When someone raises an objection to Christianity like: ‘There’s no proof of God’, it’s relatively easy to respond. You can talk about how, outside of pure maths, we don’t talk about proof, or look at how most of the important decisions we make in life are not down to irrefutable proof (see our blog, Prove It To Me!) It doesn’t guarantee that people will buy it, of course, but the answers are there.

But when asked about the eternal fate of someone who has never heard the Gospel or never heard about Jesus, the truth is more hidden from us.

Remember, our role is not to win arguments. We are called to love people and point them to Jesus. With something like this, I think it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know.’

What can we say that might be helpful?

God has promised us that, if we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). He is not eager for anyone to die (2 Peter 3:9). “For there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:12-13). We do not know how God is dealing with people in lands yet unreached by the gospel, but from Scripture we can see that He will never condemn anyone unjustly, but will be faithful to reveal Himself to anyone who looks for His salvation. Nobody goes to hell on a technicality!

We also know that John saw in heaven “…a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10). Not only every nation but every tribe will be represented in heaven.

Notice that they all sing the same song. We are not saying that sincere Muslims or Hindus, trusting in their religion, will make it to heaven. There is only one Saviour, and everyone in heaven will be there through the salvation provided by Jesus.

Jesus died for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2)! We are confident, for example, that the Old Testament patriarchs who lived by faith before Jesus’ earthly ministry, are in heaven. So certainly some people have got to heaven without knowing Jesus in the personal way that the New Testament speaks of. Ultimately only God can judge as only He knows the individual’s heart. We hold out hope for those who have not heard but have not rejected God, those who have been misinformed, or those who are unable to understand. And we don’t need to worry about injustice, because God is Justice. It is impossible for God to go against his own nature and be unfair. Nobody will stand before God and claim foul play.

Certainly, the Bible does not teach “universalism”. Universalism is the idea that everyone gets to heaven. The Bible clearly teaches that the only certain way to heaven is through Jesus. We are confident that God will not hold anyone accountable for any knowledge he did not receive. At the same time, the Bible emphatically states that Christ is the only sure way to salvation. For anyone who has heard of the saving grace of Jesus and rejected, you have to ask what more God can do in that situation?

So, we don’t know what happens if people die not knowing about Jesus. We do know that we need to tell people about Jesus. And we do know, above all, that God has all the bases covered!

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So, in Hell: Part 1, we discussed how God wouldn’t send good people to hell because there are no good people. In Hell: Part 2, we discussed how God wouldn’t send anyone to hell because we choose it for ourselves. This week, we want to look at the solution to the problem that hell creates.

We need to be clear that God didn’t create the world so that we would be condemned to hell. He didn’t decide that we would be sinners and some of us would be forgiven but others would go to eternal destruction. Hell is a consequence of sin, which is a consequence of our rejection of God.

But what do we mean by ‘Hell’?

If heaven is the undiluted presence of God, then hell might well be the total absence of Him. He loves us unconditionally, and if we say ‘No’ to His offer of love, then what more can He do but remove Himself from our sight? The problem is that, when He goes, Love, Hope, Beauty, Justice all go with Him – because He is all those things. We love because He first loved us. We understand Beauty because of His hand in Creation. Etc…

When we reject the presence of God, we choose the absence of Him: hell. That was our move. Fortunately, God has countered so that our move away from Him doesn’t have to be check-mate. He knows where the path we have chosen leads, and He’s not cool with that, so He has done something about it.

The answer is Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of both God’s Justice and Love. At the cross, we see God’s love for people and His wrath upon sin. He cannot allow sin/wrongdoing into his presence, but He loves us too much to just let us run away hopeless.

When Jesus died on the cross, He took the consequence of our sin/rebellion/rejection upon himself. He took your bullet/paid your fine/jumped on your grenade. He provided that doorway (the narrow gate) between you and God. Nobody else has ever made that gesture for you. In every other major religion, it’s up to you to save yourself. That’s a lot of pressure. But the moment you say ‘Yes’ to Jesus – the moment you let Him take over at the centre of your life – it’s no longer about you. He looks at your sin, your guilt, your wrongdoing, and He says, ‘I’ll take that, thanks. You’re free now.’

Nobody need end up in hell. “The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance” (2Pet. 3.9). “He desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1Tim. 2.4).

Of course, if we reject Jesus’ offer of forgiveness, then there is simply is no one else to pay the penalty for our sin -except ourselves. If you were on the verge of signing a contract and, instead of shaking on it with the other guy, you pulled your hand away and spat in his face, you wouldn’t still walk away thinking, ‘that deal’ll probably still go through.’

Jesus is the only rescue plan. No other God is coming for you. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

Next week, in the final part of the Hell Quadrilogy, we will look at questions like, ‘What about those people who never hear the Gospel?’

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God wouldn’t send good people to hell.

Last week, we looked at the idea that there are no ‘good’ people for God to send to hell: There’s Jesus, and then everyone else. Here we want to look at the idea that God doesn’t send anyone anywhere – we satnav our own eternal destination.

