Rather a rambling sermon, even by my standards. (Talk of hell and damnation is too 19th century? What? Did he mean 9th century?)
It’s funny how he tries to call this “refreshing”, but dolefully spells out “the facts”. He doesn’t sound overly refreshed by it. I guess that’s a part of him (as he says) which would love to believe everyone is saved from sin into being righteous eventually. Too bad he doesn’t think this Parent will be competent at bringing “the very best” for all His children, unlike his own parents. But hey, if the scriptures teach God’s incompetency at parenting, what can a Bible-believing Christian do, amirite? (Fall back on God’s supreme competency at judging, I guess. )
Also funny how he decries “popular commentators” for teaching that Jesus rubber stamps people’s own decision to be in hell, five or ten minutes after basically teaching the same thing himself. (Citing C. S. Lewis favorably on that point along the way.) My guess is that what he really meant to decry was the second part of that popular teaching (though Lewis taught it, too) that people in hell won’t prefer to have been in heaven instead. (I agree with that criticism, btw.)
No mention of the goats being “baby” goats; no attempt at trying to reconcile his criteria for damnation with Jesus’ criteria in this judgment.
“Threaten the eternal punishment, lose the eternal life.” Nope, but he does make the expected argument there.
I agree, Rob Bell’s attempt at positioning “eonian” to only mean “intense” doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. (That was also one of my own critiques of his book Love Wins.) However, Bro. Taylor did miss examples where the term clearly cannot mean everlasting and even can only in some examples mean an intense experience (like Jonah in the stomach of the sea monster, which I seem to recall Rob mentioning, too).
The term(s) translated “eternal” do not on the other hand simply mean “age” or “eon” either, although I understand simplifying the details for his audience.
I suppose he doesn’t believe in a millennial age to come which isn’t eternal. But I fully grant that that age (and the ages of ages following) are part of one great Age of the Lord which is eternal. Still, things happen appropriate to that age which aren’t eternal. Hades and death, for example, aren’t eternal.
“No indication in the Bible that the devil and angels are put in God’s equivalent of a correction center.” Untrue, but if no one has told him I guess it’s still news. He can only pass on what he has, not what he doesn’t.
His reluctance to believe God will not be able to save all sinners from sin, bringing them to honor God, “does not honor God [long pause, long pause]”??? Okay. Yeah you think about that for a minute before trying to convince people that believing God cannot or will not bring all people to honor God somehow thereby honors God. Can’t think of any way to “get yourself straight on that”, huh? Time for another observation of just how many people there are in the world! – there, I trust the connection has now been rationally made about how believing in final honoring of God dishonors God and vice versa. Moving along. I SAID MOVING ALONG, UNIVERSAL, IRREVERSIBLE, BINARY, MANTRA, MANTRA!! HERE IS A CHARMING INSURANCE UNDERWRITER FROM SEVEN OAKS, WHY ARE YOU STILL THINKING ABOUT WHAT I JUST SAID EARLIER!! I WANT TO SEAR YOUR MINDS SO THAT, BEING SCARRED, YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO ASK ANYMORE HOW HONORING GOD DISHONORS GOD AND VICE VERSA!!!
Yes, put your picture of a happy and successful extended family up on your desk to remind yourself of how unhappy and/or unsuccessful you think the Bible is teaching Jesus will finally be when He comes in His glory to honor Himself and His Father with ultimate dishonor. It’s hard to describe how clearly “refreshed” you are at that thought.
Remember Jesus’ failure or lack of evangelical care always, audience. Tomorrow morning, tomorrow night, when you go out evangelizing yourself. Yes, I am trying to frighten you with a hopeless punishment as the only punishment worthy of the honor and reputation of God, or perhaps with God’s inability to save people from a fire. Either a hopeless punishment or no punishment at all, that’s the only way; only final unrighteousness and permanent rejection of truth will suffice for a God Who “cares so much about righteousness and truth”.
