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 2)
Dr. Robert L. Sumner, Editor

The trouble with Bell’s “heaven on earth” theory – and it is a theory, a very human theory – is that some of the most godly folk in the world (in Rwanda of which he speaks in the next chapter about being in a literal hell, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, China and other countries where Christians – and even pagans of a different faith than the regime in power) are persecuted beyond our comprehension. Try telling believers there they are in Heaven! And try telling the suffering pagans they are experiencing the Christians’ Heaven. Further, how could some Rwandans be in both Bell’s heaven and hell right now? His theology seems to have some serious contradictions.

But let’s bring it closer to home, on this side of all the oceans. All of us, probably, have had experiences where the most devout saint we knew was suffering incredibly, in daily, constant pain from rheumatoid arthritis or some other dread disease or infirmity. In addition, he or she had financial problems that would tempt some normal folk to commit suicide, trying to stretch a meager budget to the next Social Security check. Is that one experiencing Bell’s heaven on earth with the symbolism of golden streets, gates of pearl and incredible blessing?

Bell closes his Heaven chapter talking about “… Jesus’s invitation to heaven here and now, in this moment, in this place.” So Bell makes a massive, colossal blunder that wrecks his thesis: making synonymous eternal life and Heaven. They are not one and the same any more than Peter and John, while both apostles, were one and the same. In fact, perhaps Bell forgets what Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Bell says it is.

To put it in the words of a friend, “This world is as close to Heaven as the unsaved person will ever see. And this world is as close to Hell as the saved person will ever see. But this world is neither Heaven on earth or Hell on earth.”

Bell on “Hell”

His third chapter is Hell. He opens by saying some years back, when he was to speak at a theater in San Francisco, one of the protesters had stitched on the back of his jacket, “Turn or Burn.” While he makes light of it, my dear friend John R. Rice and literally hundreds of other preachers have preached and/or published sermons, “Turn or Burn.” But perhaps more to the point for Bell, Charles Haddon Spurgeon – called by many evangelicals the greatest preacher since Paul – also had a sermon, “Turn or Burn.” While that tribute to Spurgeon may be an exaggeration, his books and sermons are still circling the globe by the millions nearly 120 years after his decease (when he went to Heaven!) and even Bell and his friends know of him. On the other hand, most of us never even heard of Bell until his bad book became famous. And that is only due to the alleged unbelief therein.

Even our small local paper put comments about his book on the front page and telling of one area Methodist preacher who was fired for agreeing with it. But, then, attacks on the Bible have always circled the globe while, as the saying goes, truth is getting her boots on.

After Bell makes light of ‘turn or burn’ he sets out to show us the word Hell is missing from the Bible, using the same arguments the Jehovah’s Witnesses have used for well over a century – and other Bible critics before them. He notes that ‘hell’ is found in the New Testament “roughly twelve times … almost exclusively by Jesus himself.” Actually it is found in over a score of verses in the New Testament, but Bell is talking about the Greek Gehenna, literally Valley of Hinnon, Jerusalem’s “city dump.”

Well, was Jesus using Gehenna in the sense of a garbage dump southwest of town, or was He speaking of a literal place where the human garbage of the world is disposed? Let’s look at how He used it:

“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:29, 30). Was He talking about having your carcass tossed on the city dump? I don’t think so!

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Again, was He talking about your body being thrown in the dump instead of getting a decent burial? That’s not possible; He wasn’t just warning about someone killing the body; he was also talking about the soul, which is separated from the body at death. He wasn’t warning, “Fear him who has power to cast your soul into the garbage dump.”

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Matthew 23:15). Was Christ saying they make proselytes “twofold more the child of the garbage dump” than themselves? Well, possibly; but it sure violates the normal meaning, doesn’t it?

“Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). What, pray tell, is “the damnation of Jerusalem’s garbage dump”? The more Bell waxes eloquent, the sillier he appears.

Bell moves on to a second word translated Hell (II Peter 2:4), the Greek word tartarōsas, which Bell says is “a term Peter borrowed from Greek mythology.” Did you get that? It is a mythological term, and one he dismisses in two sentences in his book! The recognized Greek scholar Archibald Thomas Robertson goes into a little more detail, saying it is “First aorist active particle of tartaroō, late word (from tartaros, old word in Homer, Pindar, LXX, Job 40:15; 41:23, Philo inscriptions, the dark and doleful abode of the wicked dead like the Gehenna of the Jews), found here alone save in a scholion of Homer. Tartaros occurs in Enoch 20:2 as the place of punishment of the fallen angels, while Gehenna is for apostate Jews.”

Given a choice between Robertson and Bell, I’ll take Robertson every time!