A lot of people seem to think that the statements “God is all loving” and “Some people go to hell” are explicitly contradictory. Why would God, if He is all-loving, allow anyone to end up in hell – whatever it is that hell is? It seems so unjust! And I agree, it does seem unjust.

The first thing to say is that without a God of Justice behind everything, our sense of justice and injustice would be totally flimsy. If human death is the end of existence, then there is no such thing as ultimate judgement or ultimate justice. There is no such thing as fairness! Live how you want, and the result will be the same: nothingness.

For something to seem unfair, it has to first be measured against a definite, immovable standard of fairness. An orange wouldn’t approach the colour Orange and say, ‘I don’t think you’re very Orange.’

You just don’t get a definite standard of justice without God. So when we worry about God being unfair, we’re worrying unnecessarily because He is Fairness. He is Justice.

According to the Bible, God’s nature is both perfect Justice and perfect Love. Both of these are equally powerful, and neither can be compromised. With God, you are guaranteed both unconditional love and perfect justice.

But this is precisely the problem! Because God’s Justice exposes our inadequacy. The Bible says that every person has failed to live up to God’s moral law (his standard of goodness) and so we find ourselves guilty before God. The biblical word for this failure is sin. You might think you’re a good person compared to rapists or politicians, but you are not going to be judged against them.

The prophet Ezekiel declared, “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel. 18.4), and the apostle Paul echoes, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans. 6.23). You reap what you sow. This is justice in its purest form. By yourself, you fail the entrance test into heaven.

But why doesn’t God just stop us from sinning? Well, because He loves us. God has not made us robots. We have Free Will. We can use that Free Will to accept his offer of love and ‘life in abundance’, or we can use it to do our own thing. He will not and cannot force us to believe in or follow Him. You cannot force someone to love you – we have a different word for that.

“Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature.” (Galatians. 6.7-8)

Heaven isn’t a treat. It’s not Center Parcs. Heaven is the undiluted presence of God. And if you’ve spent your entire life rejecting that presence, why would you suddenly want to be there in the midst of it?

It’s horrible to think that people I know may end up in hell. I reject it on an emotional level. But I wonder whether we put too much emphasis on how we feel, and not enough on God’s holiness. Sin just cannot exist in the presence of God. It would be like a damp book thrown into a furnace – by the nature of those two things, the book would just get burnt up. And we are sinful – we’re damp books. We can do good things with a small ‘g’, but we are not wholly Good. Without some kind of protective suit, we are going to get burnt up.

Next week, we’ll look at what we call this protective suit. But, to end, remember that we don’t preach hell. We preach Jesus’ offer of ‘Fullness of Life’. Nobody else in history has ever made you that offer. It’s not ‘turn or burn’ – it’s ‘turn, and see what it means to live life in all its beauty’.

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Recently, I asked a friend who used to believe in God how he lost his ‘faith’. He told me that two people close to him died in quick succession, and he realised that the idea of God sending those good people to hell was so ridiculous that the Christian god was obviously false.

So, how do we respond?

The first thing to appreciate is that whenever we talk about death and hell, we should do so with utter sensitivity. This is not just a theological issue, but also a deeply emotional one. We are trying to communicate the message of God’s love, not simply a brusque,‘Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in’ message.’ We should convey news about hell, perhaps, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The crux is the question, ‘What is good?’ And here we’re dealing with the key issue for the modern western world. The consensus opinion in our society would be that people are inherently good. If you stood on any high street and surveyed people about their sense of morality, you would probably sustain some kind of brain injury. But you would also likely hear people saying things like: ‘Well, you know, I’m not perfect, but I’m alright really. I’m a good person deep down. I’ve never murdered anyone.’

We have in our minds a sliding scale of goodness, with murderers, rapists (and, in my case, Tottenham) at one end, and people like Mother Teresa and Lenny Henry at the other.

We develop a sort of internal quasi-equation: If God is good + I’m alright = God wouldn’t send me to hell.

But that falls down when you come to Christianity (and as you know, we’re all about that here). The biblical elephant in the room is that there are no good people. This sounds cruel and harsh and a bit intolerant, but we need to be clear about what we mean by ‘good’. Good compared to whom? To a murderer? Sure. To God? ‘Fraid not. With Christianity, the view is not that there are good people and bad people: there’s Jesus, and then everyone else.

Romans 3 says ‘There is no one righteous, not even one…there is no one who does good, not even one.’ That doesn’t mean that we are all evil Childcatchers from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We might think we come off OK on our own scale of good/evil, but however you cut it, compared to Him, we are not good.

So God doesn’t send good people to hell, because there are no good people. At this point, someone might say, ‘Well the God I believe in is much nicer than that,’ or ‘If there is a God, he wouldn’t send anyone to hell.’ And that’s fine, but that’s not the Christian God. And besides, you actually won’t find this other God anywhere – he’s just a placebo.

If Christianity is true, then the idea that you try to live a good life and God rewards you for your efforts is false. Jesus didn’t come to tell us that we were all doing fine. He didn’t go willingly to his death because nothing was wrong.

