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 3)
Dr. Robert L. Sumner, Editor

But at the same time he follows with the first really biblical statement we had read this far – even though it seems as out of place as a king size Sleep-Number bed in a shanty with no electricity or running water: “If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God allows us that freedom; we have the kind of license to that. If we want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God respects that desire on our part, and we are given a life free from any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with all God is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.”

However, our enthusiasm is inundated with cold water when we realize he is merely talking about the same “hell on earth” he’s been talking about all through the book. He is simply referencing time, not eternity. As such, it is mere fluff.

Dying to Live?

In his next chapter, “Dying to Live,” starts with talk about the cross – somebody named Eminem (I guess a rock star from what Bell said) making a comeback after five years from the scene and appearing with a cross around his neck – which leads Bell into a discussion of the Levitical animal sacrifices.

He notes that they were stopped when Christ came and are no longer necessary, but it was while trying to explain what happened on the cross that he made a statement that should curl the toes of every Bible-believer when he reads it. Calling the cross a “sacrificial metaphor in our modern world” [a metaphor, of course, is a figure of speech, an allegory, a simile]. Is that all the cross is?

He went on: “There's nothing wrong with talking and singing about how the 'Blood will never lose its power' and 'Nothing but the blood will save us.' Those are powerful metaphors. But we don't live any longer in a culture in which people offer animal sacrifices to the gods … What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand."

The biblical message has never been without blood. It started with the first sin by the first sinners in the Garden of Eden, and God Himself shed the first sacrificial lamb. That was followed by the rejection of the first man ever born into the world because it was bloodless (the fruit of human labor) and accepted the second born because it was based on the blood of the lamb, a sacrifice of faith.

Besides, who ordered the seemingly endless flow of blood on Jewish altars from the days of Aaron until the Jews ceased to have a nation? Wasn’t it God Himself? Should we make light of it? Bell concludes: the cross – and the blood – is no more important than the metaphors of other religions. Bell says, “The point, then, isn’t to narrow it to one particular metaphor, image, explanation, or mechanism. To elevate one over the others, to insist that there’s a ‘correct’ or ‘right’ one, is to miss the brilliant, creative work these first Christians were doing when they used these images and metaphors.”

So . . . think of that the next time you stand and sing, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

In this chapter Bell goes on to explain the Bible in a way few others would. He says, “One of the things you pick up in reading the Bible over time is that the writers were extremely clever, employing incredibly complex patterns with numbers and hints and allusions in their writings. Often just below the surface they would place another story, another point.”

Sounds pretty complex to me, something beyond my limited capabilities to understand. I guess that is why we need Rob Bell to come riding on a white horse to rescue us. Suppose?

And this was because John said, “This, the first of the miraculous signs” (2:11) and later, “This was the second miraculous sign” (John 4:54). He was answering his own question, “Why does John number the signs?”

After seven signs in the Gospel of John, Bell happily introduces the eighth (although it is not called that in John), the resurrection of Christ, truly a wondrous event. Bells says, “The tomb is empty, a new day is here, a new creation is here, everything has changed, death has been conquered, the old has gone, the new has come.”

That is true spiritually when you trust Christ, thank God, but physically things are pretty much the same. Planet earth is in bad shape and the “greenies” are telling everyone to help save our environment. The earth still groans and waits the change, just as Paul said decades after the resurrection of Christ (Romans 8:19-25).

Bell goes on to tell us (correctly, I might add) that His work “inaugurated a movement … to renew, restore, and reconcile everything ‘on earth or in heaven’ (Col.1) just as God originally intended it.”

Then he says, “Yes, it includes people. The writers were very clear that the good news of the cross and resurrection is for everybody.” True, but not everybody (as he implies) has gotten in on it. It is available, but rejected on the part of many. Like the money in grandma’s cookie jar on the top shelf, some have not availed themselves of it.

Alas, Bell writes as if it is a done deal for everyone – even its rejecters.

To us, this was a strange chapter.

Rocks Everywhere

He starts the chapter “There Are Rocks Everywhere” with a story of a man he met in his first pastorate who smoked pot and drew pictures at his kitchen table until dawn. But one night he was suddenly aware of an “overwhelming presence” that knocked him to the floor. He took that as God telling him to “receive that love and become a follower of Jesus.”

We are not sure of Bell’s point. Perhaps it is to smoke pot every night until dawn and wait for God to appear and tell you to follow Jesus. But he goes on to say he has “heard countless stories like it.” And he says for every one he dismisses, he hears “ten that can’t be as easily denied.” (I don’t hear all these stories, but I don’t run with that crowd – or smoke pot.)

