Here is the fourth and final part of the mini-series of video talks by Lee O’Hare, where he addresses the foundational issues underpinning the standard Evangelical doctrine of Hell.

In this talk, Lee addresses the other main pillar/weapon in the arsenal of the Fundagelical proof-texter: the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

With this Scripture, unsurprisingly, the Fundies have no problem accepting that this is a parable (unlike in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus) because it suits their purposes and they can instead twist the parable. No-one really believes that sheep will go to Heaven whereas goats will go to Hell 😉 . But because parables are stories with an indirect meaning that must be inferred by the reader, naturally this provides Fundagelicals with the opportunity to twist it how they want, which they do freely and shamelessly. In mitigation, many of them are just parroting what they have been taught…I know this because I used to do it too, just like that. But I never used the phrase ‘Pieces of Eight!’.

But in this talk, Lee explains the background to this parable and explores several avenues as to its interpretation.

As I have mentioned in previous blog posts giving you videos to watch, these talks do represent a fair amount of investment in terms of time; each talk is about an hour long. But if you can at all make the time to listen to these excellent videos, it will be time well spent, I assure you.