Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

Is Love Wins a Loser? (Part 1)
Dr. Robert L. Sumner, Editor

A Major Book Review . . .

Is Love Wins a Loser?

By the Editor

LOVE WINS: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, by Rob Bell; HarperOne, An Imprint of Harper-Collins Publishers, New York, NY; 8 Chapters, 202 Pages; $22.99

[First, a word about the author’s style: he rarely, if ever, gives an exact biblical quote, just the chapter. Perhaps he feels you can find it yourself if you are interested. The translation he uses is Today’s New International Version.]

When you pick up this book and look at the cover, front and back, your attention is drawn to a picture of Bell with his shirtsleeves rolled up and gazing up at the statement: “‘God loves us. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. Unless you do not respond the right way. Then God will torture you forever in hell.’ Huh?”

That is hardly what one would expect on the cover of a book purporting to be a biblical discussion by an evangelical of the Afterlife, especially as it relates to Heaven and Hell. And the problem is further compounded by the publisher’s blurb below it: “Rob Bell is a central figure for his generation and for the way that evangelicals are likely to do church in the next twenty years.” Evangelicals? Do church? If so, Heaven help us!

When we opened the book one of the first things we saw was a picture (the only one in the book) of a cross as a bridge to Heaven with people walking over the cross/bridge to Glory. I recognized it immediately as the one my dear, late friend, Evangelist Robert G. Nicholas (his wife, Pearl, was a gifted poet and artist; one son is president of Shasta Bible College in northern California) had on the cover of his gospel tract that circled the globe in millions of copies and won an untold number of people to Christ. In fact, so many people wrote in response to the decision form that he finally left his address off – he couldn’t handle all the mail.

As for the picture itself it was a painting made by my friend Bob’s step-mother, a godly lady who loved the Lord. I don’t know whether Bell’s use of it is a copyright infringement or if the picture is now in public domain, but Dr. Nicholas says his grandmother had the original painting hanging on a wall in her house. As for his father, he said he gladly gave permission to one and all to use it, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted it to be used in this book in this manner.

Be that as it may, Bell asked his sister Ruth if she remembered it and she responded, “Of course, it gave us all the creeps.”

The creeps? All of us? Quite frankly, it never gave me the creeps and I was thrilled to look at it because it reminded me no one has to go to Hell since Christ died on the cross to provide a bridge to Glory for anyone so desiring to pass over into Heaven.

You might say that right at the start I realized Bell was coming from a somewhat different direction than where I and other evangelicals have always started in Scripture when looking at eternity and the afterlife.

Bell has a lot of silly straw men he sets up to knock down throughout the book, such as the idea of people floating around on clouds forever. That is foolish, of course. But since Nahum 1:3 says, “The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet” (emphasis added), wouldn’t that mean we would be following Jesus wherever He went?” That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

But one of his very first straw men is, “Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?” And this was at the start of only the seventh short paragraph in chapter one.

He doesn’t answer, so I will. No, God doesn’t send anyone to Hell (Bell uses the lower case for Hell – and Heaven – throughout his book, but since they are real places like Grand Rapids, North America, London, Africa and China, I always capitalize them; for cussing, perhaps the lower case would be correct) “for things they did in their few finite years of life.” All the sins of all people of all races and all ages were placed by God upon His Son at the cross. He paid the price, the penalty for every one of those sins. People, therefore, do not go to Hell because of those sins, but because the Lord Jesus Christ is not received as personal Lord and Savior. A preacher who calls himself ‘an evangelical’ should know that. It is, perhaps, one of the simplest and most repeated truths in the Bible.

So the answer to the first part of Bell’s rhetorical question he doesn’t answer (he leaves a lot of them unanswered in this book) is “No, God does not!”

Even before this, he has an illustration on the opening page of chapter one about Mahatma Gandhi. It seems Bell’s church had an art show and one of his members (we assume she was a member; at least she was a participant in the show) had an entry with a quote from Gandhi. A person attending the show had attached a piece of paper to the exhibit saying, “Reality check: He’s in hell.”

Bell’s response (I’ll give it the way he gave it so you can see what we meant about the wasted space in this book; the rest of the quotes we’ll give in this paper’s style to save our space) was:

“Really?

“Gandhi’s in hell?

“He is?

“We have confirmation of this?

“Somebody knows this?

“Without a doubt?

“And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?”

This took seven paragraphs and eight lines in his book. (We acknowledge, of course, a writer’s right to use his own style. Some complain I use too much italic and boldface.)

