each one of her children, covering a variety of topics such as the disappointment that comes when life does not go as planned and God’s faithfulness during times of change.

The heart of a mother? Is Kate’s mother heart one we should be studying? If she’s writing letters to her children, why on earth are we all reading over their shoulders? I wonder how well she knows all those eight children. I wonder where she finds the time to know them all with all the speaking engagements she’s apparently been doing for years. At churches, no less. What are churches thinking, taking this young mom away from her kids? And what are publishing companies thinking, publishing her?

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Bob Vincent On Hell and God’s Compassion : part two

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This post is a continuation from yesterday. Today we have more from Bob Vincent on Hell and the Compassion of God.

Even if one rejects classical theism and denies God’s complete omniscience, this still does not get God off at the bar of human justice. At any point, seeing that his creation had gotten into such a mess with masses of people raping, murdering and enslaving others, he could have stopped it in some fashion or other. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t I? Would you allow one soul to go to hell? Would you not do everything in your power to manipulate a person so that he would freely choose to comply with whatever conditions were consistent with your own moral character? The Arminian and the Pelagian have no easier task than the Calvinist or the Hyper-Calvinist defending such a being before the court of human justice.

Soon every man will join hands with Satan and all the demons in hell to damn such a God to the very hell he has allowed to exist. But I won’t, nor will any who have come to know his sweet grace. I will not sit in judgment of this high God. He is wholly beyond me. He is the dreadful Sovereign, God the All Terrible, the one from whom heaven and earth must flee away. I will bow my knees and worship him because it is my bounden duty. Nor will I question him. He is Yahweh God of Armies. “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Psalm 131:1, 2.)

I do not question this God, because he is the God who is and there is no other. He can cast me into hell. He creates weal and woe. (Isaiah 45:1ff.) It isn’t that I don’t have all these feelings, but I choose not to indulge them, remembering that I am dust—fallen, fallible and finite in the totality of my being, in the totality of my capacity to reason.

And truly—I take an oath—as God is my witness—as I have lived in this world, wandering in the mad labyrinth of the human mind—my own and others—I have concluded that I deserve no less fate than to burn in hell forever. Over the years I have counseled several hundred people with sexual problems—I have heard the damnedest things, the most bizarre things—sadly, I discover in all of this putrefying business that the seeds of the most unspeakable evil are in me, too. I have come to discover the real problem with the Pharisee’s prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” (Luke 18:11.) His real trouble was that he was like other men and didn’t know it.

In one of the imprecatory sections of the Law, Deuteronomy 28:53-57, we discover what is in the most gentle and sensitive man and woman—your mother and mine—you and me—they will kill and eat their own children and not share so much as a piece of afterbirth with the rest of the family. The longer I live, the more I study World History, the more I see the hidden side of human nature, the more I confess that man is evil—that I am evil—yet, paradoxically and by grace, I am a saint, too. Whatever else the Bible teaches about God and hell, it teaches that everyone who ends up in hell is suffering the consequences of his own behavior. The longer I live, the more I see this as true.

(t0 be continued)

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Bob Vincent on Hell and God’s Compassion : Part One

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For the next few days, I’ll be posting parts of a paper written by Bob Vincent, the pastor of a church in Alexandria Louisiana.

Hell

The God of Compassion and Human Misery

I love God, but there are things that my fallen, fallible and finite human nature dislikes about him. The number one thing that troubles me about God is that he allows hell to exist and that he allows any sentient creature to go there.

Our family has one dog and two cats:  a Rat terrier named Hamilton who suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a Siamese cat named Edgar and a huge, neurotic Polydactyl named Emilio—our sixteen year old, arthritic, totally deaf, partially blind, Boston terrier named Ralphie died in early December of 2004.  We really like these three animals and have spent a fair amount of money with the veterinarian keeping them healthy.  If they are in pain, we do our best to relieve them.

We care about most animals that way. If an animal were to be seriously injured, I would make a prima facie judgment. Could this animal make it to the veterinarian? What would be the quality of his life, were he to survive? If I determine that there is reasonable evidence that he can be saved, I will drop what I am doing and take him into town. If I conclude that he is hopelessly gone, I will fetch my 357 revolver and shoot the poor creature through the skull, thus putting him out of his misery. It would cause me psychological pain to do it—I know that because I’ve done it before—but I would relieve the suffering because I care about the feelings of an animal: “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10.)

If one of my animals persistently wandered off into traffic, and I knew about it and did nothing, I believe that I would be responsible for his suffering were he to get hit. Now if I feel that way about dogs, cats, raccoons and squirrels, what about other sentient creatures—what about the one species that was directly created by God and made in his image? Surely I must feel some compassion for the whole of humankind, from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to Ted Bundy and the neighborhood exhibitionist. That compassion has been tested, as, for example, some years ago when a man confessed in my office that he had raped a child. But even there, in spite of all that he had done, I felt compassion for him, for he was both victimizer and victim himself, having been gang raped as a new recruit in the United States Army by some of his fellow soldiers.

