Earlier Justin Taylor posted this and asked the question, “Is Rob Bell a Universalist?” After watching the video below it is not exactly jumping to conclusions to say, “It sure looks like it.”
Bell remains wildly popular. He has been a magnet for various evangelicals who have lost their moorings as well as skeptics and critics. While seeming to understand, counsel, and help, he also takes people down a distinctly non-Christian road. Therefore, the port of Rob Bell is not one of refuge and rest but of theological danger and abuse.
A few years ago I posted this article: Rob Bell makes me Mad: A Pastoral Response to Velvet Elvis. It was (and remains) very popular (go ahead and ‘Google’ Rob Bell and you’ll see why). In the last couple of years I get several comments and emails a week criticizing me for that post. These very critical comments tell me that I have got it all wrong, that Bell is orthodox and that paranoid doctrine-obsessed clowns like me are the bigger problem. It’s been good for my sanctification.
Despite the raccous crowd, many have known for some time that while Rob Bell circles about the evangelical perimeter, he does so in the drag of old-time liberalism. So while I am discouraged by his position I am not shocked. In fact, I am somewhat relieved that he has actually come out of the theological closet.
Where I become nauseous is in thinking about the massive sway of influence this man has over a doctrinally drifting and ever increasing crowd of untethered evangelicals. The way in which he has done this is frightening.
I don’t suppose I’ll be flooded by a myriad of emails from all of those folks retracting what they said any more than I can hope for Bell to do the same. He has more than book sales at stake.
See the video below for yourself. He got me to buy the book.
LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.
