← Thinking Fellows
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Scott Keith, Bruce Hillman and Adam Francisco. The Thinking Fellows is part of the 15:17 podcast network of shows. Go to 15:17.org, go look on the homepage there. There is a featured section right at the top that shows you the latest things happening at 15:17 that might include daily blogs, weekly preaching helps, podcasts like this one, new videos, conferences that you might have the chance to attend, and so much more. Go check that out 1517.org. There's new stuff up there every day of the week and you can share it with family, friends or people who you think might be in need of some gospel centered content. All right, guys, second episode this week. A little peek behind the curtain. Unusual for us, but we've had some travel. I had a baby, mistakes were made with the episode count and we got to catch back up.
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A
I mean, every time you say something like I had a baby, I want to ask, how was your labor?
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B
It was great. This is California after all.
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C
Yuck.
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B
Adam can't handle it. Well, this episode is going to be brought to you by the Gates of Hell. That's what we're going to be.
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A
It sounds like we have sponsors.
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B
Yeah, we have a sponsor. Yes, no, the Gates of Hell. We're going to talk about hell on this episode. I don't know if we've ever dedicated a whole episode to the doctrine of hell. I wrote an article about it recently. I also did a video over on YouTube that you can check out responding to Joel Osteen. He was a guest on a big influencer podcast, the Impulsive Podcast. And they asked him about hell and he gave not a half bad answer,
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A
but like I was actually, I watched your video this morning. I was shocked at how good his answer was regarding salvation too.
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B
So I talked to somebody else about this who's a friend of 1517 that I was also like. Did Joel Osteen just describe salvation by faith alone? That's weird. And the funny thing was his reply was that these prosperity preachers, these really large prosperity preachers, one of the problems with them is they often know the truth and then they swindle people anyways. And that's the.
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A
I mean, it feels like he's got some real repenting to do if he knows that answer.
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B
Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
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A
I was actually really shocked at how straightforward his answer to salvation was and kind of how biblical his answer to hell was. Yes.
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B
Yeah. I think my only complaint about it was that he did the dodging thing. It's a part of a longer segment which is essentially, he just said, hell is separation from God and you don't want that. And I don't want to talk anymore about it because I'm not an expert. You guys can have an expert on the show if you want to talk about hell.
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A
Which is funny because he's like one of the best known preachers and theologians on the planet.
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B
Yeah, air quotes, please.
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A
But. Yeah, well, I know, but I mean, if he's not setting himself up as an expert on the Bible, he shouldn't be doing teaching.
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B
Yeah, yeah, that. I actually think the whole point of them having him on the podcast was that he was like an expert on Christianity and they wanted to.
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A
They asked him, you need to get a hell expert up here. Like, he's a hell expert. I can't answer. You better call the devil.
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B
So that was convenient timing. I had already been writing the article before that clip came out and then. But the reason I was writing it is because I have seen, I have not watched, but there have been a bunch of debates about hell between like, popular evangelical, on the more sort of orthodox, like theological side about hell recently. So people have been talking about it. And also when Wes Huff had all of those opportunities to go on like the various podcasts after Joe Rogan, like the sort of like the dude podcasts and people.
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C
Manosphere.
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B
Manosphere. I don't know if they were all manosphere ones.
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A
I've also heard potusphere.
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B
Potusphere podcasts. It was interesting because I would say on like three or four of them, they'd be having a good conversation. And then a non Christian on the show would be like, so you think I'm going to hell? And really try to he say yes, he basically did in very nice Wes Huff ways, which was good. In very wholesome ways, which is.
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A
He is Canadian.
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B
He is Canadian and good at what he does. As far as being winsome.
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A
Very good at what he does.
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B
But it's obviously to me one of these questions where Christians are like, even when they have an opportunity to have a voice present in culture at a particular time speak into an issue. It's the thing we're supposed to be ashamed about. It's like, ah, Christianity seems pretty okay, except for that you think everybody who's not you is going to hell. And because of that, it appears to me that Christians even who maybe personally or their churches have a strong doctrine of hell or they're willing to talk about it amongst themselves, will decide not to speak about it publicly or avoid it publicly or kind of do what Osteen did, which is not say much and sort of slough it off because it might negatively affect their witness. Is the reason I'll hear is that, hey, we could deal with that once you're a Christian. But as far as our witness to the world, better to avoid it and just talk about Christ, if that makes sense. So that's why I was thinking about this. I'm curious how you guys think about this. I was talking to Adam yesterday, and he used the phrase something like talking about hell evangelically, which might then push back against this. Yeah, I'd love to hear Adam explore that because that pushes back on this idea that it is a negative impact on your witness. And then the question I asked in the blog that I wrote that I think it would be good to just see everybody's answers on here was what is the minimum that what do Christians have to say about hell? I think there's a bunch of popular notions of hell that you don't have to really speak about or that are based more out of literature than they are out of Scripture. Like thinking about how Dante has affected our popular conception and our imagination about hell. But what do Christians actually have to say about hell? What is the orthodox position? But let's see your atoms first. I'm going to put them on the spot here. What were you thinking? And maybe you're regretting it now when you said something like there's an evangelical way to present hell or an evangelical push around hell.