Next week we’ll look at the fact that God doesn’t send people to hell. We choose it for ourselves.

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Last week we ran a competition with Damaris Trust to win ‘red carpet’ tickets to the movie premiere of ‘Flight’ starring Denzel Washington.

The question was:

What’s your favourite place you’ve ever visited on a plane, and why?

And the winning answer:

“Heathrow. For 10 years while my children were young I travelled extensively on business. Heathrow meant I was home to see my wife and kids. No better place to be.”

Our winner was Tony Ingall of Enfield – here is what he thought of the night:

“I never enter competitions.  Well that’s not strictly true, I enter competitions so rarely that I struggle to remember the last time.  As for winning anything, the last time I won something it was a bottle of whisky in a raffle in 1977.

While reposting the CVM competition entry on our church FaceBook page, the question caught my eye.  I’ve travelled a lot, mainly on business.  Seattle, San Francisco, LA, San Jose, Boston, New York, Philadelphia (so often the bar staff there greet me by name), Rome, Brussels, Paris, Singapore … I think you get the picture, always a bag packed ready to go.

So my favourite place, well you saw the answer.  When you travel that much, it is always good to come home to the family.  To those you love and who love you and support you.  Those who have the grace to let you do the work God has called you to, even though it takes you away from them.

How did the evening go?  It was great!  A colleague from work joined me as my wife was away (her turn for once).  We got to walk on the red carpet in Leicester Square with the crowds clapping and cheering, strangely no-one wanted our autographs.  They seemed more interested in Denzel Washington and Kelly Reilly for some reason I can’t explain.  The film was not what I expected.  I’d imagined something more investigative.  You know the sort of thing, a fatal accident caused by a failing part, the big bad manufacturer, who has been doing things on the cheap, covers up to avoid a disastrous run on the share price and the lone investigator brings them down.  Instead we got an insight into the moral dilemma of a drug taking alcoholic.  Denzel Washington was superb as the pilot disintegrating under the influence.  Kelly Reilly gave a awesome performance as a trick-turning drug addict.

It’s not a film for the faint hearted, the easily offended or those with a fear of flying but definitely a film worth seeing.”

If you would like to know more about the film and the themes in it, Damaris have produced the official community resources  - see it here: www.damaris.org/flight

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Knee deep in mud, gale force winds and hauling millions of chairs across a field in Swindon, was not how we were expecting our internship to begin.

OK so maybe we were only ankle deep, and it was probably more of a strong gust than a gale… and there were probably only 1000 chairs but you’ve got to have a dramatic opener for your first proper CVM blog. We were thrown in at the deep end and were told to expect the weekend to look like a lovechild of New Wine and Top Gear, which it really was. This is how two young men in their late teens survived The Gathering XII…

Jack Undrell: Diary Entry

Thursday was jam-packed, muddy but HOT! All the team started to look like tomatoes after a couple of hours. We worked from midday until late evening, washing up, putting up tents and marquees. At the end of play we had fish & chips before a well-earned sleep.

Friday morning was mental! The boss wanted us to sort out a lot of last minute preparation before 800 men arrived. My main duty was assigned to me: Managing the CVM stand, which was brilliant. It was amazing talking to everyone who came through check-in and later that evening, I got to listen to Jon Burns. As a football and rugby fan, his story was incredible.

Saturday, what can I say, the blokes must have got a lot out of the sessions as the resources were flying off the stand. Darrell Tunningley went on to give his testimony of how God transformed him from a heroin addict and a convicted armed robber to a church minister, which was incredible. However, for me, the best moment of the weekend was seeing around 40 men commit their lives to Jesus later that night.

On Sunday morning we all shared communion, (first time for some blokes) and quite a surreal experience for me. Before we set off for home, I knelt with hundreds of men to meet with Jesus in the mud.

Looking forward to next year!

Andy Cozens: Diary Entry

I couldn’t have thought of a more effective way of getting to know my colleagues than sharing a campsite and actively serving Christ with them. The type of bond that was formed between me, Jack and the team over the weekend would have probably taken over a month to form if we’d just been sat at CVM HQ.

Having such a close band of brothers and sisters made the kit-hauling, dishwashing, tea making and errand running so much more easy to cope with. Not to say that it wasn’t hard work, but it would have been much harder without the team’s general supportive attitude towards each other.

Within the CVM team was the camera-team, which I was blessed enough to be a part of. It was our job to capture all the main meetings, seminars and worship times with four old BBC cameras.

I had prayed a lot before joining CVM that I would be able to use the gifts and skills that God had given me to bring glory to him and already, on the second day, I was doing just that. What an answer to prayer!

Without doubt the best part of the weekend was 40 guys came to be prayed for after a Gospel message. It was at this moment when I realised how much God had been working over the weekend.

Who knows what happened when those men arrived home again but my prayers are definitely with them and their families. The Gathering XII gave me a new heart for men’s ministry and I am so glad to have joined a movement that is so effectively making Christ known to so many men.

All the Best,

Jack&Andy

Book Now for The Gathering 2013

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