This article is not only in our newsletter but was sent as an email and posted on Facebook. Over the last several years, as I have desired to know Christ better, continually learning from the Bible and getting back to wanting to know theology more and more, I have been challenged with a continuing wave of thoughts by “progressive” thinkers who are in many ways attempting to re-define historic Christianity.
I have always been honest in where I fall on the scale of belief. I am conservative theologically but more progressive when it comes to methodology. The latter statement does not mean I would do something contrary to Scripture, but it does mean that I am not locked into a preset thought of things. As I study God’s Word and our world, it is important to meet people where they are at without compromising belief – Jesus did it and so should we.
Having said that, it is also important for believers to have their spiritual antenna up when it comes to things people are teaching. Postmodernism claims that there is no objective truth, and everything is questioned, including historic Christianity. This comes from some of the leaders of postmodern thought, and unfortunately, they are attempting to redefine Christianity in many ways. There is a growing movement to deny the existence of hell, a calling into question whether Jesus really is the only way to God (Jn. 14:6 are Jesus’ own words that He is), a denial of the Bible being without error, and going so far as to question Jesus’ own words.
Let me give you one quote from a blog that when I read it blew my mind. In writing regarding the idea of heaven and hell and what it really means, this blogger wrote as he saw the issue as having several problems:
"But it raises an exegetical problem as well: Jesus held an incorrect cosmology. Yes, of course our cosmology is probably wrong as well, or at least incomplete, but that doesn’t make Jesus’ cosmology any more right. Both Jesus and John the Baptist seem clearly to have embraced the ancient Hebraic belief in Sheol/Gehenna/Hades — i.e., a physical place of fires that the bodies of the damned are thrown. It seems merely wishful thinking when Aquinas, arguing that Jesus had full and perfect knowledge of all things, wrote, “Christ perfectly knows all human sciences.”"
This is what happens when we make our understanding of the Bible (anthrocentric – man-centered) instead of God-centered (Theocentric). When man begins to redefine the Bible to make it “relative” to our thinking, things like this happen. To say “Jesus held an incorrect cosmology” is dangerous at the least, all out heresy at worst. This writer misinterprets part of the Sheol/Gehenna/Hades discussion. Jews believed in an afterlife, and Jesus helped define the God view of the afterlife. To say that somehow Jesus got it all wrong or held an incorrect view leads to some serious questions. In fact, Jesus plainly stated why hell was made in the first place (Mt. 25:41) but that man chooses to reject God and faces eternal separation from Him.
God is loving, merciful, gracious, and kind, but He is also just, righteous and Holy. You cannot separate Who God is. He is all these and He desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) but not all will accept Him. Hell is not a place where God taunts or mocks people; it is a place where people who reject God and want nothing to do with Him have chosen for their eternal destiny.
Note that this same blogger said that “it seems merely wishful thinking” that Jesus would know perfectly all human sciences. How could He not. He is the Creator of all things (John 1:3; Col. 1:15-16) and to question Jesus’ knowledge is to question Who He is. When man begins to redefine what the Bible says we only drift further and further from the truth.
Why does this bother me you may ask? Our goal as a church is to help people become disciples of Jesus Christ. Disciples not only grow to know God better, but they change the world in which they live. They desire to impact people wherever God puts them, to live as “salt and light” and to touch the lives of people. Being a disciple is more than just being a “fan” of Jesus, it is being a follower. A disciple not only followed the teachings of their teacher, but also, if the lifestyle was worth following, they learned how to live from their teacher. They mimicked (in a good way) their life and held firmly to what they taught.
Jesus is the ultimate Teacher. He is God Himself, unmistaken in all things, including heaven and hell and all things pertaining to life. If we are to know about God and all that He has for us, we have to understand that Jesus is not mistaken, the Bible is God’s perfect record to man, and that we can trust what it says about all things. God wants us to be students of the Word and apply it to our lives, and if we don’t believe what it says, there is no “real-life” discipleship, there is nothing to cling to.
Our goal at Burwell is to live out the life-changing message of Christ and the Word of God. May we hold onto the truth revealed to us through God’s Word.
Pastor Scott
