First things first. Bell does come back to the fact that Jesus questioned the rich man about five out of the six commandments contained in the second table of Ten Commandments. So, in correction, Bell does further elaborate on Jesus' specific omission of the tenth commandment. He first brings the subject up on page 28, but continues the discussion on page 41. There is a lot in between, and I will go back and outline what he claims in those pages. I want to set the record straight, though, that Bell does not dismiss the importance of the omission of the tenth commandment when Jesus listed the commandments to keep.
Bell recognizes that Jesus "leaves out the last command, which prohibited coveting" (p. 41). He got the right answer, but he takes the discovery and goes south with it. There are several observations that Bell makes concerning the omission of the tenth commandment. First, Bell writes that "rich people were rare at that time, so there is good reason to believe that Jesus knew something about (the rich man) and his reputation" (p. 41). This is a very crucial comment that leaves much to be observed about Bell's theology. This one sentence tells us a lot about Bell's knowledge of history, knowledge of credibility, and his belief that Jesus was wholly man and wholly God. What do you mean? Thanks for asking. Let's dissect this one sentence.
Rich people were rare at that time? Who says? Rob Bell does and I guess we are supposed to take his word for it. Unfortunately, there are no footnotes, endnotes, or citations concerning this quite extraordinary claim. I guess every one was poor back then and there were only a handful of rich people at that time. Actually, ironically, Peter's response to Jesus' remark that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God does not seem to concur with Bell's claim. In verse 25, Peter responds, "Who then can be saved?" Looking at Jesus' response to this question we can see in what manner Peter asked the question. It does not appear that Peter asks in the manner "If rich men cannot be saved, then what kind of men can be saved?" but it appears that he is asking "If that's the case, then we're all doomed!"
The fact that Bell makes this claim without providing sources renders his claims suspect. I do not want to make a claim that is too critical, but I will make the observation that there are only a few kinds of people who make substantial claims and think that they are above credibility and the need for referencing, citing, and substantiating their claims. One of which is someone coming up with something completely new, completely unable to be reinforced by others, and completely made up. Another option is someone that is proposing something to a group that he could reinforce but only by people that the group has already rendered without any credibility and unreliable as a reference. It's like positively referencing Al Gore's view of government spending during the GOP National Convention. All I can know for sure is that Bell keeps making historical and theological claims without any references or citations. Leaves his statements suspect.
Finally, Bell's observation that since rich men were a rarity in those days that there was a good chance that Jesus knew who the man was blows me away! What about the fact that Jesus was God?! What about the fact that Jesus' voice created that man's heritage thousands of years past? What about the fact that Jesus was the life that flowed and pulsated through the man's veins? Bell's own words seem to imply that he does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Bell also makes this startling comment just prior that further renders his view on the Gospel suspect:
"How do you make sure you'll be part of the new thing God is going to do?...The standard answer was: live the commandments. God has shown you how to live. Live that way. The more you become a person of peace and justice and worship and generosity, the more actively you participate now in ordering and working to bring about God's kind of world, the more ready you will be to assume an even greater role in the age to come" (p. 40).I know that that whole comment needs a little bit of context, so I am going to do my best to explain what Bell has articulated earlier. I'll try my best to explain Bell's train of thought, but he jumps around so much that it is going to be hard.
The whole point of this chapter (Here is the New There) is to clarify to all of us that Heaven is not a place somewhere else, but rather, that it is right here. Going through Matthew 19, Bell is trying to exposite the rich man's conversation with Jesus to show that even Jesus talked about a heaven in a way that does not agree with the widely accepted concept that the Christian church has held for the past two millenniums (that being that heaven is a place outside of this world). First, Bell talks about how "heaven, for Jesus, was deeply connected with what he called 'this age' and 'the age to come'" (p. 30). Bell claims that "another way of saying 'life in the age to come' in Jesus's day was to say 'eternal life'" (p. 31) and references the use of "this age" and "the age to come" in Luke's rendering of the rich man and Jesus in Luke 18:30.
Bell then goes on to observe that Jesus wasn't the first person to speak about this age and then another age to come: "He came from a long line of prophets who had been talking about life in the age to come for hundreds of years before him" (p. 32). He then claims that Isaiah 2:4 talks about peace on earth (kind of an ironic chapter for him to use considering the way Isaiah prophesies the terror in which God will judge the earth and that the whole premise of his book is that God loves us too much to destroy us forever in Hell). He also misapplies Isaiah 11 and 25 as a reference to Biblical examples of peace on earth. He further misapplies other prophets to say that "people will be given grain and fruit and crops and new hearts and new spirits" and "everything will be repaired and restored and rebuilt and 'new wine will drip from the mountains'" (Ezekiel 36 and Amos 9). After he does so, he writes, "Life in the age to come. If this sounds like heaven on earth, that's because it is. Literally" (p. 33).