One of the things that troubles me most about God is that he has allowed this world with its endless cycles of sin and death to go on and on, human beings not only reproducing themselves biologically, but reproducing their patterns of sin generationally. And worse than anything that ever has taken place on our planet is what awaits people after life—eternal separation from God in a place of unending, conscious agony. God could prevent all this. Why doesn’t he?

Modern man has mastered the art of manipulating the wills of the masses so that they truly desire the ever changing images of beauty, success and fulfillment that are pitched at them through magazines, newspapers, television and the cinema. Free will is not destroyed, simply massaged, not unlike the way that a man wins the love of a woman—one of the things that caused Solomon to wonder. (Proverbs 20:19.) Do not successful parents benevolently manipulate the wills of their children so that their little ones desire to do that which pleases the parents? Can God not do the same? Can he not woo the whole human race to Christ without violating our wills? Is he less competent than Hollywood and Madison Avenue?

If God can prevent any sentient being from ending up in hell, why doesn’t he do it? “The eternal fire (was) prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41.) But what about even Satan himself and his poor minions, the pathetic fallen spirits that were primordially duped by him? I don’t even want the demons to burn in the unrelenting, eternal fires of Gehenna, in that place where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, where the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, once the inexorable sentence is passed. (Mark 9:48; Revelation 14:11.)

(to be continued)

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Tebow Defended

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Well, this is a positive outcome from the Tebow ad business. Sally Jenkins is pro-choice, but she can see the hypocrisy of the women’s rights groups. Good on her.

She starts her article with:

I’ll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won’t endear me to the “Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep,” otherwise known as DOLL, but I’ll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

And it gets better from there. Great stuff. Go read.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 1 Peter 2:12

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Umm…Can You Say Hypocrisy?

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This one needs to be filed in the “H is for hypocrite?” folder.

What is wrong with these people? Where is the ACLU? Why are they not screaming over the blatant censorship that these women’s advocacy groups are attempting?


The gay groups are not happy, either. For one thing CBS decided not to air an ad for ManCrunch.com, a gay dating service.

CBS rejected a commercial on Friday for gay dating Web site, ManCrunch, saying it didn’t meet network standards. The ad features a Packers fan and a Vikings fan taunting one another across the couch, until an accidental brush of their hands in the chip bowl sends sparks of an entirely different sort flying and (much to the discomfort of a stoic third friend watching the game with them) the two men make out. CBS deliberated almost two weeks before announcing it was rejecting the ad.

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation President Jarrett Barrios released a statement saying that there seemed to be a “homophobic double standard” in the network’s decision…

Here’s what I think: Gay dating services have the right to advertise, Focus on the Family has the right to buy time to air their message, and CBS has the right to run the ads they want. What is the big deal? It’s not like CBS doesn’t regularly run perverted ads. It’s not like the Christians have equal time. But the gay and women’s advocacy groups want to make it, I think, so that Christians have no time at all.

Oh well. God is bigger than all the sinners put together. One day they will bow to the name of Jesus and confess that he is Lord. One day God’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea!

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Calvinists — Those Horrid Heretics

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Seems like everywhere I go Calvinists are accused of being a hateful heretics—people that take pleasure in judging others and that long to rejoice over poor sinners in hell.

I figured if I’m going to be accused of being mean-spirited, I might as well dish up a bit of crankiness. That and a good chuckle every once in a while:




Oh, good grief! I’ve watched it several times and it cracks me up every time. Oooh that young woman is so nasty.

Nasty, nasty Calvinist.

Of course the Bible also has some choice words about false witnesses and slanderers. So the fellow that created this video is not going to get off without a few stripes, I’ll wager.

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Inaugural Prayer

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What would you pray at the inauguration if you were invited to pray? That question was asked on an email list I’m on.

Bret L. McAtee, a pastor of a CRC in Charlotte Michigan, answered this way:

Most Just and Benevolent God of The Lord Jesus Christ.

We confess this morning that you are the God above all gods – The Creator God of all the earth. You are the one who determines the end from the beginning and you hold the hearts of all potentates in your palm to do with as you please.

We come before you as a people you have repeatedly blessed throughout our history, and we confess that we have sinned repeatedly and high highhandedly done violence against thy tender mercies. Though we Americans are not all Christian we understand that just as you threw out the Canaanites of old from the land for their violation against your just standards so you hold all of us today – Christian and non-Christian alike – accountable for our sins – both public and private.

For the sake of thy Crucified, Resurrected and Ruling Son we pray that you might be pleased to send all of us an awareness, born of thy Spirit, to make us conversant with our sin and idolatry. Be pleased, for the sake of Jesus to cause us to see our wickedness that we might be instructed to flee to Christ who alone is the propitiation for sin and who alone can heal us, our families, our Churches, and our Nation.

Be with our President most Excellent Father. Cause him to lead us in repentance. Where he stands in need of humbling himself before you we pray that you might grant it. Be pleased, we beg of you, to make our President a nursing father to thy Holy Church so that all the people of this Nation might be blessed.