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C
Yeah, very quickly, I'll say. I mean, this is kind of the Lutheran way of talking about hell, where on one hand, we don't obsess about filling in all the details because Scripture, while it speaks very clearly about hell, doesn't give us, like, all these details and so on. But I would say when we talk about hell and eternal punishment and so on, it's to point people to Christ, you know, it's not to just sort of, like, revel in, like, trying to figure out the hierarchy of hell and who's in what layer, like Dante might,
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B
you know.
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C
That's all. That's all I meant. You know, you talk or you preach about hell, if you will, to point people to Jesus, to the Gospel. That's all.
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A
The only thing that I saw that I disagreed with in either your video, I don't mean to say disagree. That's kind of strong. Your video or your article is just it sort of relies on this idea that you have to have a particular view of hell in order for the law to be effective. When speaking of hell. And by that I mean like that it's a place that it's a place of punishment and enduring pain and all this kind of stuff. Rather than that it's just sort of, I guess, I mean, I hate. I can't. The words coming out of my mouth make me want to vomit. But that it's sort of more like what Joel Osteen said was just as this is separation from God and that we don't know a lot about what that means or what that is going to be, but we know it's what you don't want to have happen to you or where you don't want to be. And I think both of those, you know, can functionally, the law uses both of those views pretty well towards the same end. That's the only. As I was kind of mulling around some of the things that you said in the video, I think they're all accurate, but I also think they sort of. There was an exclusionary element that if you have a slightly different view, that the law is not doing its same thing there. And I'm not sure about that.
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C
The video, are you. You're talking about Caleb's video, not talking
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A
about Jalip's video, which I watched as homework for this video and read his article as homework for the video.
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B
The thing I guess I was trying to do in the video is. And in the article is to say that the separation part is very real and scriptural, right? Like you have cast away, cast into. You have that in the Old Testament. You have it pretty clearly in Jeremiah. You have it from the words of Christ in particular. And I would say that that's where sort of defending Adam's phrase, I would say, you know, there is some sort of relationship to what the gospel is doing. Not that it to hell and that we see it in Christ's preaching. He uses hell over a dozen times directly in his ministry throughout the Gospels. And the reason I wasn't trying to say necessarily that the law can't do its work with less, but that we actually, if we say it's separation, hands up. Well, Jesus gives us more adjectives than separation. So that we can actually say, well, I know separation isn't good. We can actually say, I know that separation is so fire weeping of gnashing and teeth, a sort of suffering without relief. All these different descriptions where, you know, worm and moth will not destroy all these things that Jesus himself preaches about hell. You can and perhaps should Go. As far as being willing to say what Jesus said about hell.
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D
Do you think those are literal, Metaphorical?
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A
Yes. Go ahead. Sorry, Bruce.
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B
Go for it, Bruce, but I kind
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D
of doesn't kill like when you say that. Do you think though, are you inferring that those should be taken literally because he said them?
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B
I'm inferring that they should be taken seriously so that the description.
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A
Seriously, but not literally. No. Jesus just got trumped.
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B
No, he didn't. I mean, maybe he did.
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D
In the sense my opinion. I think they're metaphorical.
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B
When you say separate, I actually, I mean if, if you do, I think that's. I think the point still stands, 100% still stands, which is that describing separation is available to us, even if it's met, even if it were to be metaphor, that's available is available to us instead of throwing your hands up so that when somebody goes separation from God, I mean, I feel pretty separated from God right now and I live my life.
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A
Yeah, that's a solid point.
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B
Jesus is saying separation from God is fire weeping and gnashing of teeth, darkness without light.
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A
In other words, even if you're not a Christian, you do not realize how much God is connected to you in sort of first order ways. But in hell you will. And it's described as being very uncomfortable.
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B
Exactly.
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A
I mean, if our doctrine that we believe that God makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, even the unrighteous are protected and connected to God in a way that they do not understand, and that that connection and that protection being removed would be eternally painful. I think even if just that passage is true, eternal drought.