The climactic tale of this group of stories he relates has to do with a man he visited in the hospital who had been crushed between a lift and a beam, but before he blacked out he saw a white light and then in an unconscious state was conscious of repeating, “Please forgive me” over and over until he came back to consciousness in the hospital.

Shades of the books of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Raymond Moody and others in that “I-momentarily-saw-Heaven” crowd and their application that everyone goes there when they die  (promoting universalism; you know, like Bell is accused of doing). Fortunately, I guess, another medical authority – a highly respected internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases specialist at the Diagnostic Hospital in Chattanooga (TN) – Dr. Maurice Rawlings, followed those up with books describing just as many screaming about the fires of Hell when they died.

And Dr. Rawlings added, “Nor have I ever heard anyone cry out to anyone but Jesus Christ on his deathbed. Not Krishna, not Mohammad, not Mary Baker Eddy, not one of the other religious leaders. Why not?” Good question.

Much in this chapter, because it involves Jesus in the Old Testament, many evangelicals could agree with, but Bell keeps coming back to his universalism. He says, “… we see that Jesus himself, again and again, demonstrates how seriously he takes his role in saving and rescuing and redeeming not just everything, but everybody. He says in John 12, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He is sure, confident, and set on this. All people to himself.”

But is He saying He will redeem, save for eternity all people? Hardly. Most evangelicals except Calvinists – and they must change “all men” to “all the elect,” even though there is no justification for it other than to fit their theology – have understood this as drawing them and enlightening them enough for them to make a conscious decision of faith in Christ – or reject Him. Robertson says the word draw (helkusō) is “future active of helkuō, late form of helkō, to draw, to attract.” Christ is speaking of His drawing power, attracting men, women and children to Himself.

In fact, Robertson goes on to assure his readers, “By ‘all men’ (panias) Jesus does not mean every individual man, for some, as Simeon said (Luke 2:34) are repelled by Christ, but this is the way that Greeks (verse 22) can and will come to Christ, by the way of the Cross, the only way to the Father (14:6).”

Now that Bell is back in his rhythm, he enthuses that John 6:51 (where Christ is figuratively pictured as bread to eat) says Christ gave his life for the world, and he presents it so the reader gets the idea all are saved. And he quotes John 10, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen,” referencing it to “other religions.”

No, the “other sheep” here were merely Gentiles, not of Judiasm, and the idea of them being able to get saved was abhorrent to a good Jew of the day. In fact, four times in the opening verses of John 10 Christ describes Himself as “the door,” not “a door.” That is rather exclusive, wouldn’t you say?

It is here, talking about his nonexclusive gospel, that Bell finally acknowledges John 14:6 in a friendly way. He says, “This is as wide and expansive a claim as a person can make.” True, anyone willing to meet His terms can get in on it, but it is also as narrow and exclusive a claim “as a person can make,” saying, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Yet Bell starts immediately to broaden the exclusivity of it! He writes: “What Jesus does declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody.” Everybody? Or everyone who believes?

Bell refers to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, saying, “These rituals are true for us, because they’re true for everybody. They unite us, because they unite everybody.”

Really? Everybody?

Then he asks, “So how does any of this explanation of who Jesus is and what he’s doing connect with heaven, hell, and the fate of every single person who has ever lived?”

Well, he tells us, “People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways.” He says, “Sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t.” He says, “Sometimes people bump into Jesus, they trip on the mystery, they stumble past the word, they drink from the rock, without knowing what or who he was” (emphasis added).

Bell is fond of saying things like, “None of us have cornered the market on Jesus, and none of us ever will.” Which is a true statement but he gives it a false application (as he does repeatedly).

He says, “His disciples want to shut down a man healing in his name in Luke 9, but he says sharply, ‘Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.’” Actually, that man was casting out demons and he was doing it, “in thy name” (in the Name of Jesus). He was not doing it in the name of Mohammad, or Buddha, or Christian Science. It was what we would call a different denomination in the Christian faith, not a different and pagan religion. He was merely saying we are not to stop someone working successfully in the Name of Jesus, doing His bidding.

Before Bell quits throwing rocks in this chapter he says, “… it is our responsibility to be extremely careful about making negative, decisive, lasting judgment about people’s eternal destinies. As Jesus says, he ‘did not come to judge the world, but to save the world’ (John 12).”

While that is true and His main purpose in His first coming was to provide a redemption that would save forever anyone who trusted Him, that does not deny the other side of the coin; He is also going to judge the world (John 12:47; Acts 17:31).