Our response is a [biblical] reality check: First, Gandhi was born a pagan and died a pagan (Hindu). That is a matter of history. Second, Gandhi, in his own words, tells of a place in his life when he made a deliberate, conscious rejection of Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Third, there is not a line, not even a hint by any of his biographers or the historians that he ever changed his mind. Fourth, Jesus Christ Himself said, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Fifth, both our Lord and His apostles said repeatedly that false prophets, especially religious ones, should be exposed. Even Bell admits religious false prophets are the worst kind.

Ipso facto, based on the facts as we know them, Gandhi is in Hell. So, what’s your problem, Mr. Bell?

To ask Bell the questions he asked us: Do you have confirmation that he isn’t in Hell? Do you know this? Beyond a doubt? And you have taken on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know? Really?

Bell sarcastically asks, “… which is more terrifying to fathom: the billions who burn forever or the few who escape this fate?”

And he continues his sarcasm by asking how one ends up being one of the ‘going to Heaven’? “Chance? Luck? Random selection? Being born in the right place, family, or country? Having a youth pastor who ‘relates better to kids’?”

The answer, of course, is “none of the above.” It is in the verse just quoted – and scores of others like it – “he that believeth on the Son.”

But then Bell asks, “What kind of faith is that? Or, more important: What kind of God is that?” (emphasis added).

This is very serious; he is questioning the character of Almighty God if there is a Hell, especially the kind of Hell preachers have always talked about! A little insignificant man in Michigan is questioning the God of the Universe about what He said in His Book? However, the biblical answer to his “what kind of God is that?” is that He is a gracious and loving God who “so loved the world” that He sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross at Calvary nearly 2,000 years ago in behalf of “every person who ever lived” (to use Bell’s book title expression), providing a way of escape from the horrors of that eternal Hell.

Then Bell questions about ones saved and ones lost, “… why is it that those who make this claim are almost always part of the group that’s ‘in’?” I guess it is because they are the ones who take God at His Word, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bell?

He jumps next to the funeral of a young man killed in an automobile accident who “told people he was an atheist.” And someone responded, “So there’s no hope then.” And Bell tries to wax eloquent, “No hope? Is that the Christian message? ‘No hope’? Is that what Jesus offers the world? Is this the sacred calling of Christians – to announce that there’s no hope?”

That is a deliberate, twisted message of what Christians proclaim – and have always proclaimed. They announce there is hope. That hope is in Christ and His love, proven and provided at Calvary. Trust Him and you go to Heaven. Fail to trust Him and His servants must warn you that you’ll be lost forever in Hell. That’s what Jesus said. And pity the poor man that dares defy God’s declarations.

From there, Bell brings up the ‘age of accountability,’ something the Bible doesn’t mention. What age that is, Bell doesn’t know – and indicates he doesn’t. Nor do I. Obviously, the background of the person, his or her biblical opportunities and training, along with many other questions come into play about when an individual reaches the state that makes him personally accountable for his sins. Where God is silent, Bell and Sumner should be mum also. The only thing we can be sure of in this is, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25).

Bell says if a baby could grow up and not believe wouldn’t it be better to terminate [he means kill] him prior to his twelfth birthday (oh, perhaps Bell does think he knows the age when one becomes accountable: age 12). That, of course, is silly talk, the foolish declaration of a Bob Ingersoll, or a Thomas Paine, or a Richard Dawkins, certainly not becoming someone calling himself a Christian, a disciple of the Son of God. And how could a mere mortal know whether someone else was going to believe sometime in his or her life? You know, perhaps get saved at age 88?

But Bell loves these hypothetical cases; most of his arguments are built on them. The entire theme of Love Wins, in fact, is philosophy, not theology.

Yet Bell is not done with the young atheist. He wonders what he could “have had to happen … to change his future? Would he have had to perform a specific rite or ritual? Or take a class? Or be baptized? Or join a church? Or have something happen somewhere in his heart?”

While the answer to all of that is “none of the above,” from there Bell goes into a song and dance about what should happen in the heart? Is it a prayer? What kind of prayer? And he goes on ad infinitum about how it should be. He finally says “all that matters is how you respond to Jesus,” and he says that answer “totally resonates with me.” And with me.

But then he goes on, “Which Jesus?” And he finds a far-out incident (the reality of it doesn’t “resonate with me,” but I guess there are such twisted minds out there) of a girl growing up being repeatedly raped by her father while reciting the Lord’s Prayer and singing Christian hymns, and Bell asks, “That Jesus?”

And Bell wonders what about Christians rounding up Muslims and machine gunning them, “That Jesus?” (His story would match reality better if it was Muslims rounding up Christians and killing them – something that goes on daily all over the world.)