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B
Yep. I also think from the epistles of Paul and things like that, I use this in the Article 2. There's also the condition of sort of God. If you are separated from God, God's silence then being there, the internal silence of God, that you're then left only with the judgment of the law against you as a sinner. There's no quelling word against that. And so Christians can then even assert the eternal accusation of the law and the guilt and what that would be like with truly no forgiveness. And so those are all things that I think should be said about hell, whether metaphorical or actual, or however you want to do that. But I think people again want to soften hell. So even Bruce somebody going, well, it's metaphor. Are you doing that? I'm not saying you, I'm saying people. Are we doing that? Because then hell doesn't sound so bad. When we're at the table with other people of other worldviews and religions so that Christianity doesn't sound crazy, like, hey, somebody who was kind of a good person in this life is going to suffer fire. That makes you sound like a real, real nice person at parties. Nobody's going to respect me. So I'm going to say that's really a metaphor for separation. Or is it? Or is it because we're trying to be kind? Again with the witness, like, do we downplay hell or not speak of it in the certain terms? Because it's merciful to do that to people.
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A
I've often thought of it this way because I don't pretend to know a lot about either heaven or hell.
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B
He's doing the osteen. We need a hell expert. No, I'm just kidding.
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A
Yeah. For a long time, I felt like I need a heaven expert.
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B
But
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A
I believe that heaven is an actual place, especially when connected to the resurrection and the new heaven and the new earth, and that I will be there united with Christ in my body. And I think that when Jesus speaks of hell and heaven, he speaks of them both in this same way, that there is a heaven and there is a hell. And I have this hard time believing that if there is, since Jesus speaks sort of the same way about both of them, if there is a heaven, that there isn't a hell. I have a hard time with that, too. Like an actual hell. I have a hard time with that, too. I think the biggest picture that we get of this is one of the problems with it. Like, the biggest sort of descriptors you get is parabolic. When the rich man and Lazarus, you know, and it's. It's. It's a pretty vivid description of what it's like to be in hell physically, but it's parabolic. And so I think it's. That doesn't mean that it's not exactly like he set it up, you know, in the parable. But I think the minute you would say it is, somebody could just answer to you. Well, you're getting that from a parable,
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D
and that was Hades. Okay, so there's a direct reference. I mean, there's a parallel, but. Right. They're similar. But it's also not even a direct picture of whatever it is.
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A
You might have to flesh that out for me since I'm not a hell expert.
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B
Yeah.
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D
So Hades is. Hades gets thrown. Hades gets thrown into hell in. In Revelation.
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A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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D
Death and Hades get thrown into hell. And Hades is just the sheol in the Greek, really, it's just the abode of the dead. But there appears to be a good and bad side where people are sorted in, in Hades. But a Hades like death is eventually completely thrown into the lake of fire. So, yeah, I think there's all these metaphors.
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A
Does that advocate. You think that's advocating for, like, an annihilationism?
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D
Well, okay, so I just found it's Revelation 20:14. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. So you can take that a bunch of ways. There's. There's a lot of people who take that as an. That is a key passage for annihilationism. It's one of the proof texts. But you can also take it as. It's the second death, meaning, like, well, when you died, you went to Hades, but now when you die you're going to go, you know, now all the dead are going to, to the lake of fire. Since the second death, second place they're going, you kind of take it either way, depending on where you want to go. I don't. This is where I like. Caleb, to your question about softening hell, I think just on the surface, I'd be like, yeah, we can't soften hell. At the same time, though, there's a lot of Adiaphora here. There's a lot of, like, unknowns and mysteries. So one person's, one person's view on hell is to another person a softening of hell. And that may not objectively be true because we just don't know a lot. So I think it's relative to where you are on what you believe of hell. You can think someone is softening it when actually they may have a really robust view. They just, they just might not think it's eternal, for example, they might think there's an annihilation part of it, but they believe it's a place of horrible judgment and separation from God. I think this is where your question like, well, what do you have to really believe?
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B
What do you have to say? Is kind of my. Because I agree with you. That was sort of the prompting of, of the article or even some of the debates I was seeing or privy to was like, well, a lot of this is speculation, as my dad said, with heaven as well, too. I mean, in popular theology, speculation about heaven and hell is just sort of, you know, it's a dime a dozen. Everybody just kind of says something that ultimately isn't, you know, in Scripture, even relating to our angels episode that you know, you're going to be an angel in heaven or something like this, right? Or. Or describing what the sort of. The perfect piece of heaven is like. There's not a lot of verses in Scripture on the specifics of heaven or hell. But there is something that you have to say, I think at least you
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D
can't really say there's no hell. And you can't say. I mean, there's even a debate if God is. If it's truly separation from God. Like one side of the debate goes, it's separation from the loving God. But in hell, God is present in his wrath. So that even if I go to Sheol, you are there. There's a bunch of passages that seem to imply, if you want to read them that way, that, like, well, hell is actually so bad because God is there, but he's there in his wrath, not in his grace and mercy, which you could also say is a separation from God and his triune love. But, you know, and then some people are like, no, it's actually a place he prepared, where he is not. You can kind of find verses, I think, for both, you know, like, how are they being punished if God is. Is there a place where God is not? I mean, the Old Testament makes it very clear. There's not a place that God is not. So in some way, he would be in some way present, but he would be present in a way that isn't characteristic of who he wants to reveal himself to be to his creation. Because it was prepared for me, devil and the angels. Right. For the demons.