And, then of course, there is Hades, the word Jesus used in telling about Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. There the tormented rich man begs for a moist finger to touch and cool his tongue. Was that to Bell the torment of thirst in the Hell of the garbage dump? Nah, Bell says he just wanted Lazarus to “serve” him (these stereotypes are hard to shake, like blacks and whites in our day). Since the rich man still sees himself as better than Lazarus, his ‘hell’ hasn’t helped much, I guess. Bell says, “He’s in Hades, but he still hasn’t died the kind of death that actually brings life.”

Is he saying in Hell someone could die “the kind of death that actually brings life”? If so, will that help? To Bell, the tale (“a brilliant, surreal, poignant, subversive, loaded story”) is just the theme of a ‘social revolution’ Jesus was introducing.

He has more about that story, but I won’t bore you.

What about the passages that don’t use the word “hell” but clearly talk about judgment and punishment? Many are stronger than those using the word, but Bell ignores them like the bubonic plague. In a rare one or two he mentions, he offers two views. One is a political application: the Romans will crush you. Second, there is a religious application: people who think they are “in” perhaps are not.

That certainly is a far-fetched idea for passages like, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth … So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42, 49-50).

Perhaps Bell can get his ideas out of such statements (he does have a good imagination), but quite frankly we cannot.

Does Hell start in this life? Listen to the highest authority, our Lord Jesus Christ. “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:26-29).

When does Jesus, who was given the authority by the Father, “execute judgment”? When will “damnation” take place? After those in their graves hear His voice and come forth to “the resurrection of damnation” (Hell). That doesn’t sound like this life, does it?

What about “And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (II Thessalonians 1:7-9)?

If he even mentioned this zinger, I missed it. So I’ll help him out. “Flaming fire” (en puri phlogos) is literally “in a fire of flame, fire characterized by flame,” Robertson says, and he adds “eternal destruction” (olethron aiōnion) is a phrase not found elsewhere in the New Testament “but is in IV Macc. 10:15 of the tyrant (Antiochus Epiphanes). Destruction (cf. I Thess. 5:3) does not mean here annihilation, but, as Paul proceeds to show, separation from the face of the Lord (apo prosōpou tou kuriou) and from the glory of his might (kai apo tēs doxēs tēs ischuos autou), an eternity of woe such as befell Antiochus Epiphanes. Aiōnios in itself only means age-long and papyri and inscriptions give it in the weakened sense of a Caesar’s life (Milligan), but Paul means by age-long the coming age in contrast with this age, as eternal as the New Testament knows how to make it. See on Matt. 25:46 for use of aiōnios both with zōēn, life, and kolasin, punishment.”

In short, Paul didn’t think Hell was part of this age, but in contrast to it.

By the way, Matthew 25:46 is one Bell also forgets, so we’ll give a reminder: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” The words “everlasting” and “eternal” are exactly the same, aiōnion. If one is not forever, neither is the other. Here Robertson puts it: “It comes as near to the idea of eternal as the Greek can put it in one word. It is a difficult idea to put into language. Sometimes we have ‘ages of ages’ (aiōnes tōn aiōnōn).”

My physically blind seminary theology professor, whose insight into the Word of God ran deep, Emory H. Bancroft, quoted C. H. Mackintosh for us: “If it be maintained that the word ‘everlasting’ does not mean everlasting when applied to the punishment of the wicked, what security have we that it means everlasting when applied to the life, blessedness, and glory of the redeemed? What warrant has anyone, be he ever so learned, to single out seven instances from the seventy in which the Greek word ‘aionios’ is used, and say it does not mean everlasting, but in all the rest it does? None whatever.”

And how about Jude 14, 15 that Bell overlooked: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Or Revelation 21:8, given by the Apostle of Love, John the Beloved Disciple: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

This language is too plain, too blunt to dismiss with jokes, sarcasm or to pass off as something from mythology.

What about Sodom and Gomorrah as samples of Hell, which Peter emphasizes (II Peter 2:6, ff)? Bell explains it this way: Ezekiel had a series of visions showing God’s promise to “restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters” to “what they were before. (chap. 16).” Never mind that the judgments in the New Testament refer to the Gentile inhabitants of those cities (Canaanites) in the days of Lot (with an application to everyone else), while in the case of Ezekiel it relates to the Old Testament people of God, primarily Jerusalem. I guess he found the right ‘words’ to put together and that was all that mattered to him.

Bell says, “Jesus did not use hell to try and compel ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die.” Oh? Luke 13:2-5 sound a lot like that to me, don’t they to you? “And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

If He wasn’t telling them they needed to repent or they’d end up in Hell, He sure fooled a lot of us simpleminded folk that haven’t been educated as well as Bell, didn’t He? He uses other passages in Jeremiah, Hosea and Zephaniah to argue the same (where God, alas, is talking about the restoration of His chosen earthly people, not even remotely referring to Hell).