Following this statement, he makes these three observations about life in the age to come: 1) "They spoke about 'all the nations.' That's everybody" (p. 34, emphasis original). 2) "One of the most striking aspects of the pictures the prophets used to describe this reality is how earthy it is" (p. 34). 3) And finally, "much of their visions of life in the age to come was not new" (p. 35), after which he observes that Adam and Eve were told to name and order the animals, and in a similar manner, we are going to have to make this world what we want it to be. Oh wait, if you think that's bad, check this statement out: "This participation is important, because Jesus and the prophets lived with an awareness that God has been looking for partners since the beginning, people who will take seriously their divine responsibility to care for the earth and each other in loving, sustainable ways" (p. 36). The god that Bell worships is going to be waiting for a very long time.
What follows? After all of that, Bell articulates his views on the day of the Lord. He claims that on that day God will finally say "Enough is enough"! From this point we can see that Bell has a very low estimation of sin and wickedness. The only people that are sinful before God are the warriors, the rapers, the greedy, the unjust (how he defines it, I don't know), the violent, the proud (see note on unjust), the divisive, the exploiters, and the disgraceful. He then describes God's wrath pouring out on oil spillers, those who sexually assault women, leaders who used political genocide, institutions that seek profit rather than take care of their employees, and "every time we stumble upon one more instance of the human heart gone wrong" (p. 38). That's Bell's God of judgment. How God punishes the guilty, he hasn't articulated yet.
Bell's God of anger is one that pours out wrath on those that have not been loving to their neighbor. As Bell articulates it, God's anger and wrath are only poured out in order to protect the underdogs of the world. His anger is not poured out on all who reject His Son and refuse to kiss the King of Kings. Bell believes that God's anger protects man rather than bringing our holy God glory through his wrath and destruction of sin and unholiness.
To sum up his little exploration of the prophets' supposed view on the "life to come" Bell claims that "[the prophets] did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth" (p. 40). (Mind you, we have not even gotten to the part of the book where Bell claims that God's love will eventually save all men.) And this brings us to the previously quoted comment. Scroll up and read it again now that you know the context of Bell's claims about heaven and salvation.
After this long tangent, Bell finally returns to Matthew 19 and Jesus' conversation with the rich man. As he interprets it, Jesus tells the rich man to sell all of his possessions and give the money to the poor because "he hasn't learned yet that he has a sacred calling to use his wealth to move creation forward. How can God give him more responsibility and resources in the age to come, when he hasn't handled well what he's been given in this age?" (p. 41). He's not ready for the treasure in heaven if he cannot correctly appropriate the treasure he has now. To close the section, Bell asks the question "What does Jesus mean when he uses that word 'heaven'?" (p. 42). That is where I have stopped and had enough Rob Bell for the day.
Returning to my prior observation, however. I want to use all of this information to deduct Rob Bell's view on sin, Christ, and salvation. Bell does not seem to think that sin is disobedience to God and nonconformity to His will, but rather seems to see it merely as social injustice. Sin is not a detestable act against our Holy God and Creator, but is rather a social crime against the people that surround us.
Bell's view of salvation stems from his view of sin. Instead of man being born in sin through the sins of our first head (Adam) in the garden, Bell seems to believe that some people just make bad decisions. Instead of man's heart being desperately deceitful, he teaches that man just needs to get his act together. Instead of being completely devoid of righteousness and unable to return to communion with our perfect Creator, seeking to glorify Him with unblemished and acceptable worship, and unable to keep the Law of God perfectly, constantly failing and further cascading into the depths of eternal judgment, Bell seems to believe that the only salvation we need is a cleaner, nicer, more peaceful existence on this earth.