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A
Right? Yeah, yeah. It's always been enough for me just to listen to Christ talk about it and be like, oh, I want nothing to do with that. Like, you know, it's not sort of. And to not sort of try to get too far into it. Just knowing that when Christ describes it, whatever it is, it seems like it's really bad and not enjoyable at all and that it's gonna be forever. And when you kind of put all those together, I mean, the minute you try to conceptualize that, you don't have to get Dante deep into it to figure out this is real punishment and this is real something that I don't want to be a part of. And it's kind of the same thing with heaven. Even though you don't get that many details about the life of the world to come, you get enough, you know, a feast, a party, mansions with God. What's that?
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C
Adam, 72 virgins.
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A
That's the wrong one.
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C
Oh,
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A
And then. And I gotta Say, that does not sound all that appealing, to be honest with you.
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D
But you had said earlier. And maybe Adam can pitch in here because he's kind of. Of the four of us, I think more the medieval expert.
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A
Yeah, he's our medievalist.
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D
But I think it's hard to. For us now to even think and debate about hell without sort of the influence and imagination of the Middle Ages, because they. They really like. If you go to the early church, they talk about hell. They actually don't have a single view on it. There's universalists who are orthodox fathers, there's annihilationists. There's a traditional eternal torment, like you can find it all in the early church. But you get to the Middle Ages and there becomes this real obsession in art and in theology with hell. Altar pieces start to change, like in churches, and you got Dante writing, you know, the Inferno, and all this kind of imagination happens. And it's probably directly related to the penance system and therefore also to the Reformation. So there's a lot of, like, Adam, I don't know if you want to give your thoughts on that, but I think the Middle Ages are inescapable to our current conception of hell.
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C
I actually do want to get back to Scott's point. Just before you spoke, Bruce, on the motivation of all this stuff, when Caleb mentioned I used this phrase evangelical. How did I put it?
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B
I don't know.
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C
Evangelical way we're talking about hell. It's also that what Scott was referring to, whatever it is, hell seems awful. And not just awful, but eternally awful. And not only is that a motivating point to preach Christ, but I think it's also motivating. It ought to be one of the things that motivates us to speak the gospel to those who have never heard it, if that makes sense. There's a story, and this is kind of.
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B
This is.
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C
I don't do this for comic relief, but I think it is kind of fun. There's a story of a church official, I don't know, maybe two decades ago, who would go around doing talks on encouraging Christians to do evangelism and so on. And he would. He would snap his fingers every second or so. And then somewhere during his talk, he'd stop and say, every time I've snapped my finger, a soul went to hell. Yeah, yeah, well. And then. I don't know. I think. I don't know that it's just folklore, but I've heard it on several occasions, but told a little differently, that there was a pastor in the Back of the room, who kind of jokingly said, well, then stop snapping your fingers. As if the snapping fingers was.
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D
But.
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C
But, I mean, you know, there's a mutual friend of ours, the tall guy from Los. Or from. Where is he? Long Beach.
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A
Long Beach.
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C
Who he and I have talked for years, decades about, like, thinking about hell. As much as we don't want to think about it, if there's one thing it ought to do is really encourage you to speak to the people that you're around, your kids, your. Your neighbors about Jesus. And you know, Caleb, you mentioned earlier how there are some who maybe suggest or maybe even say that you ought not talk about hell around unbelievers. And that seems kind of, I don't know, silly to me because it's a. I mean, it's hard not to read the New Testament and come across some reference to or warning from or away from hell. But part of me also wonders is maybe the suggestion to avoid that conversation is because most people don't believe in hell. So it doesn't. It's like a non. Thing. It's an unding to them. Right.
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A
Those Christians, maybe even.
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C
Yeah, well, and that includes Christians.
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A
So.
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B
Yeah, I guess the thing I've wondered is that our failure as sort of.
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C
It's certainly your failure, but yeah, I mean, Christians there are public witness. I don't know, there are at least some. There's a camp of thinkers on this topic who'd say that we've, ever since the Enlightenment, slowly but surely kind of embraced the ghetto that the Enlightenment resigned us to.
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A
I don't know this relates to this exactly, but I was. I'm trying to give this show that I was really good for a few seasons a chance, and what I hope is its final season. But one of the main characters dies, right? And his kid and his grandkid are. They miss him, of course. Right. And the grandkid asked the mom, like, do you think he's in? And they can't even say it. Right? And the mom goes, she's a scientist, of course. This is what kills me about all these conversations. Heaven, hell, afterlife, everything. She's a scientist, full tilt materialist. But she goes, well, I don't think there's some magical place in the sky, but I do know that they're with us always and they speak to us and we need to listen to them.
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B
And I'm like, how is that more magical?
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A
But that is a very. But as Adam pointed out, the reason I brought that up is I would think that that's even Sort of like the Christian conception of heaven and would just completely avoid hell altogether. Just say, you know. Say what? Well, then maybe just say, well, when they die, they die. And you don't want that. The positive would be when you die, you become an angel or you become this thing that we can still commune with or whatever. And I think she actually said commune with them too on the show, which was like blowing my mind. But at the end of the day. What's that, Adam?
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C
Which show is this?
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A
It's called For All Mankind.
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B
Oh,
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A
it's about space. Shocking. But at the end of the day, I think, I think that it's. I think we need to talk about these things like they're real. Because they are. And even if we don't go into big depth in describing, you know, their characteristics as being real, Jesus talks about them not just metaphorically and not just parabolically. He talks about them like they're real. Now some of the descriptions might sound metaphorical and the ones parable, but it's consistent that every time he brings it up, it sounds bad. It sounds like a bad place and it sounds like a place. And at the end of the day I just think that, you know, would I do 10 shows on hell no. Do I think it's good to do one? Yeah, because we need to speak about these things as like they're real. Because it is motivating to the Christian too, to evangelize if you actually think that this is a real place where people who don't cling to Christ are going on their death.
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D
I like that framing Scott.
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C
I gotta tell you a little story though first, Bruce, that'll fit with Scott, what Scott just said. Okay. And this kind of goes, doesn't go against, but maybe tax on to my comments about, you know, nobody believes in hell anymore, so what's the point in talking about it or whatever. But I, you know, this is a autobiographical. I have a friend from high school who was an atheist the whole time through high school. She had a. Not a rough childhood, but you know, like kind of a. She was adopted and her dad was a Marine or a Korean War vet. I liked him a lot because he was gruff and go figure. That's why I like Scott because he's gruff and grumpy and mean, but
- [31:06]
D
there
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C
was never any inclination she had any desire to learn about the Christian faith or anything like that. But we've been friends for 30 plus years and when we do talk, or did talk a lot, always there would be some sort of religious sort of element to our conversation. Um, one year I sent her a Bible for her birthday. Um, and then, you know, I was in the military and we kind of lost contact, but every once in a while we'd talk. And then one day, I kid you not, this is like 15 years after high school, after we, you know, last, like, we're really like close friends. She, I guess she called me up one day and asked if I'd come out and be the sponsor for her kids baptism. I was like, what? It was like out of nowhere, and she was going to have the babies, they're twins, baptized at a LCMS church. And she's kind of liberal, right? And I'm like, what the heck? So we talked. I asked him, what's the story here? And she like, no kidding, said I kind of asked her something like, well, why are you having your babies baptized? Are you a Christian now? And so on. She goes, yeah, I've been going to this church in Sular, that's in St. Louis. And she goes, and I don't want my children to go to hell. So maybe talk of hell is of some benefit in the public arena. I don't know that I ever talked to her about hell, but it is a terrifying place. Like you said, Scott, it's a place. And there's a lot of metaphorical language in the scriptures, but it treats it as a real place, a place of. Well, it's a lake of fire. It's a place you don't want to be. Now, how that's all going to work out, that remains to be seen. But Bruce, I interrupted.
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D
No, no, that's a good story. I was just going to add to Scott's point that I think there needs to be a balance. Always. You have to read the. My main point is you have to read the context for when it's appropriate to bring up hell or not. I do think it functions a lot to motivate Christians who know the truth about the full depth of what God is doing in and through Christ. But I also think it's. There was a point in history where it was so overused that it created problems. I mean, you can think of like Jonathan Edwards, servant, you know, sinners at the hands of an angry God, where you're God, you're a spider, and he's just playing with you, dancing you over the fire. And. And this kind of thing.
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A
I mean, it seemed to bring a lot of people in.
