Fresh off the press, I borrowed AB’s copy of Francis Chan’s new book Erasing Hell.
About a third of the book analyzes specific passages of the Bible to discover whether hell is retributive or corrective (a second chance to go to heaven), and whether it’s eternal or annihilation (completely destroy the soul). Since I don’t need to be convinced that hell does exist and that it’s a place of eternal judgement, I read through those chapters quickly. For those who are not sure, those chapters are very informative.
The premise of the book is that we cannot impart our own ideas about what is or is not hell, but rather we need to see what God says in the Bible. We have to let God be God. Even if you don’t believe the Bible, you might want to hear what Jesus says about hell, and this book explains it well.
The best parts of the book are the introduction, the first two chapters and chapter 6. The most important lesson in the book that Chan keeps reiterating throughout is hell should not be taken as an academic subject to be discussed. People’s future is on the line. “In other words, don’t forget that the doctrine you are studying may be the destiny of many people.”
So what do I do with the information that hell is real and horrible? I don’t know.