And Bell follows the liberal line of the 20^th century, “Jesus said in Matthew 13 that this new reality is like yeast, working its way slowly and quietly, and steadily, through the dough.” The only trouble with that is that every other time yeast is mentioned, over twenty times in the Bible, yeast (leaven) is a symbol of evil, not good. And that evil is, indeed, “slowly and quietly, and steadily” working through both the church and the world. Books like Love Wins prove it.

“Better” Good News

Chapter 7 is, “The Good News Is Better Than That.” While the reader probably hopes this chapter of the book is going to be better than the first half-dozen chapters, he is doomed to disappointment. This one starts with the story of the prodigal son – where I started 70 years ago, in my first sermon at Holmesville (NY). Bell doesn’t preach it like I did, though.

Naturally, Bell zeroes in on the older brother (although not exclusively) because he is meaner and less inclusive than the Father or the prodigal – you know, like most of today’s evangelicals. And that is how he pictures us, like that mean, ugly, horrible elder brother.

He says the difference between the two sons is “the difference between heaven … and hell.” Wow! What a difference! And he complains, “Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell.”

Well, isn’t that true except for one thing? (One of the things so aggravating about Bell is the way he slants his words to try to prove his point. In short, he is not honest in how he evaluates the positions of others! It is not ‘if they don’t accept in … the way the person telling them the gospel does.’ It is if they don’t accept what the Word of God says! Period. And only that!)

And to you preachers out there who preach against sin – as the Bible does and Bible preachers did – if “people say they’re tired of hearing about ‘sin’ and ‘judgment’ and ‘condemnation,’ it’s often because those have been confused for them with the nature of God.” So Bell tells you.

But isn’t God’s nature described in Scripture as “God is holy, God is righteous, God is a just Judge, God is of purer eyes than to look with favor on sin,” etc.? Of course God is love, gracious, forgiving, good, merciful, etc., but isn’t it as bad to ignore the former as the latter? Shouldn’t a Bible preacher emphasize both? After all, God is Truth!

Here again Bell is talking about men creating their own hell.

And he says, “So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will ‘get into heaven,’ that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club.”

Do you agree? I don’t, and I find that kind of talk very sad.

Bell adds, “When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.”

But how is a sinner going to experience that joyous participation if he doesn’t enter the sheepfold of redemption though Christ? And remember, Jesus is The Door and The Only Door. As the kids used to sing in Sunday School and VBS, “One door and only one and yet its sides are two. I’m on the inside, on which side are you?” Perhaps Bell thinks we perverted their little minds teaching them that chorus.

Jesus said in John 10, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep … This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them. Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture ... And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” (Note the context here of “other sheep I have” discussed above.)

But Bell says, “An entrance understanding of the gospel rarely creates good art. Or innovation. Or a number of other things. It’s a cheap view of the world, because it’s a cheap view of God. It’s a shriveled imagination. It’s the gospel of goats.”

You mean like verse 9 of John 10 above: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture”? That is definitely a biblical “entrance understanding.” Would you call it a “gospel of goats”?

Strangely, Bell thinks it is “especially true in missionary settings or in pastors’ families or in church communities” where folks think God is a slave driver and they pick up resentment, saying, “Those people out there may be going to parties and appearing to have fun while the rest of us do ‘God’s work,’ but someday we’ll go to heaven, where we won’t have to do anything, and they’ll go to hell, where they’ll get theirs’” (italics Bell’s). And he says those who think that way are in Hell now (his idea of Hell, of course).

What a strange understanding of those of us in Christian service! We don’t think Heaven is for being slothful and indolent, and for most of His servants in this life, we deem they are like Jeremiah, crying out, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jeremiah 9:1). But along with the burden of the duty are the joys of accomplishment, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:6).

Oh, by the way, Bell warns, after his imaginary description of Christian service, “Have nothing to do with that God.”

And, believe it or not, he says those of us in the evangelical persuasion preach a “rescue” message: Jesus paid the price for our sin so we can be rescued from God. I told you he had a vigorous imagination! We preach that God Himself paid the price so that we could be rescued – if rescue it be – from our sins! That is slightly different, isn’t it? We evangelicals, he says, “shape our God, and then our God shapes us.”

Bell seems to misunderstand – admittedly it fits his thesis to do so – what Jesus said as He hung on the cross about His tormenters: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23). He says, “Jesus forgives them all, without their asking for it. Done. Taken care of.”

He takes our Lord’s offer of forgiveness and declares it a done deal. With that one simple sentence the Sanhedrin, the hypocritical and wicked Pharisees, the evil Sadducees, Pilate, Herod, those who nailed Him to the cross, the one who spat in His face, those who mocked and jeered His claims, gave Him vinegar to drink when He thirsted, sadists who pulled out His beard by the roots, sinful men that nailed His hands and feet to the wood, unclean soldiers that thrust the spear in His side after He was dead – they were all forgiven and made ready for Heaven?

I don’t think so. Forgiveness is not complete until it is accepted.

But he concludes from that, “Forgiveness is unilateral. God isn’t waiting for us to get it together, to clean up, shape up, get up– God has already done it.” I guess you couldn’t get any more Hardshell Calvinist than that, could you?

Yet he turns around and seems to admit it is not that simple, that something else remains: trust. He says, “The only thing left to do is trust. Everybody is already at the party. Heaven and hell, here, now, around us, upon us, within us.”

Pardon me, but that is religious nonsense.

The End

We’ve been reviewing books – in our prime, over 100 and 200 a year – but this is one of the worst. When we got to Chapter 8 and read the title, “The End Is Here,” we almost broke out in the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

This chapter – mercifully only six pages long – begins by Bell relating his experience as a little boy when he knelt beside his farmhouse bed between his two parents and told God he was a sinner, he believed Jesus came to save him, and he wanted to be a Christian.

He adds, “Now I am well aware of how shaped I was by my environment, how young and naïve I was, and how easy it is to discount emotional religious experiences,” but he also says, “What happened that night was real. It meant something significant then and it continues to have profound significance for me. That prayer was a defining moment in my life.”

That’s good. I appreciate that.

And, not surprisingly, he concludes his book with the word, “And may you know, deep in your bones, that love wins.”

A Few Thoughts

The argument in the religious world about this volume is whether or not it teaches universalism. He has denied it, but not in writing to my knowledge – certainly not in this book.

We read it all, from beginning to end, and aside from his boyhood conversion experience, which he seems to make light of in the first nearly 200 pages, I could not find one paragraph, one sentence, one word that repudiated the idea of universalism. If he is not a universalist, he certainly fooled me and disguised it well. As indicated elsewhere, I had never heard of Bell until this book came out, but those who know him say he is a compassionate, kindhearted man with a deep love for people. Perhaps so, but failure to cry “Fire” when people who don’t know their danger are trapped in a burning building is neither love nor compassion.

As indicated earlier in the review, we are convinced that anyone other than a theologian – especially a new or immature Christian – will be hopelessly confused after reading this book. We pray none does!

Bell doesn’t write as a normal author dealing with theological issues. His sentences are short, choppy … and spread out. In fact, in our judgment this 200-page work would fit a normal 100-page book.

If we thought it would do any good, we would be happy to send Mr. Bell a copy of our Scripture-sated book, Hell Is No Joke! It was originally published right there in his town, Grand Rapids, by his normal publisher, Zondervan Publishing House, and is still available today by its third English publisher. Believe me, Hell isn’t a joke or a ‘misunderstanding’ either.

Which brings up another matter. We doubt that the reputation of evangelical Eugene H. Peterson, professor emeritus of spiritual theology at Regent College and producer of The Message, will be enhanced by his glowing recommendation of Bell’s book on the dust jacket. By the same token, we doubt it will hurt the reputation of Greg Boyd in the slightest (also featured there), the promoter of the inane “openness theology.”

Dr. A. T. Pierson, a voluminous author and a Spurgeon successor at the Tabernacle in London, in The Inevitable Alternative, asked: “Can you find a single passage in the Word of God that indicates that the work of the Spirit is to continue beyond the bounds of the present life? I have never found it. There is no hint in the Bible of a change of character beyond this world.”

Postscript: Several men sent me an “under 60 second” video of Bell clearing up “the confusion and false reports regarding his faith.” While the confusion part is entirely of his own making, when I heard/saw the video I thought it was “The Rob Bell Comedy Hour.” It started with roars and gales of laughter and ended the same way. We see nothing funny about what he has done to confuse the spiritually weak.

Bell runs quickly (under 60 seconds you know) through a list of things he says he believes. For example, he says he believes in Hell and he believes in Heaven, but the Hell and the Heaven in which he says he believes in his book are not the ones described in the Bible.

Regarding Universalism, he said he was not a Universalist because he believes “God's love is so great God lets you decide.” But his book implies it – “love wins” with everyone, or nearly so. Which may not be the old-fashioned Universalism, but it is Universalism nonetheless. 

He closes with, “I believe it’s best to only discuss books you’ve actually read” (his emphasis). That excuses me because I have carefully read his book from cover to cover, made voluminous notes, and rechecked statements therein again and again.

It is a bad, bad book and we refuse to recommend it to anyone!