Bell jokes about Paul handing over apostates like Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan (“Is there paperwork involved?”). Actually, to Bell, these apostates are good old boys who are just going to “grow” and “become better” through the experience.

He says, “But ‘forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used.” Oh?

And he goes on, “So when we read ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there. Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever.” This certainly seems to contradict what the Greek authority Robertson said above. (And to me, Bell is not worthy to shine Robertson’s shoes, much like John the Baptist said about Jesus in Matthew 3:11, Sumner paraphrase).

Another brilliant scholar, E. B. Pusey in his What is Faith As to Everlasting Punishment (a reply to Canon Farrar) declared: “Those who deny that any of the words used of future punishment in Holy Scripture express eternity, would do well to consider whether there is any way in which Almighty God could have expressed it, which they would have accepted, as meaning it … It is wisest, surely, to leave all blindly in His hands, from Whose words Christians, as a body, have received the belief in Hell, ever since He came on earth to redeem us from it. ‘Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints.’” Amen!

The biblical expression “unto the ages of the ages” is noteworthy. Dr. R. A. Torrey in his sermon “The Bible Hell,” which we published years ago in The Biblical Evangelist, said: “This expression is used twelve times in one book, eight times of the existence of God and the duration of His reign, once of the duration of the blessedness of the righteous, and in every remaining instance of the punishment of the beast, the false prophet, and the impenitent. It represents not years tumbling upon years, nor centuries tumbling upon centuries, but ages tumbling upon ages in endless procession. It is the strongest known expression for absolute endlessness.”

In short, if Hell – or Heaven for that matter – ever ceased, God would cease at the same time. All are of the same endless duration.

When he gets down to discussing about how we should think about Hell, Bell asks, “Do I believe in a literal hell?” and answers positively, “Of course.”

Isn’t that great? It might be, but then you discover the “literal hell” in which he believes is different from the one Christians have always accepted. His literal hell is children, suffering the loss of hands, legs and arms from genocide in Rwanda. After he says he believes in a ‘literal hell,’ he says, “Those aren’t metaphorical missing arms and legs.” That is the kind of hell in which Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Arthur Buttrick, Shailer Mathews and that crowd of 20^th century ‘religious infidels’ believed.

Does Bell believe in the Bible Hell? You be the judge. Here is how he ends his chapter on Hell:

To summarize, then, we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep without our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way.

And for that, the word ‘hell’ works quite well. Let’s keep it.

To Bell, Hell is just a word we need to describe troubled times here and now when we aren’t right with God, not in fellowship with Him.

The Sovereignty of God

With Heaven and Hell neatly disposed of, Bell goes on to a chapter, “Does God Get What God Wants?” The last sentence of his first paragraph, talking about statements of faith on church websites, he says, “Most of these lists and statements include a section on what the people in the church believe about the people who don’t believe what they believe.” For evangelicals, it is not for “people who don’t believe what they believe,” but don’t believe what the Bible says – and passages from the Bible are given to back it up.

Bell then gives samples and the first one he says is from “an actual church website” (sounds like this one will be really bad, right – an ‘actual’ church website?): “The unsaved will be separated forever from God in hell.” Sounds like a pretty good, biblical statement to me! How about you?

He gives several “website” examples, then says the same crowd affirm “the goodness and greatness of God” who is mighty, powerful, loving, unchanging, sovereign, full of grace and mercy, and all-knowing, and also the One that “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2).”

And Bell questions why, if God is good and great and wants everyone to be saved, “but in this, the fate of billions of people,” He is “not totally great. Sort of great. A little great.” And he worries, “Will all people be saved, or will God not get what God wants? Does this magnificent, mighty, marvelous God fail in the end?” Note the clear implication that everyone gets saved in the end or God has failed. It is either universalism (God saves everyone) or He will forever be a failure!

This inanity, of course, ignores the whole picture of God’s plan for mankind, namely, the inclusion of man’s free will. God does not want, to dwell in Glory with Him forever, little creatures He can wind up tight, turn them lose so they’ll run around Heaven shouting, “I love God.” “God is great.” God is holy and good.” “God redeemed me.” And when they run down, wind them up again.

Nonsense! That is total twaddle, absolute claptrap.

Some Calvinists, it is true, have so misunderstood God’s sovereignty they think He even planned and ordered their sins, but there is not even a hint of such idiocy in the Bible.

While we were looking (hoping, actually) for a way to skip this chapter as irrelevant to his theme, we read his statements and the Scriptures he quoted saying all mankind will bow before Him, acknowledge His Lordship, etc.: “This insistence that God will be united and reconciled with all people is a theme the writers and prophets return to again and again.”

But there is not one paragraph, one line, one word in the Bible saying anyone who dies and leaves this life lost will have any opportunity to be saved or be eventually “united and reconciled” to God. A mighty, sovereign God making rebellious man admit their errors and acknowledge His true being is not the same as redeeming them.