- [33:47]
D
Yeah, well, the Great Awakening. Yeah, so. So this was interesting. So in the 20th century, when Billy Graham was at his absolute Height. He had a meeting with the theologian Karl Barth. They met and they talked about different styles and stuff, and they met privately, and each one of them only has given sort of cryptic, broad things on their discussion. Barth's quick kind of summary of this meeting was finally just published in English a few years ago. It had only been in German for a long time. And he said that he was frustrated with Billy Graham. They had a disagreement about how the Crusades were, in Bart's words, mostly machine gun fire to the audience. In other words, Bart said, billy Graham, I love what you're doing. I'm not against you. You're preaching the gospel. I cannot possibly be against you. But the problem is that if you go to one of your crusades, you don't really hear a lot of good news. You just hear a lot of gunfire. And what he meant by that was that the Crusades were more scaring. The gospel message that Billy Graham was preaching, according to Barth's interpretation of it, was God is rescuing you from hell, which Barth was saying was more of an application of the law. And that the gospel, Barth told him, is actually just good news. It doesn't rely upon you having to tell someone they're going to hell. And Bart's like, if you look at Peter, if you look at Paul, if you look at the. The introduction of the gospel to pagans in the New Testament, they don't bring it up. They talk about the good news that Christ has done. Now, of course, that good news can't be separated from the fact that you're rescued from sin, death, hell, from the
- [35:25]
A
delivery from sin, death.
- [35:27]
D
But the question is, are you scaring someone in meaning, like, that's the gunfire, right? Like you duck for gunfire, you try to find safety, or do you present a God who loves you and gave his life for you? And maybe there's a place for both. And I think that's my point. But I think that if Christians feel like, oh, well, there's not enough talk about hell, so now I'm going to go down the Jonathan Edwards path and I'm going to do fire and brimstone and stand on the street corner and tell everybody, that's the kind of gunfire that I don't think is usually also helpful, because the picture you get of God is he's actually out to get me. But there's this one, there's this one, like, card I can get from him where he won't kill me. And that's not really good news. That's escapism so that I think there's.
- [36:14]
B
So I think, obviously we won't fully agree with Bart. At least three quarters of us on
- [36:21]
C
the
- [36:24]
A
side with Bart. Or Billy Graham.
- [36:27]
B
Or Billy Graham. Yeah. Wait, a what? A what? A rock in a hard place?
- [36:31]
A
No, I'm with Billy Graham. That's not hard at all.
- [36:33]
B
Oh, that's hilarious. This is where law and gospel actually applied. I'm not going to say balanced, because they're not balanced, because the gospel is the final word from God.
- [36:48]
A
Can you say distinguished?
- [36:49]
B
Distinguished. There you go. Law and gospel. Distinguished is incredibly helpful. And Bruce, to tie into your medieval thing as well, which I think you're absolutely correct, the medieval system of penance plays into Dante's picture here, which is in penance, you receive, you know, weighted, you know, weighted acts according to the sins to. To get full repentance and to get then full absolution or whatever it may be, comforted conscience, got to do a certain amount of. Of works or prayers or whatever it may be. And Dante does the same thing, right? It's retributive based on the level of your sin. Thankfully, the most punished person is the Pope in Dante's case, which is pretty accurate. But I think that's Caleb's second trump reference. That's a Luther reference.
- [37:49]
A
I'm just kidding. I'm just looking at Current tv.
- [37:55]
B
But the reality is that, yeah, when you speak of the gospel and we use words like rescue, saved, plucked out of hell is part of the rescue, Right? But you also can't hell somebody into loving God. You can't just use the law. The law can't, by its own power, strength, produce love of God, faith, trust, all of these things. And so, yeah, the problem with, like, Edwards, for instance, and this sermon was at the front of my mind when I was writing about this also, is that, yeah, you have this attempt to scare people into loving God, which then on the counter side gets you all of these. These popular rejections of hell today, which is, oh, I'm supposed to love God because he might put a gun to my head. You know, kind of also makes you
- [38:58]
D
intolerant to other sinners, right? Because then you're like, well, I changed my life. I turned my life around. I did what was right. Look at them. They're not doing it. They deserve it. They should. You know, like.
- [39:08]
B
But hell is, you know, sin, death, the law, hell, these are the things that Christ is rescuing you from. And so positioned like that. Not that like, oh, you make a decision. Hell or heaven or hell, which is
- [39:26]
D
what the Crusades were.
- [39:28]
B
Yeah.
- [39:29]
D
Make a decision.