Finally he boldly announces, “Some Jesuses should be rejected.” Didn’t he masterfully destroy that straw man? Don’t you see that these real or fancied incidents have nothing to do with the Bible and its teaching about Heaven, Hell – or salvation in Christ?

And do you see what I mean about Bell writing in the style of Ingersoll, Paine or Dawkins?

From there he goes into the matter of the failure of Christians. He asks, “What if the missionary has a flat tire” when going to preach Christ at a village and misses the appointment? Is someone else’s eternity resting in your hands?

Well, the truth of that is why all of us should be about the Master’s business, daily, continually, all our life long. This truth is also born out in Ezekiel 3 and again in Ezekiel 33, the matter of “bloody hands” on the part of the failure of all not sounding the warning who know of the danger.

But even if we fail (which is Bell’s point), if Paul was right in Romans – and we are convinced beyond all cavil he was – the warning in nature is sufficient to make all “guilty before God,” even if the Name of Jesus is never named. Paul wrote there: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:18-20, emphasis added; see entire context).

And while Bell rambles around the mulberry bush of his own creation, he tosses in his conviction that a woman wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. Well, bully for her! It must be all right for a woman to teach the deep things of God to men; Paul must have been wrong in I Timothy 2:11, 12 and I Corinthians 14:34, 35, for example. [We assume here Bell believes Priscilla (with husband Aquilla) wrote Hebrews, but as we noted in our 544-page commentary, Hebrews: Streams of Living Water, that pair’s authorship is “highly doubtful for many reasons … not the least of which is the use of the masculine me in 11:32.”]

Then he argues about evangelicals saying salvation is a “personal relationship with God through Jesus.” If so, he asks how come that phrase isn’t found in the Bible? While he is technically right that it is not, the idea starts with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and is saturated throughout the following 66 inspired Books. And the phrase Bell uses, “our hearts being transformed,” is not found either, but that’s a small detail. (The idea of both expressions – personal relationship and hearts transformed – is found repeatedly in Scripture, however, even if the ‘exact wording’ is not!) We really don’t know what his point is here; the entire book seems geared to raising questions (mostly without answers) to traditional evangelical belief.

From there he notes that if we can’t save ourselves by our works – if it is merely “accept,” “confess,” “believe” – aren’t they verb actions? It has been a rare cult that hasn’t used the same argument against sola faith, faith alone.

Then somebody (a voice, he says) reminds Bell – and us, supposedly – that this is just a story. A story? We thought it was the verbally inspired message of Almighty God to mankind that contains everything we need to know about this life and the next one. [Many times in the book Bell refers to the Bible as “a story.” It is strange. But then, to Bell the record of creation in Genesis is just “a poem.”]

So far our review has merely covered approximately half of the first chapter. We’ll stop the page by page review (we don’t want a 50-page issue of The Biblical Evangelist) and merely highlight some of the rest of the book’s teaching.

Bell on “Heaven”

He has a chapter on Heaven which he starts with the previously mentioned picture painted by my friend’s stepmother. Neither his sister nor Bell (we learn here) liked it (“it gave us all the creeps”). So he proceeds to tell all the sillies that uninformed people have said about Heaven, starting with white robes (which the Scripture does talk about, by the way) and asking whether one can play sports in a white robe, or what if you spill food on it? And, of course, he has to talk about Peter the Greeter at the pearly gate (“like a bouncer at a club,” is the way he puts it), an invention of Roman Catholicism and something of which Scripture does not speak.

While the important thing is going to Heaven, Bell makes light of confrontational evangelism such as folks going door-to-door to witness, or bumper stickers reminding folks of eternity. We aren’t too enthused about the latter, especially when the drivers cut others off or exercise other road rudeness, but our Lord Himself taught His disciples “door-to-door evangelism” and the apostles and early disciples practiced it. So why knock it?

But in this section Bell makes an amazing statement. Listen to it: “This is why Jesus doesn’t tell people how to ‘go to heaven.’ It wasn’t what Jesus came to do.”

Oh? He didn’t? It wasn’t?

Perhaps Bell has never read John 14:2-7, where Jesus said: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him” (emphasis added; actually, the entire passage in John 14, but this is enough to make our point – it was one of the things He came to do and He did tell people how to go to Heaven).

To Bell, Jesus was not concerned with eternity, only “this age” and “the age to come” (which most evangelicals call the millennium). In short, as he makes clear, nothing other than life on this earth! Most of us believe in what Bell references as the millennium, but when he says things like “war, rape, greed, injustice, violence, pride, division, exploitation, disgrace” will be gone forever, he ignores the end of the millennium and then the dawning of another new age – eternity!