As the Prophet prayed of old so we ask in this invocation, “In wrath remember Mercy.”

Do all this we pray that thy name might be magnified, so that thy Royal Son Jesus may be made known and so that thy present full Kingdom might be increased so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord might cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

In the name of Jesus Christ – the one alone mediator between God and Man – we pray

Amen.

I’m thinking we should all be praying like this even though no one has invited us to offer prayer at the inauguration.

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Improving Upon Scripture

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I just finished Tosca Lee’s, Demon: a memoir. I would never have read the book if it wasn’t getting rave reviews from everyone and strong recommendations from people whose opinions I respect.

Now that I have read it am I glad I did?

Well, the book is a work of art, that’s for sure. The writing is wonderful. Tosca Lee knows how to turn a phrase. Also, the gospel is presented. It is clear that man’s sin creates a breach between him and God, and God became flesh and shed his blood to save man. That much is clear.

Another good thing in the book is that the main character sees himself as a good man in the beginning of the book, but by the end of the book he sees himself as a monster.

I can see why people like this book. It’s a departure from the normal way [read "preachy way"] Christian books present the gospel. It feels fresh. This gospel is spoken from the mouth of a demon.

That’s all well and good.

My main problem with the book is with what I see as a subtle message that scripture is not quite good enough.

In Demon, Lucian, the demon, gives Clay, the main character, a vision of the fall of Satan and of the creation of the world. Clay sees it all in a vivid dream. Later he goes to read the Biblical account of creation and finds it “recounted with all the emotion of a recipe.” He reads the first two chapters of Genesis and finds them dry and rote. But when he reads the first two chapters of the Bible, and adds in the things he’s learned from the demon, the text, dead and cold, “comes to life.”

With another passage of scripture, Clay finds the demon’s account to be “more vivid” and “more compelling” than scripture alone.

I’m offended by the suggestion that a demon’s account can improve upon scripture. I understand this is a novel and it’s a fictional character who believes the demon’s story is better than scripture, but I think the whole point of the book is to do for me what the fictional demon does for the fictional protagonist–give me a fresh view of scriptural events. I found I liked the traditional view better than the fresh view.

I had problems with the fresh view of the spiritual realm. Sometimes demons were unable to approach praying Christians, other times they were able to kill them. No explanation on why they were allowed to kill sometimes and not other times. Jesus commanded the demons in scripture and they had to obey. Do they still have to obey?

The Father took a back seat to Satan in the beginning of the book (Satan was glorious, God was offstage; Satan screamed insults, God kept silent with his back turned) and the risen Christ took a backseat to demons in the latter part. Does he rule over the demons? If so it wasn’t apparent.

And then, after the fresh view, the end of the book, I thought, added more of the “low view of scripture” stuff.

*spoiler alert*
If (as the demon asserts) demons hate God and are bent on stealing humans from him and if they hate humans and want to see them damned to hell, why would this demon tell Clay, the protagonist, that the Bible is true? Why would he warn Clay that he was dying and he needed to believe in Christ before he died?

His motivation for telling Clay everything is so that when Clay still refused to believe, even in the face of such evidence “there will be at least one of El’s precious clay humans more damned to hell than I!”

What? We’ll be more damned to hell for disbelieving the testimony of demons?

It’s very possible that every man who goes to hell is worse off than the fallen angels. It’s possible that to turn down the grace offered in Christ makes us doubly worthy of damnation. I don’t know. But a man who refused to believe a demon would not be more damned than any other man.

It’s not as if the demon’s testimony is more sure than scripture so all the people who have rejected scripture are less damned or equally damned but the one man who has heard the truth from the demon’s lips is the “one” precious man who is more damned than the demons. The man is not worse off for rejecting the demon’s testimony of the crucified Christ than he is for rejecting scriptural truth offered by the apostles or by a minister or by a neighbor lady. To reject Christ is equally damnable no matter who offers him.

I find the scriptural presentation of Christ to be far superior to what the demon gave us in his memoir, and to imply that the demon’s testimony is more sure than scripture is…well…disturbing, to put it mildly.

It’s disturbing because we live in a day where scripture is seen as irrelevant and needing embellishment.

I don’t care if it’s a demon or the Virgin Mary doing the visitation: Visions are not more reliable than scripture.

I had a friend, a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, who was drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy but he had trouble accepting their position that Mary was the co-redemptrix and mediatrix for man. So he prayed and prayed and prayed asking God to show him if it was OK to join the Eastern church. He kept praying. For weeks. And finally Mary came to him in a vision and told him it was OK. It was OK for him to pray to her–she was alive–and the Orthodox reverence of her was fine. So he joined the Russian Orthodox Church. I don’t think he was willing to take “no” for an answer. Scripture is clear on the matter. Mary is not the mediator between God and man. But my friend prayed until he got a better word. A word that superseded Scripture.

I see Demon: a memoir advocating the same nonsense.

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