Of course God is sovereign. Of course God does what He pleases. But all of what He does is outlined in Scripture and – like it or not – He is not going to change it for Bell or anyone else. God is a righteous Judge, not a Good Humor man handing out ice cream to the kiddies in exchange for their quarters.

Bell quotes Psalm 22 (he calls these details): “All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him – So everybody who dies will kneel before God, and ‘future generations’ will be told about the LORD. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!” And he multiplies passages like this, most of them having to do with Israel and restoration to the land.

Is Bell implying, as it appears, everyone is going to be saved? If so, that is the heresy of universalism. And, if not, what in the world is he saying?

“In the Bible,” he writes, “God is not helpless, God is not powerless, and God is not impotent.” Of course not! No one is saying differently. But that is not the issue. By the way, Spurgeon sees this passage in Psalm 22 (from verse 22 to verse 31) as deliverance, saying, “There is no salvation out of Christ. We must hold life, and have life as Christ’s gift, or we shall die eternally. This is very solid evangelical doctrine, and should be proclaimed in every corner of the earth, that like a great hammer it may break in pieces all self-confidence.”

Again Bell says, “God has a purpose. A desire. A goal. And God never stops pursuing it.” And he offers the trilogy of parables in Luke 15 as proof. But a woman finding a coin, a shepherd finding a sheep, or a son returning home is not people being saved, made ready for Heaven. We were warned in seminary – but perhaps Bell wasn’t – never to base doctrine on parables. They are illustrations, nothing more.

Later he references a letter Martin Luther wrote Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 about the possibility that people could turn to God after death: “Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?”

Bell calls it a good question, but doesn’t give us Luther’s insight. We are confident if he favored such a view Bell would have quoted it in boldface type.

He speaks of “an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years have assumed, affirmed, and trusted that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever, because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest of hearts.”

Oh, who are these “serious disciples,” of “untold number,” “across hundreds of years” that have “assumed, affirmed, and trusted” all will be saved “because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest of hearts.” Who are they? What are their names? Where did they say this? What kind of scholarship did they have? This kind of assertion is as meaningless in Bell’s book as it would be in a court of law, tossed out as hearsay.

He makes much of people –apparently preachers – telling of folks “pounding on the door, apologizing, repenting, and asking God to be let in only to hear God say through the keyhole: ‘Door’s locked. Sorry. If you had been here earlier, I could have done something. But now, it’s too late.’”

Sounds like Matthew 25:11-13, doesn’t it?

The trouble with Bell’s scenario, as we understand Scripture, is that then no one lost will pound on the door, repent, or beg God to let him in. At that time men will be like the lost sinners on earth during the great tribulation: “And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain” (Revelation 16:8-10). In the midst of all that torment, rebellious sinners refuse to repent.

According to Bell, it looks like God is losing again. But, then, Bell doesn’t think much of the Book of Revelation – apocalyptic, heavily symbolic – “a complex, enigmatic letter from a pastor named John filled with scenes of scrolls and robes and angels and plagues and trumpets and horses and dragons and beasts and bowls and prostitutes and horses. Women sit on scarlet beasts, swords come out of mouths, and in a ‘lake of fire’ death and Hades experience a ‘second death.’”

Alas, Bell is not above misrepresenting his opposition. He says some “find Jesus compelling” but don’t follow him “because of the parts about ‘hell and torment and all that.’ Somewhere along the way they were taught that the only option when it comes to Christian faith is to clearly declare that a few, committed Christians will ‘go to heaven’ when they die and everyone else will not, the matter is settled at death and that’s it” (emphasis added).

Only a “few” “committed Christians” go to Heaven? Come, come, Mr. Bell, you know that such is not the evangelical position. One picture John gives is: “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing” (Revelation 5:11, 12). The English Standard Version says “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,” which Robertson calls “a mild huseron-proteron.”

And another: “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, 10). Once again it is a crowd impossible for man to number. And this group is only from the Great Tribulation.

A few? These worshippers praising and worshipping God are not only so many it is impossible to number – they are coming literally from everywhere!

And so Bell, after misrepresenting ‘the evangelical position’ argues that his ‘story’ with a better ending – everyone right with God, happy, rejoicing – is much to be desired over the ending of woe for some – unrelenting punishment, a black hole of endless torment and misery. But we are not talking stories here; we are concerned with the infallible Word of God. And the true evangelicals are interested only in truth, not winning popularity contests.

The theme of this chapter seems to be: God wants everyone saved; God is all-powerful; everyone will be saved. If not, Bell does not know how to make himself clear – at least to an ignoramus like me!

Near the end of the chapter he asks, “Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” And what is Bell’s answer? Believe it or not, after more than 100 pages of God can’t lose, His will won’t be thwarted, love is going to win, he says, “those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.”

I kid you not!