Erasing Hell, Chapter Two

Erasing Hell, Chapter Two

"Through the years, many ideas of hell have been proposed - some attractive, some not. But if the truth is what we're after, we need to stick to what Jesus actually said."

On to the second chapter. There are some things I like and some things I like less, but overall Chan continues setting the stage to talk about Hell. He spends most of the chapter laying out the context of first-century Judaism and tackles a few different viewpoints on what has been misunderstood in some present-day teachings. He mentions Rob Bell a couple times and cites numerous sources, content to merely refer to the source by the century it was written in, later explaining in the notes at the end of the chapter in detail where the quote or idea comes from. Most often these are apocryphal passages from the book of Enoch or Baruch if they aren't quotes from Bell, C.S. Lewis or other notable humans.

I'm purposefully pacing myself in reading the book and perhaps this taints my experience, but I'm getting bored already. I want to dig in and talk about the big stuff. I'm less interested in what Rob Bell has to say about Hell because, well, I don't think even he understands what he says most of the time. He's quite post-modern in that respect. Don't get me wrong, Chan is laying some necessary foundation and he's doing a great job - but I'm on page 71 of 198 and we still haven't concluded much at all. I'm interested to see how he presents Hell, since he seems to be systematically removing the softer presentations. Chapter Three is titled "What Jesus Actually Said About Hell", so maybe we're getting somewhere. I could also be a little spoiled, since the last two books I've read were C.S. Lewis and you can pretty much quote random sentences from his work and sound profound.

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As an aside, Jaffrey Bible House is gearing up for Riverfest on July 30th. Some things are changing this year, and the result is going to mean more people on the Jaffrey Commons (our front yard) and for longer (the BBQ is going to be held there, if all goes as planned). This is a huge opportunity to be recognized and bless folks! Our prayer is that God would work through us during that time to become further acquainted with the community and grow as a business - so we can serve more! All store inventory will be at least 10% off, and all pre-paid special orders placed that day will be 15% off - this is awesome! Even if only to visit for a few minutes, please stop by and see what God is up to, you'll be blown away!

~~JBH