- [39:30]
B
This is. Christ has made a decision to rescue you from hell. While you were rebelling from God, attempting to walk straight into hell, God sent his only son to die for you, to rescue you, to pull you out, to pluck you out from the dangers of hell, to make it so that you won't face the gates of hell. They can't come and claim you. This is good news. This is what makes the news good, is that you have been rescued from something. Not just from nothing, from vanilla, from plain, but from sin. Death and hell, which are all connected. Sin carries the weight of death and death, apart from faith in Christ, has the permanence of hell. And so apart from Christ, there's no hope for those who are dying in sin. And so that's. The other thing, is that this also depends on us. Taking sin seriously is not just the naughty things you do. And, you know, and not teaching our kids, for instance, that the reason you avoid sinning is because you might go to hell if you do too much of it. You know, which was kind of the back and forth on the impaulsive podcast, too, was like, they asked about levels in heaven and, like, how bad do you have to be to go to hell? Which actually made Osteen's answer even better, in one sense, because he really.
- [41:03]
D
What's weird is there are levels of
- [41:05]
B
heaven, so there could be levels of hell.
- [41:08]
A
I'm not. So what? I. Unless you're my heaven expert, I don't know.
- [41:13]
D
I'm just saying I was taken up to the third heaven. That's scripture.
- [41:17]
A
Unless you're my heaven expert, I don't want to do this. We. Before we do a heaven show, we're gonna actually go find a heaven expert and bring him on, because I got questions.
- [41:30]
C
Alison McGrath wrote a book on heaven.
- [41:33]
A
I know he did, years ago. Yeah. Have you read it?
- [41:36]
C
No.
- [41:37]
A
Yeah, I haven't either.
- [41:38]
B
I'm not interested.
- [41:38]
A
I'm over here. Like, I need answers. I was like, this book has the answers. I'm like, haven't read it.
- [41:45]
B
This isn't like, accounting your good works in the place Christ is.
- [41:48]
D
No, no, no, no. This was like, there's a lot we don't know. You know, Dante's is all based on, like, your merits.
- [41:55]
B
Yeah, this was. This was that. It was like, I. One of the hosts. I forget his name. The one who's not Logan Paul was like, you know, I'm close. I think I'm close to heaven. Kind of doing the Trump thing. I'M close to heaven. I'm not sure if I'm there yet.
- [42:07]
D
I take the little.
- [42:08]
B
Come out the juice. My wife.
- [42:10]
A
This is the big issue. This is the big issue here. You just, like, touched on it. And this isn't about hell, but this is like somebody. And my Lord, Joel Osteen was giving the answers to this. Like, this cannot be understated. How bizarre it is that his name has come up somewhat positively, at least five or six times on this episode. But that means that this other dude just did not listen at all to Joel Osteen when he said how you get to heaven? Because again, surprisingly, he gave a good answer. He's like, you get there by faith in Christ alone, period. The end, right? And this guy's like, well, I'm a pretty good person, so I think I'm close to heaven. This is why I'm on your side now, Caleb. You got me around. It took 42 minutes and 36 seconds, but you got me around. This is why you have to talk about this. Because this dude thinks, no matter what Joel answered his question, he thinks that he's still going to be earning it and that almost there is probably going to be good enough. And so, yeah, you have to wrap this up with sin. You have to wrap this up with the fact that you can try all you want and you can make some progress, but apart from Christ, you are no closer today than you were 10 years ago when you first started trying. And that that is going to mean eternal separation from God in hell. You have to actually give the law to these people. And you cannot give over the law all the way if you skirt around the fact that it's not just death, but that it is separation and punishment in hell. And that's why we do say, christ save you from sin, death, the power of the devil, and eternal damnation, for Pete's sake.
- [43:59]
D
Does Pete have to do it?
- [44:02]
B
It's not the only thing that makes the gospel good news. But it's like, why would we limit the things the gospel is actually, the gifts the gospel is actually dispensing, or the things that Christ has conquered on your behalf or in your stead. And to end with Adam's point about not just the weight on the people we're preaching to to accept Christ because the law is real. Like, the law should be preached in order to crush and cause despair in the self and make you realize, as you're saying here dead, that you can't merit your way or luck your way or chance your way to salvation. Because sin is serious. But then you look at, like, you know, look out in the world and see entire cultures, regions, groups of people in the millions who are rejecting Christ and who like the culture, the philosophy, the alternative religion is set up to do so. And it's tragic. It's sort of tragic. Especially if they conceptualize some alternative heaven or some neutrality for them thus, that the weight of the gospel is not necessary. And so I think it puts a lot of weight on Christians. Certainly has felt heavy on my heart this week that, dang, there are people out there who need the gospel because this is what happens to everybody who's left in their sin.
- [45:42]
A
Amen. I mean, yeah, preach the gospel. People might go to hell if you don't.
- [45:47]
B
Yeah, put the responsibility on us. We're the ones with the words of eternal life.
- [45:53]
A
That's right.