In Bell's view of salvation, Jesus has no role to play. He is an example that you could take or leave, but in the long run, God's love will render everyone lovely (that's where the book is headed). Man is self sufficient in Bell's theology, and we are capable of saving ourselves. The Bible teaches us that our good deeds avail nothing and are nothing but (I don't mean to be crass, but this is the literal translation) dirty menstrual clothes (Isa. 64:6) before God, and that no man seeks righteousness or God without the work of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 3:10-11). In our fallen state, we are unable to do any good even if we wanted to, and none of us seek after God apart from being called. If we cannot seek after God and we are unable to do anything that God will accept to make propitiation for our sins and faults, then how in the world are we supposed to be saved? You must look outside of this world. Unlike Bell's theory about heaven on earth, Jesus says, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). The solution is out of this world!
Unlike Bell's world, we need salvation from sin in our world. And we cannot accomplish salvation on our own. Someone has to come along, fulfill the Law of God perfectly, be above the curse of death for disobedience, and he must die our death for us. Not only this, but this man must place his holiness and righteousness upon us as our own and take our filthy, feces covered rags and place it upon himself. He must become the propitiation for our sins, pay the ransom, bearing the penalty and wrath of God for our iniquities. Such a man has come, and he is not (as Bell would have us believe) a mere man, but he is the very eternal God incarnate, Jesus Christ! There is so much more to write about a proper view and understanding of Christ's substitutionary atonement, divinity, and work of redemption, but there are much better authors who have written about it than I. I will leave you to refer to them.
In conclusion, I do not have time to refute everything that Bell writes. In a few pages he takes passage after passage out of it's proper context and misapplies it to meet the needs of his own agenda. He uses the Word of God like someone else I know. Read Genesis 3, Matthew 4, and Luke 4 and I am sure you can catch on to who I am speaking of. No, I am not saying that Rob Bell is Satan nor am I saying that he is the antichrist. However, (I will leave you to make your own judgments concerning what he has written and what he has claimed about Christ) I will contend that his denial of Jesus' divinity and His redemptive ministry and sacrifice renders him an antichrist.
How deplorable it is that this man is trying to tear down the kingdom from the inside out! If this is where the American church is headed, then we have not reached the sinful climax of the wickedness that "Christian" churches can function as synagogues of Satan yet. I wish I had the complete quote, but in Michael Horton's Christless Christianity he speaks about what a Satanic church would look like. It would not be a church in which reckless sin is rampant and there is complete disregard for law and ethics, but rather, it would be a church in which everyone dresses nice, puts on a hypocritical show, pretends to love each other, and the pastor gets up before the congregation and preaches a Christless gospel, a gospel where no one needs Christ, no one is sinful, and God ceases to matter. That is what we are up against. And so much of it could be abated if the people of God would simply open their Bibles up and read it for themselves! So much of it could be abated if the people of God would take advantage of the true means of grace given to us through the preaching of the Word! Satan can take the Word of God and use it against us if we don't understand what it means. He tried it on the Word himself, so why wouldn't he try it on God's people? We need to listen to John's warning and take it to heart:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:1-6
God does love us, but he manifests this love by "[sending] his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10). Anything else is a lie. Rob Bell (as genuine as his intentions may appear to some) is telling a lie and evidences a spirit of error. He does not confess Jesus is from God, and, therefore, John calls him an antichrist. Harsh words, but harsh words are needed to reveal dangerous circumstances. The church must be very careful to label an idea heretical and it's origin "heretic," and only the church as a whole has the authority as administers of the Word and having the keys to the kingdom have the ability to do so. It is my prayer that the greater American Christian church would be united against this front. We have our many quarrels and disagreements, but I hope and pray that God would reveal the ideas of Rob Bell (and the rest of the Emergent Church) to be of the spirit of error, anti-Christ, and a direct opposition to the kingdom of God. It is also my prayer that Bell would be corrected by the spirit of truth that flows through the Holy Spirit, that he would recant all that he has claimed, repent of his previous stances on Jesus and our salvation, and that God would use him as a true builder of his kingdom. If he won't repent, it is my prayer that his thoughts and beliefs would be short-lived, that he would find no accomplishment in seeking his own kingdom, and that God would destroy Bell's ideas, church, and idolatrous god.
Thanks for reading again. I think I am done writing about what Rob Bell writes (unless he says something else that is so blatantly unChristian that I cannot believe that professing believers fail to see its error and believe it...which is more likely than not). If I do write more, it won't be for a while. I would rather read spirit-guided, humble, scholarly, and godly men who have a passion for the Word of God, the redemptive history revealed within it, and who don't desire to see people believe a new gospel but, rather, believe in the "good news" of the one, true Gospel! I've had enough Rob Bellism for a while. It's time for some good, solid, glorious, truthful, Christ-centered Christianity!
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