If he is going to accept the ‘good’ in the millennium (a sort of Heaven on earth) he will have to accept the ‘bad’ at the end, when Satan is loosed for a little season and another rebellion against God occurs (a sort of Hell on earth). The prophets he quotes spoke of both, the time of blessing and the time of cursing. No one has the right to pick and choose what he will believe about the two.

In this chapter Bell says, “Jesus makes no promise that in the blink of any eye we will suddenly become totally different people who have vastly different tastes, attitudes, and perspectives.”

Oh? I thought that was what He meant when He instructed John to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (I John 3:1-3, emphasis added). That sounds like perfection “in the blink of an eye” to me.

This also answers his question, “To portray heaven as bliss, peace, and endless joy is a beautiful picture, but it raises the question: How many of us could handle it, as we are today?” The answer is ‘no one’; that is why He is going to change us in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when we are caught up to meet Him and enter His Heaven!

Bell talks about “the speculation about heaven – and, more important, the confusion.” Boy, are folks ever going to be confused when they read his speculations about that Land that is fairer than day!

He speaks of the hard work of a woman in horrible circumstances trying to raise a child and her good ‘character and substance.’ Bell says that her God can trust her to run the world. There is one thing wrong with his picture he paints here: there is not one word of her faith in God or her trust in Christ, whether it is called “personal relationship” or “heart being transformed.” Is she going to “run the world” because of her hard times? Or maybe – just maybe – because of faith in the Living Lord which he doesn’t mention?

Bell says the Greek word aion “refers to a period of time with a beginning and an end.” Not always; not necessarily. The Greek scholar W. E. Vine, author of the widely used Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says, “The force attaching to the words is not so much that of the actual length of a period, but that of a period marked by spiritual or moral characteristics,” and he illustrates by its use as an adjective (aiōnious) in John 17:3.

Vine says, “The phrases containing this word should not be rendered literally, but consistently with its sense of indefinite duration. Thus eis ton aiōna does not mean ‘unto the age’ but ‘for ever’ (see, e.g., Heb.5:6). The Greeks contrasted that which came to an end with that which was expressed by this phrase, which shows that they conceived of it as expressing interminable duration.” The contrast of which he speaks is between aiōnious (eternal) and proskairos (for a season).

In a work we publish (Problems of the Afterlife: What Destiny Awaits Unbelievers? by Samuel Fisk; Biblical Evangelism Press, Raleigh, NC), in a section “Light from Leading Lexicons,” Fisk says: “Arndt and Gingrich’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, recognized on every hand by those wanting to know the accurate meaning of Greek terms, renders aionios simply as ‘eternal,’ citing secular as well as sacred examples. On its significance in the New Testament it suggests three elements conveyed in the meaning: ‘1. without beginning … long ages ago … 2. without beginning or end … 3. without end.’ Then on the third of these it presents ‘of God’s judgment,’ ‘of eternal life,’ ‘of heavenly glory,’ etc., giving examples of each.”

Then, after quoting Kittel’s 10-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on aionios, Fisk says, “Incidently but significantly, Kittel, in a lengthy discussion of the meaning of aion, points out that even this base word on occasion has reference to eternity or that which is eternal, citing specific examples.”

Later Bell explains aion by students bored in class, looking at the clock while it ticks, and thinking later, “It felt like it was taking forever.” And he adds a thought about young lovers when together filled with such ecstasy hours feel like minutes. But God is not playing games or using His imagination. When He says forever He means forever.

And lest you misunderstand him, Bell says: “Let me be clear: heaven is not forever in the way that we think of forever …” And his best explanation of that is: “… when Jesus talked about heaven, he was talking about our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace and love in this life and the age to come” (emphasis by Bell in the original).

In short, he gives new meaning to some ministers’ sensational sermons, “War In Heaven!” Taken literally, World Wars I & II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc., etc., were and are taking place in the Christian’s Heaven today. I am confident (well, in light of the rest of the book, not too confident) that is not what he means, but it is what he is saying if Heaven is now.

But fearful you still don’t understand, he adds: “To say it again, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life lived now in connection to God” (emphasis added). While that is true of eternal life, he is not supposed to be talking about eternal life but about Heaven. That is like saying a young couple in New York City getting married and heading for Liberia to live their lives in missions are in Africa as soon as they are married. Apples and oranges – and eternal life and Heaven – are separate matters. Try to square Bell’s thought with John 14!

And repeating it by saying it again, as he does, doesn’t make it true: “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life that can endure and survive even death.” Of course eternal life [he keeps forgetting his subject is Heaven] starts the moment one gets saved – and it not only “can” survive death (Bell’s word), but it “will” survive death (Jesus’ word).