Puzzling Pictures 9: How Great A Salvation

On Wednesday, a man asked me for my testimony. Did he want me to tell him how I stood before the Lord at that present moment, or did he want to know how I became a believer in the first place? He wanted to know how I was saved, he said: it was a question he always asked when he met anyone who claimed to be a Christian. Fair enough.

He seemed happy with what I told him. It’s a simple story, though it still seems to me to be highly unlikely and moderately marvellous. It does not show me in a good light, but does demonstrate that “God moves in a mysterious way”, as William Cowper put it. 

I was just wondering … I have not yet come across anyone who went forward at the recent “Festival Of Hope”. I suppose it’s possible that there is someone reading this who responded to Mr Graham’s invitation to go to the front and to pray with him. Well, if I were to meet you, I would ask you - with your permission - the following three questions.

1   Would you say that you are now saved?

2   How were you saved?

3   From what were you saved?

I would be particularly interested in the answer to question number three. Why so? If you haven’t read it already, please go back to the blog entry entitled “Puzzling Pictures 9: The Grate Fire.”

As I stared into the flames of that fire in the gathering gloom, waiting for them to do their work, I thought about hell for quite a while. I’d considered the possibility of sudden death, earlier in the afternoon. But, I was sure I was saved. Why bother wondering what hell was like? 

But, why didn’t I know all that much about it? I couldn’t recall a single sermon that had more than a passing reference to the subject, over at least the last decade. 

As many have remarked, preaching and teaching in the Contemporary Christian Church seems to follow the Pick & Mix principle: pick out what people will find pleasant and easy to accept, and leave out every doctrine that might seem hard, harsh, or in any way unpalatable. Woe betide the preacher who refers to repentance as though it were necessary to salvation. And who would be foolish enough to insist on the permanence view of marriage, as taught in the New Testament? Above all, heaven help the pastor who tells his people that unbelievers will end up in hell. How hateful - and hated - he would be!

What does Paul tell Timothy?

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 3.16-4.4)

I’m sure that most readers will be more knowledgeable on this topic than I am. So, just out of interest, how would you answer the following questions, as they might be put to you by some sincere yet sceptical enquirer?

Is there really a hell, or is it merely annihilation - a departure into nothingness - when we die outside of the salvation which God offers in Jesus Christ?

Do the unsaved dead really suffer torments; and are there really differing degrees of torment, according to the deeds done in this life?

Does hell really last for eternity, or is there an eventual ending to it all?

Would a God of Love be capable of condemning anyone to eternal punishment?

Isn’t the concept of hell something which belongs to the Old Testament, rather than anything that is relevant to the New?

Isn’t the language used about the afterlife entirely symbolic, so that we need not take these ideas too seriously?

Answers should be biblically-based, of course. I note our pastor’s admonition in his blog entry for today: “Anything you believe about heaven which is not taught in the Bible is almost certainly wrong”; likewise, for anything we believe about hell.

Is it worth taking the trouble to find as much as we can about the true nature of hell? 

Well, without that knowledge, how can we even begin to appreciate just how much it cost to keep us out of it?