- [45:57]
B
Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for entertaining this episode on Hell. Hope that it was useful to the listeners. If you'd like to read the article that we referenced, link in the show notes below or go to 1517.
- [46:10]
A
Org video is very good on YouTube. And we need people to like and subscribe our YouTube videos because we need YouTube to show us some love. Okay, we need the YouTube love. And only way we do that is by you guys interacting with it. Comment, like, subscribe. Tell Caleb we did horrible or tell him we did really well. Whichever. Just give it some interaction. Come on now.
- [46:29]
B
Yeah, I do like the comments. I will say I do like the comments. Sort of disappointed that, like, Joel Osteen, that I gave Joel Osteen a little credit, which is true. I mean, per this episode, it sucks when you have to do it, but I guess credit where credit's due.
- [46:44]
C
Do you ever wonder Joel Olsteen, like, I've only seen clips of him probably on YouTube or something over the years.
- [46:51]
A
Oh, yeah, me too. Yeah, you're right.
- [46:53]
C
Do you ever wonder, though, if maybe if you just. This is purely hypothetical.
- [46:58]
D
Okay.
- [46:59]
B
I think there's a field trip for the thinking fellows coming out of the.
- [47:02]
C
Maybe he's not as bad as we make him out to be. I don't know.
- [47:05]
B
Sounds like we're coming.
- [47:07]
D
I really think he's just uneducated. He just inherited it from his father. So I don't know that he's maliciously out to be a heretic. I think he thinks he's doing right,
- [47:18]
A
but he's been accused of heresy so much, he's had to have looked into it by now.
- [47:21]
D
You would think so, but like, he's changed his mind now, right? Like, because he used to like, you see the Larry King interview where he was like, I don't know about Hilary. I don't, I don't know about that. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to. And now in this interview he's kind of more strong so getting a little more informational.
- [47:38]
B
He did say he didn't want to talk about it in the last section. Right? He said it's real. I know it's separation from God. I know we don't want to be there, but I don't really want to talk about it. That's kind of his. That was kind of the shtick. But I mean, you're right, it's better than nothing. Obviously improvement again, the weird faith alone thing. I think he even said those given faith, like, I don't know if that was an accident.
- [48:02]
C
But thinking fellows, you know, we should
- [48:06]
A
ask him to come on the show. Let's ask him to come on the show. Am I incredible?
- [48:11]
B
They met him at his church and I have to feel like there was dollars.
- [48:16]
D
Dude, just ask him just like come on. The thinking fellows.
- [48:20]
A
Send him an email.
- [48:21]
B
I'm going to cold email Joe Joel Osteen right after this.
- [48:27]
C
Didn't we cold email Jordan Peterson?
- [48:30]
A
It didn't work.
- [48:30]
B
Did not work.
- [48:34]
A
I get people all the time. In fact, I was just at a graduation party on Friday and this very well meaning lovely lady said was telling me about all the people we should cold email because they probably want to come on the show. And I'm like. And I gave the Jordan Peterson example because the reason we did that is he used to come on any podcast that would pay him $5,000 to come on and. But we, we hit him up just after he got so popular that he stopped doing that. Which is I think why we didn't get an answer to the cold email. But. And I just was trying to tell her, I'm like, man, these people just don't do this kind of thing for free.
- [49:08]
D
If you, if you had told him you wanted to talk about his all meat diet, I bet you he would come.
- [49:12]
C
No, he's been very, very ill for the last year.
- [49:16]
D
He just had a picture from the hospital I saw on social media, like
- [49:20]
B
hospital, yeah, we sent a cold email expecting, hoping back for the $5,000, I'll do it. And like being like, but he had
- [49:29]
A
stopped doing that because he had it like skyrocketed by them.
- [49:33]
B
But we should have Joe Rogan next.
- [49:36]
A
Yeah, let's.
- [49:37]
B
We should have.
- [49:38]
A
We'll give Caleb a list of cold emails. Joe Rogan, Joel Osteen. Who's the other one? He's the guy that just became a Christian that's been on all the podcasts. Like big name Russell Brand. Russell Brand.
- [49:53]
B
Is he jail? No, he was just on the Tucker Carlson podcast. Like
- [50:00]
C
we should call jail and sexual assault.
- [50:04]
D
I don't know the details. Russell Brand? Yeah, Something with sexual stuff.
- [50:07]
B
I don't remember. You can Google it.
- [50:09]
A
Wow. We should probably end the show. This is getting into like the non show conversations that we do on video and that could be bad.
- [50:19]
B
Well, thank you for listening, especially to this last five minutes of the show. You can catch us next week by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcasting app or platform. We'll catch you next time. Bye.
- [50:42]
A
Sam.