“The question is how could a loving God not send a person to [a finally hopeless] hell.” Um, by continually acting toward saving all sinners into righteousness and love and not giving up until He gets it done, even if that takes some hell for impenitent sinners.
I realize he thinks the scriptures are teaching this, but his attempts at principle justification are failing so hard he ought to be proportionately suspicious that maybe he’s misreading the scriptures and perhaps hasn’t found enough data there yet. He clearly isn’t comfortable with what he’s teaching and is trying to talk himself into accepting it.
Oh wait, the answer to the question of how a loving God could not send a person to a finally hopeless hell was to send His son to bear that judgment instead? So Jesus (clearly not God Himself in any way on this theory) went undeservedly to a finally hopeless hell so that some other people who actually deserve to go there wouldn’t have to? And “we all know” this? Really? Because I’m pretty sure we all know He didn’t go to a finally hopeless hell, unless “we” are some kind of non-Christian Jew (and not even every kind of non-Christian Jew). Even Muslims generally don’t think Jesus went to a finally hopeless hell (or to any hell at all actually, or was judged against by God at all). Or was that not the “judgment” you were talking about?
Still, I guess in a way “the punishment fits the crime” if the punishment is to forever refuse to yield to God, in which case God authoritatively ensures permanent continuation of the behavior for which the person was punished in the first place. Like a judge who punishes a murderer by ensuring he will forever after commit murder! – surely that punishment also fits the crime, yes? (The murderer won’t enjoy continuing to commit murder forever? Then the punishment didn’t fit the crime after all. Huh. “You haven’t even begun to think about the crime,” indeed.)
“Does [not talking about hell enough] explain our lack of passion?” Well, that might explain your lack of passion in being refreshed by a doctrine of finally permanent dishonor of God. But I suspect your evident lack of passion in talking about it stems from other reasons.
When I said earlier “no attempt at trying to reconcile his criteria for damnation with Jesus’ criteria in this judgment”, I meant his criteria for damnation up until he introduces his third point. Before then the criteria for damnation is not accepting and following Jesus as Lord – which the sheep hadn’t been doing or they wouldn’t be asking when they ever had served Jesus, not incidentally. Now the criteria is how people treat Jesus’ servants when the servants are in trouble.
Brother Taylor does notice that the sheep are surprised they haven’t been serving Jesus by serving His servants, but doesn’t notice what’s so surprising about this surprise (although he says the surprise is that this is a surprise). The surprise is obviously that these people weren’t formally Christian, since no Christian should be surprised about this! Moreover, Bro. Taylor, in painting this as only helping people who belong to the Christian family already, interprets this surprise entirely against what Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount: if you do good for those who love you, what are you doing more than pagans and traitors do? Being perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, requires doing good to our enemies. Which fits with the fact that the baby goats in this judgment are literally the least of Christ’s flock. Bro. Taylor does seem to vaguely recognize that these must be pagans like the Canaanite woman or the Magi (his examples), but still positions them as people who have already become Christians before helping “the family”.
So on his theory it comes as a complete surprise to these highly dedicated Christians that they had been serving Jesus by serving other Christians, because they didn’t even notice what they were doing, and “they didn’t even notice what they were doing because they were part of the family”. That may be literally the most retarded description of Christians I’ve ever heard a Christian give about faithfully obedient Christians.
But it’s important for him to make nonsense out of the data, because the implications would be that Jesus saves people who don’t even know they’re serving Jesus. C. S. Lewis, whom he likes to quote, specifically used to say about this judgment “there will be surprises”, and that’s one of the things he meant by it.
It doesn’t help his presentation that he can’t think of a third surprise to make a nice trinity of surprises, so simply repeats surprise number two as though it’s also the third surprise. I can think of a third surprise he totally skipped over, right there in the text: when were we not serving you, Lord?!
He does at least (finally!) recognize toward the end that the goats are also part of the flock, cared for as part of the family.