Today, we continue with Dr. Don Keathley’s series on ‘Hell’s Illusion’. (The first part is here, in case you missed it; I heartily recommend listening to these talks in sequence, as each one builds on the knowledge we gain from the previous talks).

Personally, I have always wondered why, given two contradictory Bible verses, or indeed two contradictory doctrines that are both based on Bible verses, why so many mainline Evangelical Christians will default to the Bad News side of things, rather than the Good News. After all, the word ‘Gospel’ actually means ‘good news’! I’ve expressed this concern before in my blog.

Of course, the main example that springs to mind is that of the doctrine of Hell. Rather than believe the Good News that so many are realising in these days, that there IS no eternal conscious torment after death, these people still would rather believe the Bad News, and hold on tight to that awful doctrine, rather than let go and float free of it.

And I think that the reason why they default to the bad news is because that’s all they have ever known. Think about it. They simply know of no other system. If you take away the bad news that they have believed all this time, then their worry will be this: what else in their secure, all-worked-out system have they got wrong too?

As we saw in the last talk in this series, just about all the denominations in Western Evangelical Christianity are essentially based on one or the other of the two belief streams known as Calvinism or Arminianism; most Evangelical belief systems are therefore based on one of these two streams (not both; they are mutually exclusive). Despite their major differences, however, both of these streams rely on the doctrine of Hell to work properly. Therefore, to disbelieve in Hell is to take away one of the central pillars of the belief systems of Evangelical Christianity, and in fact if this pillar is taken away, the whole lot collapses for want of a better doctrine to hold the whole thing up. It’s all they have ever known, and the entire edifice depends on it.

And actually that’s not a bad thing, because it helps us realise that if a doctrine depends for its survival on something other than Christ, then it needs to go.

So, here’s the second in the series of talks by Dr. Don Keathley, in which he examines the four words from the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures  which have been erroneously translated into the single ‘English’ word ‘Hell’ (although actually the word is Norse in origin):

My regular readers will know that I do not believe in the idea of Hell; the place where the wicked/unbelievers/anyone that you don’t like will burn for ever in eternal fire. I just don’t believe in it at all, for many reasons: a non-exhaustive list being: personal; theological; Biblical; experiential; and also at a deeper level that is between me and Jesus (sorry!) I do believe that bad people can create a hell on earth for others, and for themselves too, and that that’s what Jesus was talking about in the Bible passages where He supposedly is talking about Hell. But that’s nowhere near the same thing; not even close.

I would love to be able to collect all my thoughts and ideas on the subject. I have done so to some degree in the past, with some blog articles and with my ‘Hell Resource Page’ (accessible via the ‘Resources’ tab in the menu on each page of my blog). But when there are teachers around of the calibre of American pastor and excellent Bible teacher Dr. Don Keathley, then the teaching and resource is right there and so why not share it?

Many of my friends, both online and in real life, agree with me that this is some of the best teaching debunking Hell that there is. And I will therefore be sharing one video every three days, to give you time to digest each message before the next one. Alternatively, if you just can’t wait, the talks are freely available on YouTube 😀   But I do recommend that you listen to them in order!

So,  here is the first episode in Don’s series of six talks, shared here with his enthusiastic permission. In this talk, Don begins by explaining how the doctrine of Hell has historically become the lynch-pin of modern Evangelical doctrine.

The talks do represent a fair amount of investment in terms of time; each talk is about 40-50 minutes long. But if you can at all make the time to listen to these excellent videos, they will transform your life. They have certainly helped me, because they have confirmed that I am not the only person in the faith that is thinking along these exact same lines!

Over to Don: